The Man Who Loved Birds Read online

  Flavian winced at this casual reference to his first lie in what was becoming a swamp of deception. “Any time. But I have to go. I have to make Vespers.”

  The Voice studied the sky. “Aint no clock time here. That’s why I come here. That and planting my babes.”

  “Yes, well, you tell that to the abbot.” Flavian took the Voice’s hand. A warm grip of leathered horn—he would have no blisters. “You know, I never caught your name.”

  “That’s because I never mentioned it.” The Voice grinned. “Fools’ names and fools’ faces are often seen in public places. That’s the last nun I had talking. Sister Mary Immaculata Schmuck. Fourth grade, I think she might have been. ‘Mind of your own,’ she told me, ‘but bad attitude.’ After her I was out of there for good. Come to find out she got me exactly right. Johnny Faye.”

  “Johnny Faye what?”

  “No what to it. Just Johnny Faye. Thanks for the help.”

  And then Flavian climbed out of the creek and pushed through the wall of cedars to walk over the hill and down the lane, stepping smartly so as to reach the abbey in time for Vespers. As he jogged along he realized that now he could put a name to the Voice and that was something, on top of which he had figured out a plan to get rid of the manila envelope.

  Chapter 3

  Flavian sat in the monastery minivan, studying the doctor’s office. When he last visited this building it had been a gas station with a garage door that rolled up to reveal a hydraulic lift for raising cars and trucks. Now he tried imagining that bay furnished with medical equipment. What came to mind instead was the thought of corpulent Brother Bede, being elevated for inspection.

  Crammed into the glove compartment of the monastery minivan: the manila envelope left by Johnny Faye, on which Flavian had written in large block letters DR CHATTERJEE—DONATION TO THE DESERVING. He had decided to take Johnny Faye’s suggestion—he would locate the doctor’s mail slot, drop the cash-stuffed envelope through it, and make tracks.

  But as he was cramming the envelope into the slot, the door opened a crack. “May I be of assistance?”

  Flavian was charmed by her accent, not quite British, not quite anything but itself, and mortified by the hint of suspicion in her voice. He told her he was a monk right off—it seemed the surest way to keep her from looking inside the envelope, on which, after all, he had written her name.

  His identifying himself seemed to put her at ease. She opened the door. “Won’t you come in for a cup of tea? In my country it is what one does when monks come to the door. That or give alms. But here you have brought me a gift.”

  Flavian grinned weakly. He knew he should decline—a monk, outside the enclosure after Compline, delivering money that for all he knew was contraband, only to accept an invitation to sit alone with a woman? Was there any rule he wasn’t breaking? “Sure,” he said, and in his flat, cheerful inflection of that word, he who had never traveled abroad understood for the first time that he was American.

  Inside Flavian sat on the worn vinyl couch, sweating through his shirt. From his seat he watched her move efficiently about her cubbyhole of a kitchen. He had always thought of the monastery kitchen as cramped; suddenly it seemed as vast as America. It occurred to him that she lived in space in a very different way than he—given a burner, a sink, and a few square feet, this woman could prepare a meal for twenty.

  “Do you have a preference among teas?”

  “Iced,” he said, and when this was followed by silence, “Unsweetened. But if you’ve already put in the sugar that’s all right, too.”

  After a few minutes she brought in a tray furnished with teacups, a sugar bowl, a bowl filled with ice, and a saucer with four thin cookies placed in the form of a cross. “Please tell me about your monastery,” she said, and Flavian, who thought he would have little to say on the subject, talked through the pot of tea—of the long and checkered history of the order, begun by enthusiastic reformers who through hard work had transformed Europe from swamps and forests into fertile fields; how they grew wealthy and corrupt until a new reform arose; how these monks fled France during her revolutions and came to America to begin anew. As he spoke he felt some small glow of pride—despite their great sins, and there had been many, they had made their mark as a community of men.

  The evening light faded from the windows. The envelope sat on the coffee table, its inscription face down—the doctor had not mentioned it, probably waiting for him to offer it in formal presentation, which he was not about to do, but standing to leave would prompt the question of what it contained. The tea was having its effect but he did not dare visit the bathroom from fear that in his absence she would pick up the envelope and turn it over and read the note. Then she would open it and there would be questions, and above all he wanted to avoid questions. He crossed his legs.

  “I am pleased to meet a monk,” she was saying. “So much of this country is so foreign to me. In medical school one had time only for study and work, and now I find myself for the first time, really, out and about in the real America, and whom should I encounter but a monk? You have some quality of being a monk that I recognize. I believe I might have recognized you as a monk even had you not told me.” Flavian shifted in his seat. He uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “More tea?” she asked. He declined. “I can see that you are American even before being a monk. That particular quality of self-assurance, I know it from your movies. I ask myself if someone from a small, obscure country might ever acquire it.”

  Do not think of water, Flavian told himself sternly. Immediately there came to mind the duck flying over the tavern’s Miller Lite waterfall. If only she would excuse herself to another room, even briefly. If only—

  A knock at the door. “If you will excuse me,” Dr. Chatterjee said.

  A tall thin woman stood outside, carrying a young boy who was clawing and biting the air and making terrible, strangled, gasping sounds and the woman’s face was a study in terror and then the child stiffened in her arms and Flavian could see, anyone could see that he was fighting for breath.

  “Doctor—I’m sorry, asthma—” and in that moment the world of ordinary life fell through a hole and everything became immediate and important and necessary.

  “Bring him in,” Dr. Chatterjee said. “Follow me.” The doctor opened the door into her medical office. As the woman passed Flavian caught a glimpse of the boy’s face, his eyes wide and alert with terror, and then his small body seized up and he gave a strangled, choking moan. “Lay him there,” Flavian overheard the doctor say, even as to his lifelong shame he picked up the manila envelope, unbuttoned his shirt, and stuffed it between his shirt and his chest.

  “Brother Flavian,” Dr. Chatterjee called from the examination room. “Telephone the ambulance and tell them to come immediately. The telephone and the number are both on the counter. Please tell me what happened,” this last she spoke to the woman.

  Flavian rebuttoned his shirt as he made the call. Ambulance, now, emergency, Dr. Chatterjee’s office, boy can’t breathe, cause?—asthma, come now, come right away.

  The boy was lying on the table, gasping. “He was playing with this knife,” the mother said. “I don’t know how he got the knife, I told him a thousand times if I told him once that if I caught him with a knife that would be the end of—”

  “Yes, yes.” Dr. Chatterjee took a stethoscope from a hook on the wall. “And then what happened.”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know, I wasn’t looking or I’d of seen the knife, you know, and I’d of taken it away. All I know is that I come out in the yard to get the clothes and then I saw him there and the knife on the ground and him choking.”

  One side of the boy’s shirt had a blossom of red, blood from some kind of wound but no great amount—evidence of a cut or a scrape but not the blood of a life. Then Dr. Chatterjee flicked on the overhead fluorescent and in its glare Flavian saw the boy’s twisted neck and something wrong that he couldn’t name except that he knew some order known to the bo
dy was terribly out of place. “Mother of Mercy,” the mother whispered. “Please do something, please help.”

  Dr. Chatterjee motioned to Flavian. “There’s a pair of scissors in that side table. Bring those, I need to cut away his shirt.”

  The mother started forward. “Oh, no, ma’am, I don’t think—”

  “I will buy him a new shirt if it comes to that,” Dr. Chatterjee said. She took the scissors and sheared down the back of the shirt in one smooth motion. The boy’s mother held back, her head bent. The shirt fell away and Flavian, who was leaning in to hold the flailing child by his arms, saw first what Dr. Chatterjee saw next: Across the boy’s skinny back were four welts, three horizontal bands and one at an angle and all four so precise as to insist that they existed not by accident but by design.

  Flavian looked away.

  A moment of silence.

  “I see.” Dr. Chatterjee looked closely at the welts, then turned from the child to pull open various drawers. “Lay him on his back. One at either end. We cannot wait for the ambulance. You are—?”

  “I’m Officer Smith’s wife. The state policeman. We live across the road.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Chatterjee pulled an envelope from the drawer and tore it open and drew out a pair of latex gloves. She took them by their wrists and pulled them on, then laid their plastic wrapper flat on the table next to the boy. “Mrs. Smith, take his feet. Brother Flavian, stand at his head. Hold his arms, lift them above his head, pin them to your sides. Do not let him move. Hold his legs, Mrs. Smith, no, not like that, he must not be able to move, climb onto the table and sit between his feet and put your weight on his calves, yes, like that.” Dr. Chatterjee scrabbled in the drawer and took from it a silver-handled knife and another plastic envelope and tore it open and removed a thin sharp blade and snapped it onto the knife and placed the scalpel on its flattened plastic envelope. She crossed to a closet and opened a door. “No proper chest tube, no proper chest tube, we will use this,” and she returned with another envelope and a bottle the color of dried blood. “Keep him still.” She opened the bottle, spilled a bit of its contents onto a tissue, wiped the blunted scissor clamps, peeled open the envelope, and then used the scissors to lift a plastic tube from inside. Dr. Chatterjee took up the scalpel and pinched off a bit of tubing, which she left lying on the square of opened plastic. “Brother Flavian, talk softly at his ear. Keep him still.” Flavian clamped the child’s arms at his sides as the mother spoke Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope. Dr. Chatterjee bent to the child’s side and felt along his rib cage, and when her finger reached a certain place she made a small noise of satisfaction. “Still, still, my lad,” and the doctor dropped her voice and spoke at the boy’s ear in a slow, smooth murmur in a language Flavian had never heard while he responded to Mrs. Smith To thee we cry poor banished children of Eve even as Dr. Chatterjee continued her murmur, she might have been speaking in tongues as she wiped the boy’s chest with the tissue, a swath of ochre on his white skin. Mourning and weeping in this vale of tears, Flavian spoke as he pulled back, the boy was so strong and fighting, twisting, the tendons in his neck taut with labor as he struggled for air, and Flavian braced his feet, grateful for his clod-hopping farm boots. Now Dr. Chatterjee was laying the scalpel to the boy’s chest and cutting with a quick, deep stroke, the strength of her shoulders leaning into the blade as the strength of her arms and hands held it back, and then something inside the boy gave way and Dr. Chatterjee made another small noise of satisfaction. With one hand holding the scalpel in place she took the scissor clamps in the other and inserted them into the wound. “Do not let him move, hold him still but yes, keep his arms pinned back, link his hands and hold them together yes, not much longer now,” and with one hand she removed the scalpel and laid it on the square of plastic and then turned back to the boy and gave the clamps a half-turn and spread their handles wide so that the wound opened and it was as if she had punctured a tire, air and blood spattering out, blood sprinkling Flavian’s shirt, and then the boy took a deep gasping breath and another and another and the color returned to his lips and face. “Now hold this hemostat exactly where it is and do not let it move,” and Flavian leaned forward to hold the hemostat in place. Using a second set of clamps Dr. Chatterjee took up the piece of tubing and inserted it into the open wound. “Use this hemostat to hold the tube,” and she removed the first hemostat and laid it aside as she was turning to take another small plastic envelope from the drawer. She peeled it open and took out a curved needle trailing a long black silken thread. The boy had stopped struggling now and his breathing was calming—his eyes still stared up at Flavian’s but the terror in them had been replaced by ordinary fear. Dr. Chatterjee bent to the tube and inserted the needle into the boy’s flesh on one side of the incision, then pulled the thread with a deft tug and looped it around the tubing and inserted the needle again and pulled with another tug, she might be sewing a button on a shirt, but at the end of the gesture Flavian could feel the tubing held in place now by the sutures, and after several more passes with the needle Dr. Chatterjee straightened her back and dropped her shoulders and exhaled a small sigh, and Flavian understood that it was over, that she had done what she set out to do. She cut and knotted the thread, then placed her hands gently on Flavian’s hand and released the clamps of the hemostat and the tubing stayed in place, making a little bubbly sound each time the boy breathed. She turned to the desk and removed a length of gauze and another envelope of gloves.

  The boy’s lips and skin continued to brighten. The mother slipped from the table to her knees like a dropped stone. She took the boy’s feet and pressed them to her forehead. On a table to one side Dr. Chatterjee was preparing a compress of gauze and adhesive tape. Flavian moved his hands from the boy’s shoulders to cradle his head. The pitiless fluorescent blue.

  Dr. Chatterjee bent again to the boy’s ear. “His name is—”

  The mother did not raise her head. “Matthew Mark.”

  “Matthew Mark. Do you know where you are? Do you know who I am?”

  The boy looked up at Dr. Chatterjee and the monk. “Yes, ma’am. You’re Doctor Chatterbox.”

  “Very good. And could you tell me what day today is?”

  “Um—Thursday.”

  “And could you tell me the name of the president of the States?”

  “Yes, ma’am. President Ronald Reagan.”

  “Very good, Matthew Mark. You are a brave boy, and smart, I see. I am very sorry that we had to treat you so roughly, but you know that you could not breathe and we had to make it possible for you to breathe, and now you can breathe, yes? Very good. Now you may close your eyes. Everything is going to be fine, but we shall take you on a short ride in the ambulance so you may have a story to tell your friends.”

  “And will you tell me a story on the way?”

  “You’re a young man now, you may go by yourself, though I’m sure you will have attendants. Perhaps they can tell you a story. Now turn on one side, so I can listen to your breathing.”

  “Promise you’ll tell me a story.”

  Dr. Chatterjee smiled. “If you will turn on your side, I will tell you a story. For now we will want to take a look at your back.”

  At this the mother lifted her head. “Oh, I don’t think you need to do that, no, ma’am. You can see for yourself, he’s doing fine now. His color. I don’t know how I can thank, what I can do to thank—”

  “Mrs. Smith. If you could just help me give him a turn—”

  The mother stood. “Oh, no, he’ll be just fine, I don’t think we need—”

  His eyes focused on the boy’s sun-streaked hair, Flavian took the boy by his shoulders and gently turned him on his side.

  Dr. Chatterjee examined the welts. “The skin is not broken—that is good—I see no visible evidence of internal trauma, but an X-ray will be required. Evidently there was enough trauma to induce pneumothorax.” She spoke calmly and to no one in particular. “If a t
rauma causes a gap, even a small tear to open between the chest cavity and the exterior, each breath pulls in air and that serves to collapse the lung, making it impossible to breathe. Asthma is a complicating factor but only rarely is it the proximate cause. We have equalized the pressure so that the boy can breathe, and as a result he is in no immediate danger, but we will need X-rays to determine if he requires further treatment.” For a moment she held her silence, then she motioned the woman into a chair and sat next to her and took her hand. The woman pulled away. Dr. Chatterjee gently took her hand again. “Mrs. Smith. Can you tell me again how this happened? Bear in mind that your son’s health depends on my knowing precisely what took place.”

  At that moment Flavian heard the ambulance wail—it had been a half hour since his phone call, the time it took a driver breaking the limit to reach their small town from the hospital thirty country miles distant. The mother said nothing. The boy’s eyes were closed—asleep? or possum? The wail enlarged itself. Those welts striped across that small back. Flavian turned away and did not look at the boy again until Dr. Chatterjee had wrapped the torn shirt around his shoulders and the paramedics were wrestling a stretcher into the room.

  Chapter 4

  The priest and the policeman were fishing. They had become friends because, as Father Poppelreiter pointed out, they shared a mutual interest in the law, whether that of God, in his case, or of man, in the case of Officer Smith. They became fishing buddies because they each took Mondays off. Father Poppelreiter recovered from a day of saying mass in five different parishes scattered across two counties. Officer Smith recovered from a weekend of checking IDs on underage kids or seething under the threats and pleas of speeders (they might as well save their breath, he always wrote the ticket, no exceptions, tell it to the judge). Smith was young, with a weak chin and small narrow black eyes and eyebrows so thin and faint and the folds beneath his eyes so dewlapped that he gave the impression of having always been old. He was young but not naive—he knew perfectly well that the old priest spent their first hours on the lake in an agony of desire. Smith could see it in the priest’s eyes, darting to the cooler under the middle seat, he could read it in the priest’s ruddy face, where the intricate branchings of broken capillaries bore witness to a lifetime of longing. Smith knew those signs since before memory—his earliest recollections were of the smell of whiskey on his father’s breath.