The Whispering Land - Durrell Gerald - Страница 22

The parrot shuffled his green feathering with a silken sound, put his head on one side and spoke.

"Hijo de puta"* he said, clearly and slowly.

The woman stood as though transfixed, her mouth open, unable to believe in the perfidy of her pet. Helmuth uttered a great sigh as of someone who knows the battle is won. Slowly, and with a look of utter malignancy, he turned to the unfortunate woman.

"So!" he hissed, like the villain in a melodrama. "So! This is your idea of a talking parrot, eh?"

"But, senor…" began the woman faintly.

"Enough!" said Helmuth, cutting her short. "We have heard enough. A stranger enters your gates, in order to help you by paying you money (which you need) for a worthless bird. And what do you do? You try and cheat him by telling him your bird talks, and thus get him to pay more."

"But it does talk" protested the woman faintly.

"Yes, but what does it say?" hissed Helmuth. He paused, drew himself up to his full height, took a deep breath and roared:

"It tells this good-natured, kindly senor that he is the son of a whore."

The woman looked down at the ground and twiddled her bare toes in the dust. She was beaten and she knew it.

"Now that the senor knows what disgusting things you have taught this bird I should not think he will want it," continued Helmuth. "I should think that now he will not even want to offer you fifty pesos for a bird that has insulted not only him, but his mother."

The woman gave me a quick glance, and returned to the contemplation of her toes. Helmuth turned to me, "We have got her," he said in a pleading tone of voice, "all you have to do is to try to look insulted."

"But I am insulted," I said, trying to look offended and suppress the desire to giggle. "Never, in fact, in a long career of being insulted, have I been so insulted."

"You're doing fine," said Helmuth, holding out both hands as if begging me to relent. "Now give in a bit."

I tried to look stern but forgiving, like one of the less humorous saints one sees in ikons.

"All right," I said reluctantly, "but only this once. Fifty, you said?"*

"Yes," said Helmuth, and as I pulled out my wallet he turned again to the woman. "The senor, because he is the very soul of kindness, has forgiven you the insult. He will pay you the fifty pesos that you demanded, in your greed."

The woman beamed. I paid over the grubby notes, and then approached the parrot. He gazed at me musingly. I held out my finger, and he gravely climbed on to it, and then made his way up my arm to my shoulder. Here he paused, gave me a knowing look, and said quite clearly and loudly:

"Como te va, como te va, que tal?"* and then giggled wickedly.

"Come on," said Helmuth, revitalised by his session of bargaining. "Let's go and see what else we can find."

We bowed to the woman, who bowed to us. Then, as we closed the bamboo gate behind us and were getting into the car, Blanco turned on my shoulder and fired his parting shot.

"Estupido" he called to his late owner, "muy estupido"*

"That parrot," said Helmuth, hastily starting the car, "is a devil."

I was inclined to agree with him.

Our tour of the village was not entirely unproductive. By careful questioning and cross-questioning nearly everyone we met we managed to run to earth* five yellow-fronted Amazon parrots, an armadillo and two grey-necked guans.* These latter are one of the game-birds, known locally as charatas, which is an onomatopoeic* name resembling their cry. They look, at first glance; rather like a slim and somewhat drab hen pheasant of some species. Their basic colouring is a curious brown (the pale colour a stale bar of chocolate goes*) fading to grey on the neck. But, see them in the sun and you discover that what you thought was a mat brown is really slightly iridescent with a golden sheen. Under the chin they have two drooping red wattles, and the feathers on their heads, when they get excited, stand up in a kind of crest that looks like a lengthy crew-cut. They were both young birds, having been taken from the nest when a few days old and hand-reared, so they were ridiculously tame. The Amazon parrots were also tame, but none of them had the knowingness or the vocabulary of Blanco. All they could do was to mutter "Lorito"* at intervals, and whistle shrilly. Nevertheless, I felt for one morning's work we were not doing too badly, and so I carried my purchases back in triumph to the house, where Joan Lett had kindly allowed me to use their empty garage as a sort of storehouse for my creatures.

As I had no cages ready for the reception of my brood, I had to let them all loose in the garage and hope for the best. To my surprise this arrangement worked very well. The parrots all found themselves convenient perches, just out of pecking range of each other, and, though it had obviously been agreed that Blanco was the boss, there was no unmannerly squabbling. The guans also found themselves perches, but these they only used to sleep on, preferring to spend their days stalking about the floor of the garage, occasionally throwing back their heads and letting forth their ear-splitting cry. The armadillo, immediately on being released, fled behind a large box, and spent all day there meditating, only tip-toeing out at night to eat his food, casting many surreptitious and fearful glances at the sleeping birds. By the following day the news had spread through the village that there had arrived a mad gringo* who was willing to pay good money for live animals, and the first trickle of specimens started. The first arrival was an Indian carrying, on the end of a length of string, a coral snake* striped in yellow, black and scarlet, like a particularly revolting Old School tie.* Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm, the Indian had tied the string too tightly about the reptile's neck, and so it was very dead.

I had better luck with the next offering. An Indian arrived clasping a large straw hat tenderly to his bosom. After a polite exchange of greetings I asked to see what he had so carefully secured in his hat. He held it out, beaming hopefully at me, and then looking into the depths of the hat I saw reclining at the bottom, with a dewy-eyed expression* on its face, the most delightful kitten. It was a baby Geoffroy's cat,* a small species of wild cat which is getting increasingly rare in South America. Its basic colouring was a pale fawny yellowy and it was dappled all over with neat, dark brown spots. It regarded me with large bluey-green eyes from the interior of the hat, as if pleading to be picked up. I should have known better. In my experience it is always the most innocent-looking creatures that can cause you the worst damage. However, misled by its seraphic* expression, I reached out my hand and tried to grasp it by the scruff of the neck. The next moment I had a bad bite through the ball of my thumb and twelve deep red grooves across the back of my hand. As I withdrew my hand, cursing, the kitten resumed its innocent pose, apparently waiting to see what other little game I had in store for it. While I sucked my hand like a half-starved vampire, I bargained with the Indian and eventually purchased my antagonist. Then I tipped it, hissing and snarling like a miniature jaguar, out of the hat and into a box full of straw. There I left it for an hour or so to settle down. I felt that its capture and subsequent transportation in a straw hat might be mainly responsible for its fear and consequent bad temper, for the creature was only about two weeks old, as far as I could judge.

When I thought it had settled down and would be willing to accept my overtures of friendship, I removed the lid of the box and peered in hopefully. I missed losing my left eye by approximately three millimetres. I wiped the blood from my cheek thoughtfully; obviously my latest specimen was not going to be easy. Wrapping my hand in a piece of sacking I placed a saucer of raw egg and minced meat in one corner of the box, and a bowl of milk in the other, and then left the kitten to its own devices.* The next morning neither of the offerings of food had been touched. With a premonition that this was going to hurt me more than the kitten, I filled one of my feeding-bottles with warm milk, wrapped my hand in sacking and approached the box.