The Whispering Land - Durrell Gerald - Страница 26

The woman surveyed me from dark, dry eyes, without curiosity.

"You are welcome to him," she said at last, "for he is a dirty bird and he does not talk. My son brought him to me, but if I can sell him I will be only too glad. Come in, senores, and see him."

She shuffled ahead of us and led us into the inevitable courtyard of potted plants, forming the well of the house.* When I saw the bird it was all I could do to stifle a yelp of delight, for the creature was a yellow-naped macaw,* a rare member of the parrot family. It was sitting on the remains of a wooden perch, which it had obviously, over the past week, demolished slowly and systematically until scarcely anything remained. It glanced up at us as we gathered round it, a fine sliver of wood in its beak, uttered a short gurking noise, and returned to its work of demolition. Luna gave me a quick glance from his brilliant eyes, and I nodded my head vigorously. He took a deep breath, surveyed the macaw with loathing, and then turned to the woman.

"One of the commoner ones, I see," he said carelessly, "but even so the senor is interested in buying it. You realize, of course, that for such a common, destructive bird, and one, moreover, that does not talk, we cannot afford to be generous. The senor would not dream of considering paying anything more than, say, twenty-five pesos for such a creature."

Then he folded his arms and looked at the woman, waiting for her outburst of indignation at the mere mention of such a low price.

"All right," said the woman, "you can have him."

While Luna regarded her open-mouthed she picked up the macaw, plonked him unceremoniously on my shoulder, and held out her wrinkled palm for the notes which I was hastily counting out from my wallet before she changed her mind. We were back in the street again, with the macaw making surprised and pleased gurking noises in my ear, before Luna recovered the power of speech. Then he shook his head despondently.

"What's the matter, Luna?" I asked. "It's a wonderful bird, and to get it so cheap is incredible."

"For your sake," said Luna gloomily, "I am glad. But it makes me fear for the future of Argentina when I meet someone who will not bargain, but accepts the first price offered. Where would we all be if everyone did that?"

"Life would probably be a lot cheaper," I pointed out, but he refused to be comforted, and continued to grumble over the woman's behaviour for the rest of our tour of the town, though a brisk half-hour exchange with a man who drove a hard bargain over another parrot shortly restored his faith in humanity.

We continued on our way through the town until it grew dark, by which time all of us were carrying what amounted to a small zoo. There were five parrots (including, to my delight, another yellow-naped macaw), two pigmy Brazilian rabbits,* with ginger paws and white spectacles of fur round their eyes, and an orange-rumped agouti,* a large rodent with dark eyes, slender legs and the disposition of a racehorse suffering from an acute nervous breakdown.* We carried this assortment of wild life back to Luna's house and let them all loose in the patio,* while Luna organized his band of relatives once more and sent them scurrying in all directions to fetch empty boxes, wire-netting, saws, hammers, nails and other accoutrements* of the carpenter's trade. Then, for the next two hours we were fully occupied building suitable habitations for my acquisitions. At length, when the last of the creatures had been placed in its cage, Luna and I sat at the table nearby and ate and drank heartily, while from the pile of wooden boxes came the faint scufflings and squawks which are such music to the animal-collector's ears. Presently, a large tumbler of good wine by my side, I sat down in front of the cages to examine my charges by lamplight, while Luna called for his guitar and sang the soft, mournful folk-songs of Argentina, occasionally, where the music required it, using the deep wooden belly of his guitar as a drum.

The parrots we had acquired were all blue-fronted Amazons, all rather scruffy because of bad feeding, but all reasonably tame and able to mutter the inevitable "Lorito" which is the Argentine equivalent of "Polly". As they were all much the same size and age we had caged them together, and now in the lamplight they sat in a row, like a highly coloured jury, regarding me with the ancient, reptilian and falsely-wise expressions that parrots are such masters at adopting. I was pleased with them in spite of their tattered appearance, for I knew that a few weeks of good feeding would make a world of difference, and that, at their next moult, their feather would glow with lemon-yellow, blue and a multitude of greens that would make a collection of emeralds look dowdy in comparison. Gently I lowered a piece of sacking over the front of their cage and heard them all fluff and rearrange their feathers (a sound like someone riffling through a pack of cards) preparatory to sleep. Next I turned my attention to the yellow-naped macaws, and gloated over them for some time. We had, experimentally, caged them together, and the way they had immediately taken to each other and started to bill and coo inclined me to think that they were a true pair. They sat on the perch now and regarded me solemnly, occasionally turning their heads on one side as if to see whether I looked any more attractive that way. Basically their colouring was a deep, rush green, only relieved* on the neck where they had a broad half-moon-shaped patch of feathers which were bright canary-yellow.* For macaws – which are as a rule the largest of the parrots – they were diminutive, being slightly smaller and more slender than the common Amazon parrots. They gurked gently to me and to each other, their pale eyelids drooping sleepily over their bright eyes, so I covered them up with sacking and left them.

Next to the macaws the Brazilian rabbits were the creatures I was most delighted to have obtained, for they were animals I had long wanted to meet. The two we had got were only babies, and I lifted them out of their cage and they sat, one in each hand, comfortably filling my palms with the soft, fat warmth of their bodies, their noses wiffling with all the strange scents of food and flowers with which the patio was filled. At first glance you would have taken them for the young of the common European rabbit, but closer inspection soon showed the differences. To begin with their ears were very short for their size, and very neat and slender. The basic colouring on the back was a dark rich brown, flecked and patterned with rusty-coloured patches and blobs. Their feet and part of the leg was a bright, rich ginger, and, as I said before, they had a fine circle of white hair round each eye. Their nose and lips, I now noticed, were faintly outlined in white as well. When they were fully adult, I knew, they would still be among the dwarfs of their breed, being only half the size of the European wild rabbit. As far as I knew, no zoo in the world possessed these interesting little creatures, and I was delighted to have got them, though I had faint qualms about being successful in taking them back to Europe, for the rabbit and hare family do not, on the whole, take kindly to captivity,* and are reputedly difficult. However, these were very young, and I had hopes that they would settle down satisfactorily.

When I lifted the sacking off the front of the agouti's cage she leapt straight up into the air, and landed with a crash in her straw bed, quivering in every limb, with the expression of an elderly virgin who, after years of looking under her bed, has at last found a man there. However, with the aid of a piece of apple I managed to soothe her into a fairly reasonable state, and she actually allowed me to stroke her.