to see it again.”
Thousands of crows had been gathering in the downtown area, nesting in the trees, fouling the sidewalks and the car lots along Highway 83. The city had tried everything, including bringing in a falconer, but nothing had worked. The crows had mobbed the falcons, which had then refused to fly. Now the city had employed the pandit. The pandit refused to explain how he proposed to get rid of the crows — except to say that he wouldn’t kill them; and he wouldn’t allow anyone to observe him. This secrecy prompted people to watch for him, and various sightings were reported — in a car lot on Highway 83, on the municipal golf course, walking along the Mission Main Canal just north of the second lifting station — as if he were a rare bird, and in his bright robe, according to the article in the
Monitor,
he did look rather like a flamingo. There was a photo of him in the paper looking up at a dozen or so crows perched on telephone wires. The crows dispersed during the day to forage but gathered in the city in the evening, darkening the skies.
The manager also produced a scrapbook with photos of a number of Indian weddings he’d catered, one of which included, in addition to the photographs of the different dishes, several photos of an elephant that was all dolled up with costume jewelry and velvet trappings. In the background was a citrus grove.
“This is Norma Jean, right?” Rudy asked.
“Precisely.” The manager shook his head up and down vigorously “She is a very fine animal, very fine, very beautifully shaped,
very well behaved. She did not cause one bit of concern. There were two hundred guests at this particular wedding, and we took care of everything. You won’t need to be concerned at all.”
Rudy spent most of the afternoon with the manager, drinking sweet tea and planning a menu that included tangy lentil soups,
spicy vegetable curries, baked spiced fish, cucumbers in yogurt, hot bitter mango and sour lime chutneys, and platters of aromatic rice tinged with saffron. And the chicken vindaloo that Rudy had eaten for lunch.
It was almost five o’clock when Rudy left the restaurant. He drove straight to the Russians to have a shot of vodka and chew the fat, and to buy three more paintings, one for each of the girls, and to see if Norma Jean would like to be in another wedding. The Russian was giving Norma Jean a bath outside her little barn when Rudy pulled into the drive. A portable radio was blasting the Beatles’ new album,
Sgt. Pepper,
and Norma Jean was dipping her trunk into a big horse trough, sucking up water and then spraying herself so thoroughly that sheets of water covered her shoulders and flowed down her sides and onto the Russian, who was on his knees, scrubbing her stomach with a large brush. She had her eyes closed, and the Russian was doubled up underneath her, so they didn’t see Rudy.
Norma Jean struck Rudy as a being from the beginning of time, or maybe outside of time, like a Platonic idea, but at the same time he had the impression that he had intruded upon an especially intimate scene, as if he had intruded on a husband and wife in the privacy of their own bathroom.
This is happiness,
he thought as he watched the Russian scrub the big brush back and forth on Norma Jean’s stomach.
He was about to clear his throat to announce his presence when a sharp pain in his chest took his breath away, as if he’d taken a bullet, or as if Norma Jean had sat on him. He opened the door and staggered out of the truck. He tried to hold himself up by putting his right arm through the open window, but he fell, belching loudly as he hit the ground. And then he was trying to tell the Russian, who was kneeling over him, that he just needed to lie still for a while, right there on the ground. He got his breath back for a minute; the clenched fist opened up. That’s when he realized something else: that he didn’t mind dying, didn’t care, didn’t give a hoot, as his dad
Thousands of crows had been gathering in the downtown area, nesting in the trees, fouling the sidewalks and the car lots along Highway 83. The city had tried everything, including bringing in a falconer, but nothing had worked. The crows had mobbed the falcons, which had then refused to fly. Now the city had employed the pandit. The pandit refused to explain how he proposed to get rid of the crows — except to say that he wouldn’t kill them; and he wouldn’t allow anyone to observe him. This secrecy prompted people to watch for him, and various sightings were reported — in a car lot on Highway 83, on the municipal golf course, walking along the Mission Main Canal just north of the second lifting station — as if he were a rare bird, and in his bright robe, according to the article in the
Monitor,
he did look rather like a flamingo. There was a photo of him in the paper looking up at a dozen or so crows perched on telephone wires. The crows dispersed during the day to forage but gathered in the city in the evening, darkening the skies.
The manager also produced a scrapbook with photos of a number of Indian weddings he’d catered, one of which included, in addition to the photographs of the different dishes, several photos of an elephant that was all dolled up with costume jewelry and velvet trappings. In the background was a citrus grove.
“This is Norma Jean, right?” Rudy asked.
“Precisely.” The manager shook his head up and down vigorously “She is a very fine animal, very fine, very beautifully shaped,
very well behaved. She did not cause one bit of concern. There were two hundred guests at this particular wedding, and we took care of everything. You won’t need to be concerned at all.”
Rudy spent most of the afternoon with the manager, drinking sweet tea and planning a menu that included tangy lentil soups,
spicy vegetable curries, baked spiced fish, cucumbers in yogurt, hot bitter mango and sour lime chutneys, and platters of aromatic rice tinged with saffron. And the chicken vindaloo that Rudy had eaten for lunch.
It was almost five o’clock when Rudy left the restaurant. He drove straight to the Russians to have a shot of vodka and chew the fat, and to buy three more paintings, one for each of the girls, and to see if Norma Jean would like to be in another wedding. The Russian was giving Norma Jean a bath outside her little barn when Rudy pulled into the drive. A portable radio was blasting the Beatles’ new album,
Sgt. Pepper,
and Norma Jean was dipping her trunk into a big horse trough, sucking up water and then spraying herself so thoroughly that sheets of water covered her shoulders and flowed down her sides and onto the Russian, who was on his knees, scrubbing her stomach with a large brush. She had her eyes closed, and the Russian was doubled up underneath her, so they didn’t see Rudy.
Norma Jean struck Rudy as a being from the beginning of time, or maybe outside of time, like a Platonic idea, but at the same time he had the impression that he had intruded upon an especially intimate scene, as if he had intruded on a husband and wife in the privacy of their own bathroom.
This is happiness,
he thought as he watched the Russian scrub the big brush back and forth on Norma Jean’s stomach.
He was about to clear his throat to announce his presence when a sharp pain in his chest took his breath away, as if he’d taken a bullet, or as if Norma Jean had sat on him. He opened the door and staggered out of the truck. He tried to hold himself up by putting his right arm through the open window, but he fell, belching loudly as he hit the ground. And then he was trying to tell the Russian, who was kneeling over him, that he just needed to lie still for a while, right there on the ground. He got his breath back for a minute; the clenched fist opened up. That’s when he realized something else: that he didn’t mind dying, didn’t care, didn’t give a hoot, as his dad
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