he has the strange trait, of course, of reversing his words. Mirror writing. Apparently, according to the doctors, it's related in some way to his inability to speak. Some sort of trauma, no doubt. And then I have noticed that he is an execrable speller."
"Yes! And when, in what I now perceive to have been a pathetic plea for assistance, he scrawled the words leg ov red' on a bit of paper, he was neatly exhibiting both traits."
"Leg ov red," Mr. Panicker tried, projecting and reversing the letters against an interior screen. "Der . . . Vog . . . el." Ah. "Der Vogel. He was asking after the bird. Of course."
"Yes. And now, tell me what he was saying on the other side of the scrap."
"Scrap?"
The old man thrust a bit of writing paper into his hands.
"This scrap. On which was written, by an adult man,
young, with a Continental hand, the address of the very establishment before which we now sit. Dropped, or so I mistakenly concluded, by the proprietor himself."
"Blak," Mr. Panicker read. And then, reverse-projecting it: "Good God."
10
He had seen madmen: the man who smelled of boiled bird-flesh was going mad. He knew the smell of bird-flesh, for they ate it. They ate anything. The knowledge that the men of his home forests would burn and eat with relish the flesh of his own kind was a stark feature of his ancestral lore. In the first days of his captivity the contemplation of their bloody diet and the likelihood that he was being kept by them against the satiation of some future hunger so troubled and revolted him that he had fallen silent and chewed a bald place in the feathers of his breast. By now he was long accustomed to the horror of their appetities, and he had lost the fear of being eaten; insofar as he had observed them, these men, pale creatures, though they devoured birds in cruel abundance and variety, arbitrarily exempted his kind from slaughter. The bird they ate most often was the kurcze Hahne poulet chicken kip and it was this odor, of a chicken slaughtered and boiled in water with carrots and onions, that, for some reason, the man who was going mad exuded, even though he never appeared to eat anything more than toast and tinned sardines.
In the Dutchman's house, by the harbor, on the island of his hatching, when he still feared the fires and teeth of these terrible apes with their strange, beguiling songs, he had gone, he supposed, slightly mad himself. As he watched the boiled-chicken man, Kalb, stalk back and forth across the room, hour after hour, the pelt of his head disordered, the pelt of his face grown thick, singing softly to himself, the parrot would creep, in unwilling sympathy, from one end to the other of his perch, and feel a certain comfort in so doing, and recall how, in those first fearful months with the Dutchman, he had passed hours making the same short journey, back and forth, silently chewing on his own plumage until he bled.
He had seen madmen. The Dutchman had gone mad, in fact; had killed with the knotted-up bones of his hands the girl who shared his bed, then drunk his own death in a glass of whisky spoilt by the worst-smelling substance that Bruno had yet encountered in his long life among men and their remarkable vocabulary of stenches. Whisky had a stench of its own, but it was one that Bruno during the later time of his tenure with le Colonel had learned to appreciate. (It had been ages now since anyone had offered whisky to Bruno. The boy and his family never drank it at all, and though he had often detected its acrid flavor on the breath and clothing of Poor Reggie, he had never actually seen Poor Reggie with a glass or bottle of the stuff in his hand.) Le Colonel had his bouts of madness, too, silent, lasting glooms into which he sank so far that his songlessness Bruno experienced as a kind of sorrow, though it was nothing like the sorrow that he felt now, having lost his boy, Linus, who sang in secret, to Bruno alone.
It was one of Linus's old songs, the train song,
"Yes! And when, in what I now perceive to have been a pathetic plea for assistance, he scrawled the words leg ov red' on a bit of paper, he was neatly exhibiting both traits."
"Leg ov red," Mr. Panicker tried, projecting and reversing the letters against an interior screen. "Der . . . Vog . . . el." Ah. "Der Vogel. He was asking after the bird. Of course."
"Yes. And now, tell me what he was saying on the other side of the scrap."
"Scrap?"
The old man thrust a bit of writing paper into his hands.
"This scrap. On which was written, by an adult man,
young, with a Continental hand, the address of the very establishment before which we now sit. Dropped, or so I mistakenly concluded, by the proprietor himself."
"Blak," Mr. Panicker read. And then, reverse-projecting it: "Good God."
10
He had seen madmen: the man who smelled of boiled bird-flesh was going mad. He knew the smell of bird-flesh, for they ate it. They ate anything. The knowledge that the men of his home forests would burn and eat with relish the flesh of his own kind was a stark feature of his ancestral lore. In the first days of his captivity the contemplation of their bloody diet and the likelihood that he was being kept by them against the satiation of some future hunger so troubled and revolted him that he had fallen silent and chewed a bald place in the feathers of his breast. By now he was long accustomed to the horror of their appetities, and he had lost the fear of being eaten; insofar as he had observed them, these men, pale creatures, though they devoured birds in cruel abundance and variety, arbitrarily exempted his kind from slaughter. The bird they ate most often was the kurcze Hahne poulet chicken kip and it was this odor, of a chicken slaughtered and boiled in water with carrots and onions, that, for some reason, the man who was going mad exuded, even though he never appeared to eat anything more than toast and tinned sardines.
In the Dutchman's house, by the harbor, on the island of his hatching, when he still feared the fires and teeth of these terrible apes with their strange, beguiling songs, he had gone, he supposed, slightly mad himself. As he watched the boiled-chicken man, Kalb, stalk back and forth across the room, hour after hour, the pelt of his head disordered, the pelt of his face grown thick, singing softly to himself, the parrot would creep, in unwilling sympathy, from one end to the other of his perch, and feel a certain comfort in so doing, and recall how, in those first fearful months with the Dutchman, he had passed hours making the same short journey, back and forth, silently chewing on his own plumage until he bled.
He had seen madmen. The Dutchman had gone mad, in fact; had killed with the knotted-up bones of his hands the girl who shared his bed, then drunk his own death in a glass of whisky spoilt by the worst-smelling substance that Bruno had yet encountered in his long life among men and their remarkable vocabulary of stenches. Whisky had a stench of its own, but it was one that Bruno during the later time of his tenure with le Colonel had learned to appreciate. (It had been ages now since anyone had offered whisky to Bruno. The boy and his family never drank it at all, and though he had often detected its acrid flavor on the breath and clothing of Poor Reggie, he had never actually seen Poor Reggie with a glass or bottle of the stuff in his hand.) Le Colonel had his bouts of madness, too, silent, lasting glooms into which he sank so far that his songlessness Bruno experienced as a kind of sorrow, though it was nothing like the sorrow that he felt now, having lost his boy, Linus, who sang in secret, to Bruno alone.
It was one of Linus's old songs, the train song,
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