Birdman - Escape from America
* Anyone interested in helping out with the audio version, get back to me (a n t h o n y c a p l a n 1 @ g m a i l . c o m):
The countless ways of yearning, the winged and white-backed
beasts, crossed the ocean behind Kagan, in hot pursuit. The Atlantic beat
against the cliffs of this present citadel, laying siege to his dreams. The
light of day gave a nightmarish aspect to the misted fields, the silent cobbled
street with its electric cables sagging and shrieking in the wind, the three
public houses, the post office in requisite green, the shop and the sharp
hairpin up the hill. Across the water in one direction lay Europe, in the other
America. Goat Island, the last spurs of the land’s spiny back, seemed in a
winter’s dawn to have been thrown up out of the sea by an improbable hand.
“Sit down, Mr. Smith,” said Francis, the eldest brother. He
rose from his chair at the small rectangular table.
“No, that’s all right. I’ll take the plate up to my room,”
Kagan said.
“You can sit here if you please,” said Francis, pulling out
his chair in a gesture of invitation. Murphy senior grunted an assent. Mrs.
Murphy cleared her plate and Francis’s plate away from the table. The rest of
the Murphys resumed eating as if on cue, satisfied that the situation with
Kagan would resolve itself one way or another without impacting their ability
to finish breakfast.
Kagan would have insisted on going upstairs with his food,
but thought of Bert Smith, birdwatcher and student of man, and accepted the
offer. He walked around the table by the steamed window, the sill with its
statuette of Mary in her cloak of sky blue, so unlike the Irish sky this
particular morning, and sat down as Mrs. Murphy loaded his plate with food in
whiplike motions from the range.
Francis lit a cigarette, while Murphy senior directed a
comment at Kagan he did not understand. He wiped his mouth in a scholarly
fashion and asked Mr. Murphy to repeat himself.
“You’ll be walkin’ the cliffs for the birds this mornin’,
Mr. Smith,” said Murphy.
“That’s exactly what I plan,” said Kagan.
Murphy mumbled to himself, mumbles Kagan took as tokens of
disbelief, and his stomach sank. To play Smith would require more than
imagination. It would take balls. Kagan suspected Smith would be of a taciturn
disposition and so kept quiet, finishing his food.
The Murphys gathered in twos and threes by the front door,
said goodbye to Mrs. Murphy and headed out across the lawn to the Hiace van and
the Toyota Carrera on the curbside followed closely by Heidi, the yapping
dachshund. Kagan observed through the open front door beyond Mrs. Murphy’s
midriff as the two vehicles wheezed into action and drove off. Mrs. Murphy
closed the door, leaving Heidi sniffing for remains outside on the wet lawn.
“Not a very nice day, actually,” said Kagan.
“’Tis not the day but the fish that are in it,’ said Mrs.
Murphy. “You could do with a good lie-in, Mr. Smith, you look half dead. I’ll
get you some more tea.”
“Call me Bert. And thank you, Mrs. Murphy.”
She poured him another cup of tea and seemed unfazed by his
forwardness. Apparently Smith was an intimate, theatrical sort of man and had a
winning way with older women. This disclosure, along with the breakfast, went a
way towards allaying the gnawing pain in his gut, a product of pints the
previous night. The beer flowing through him seemed to have eroded a large
chunk of his liver.
Upstairs, Kagan gathered up the binoculars and the bottle of
Bushmills, put on waterproofs, porpkpie hat and boots, all of which except for
the Bushmills he’d acquired at a sporting goods outlet in Mallow on his way
down from Limerick, and descended the stairs again. Mrs. Murphy was dusting
down the table, Heidi sleeping in her basket by the range.
“You could do better than going out on a wet day like
today.”
“Ah, but I have my duties to the birds.”
“I suppose it’s one thing or another.”
“Very true. I’m just a bird-watching fool, Mrs. Murphy.”
“I know. I know. And I’m thinking that old David Bellamy
himself would give up on the birds and stay inside with the fire going on a day
like today.”
“Yes, well. It’s a severe sort of calling.”
“Not for the faint-hearted.”
“No.”
“And you seem yourself a sort of stay at home man. Although
there is a touch of the rough to you, as if you’d seen better days.”
“You flatter me, Mrs. Murphy.”
Heidi stirred in her basket but thought better of it as
Kagan went out of the house. He walked past the sleeping village, folded up on
itself in the mist, and climbed the mine road up the long hill to the top of
the island, hopping a ditch gurgling in the gossamer rain and over a short
wall, his boots squelching in the mud.
The rain blew in from the southwest, the direction of
nightmares. Sitting on the edge of the cliff, Kagan could see the ocean far
below him bashing against the rocks. Through the binoculars he scanned the
waves for a sign monsters or vessels of calamity. But all he could see were
swooping gulls along the lower portion of the cliffs, some cormorants skimming
the water, and a group of seals further along the rocky coast. There was
nothing out there but the wind and the waves as far as the eye could see. Kagan
clung to his perch, pre pared well for this sort of battle, facing down of
fate, manning the watchtowers of the imagination, seeking with the radar of the
mind for friend or foe. They would be coming after him. They always did. They
had the patience of landowners, the law on their side. All Kagan had was the
waves. He wiped the water off the lens of the binoculars and put it away.
Unscrewing the top of the whiskey bottle, he regretfully considered his
situation.
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