Songbirds(53)

‘I know that her employer came to report her missing but had no success,’ I concluded.

He put his pen down now and with a gesture that seemed to suggest that he wasn’t fussed, he closed the file. ‘And who are you to her?’ he asked, tapping the flyer roughly with a finger.

I hesitated.

‘Her lover?’ There was a slight smirk on his face.

‘Well, I wouldn’t put it like that.’

He smiled now. ‘I don’t blame you, a lot of them are extremely beautiful. I wonder sometimes, though, if they really are as beautiful as they seem or if it’s because they look different, exotic, if you know what I mean?’

I didn’t reply. I could feel my neck and face heating up.

‘So. How would you put it then?’ he asked.

‘I care about Nisha very much. She has been working hard for nine years to send money to her family . . .’

His smile broadened and he started waving his hand, as if he couldn’t be bothered to hear the rest. ‘These people don’t care about their families. They have no real roots. They would throw their families away at the drop of a hat! That’s why they are able to come here, or travel even further to countries in Europe, or to the Arabic Emirates and God only knows where else. You wouldn’t see a Cypriot lady making that sort of decision now, would you? Leaving her children behind? That would be unheard of, no matter the circumstances. But then again, their lives are so shitty back home. They are peasants. No prospects. They come over here and we give them more than they could have ever imagined – good accommodation, good food, higher wages. But they have no gratitude – some steal, some sell their bodies, others take off. You’d think they’d appreciate being here more. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are like us. They are made of different stuff, mark my words.’

‘Whatever you say, she is missing, and I would like you to launch an investigation.’

‘Look, I’m not here to be chasing after these women. They come here. They don’t find what they are looking for. They run away to avoid the debts they owe to their agents. Don’t you think we could put taxpayers’ money to better use than launching an investigation which will inevitably be a complete waste of time and resources?’

This guy was an arsehole. His skull an impenetrable wall. I focused on the blue veins that ran down from his receding hairline, the steep bridge of his nose, his yellow teeth. I clenched my fist beneath the table to trap the anger.

A woman came in with a coffee and a plate of biscuits, which she placed in front of him. He took a sip and sighed with contentment. I got up to leave, leaning over to take the flyer from his desk, but instead deciding to leave it. Let him throw it away.

*

At home I cleaned the birds. Mechanically, systematically. I needed to get the job done. I defeathered the blackcaps, song thrushes and chiffchaffs. These birds would be pickled, roasted, fried, eaten whole in secret. The tiny blackcap sat beside me, chirping now and then, struggling to flutter up onto the table in order to eat some berries. It succeeded, then clumsily wafted back down again to give itself a bath in the bowl I’d set out for it. It was getting stronger, its wing clearly mending, but it needed more time. I’d purposely put its food on the table and the bird bath on the floor so that it would exercise its wings, test its strength.

When I first starting poaching, I did some reading on avian intelligence, hoping to confirm the bird-brain theory, so that I would feel better about what I was doing. Instead, I learned that certain bird species were so smart that they were considered ‘feathered apes’. For decades, scientists believed that birds weren’t capable of higher thinking because they lacked a cerebral cortex; however, now they knew that a different part of the brain – the pallium – evolved to fill its place.

In my heart, this revelation was not surprising. I had known since I was a child – and had held that dead golden bird – that they had an inner life. Throughout my boyhood, I had known birds solve problems with cognition beyond instinct, their minds flexible and sharp. I even had a crow-friend I called Batman, whom I’d watch make tools out of twigs and wood. Sometimes I would offer Batman some metal wire and create sort of a problem – a puzzle as such – and sit beneath a tree and watch it work out a solution.

Seraphim killed Batman during one of his visits. He shot the bird with a pellet gun. His dad had given him the gun to practise aim control so that he could go out hunting with the men. He was using figs as targets. He was pretty good: I remember him scrunching up his left eye, holding the gun steady on his right shoulder. Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. He became more proficient by the second. Then, while we were having our lunch one afternoon, Batman flew down from the sky through the pines. Seraphim swiftly put the gun to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. The bird didn’t die straight away, and Seraphim held it by its legs upside down, the bird squirming in his grip, and took his trophy down the mountain to show his father.

As I made my way through the bin-bag – an indistinguishable mass of bodies, feathers and beaks tangled together – my eyes fell upon an owlet. I reached down for it. It was smaller than my palm, but its body carried heft, its feathers impossibly soft and fine. I wondered if it had flown into the net while following his mother on a night hunt. Its oversized opaque black eyes in its pale, heart-shaped face looked up at me without seeing.

I thought of Nisha’s story of the owl, of losing Kiyoma, and I almost dropped it on the floor. How did I not notice this bird in Akrotiri when we were sorting the birds? Did Seraphim see it and let it pass into the bag on purpose? I can imagine he would have bitten into its neck indiscriminately. To him, a bird was a bird was a bird. To me, I worked like a machine. A hunt was a job was money.