The Elusive Language of Ducks (25 page)

As she continued to walk, she passed a woman with long grey wispy hair pushing a pram. Children and their parents had gathered around the pram, and Hannah peeped past them to see a perky lap-dog tucked under a grubby knitted blanket.

Looking around, she saw all the families lazily strolling by the beach. Parents clutching chubby hands, hugging babies, anxiously chasing toddlers as they wobbled through the sand towards the sea. Lovers pressed into each other. A teenage girl leaned over a stylish old lady in a wheelchair who curled a purple sea slug tongue around an ice cream. The girl gently readjusted a towel across the old lady's chest, dabbing at a milky drool hanging from her chin.

And again Hannah couldn't help but wonder about the chemistry, supplied by Nature, which made for attachment between one person and another, a person and another object, a person and a dog. A man and another man's wife. A man and his cello. A person and her mother,
her dead mother. An alcoholic and drink, a drug addict and his drug. A woman and her duck.

All these people clearly were attached in one degree or another to the object of their affections. But love. What
was
love and what was it all about? Was it all interconnected? Was it the same chemistry? Was love just chemistry, was addiction love? What was the nature of it all?

She thought of Simon and the intensity of feeling between them when they first met. And the long years they had lived alongside each other, their skin loosening into miniature folds around their eyes. She wondered where he was now and what he was doing.

And last night. Was that chemistry or chaos?

Hannah was mystified as to what might have burned so fiercely between herself and Eric so many years ago. She couldn't evoke the man she knew then from the Eric of now. Did age bring its own brand of metamorphosis, from hot dog to curmudgeonly, heavy, slobbery old dog?

Then she recalled the time she'd lifted Max into her arms.

Oooof, she'd groaned, you are getting so heavy!

Max replied: Poppa's stronger than you. Poppa's a gorilla.

Well, she thought now, there you go.

Because he had pushed her off the tight-rope. Because he'd made her laugh. Because he'd strung a love song through her heart. Because his chest felt like a landing place for her weary head. Because she didn't have to stand on tiptoes to kiss him. Because the storm made her do it. Because he made her suddenly feel lonely. Because the smooth skin of her life had bulged like a cherry balloon. Because he looked sexy in black. Because it felt like fun. Because it was fun. Because he teased her. Because he was there. Because he told her that if she let him fiddle, he'd be her beau. Because her husband was so far away it didn't seem to matter. Because once she opened the door and there he was, holding an empty picture frame around his head. You're driving me up the wall, he'd said. Would you like to come to my place and hang around with me?

And then it was over. They avoided each other. She wanted to close all the windows in her house, pull all the curtains and sew them securely with rope, shift furniture against them to block out any sound, any stray sigh of his that might be floating by. But she didn't, of course. And she needn't have worried. There was no more music from the house next door. Just like that. It was as if a tree full of birds had been cut down.

When Simon arrived home from Uganda, that first night in bed she was paralysed. The world was silent as it strained to listen for every sound, every breath she took. Simon held her in his arms and waited for her. Finally she wept. She wept because she had missed him, and because she was missing Eric. She wept because she had lost a baby. She wept because she felt like a traitor. Simon held her gently and asked her why she was weeping. She cried more. He held her until eventually she was able to turn to him. He presumed it had been just because she'd missed him. But all the birds in that chopped-down tree knew there was more to it than that.

Quite a few months later, Eric met a woman who moved in with him. Suzie.

One day Simon said, We haven't seen Eric for a while. Why don't we invite them over for a drink?

Hannah said, Oh, I think he's pretty involved with his new girlfriend. We should let them be.

But he invited them anyway. Suzie shoved aside all awkwardness with relentless cheery chatter. Gradually all the taut cords of longing between the two houses began to sag, then shed their scabby crusts before falling to the ground. The music started up again for a while. Hannah could hear Suzie's strident singing along with his fiddle and she didn't care. The woman couldn't sing in tune anyway.

Not long after Suzie returned to her old boyfriend in Darwin, The Eketa Hoons went on their last tour. The singer developed nodules on his larynx and called it a day, and the drummer beat it to Nelson. By this time the hedge had grown, but until recently they'd always kept a natural gap as they popped backwards and forwards.

Chapter 20

Now that the duck could fly, he spent quite a bit of time on the fat limbs of the magnolia tree winding across the deck. On the wide wooden railing, she'd left a water dish that was really a plastic cat-litter tray — one of several she'd bought and placed here and there around the place. As she worked she could watch through the window when he washed. She loved to see him slapping around in the water, beating his wings, his feathers shimmying and shivering, his body surrounded by an aura of mist against the sky. He'd dive his beak into his uropygial gland, plastering dobs of yellow through his feathers. Or he'd pace up and down along the tree limbs, moving from the shade of the magnolia leaves to the open railing, where the whole world lay before him.

She was amazed at his sense of balance . . . he was a poem whose multiple components each shifted and flowed in accordance with the position of the others as they vied for equilibrium, as he wrapped his rubber feet round the edge of his water tray, or stood on the deck railing, or a shaking branch. On a squally day, he was a ship with an ugly red prow and a sail full of gusto, adjusting to every blast of wind buffeting around him. His tail would lift and drop to meet each wave, his body modifying its stance in micro-twitches to shift up down, up down.

Whenever she came into his view, his crest would lift in a stiff mohawk, his whole body charged with excitement. He'd turn to stand and stare at her as she moved inside the house, always searching for that eye-to-eye connection.

If she kept still as she worked, as long as she was within his line of vision, he'd pull up one leg deep into his feathers under his wing, and balance on the other, like a stork, ostensibly asleep with his white furry eyelids folded over his eyes — two fluffy mounds looking out of place in the boiling red of his face. Occasionally he would drop himself onto his belly and tuck his head into the feathers of his wing, and this was the stance she loved the best, because it suggested he was relaxed and at peace, and, despite his recent unnerving behaviour, that was all she wanted for him.

Reasons. If only she could understand the
reasons
for the unprovoked attacks against her. She sifted through all the incidents she could remember, searching for a common theme or clues or triggers that might unravel the mystery.

She was thinking of the time, a while ago now, when she left a heap of leftover rice on the grass, with the idea that the duck might like to nibble at it, and should he not, she knew that other birds would wolf it up. But the duck acted warily, waddling sideways past the mound. She persisted, picking him up and placing him by the rice with his beak hovering over the top of it, but still he shied away, whining fearfully.

Then she noticed how he liked to attack the white plastic-covered cushions used for his night-time roosting in the cage. There was a pattern to the way he pecked at them, grabbing a piece in his beak and thrusting, before jumping on top to repeat the pecking once more.

There was the white towel he flew at while she was putting out the washing, and the white washing basket he jumped onto before he went for her.

And
the attacks were more likely if she had bare feet or, especially, if she was wearing her red sandals. Her white duck feet with the flash of bright red face, from his point of view. She had surmised that her exposed flesh was an obvious target, but now it was looking as though colour might be the trigger for his aggression. White, primarily, with red, or sometimes black, added to it. She wondered whether the predator that killed his mother had been white. She wondered whether he had a sense of his own whiteness. The overnight educator had been hissing in his ear: What are you? Man or duck? Get her, get her. Go on, go! Show her what you're made of.

But she was still bemused. Was this normal duck play or was it serious?

When she investigated through the internet, Hannah discovered a couple of videos on YouTube showing fighting muscovies. Wings batting, necks curling round necks, beaks clamping. She knew the instant bruises those sucking beaks caused. A panicking voice-over was screaming: Look at all the blood. There's blood everywhere. Are they trying to kill each other?

She read that muscovies could fight to the death. Territory. She watched video footage of muscovy ducks mating, the male trampling the back of the female, tail furiously sweeping from side to side, beak wedged in her neck. The pair didn't look much different from the muscovies fighting.

And then she found the
New Scientist
slow-motion video of the copulating muscovies.
Coitus interruptus. Coitus interruptus scientifica.
A scientist was holding a ruler measuring the penis which was coiled like a corkscrew, a corkscrew from the $2 Shop, an uncertain rocket spiralling its skewed and rambling way to its destination. According to the scientist, the penis was twenty centimetres long. The burst from erection to ejaculation took .36 of a second. A third of a second. The cloaca of the female spiralled in the opposite direction of the male, apparently in an attempt by Nature to save the female from forced copulation.

Why didn't Nature create a less aggressive creature? How could it be that Nature designed the male and female organs to be so diametrically opposed to each other? Did He who made the he, make she?

The woman played the video again. She was astonished. This eruption of activity emerging so swiftly from such a depth of feathers? A third of a second! If ‘one hickledypickledy' was the measure for one second, then it was all over in a hickle. And so many ducklings owed their lives to this!

The woman laughed.

Look at this! she said out loud. But of course, the man, who would have had something to say about all this, was not there.

When she ventured out on her regular walks, Hannah passed strangers who smiled at her. She smiled back. She smiled at others, they smiled back.

Even when her mother was locked into herself with the disease, her face usually lit up when Hannah walked into the lounge of the rest home.

And then there was the foreign couple facing each other at the beach who'd been engaged in furious debate. She couldn't understand their language, or guess the subject of the discussion, but the hostility of the eyes, the curling lips, the jutting chin and their gesticulation made it obvious to her that this was not a friendly conversation.

She thought of Simon and all the non-contact mannerisms and expressions and micro-expressions she was able to interpret without the need for words. From the insignificant — such as itching his nose, or stroking his beard or tugging his ear — to a more thoughtful frown, or pursing of lips, or craning his neck. The face a rubbery canvas constantly giving out signals which left little doubt as to their meaning. A glance or an expressive hand that was able to stop her, show disapproval, question her whimsically, soften her with love.

But the duck. The duck hissed, trilled, snorted, whined, panted and made raspy grunts. He rhythmically dipped and bobbed his head this way and that; swayed his head horizontally; tapped the ground or his foot with his beak; faced her alarmingly; shuffled sideways. The crest of his head feathers would shoot up, his wings would flatten, and at times he'd suddenly sit upright, head high, his whole body erect, while an eerie high-pitched quiver of sound leaked from within. He'd silently snap his beak rapidly into the air as if he'd reverted to his babyhood and was begging for food, or was gulping at invisible mosquitoes just out of reach, or was blind and mad, or was trying to tell her something but couldn't find the words. As if as if as if. Her interpretation of his language was all relative to her terms. Conjecture. The only sound she understood for certain was the happy soft feeding cheep he made when they were out foraging together.