The Visitor (21 page)

Etos and his kind knew perfectly well what death was. Or at least, they knew as much as umas did with regard to its visible effects, that it transformed the living into an inanimate object.

Etos wasn’t paying attention any more to what was rigidifying his broken limbs. To be even more precise, he was deaf to all of his body signals... well, almost all. Of his entire outside world, he could smell the blades of grass that he held in his right hand. These few fragments spotted with Mahisa’s blood were his treasure. From time to time he kissed them tenderly and his reddened eyes watched them with fevered fervor that only passionate love can burn in a heart.

Following the mental images that were at the forefront in his mind, his face changed in appearance. When he thought of Mahisa’s beautiful bursts of laughter when blew hard while shaking his mouth on her slender neck, a tender smile
stretched his lips, though his eyes were still flooded. He was smiling in tenderness while crying. But then there was the horrible wound, this indelible mark in his memory as painful as a mark being branded onto the skin. Then his cries rose to heartbreaking tones and he kissed his very tight fist holding his treasure, or else he pressed it to his cheek.
 

*

Akkaliza raising from time to time her head to look at Sneaky couldn’t quite interpret his complex expression. She saw it as a wincing in pain like any other.

If she had been told that she would miss the Inquirer show on channel 2 the day that her aunt was invited, and due to the incredible reason of why this evening she would have another things in her mind, of course, she wouldn’t have believed it. Yet, this long-awaited moment was completely absent from her thoughts. She rested her head on the Sneaky’s chest. Something had changed: she even felt more communion of sentiments since the video from the camera had revealed to her why he was suffering so much. She knew. She knew that the bov was mourning the loss of his loved one. He was crying with his eyes, where umas would have in a similar circumstance cried with their beak. She figured it out, she was certain. Same as umas, bovs knew love. The same, just as strong, just as beautiful. She was increasingly confident that they had a range of feelings no less rich than that of her own species. Intuition told her that Sneaky would let himself die, if he couldn’t recover the one he loved. That’s what she had explained to her father while showing him the video of the bov reacting to the death of his companion.

“
Look at him!” she had told him. “See how he stretched his arm out to gather blades of grass stained with blood. Look how he cherishes the only thing that’s left of her. See! Look and understand! Dad, I’m going into his cage. I'll eat when he eats. I’ll drink when he drinks. If he lets himself die, I’ll do the same.”
 

Was it only due to the emotion carried in the voice of his daughter or had Akkal been touched by the video itself? Probably both. In any case, he had seemed terribly upset. He hadn’t stopped his daughter from entering the animal’s cage.

“
I'll do everything in my power to fix things,” he simply promised before hurrying off.
 

*

T = 5,130.

Ekklamisa was zigzagging every which way in her living room under the eyes of Ikkarix, who remained placidly sitting in his chair. While he quietly scratched the veneer from his beak using his varnish removing scraper, she was shouting, now and then, "Yeeeaaah!" and all kinds of cries of enthusiasm quickly raising her four arms to the skies.

On the big wall screen, two astronauts in the Adventure shuttle were watching her thanks to a camera that provided a view of the whole room. You could see them floating in weightlessness showing pleasure and amusement from the posturing of the manager of space missions.

Everything had gone smoothly. Falcon had fully accomplished the mission for which it was designed in a hurry. The mysterious machine which had come from deep space had been sufficiently slowed down to be captured by the Teruma’s gravity. Ekklamisa, finally freed from her worst trances, was feeling wings growing. All those on the ground control team and the two cosmonauts had joined their voices to cry out in joy. The Visitor, that’s how they tacitly ended up calling it, was dutifully parked in a nearly circular orbit. He couldn't escape them. For Ekklamisa, it was just like if it had been placed here, beside her, on the floor of her living room.

Ikkarix carefully folded back the cotton-wool cloth that contained small shards of his beak’s varnish and put it into the kitchen trashcan. This done, he put a bottle of glossy black varnish and a mirror on the table, sat down on a chair and began to revarnish his beak with dedication.

“
How can you stay so calm with all that’s happening?” she said surprised. “I’ve trouble thinking that you aren’t taking the full measure of this moment’s importance!”
 

“
Apparently, I’m giving it more than yourself!”
 

“…
?”
 

“
What do we know of our capture? What tells you that there isn’t, inside, something smart enough to be sensitive to the quality of our welcome. Myself, I don’t know... a kind of computer program so sophisticated that... Or else, some living being, even... In a few hours, after our decontamination precautions, we’ll bring it down to Teruma and... I don't want to look sloppy. You never know.”
 

Ekklamisa ceased all demonstrations of enthusiasm and shut herself  in the bathroom to put new powder on her crest.

*

Sitting in the veterinary clinic’s waiting room, Akkal was scratching the scales of his forehead.

He had just summarized the situation for Akkali on the phone. She was very much concerned for Akkaliza.

“
I'll try to convince her to come home to rest,” she said. “Surely, she can’t spend the night in that cage!”
 

He had hung up, tired of hearing her lamenting.

Ikkillu had asked him to wait for her there. He had no other choice but to trust her and hope. All staff members were very surprised that it was a bov that had been brought into their emergency department. In all their careers, this was the first time. Generally, it was most of the time for hinecs or thacs, but sometimes for birds, hamsters, rabbits and other pets. It was mainly for animals that had the good fortune to be considered ‘cute’ by people. Since they weren’t in this category, but instead culturally designated to be eaten, bovs were never seen in a general veterinary clinic. It was as incongru
ous as a banana in a toolbox or a drill in a freezer. Furtive and perplexed glances towards Akkal made by four other people, who were waiting with him, and who had seen arrive the anachronistic animal, said a lot about their surprise. They gave him the impression of being one of those jaded eccentrics who, not knowing what to do to spend their money, invented every day new whims to stand out.
No doubt they imagine that tomorrow, I’ll bring a camel to the movies
, he thought bitterly. But their glances didn’t worry him that much. He thought of the day when he had fired two shots at that bov. Two small nothing gestures. Two small flections of a single finger. And yet, only one really counted since only one had found the target! And bang! Another finger movement and he found himself here, at night, under critical eyes, praying with all his soul that an another bov, that he had never seen before, would not die. How could life enter such mazes with so confusing paths? How could fate make such pirouettes? What link could there be between a movement of finger somewhere in a forest and the threat that his daughter would starve herself to death a few days later?
 

Speaking of a finger on a trigger, Ykkypol’s wife had called him on the phone, early this very morning, to let him know that her husband had been the target of a madman on the set of The Inquirer. Viewers hadn't seen the incident, since the broadcast was slightly deferred to be able to cut passages likely to offend the public. Ykkypol was currently in the emergency ward of a clinic. Akkal hoped that he wasn’t responsible for any part of that event.

He thought of this bov which seemed so attached to the one that his daughter had named Sneaky. She had most likely covered one hundred kilometers to find her companion.
We can’t really call that love
, he said to himself.
That’s instinct, that’s all. It’s animal instinct...
But he had the greatest difficulty to convince himself.
 

Is God pursuing a means to make me understand something... or to punish me for my actions
? He asked himself.
 

Not speaking to him except in similar difficult times, he began to pray fervently, eyes closed, four hands on his knees joined together by forty intertwined fingers.

*

A full moon was seeping through the sparse foliage above the cage.

“
Akkaliza!” said Okkala softly. “It’s me. Your mother called me to tell me what was happening. Please answer me.”
 

 
Akkaliza looked up. Crest crumpled, she looked at her aunt as if she didn’t recognize her. And then she exclaimed with a faded voice:
 

“
Okkala... it's nice of you to come see us.”
 

“
Is your arm getting better?”
 

“
Yes,” said Akkaliza showing her dressing. “It doesn’t really hurt any more.”
 

“
Well! … You're not going to spend all night here?”
 

“
I promised Sneaky that I’ll stay with him.”
 

“
Humph... Tell me what happened,” asked Okkala putting a loving hand on her niece’s foot.
 

“
Sneaky is in love, his companion was killed. He’ll let himself die. I promised him to accompany him to the end. I’ll eat or drink when he does it himself.”
 

“
How can that be, Sneaky in love?”
 

Akkaliza thrust her hand into one of her pockets and pulled out her camera memory card. She handed it to her aunt:

“
See for yourself.”
 

Okkala took the object.

“
You know...” added Akkaliza. “I learned something. Bovs...”
 

“
Yes?”
 

“
Well... They cry with their eyes. In the wetting.”
 

“…
It's funny that you tell me that today.”
 

“
Why?”
 

“
Because I’ve just learned of it myself from Professor Kkmura, during the Inquirer show.”
 

“
Oh! Excuse me... I didn’t watch. Forgot.”
 

“
It’s okay. I understand. In your place, I would have forgotten also.”
 

Okkala didn’t find, for now, any need to speak of the tragedy that occurred on the set. She introduced the card into her phone to view the video.

*

Upper arms crossed on her chest, the other two in the pockets of her pants, Akkali was walking around the large living-dining room table. She wondered why her daughter gave so much importance to the life of this beast that she had never seen and why Akkal instead of trying to make her more reasonable spent his time at the veterinary clinic.
He must be disturbed by what happened to Ykkypol
, she said to herself. He had made her a brief telephone call her to tell her. She stopped for two seconds then resumed her patrol around the table in the other direction.

The eyes of the stuffed bov heads watched this manifestation of anxiety with the coldness of the glass which they were made of. However, had it not been for the certainty that they could no longer think, one might be led to believe that these creatures knew that the end of this torment depended on the recovery of a congener. And that the one that had contributed to putting its life on a razor wire was none other than the one that had put an end to theirs. Anyway, that was what Akkaliza’s mother was feeling at the time that Okkala arrived.

“
So?” started Akkali while ceasing her infernal trek around the table.
 

“
She won’t return. She’ll spend the night in that cage. If you had seen what I just saw, you would understand.”
 

“
You can't convince her to sleep in her bed?” insisted Akkali sounding polite for the first time in a long while.
 

Okkala replied on the same tone:

“
No. As I’ve told...”
 

She handed her phone to her and completed with:

“
Watch this video and you'll understand. Give me two blankets, if you please. One for her and one for me. I'll go spend the night beside her. You can return the phone after you’ve finished viewing. We need to call Akkal to get the latest news.”
 

Resigned, Akkali went to fetch two blankets and gave them to her sister-in-law who left immediately. As soon as she was alone, she dropped into a chair and looked at the video. Before arriving at the final image, her beak began to vibrate. And when she had seen it all, she lifted her eyes to see the stuffed heads. On the wall in front of her, there were three females and two males. The first were easily recognizable by their hairless faces, the latter, on the contrary, had hairs around their mouths.

Why, up to this moment, haven’t I never truly realized that these things weren’t always just objects?
was the question that suddenly struck her heart and her mind.
 

At the time when she was about to call her husband, the noise of a violently opened door startled her. Akkal crossed the room like a hurricane, almost tore away the handle when opening the door leading to the garden and disappeared into the obscurity. She ran behind him.

*

Okkala had taken a garden chair from front of the house to use it here, in front of the cage, to spend the night with Akkaliza and Sneaky. After giving a blanket to her niece, she sat and put the other on her knees.