White Eye

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  The room was not much used, because most work was done in the Big Lab, which also was equipped with negative-airflow cabinets. Parker, who entered Level 2 most, never bothered with more than a gown and gloves, unless he had to dissect a cadaver infected with White Eye. He and Sonja, like everyone in U-1, were protected against the disease by Vaccine I, but he took no chances. He had a dissection bench set up with the tools he needed, including a mechanized bone saw, inside a clear plastic biohazard tent.

  The door to the Animal Room had one-way glass so that, from the Big Lab, staff could check on the chimpanzees without being seen by them. Inside, a concertina door divided the animal room in two. It was extended at night to separate the chimpanzees from the rabbits and mice, and pushed shut during the day to make space for the chimps to play. Its equipment included brightly colored kindergarten-size furniture, a television/video, soft toys, building blocks, climbing ropes on one wall, and an exercise bicycle specially shortened for chimp-length legs. At first the chimps had been left caged all day, but they died from inactivity. Parker suggested it would be cheaper in the long run to pay for a keeper to play with them, and Grossmann had reluctantly agreed. Every six months, he sent down a boy from the breeding farm, flying him into Australia on the same route used for the chimps: Bangkok, Kuching, Ujung Pandang, Kupang, then Karatha. Siam’s dispatch department always managed to send other freight on these flights, which then doubled back to Darwin and landed legally, thus making the whole arrangement economically viable. Meanwhile, for six months’ work underground the keepers earned a one-hundred-fifty-dollar bonus. Even so, by the end of 1992, staff at the breeding farm in Saraburi were unwilling to apply for service in Australia, having been discouraged by tales of isolation, tasteless food, and evil spirits. Lek was not a keeper but a servant in the Saraburi guesthouse who had shown an interest in animals. She was a pug-faced militant vegetarian and had the famous Siamese temper. Meat products had to be banned from the staff room refrigerator soon after her arrival. Parker found her deliciously funny and encouraged her to tell stories about demons at morning tea.

  When he went downstairs that afternoon, he found her holding a rabbit up against her shoulder, like an infant being held for a burp.

  “Put that animal back in its cage immediately,” he said. He went swiftly forward and gave her a light, sharp smack on the backside.

  In Bangkok, just before lunchtime, Michael Romanus collected a suit the color of vanilla ice cream from the tailor in Silom Road who made Otto’s clothes. Romanus could not afford the suit himself; Grossmann was buying it. “There’ll be a lot of rich people at my reception, Mikey. I don’t want you to be embarrassed,” he said. I wouldn’t be, Romanus thought. But when he saw himself in the suit, he had to admit he felt good. From the tailor’s shop he caught a cab to Grossmann’s house. The heavy iron grille rolled back, and the cab crunched to a stop on white gravel outside the teak double doors. Romanus gave a hasty smile to the servant who let him in and made straight for Otto’s study, as if late for an appointment. When he reached the door, he opened it and went into the room where Grossmann’s personal assistant, Miss Bochang, guarded the inner sanctum that lay beyond. Miss Bochang, was not at her desk, as Romanus knew she would not be. She was on the other side of town, waiting to meet an animal dealer who would never turn up. Romanus locked the outer door and went to the desk, where the documents he needed were just where she had left them an hour ago. He laid them out in a row, took a camera from his pocket, and photographed them. Then he shuffled them back together, the way they had been when he found them, and grabbed the manila envelope marked “Michael Romanus, To Be Collected,” in Miss Bochang’s curly script.

  He poked his head into Otto’s room and waved the envelope. “See you at the party.”

  “Hey!” Grossmann called. “Show me the suit.” Romanus sauntered into the room and strolled across the Persian rug. “I tell you, it looks great.” Otto was beaming with pleasure. “After the reception, you and I will need some female company, that’s for sure!”

  “Whatever you say. I gotta run, Otto.”

  Grossmann returned his attention to the balance sheet he was studying, still smiling although the figures were not wonderful. He was thinking about going to La Parisienne with Michael: It was so amusing, the way the Australian always kidded the girls as if he had no idea they were whores.

  Since Sunday, Diana had visited Jason’s place once or twice a day to see the eagle, each time bringing it small meals. The bird still detested her, but it was now willing to eat in her presence, whereas at first it had refused to take food while she or any other human was in sight. The trick had been to starve it for twenty-four hours, then offer fresh rabbit the next morning. On her Tuesday visit, Diana had discovered that Margaret the receptionist, with Jason’s compliance, had been inviting people into the laundry to look at the bird. Diana insisted on moving the eagle to the back garden, out of earshot of the clinic. Jason tried to make light of it. “At least I’ll be able to get my washing done,” he said. Margaret was deeply insulted.

  On Thursday afternoon, Diana took from a cupboard in the storage area of the aviary her long leather glove and gauntlet. The gauntlet was a green-hide sleeve that fitted from her wrist to her elbow, reinforced longitudinally with strips of steel to protect her arm from the eagle’s grip. In the storage area, which separated the two mews, there was a horizontal pole, like a ballet school bar, where the hunting birds perched while she hooded them. Diana kept all her falconing tools in this narrow room: a set of scales, lures in the shape of rabbits and pigeons, jesses, creances, her falconer’s bag, and a variety of hoods, some as small as a walnut shell, others like half a cricket ball. She pulled on the gauntlet, then a glove, and tried her arm for strength by whacking it against the pole. There was only a dull thud. She removed the leathers and set out for Jason’s clinic, stopping at the butcher’s shop, where she collected a rooster’s head. Cockscomb contained something that eagles relished. When she walked in, holding the head by its neck feathers, Margaret yelled, “Get that thing out of here!”

  Diana went on through to the back garden. She had tethered the eagle to a liquidambar tree, but all she could see when she went out was a pair of large, cream-scaled feet, jessed, with a leash attached, underneath a nearby nandina bush. She hunkered down, holding her hands behind her back, and gave a two-note whistle. She was careful to keep her eyes lowered as she approached, since eagles regarded eye contact as a threat.

  It was just visible as something denser behind the bush. Diana whistled again, then held at arm’s length the rooster head. The leaves of the nandina bush vibrated, and next moment the eagle jumped from behind it. Diana tossed the food. A massive foot pinned it to the ground, the black neck arched, there was a ripping noise, throat muscles bulged. As the glossy head bent to eat the rest of the meal, Diana dropped the fowling net.

  She drove around Kalunga until it was dark, giving the bird time to calm down.

  When headlights appeared at the top of Fig Tree Gully Road, Grace, who had been on the lookout, hurried to the side of the house and opened the gate. As the van pulled up she whispered, “You got her?”

  “Yes,” Diana answered.

  By now the evening star was shining and there was so little daylight left the eagle could see no better than the humans. Diana was hoping this would quiet the bird, but it did not. When she tried to take her from her perch in the back of the van, the wedgetail flattened her contour feathers close to her body and struck out with her foot.

  In the end, Diana had to use the net again. Her captive struggled and kicked while she was being carried down through the garden.

  Grace’s wide, soft form moved on ahead with the flashlight, her face and limbs invisible in the dark. When they reached the ti-tree fence, she gave a whistle. A loud, rasping “cush-cush-sh-sh” answered. They entered, and Grace switched on the light, slowly increasing illumination. The owl shook its head at the light, while the frogmouth stood erect on its bow pe
rch and made its huge eyes into yellow slits. The ducks set up a commotion, and the peregrine screeched.

  Finally the eagle was installed, alone, in the second mews, while outside, the falcon, placed on a small block perch for the night, jumped in the air in a temper. Grace shuffled about, sighing. When she closed her eyes for a moment and looked at the light around Diana, she could see that Diana was tired and disturbed. She had warned her, “You be careful, or you’ll have an accident.” Instead of slowing down, however, Diana had taken on extra work. In just over a fortnight, when the eagle’s wing had healed, she would have a full-time job training it. In the meantime, the falcon and the two night birds had to be prepared for release. The falcon was still a hopeless case, Grace knew.

  She adjusted the dimmer switch so that later, when the owl and the frogmouth were fed, they would not be alarmed by sudden bright light.

  Late in the afternoon, Kerry Larnach drove from the airfield to Kalunga and kept going until he was on the other side of town, on a potholed street that dwindled into dirt road and, finally, long, dry grass. Halfway down the street, there was a phone box with an out-of-order telephone. On either side, Paterson’s curse and thistles grew on vacant blocks where car bodies rusted and old plastic bags, caught on bushes, flapped in the breeze. Toward the end of the street, before it became a dirt road, stood four small, shabby houses and one neat one, which was where Grace Larnach lived with her grandsons, Tom and Billy, aged eleven and thirteen. The boys had been sent out from Sydney a year earlier, when their father was jailed. Their mother, Grace’s daughter, had her hands full with three younger children. “My relations,” Kerry said, grinning scornfully at the miserable houses. His great-grandfather (and Diana Pembridge’s) was Old Mister Larnach, a gold prospector and landowner who had found time to sire a legitimate tribe of his own, plus a bunch of half-castes to whom he gave his name. Grace was the granddaughter of Old Mister, as the town still called him. In boyhood, Kerry had hated having black relatives, but since he had become a big noise in the shire, his sense of shame had relaxed. These days he greeted Grace as “Auntie” when he passed her in the street.

  Earlier that afternoon, he had telephoned the gallery and chatted with Auntie, pretending he had rung to talk to Diana. In fact he wanted to find out when Tom and Billy would be home alone; they had a set of keys to his cousin’s place.

  He walked up the cracked concrete path to the porch, where plants flourished in pots and the dusty, savage-looking cattle dog from next door strolled around on stiff legs, alert for enemies.

  “G’arn!” Kerry said. The dog ducked, ran toward a hole in the wire fence, and shimmied through.

  The boys were lying on a balding sofa in the front room, watching a video. Kerry had a football with him. As he pushed open the door, he said, “Hey!” and tossed the ball. Billy caught it.

  Kerry sat on the sofa. “Whatcha watching?” he asked.

  For a few minutes they all concentrated on Mel Gibson killing someone. Tom announced. “There’ll be a slow bit now We can stop it.”

  Kerry said he had come to offer them a car-washing job. They went outside to look at his Land Cruiser. “Twenty dollars for washing and polishing it every week. How much do you get for cleaning Auntie Diana’s birdhouse?” he asked. Fifteen, they said.

  Kerry guffawed. “She’s robbing you.”

  The boys gazed at him with lustrous dark eyes. They were at an age that trembles on the edge of magic, bravado, and fear of adults.

  “You got the key to it?” he said.

  Half an hour later, he left, jingling in his pocket Diana’s aviary key, front and back door keys, and the key to her van. “Ten-thirty tomorrow morning I’ll come by the playground and give ’em back to you,” he promised.

  “And the new set,” Billy said.

  “And the new set.”

  The kids watched him drive away, still as solemn as they had been throughout his visit. When the Land Cruiser reached the end of the road, they turned to each other and squealed.

  “I thought we’d had it!” Billy yelled.

  “Me too!”

  “When he walked in I thought, Oh, no! We’re dead!”

  They had to run up and down the street and chuck gravel at a telegraph pole before they calmed down.

  Kerry, meanwhile, was disappointed that Diana’s office key was not among those he got from the kids by offering to make them a duplicate set they could keep. He wanted to have a look through Diana’s filing system and figured it would be easier if he had the key to the door of her workroom.

  The new chimp was due to arrive in twenty-four hours. In the worst case, if it seemed too dangerous to land the animal at either the airfield or the Research, Kerry had decided to have it ditched. He and his little brother had agreed on the signal: “Nice weather here—still warm enough to swim” meant “Throw the chimpanzee into the lake.” Lake Kalunga was three meters deep, more than fifteen kilometers long, and four kilometers wide. It had a maze of submerged hazards—drowned trees, sunken duck boats, and old fence posts, from years when the water receded and the lakebed was used as grazing land. The location of these snags was known only to people like Diana Pembridge and the Larnachs, who had grown up near the lake. Another crate would be just one more submerged object. It would be well covered with water, probably never discovered.

  Kerry drove home slowly, wondering what to do if Diana suspected chimpanzees were being brought into Australia unquarantined. He and John Parker had not worked out how Carolyn Williams had got wind of the chimps—yet she did not seem to know the animals were coming to the Research. Or if she did know, her questions to the animal food companies had been even subtler than they seemed. She had pretended to be conducting a “survey on commercial foodstuffs supplied to apes and monkeys in Australia” for CITES, the Convention on International Endangered Species.

  Kerry’s left leg jigged as he remembered the conversation he had had three weeks ago with the sales manager of Animal Food Supplies. “We’ve had a request for information from a Dr. Carolyn Williams about institutions ordering primate food, but before giving out the names of our customers, we are checking with them.…” Since yesterday, when he had read the Primate Rescue Organization newsletter, Kerry had been asking himself, Was it really Carolyn who rang? The person said she was Carolyn Williams and claimed she worked at the Research. That gave credibility to her survey story. But what if it had been Diana? Diana would not ring and say, “Hi, I’m an animal rights radical. I once threw red paint on thousands of dollars’ worth of furs, but I was young and stupid then. Now I’m older and smarter, and I’d just like to ask …”

  He was worried about Jason Nichols too. He had warned Parker that they must keep to a minimum the number of people involved: the lab staff, Sonja, him, his baby brother. When Parker needed veterinary assistance he brought in Nichols. “Jason’ll do anything for cash,” John said. But in Kerry’s view, Nichols was not money-minded so much as eager for little adventures, a bit of lawbreaking to spice up his life. He had a face like an angel—and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could kick him, Kerry thought.

  “Nichols is a weirdo,” he warned Parker.

  “No weirder than most other people,” Parker had replied. “Our age is psychically disturbed. The church failed, and we put politics in its place. Now politics has failed. We believed in money, but money is failing. People don’t know what to trust, so they trust anything. Look at the flood of ignorance and superstition everywhere, the anti-science sentiment among Western youth, the belief in magic and witchcraft.”

  Kerry drove past Nichols’s house. The Porsche was not in the drive, but Margaret McLeod’s bicycle was leaning against a side wall.

  His own house was only two doors past the veterinary clinic.

  Kalair staff joked that their boss ran the airline as a cover operation for his secret depravity: tools. In the back garden, Kerry had converted a double garage into a toolshed, its walls lined with shelves on which, in alphabetical order, were ar
ranged gadgets from awls to vises. He had six weights of hammers, twenty screwdrivers, pliers tiny enough to pluck eyebrow hairs, ranging to implements that needed both hands and could yank an iron pin from a railway sleeper. People were always dropping in, wanting to borrow something. Just yesterday, Joe Miller from the Research had called by the office, wondering if he could borrow a small chisel.

  After microwaving and eating dinner, Kerry went to his shed and cut a set of keys. At eight o’clock, he set his alarm for 1:00 A.M. and went to sleep.

  In Bangkok, Michael Romanus spent two thousand baht on photocopying the prints he had made of the documents found earlier that day in Miss Bochang’s room. From a business office near Lumpini Park, he faxed the photocopies to Raoul Sabea in Chiang Mai. They were the correspondence, airfreight bills, and receipts for sale of the “young red bird” he had brought to Grossmann in Saraburi. Otto had said he would have the baby orangutan flown to the orangutan rehabilitation center in Kalimantan; instead, he had sold it to a Swiss industrialist.

  Diana fed the night birds at around nine each evening. Feeding every forty-eight hours would have been enough, but she wanted them a little overweight so when she released them they could tolerate a couple of hungry nights without becoming distressed. Neither bird had flight problems, but after weeks in captivity, they were out of hunting practice.

  The frogmouth had been caught by children who found it asleep in a hollow tree. They had kept it in a cage, where it developed an ulcer on one of its small, weak feet, and it could barely stand when Diana first took charge of it. A farmer had found the other bird, a female masked owl, in his barn, half dead from rat poison. Diana had looked after these birds for only a fortnight but already had grown fond of them, the owl especially. She was tall and chestnut-colored, her face a lovely split-apple shape, outlined in black. She had long legs, rufous feather trousers, and the dramatic habit of suddenly turning her head 180 degrees when she detected an interesting sound. At first she was utterly silent, but after a few days she began responding to Grace’s calls, and now she was almost chatty, crying “cush-cush” or “quair-sh-sh-sh” whenever she had company.