The Bird (extract)

“I suppose I’m just fooling myself. You are an animal. A wild animal – that’s what you are!” The bird fluttered down to perch on the arm of Salim’s chair.

“I keep on feeling that there is something more.” Salim looked up pleadingly. “But how could you turn on Sophia like that? She is harmless. In fact, she is sweet. Gentle. And rather beautiful. She would make a good mistress for you, and a good wife.”

The bird snapped forward, drawing blood from Salim’s knuckle.

Convulsively, Salim whipped his hand back, crying out, “Aaah!”

And then, removing his hand from his mouth: “Blast! That’s it. I must be insane…crazy! But things are going to change. Right now! You are going in a cage. You’re not riding on my shoulder anymore, or coming with me anywhere.”

And then in final, emphatic self-reproof: “Salim, boy, wake up! This animal is dangerous!”

After a long-drawn moment a single, black tear oozed from the corner of the bird’s eye. Salim froze as she gazed down on him, hurt and sad. Then, throwing up her head she spread her wings and with deep and powerful strokes soared into the blue of the sky. Like a firework, she trailed sparks and flame, and at her apogee, high, small and bright, wings crucified against the heavens, she surrendered to fire. It consumed her, defacing, obliterating her once stately form. And down the remnants tumbled, a blazing, shapeless slag, to drown hissing and smoking in the placid pool. Water slopped carelessly against the edges and the ripples faded.

Gentle reader, all of you know the moment of shock, when the world is stripped of detail and form. There is no coherent thought yet, only a numbing bulk of wrongness that looms and intrudes. And in the grey there are flashes, harbingers of the storm of regrets that will batter and eviscerate in the weeks and months to come. But not yet. Now there is only amazement.

Salim staggered to the brink of the pool. And, as if compelled, over the brink. At the edge the water was knee-high. Bereft of volition, he subsided, coming to rest on the coping, his hands on his knees while he regarded the stilling waters with desolation.

A woman’s head emerged from the water, dark hair slicked back from her tanned and aquiline face. Jewelled droplets clung and dripped from her breasts and shoulders. She stood and the rippling waters lapped, caressing her thighs. Unashamed and glorious she waded slowly across the pool towards Salim.

In honesty, she was rather enjoying the effect she was creating. Slack-jawed, Salim resembled a stranded fish. He, for his part, for all the confusion of his emotions, found time for her extraordinary beauty to pierce him through the heart (such are the imperatives of the male psyche).

A serene and secret smile toying on her lips, she nudged between his outspread knees and with her left hand pushed gently on his shoulder. He fell back leaning on both palms. Motionless, they gazed at each other. Eventually, she reached out her right hand, palm upward.

“Come”, she said.

Wordlessly, he took her hand, rose and followed her, up the stairs, to his apartments and to his bedroom.