Pigeon Variations - Ch 24 - In Conversation with a Bird of Prey

The Colombian was hunched in a corner, perched on his soiled bed. Half man, half bird. The transition to a bird of prey was slower than other categories. Scientists couldn’t explain why.

“Cheers,” said Pyser, raising a glass to the Colombian. “I wanted to tell you I’m leaving.”

The Colombian ruffled its feathers.

“I’ve met a girl,” Pyser continued. “She’s going to let me live with her for a bit until I get myself straight.” He drank the lager. “What she doesn’t realise is that I’ll never be straight. This is who I am. This is what I do. I’m not going to change for anybody. Why should I?”

The Colombian made rapid squawking sounds. His body was transforming as Pyser spoke. The skin openly bled as the rachis for the feathers pierced through like blades. Bones sounded like cracking ice as they moulded into new shapes.

“What’s Colombia like?” asked Pyser. “I only know it from Romancing the Stone. Have you ever seen that film? Total classic with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. Oh, I suppose there’s that drug dealer too. Pablo what’s his chops? Fuck. What was his name? Escobar.”

Pyser drained the can and opened another. There was a bottle of whiskey next to him too. He took a swig. The Colombian’s room resembled an uncleaned cage. The floor mushy with maggoty goo and filth. It was an effort not to vomit. Pyser knew he’d definitely be blowing chunks had he not possessed the foresight to pop a couple of ‘little fellas’ before entering the room.

“Do you know something, I’ve only ever been to Paris? I’ve never been anywhere else abroad except for a weekend in Paris. Maybe one day I’ll live abroad. I want to. It’s something I’ve thought about.”

It was two in the morning. Artur and Blanka had returned to Poland. There was a new tenant who had moved in. Pyser didn’t know much about him except he was in his sixties, Irish, and claimed to be an actor who did gardening on the side. More likely to be the other way round. Whatever. The plan, as per usual, was to grab what stuff he could and do a runner.

There was no money in the Colombian’s room. No nothing really. An old-fashioned suitcase with clickety locks, the metal faded and scratched. “I know things aren’t amazing for you at the moment,” Pyser said, “but you’re going to be a top-notch bird. Think of what it’s going to be like, soaring high among the clouds, living in the mountains, owning the sky. You know what, I’d swap places with you in a heartbeat.”

It was true. Pyser was adamant he wasn’t going change his ways for no one and, at the same time, he was so fucking bored and fed-up. His drinking and drug taking were completely out of control. He wanted to stay as fucked up on this current binge for as long as he could as he was terrified of the come down when he finally burned out. It was going to be a humdinger of a downer.

“Why did you come from Colombia?” he asked. “What were you running from? Was it over drugs?”

Pyser drank. “Although I bet Colombians hate the drug cliché. I don’t blame them. We have our own here. The clichés of the working class, for one, repeated by middle-class wank stains on TV, the newspapers, books and films. I’ve been thinking about the working class a lot lately, whether I am one of them or not. Shall I let you into a secret? I fucking hate the working class, especially wankers who describe themselves as working class. It’s bullshit. A con designed to keep you in your fucking box. Know your place, son. Well, you can all fuck off. The working class as a concept was invented by academic, middle-class wankers. What do you make of that?”

The Colombian was in agony. It was etched across every segment of skin and sinew in his body. Pyser said, “I digress. Let’s come back to you. Did you come here to study English for the summer? Was that your plan? Looking to better yourself like all the other students. Build yourself a future. Education maketh the man. Course it does. Let me tell you, there is no future for the likes of you and me. No one wants to know us. We’re the driftwood. The low-life. The nobodies. Unless you’re born into money and know the right people, it’s never going to be any different. I’m talking about the silver spooners. The Thomas Pinkers. The polo playing ponces who quaff champagne and sail the Atlantic, bumming each other in wood-panelled cabins.”

Pyser picked his nose and flicked it at a maggot. “You know, I do find myself thinking that one day everything will be alright. That I’ll wake up and I won’t feel terrified and sickened by who I am. Do you ever get that sensation? I suppose you’re going through it now. It’s a headfuck. At least you came to England with good intentions. I’ll give you a point for that. I bet there was a girl too. Her name was Jenny, right? An aquarius with webbed toes on her left foot. Or was it her right? She had a phobia of buttons. Couldn’t stand them. She’d buy you t-shirts and hoodies to stop you wearing shirts. And you were so in love in the beginning. It was like an obsession, this desire to be together. ‘I want to grow old with you,’ she whispered in bed one night. And you fucking believed her, didn’t you? What a cunt. Believing that stuff. This fantasy that the pair of you would stay in love and would live together until you were both in your sixties, seventies and beyond. You wanted to think it could be true. That life could be like that. And for a brief moment in time, it fucking was like it. That bliss of total trust and acceptance. Heavenly, almost. How you would cuddle in bed on a Sunday morning, sharing secrets, laughing, fucking and drinking hot tea and eating buttered toast. It was perfect right up until that moment you cocked everything up by being the cunt that is you. Am I right, Eagle Boy? Hawk Lad? Do tell me if I’m getting you wrong here. Doing you the proverbial biographical injustice.”

Swigging the whiskey, Pyser considered popping temazepam to bring calmness to his thoughts. “Do you fucking yearn,” he said, “to lay on a sofa with her and watch a film? Are you desperate to come home with her and unpack shopping and make yourselves crackers with strong cheddar cheese and dollops of chutney? Do you remember the times you had chicken fajitas with fried beans, hummus and salad? Are you completely fucking bamboozled by how you threw away intimacy and trust? Trust, man. All over some misguided notion that she was tying you down. That she was stopping you being the man you wanted to be. A man who, it turns out, was also a fantasy, a fiction. He never existed in the first place because you never had the fucking nous to create him.”

The poor prick was in pain. Pyser could see it in what was left of the Colombian’s eyes. He got up and pushed the window open as far as it would go. “You fly out of here when it happens,” he said. “Don’t let the bastards catch you.”

Pyser went to pat the Colombian on the head but the bird-man started squawking loudly.

“Alright, I’m offksi,” he said.

Picking up the half-full bottle of whiskey, he saluted the creature on the bed. “Good luck. I envy you, I hope you know that – being a bird of prey is more than simple men like you and me could ever hope for. It’s a gift, mate, from a higher power. And I’m not talking about fucking god or any of that religion shit either.”

In the hallway, he picked up his two black bin bags, dropped his key onto the wicker matt and headed to his new abode.

It occurred to him that with each place he moved to, he took fewer belongings with him.