The Flight of Birds Page 4

  Of course, this isn’t how it functions in the early stages. There are giggling fits and embarrassed twitches. Nobody knows what to do. Miss reminds them to focus on their peripheral vision. They shiver forward; somebody trips on the aquamarine carpet. They topple in a guffawing heap. Try again, Miss says. They wait. They shimmer. They slide into a rhythm; sense an impulse to the right. They sweep quietly across the floor.

  The boy doesn’t join in. He’s not one for functioning in a group. In any case, he knows the others would only be repulsed by him. They already think he’s weird. Miss doesn’t notice. She marvels at the movement. She raptures on about synchronicity, about surrendering to the flow.

  Miss Tifying, he wants to share with the group. He doesn’t say anything.

  A Weight of Albatrosses

  The boy and his mother are alone in a brown room. She’s in the bed, he’s perched tenuously on a fidgety chair. It’s difficult for her to talk. He’s waiting for his cue. Creakingly, she breathes out.

  What happened at school today?

  Nothing.

  There’s never nothing, she says, eking out the words.

  Nothing much.

  In English? she asks.

  He knows she likes to talk about books. She taught him to read. He follows her train of aching thought. Writing an essay about the Ancient Mariner.

  A smile creases her face. Go on, then.

  He whispers the lines she already knows.

  He holds him with his glittering eye—The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years’ child: The Mariner hath his will.

  He knows these lines well. A gift from her, reading to him at night. Their positions reversed: him tucked under the blanket, her nesting in the chair. She read him everything. Fairy stories, novels, poems. He’d let the words drift over him, like music. Let us go there, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky. Would I were stedfast as thou art,—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?

  Now he whispers them to her, every afternoon, in the amber light. He sings to her in the stuffy, chestnut air. And the good south-wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play, Came to the mariners’ hollo! They have an hour of this; sometimes more, but mostly an hour. His father says it’s best that he doesn’t tire her out. A reedy melody; a painful sigh. At the end of the hour, he pecks her on the cheek and slips out of the room.

  His father is always on the other side of the door. She’s having a good day today, he says, even when she’s not.

  She’s sleeping, the boy says, even when she’s not.

  His father says, She always looks forward to seeing you.

  A Murder of Crows

  The group hasn’t achieved perfect synchronicity. He’s still on the outside, looking in. They gravitate towards the windows then reel away. They lag. He watches a classmate being towed along. She’s not in tune with the others: her shoulders are lopsided, an elbow sticks out. A tizz of black hair darkens her face. She flicks it away. Ignore it, Miss says, not unkindly. Let go of your body. The boy considers the other bodies drawling over the carpet. That misshapen boy, spongy and pink, his paunch uddering over his waist. The too-tall girl, shrinking from the ceiling. The rash-haired boy with the messy face, his cheeks a galaxy of pimples. A skirt too short, creeping up a girl’s leg. An untucked boy’s shirt trailing behind. One student’s eyes flit from left to right: anxious, alert. Another student’s face is a doughy lump, a slab of tongue worming out of his pale lips. One slouches; another shambles. A boy turns the corner too sharply. He gets elbowed in the jaw; it’s a palpable whack. A bruise is bronzing on his cheekbone. Not that way, you doofus, a classmate hisses.

  He doesn’t make friends. At lunchtimes he hunkers in a hidden alcove at the edge of the quadrangle, reading or watching the sparrows poke and scatter. He prefers it that way. He’s tried. There was that almost-friend in primary school. The girl he talked to, once, in commerce class: she snarled and he backed off. He’s not a total basket case. When they’re forced into group assignments he’s able to engage in tight conversations, innocuous and polite. In those situations he keeps his hands firmly against his body, squeezing his elbows into his rib cage.

  He’s in this position now, sitting in the corner of the drama room as the others flock away from him. He’s acutely aware of his body, separate from all the others. His insubstantial skeleton. The sharpening of his cheekbone, the dull ache behind his eyes. His wispy hair is staticky. His skull is clenched. He’s locked inside his own thrumming thoughts. He prefers it that way.

  He’s aware of an enthusiastic smile warming the room. Miss asks if he’s ready to participate. He flees.

  A Pitying of Turtledoves

  He’s shivering in the airless corridor. His hands are picking at the edges of his shorts. The skin on his legs feels ashy.

  Miss pokes her head out of the classroom. He can see her wavering, wondering about the best course of action to take. He suspects they’ve all been told, all the teachers, about his family situation. Sometimes his maths teacher gives him a sad nod when she hands back test papers. Miss looks the same way now.

  I have to go, he says.

  Of course, she says. If you need to—She flusters. If you’re needed at home.

  He can sense she’s pleased with herself. Miss Understanding.

  She smiles and then slides back into the flow.

  A Solitude of Space

  He doesn’t go home. Home is another kind of flocking. A smaller group, maybe, but still a flock. A chorus of three. He thinks about the nightly rituals, the rhythmic recitations. And the good south wind still blew behind; hung aloft in the night; spread out against the sky. And not just poetry. The same exchanges, evening after evening. He waits for his cue. What happened in school today? Nothing. It’s never nothing. Then later: She’s having a good day. She’s sleeping. She always looks forward to—

  He will not flock. He will not be ensnared in any crowd, not even a gathering of three. He will not be annihilated by the moment.

  He walks out of the grounds, not towards home. The streets around the school are booming, but he does his best to shuffle it all out. His jumper is thin. The wind cuts his bare legs. His jaw hums, as if he’s been nudged by a classmate’s elbow. He straggles into quieter spaces, hedges and fences, parked cars and fluttering leaves. He’s ambling, threading down laneways and following hidden paths between houses. The solitude of the middle of the day surprises him. A sliver of a boy, clinging to a fraying grey fence, his fluffy hair shredding in the wind.

  He is a flock of one. His mind is a blank sheet of paper, but it’s his own to write on.

  The street passes over a stormwater drain: a bump in the road, an almost-bridge. On another day, he wouldn’t notice it. There’s a narrow mesh of fence between two houses; he peers through, looks down at the smooth cement. A sorrowful thin trail of water. A used-to-be creek. There’s a gash in the mesh. He eases his way through and swings down. The soles of his feet sting as he lands.

  Graffiti swirls the edges of the almost-bridge. It’s more of a tunnel. He contemplates the void within. It must run underground for quite a distance, under houses, under parks, under schools. He places a tentative foot onto the oily threshold. He ducks under a frond of straggly vine. His eyes adjust. He thinks there should be an echo but he isn’t game to cough or call. The graffiti tentacles across the walls for a few metres in, but then stops, as if reeling from the dankness. The boy sneaks deeper. The smooth cement is stained like eucalyptus bark. He feels like an explorer, mapping out uncharted territory: in the grey density of the bush, on the Antarctic plains, across the expanse of the desert. The silence is profound. When he emerges from the other side, an eternity later, squeezing through rusty wire into the gully of a park, the sky overheard is dark.

  He’s not far from home. He glides in the back door. His father is waiting, sitting at the kitchen table.

&n
bsp; Where have you been?

  Deeper in the house, the boy can sense a bedroom door open, just a sliver.

  Where have you been?

  The boy says nothing.

  Where have you been? She always looks forward to—

  At these words, these invocations, the boy rips around the room. He rushes his hands across the marble-top table, upheaving a half-full coffee mug. The mug cracks on the floor like broken wood. He flies out of the kitchen, down the hall. This is where they keep the books. He strikes at them, plucking them out one by one. They are bombarded against the wallpaper. Spines splinter, leaves flurry through the air. Scrunchy yellow parchment is ripped at and thrust away. His father is trying to embrace him, to squeeze his arms around the boy’s blasting body. But it itches. He scratches back. The boy shrinks down, slipping out of the entangling arms.

  He’s a hurricane ripping out the front door. A flurry of one.

  A Wake of Buzzards

  He flails down the suburban street, half a block, maybe, before the fuming dissipates. He stands rigidly in a space between streetlamps, the cold air consoling his skin. He wonders what his next move should be. He considers slinking back to the stormwater drain and hunkering in the dark. But even here, even in this extreme state, he knows that’s foolish. He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He half turns towards home and trudges back. The front door is still open. There is no way he can go in. He lurks his way down the side of the house, rattling against a watering can. His shoes rasp against the pavers on the patio. He freezes. The bulk of the house is palpably black, but there’s a box of light where the kitchen is. Framed in the window is his father, sitting at the marble table. He is staring out. The boy—like all of us when we’re standing outside looking in—thinks his father is looking at him. But of course he isn’t. He’s staring into nothing. He lets his gaze drop to the table. There are pieces of a torn-up book in front of him and he’s trying to piece them together. Outside, the air is sharp. The boy hugs himself, rubbing his hands against the sleeves of his papery jumper. He draws in his elbows. His father shuffles the leaves, sorting them into piles. His hands wave over the oniony paper like an incantation. The gesture weaves a perfect circle, signifying everything. His father lifts his gaze again to the window. His hands fall onto the table. The boy watches as his father’s face hums and twitches and then cracks open. His father howls. An overwhelming stream of sticky pain. Relentless and hot and melodious.

  The howl of someone alone.

  An Exaltation of Larks

  The boy goes to school. The bevy of students is still twittering and jeering, as if the world hasn’t changed. When it’s time to begin the flocking, he volunteers to lead the group.

  The drama teacher is hesitant. Miss Apprehensive, he thinks.

  I’m all right, he says. He knows what he needs.

  He stands still in the centre of the room. The flock forms around him. He lets go of his thoughts. He allows himself to be carried along by the flow: from this corner to that, in sweeping arcs over the aquamarine carpet. The flock contracts and expands. They curve away from the windows, and his body turns, too: not before the others, not after, but simultaneously. Synchronously. He feels his skin shimmer as it merges with the others. He can’t tell where he ends and the other students begin. He’s dissolved. He’s embraced by the fleeting, luxuriating movement. The room breathes. The ceiling above them lifts away, the floor below drops, cavernously. They’re all carried away. They’re flying. It’s like water, like air, like clouds. Like music. Like a line of poetry. The flock surges through space, circling and radiating, converging and illuminating. It’s seductive; it’s frightening; it’s beautiful.

  He goes home that night and slips into the amber room. He performs all the duties of the ritual. His mother lies in the bed, waiting for the next line. The readiness is all. He tries to love the creases on her face. Afterwards he sits at the marble table with his father.

  She’s having a good day today, his father says.

  She’s sleeping, the boy recites.

  He looks forward to this communal moment, the last rite of the evening.

  Later, the boy falls in with other congregations. Exams and assemblies, interviews and weddings and funerals. He slips away from school, drifts through university. He joins other flocks. A seminar of students, a shuffle of colleagues, the kinship of a new family. He watches other clusters form. A kitchen of cooks, a plunge of plumbers, a balance-sheet of accountants, a flight of ornithologists. He moves unnoticed among crowds, never leading, never following. His relationships are haphazard but harmonious. Occasionally he fades into view, but he tries his best to avoid it. When someone really notices him, the outside of his skin umbers like a bruise.

  Do You Speak My Language?

  Are the birds making music, or simply mimicking, parroting or aping themselves? Is their song a call and response, a chant, or simply a repetition? Is it a theme and variation, indeed an improvisation, or rather a mechanical repetition, or indeed reproduction?

  David Wills, ‘Meditations for the Birds’

  It all happens in a moment. A slicing of wings through the air. A snatch from the plate by a flat-arrow beak. And bacon and bird are gone, up into the branches of the eucalypt in the far corner of our garden.

  Breakfast on the back veranda is part of our weekend routine. Three rickety chairs around a rustic table. Or, more often than not, four bodies stretched on the deck, taking in the sunlight. This morning, the table’s been commandeered by the Saturday paper. The travel and real estate sections are splayed over the splintery wood, weighted down by a mug of coffee and the corner of an egg-stained plate. We’ve all retreated from it. I’ve stolen a few pages and am lying on my stomach on the lacquer-brown boards of the deck. The dog, dead to the world, is flopped firmly against my leg. My wife is sitting cross-legged, her back leaning on the glass of the sliding doors. She’s sipping her coffee and swiping on her iPad, following esoteric trains of thought. My daughter is balanced on the edge of the veranda, legs dangling, humming a tune under her breath. A strip of half-eaten bacon curls on the plate next to her.

  Moments before the kookaburra strikes, my wife is saying, ‘Listen to this: they’re holding the Fiftieth Annual Bird Calling Contest this year. Can you believe it? You know, those kids with bad haircuts who appear on The Late Show?’

  I nod affably and say something about Letterman’s love of ritual humiliation.

  Moments before, my daughter is strumming a rhythm on the boards. Tap tap tap tap. A beat I almost-recognise. Tap tap tap tap.

  Moments before, I’m saying, ‘Listen to this: Who’s laughing now? Men at Work lose court appeal. Can you believe it?’

  My wife doesn’t even look up from her screen.

  ‘Are you harping on about that again?’

  Meanwhile, the kookaburra sits on the branch of the old gum tree: poised, sharp, watching.

  My wife is right: I can’t stop talking about the case. I tell and retell the story: to colleagues, as we’re making our way up the stairwell to the office; to neighbours, when we’re chatting at the dog park; at the newsagents, when another punning title appears in the paper. The shoebox under the bed is full of clippings with headings like: ‘Kookaburra swoops Aussie icon’; ‘Riff rip-off’; ‘You better (not) take cover’. The press is loving it. A chance for outrage, scandal, the-legal-system’s-gone-mad conspiracies, tall-poppy takedowns, underdog talk-ups. After all, the whole thing began in the media.

  I remember that night, watching the episode of Spicks and Specks. ‘Welcome to a special children’s music edition,’ said a smirking Adam Hills.

  ‘Just what we need,’ my wife said, folding an insurmountable pile of tiny socks and T-shirts spattered with preschool paint. Play School and Hi-5 stars grinned out of the TV.

  ‘Have a listen to this,’ Adam said. ‘Name the Australian nursery rhyme this riff has been based on, as well as the name of the man playing it.’

  Charli and Jay and Justine shrugged.
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br />   ‘This bit especially,’ Adam said, and tapped out the rhythm in the air with his pen.

  The red Wiggle offered, tentatively, ‘Greg Ham’s the flautist, but …?’

  They all listened again, leaning over their desks, and two songs disentangled from each other. The panellists’ mouths formed words: from one song, from the other.

  ‘It’s … it’s …?’ wondered Jay Laga’aia, before making an astonished link. ‘“Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree”. “Down Under”.’ Like the TV panel, the lounge-room viewers were surprised, delighted by the connection. It was remarkable that we’d never heard it before. But there it was: the two songs different; the two melodies the same. My wife wandered off to bed that night, humming the flute riff, gliding into the childhood song.

  Two years later, Justice Jacobson of the Federal Court is still humming the tune, but in a different key. He says:

  Thus, there remain two principal issues. The first is whether there is a sufficient degree of objective similarity between the flute riff in Down Under and the two bars of Kookaburra.

  The second issue is whether, if I am of the view that there is the requisite similarity, the bars of Kookaburra which are reproduced are a substantial part of that work.

  Much of Jacobson’s deliberations circle around the ambiguity of the word ‘substantial’, tracing its application through a series of prior cases, and questioning whether or not the word applies to both the original and the infringing work. Jacobson uses what he calls ‘quantitative and qualitative consideration’ to form his verdict, what he also refers to as ‘by the eye as well as … by the ear’. Expert witnesses are called to talk about ‘signatures’ and ‘hooks’. Dr Andrew Ford, expert witness for the applicants, correlates the principal phrase from ‘Kookaburra’ with the flute riff from ‘Down Under’. The first two bars of ‘Kookaburra’ are its signature. The riff is clearly the hook: ‘a short instrumental figure which (with luck) proves to be instantly memorable and recognisable every time the song is played.’ Both hook and signature are substantial; they’re the essential part, the centre of the song. They’re the same tune in both works. To make his point, Ford transposes Kookaburra from F Major to D, to match the impugned work. ‘The melody is identical,’ he states, ‘but the chord that underpins it is different, and it gives a slightly different feeling … it’s a bit like shining a different light on it … it doesn’t change their nature.’