Among the bodies that continued mysteriously to fall out of the sky were found the charred remains of Gilberto. The silver phosphorescent parachute, made of Matacão plastic, was nonflammable and it alone remained intact, its bulbous billowy form sailing out across the shimmering night skies with a human candle. It had risen to an incredible altitude, much higher than Gilberto himself might have imagined being shot from a cannon, fueled by the rising heat of its burning traveler. When the scarcity of oxygen at that height squelched the flame, Gilberto had become, perhaps, the very angel of Chico Paco’s last vision.
It was discovered that many of the fallen bodies, whose demise could not be traced to feather worshiping, were those of people who had been experimenting with the use of a new feather made of Matacão plastic. Further investigation revealed that the natural magnetism of the Matacão plastic could in certain circumstances, feather rubbing being primary, produce hallucinations. This would, scientists said, account for the rising number of people who claimed spiritual encounters during self-flagellation on the Matacão or the inordinate number of crazed individuals who had, emergency room records insisted, overdosed on four days of frenzied dancing on the Matacão. People were calling it the “red shoes syndrome”; Carnival revelers on the Matacão had actually been unable to stop dancing. Doctors testified to treating the physically exhausted dancers—their feet still kicking and their bodies twitching under the sheets to an inaudible beat for days after.
But the music had stopped long ago. Batista Djapan’s weekly pigeon messages had themselves forecast the end. “Look for the charcoal angel in the sky,” one read ominously. “Escape the rain of feathers,” the next warned. Batista himself did not know what the messages meant. He would only know when reality itself had deciphered the meaning. What was it he or anyone else must glean from such a message? Batista was always puzzled by the messages, but lately he had felt a growing sense of fear.
Where was Tania Aparecida when he needed her? She would know what the messages meant. She would be able to interpret his fear. “Tania Cidinha!” he would call out. “Come home. I need to talk to you!”
“I’m just a pigeon call away,” she would say.
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you myself!”
“I’m right here, darling. I’ll be here for the next hour. If it’s urgent, you can fax it to me at the following number . . .”
Batista groaned. He did not know what he felt any longer. He did not think it was jealousy, as Tania Aparecida insisted. But then, just when he was beginning to fear that he was losing his memory of her, that he would not recognize her if he saw her, that the memory of her face was only of the photographs she had sent him, he would catch a whiff of some scent, some odd perfume in the air that could only belong to Tania Aparecida. Then the memories would flood back in rushing torrents, his heart heaving, a deep moan cupped in his throat. He often thought that it would be easier if Tania Aparecida were dead, but then he knew that it would be worse. He wanted to tell her that it was no longer jealousy, but a terrible longing, a painful necessity. He would never be jealous again if only she would stay awhile.
But Batista’s emotions were left simmering with the onslaught of a more immediate threat: typhus. It was not so much that the disease had virtually decimated the workforce of his pigeon operation, causing a general stagnation in the usually prompt service the Djapans had been known for; people were so depressed by the typhus crisis that they no longer got very excited about slow service, and if it were bad news, people would rather hear it later than sooner. Neither had typhus really made a significant dent in the pigeon message business; while festive sorts of pigeon messages were practically nil these days, messages of sympathy and death filled the airways. Batista had continued to supply the Foundation for Votive Pilgrimages with pigeon pilgrims, and that service had hardly slackened with the typhus crisis. The true threat of typhus was in its cause: rickettsia.
Rickettsia were microorganisms that traveled via a minute species of lice, which in turn traveled via feathers, which, of course, traveled via birds and, of late, humans. The lice that transmitted rickettsia were practically invisible to the naked eye, but they were the nasty creatures that invaded the pores in the ears and around the neck and sucked the skin into a rash.
The first thing to go were the feathers. Plastic feathers had already been outlawed for their severe hallucinatory effects, but now the natural feathers—from the cheap chicken-feather imitations of the rare feathers to very expensive rare feathers themselves—were all dumped with extreme disgust and loathing into incinerators. Feathers burned night and day all around the Matacao. Some people gave up the feather habit with easy distaste, like some passing fad gone sour, but others found their dependency on that soft, light object had grown beyond their expectations. Many people experienced a weight gain. Others returned to smoking cigarettes. A number of stressed-out executives actually jumped out of their office buildings. Some had to be treated for shock and withdrawal.
Banning feathers, however, was not enough, authorities stated. It would be necessary to go to the source. It would be necessary to attack the rickettsia in the lice in the bird feathers. Batista was frantic. The authorities were adamant: no birds could be spared if the disease were to be completely eradicated. Batista himself had tried out DDT on a small selection of his own birds. Every bird had died. “It’s not an insecticide,” he ranted. “It’s a birdicide!”
The authorities admitted that some birds might not survive the application of DDT, but that a particularly strong solution of it was necessary to kill the tenacious lice. Batista himself could even vouch for the ineffectiveness of the DDT solution; long after the death of his birds, he was sure he could see the lice crawling around under the barbs. Batista was furious. What was the purpose of this mandate if the birds died but the lice survived? Some officials, who did not want to be quoted, claimed that if the birds were dead, the lice would not have the advantage of that parasitic relationship.
Michelle Mabelle, the French bird professor, telephoned Batista almost every day now to voice her alarm. Batista could hear the cries of Michelle’s triplets in the background. “Ah, is it Liberté?” Batista could hear Michelle asking. “Poor baby.” From where he stood, Batista could observe a new clutch of Djapan champions, the parent birds regurgitating the curdled pigeon milk in their crops for the hungry squabs. And from the other end of the line, Batista could hear Liberté’s sobbing shudder and its contentment as it nudged into one of Michelle’s copious breasts. Michelle made herself comfortable with the nursing baby and continued her conversation with Batista. “You’re the only one who understands the situation around here, Batista,” she began. “Only someone like you, someone who could take such extreme care to make the best bird feed in the country, could understand. Where, I ask you, are the other bird-lovers in Brazil? I’ve spoken to everyone, given interviews to all the papers, sent letters and telegrams to politicians and conservationist groups all over the world. No one seems to have the time to listen! Some ask me if I didn’t know there was a drug war going on. Others say that human beings and the unborn fetus are more important than birds. Others ask me if triplets are not enough for me to worry about,” Michelle fumed.
“What about your husband? He must have some influence,” suggested Batista.
“Ah, Batista, we argue about it continuously. He is so involved in the pressures of the market these days, I can’t seem to get through to him. Of course he is concerned. This will be the end of feathers. The end!” Michelle tried to contain her sobs. “He is still trying to recoup the losses from those horrid plastic feathers. There have been lawsuits, you know.”
“Dona Michelle,” Batista pleaded respectfully, “Mr. Tweep has to understand about the loss of all the birds. You must talk to him.”
“You don’t understand. I have tried. He’s still convinced that artificial plastic feathers are the answer. It’s a problem of removing the magnetism, he said. With proper marketing, he believes it could work again.”
“Work again?” asked Batista.
“Yes. It’s a problem of technology, my husband says. Plastic feathers would not harbor lice.”
“But the real birds!” cried Batista. “What about the real birds!”
Michelle Mabelle’s voice trembled, “I have asked him the same thing over and over. Ever since Chicolándia, I think he is convinced that everything can be more easily reproduced in Matacão plastic. What can I say? It is like talking to the Matacão itself! I try to tell him that half—HALF—” Michelle screamed, “of the world’s species of birds live in the Amazon forest. There are many I have never even seen,” she sobbed, remembering her bird lists. “I ask him about my pioneering work on the neotropic family Thraupidae. Imagine the green and gold tanager, the Tanagara schrankii. I finally saw it the other day. The beautiful black eyes, the soft yellow and green hues tapering into the sky blue of its wings and tail feathers. Everything shimmering softly in the sunlight. I could hardly breathe for the joy I felt. It was such a momentary happiness—” Her voice broke off in long hopeless sobs.
“Dona Michelle,” Batista tried to console the woman. “Please don’t cry. I will try to do everything possible to save the birds.”
Batista stalked all the halls of government trying to save his pigeons from the inevitable. The old dispatcher, once fluent in the language of paperwork and former sophisticate of the easy bribe to cure any bureaucrat’s thirst, saw all the doors close before him. No amount of money or hustle could supplant this now indelible code. Batista wondered at the purpose of a bureaucracy which could not be subverted. Things had certainly changed since his days in the business. “We know your situation, but the public must be attended to. Too many people have died, and thousands more will die if we do not stop the spread of the disease now. It would be impossible in such an operation to single out particular locales of noninfectious habitation. We are infinitely sorry for the loss you will have to suffer, but think of it, Batista, this is for the good of mankind.”
Batista went home, exhausted and dejected by his inability to save not only his own prize Djapan pigeons, but any and all birds. In a last frantic effort, he ran about opening all his pigeon cages and shoving the frightened birds from their roosts. “Go!” he commanded. “Fly away before it is too late,” he screamed. But while many flew up, sweeping the skies with their circular routes, most returned within a few hours to the home they had been trained to return to.
Batista sat in the dark and wept. He could hear the small biplanes and the camouflaged bombers flown by the air force, flooding the air with their drumming propellers. Hundreds of these planes flew back and forth all day and all night long, dropping their poison bombs and spraying a dense fog over everything—the town, the Matacão, the farms and plantations, and the beautiful and still-mysterious forest. For weeks the odor and the fumes lingered over everything. Not only birds died, but every sort of small animal, livestock, insects, and even small children who had run out to greet the planes unknowingly. The odd mice with suction-cupped feet and the rusty butterflies of the forest parking lot died, too. Strangely, as Batista himself had predicted in his own and last pigeon message, the birds had risen from the dense forest in a panic to escape the horrid fumes. Millions of birds of every color and species, many the very last of their kind—ebony toucans with their bright orange beaks, red-headed blackbirds, paradise tanagers in clear primary colors, scarlet ibises, spike-billed jacamars clothed in metallic green, miniature darting hummingbirds—filled the skies, pressing the upward altitudes for the pure air, but the lethal cloud spread odiously with sinister invisibility. The Matacão was soon covered, knee-deep with the lifeless bodies of poisoned birds. Indeed, for countless days and nights, it rained feathers.