My beloved friend V. S. Krishnamurti—
The small scientific community here is grateful—and always will be—for your delightful histories of amorous bivalves, and your descriptions of Argonauta gamboling upon the placid waters of Turtle Soup Bay beneath the moon. Often I recall those marvelous conversations we had years ago during your last visit here; recall your conceit that all living things carry fables—the fabulous histories of their being within their cells: each creature an encyclopedia written in code. You likened the chromosomes to the Minotaur’s maze, the face of the Medusa, a map of Milano, Mars seen from space. And now, having reread this little history of Birdland in which language plays a major part, I cannot help but remember, dearest Ved, how you would toss morsels of Sanskrit at me and scraps of Tantric lore, and profoundly engage me—just as once I saw you engage a dolphin by tossing it an armful of fish.
Because I know that you are always eager to learn more about this place which has been my home since boyhood and which has, to my delight, excited your curiosity on the rare occasions of your eagerly awaited visits from your all-too-distant Australia, I have taken the liberty to dedicate this brief history of Birdland to you (or, more precisely, this revery).
If most of what is related here happened over three hundred years ago and reads like a romance, you know me well enough to trust this account has been carefully documented. I have read each word on the subject of this my fragile, my startling island still so rich in rarities (and I am thinking of those albino bivalves you discovered, the scarlet bottom-feeding rays).
I have held every artifact kept within our beautiful coral-walled museum and read every book in the library; I have, with binoculars, explored on foot the island’s entire length and breadth, my sleepless nights punctuated by the sound of gastropods noisily snapping shut their valves. And although I know it is impossible, even now I pray that by some miracle, as I sit in silence on a lump of volcanic glass off the leeward coast, I shall hear the lôplôp singing, or smell the sacred smoke of an aboriginal shaman’s cigar. So much has vanished!
Ironically, the greatest boon to my project has been the discovery of Rais Secundo’s inquiry—which had slept for three centuries in a broom closet. If the Inquisitor was responsible for the destruction of Nuño Alfa y Omega’s magnificent opus (as well as countless ocularscopic plates), much has been preserved within the inquiry itself.
Secundo’s need to justify his acts of vandalism—if only to himself—constrained him to keep examples of what he sought to suppress and so, despite himself, assure the survival of some of the world’s most astonishing erotica.
True, the intention of the ocularscopic project, funded by Fantasma, was not only magical but pornographic. However, Nuño Alfa y Omega was not only an inventor of precocious genius, but a great artist, and the results—those lascivious nudes and multifarious copulations—can only be called transcendent.
Recently an insular group has attempted, once again, to suppress those incandescent verses and consign the ocularscopic plates to oblivion. Even before my little book has seen the light of day, it is the cause of a heated controversy. I was present the morning the “Clean Sweepers” stormed the museum carrying hammers and brooms with the intent to smash those unique artifacts you have so admired. In the scuffle, the mysteriously beautiful Ama-ma-mu—the jewel of the collection—was dashed to the floor. But that obsidian Venus, copulating so freely with a lôplôp on her molluscan couch, proved tougher than parquet. She has been returned unscathed to her niche, and the fine extracted from the “Clean Sweepers” has purchased an electronic eye. As tireless as an angel, it watches over her night and day.