26

FRESHLY COIFFED, CLOSE-SHAVEN, mustache recalibrated in a slender trapezoid, Gregor emerges an hour later from his barber’s little shop, next to a ladies’ hairdressing establishment where, the fashion for long hair having passed, a woman is sweeping out onto the sidewalk great hanks of hair swirled in a fluid mass with interlocking zones of blond, brunette, red, and black tresses, plus the occasional swatch of white or gray. That is where Gregor spies, limping in the blond section where it has come to grief, a new pigeon.

Gregor studies the bird. A long platinum blond or Titian red hair has wound itself among the toes of its right leg, and since the left one is now tangled in it too, the creature is hamstrung. With each move the pigeon makes, the hair digs deeper between the scales on its legs, an ever-tightening ligature that is cutting off the circulation. Thus paralyzed, the bird tries in vain to fly away, unable to lift off simply by flapping its wings, a twin-engine aircraft without a proper runway.

When Gregor tries to rescue them with the very kindest intentions, some pigeons prove absurdly recalcitrant, struggling like an old lady being helped across the street without her permission, even wounding him with their beaks and claws, but he has no trouble capturing this one. Securing its beak with a rubber band to keep it quiet, concealing it under his overcoat, he brings it discreetly back to the St. Regis, against the hotel rules.

Up in his room, Gregor first gives the pigeon a footbath of warm water and disinfectant. Leaving the patient to soak, he prepares the proper operating equipment: scalpel, tweezers, toothpick. Three hours later, judging the tissues sufficiently softened, he tries to discover in which direction to unwind the offending hair. Then, slipping the toothpick between the leg and the embedded bond, he cuts the hair into segments with tiny strokes of the scalpel, removing them with the tweezers.

Twenty minutes later, Gregor is done and estimates that two or three days of rest will have the bird back on its feet. Meanwhile, though, he contemplates it. He contemplates it at length. He contemplates it so much, hour after hour and almost in spite of himself, that an emotion of a hitherto unknown kind and format seems to steal over him as he watches. It’s an attentive ravishment, a marveling; it’s pleasing and rejuvenating, a steady, pure current that he has never experienced until now with anyone, and at the end of the day he finds himself wondering if it might not be an emotion he has only heard about and never paid attention to before, a feeling difficult to define, hard to put into words. A state—let’s take the plunge: let’s call it love.

This pigeon is in fact a female with feathers of the truest white, wings delicately striped with pale gray, her breast faintly tinted with mauve. Her scarlet beak is dotted with saffron yellow, her legs shade from royal purple to pearly gray and, immaculate, her tail tilts up just a little, like that of a peacock. Her genealogy must be exotic, moreover, because her eyes, usually round in granivorous birds, are not only slightly slanted but even—uniquely—edged with lashes. The soft, throaty timbre of her voice, her elegant, hesitant gait, and her way of tilting her head to one side, glancing away as if in nostalgic reverie, strike Gregor to the heart and seem almost to bring tears to his eyes.

A sign of weakness in him, perhaps; the reviviscence of his former ideas of grandeur, or the beginnings of senility. His rational mind cannot help it: this pigeon reminds him of how some excitable souls used to claim, back in the days of his young glory, that he had arrived among us on the back of a dove. Then Gregor’s still fertile brain imagines that something like a conversation might arise between him and her, which isn’t any more inconceivable, after all, than a chat with Martians.

So he takes care of her devotedly in his room for an entire week, after which, cured of her motor handicap, she ought to be released in accordance with the hotel rules. First off, however, although she has recovered perfectly from that leg business, the pigeon still seems a touch under the weather, droopy and tired. One could of course decide that such symptoms simply reflect a normal convalescence, which the bird should spend at the aviary. But secondly, Gregor must admit that he couldn’t bear that. He has grown so attached to her that he would suffer to see her go. Unbeknownst to anyone, in defiance of hotel regulations, he decides to have her live in his room, as if she were the fiancée he has never had.

This secret bond cannot be maintained in a state of constant togetherness, however, since what remains of Gregor’s business affairs still requires him to leave his room from time to time, and everyone knows that living together involves telephoning the beloved at least three times a day when separation is unavoidable. Thus Gregor must rely once again, in the utmost secrecy and thanks to exorbitant tips (considering his budget), on the housekeeper of the fourteenth floor to take care of the bird in his absence. When he is delayed by his projects or obligations, she must answer his six daily phone calls to report on the condition of the pigeon, which she also feeds according to a carefully arranged diet, a selection of fresh and varied seeds that are permanently stockpiled in the hotel room.

Among Gregor’s obligations, the sole survivors of his society days are the ritual dinners on Tuesday and Friday with the Axelrods. Since his hosts notice after a few days how strange and preoccupied he seems, the inventor must account—through veiled allusions—for the appearance of someone new in his life, but, aware of the eccentricity of the situation, Gregor doesn’t dare admit that he’s talking about a bird. Misunderstanding, Ethel initially displays a feigned interest, followed by masked irritation and then straight jealousy concealed by coldness. Since a lover cannot remain silent for long, however, or keep from discussing his passion in detail at the first opportunity, Gregor must explain that the object of said passion is not what one might call a mistress but a minor member of the family Columbidae, which at first provokes amusement and sharp relief in Ethel.

But since Gregor, once the news is out, can’t help sharing more and more news, and quickly starts talking about the pigeon as if it were a human companion and not a pet anymore, and soon talks about nothing else, Ethel’s amused relief gives way to aggravation, then exasperation, until the jealousy is back and sharper this time because it’s tinged with incomprehension and resentment—if not contempt—and camouflaged with even greater coldness, all to the complete satisfaction of Angus Napier.

The young man with the frightened face, meanwhile, has made himself a more solid place at Norman’s side but no longer in his shadow. Now an individual in his own right, he is more than just a secretary, something halfway between an associate and an adopted son, consolidating his place with the Axelrods without giving up on one day seducing Ethel at last, although he is losing faith in that prospect.

Two other small developments have changed things for Angus. The emoluments he receives from Norman have permitted him, by dint of savings, first to acquire on credit and secondhand a lovely streamlined Duesenberg convertible with a straight eight-cylinder engine, a sleek torpedo with green flanks and a blue top, its large brown fenders protecting spotless tires with bright yellow rims and spokes. No car is more chic or more costly, and Angus has gone heavily into debt for this one, which is too big for him. Although you could never see this in his eyes, more frightened than ever by the expense, Angus is very pleased with it. As soon as he can, hoping to take Ethel on her errands, he puts the Duesenberg at her disposal. She turns down his offers most of the time, however, and now that Prohibition is a thing of the recent past, the second small development is that Angus tries to drown his sorrows over this impasse by drinking, it must be said, immoderately. Thus the glare he turns on Gregor is still as hostile as ever but pretty glazed and, given his perpetually frightened expression, not all that noticeable either.

As for the looks Gregor gives his pigeon, they’re increasingly worried. Her health still seems precarious, so he attempts to get her back in shape by varying her diet or taking her for walks along the Hudson and on the beaches of Long Island, to build up her strength with sea air, or, trying out his old theories, with light electric shocks he administers with an ancient dynamo. One fine morning, he even sends her on a vacation, entrusting her to his errand boy—whose parents live in the country—with an absolutely endless list of dos and don’ts. Naturally he hates to part with her, but he’ll try anything to restore her health, which a week of fresh air can only improve. Gregor finds himself dreadfully alone by the end of that morning and spends a long dreary afternoon holed up in his room without managing to work—an increasingly frequent problem—or even read the papers, which he leafs through distractedly. He’s preparing to dine alone in his room a little earlier than usual when a clattering noise at the window makes him turn and she’s there, pecking weakly at the glass, exhausted from flying home on her own. And Gregor’s heart, when he lets her in, is pounding.

In the days that follow, nothing seems to go well, though. Indifferent at times to her food, the bird displays an extreme lassitude and there are moments when she seems dazed, moments soon marked by light coughing that grows hoarser, spasmodic, alarming, and coupled with fevers. In spite of his skill, Gregor must urgently summon a veterinarian. After long auscultations and palpations, a retinal exam, a blood pressure reading, and three taps of the reflex hammer, the doctor looks up at Gregor with doom in his eye. By way of a diagnosis, he slowly shakes his head. Like Madame de Beaumont, author of Beauty and the Beast, and the Lady of the Camellias, the Goncourt brothers’ heroine Germinie Lacerteux, Fantine, Claudia, Francine alias Mimi, and other classic heroines, alas—there is no doubt: the pigeon displays all the symptoms of tuberculosis, and that illness, in those days, was still a sentence of death.