The Elusive Language of Ducks (2 page)

From the start she'd been aware of the whole projected scenario, the band-aid for the gaping wound. It did not stick. It somehow marginalised her grief.

And what are you going to do with this? she'd asked her husband. She closed herself tight against the chirruping fluff skittering in the straw.

It's for you. From Claire and Bob.

I don't want it. I don't want another creature to look after.

That's OK. I thought you might say that. Don't worry, it was going to die anyway, it's been abandoned. But what shall we do with it?

It smells revolting, she said.

I know, I . . . it's been running around in its mess since yesterday morning. And the water has sloshed everywhere.

Turning, she went inside. From the bedroom her mother called to her. No, she didn't, but always there was the echo of her voice lingering there, hovering in Hannah's head like wind chimes, waiting for the right breeze to knock a memory resonating into life.

She passed through the hall, through the sitting room and out to the deck where she leaned on the railing, staring across the valley. The magnolia tree beside her, winding across the deck, was just sneaking into
leaf. They'd lived in this same house for twenty-two years, on the quarter-acre section in a hilly suburb near the centre of the city. The area used to be a patchwork of sections the same size as theirs, houses surrounded by daisy-dotted lawn stretching from fence to fence, with paths from the road to the houses framed by flowers. Over-laden plum trees had provided for sauce and jam, gorging kids, rows of preserving jars in wash-houses, and still there were plenty of plums for the birds. Lemon and grapefruit trees, heavy with balls of juice, grew in sunny corners. Neighbours talked over the fences and shared produce from their vegetable gardens, squared out at the bottom of the sections.

Now they were crammed in by apartments, town-houses and palatial new villas which, from time to time, sprouted a shroud of white plastic, like nursery-web spiders in a hedge, to allow workmen to repair leaks from poor construction. Video cameras surveyed properties. Alarms, like frightened birds, spasmodically startled the peace. Generally, there was no communication amongst the neighbours. Hannah and Simon used to be more than friendly with Eric, the man next door, but recently even he had withdrawn. And his music, which used to thread so enticingly from his house to theirs, had stopped.

Hannah.

An alarm, startling her. Simon had followed her to the deck, was standing beside her.

She'd placed her head into her cupped hands.

Hannah.

I don't want a duck. I don't want anything.

I know. I'm sorry. Come inside. I'll get rid of it.

How can you just get
rid
of it? I'm not pregnant. This creature has been born.

He'd stood there helplessly. He pitied her, she could see that. But she was pushing him, nudging him away from her, forcing him right up to the edge of the cliff. She was the last straw in a duckling's carry-bag.

Where did you put it?

On the front lawn.

On the
lawn?
Where the
cats
can get it?

Once again she'd turned from him, passing back through the house to the lawn, which was surrounded by trees and shrubs and ferns. She
picked up the bag and returned inside, to the bathroom. She scooped the duckling into the bath. It ran skittering in panic on the shiny white porcelain. Simon stood at the door, watching. She took out the mash and the water dish.

Can you empty this into the compost, said Hannah, handing him the carry-bag. Have you got clean straw?

Oh yes, I think I have. Claire gave me some stuff. And fresh mash. The duckling will need a heat source, I believe.

When he returned with the carry-bag, she wiped it clean with paper towels and put it on a towel on the heated tiles in the bathroom, with the fresh straw that his aunt had provided. The carry-bag was made of strengthened plastic and its corners could be straightened rigidly to create a box. She leaned over the bath and cupped her hands around the noisy duckling, releasing it into the straw. Already there were two small heaps of mess in their bath. She brought out the disinfectant, turned on the tap and started swishing and scrubbing. She knew nothing, nothing at all, about ducklings. Nor about ducks of any description, except that they quacked and ate bread in parks.

Later, she'd googled ‘ducklings' and found: They must always have water. They have no teeth and can choke on their food if they don't have water, as they can't chew. Ducklings are messy and will slop their water everywhere, will walk in it. Don't give them bread as they are not made for it. Ducklings might like the odd worm, but not too many. Too much protein and they will develop angel wings — wings that stick up. They eat greens and mash.

So she'd placed a bowl for water in its box. A green china jam dish from the cupboard, the size of about a third of an orange, in the shape of a flower. When the duckling stood in it, the bowl contained its fluffiness perfectly. The petals opened around its yellow form like an eggshell.

And that was several weeks ago. She had reluctantly agreed to look after the helpless creature until it was strong enough to fend for itself, before returning it to Te Awamutu or setting it free amongst other ducks in a park somewhere.

She leaned over and picked a dandelion leaf growing from the base of a rock. So tiny was the duckling that she had to rip up the leaf. She dangled the narrow strips in front of its beak so it could snap them up.

When her mother came to live with them after she became ill, Hannah would lurch from sleep, wondering whether she might have passed away overnight. There were times when the anxiety was so insistent that she was forced to get out of bed and pad down the stairs to stand at her mother's door, listening for the soft snoring that filled the room.

Once, confronted by silence, she eased open the door, crept in and stood by the bed. Moonlight filtered in through the curtains and settled around the shapes of the motionless bedclothes, across her mother's face, the dark cavity of her open mouth, empty of breath. Hannah touched her cheek. Slapped her vigorously, calling. Suddenly her mother heaved and yelped, struggling in vain to sit up.

Oh, oh, I'm sorry Mum, I . . . was just looking for your teeth. She grabbed the first reason — however ludicrous — that came into her head.

Hannah, for heaven's sake, what's happening?

Nothing, I'm sorry. I just, I was just checking, that you were all right. Ssssh, it's OK. Go to sleep.

I
was
asleep. Where are my teeth?

They're in the glass. It's OK. I had a dream that you'd lost them.

Are they there?

Now, every morning, Hannah was awakened by her husband perfunctorily plodding around the house, his weight wrapped thickly around his middle, whereas hers returned to fill her head, unseen except for the pull of flesh from around her cheeks, her mouth. The weight of heavy deliberation.

Her first task was to check on the little duckling in the carry-box in the bathroom, to make sure he hadn't drowned in his water or died in his sleep from lack of whatever it was that ducklings needed that she hadn't been able to offer.

From the local pet shop she had bought supplies of straw to line his box, and special baby chook mash. Each day he ate a little more.

When he spotted her, the duckling peeped an urgent staccato code, for which she didn't have the key, but it soon threaded its way from its
helplessness to the part of her that had become habituated to caring for the helpless. She only had to pick him up to soothe him. All he desired was to nestle into somebody, to sleep with his head pushed into a fold of arm or flesh. All he really wanted, of course she realised, was a mother duck.

Because of this, when she was at home the woman carried the duckling on her shoulder under her hair. If she was working at her desk, the ducking snuffled into her neck before settling to sleep. It was a strange companionable thing to have this downy ball rummaging through the blonde grassy shelter of her hair. At other times she spread a towel across her lap and he'd sleep there as well. Eventually, she noticed that, as long as she removed him from time to time, he didn't poo when he was upon her. She supposed that, in the wild, this was Nature's way of preventing mother ducks from being covered in the excrement of their brood.

Gradually, as the weeks passed, the woman introduced the duckling to the outside world. She took him into the garden, looking for worms and pulling out weeds along the way. The duck kept close by her, almost dangerously so as she clambered on her knees around him while he pecked and skittered amongst the grass and plants. He wasn't strong enough yet to tear at leaves, so she continued to do this for him. As she didn't know which plants were poisonous for ducks, she guided him towards the dandelions and discouraged him from eating other vegetation. They discovered the fleas that erupted from the soil when she pulled away a brick or a piece of wood. He liked slaters and small cockroaches. The special purring chirrup he made when he ate rose in intensity whenever he made a bountiful find.

The garden had been neglected. Its parched soil felt malnourished, screaming with thirst. When they first moved here, twenty-two years before, they'd been surrounded by a low hedge, a lawn filled with daisies, and with plums, lemons, figs and mandarins on the lawn out the back.

She and Simon had laboured over the soil, digging in compost, and buying native trees, flaxes and ferns to attract birds. It was a project they'd enjoyed, quietly working alongside each other, often until dark when their tools and the weeds dissolved into shadows. In the early days, they'd kick off their shoes and fumble their way inside, laughing, without switching on electric lights. They'd fling off their grubby clothes to sink into a hot bath together, their skin stinging from the sun, the water muddying from their shared toils. They sipped wine or smoked a joint, ate previously prepared delicacies, and looked at each other in flickering candlelight from each end of the bath.

Over the years, the garden was developed to a point where it needed less attention. From time to time they'd revisit it with the same fervour, spending full weekends doing maintenance: weeding and pruning, planting and feeding the soil. But basically it looked after itself. The trees grew into a lush barrier from the rest of the world. It was only from the deck that they could look over and beyond to the neighbours' backyards, and over to the other side of the valley where houses and apartments were
continually being crammed into any available space.

After her mother came to live with them, Hannah finished teaching and took on editing work that she mostly could do from home. Her mother's stay also coincided with Simon shifting from a solid day-job into semi-retirement. He took on engineering work that he could do from home, or which alternatively led him away for days or weeks at a time to other cities, sometimes other countries, on contract. Although they were spending more time in the house together, they spent less time nurturing each other. Hannah could see this clearly now. She'd been involved in the care for her mother. The garden became a shell that locked them against the world, into themselves. And their connection through their computers into separate domains left them trudging through different ethereal wastelands, and somewhere along the way they had become disconnected, their fingers seldom touching, moving onwards from a perspective that had once met, along parallel paths that steered them into an infinity apart.

And after her mother arrived, neither Hannah nor Simon had ventured into the undergrowth of the garden, neither of them pulled weeds or re-planted. Neither of them spent days or hours labouring until their muscles ached. On warmer days, Hannah had helped her mother outside onto the garden seat, with her handbag of course, bundled up in a bright crocheted blanket. She'd entertained her with readings from Shakespeare, absurdly shouting the Elizabethan language to be heard, not only by her mother, but all the neighbours and passersby, as well as triggering a nearby dog to soulfully howl the part of an unsolicited extra.

Meanwhile, the neighbourhood cats had moved in. Now Hannah anxiously shooed them away. She could spot their eyes glinting like malevolent creatures from a Rousseau jungle. Her own old cats skulked close by as well, displeased by this newcomer, a bird what's more, competing for her attention.

At night, the duckling slept in the bathroom, still in the same plastic carrier. Each morning she cleaned out the straw where his poos collected, all the plump worms of his dreams spurted from the night for her to see.

Her own dreams of late were to do with him. Foraging dreams. Losing dreams. And then, a truly distressing dream.

The day before, she'd heard a radio interview with a chef banging on about the exquisite flavour and texture of
pâté de foie gras.
He was exuberantly sharing a recipe for tender juicy duck breast, cooked slowly with juniper berries and brown sugar.

Later, an email from a listener was read on-air. Were people aware of the cruelty behind the production of
pâté de foie gras?
How ducks were force-fed five kilograms of mashed corn a day, pumped through long pipes thrust down their throats? The torture lasted over two to three weeks, swelling their livers up to ten times the normal size.

That night, she dreamt that she was pulling a roasting dish from the hot oven. Amongst a rocky landscape of potatoes, pumpkin and parsnips, the duckling lay sprawled, gazing up at her weakly. His crusty fluff was pressed against goosebumpy skin.

She quickly retrieved his little carcass from the roasting dish, pleading with him not to die. But his eyes were milky white. There was a hopeful shimmer of black in the centre, until even that closed, like the last bubble popping from quicksand. His head quivered then flopped onto the palm of her hand.