Ritual
My neighbor keeps birds because they are beautiful creatures and symbols of our Lord. Or so I have always assumed. He has cockatoos, parakeets, and all manner of exotic varieties I cannot be bothered to remember the names of. On Sunday afternoon I brought my unread Times to his door. I thought he might need to line his cages. He thanked me with an offer to join him for dinner, which I accepted because I enjoy hearing people talk about themselves. I said, when? He said, what about now? I told him I needed to change. He said, you look beautiful. A bird screeched from a room I could not see. We sat at the dining table, just making conversation. He asked me how I felt about death. I told him I believed in it. It’s hard to deny, he said. He was a mortician. It’s not a simple matter of preparing bodies, he said, in case that’s what you had in mind. I told him I assumed it was more complicated than that. He reminded me that many cultures prepared their dead for the next world through an elaborate set of rituals. The Vikings, for instance, buried their dead in stone ships so that the spirits might be transported to the afterlife. He told me to imagine a world in which the mortician was responsible for such a spectacle. I did. We were silent for a moment. I pictured him at the helm of a great ship, navigating it between tree-topped islands and rocky shores. He said, some people believe you can take objects with you. As a mortician, I can tell you this is untrue. He laughed. I said, that was a joke? He gave me an odd look—somewhat confused and disappointed and said, not a very good one. He disappeared into a back room, emerged from the dark hallway with birds perched on each shoulder. With a careful hand, he pulled his chair away from the table and sat down. The birds rocked a little on their perches. Both of these birds, he said, are named Wallace. I thought I lost Wallace the first. That very day I bought a replacement Wallace. By ten o’clock that evening the first Wallace had returned, and then I had two. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I said. What do you mean, he asked. I told him that I had always taken for granted that a man with birds was a religious man, or at the very least one with spiritual sensibilities. I used air quotes around that last part because I did not know what I meant by it. The mortician smiled, poured himself another glass of wine and told me that although mine was a fair assumption, it was incorrect. Was I disappointed, he asked. I nodded. He shrugged and the Wallaces released their grips on his shoulders to fly around the room in thick white arcs.
