Bukhara Nocturne

For instance, we would tell her that at nightfall the cawing of the crows and the flapping of their wings made travelers go insane. But just to say that the birds came to the city by the thousands was meaningless. You had to see how that sinister clot of feathers, beaks, and scaly feet coagulated on the tall eucalyptus trees and the leafy chestnut trees, whose branches were all on the point of splintering. Seeing it made you realize the absurdity of trying to reduce certain phenomena to numbers.

Does it really mean anything to say that a flock of thousands of crows or, if you prefer, hundreds of thousands of crows noisily fluttered around in the skies of Samarkand before landing on its tree-lined parks and avenues? It doesn't! You had to see that pitch-black mob to realize that numbers ceased to matter, that an unformed but perceptible notion of the infinite was pushing its way in.

"At the moment when the crows pour in," Juan Manuel pointed out, "it's not uncommon for some Norwegian tourist to jump off the balcony on the eighth floor of the Tamerlane Hotel, or for some Bolivian diplomat on holiday in the city to start cawing too, to wave his arms up and down and flutter them, to hop in an attempt to take flight. Until a nurse comes and leads him someplace where they can give him the indispensable sedative injection."

"It's the ferocious cawing that the crows make," I went on, "at the instant they're cut to pieces. Because over there, at nightfall, what you see falling from the trees like smashed fruit are gutted birds with broken wings, pieces of heads, feet, a cloud of feathers—I swear it's a damn spectacle! Meanwhile, up above in the thick leaves, the terrified survivors hop from branch to branch or just huddle in an attempt to camouflage themselves, not even daring to attempt to fly away."

"Because a species of desert crane with long, thin beaks and powerful teeth," he interrupted, "the dentiform ciconiida, swoops down and cuts them to shreds. You must know all about it because, according to what I've read, it makes its way here from the Libyan coasts and takes control of large sections of Calabria. The terror makes the birds emit their most deplorable caw. Have you ever seen them attack? During his convalescence, the Hungarian Feri almost went insane because of the din during those melodious massacres."

She looked at us with a certain annoyance and then, having decided to participate in our dialogue, nonchalantly declared: "I think it's actually Lapland sea gulls that live on the flesh of other birds."

"Lapland sea gulls? The larus argentatus laponensis?" asked Juan Manuel with absolute seriousness. "Truth be told, I've never heard anything about that species. But of course you know that in ornithological matters, I'm a complete novice . . . Are you sure it's called the Lapland sea gull? My reference books are very rudimentary and make no reference to it. I'll have to consult some more technical source."

"The screech of the crows sometimes sounds like the cry of a child. At other times, most times, it sounds like the scream of someone being hung."

We forgot about birds, and without the slightest transition began to ramble on about the holy, mysterious, and opulent city of Samarkand. About its history, its architecture, its culture. The only thing that really mattered was that she not speak, that she be kept quiet the longest time possible.

"It has neither the charm nor the cultural prestige of Bukhara," we admitted a few days before she set out on her journey. "Bukhara is the city of Avicenna, Samarkand the city of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. That's the difference, and it's enormous. Do you realize that?"

II

I'm sure that the first time I was in Warsaw my ignorance about Bukhara was absolute. Perhaps I'd...