Dear Em,
Your translator is safe. I have wiped the mustard off its strap. Before you blame the birds, I should explain that the mustard was mine.
You said it should be pointed at a group, not at one pigeon I particularly wanted to hear from. You also said the words on the screen were estimates, not subtitles. I remembered both instructions. I even repeated the second to Ro later, with the authority of a man who had just ignored it.
The pigeons at the square said NOON. Three of them gave the same little nod and turned toward the bread kiosk. The machine displayed a clock symbol beside the word, with a confidence bar that was mostly full. I watched for half an hour. NOON appeared nine times. I took it seriously.
You know I have been walking with Ro on Wednesdays. She stops for every dog, including the ones that don’t want to stop for her, and she carries a notebook to write down unfamiliar street names. Her husband used to do that. She doesn’t tell me whether she likes the habit or simply cannot let it go. I don’t ask every week.
Last Wednesday she said it was a pity the square’s chestnut tree had been cut down. We had sometimes sat beneath it when the pavement became too much for her knee. I said we could still sit there. I had two folding chairs at home, bought for fishing before I discovered the fish expected me to get up early.
“Next Wednesday, then,” she said.
“Something to eat?”
“If you’re bringing it.”
She touched my arm when she said that. I have thought about the touch more than the sentence, which was probably my first error.
When the birds said NOON, I decided they knew the square better than I did. Ro and I normally met at ten. I wrote a little invitation and pushed it through her door, with the time printed large enough to impress on her that I was organizing this properly. I included a drawing of the tree as it used to be. Drawing is not one of my gifts. A neighbor asked why I’d put a cauliflower on an appointment card.
I was at the square by eleven-thirty with the chairs, the food, the translator and a yellow tablecloth. The council has left the stump as a seat, so I spread the cloth across it. It was just broad enough for two plates if neither of us moved very much.
The square was hot. It had been pleasant in the mornings when we crossed it, but by noon the sun stood straight above the kiosk. I put a chair beside the wall. When I sat down, my knee hit the stump and the mustard jar rolled off the cloth. I caught it against the translator. That is the entire mustard story.
The birds gathered by the kiosk. The translator said OPEN, then GROUND, then OPEN again. A woman came out with a tray and shook bread crumbs into a shallow dish. It was her lunchtime custom. The pigeons crowded around it and said, as far as your machine could judge, HERE.
I watched them eat. I had brought enough sandwiches for three people, in case one of us was hungrier than the other expected. At twelve-fifteen I ate half of one. At twelve-thirty I called Ro. Her phone was on the hall table, where she leaves it whenever she goes walking. I know this because she has told me twice.
At one I packed up. The pigeons were resting under the kiosk. The machine displayed SHADE, which would have been a useful recommendation an hour earlier.
There was a note through my door when I reached home.
I’m sorry I missed you. Waited at the square till half past ten. Going to the canal instead. R.
My invitation was still lying on her inside mat when I knocked at two. She picked it up as she opened the door. She had spent Tuesday night with her sister and returned through the garden gate. There is no drama in that explanation, though I had invented several on the walk over.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I changed the time.”
“I see.” She turned the card sideways. “Is that lunch?”
“It was a tree.”
“Ah.”
I showed her the translator. She read the little history of noon requests and looked at me over her glasses.
“Did they want us there?”
“It doesn’t say us.”
“No.”
“The machine matches head movements with—”
“Hal. Did you ask me to change the time?”
“I put a note through.”
“I know. I’m holding it.” She laid it beside the translator. “Next time, get an answer from me too.”
I had read the booklet twice. Nothing in it offered a useful reply.
Ro said she had missed breakfast and asked whether I had any sandwiches left.
We ate at her kitchen table. She took the one with tomato, which I had worried would be too ordinary for a picnic. She ate it without suggesting an improvement. I made tea. Her kitchen has a west window, and the light at three in the afternoon reaches the table without reaching the kettle. I know these things now because I was there, and they were pleasant to notice.
“Would you like to go out next Wednesday?” I asked.
“At ten?”
“Yes.”
“With the chairs?”
“If you like.”
“There’s a bench by the canal.”
So we went to the canal. I brought no tablecloth. I did bring the machine, because Ro asked to see what the swans might say. Its booklet says swans are not supported. She was disappointed, then asked whether the pigeons knew this.
The canal pigeons said something the model could not match. We watched one circle a paper bag until another bird stood on its corner. Together they pulled out a crust. The machine offered MOVE and held its confidence bar at a very modest level. That seemed a fair description.
Ro leaned toward the water to sketch the opposite bank. I muted the speaker because she was counting windows. After a while she moved the notebook between us and asked whether the crooked line looked like a bridge. It did. Mine would have looked like a comb.
I am returning the translator tomorrow, as promised. I would like to borrow it again when you’ve added swans, if that ever becomes possible. Ro says she won’t trust a swan’s advice on picnics either, but she still wants to hear one.
Yours,
Hal
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