City Beasts Read online

  Praise for Mark Kurlansky

  “Mark Kurlansky’s fiction provides the same pleasures we have come to expect from his nonfiction. It’s beautifully written, observant, and acutely intelligent.”

  —Francine Prose

  “Brilliant . . . Journalistic skills might be part of a writer’s survival kit, but they infrequently prove to be the foundation for literary success, as they have here. . . . Kurlansky has a wonderful ear for the syntax and rhythm of the vernacular. . . . For all the seriousness of Kurlansky’s cultural entanglements, it is nevertheless a delight to experience his sophisticated sense of play and, at times, his outright wicked sense of humor.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “For those of us who love both stories and food, this book is a delectable feast. Mark Kurlansky’s sixteen-part novel is like a long, wonderful meal with friends. It is nurturing, succulent, and most of all, a lot of fun.”

  —Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying and Claire of the Sea Light

  “Kurlansky powerfully demonstrates the defining role food plays in history and culture.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Kurlansky continues to prove himself remarkably adept at taking a most unlikely candidate and telling its tale with epic grandeur.”

  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Kurlansky has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  ALSO BY MARK KURLANSKY

  Ready for a Brand New Beat: How “Dancing in the Street” Became the Anthem for a Changing America

  The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macorís

  The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food— Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation’s Food Was Seasonal, Regional, and Traditional—From the Lost WPA Files

  The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town

  The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell

  Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea

  1968: The Year That Rocked the World

  Salt: A World History

  The Basque History of the World

  Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

  A Chosen Few: The Resurrection of European Jewry

  A Continent of Islands: Searching for the Caribbean Destiny

  ANTHOLOGY

  Choice Cuts: A Savory Selection of Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History

  FICTION

  Edible Stories: A Novel in Sixteen Parts

  Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music

  The White Man in the Tree and Other Stories

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Cod’s Tale

  The Girl Who Swam to Euskadi

  The Story of Salt

  TRANSLATION

  The Belly of Paris (Émile Zola)

  RIVERHEAD BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2015 by Mark Kurlansky

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  “The Leopard of Ti Morne Joli” was originally published in Haiti Noir, Akashic Books, 2011.

  Excerpt from “On Eternity” by Bei Dao, Eliot Weinberger, from The Rose of Time, copyright © 2010 by Zhao Zhenkai, translation copyright © 2010 by Eliot Weinberger. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  ISBN 978-0-698-18696-5

  An application to register this book for cataloging has been submitted to the Library of Congress

  Interior illustrations by Mark Kurlansky

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The recipe contained in this book is to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipe contained in this book.

  Version_1

  With love to Marian and Talia

  and the worlds we share

  and to Leslie Lee,

  a good writer and friend

  and one of the last romantics

  In time he understood that nature was not something outside the human world. The reverse is true. Nature is the real world, and humanity exists on islands within it.

  —E. O. Wilson, Anthill, 2010

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Mark Kurlansky

  Also by Mark Kurlansky

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  ODD BIRDS IN NEW YORK

  DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Twice Bitten in San Pedro

  MIAMI: The Alligator Teeth of an Unknown God

  THE GLOUCESTER WHALE COD

  HAVANA: A Murder of Crows

  GLOUCESTER: The Science of Happiness in North Shore Frogs

  IDAHO LOCAVORES: A Trilogy of the Sawtooth Wolf

  Part One: Hunger on the Big Wood River

  Part Two: Sheepish in Sun Valley

  Part Three: Night in Stanley

  NEW YORK NITPICKERS

  HAITI: The Leopard of Ti Morne Joli

  COYOTE

  Part One: Stalking in New York

  Part Two: Mexico City: In the Capital

  SAN SEBASTIÁN: Begoña and the Bear

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ODD BIRDS IN NEW YORK

  Some 6,000 years ago the people in Mesopotamia created the first written language. At first it was simple line drawings. They developed about 2,000 characters, all pictures of objects. After about 2,000 years the written language, now known as cuneiform, had developed into wedge-shaped symbols, dashes put together in different configurations. Each of these geometric characters represented an idea or often just a sound. Mesopotamian society revered the elite few who could write and read these texts, which were written on clay tablets. If these scribes were revered, birds were sacred animals because their feet left messages in clay that resembled cuneiform but were another language, one even the scribes could not read. Perhaps the messages were intended only for other birds.

  Far up in the northern regions of New York City, in a place known as the Bronx, in what was called a zoo, was a huge birdcage made of metal, wrought and twisted and crafted to perfection. In the cage lived some of the most beautiful birds in the world, including a bright green quetzal from Guatemala. The quetzal didn’t know that he was originally from Guatemala, just like he didn’t know that he now lived in the Bronx. Nor did he understand the idea of a zoo. But he may have suspected that he was beautiful.

  For most of his life he had lived in this tall cage with laurel branches t
o perch on and all the avocado he could eat. There were also other birds from different places or maybe the same place. He didn’t really know. This quetzal had been in the Bronx for so long that he no longer remembered the green highlands of his birth, and he was not unhappy where he was.

  He was a quiet bird who kept to himself, often spending hours on a branch without moving until everyone forgot he was there. But he had a friendly look, his close-cropped fuzzy green plumes setting off his little round head. Hairless monkeys, some with hair on the tops of their heads, came to the cage to see the birds and they always liked the quetzal when they could spot him. He tried not to be spotted and they never harmed him.

  Late at night there were screams of faraway monkeys—loud, shrill notes held for long seconds. But it was in the distance and not very troubling. The quetzal had a vague notion that nights were much noisier in his native land. He liked the quiet night in the Bronx. But now he was hearing an odd creak. He heard it again. He looked up at the bolted metal struts of the cage, the only sky he could remember, and suddenly the cage began to fall in. Birds screeched and squawked and chirped the news: the aviary was collapsing.

  Metal was crashing to the ground louder than monkey screams, and feathers seemed to be everywhere. The quetzal had only one thought—he had to get in the air where it was safe. So he spread his green wings and showed the golden tips and unfurled his two-foot tail that was almost twice the length of his glowing green body.

  It is difficult not to notice a quetzal in flight, which is why they prefer not to move too much. They fly with a long, undulating green feather tail, and the fine scarlet under feathers of the body show from below. The ancient peoples of Central America, the Mayans and the Aztecs, believed the quetzal was a god. They called it a winged snake. Even today its official name is the Resplendent Quetzal.

  But now everyone was too busy to notice the resplendentness of the quetzal’s flight. Some of the birds went to the bottom of the cage, where there were huts and branches to hide under, and others took refuge in the nearby trees. But the Resplendent Quetzal took off for the Guatemalan highlands that were buried in his memory.

  One of the birds in the chaos below was a scarlet ibis from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where he was born in a dark, briny marsh known as the Caroni Swamp. From his very long beak to his even longer legs, he was a bright red, and the bright plumage at his head gave him a showy look, not completely inspiring trust. But despite the gaudiness, he was a startling beauty.

  The scarlet ibis did not know what Trinidad was, but he did remember that he came from the Caroni Swamp. He would go there now except that he had no idea where it was. He remembered fishing for shrimp in black water with his long beak and the way his whole family, even cousins, would all settle into the same tree and enjoy the peace of sunset. Now there was no red light of sunset, only blackness and a bright round silver moon bigger than the eye of a giant.

  He looked up and saw in the silver-bright light what the ancient Mayans had seen, the beauty of the red-and-green winged snake. The scarlet ibis himself was a god in the Caroni Swamp and the descendant of an ancient ibis that the Egyptians considered to be the moon god Thoth, who had invented language. He took three huge steps and folded his long thin legs under his red body and, spreading his enormous scarlet wings, took to the air, climbing over the Bronx until he was right next to the quetzal.

  The two gods, the Winged Serpent and Thoth, felt good flying over the Bronx. The scarlet ibis felt that he was really flying for the first time in years, stretching his neck and his wings, feeling strong. He would not come down until he found the family tree in the Caroni Swamp. The winged snake could come with him if he wanted to.

  But while he searched for the Caribbean swamp, the quetzal was in the highlands, dreaming. Flying and dreaming was what he was meant to do. Misty memories crept back, of a place where the little avocados were not scattered on the ground but grew on trees and the laurel was thick above the mountains and the clouds brushed the treetops above a red-and-black-soiled earth. These memories visited while he snaked through the air with his long tail.

  The two flew into the night drunk, on their little sips of freedom.

  * * *

  For a time they were gods and they needed only this feeling of flight. But where were they going and how to get there? Each wondered why the other was joining him. Were these the quetzal’s highlands? Where was the ibis’s swamp? Alone in the sky feels good for only a short time. They needed family. They needed other birds. So then they became companions because that was what they needed. Where were all the other birds? The ibis could not remember ever being this alone.

  The quetzal had only one relative in North America, a cousin in Arizona called the coppery-tailed trogon, who was also green and red and white. He, too, was said to be very beautiful, but he was a trogon, not a quetzal, and the quetzal didn’t know about him or Arizona. He knew only how to find the broken cage in the Bronx and he was considering returning.

  The scarlet ibis, like most of New York, had relatives in Florida. The Florida relatives were pink flamingos, but to a scarlet ibis a pink flamingo is very pale, with bad eating habits. Instead of the pointed bill with which the ibis delicately picked through food, flamingos had a scoop for digging up mud, which they then sucked through strainers in their bills. He also had closer relatives on Long Island and in New Jersey, known as the glossy ibis, not as brightly colored and more common, but not known to him. He did not know where to find any birds and he, too, was considering heading back to the Bronx.

  In truth, the scarlet ibis and the quetzal had been living a very easy life in the aviary, being fed gourmet meals and doing very little flying. Now they were getting tired and looked for a place to land. In the dark the expanse below shimmered like a forgotten moonlit sea somewhere that the ibis had once flown over.

  But as the night sky turned purple and yellow on the edge of morning, they saw that this was something very different. They saw squares and boxes. They did not know that this was real estate, or how much it was worth in a seller’s market, that it was honeycombed with monkeys even tunneling under the ground. They didn’t even know that there were straight wide paths for machines that made monkeys move faster, only the machines moved too slowly because there were too many of them, or that there were panels selling things or posting warnings from Homeland Security. They knew none of this. All they knew was that this did not look like a good place for birds or for gods.

  * * *

  Ramona Pensky, who loved birds, was never going to give up her Fifth Avenue apartment. Where else in Manhattan could she wake up to birdsong? She went to court to keep her apartment facing the park. Once her lawyer revealed that her husband had used the World Trade Center attack, pretended to be caught downtown when he was two blocks away at Lydia Paulsen’s apartment, shacking up while others were dying—the lawyer was brilliant—the apartment was awarded to her even though she could barely afford it. Every morning she listened to the birds, put on her embroidered Barneys slippers, strolled to the window, and gazed into the park anxiously on the toes of her slender feet. She was a small, delicate woman, and it would be easy to say that she resembled a bird, though most birds were smaller and had rounder bodies than did she. She wondered why from her apartment overlooking the park, no matter how hard she looked, she could not see the birds but only heard them. Very small birds, she supposed.

  * * *

  The ibis and the quetzal spotted a spacious green rectangle. There were trees and lakes. The quetzal hoped the wooded hills might be his highlands and the scarlet ibis circled a marshy area to see if it was the Caroni Swamp. But his family tree wasn’t there, and though it was not yet dawn, all the ibises seemed to have already left.

  The quetzal slowly descended onto a tree branch, letting his long tail float into position like a parachute gracefully landing. A very large crow, maybe a raven, was staring at the quetzal in a way that made him unc
omfortable, so he moved to a higher branch. The raven had only been thinking that it might be fun to pull on that tail.

  The scarlet ibis landed his bright red plumage in an even higher branch, a swath of color looking too large to be a fruit but very ripe. They sat in silence in the tree as the morning light began to butter the green grass below. They were both thinking the same thing. They were hungry. This meant something entirely different for each of them. The quetzal was looking up, as quetzals do, and the ibis was looking down, as is their habit. What crustaceans were in the waters? What fruits were on the trees?

  Instead they saw birds in the grass. They had brown coats and rust-colored breasts, not bad-looking birds, the two in the tree thought, but not nearly so beautiful that they should be strutting and sticking their chests out. They had that eagerness characteristic of smaller birds.

  From their tree perches the two watched to see what food the rust-breasted birds were finding. The quetzal hoped they were looking for avocados, though they were not looking in the trees. The scarlet ibis hoped they were looking for shrimp, but they were not looking in the canals or at the water’s edge. Then they realized.

  The birds were eating worms. The quetzal and the scarlet ibis had seen birds eat bugs. In the Bronx they had seen the vermilion flycatcher—very quick. But you didn’t need to be quick to catch worms. The rust-breasted birds were very good at finding them, pulling them from the ground, holding the slithery things in their beaks and then swallowing them.

  The ibis spread his scarlet wings and gently drifted to the ground. The quetzal followed. The scarlet ibis drilled the ground with his long beak and pulled out a worm. It was slippery and slithered off his beak. Hungry as he was, he did not really want to eat it. Suddenly they heard a group of voices like an ancient bird choir.