Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

to you this way, Adam. In this country, if you counted all of my assets, I would be considered a millionaire. If you did the same for my brother, he would be considered a billionaire.”

The difference between those two statuses feels meaningless to Adam, because both are beyond his ability to fathom. Adam knows how much it costs to buy a loaf of bread, or a bus ticket, or a packet of pumpkin seeds, but he’s always struggled when it comes to thinking about things like economics. The problem is numbers, he thinks. When something is reduced to a number – like a fortune, a length of years, or a death toll – then it becomes compressed; reduced to a simple figure that does not truly account for awesome amounts of money accumulated, or time having passed, or lives being lost. Maybe only billionaires can afford things like stadiums, he supposes.

The entrance hallway of Magpie’s London apartment is filled from wall to wall with boxes and crates. Some have been opened, revealing unusual pieces of art, or intricate bits of equipment, but most are unopened and have gathered dust. “Leave the barrel and go clean yourself up,” he instructs, exchanging his brown duffel coat for what seems to Adam to be an identical black coat.

Magpie’s bathroom is grand, and tiled in white and gold. Adam removes his clothes and inspects the damage done to him. There are still some dog teeth embedded in his arms and legs, so he plucks them out and makes a pile of them, running water over the wounds until the blood stops seeping. The gunshot wound in his shoulder has stopped bleeding, and though he can still feel the bullet lodged in his shoulder, he doesn’t think he’ll bother removing it. There are already enough shards of shrapnel, and slivers of glass, and bullet fragments buried under his skin that the addition of one more isn’t going to make much of a difference.

“Here.” Magpie appears with an armful of clothes. “Hopefully these should fit.”

Sifting through them, Adam finds a tunic and a pair of breeches that seem large enough, and pulls them on. He can’t remember the last time he wore an outfit like this, but it must have been a long, long time ago, during a life he’s forgotten. “Why do you have these?”

“Costume pieces. I put on a production of Othello a few years back, and one of our actors was enormous. Tremendous actor, though.”

“Did you direct?”

“I starred, naturally.” Tilting his head back dramatically, Magpie’s silver teeth gleam in the white bathroom lights. “There’s something delicious about being a bird pretending to be a man pretending to be a man.”

There are a few tears in Adam’s coat, but with the worst of the blood washed away it seems salvageable. He pulls it on and inspects himself in the mirror. With the coat, and tunic, and breeches, he looks like a man from a dozen different eras. Which is close to the truth, he supposes. He splashes water on his face for good measure, and dries himself on one of Magpie’s impeccably white towels, turning it crimson. “Ready,” he says.

“Wonderful. Follow me.”

Back in Piccadilly, Magpie navigates the crowds through to the Royal Academy of Arts. The Academy is situated in a set of galleries beyond a courtyard, where the tourists are so thick that Adam feels as if he’s wading through people. In the centre of the courtyard is a kinetic sculpture made of metal, which moves in a tentacle-like fashion, its tall tendrils casting strange shadows across the people taking endless flash photographs. And at the far end of the courtyard is a bright banner, declaring that the Royal Academy is hosting a special exhibition called The Jewel of Paradise, which the public are invited to view, for a price.

The queue to see The Jewel of Paradise is lengthy, and winds through the art-filled corridors of the Academy, so Adam takes his time absorbing the other exhibits. He knows that his experience with fine art is a little out of touch; he is too used to art as a function of the wealthy, used to catalogue themselves, their ancestors and their lands. The art on display here seems to be interrogative of that function, in ways that challenge him, and as they slowly make their way through the halls he finds himself fascinated by the peculiar sculptures, and strange portraits, and bizarre photographs, made of materials and using methods that he is totally unfamiliar with. In fact, as they venture deeper and deeper into the winding corridors of the Royal Academy of Arts, Adam finds himself enjoying the sensation of trying to interpret the pieces of art here. There is even a certain joy to be found in his lack of understanding; the art feels as if it’s interrogating him, as much as he’s trying to interrogate it.

Through a door where their tickets are checked, they are let into a wide conservatory at the centre of the Academy, which is bursting with fake greenery. The room is circular, and has a reinforced misted-glass dome roof, so that daylight filters through. The noise of all the visitors mostly drowns out the gentle rushing of the water running beneath the floor, visible through a thick black metal mesh. The greenery is on every side, separated from the visitors by a black railing, and seems composed of plastic potted plants with large flowers coloured blue and red and yellow. At the centre of the room is a fake cherry tree, simultaneously blossoming and fruiting, pink and red, and situated beneath that tree, at the far end of the circling crowds, is the Jewel of Paradise itself.

Eventually, they come to the display box.

The Jewel of Paradise is far less impressive than Adam thought it would be. It is indeed a jewel, or a gem: a lump of red and green, shaped like an apple. The apple is crystalline, and reflects the light of the sky across its