#5

One really interesting day. I was reading some hideous novel I found in the apartament and he was watching some 50s cartoons. Out of nowhere appeared, outside and in front of the open window in the kitchen, four huge black crows.
Get the camera! -He screamed childish.
I already knew something rare was going on. Although no crow would pass the limits of the window, Anthony was standing inside from the inside in front and in between the four crows, even bigger than him. It was staring at them and they were staring at it, only staring at each other. The crows out, seemed floating in the air with their wings moving so calmly, they appeared to do it not because they needed them for flying but because of the beautifulness of the movements. As soon as they saw us enter in the kitchen, all of them looked in our direction and like studding us for some seconds would then just flew away squawking really loud, making a terrible mess out of horrible noises. Only when they were already out of the picture, our bird turned back to stare at us looking like it was getting smarter or something.
Finally, Anthony was giving us some action to talk about. Those birds, they looked to me like they were so elegant and suddenly repulsive. They definitely were of a specie, struggling with opposite forces just like the human race.
We would spend the rest of the day in the downtown library searching for any kind of information about… crows. What happened in the morning left us too intrigued to just let it pass by. We had not gone out together for a week and I felt good to do so, though I was worried about leaving Anthony all alone in the apartment.
Once the young librarian understood our Latvian -grāmatas par vārnu - he left inside and we waited like fifteen minutes. While we were, he told me that although he knew he didn’t want to wake up any other morning in the Latvian apartment, he wasn’t feeling like hanging in our other place with the guys and all any more. He said he felt changed. I agreed and told him that I didn’t, wanted to, either.
When the librarian was back said that, beyond some Poe collected short stories that included The Crow and, another one called Ravens in Winter the other two books he found were only in Latvian. We had a dictionary and he could sort of manage the language, there was a novel that he translated to Tale of the white Crow which we put away in the moment and Ltvijas putni, which means Latvian birds and it was a very detailed guide.
According to its looks Anthony was a New Caledonian Crow, it was intelligent, it was faithful to its partners, it recognizes people’s faces.
We took off right before the library closed, outside was already dark, none of us realized how late it was. We didn’t speak a word in our way home. Maybe, we were mentally too busy going through all the texts we have just read and reviewing what to look for in each of the books to continue with the crow whatever absorbing.
Once we got home, he went directly to the bathroom and came back holding an all wet tobacco package with two fingers and an expression of disgust in his face. He said that Anthony was obviously playing us a joke, he found that in the toilet. I was too tired for anything like challenging a bird and we didn't see it around and didn't bother to look for, which we knew we should have done, so that it wouldn’t be playing us any more jokes around. I took all the books of the new interest of our own and left them in the table to continue with their lecture like the first thing to do in the morning beyond breakfast.
Whatever, I m going to bed now - I told him.