Mouthful of Birds

by Samanta Schweblin

  * * *

  When the woman on the cot was ten years old, she lived with her mother near the river. It was an area that sometimes flooded and forced them to go to her aunt’s house, a few yards up the hill and built on wooden stilts. Once, when the woman on the cot was doing her homework in her aunt’s dining room, she looked out the window and saw a fisherman prowling around the other house, her mother’s house. He had arrived in a boat that he’d tied to some trees. Some high boots protected him from the water, which almost reached his knees. She saw him disappear around one side of the house and then appear on the other. He looked in through the windows. But at no point did he knock on the door or on the glass. He waited until the door of the house opened and her mother, first looking around to be sure no one saw him, let him in. The woman on the cot could watch them if they stayed close to the window. Her mother offered him hot tea, and they sat at the table. Then they left the kitchen. When the woman on the cot returned home from the other house, the fisherman was voraciously eating his supper while he entertained her mother with anecdotes about his work and the river. The fisherman offered to take the woman on the cot fishing the next day. Since it was flood season and there was no school, the mother thought it was a good idea. The fisherman took her as far as the river’s mouth, where it emptied into the lake. At that point the boat almost didn’t move, it glided gently over the mirror of water and her fear slowly left her. It was only just beginning to dawn.

  * * *

  • • •

  The fisherman assembled his rod, placed the bait on the line, and started to work. At that point she realized she was cold and hungry, but when she asked if her mother had made something for their breakfast, the fisherman made a tsk-tsk sound and motioned her to be quiet. She asked if he had an extra coat in the boat. The fisherman tsked again.

  “Are you my father?” she asked finally.

  The fisherman sat looking at her, and she got it into her head to smile. But he said:

  “No.”

  And they said nothing more.

  * * *

  • • •

  The mother of the woman on the cot always had wanted her daughter to study and move to the city. She demanded her daughter get good grades, and she made sure to repeat that if she didn’t try hard now, she would pay for it later, and it would be costly. The woman on the cot studied. She did everything her mother told her. The school was two miles from the house and she traveled there by bike. When it flooded, the school called to assign her homework. In high school she learned typing, English, basic computing. On her way home one afternoon, the chain on her bicycle broke. The woman on the cot fell into the mud and the notebooks she was carrying in the basket were ruined. A boy who was driving a truck down the road saw her fall, caught up with her, and got out to help. He was very nice. He gathered up her notebooks and wiped them off on his coat sleeves, and he offered to take her home. They loaded the bike into the truck bed. They talked a little during the drive. She told him what she was studying, and that she was preparing to move to the city. He seemed interested in everything she said. He had a very fine gold chain hanging around his neck with a small cross on it. It seemed beautiful to her. She didn’t believe in God, and her mother didn’t either, but something made her think her mother would like him. When they arrived she invited him to come to dinner later with them. He seemed delighted, but said:

  “It’s just that I have to go to work in a while. I’m a fisherman.” He smiled. “Can I come tomorrow?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think tomorrow is a good idea. I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  • • •

  When the woman on the cot went to the city, she was twenty years old. She was pleased to see that the houses weren’t raised on wooden stilts, so floods and fishermen were ruled out. The city also seemed warm to her, and it made her a little dizzy those first days. On Sundays she called her mother and told her some things about her week. Sometimes she lied. She didn’t do it out of malice, but rather to distract herself. She told her mother that she’d gone out with new friends. Or that she’d gone to the movies. Or that she’d eaten some delicious food in a neighborhood restaurant. The mother seemed to love these stories. And sometimes she couldn’t wait to hang up, so she could repeat them over the phone to the aunt as well.

  The woman on the cot had some savings and had signed up at a community college. But the expenses of food, rent, and school were very high, and soon she had to interrupt her studies and look for a job. One afternoon she was out buying bread, and the woman at the shop, to whom she sometimes told her problems, said that she had just the job for her. She said it would pay good money and leave her plenty of time to study. The woman on the cot wasn’t stupid. She knew the job could involve something unpleasant that no one else would want to do, or that it could be dangerous. She said she couldn’t make any promises, but she was interested in finding out what it was.

  The shop owner drove her to a nearby avenue and stopped in front of a two-story building with a sign that said INSTITUTE. Inside, there was a small throng of women. One of them, wearing a peach-colored uniform that also said “Institute,” asked the women to form a straight line, and threatened not to reserve a turn for them if they were disorderly. The women quickly got organized. Another woman in a uniform recognized the shop owner and came right over to them. She led them into another room and asked the woman on the cot to roll up her pants so she could see the hair on her legs. At first the woman on the cot thought she hadn’t understood the request. But it was repeated. Then she thought it was ridiculous, and that this was surely not a job for her. But neither did she see the danger in showing her leg hair to the uniformed woman, so she rolled up her pant leg and showed her. The woman in uniform put on her glasses and studied the hairs, taking a small flashlight from her pocket and shining it on them. She assessed the ankle, where the hairs were not very thick, and also the calf. Only when she seemed convinced that the woman on the cot would do did she explain the job, giving a general description and the salary. The woman on the cot didn’t know what to say. The job was very simple and the pay was acceptable. Her mother had talked to her so much about the traps that were everywhere in the city that she tried for some seconds to figure out where the danger or the deception could be. But it still seemed like a fine offer. And she accepted.

  * * *

  When there are no more hairs left, the legs look red and raw. The woman on the cot doesn’t move. The six women around the legs look tired but satisfied. They lean back in their chairs, sigh, rest their hands in their laps. The assistant gathers up the hand towels where the women collected the hairs. Before picking them up, she folds them in half twice so that none of the hairs are lost, and she deposits them carefully into a bag that she closes with a double knot once it’s full. Only then does she help the women stand up, pulling back their chairs, sometimes adjusting their shirt collars or any shoulder pads that may have shifted out of place. Then she picks up the bag, delicately, taking care not to tip it, opens the door, and goes with the women to the changing room. When they are all inside, the assistant goes back into the hall and closes the door behind her. Sometimes the women comment on the shift, laugh, or ask questions about previous sessions, and the assistant listens to them chat as she goes down the white stairs. She knows she must store the bag safely before returning to the woman on the cot.

  * * *

  • • •

  The assistant was born in the country, in a family that made its living from crops and vineyards. They had an estate with a large main house surrounded by gardens, and a small fortune. The assistant liked fish, and her father, who was almost never home, used to send her enormous books with color illustrations of all the fish in the world. She learned their names and drew them in her notebook. Of all the fish, her favorite was one called the Olingiris. Its body was short and thin, it had a long, tube-shaped mouth, and it was turquoise and yellow. The books
said it was a delicate fish, because it ate only coral polyps, and those weren’t found just anywhere. She asked for one, but it was explained to her that they couldn’t have a pet fish in the countryside. The assistant showed her mother a book that explained how to install and maintain a fish tank, but the mother told her that even if they got the tank and the right food, the fish would die of sadness. The assistant thought perhaps her father wouldn’t have the same opinion, that maybe she could show him the pictures and he would understand. But when he finally came home, she couldn’t find the book anywhere.

  The assistant had many brothers, but they were older and worked with her father, so she spent most of the day alone. When she turned seven, she started attending a rural school. One of the men who worked for her father came to pick her up at seven-thirty, dropped her off at school at eight, and came back for her at twelve. It wasn’t easy for the assistant to adapt to that new rhythm. At first she didn’t do well. Then her mother hired a private tutor, and the assistant started to study in the mornings at school and at home in the afternoons. The private tutor knew of the assistant’s interest in fish, and she built her exercises around that subject. Sometimes she read poetry, and once when they were studying punctuation she proposed that the assistant write some verses. The assistant gave it a try, and the tutor seemed delighted with the result. As homework, she assigned the assistant to write a poem with the names of her favorite fish. The assistant cleared off her desk and set out just a few blank sheets of paper, a pencil, and an eraser. She wrote a poem about fish, but invented fish. She wrote about what she felt sometimes in the morning, when she was just waking up and sometimes didn’t fully know who she was or where. About the things that made her happy, about the things that didn’t, and about her father.

  One afternoon the tutor told the assistant that she had a surprise for her, and she took a very large package from her bag, the size of a folder or bigger, and gift-wrapped. Before letting her open it, she made the assistant promise that it would be a secret, and that she would never tell anyone about the gift. The assistant agreed. She tore off the paper, and when she saw what it was, she thought her whole life wouldn’t be long enough to repay the tutor for this gift. It was the book about fish and fish tanks. Not the same one, but one just like it, new, identical.

  By the time she turned twelve the assistant’s level had improved a lot, and her mother decided the private tutor was no longer necessary. For a while, the assistant drew her among the fish. She made some drawings of the tutor kissing the Olingiris, and another of the tutor pregnant with an Olingiris’s baby. She wrote some poems for her mother to send to the tutor, and her mother promised to mail them, but there was never a reply.

  When the assistant finished high school, she started to manage her father’s finances and to oversee some things in the fields. She didn’t paint or write anymore, but on her desk she had a framed photo of the Olingiris, and sometimes, when she was taking a break, she picked it up to look at it closely, and she wondered what the private tutor was doing, and what it was like to live the way an Olingiris lived.

  She didn’t get married or have children. She left the countryside when her mother started showing the first symptoms of illness, the same year the drought finished off the vineyards and the crops. It was decided the assistant would travel with her mother to the capital, and they would live in the apartment her father had bought there some years before. The assistant brought the book about fish and fish tanks that the tutor had given her. The apartment wasn’t very large, but it was enough for the two of them. It had a window that looked out onto a street and let in a bit of light. They bought a table and two beds made of pine, and the assistant tore some pages from the book and stuck them to the wall like framed pictures. The assistant learned to cook, to make the beds and wash the clothes. She found work in a dry cleaner’s. Once the clothes were clean, they had to be put into the steamer, making sure there were no wrinkles. Lower the lid, wait a few seconds, and repeat on the rest of the garment. She also had to fold and perfume it. Sometimes there were difficult stains, and she had to bring them to the sinks in the back and use a special product. When that happened, the assistant chose the first sink, and while she waited the ten seconds the product needed to work, she looked into her own eyes in the mirror.

  * * *

  • • •

  When the assistant’s mother died, she quit her job, and as she was reorganizing the apartment, she found the book about fish among her mother’s clothes. It was the original one, the one that had been lost. She cleared off the pine table and opened the two books to the first page. She reread them side by side, several times. She thought that perhaps she could find a difference, because at first glance they looked the same, but she remembered the first one differently. It was hard to explain; she was just sure that there had to be a difference, but she couldn’t find it. She closed the books and sat looking at them for a while. She wouldn’t need them anymore, she concluded, and she stored them away together under the bed.

  She waited several days at home, with no mother and no job, not really knowing what to do. When the food and money ran out, she left the apartment to walk around the neighborhood, and she came across a “Help Wanted” sign on a building that said INSTITUTE. The work was simple, and paid well. She was hired immediately. The money from the first months left her enough to paint the apartment and buy some furniture. She threw away the pages hanging on the walls. She went out in the morning in her uniform and walked to the institute. She unlocked the doors, filled out forms, went with the women to the changing room, opened the hall, set out the materials, monitored the woman on the cot, collected the hairs, tied the bag, delivered the bag, sent the women on their way, paid the woman on the cot, turned out the lights, locked the door. At home she organized the groceries, made dinner, ate in front of the TV, washed the dishes, showered, brushed her teeth, made the bed, and lay down to sleep. Sometimes the forms ran out and she had to go to the stationery store for more. Or the women on the cot moved and she had to discount points from their salaries. Or she couldn’t find what she wanted to eat for dinner, and she went to bed earlier than usual.

  * * *

  The assistant went to reception and saw through the window that it was nighttime. She put the bag away in a cabinet under the counter alongside three other identical bags, and she locked the cabinet. When she opened it the next day they would be gone. Someone would come for them after she left. In the city, everything unseemly moved at night.

  The women came downstairs in their street clothes and said goodbye before going outside. That left only the woman on the cot, who must be dressed now and waiting for her upstairs. She went up and opened the hall again, and was surprised to see that the woman on the cot was still naked. She was sitting on the cot, hugging her knees with her forehead on her arms. Her back shuddered. She was crying. It was the first time this had ever happened, and the assistant didn’t quite know what to do. She thought about leaving the room and coming back a few minutes later, but instead she took out her notebook, went over the accounts aloud, and handed the woman on the cot the ticket with her money. Then the woman on the cot looked at her, for the first time. And the assistant felt an impulse, her stomach contracted a little, mechanically, her lungs took in air, her lips opened, her tongue hung in the air, waiting, as if she were going to ask the woman on the cot a question. A question like what? That was what closed her mouth. Was she all right? All right in what respect? In no way was she going to ask the question, though the distance between their bodies was appropriate and they were alone in the building; it was just something slow-moving in her head. But it was the woman on the cot who steadied her breathing and said:

  “Are you all right?”

  The assistant waited. She wanted to see what happened, to understand what was happening, what it was exactly that she was being asked. She felt something intense in her throat, a sharp pain that brought up the image of the books on the pine tabl
e, the pages of the two Olingirises, one next to the other, and as if it were a second chance, she looked desperately for a difference, in the eyes, in the scales, in the fins, the colors.

  MY BROTHER WALTER

  My brother Walter is depressed. My wife and I visit him every night after work. We buy something to eat—he’s partial to chicken and french fries—and ring his bell around nine. He comes to the door right away and asks, “Who is it . . . ?” My wife says, “It’s us!” and he says, “Oh . . .” and lets us in.

  He has a dozen people a day call him to see how he is. He always picks up the phone with effort, as if it weighs a ton, and says:

  “Yes?”

  And the people talk as though my brother fed off stupidity. If I ask him who it is or what they want, he’s incapable of answering. He’s not interested in the slightest. He is so depressed that it doesn’t even bother him that we’re there, because it’s the same as if he were alone.

  Some Saturdays, my mother and Aunt Claris take him to events at the assembly hall, and Walter sits there amid the forty-something birthday girls, the bachelors, and the newlyweds. Aunt Claris, who always looks for the most arcane side of the simplest things, says that the more depressed Walter is, the happier people around him feel. Now, that’s really dumb. What is true, though, is that for a few months now things in our family have been improving.

  For instance, my sister finally married Galdós. At the reception, among a group of people at my brother’s table drinking champagne and crying with laughter, my mother met Mr. Kito, and now she lives with him. Mr. Kito has cancer, but the man has a lot of energy. He’s always enthusiastic, and he’s very attentive with my mother. He owns a large cereal company, and he’s also a childhood friend of Aunt Claris’s. Galdós and my sister bought a farm far from the city, and we’ve all gotten into the habit of spending weekends there. My wife and I go pick up Walter first thing on Saturday, and by noon everyone is at the farm, waiting by the grill with a glass of wine and that immense happiness that comes with sunny days in fresh air.