The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  ‘Sorry, no luck,’ I said. Whatever I earned at the Red Rose I handed over to my uncle. It was I who was curious now. ‘Tell me how it is done.’

  ‘Well, that would be telling, a magician doesn’t reveal her secrets,’ she said, blinking, her milk-coloured hair cascading into her eyes. As she brushed it away, she looked straight at me, a slight tremor in her eyes. I was still waiting for an answer. ‘It involves a coin disappearing into skin, a lot of rubbing and a lot of misdirection. Something to impress a five-year-old, it would be nothing to Houdini.’

  My heart pounded, Hou-din-i, Hou-din-i, his name my private incantation. How many times had I said it over and over in my head to block out the past? Everyone knew who Houdini was, but I always thought of him as mine, my own, my phantom father. To hear his name spoken by her laid me bare. Who was she?

  Without warning the parrot spread his wings and fluttered upward. I was concerned he would fly into the window and pound against the glass, unable to see it. But I needn’t have worried, for the parrot alighted with a start upon the platinum waves of the girl’s hair, as a wild and gleeful gasp escaped from her lips. I would have left him there, just to see the delight in her face, but she coaxed him onto her hand as he chattered and cocked his head, showing as much curiosity in her as I. Even when she handed me the parrot again, he was reluctant to step that short bridge between our fingers. Our hands hovered, waiting. The mark on my hand looked like a dirty smudge in this light and I was made self-conscious by it, until she clicked her tongue between her teeth and the parrot shuffled his feet back in my direction.

  ‘Night then,’ she announced, standing up, and I hurried to stand with her. She tipped the remaining seed from her hand and trickled it into my palm.

  The following morning a bird sang out out in the rain like a slow bell silenced when the postman came through the gate. My Uncle Israel liked to be the first to scoop the mail into his eager hands, always looking for letters that never arrived. His consolation was to sit at the breakfast table, scouring the newspaper for stories of anywhere near home. I pulled on my clothes and leaped out of the bedroom; it didn’t pay to be late. Aunt Hephzibah looked up at me as she turned the valve of the samovar, the steam swirling around the top of the cup. She had beaten my uncle, the newspaper and post gathered close to her chest, no envelopes at all. We took our places at the table. My uncle led a short prayer, and then unfolded the newspaper in front of him, his glasses fogging up from the steamy tea. Something caught his eye and he spluttered.

  ‘Israel, what is it?’ Aunt Hephzibah asked.

  ‘There is talk again, a possible reformation of the Jewish Territorialist Organisation. And another proposal to make a settlement in Uganda or South America or even here of all places. Unbelievable. They will fail again,’ my uncle said, toast crumbs settling in his beard. My aunt refilled our cups from the samovar, the steam exhaled on her face. ‘The Promised Land is the land we were promised, it’s not something a committee can decide.’

  The article would go in his ageing brown scrapbook. It was a rare evening that my uncle didn’t have it spread out on his desk, rereading the past as if he could unravel the puzzle and prophesise the future. My uncle finished his breakfast and took the newspaper with him to his study, the crisp white printed sheets to be sacrificed to the flash of scissors. When he was finished he would return the discarded newspaper to the dining table, with all the gaps and windows and half-sentences he had made, censored as if we were at war.

  The heavy rain of the night before had cleansed the road, the smell of eucalyptus enveloping the streets. On the footpath, the shredded leaves of trees, as if from random pruning. When I arrived at the Red Rose, Jandy was out the front sweeping the footpath. He was bent over the broom, his bald head catching the gleam of the sun. When he saw me, he looked up, his snaggled teeth revealed in a smile.

  ‘Ari, Ari, what a storm!’ he said with the relish of a connoisseur. ‘How is the parrot? Is it ready to be stuffed and become a pirate prop next door?’ He gestured to the theatre across the road as a motorcar drove by, blowing all the refuse of the storm back over our feet.

  ‘Ai ai ai,’ Jandy exclaimed, setting to the path again with renewed vigour.

  I went in and started filling up the lolly jars, the smell treacle-sweet. Whilst I was wiping down the table tops, Jandy bustled in, the bell hitting against the door.

  ‘You never did answer me about that parrot,’ he said, starting to polish the chrome-topped coffee machine.

  ‘He lives,’ I said. My thoughts flew straight to the girl and how the parrot had taken the seed from her mouth as if the two of them were made of similar stuff – except where the parrot was coloured by a rainbow’s touch, she was almost completely bereft of colour. Even her eyelashes were like paintbrushes dipped in milk wash, so fair they hardly made a shadow beneath her eyes. She was distinctly moon-like, moth-like and yet altogether familiar. She was a glimmering girl.

  Miss du Maurier had given me a book for my birthday which my uncle frowned at every time he saw me reading it. It was a book of poems and one carouselled in my head unbidden:

  And when white moths were on the wing,

  And moth-like stars were flickering out,

  I dropped the berry in a stream

  And caught a little silver trout.

  When I had laid it on the floor

  I went to blow the fire aflame,

  But something rustled on the floor,

  And someone called me by my name:

  It had become a glimmering girl

  With apple blossom in her hair

  Who called me by my name and ran

  And faded through the brightening air.

  Jandy polished his pate with his hand and then, with one happy flick of the switch, turned on his pride and joy, the soda fountain that slowly burbled to life. The shop doorbell sang out and in walked the first customer of the day: the Birdman, named for his uncanny ability to mimic any bird sound he heard. Jandy whipped out a frosted glass and filled it with milk and chocolate syrup and stuck in a spoon to stir it up, just the way the Birdman liked it. The Birdman. If he had another name, he never used it.

  He sat down at the bar and offloaded his swag on the floor, taking his ease in the stool. The swag appeared to be made of some sort of blanket or coat, the russet-grey fur lush at the edges. You could not tell if he was young or old, his weather-beaten face was so covered in beard. Above it, his keen-eyed glare took in everything. He whistled as he swiped the stockman’s hat from his head and placed it on the floor. He was always whistling. It made me think of a bird I once saw as a child in my grandmother’s jewellery box, opening its red mouth, spinning around when the lid of the box opened.

  ‘Been keeping well?’ Jandy asked. It was a rare few weeks that the Birdman didn’t make an appearance. ‘We found a parrot the other day out on the footpath. The racket it made as Ari here scooped it up in a tea towel! Beak like a can opener.’

  ‘Did you now?’ He drank from the frosted glass and wiped the milk carefully from the corners of his mouth.

  Jandy nodded in my direction. ‘Our feathered friend is in Ari’s care.’

  The Birdman turned his bright eyes toward me. ‘What did it look like?’ I described the powdery green feathers tipped with pink, the black velvet choker of feathers around his throat. ‘Hmmm, not a local then, by the sounds of things.’

  None of us were, it seemed. We had all been shipwrecked by storms over which we had no control.

  ‘One of my neighbours got him to eat some seed cracked out of a pod. Do you think I could train him?’

  The Birdman’s eyes twinkled. ‘Parrots can be trained, that’s for sure, but there are other birds that pose a more interesting challenge.’ He puffed out his chest, swung his elbow over the back of his chair and held out his glass for a refill.

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘A lyrebird. That’s what you need. If you could get hold of one. That bird is a true sign of God’s hand at work.�
�

  ‘What’s a lyrebird?’ I said. There were more birds in this country than could be imagined.

  ‘A lyrebird, my boy, has the language of angels. Now there is something not many have seen nor have heard, but I have. A lyrebird in full possession of its instrument.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I was out in the bush a while back, tramping the road. The dust blew ferocious and I hoped to Hades that some car or other would come and let me hitch a ride to town. But it wasn’t a car that started wending its way toward me, but a willy-willy.’ The Birdman gave me a piercing look and took a deep breath. The hairs stood on the back of my neck. ‘I took to the scrub like a wanted man. As the willy-willy roared closer, dust filled my nostrils and coated my tongue and I covered my face with my coat as best I could, hoping it would pass me by. But the willy-willy was in a rage. It was a thing hungry for throwing. A hailstorm of pebbles pummelled my back. Somewhere in the distance I heard the faraway sound of a car engine, it seemed to grow louder, approaching, coming in my direction. Could I make a run for it to see if I could hail a ride? But as soon as I lifted my head the car silenced.’

  What was a willy-willy? Fear crawled from the corners of my mind; I had never escaped the terror of being chased. Even in the night I still woke with their footsteps pounding in my ears.

  The Birdman paused and waited for my complete attention before he continued, and once he had it, spared a moment to let his eyes wander over the spectacle of sweets.

  ‘Had the car broken down? Perhaps the wind had tricked me, with its voice like a bullroarer screaming in my ears. My Aboriginal grandmother had told me stories of Willy-Willies. They were not just furious air, they were wild and dangerous. Why, didn’t the willy-willy once see a beautiful dancing girl and want her for himself, spinning her up into the air until she turned into a brolga? I didn’t want to be caught in its maw, to become a thing of feathers and legend, struth no. The car sounded up again, the motor revving then ticking over. And then with one last whip of pebbles the willy-willy was gone.’

  He paused for a sip of his milk and ran his hand through the shrubbery of his beard and I felt the breath return to my lungs. The willy-willy was just a spirit of the imagination. It had not the power of speech or hands to do violence; it hadn’t the ability to steal life.

  ‘I looked for that car, but there was none in sight. I turned and looked in the other direction, and almost passed out from fear. There before me were two giant horns, curled and gleaming in the dusty sunshine. I spat on my fingertips and wiped my dirt-caked eyelids. The horns were feathers; the sound of the car was the lyrebird’s mimicking song.

  ‘The bird turned and looked right at me with currant-black eyes and branded me in his stare. He then sang a song, not his own. I could hear a cockatoo, kookaburra and a flock of screeching rosellas, then, without blinking, he serenaded me with the whoosh and stir of the approach of the willy-willy. So realistic it was, I checked over my shoulder to see it hadn’t returned to make more mischief.The lyrebird sang a symphony, followed by the wild scales of a piano. I didn’t dare blink. I would have clapped, but for the fear that he would mimic the applause back at me. I would have spoken my thanks, but to hear a human voice out of the bird would have sent me off screaming further into the scrub, food for bunyips.’

  ‘Bunyips?’ I said. The Birdman didn’t seem to hear me. There were more strange creatures in this country than I would ever be able to imagine.

  ‘I was relieved to find a set of streaming bright headlights veer over the horizon. I bolted to the road and flagged down the driver, who surely thought he had seen a ghost, my face dusted with the remnants of the willy-willy’s kiss.

  ‘Thank you, Driver,’ I said, feeling for my hat, but it was long gone down the windy gob of the willy-willy.

  ‘Spot of bother?’ he asked, as we set off down the road just as the dark began to settle.

  ‘Just caught in a wind storm.’

  ‘That all?’ he said dismissively, sucking on a smouldering cigarette.

  ‘Well no, as a matter of fact, there was a bird out there that scared the bejesus out of me. It sang like a car.’

  ‘Well,’ said the driver, ‘ain’t that an odd occurrence. He didn’t happen to also sound like a flute by chance?’ I shuddered in my seat, how could he know? ‘My son found one of them lyrebirds as a chick and raised it till it was old enough and ugly enough to look after itself. The thing is, my son heard they were good mimics and spent hour after hour playing this chick classical music from the wireless in hope that his foundling would pick up the notes. One morning I was woken very early, my son had started his training with the wireless before sparrow’s fart, even the chickens complained from their roosts. It was too early. I shouted for him to turn the radio off, but all I heard were my son’s snores in reply. I looked out the window and on the verandah the bird was singing his pea-sized heart out – a symphony – as clear and as beautiful as if he were playing the instruments himself.’

  The Birdman stood up from his chair and hoisted his swag upon his back, happy to have paid his debt of beverages with tales, but I wasn’t finished listening, I could only hear the faintest strains of the lyrebird’s mimicry in my own head. What else could it do, this magician of the birds?

  ‘Is that true?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘Every word God’s truth,’ he said, patting his hat upon his head, but he would say no more. I held the door open for the Birdman as he left, his tongue moistening his lips ready for the tune to come trilling out.

  After my shift at the Red Rose I went back to the shed instead of going home, but there was no sign of the girl. The parrot rocked himself on one of the beams that strutted the roof, his tightly clenched claws acting like a swing.

  Miss du Maurier popped her head around the door, a basket of dew-tipped washing under her arm. ‘Saw the lantern on, thought you may have left it on by mistake,’ she said before she spied the parrot, a green splash of colour in the dim shed.

  ‘O my, Ari, what a beauty,’ she cooed, and held her hand out to the parrot, her bangles clanking together. The parrot cocked a wary eye and rocked back and forth before ignoring her.

  ‘Who’s the new girl?’ I asked, sounding surlier than I intended.

  ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind me mentioning your endeavours, I know you are very private about them, my dear, in light of your uncle, but she is such a sweet thing. Lost her father in the war, seems a bit lost herself. Her name is Lily. And now we have another lodger, a Mr Little. We shall soon have a full house!’

  When Miss du Maurier went back up to the house, I tried coaxing the parrot down myself, a seed in my palm, but he seemed disinterested, a full belly no doubt, by the look of the scattered seed. I reached out my hand and whistled and waited. The parrot tilted his head and I whistled again. Something in the tune spoke to him and he took wing, flapping through the updraught of air, and alighted on my head. It was a start. But could he speak? What if I could get the lyrebird the Birdman spoke of, a second bird, could it speak, could it sing? Would it be able to learn the old songs my mother used to sing? Could the two birds sing together? One for sorrow. Two for joy.

  THREE

  Billy

  Miss du Maurier poured my tea in an extravagant stream, topping my cup up until my bladder was almost wrecked, but I didn’t dare hop up and visit the lav, just in case Lily came down. Breakfast came and went and I was still seated amidst the mess and spill of dishes. So I wandered upstairs and leaned my ear to her door to listen for any movement, but not even the dust stirred. I went into my own room and closed the door with all the might of my frustration, the windows rattling their protest. The world was washed with sunlight, the rain had dissipated but she wasn’t out in the street; no one of any importance was. I grabbed my hat. I descended the stairs two by two; I flew straight over them, heading for the door. But on the footpath, barring my way with her shopping, was the boy’s aunt, who, prompted only by the lightest of questions from me, was al
l too eager to divulge certain things into my confidence before I was on my way.

  In the park at the end of L’Avenue, a group of children had made a kite out of some of the recently fallen twigs and a sheet of stained butcher’s paper and were trying to tempt the cold wind to take it up into its icy heights. A boy’s running limbs tangled in the kite’s string, sending him and their creation sprawling. And there sitting in the long grass, shivering in his shirtsleeves, was the neighbour Lily had knocked from his bike just days earlier. Ari Pearl. Miss du Maurier had told me his name when I had winkled her for information.

  But Lily was there with him too. The Jew had made his jacket a fabric island for her exquisite bottom. How cosy they had become, their heads tilted together, his with its little cap, hers with its halo of hair. Last night at the theatre had been her first shift. Bedecked in her rouge usherette’s uniform she had looked like a bellboy, a beautiful little soldier, with her red hat tilted to the side of her head. Her arm had brushed against mine in the foyer as she’d given me her thanks for helping her. She had given me such a smile, I longed to fall into it and never come back. She didn’t know that the front-of-house manager had been more than happy to give her a job when I’d tipped him a fiver. If only a fiver would buy the Pearl boy off, so that I could sit next to her now.

  Unexpectedly, the long tail of the kite draped itself over her body like a sash. The wind had annointed her, made her the world’s queen. She removed it gently, so as not to tear the carefully twisted paper ribbons. The boys her humble subjects, with their scabby knees and dusty shoes all stood still as she took the kite from their hands and rolled up the string. Standing up slowly, she took hold of the string with one hand and, with the other, the crossed twigs in the middle of the kite, weighing the paper in her hands. And then she ran, the kite’s tail arrow-straight behind her. With a flick of her wrist and a whoop from her mouth she let go of it. The kite took to the air, ducking and diving with the ease of a swallow, and her straw hat followed. It rolled in my direction with divine precision so that it was only natural that I retrieve it. Today the wind was my friend. She handed the kite back to one of the boys, who took it from her gingerly.