FOUR
Ari
The parrot looked up at me when I entered the shed, wings outstretched like an invitation to an embrace. He was clutching the edge of the stall and the seeds I had left for him earlier were strewn across the floor in a neat circle, as if he had searched for the perfect one at the bottom of the tin. I filled the water bowl and he bobbed his head in it, letting the water trickle down the nub of his tongue. Again he raised his wings at me as if imploring me to release him, his beak reaching down to untie the cord until he gave up and decided to groom his wet bib of feathers.
‘It won’t be for long my sheynkeyt, my darling.’ I ran my hands up and down the freshly preened feathers and got a nip for my unwanted caress, his beak carefully reordering the feathers.
I picked up a seed pod and released a seed, placing it upon my lip before gingerly letting the parrot do a nervous sidestep onto my finger like a green Charlie Chaplin. I held him up to my face, that beak like a can opener, so close that I almost lost my nerve. Lily had not been afraid of the parrot’s kiss. Why should I be? I felt the tongue lightly tickle my lip before the seed vanished. I laughed in surprise, and the parrot, startled, flapped his wings in an immovable flight, his claws digging into the cushion of my palm.
‘Steady now, my grin hartse,’ I crooned as I tried another seed, this time controlling my surprise yet delighting in the touch. It was like a kiss had travelled between her and me, upon the beak of this bird. The parrot, as if hearing my thoughts, leaned down and nipped my thumb to wake me. Most men my age had danced close and held hands and kissed girls, but I had not. I observed shomer negiah, the law against touch, but my skin was curious. Even more so since Lily had sat down beside me in the park.
‘What are you reading?’ she had asked, leaning over and tilting the newspaper toward herself to read the headline, her hand near mine, the print rubbing off on our fingers. Amidst the news of falling stocks and job losses was the story that had made the hairs on my arm stand on end.
‘Houdini Speaks!’ I said. Her gasp was a magpie’s song; I felt like I was flying high in the wind. She leaned closer.
‘But what did he say? He’s been dead for three years now,’ she said, the curiosity in her voice mirroring my own.
‘Rosabelle, answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer, tell was the message given to Mrs Houdini by the medium at the séance.’
‘What do you think it means? Could Harry really have talked to Bess from the other side?’ Her cold fingers brushed mine as she released the newspaper.
‘They had a code just between the two of them, a message just for her, if the time ever came that he went first. It’s not common knowledge.’ I felt the paper shaking in my grasp so I folded it back in on itself, my hands seeking the refuge of my pockets. ‘One of their earlier acts was a medium show, messages from the dead for those left behind. He later went on to say it was hokum and was regretful he and Bess had misled people, but the Houdinis had their little code, just in case.’
‘A code, just in case?’ she repeated, her eyes a strange blue like glass. ‘Do you think it’s possible to receive a message from the other side?’ The way she asked made me uneasy. How could I answer that? The other side was the World to Come, the province only of the angels.
‘Well, if anyone could, I’m sure it would be Houdini,’ I said.
‘Houdini. I would have loved to have seen him, even if it was just a glimpse. He was due to come to my town once a long time ago.’ She pulled up her knees under her chin and cocooned herself in her arms. ‘It was strange, that nearly blank page in the newspaper when he died. Did you see it? A whole page bought just to have a few lines printed: IN MEMORY Of My Beloved Husband HARRY HOUDINI Who Went Away October 31, 1926. It was as if she was expecting him back any moment.’
I knew the page, it was arresting. I had removed it from the paper before my uncle had had the chance and folded it carefully away to keep. That such a page should be so quiet and blank amidst the jangled type from across the world was disquieting, as if a raucous band had halted midnote and not even an echo remained.
‘They started out together,’ I said, ‘the two of them doing the Metamorphosis. They were hardly more than children, Bess and Harry. Most people don’t ever think of Bess as a magician, but she was, in her way.’
As she looked at me, a strange slant of light moved across her eyes, so that she was nearly squinting. She held her hand up to shield her face from the sun. ‘The Metamorphosis?’ she asked.
‘Where two magicians swap places, seemingly in an instant.’ She blinked at me and I thought she was going to ask me the secret of how.
‘Have you ever thought of starting an act?’ she said instead. Her question startled me and my mind drained of thought. Before I could reply she was entangled in the ribboned string of a child’s kite. She stood then, laughing and twisting out of its clutch, freeing herself, before breaking into a run and releasing it to the dip of the wind, her hat following close behind. A passing gent stopped it with his foot and as I watched Lily retrieve it, her question soared in my mind. There were so many reasons why I had stifled this dream, never admitting it to anyone. If not this now, then what? Was I only ever to live the dreams of others? I waited for her to return to my side.
‘A magical act?’ I said, not trusting my ears.
‘Well, you already have the right tattoo,’ she smiled, glancing down at my hand, and I resisted the urge to hide it. My face burned. I did not realise she had read the word written there. ‘We could do it together.’ The wind flirted with the brim of her hat, but she held it firm. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not?’ I echoed, as all the reasons why not were being listed in my mind, in my uncle’s voice. ‘It’s just something I do for my own amusement. I’ve hardly got anything to offer.’ What could I tell her? My uncle detested anything to do with magic. All he wanted was for me to be a copy of himself, a rabbi with a congregation of my own.
‘We could make an act. Train the parrot together.’ Together. The word made me shiver. A black and white bird fanned its tail in the nearest tree, silently hopping up the branches in pursuit of a small lizard before catching it in a joyful gulp.
‘What’s that bird called?’ I asked Lily, pointing. The air was full of their dipping song.
‘It’s a currawong,’ she said. ‘They like the rain.’
How hadn’t I known its name? Until Lily told me, I had always thought it just some kind of magpie. I had been here most of my life and I still didn’t know the name of the bird that sang me awake each morning. Lily looked down at my watch, the upside-down numbers unreadable, until with the slightest of touches she turned the clock face toward her. ‘I still have a little time before I have to get to the theatre. Shall we try to catch one?’
‘It can’t be that simple, can it?’ Did she seriously think she could just pluck one out of the leaves? Was she playing with me? The fig trees seemed alive with currawongs – their name, like their song, was strange, a wild trill of sound, so full of vowels. Lily walked beside me, her eyes following the black and white dip of wings, and I was unsure of what to say.
‘Look for their nests, like a platter of twigs,’ she said as we walked with both our heads craned to the copse of branches above us. L’Avenue was lined with towering fig and gum trees, crowned with leaves. ‘There has to be one around here. See, right there.’ How could she see? I could barely make it out until she leaned closer and I followed the direction of her gaze.
‘Come on, give me a leg-up,’ she said as she removed her shoes and placed them on the ground. I hesitated, unsure of what I should do. What if my uncle saw me?
The sun was low in the sky, the light a diffuse gold. All around us the chorus of the currawong. I bent my hands together and made a living step for her foot and for a moment she hovered, her weight borne by my arms, then she was gone, her arms circling the branches and her feet finding footholds in the bark, her shirt tails a sail. As she climbed up the tree, the leaves
closed in behind her and hid her from view. She didn’t plummet as I feared. As I waited time passed slowly, with the occasional glimpse of her limbs above me as she clambered upward. I should have offered to climb. I put my hands upon the smooth white bark of the ghost gum and noticed for the first time that it was like her skin. I pulled my hands off as if I had been burned.
‘Do you need any help?’ I called up, but the leaves muffled her reply and then a branch with leaves rained down upon me. There was a kerfuffle of wings and an angry currawong swooped low out of the tree, clipping close to my head, before alighting on the nearest cast-iron balcony, clacking its beak at her, its orange eye blazing. It dipped its tail like a chevron. Lily appeared amidst the lower branches.
‘My father always said I had a way with birds, but obviously not today,’ she smiled, running a hand over her mussed-up hair before she eased herself to the ground. I averted my eyes as her legs dangled near my face, but when she faltered, I quickly offered my hand to steady her, worried that she would fall. She was in my arms in an instant, my hands slipping up the hem of her shirt, and she slipped in my grasp to the ground. I stepped back and she dusted off her hands on her trousers.
‘If you don’t want to work together, I understand,’ she said quietly. I had offended her, and I still hadn’t given her an answer. The silence pressed at me; the feel of her skin was still ringing on my hands. ‘I should be getting to work. I don’t want to make a bad impression.’ She stepped away tentatively.
‘Lily,’ I called out after her and she turned toward me. I offered her my hand. ‘We can try, can’t we? Let’s shake on it.’ She grinned at me then, and her milky fingers pressed mine. Her touch made the hairs on my neck stand on end. The first star of the evening blinked awake in the sky.
The secret plan blooming in my chest made me feel like a different man, different from the man my uncle wanted me to be. Why should I be just like him when I was marked apart? I already made my way in the world; why did I need to follow his exact steps? Yet how could I break away?
When I got home there was no sign of my uncle, and I was relieved, for he would have read my face as clearly as the scrolls of the Torah. His study door was open and as I peered in I was struck by the neatness of his desk. Usually it was a chaotic type of order, like a bird’s nest, with random pieces of paper, pages marked with the silvery scrawl of pencil, slit envelopes of letters stacked perilously close to toppling, typewriter ribbon adorning the desk like streamers. My uncle in frustration pulled the ribbons out, for his preference was for the handwritten word. ‘Moses didn’t need a typewriter when God bid the commandments and neither do I,’ was his reply when my aunt chided him for the wasted ribbons on the desk, which not even she was permitted to dust. But now the desk was tidy, the papers and ribbons cleared right away; not even the ring from his teacup remained. All that sat upon the surface was his scrapbook, closed to the world, and, surprisingly, my copy of the poems of Yeats. Why was he reading that? He detested it when I did. Had he been through my coat pockets?
I listened for his step in the hallway but the flat was quiet, the only sound the wind whipping the drying sheets. I leaned over to the scrapbook, the pages stiff beneath my hand. Some of the pages were neatly dated. Some of the articles from the newspaper were cut precisely with scissors, others ripped with a sense of rage, the torn words carefully pasted in, all dated with my uncle’s precise hand.
Outside the wind whispered secrets to the leaves of the trees. I returned to the pages of my uncle’s scrapbook, an entire page devoted to one word only:
Aliyah, Aliyah, Aliyah.
The scrapbook was a maze of his longing. His perfect copperplate script filled every line, even the margin. Aliyah, the return, the return to the homeland.
The words flooded over me. I flicked to a random page, and there, page after page, articles on the pogroms across Europe. I tried to tear my eyes away, but I couldn’t stop the words – rapes, massacres, mutilation, castration, evisceration in homes, businesses, streets, shops and the synagogue, village after village, date after date.
I slammed the book shut, an icy chill threading itself around my body, my heart shuddering in my chest so loud it hurt my still sore ribs. The memory of the utter silence nudged into my mind. The room wavered. The silence was a roar of nothing in my ears. Not even the clock on the wall ticked.
I remembered the silence of my grandmother’s house. All I’d known as home. That night she suddenly became still, her ears straining, her hands paused between the rise and fall of a stitch. Where my mother was, I didn’t know. Outside, a flap of pigeons, their wing beats animating my grandmother’s fingers again. Her stitching resumed with the precision of a machine. A log in the fireplace spat and hissed from the snow falling from above.
‘Why are you mending my coat, Bubbe?’ I wanted to ask – there was nothing wrong with it, no holes I could see – but she had one ear on the clock, the other on the silence. She patted the stitching down and broke the thread with her teeth. She ushered me over and I knew by her solemn eyes I wasn’t to speak. The room seemed different: the red Persian rug I would so often sprawl on with a storybook no longer seemed our rug; nothing in the room was familiar any more. The kitchen table and chair legs cast shadows like bars in the dim light. It was as if the silence had stolen everything that was ours, as if it had moved into our homes and we were nothing but ghosts, tiptoeing around it, afraid of letting a ripple of our voices disturb its peace.
My grandmother pulled the coat over my shoulders. The weight of it surprised me and I almost toppled backwards like a wooden skittle. She held me upright and slowly pushed the buttons through their holes. I noticed how old her fingers were, the knuckles puffy, pale. She pulled my collar close around my ears, her hands smoothing my flesh. Those hands running across my face will stay with me forever.
‘Whatever happens, my beautiful boychick, do not take off this coat. Until Aliyah. Promise me.’ I nodded, scared by the seriousness of her voice.
The back door opened and in burst my mother. She wordlessly scooped me up and pressed both of us into my grandmother’s arms, a final embrace, before she ran back with me through the still open back door. Over her shoulder, I saw my grandmother sit back quietly in her chair and pick up some knitting from her sewing basket. But then she just sat there, the needles poised as if she couldn’t remember what stitch she had last made. The red wool spilled from her lap to the floor.
I wore that coat for as long as I could until my Aunt Hephzibah pulled it off my stinking little body. The weight of it was a surprise even to her.
I put the scrapbook back on the newly ordered desk and wished my hands had not ventured to touch it, let alone open it. I left my book of Yeats where it was and was grateful to hear Aunt Hephzibah’s familiar light footstep on the stairs.
‘Ari dear, I met Mr Little today, one of Miss du Maurier’s lodgers,’ her cheery voice called to me. I stood straight and tried to breathe deeply. When her bright face appeared in the doorframe, my presence there was not lost on her, her eyes travelling over the newly cleaned desk.
‘He works up at the Bridge Theatre. Maybe he could help you get some more work, maybe they pay more than the Red Rose?’ Her words trailed off as her eyes roved over the newly ordered room; disquiet dawned across her face. She looked again at the order, the neatness, as if it conveyed a message neither of us could read.
My uncle mounted the bimah and announced the order of service, his voice ringing out in the quiet, the pages of everyone’s siddur turning quickly. I breathed in the quiet. This was the synagogue of my uncle’s longing, built from his endeavours and subscriptions. The building was simple and modest, just like him. He removed his black hat, and his grey hair was covered in the black velvet kippah embroidered in silver thread by my aunt’s patient fingers, the corners of his mouth tugged downward, as if pulled by invisible string. ‘It is the Sabbath, Ari, she is our bride, remember. Would you keep a bride waiting?’ My uncle called out the next part of the
service, and the pages turned in unison, but I seemed destined always to fall behind. I looked down at my own hands, the letters along my finger seeming green in this light – abracadabra …
I remember receiving them into my skin, the white pain of the stylus going into the soft flesh of my finger, the small finger of a child. I remember the blood and the ink, my mother’s warm hand on the back of my neck, reassuring me with each wave of pain. In the morning there was a blobby scab-shaped word trailing down the length of the middle finger of my left hand, as random as spilled jam. When eventually the scab fell off I was left with a newly minted word in my flesh. There was no explanation given that I could recall. I was too young in any case to understand.
It wasn’t until my uncle and aunt stripped me down to bathe the thickened grit of long travel off my body that they noticed it. Already my uncle had lamented about my hair. My upsherin, my locks, had been cut before my seventh birthday, and he was keen to see that I had made my covenant with God as Moses’ sons had, that a mohel had seven days after my birth ushered me into my birthright with a quick snip of a blade. In that he was reassured. Then he removed the gloves that I had worn halfway across the world.
When he saw the word he froze as if it were a message just for him. He spat on his fingers and rubbed it across my hand, thinking it would reveal more, like the child’s game of writing in wax and revealing letters in lemon juice. When the word would not come off, he turned to my aunt. She took my hand gently in hers, as I stood quivering, my little body ready to dissolve in embarrassment, standing naked in front of strangers. Aunt Hephzibah let the warm water trickle over my shoulders. She carefully cleaned the grime from the whorls of my ears, soaped my hair and rinsed it clean, careful not to let the soap sting my eyes. My uncle stood silently watching, waiting for an explanation, hoping some message would sprout from my lips, but I was the message. A child.
The Bird's Child Page 5