The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  ‘It is a tattoo, Israel,’ my aunt replied calmly.

  ‘But it is forbidden to alter the body. Do not make gashes in your skin for the dead and do not put tattoos upon you. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:28. How could she?’ I remembered the words sputtering out of him.

  My aunt plucked me from the bath and pulled me into the warmth of a towel that had been dried crisp by the sun. She dabbed down my limbs with such delicacy that my skin was still damp. She had never bathed anyone other than herself before.

  ‘He is lucky to have survived at all, Israel. If that is all that marks him, if that is his only scar, he is blessed. Why even the word, Israel, if my Hebrew doesn’t fail me, means ‘the blessing’ ha – brachah, from ‘the curse’ dabra. How can you worry about a word when it is a child we have been given?’

  Still he looked at my finger, shaking his head, and I wished the bath waters would rise as Moses could command them to and swallow me up. My aunt wrapped me closer to her. I could feel her heart pounding in her chest as my uncle approached, the yellow cake of soap held before him, sharp scented and slippery. My aunt’s arms gripped tight around me. The soap won the battle with his hand – it ejected itself with all the force of a firecracker, bouncing several times on the black and white linoleum tiles of the floor. It was then that my uncle began to cry, his tears streaming out of him silently. My aunt and I watched him leave the room and listened to the slam of the study door. Then she quietly proceeded to rumple my hair until each curl was dry.

  I rubbed the word printed across my finger, the ink now faded, the letters stretched but legible all the same. The service was over. I wanted nothing more than to slip across the road to the quiet of the shed and let my hands tickle the pale green feathers of the parrot’s neck as Lily had done. I wanted to see if he would hop from finger to finger with my encouragement, wanted to give him words over and over to see if he could speak in a human voice. Instead my uncle and I walked up the stairs together and took our places at the table, the prayers from our lips nearly soundless.

  ‘So Ari, have you given it thought?’

  My uncle spoke as if this were a casual conversation. My aunt looked sharply at him, her hands suspended in mid-air, interrupted in the simple action of picking up a knife and fork. I sliced a piece of the chicken and put it in my mouth, my uncle’s question leaching it of all flavour. I chewed it and chewed it until there was no meat left, not willing to open my mouth and meet his hope for an answer.

  ‘I have written to a yeshiva in Europe on your behalf, Ari, in lieu of your answer. It is time to be a leader in your community, to become the rabbi you were born to be.’

  ‘Israel.’ My aunt lowered her hands and rested them in her lap.

  ‘If you don’t make decisions, Ari, they are made for you.’

  I took a sip of water and considered saying something, but what could I say that would make him hear me? I wasn’t going to return to Europe and I wasn’t going to a yeshiva, no matter how many letters my uncle presumed to write on my behalf. My serviette fell to the floor when I stood up. I retrieved it, folded it quietly by my plate and left the room.

  When I opened the back gate, a loud commotion was roaring within the house, Miss du Maurier’s voice a pitch above it all. I burst through the back door and through the kitchen. In the sitting room, Miss du Maurier and Lily stood over the fireplace, while the new male lodger, who I assumed was Mr Little, was tipping a vase of water over the fIames.

  ‘Don’t drown the poor mite,’ Miss du Maurier shouted.

  ‘Trust me, Miss du Maurier, I know what I’m doing,’ he replied. ‘Better a wet bird than a cooked bird. The smell of burning flesh is atrocious.’

  Lily, a tea towel at the ready, leaned into the wet slushy ash and blackened wood and pulled out an animal, made of soot and sticks it appeared, before she folded her hand over its eyes so it couldn’t see that it had survived the pyre. They were all so absorbed they didn’t notice me.

  ‘What happened?’ I said and Lily turned around, a smudge of black on her chin.

  ‘Damn bird nested on top of the chimney,’ Mr Little said. ‘Hand it over. I’ll wring its neck and put it out of its misery.’

  ‘Mr Little!’ Miss du Maurier said, shocked at his language or the murder of the bird I wasn’t sure. I knew she wouldn’t tolerate either.

  ‘It’s more soot than burns, I’m sure of it,’ Lily said. I could see she would not hand it over to the executioner. ‘Come on, Ari,’ she said and I followed her out to the shed, leaving Miss du Maurier bending over the hearth with a dustpan and brush, while Mr Little stared, his blackened hands slack at his sides.

  The parrot swooped down to the bucket and watched inquisitively as Lily dipped a face washer into the water and ran it down the currawong’s wings, until the water was black. The currawong had fallen into some kind of trance; the bird submitted to her ritual bathing without complaint, her orange eye focused on the middle distance.

  ‘Oh,’ Lily said as she ran her nail through the filberts of the bird’s tail. ‘She’s lost the tip of her tail feathers. May affect her flying.’

  The parrot dipped his beak into the sooty water and reclined back, gulping at the water, dip after dip. Finding no dry cloth to hand, Lily dried down the currawong with her shirt tails, while I looked around for a suitable box. The old bamboo birdcage that had once been a palace for canaries was an option, a temporary prison covered with an old towel, but there was no need. The currawong flew up onto the rafters, her tail a fan, and watched us below her quizzically as we watched her above.

  ‘Well, that answers that then,’ I said.

  Lily sat down in the old armchair; there was a warm flush on her pale cheeks. Her face was like a lit lantern, a bright white. As if we were simply continuing our conversation in the park, the questions burst out of her, each one soaring dizzyingly, one after the other.

  ‘Did Mrs Houdini confirm that the code was correct? The one Houdini supposedly delivered from the other side? If so, who is Rosabelle? Was it a nickname for Mrs Houdini? I thought her name was Bess,’ she said expectantly.

  She coaxed the parrot to perch upon her hand, his head bobbing up and down to a beat only he heard.

  ‘Rosabelle is the name engraved in her wedding ring,’ I said, ‘from the song she sang when they met – Rosabelle, sweet Rosabelle, I love you more than I can tell. Over me you cast a spell. I love you my sweet Rosabelle.’

  She looked from the parrot to me as if she could see my thoughts. Talking of love in the shed, alone but for the dozing ginger cat and the birds, was not permitted. She did not know that, I did, but I wasn’t going to be the one to leave.

  ‘And the rest? The pray, answer bit? I could make no sense of that at all.’

  ‘Answer, tell, pray, answer, look, tell, answer, answer – it was the code for the Houdinis’ mind-reading trick, it was in a book my aunt gave me, but it means more than that,’ I said. The lamp turned her hair gold and the parrot gently ran his beak through the strands, already claiming her as his own.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she said, blinking against the glare.

  ‘The first part is their old cipher, but the rest is their code alone, a magic word in their own private language. They had agreed that if there was life on the other side he would try to get a message through. Believe was that word.’

  ‘Believe? Believe that the dead can talk? Houdini spoke?’ Her voice caught in her throat.

  ‘Houdini was obsessed with the idea of being able to talk to those on the other side. He spent half of his adult life trying to get a message from his parents who had passed over, and then for the rest of it he tried to debunk the whole thing and expose the mediums and their charlatan ways.’

  ‘So you could say he had a bet each way? If Houdini was on the other side, why would he use a medium if he despised them so much? Surely he would pass the message directly to her? Do you think it is possible?’

  ‘For the dead to talk to us? I don’t know.’

&nbs
p; Blotches of colour rose in her cheeks, tears pricked at her eyes. She blinked them away.

  ‘So where do we start?’ she said. Her voice was tight in her throat. The parrot started chattering to her as if he had the words to comfort her that I lacked. Lily encouraged the parrot to step onto her hand and we watched him do a sideways walk up her arm until he perched on her shoulder. She ruffled the short green feathers on his head with a fingertip and the parrot bobbed up and down, lost in his pleasure. ‘How do we teach you to sing or talk or whatever it is we will get you to do?’ she asked and the parrot screeched. We looked at each other. Lily grinned. ‘Answer for everything, you have!’

  ‘What about something like this?’ I pulled my violin from its battered case, my fingers tentative upon the board, and played a short bar. But I stopped suddenly. Some other sound cut through the notes. The currawong swooped onto the opposite rafter, carving a draught through the cool air. In the violin’s place came a strange otherworldly trill. Upon the rafter, the currawong hopped from one foot to the other, agitated. There was only one person who whistled that way.

  ‘What is that?’ Lily wondered aloud, as the ethereal song made the air prickle around us.

  ‘How’d you feel about us expanding our menagerie?’ The word our felt large in my mouth.

  ‘With what?’ she said excitedly.

  ‘That most magical of all birds. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere,’ I said.

  The Birdman was nowhere to be seen, but his notes lingered in the air as if invisible staves hung there still. I hurried into the lane that ran along the back of the house and waited to hear it again. The whistling swelled, whether it was nearer or further away I couldn’t tell for sure, but I tried to follow, ran in hope to the heart of it, stopping every few moments to listen again. Somewhere, someone smashed a bottle, and the splintering of glass echoed in the darkness and right into my mind. The sound flooded panic into my limbs. I had run like this before when I was a child; every footfall took me back to that night.

  The clutch of my mother’s hand was on mine, and black spots appeared behind my eyelids. I wanted to stop there and then in the dark cobbled streets, to curl into a ball and let the stones part and swallow me. My mother drew me onward, stopping in the shadows of the buildings when there was silence, nothing but our own ragged breaths in our ears. ‘Ari, just a little further.’ Her voice was a struggle between the calm and the quake, then our feet would find their wings again. The frost was already coating the cobbles and dampening our shoulders. Behind us was the shock of smashing glass, cries of people shoved from their beds, the splintering of doors, the solitary cry of a child winnowing out into the air like a wisp of smoke out of a chimney. This sound like no other made my mother’s feet run faster, my legs barely able to keep up. She ran with me almost flying behind, a child-shaped kite catching the air, the corners of my coat whipping at the wind. I remembered glancing up and noticing the pinpricks of stars, looking oh so cold and far away.

  The wind gusted through the gum trees. If I had closed my eyes I could have heard my mother’s voice. A huge gust shook down a rain of gumnuts upon my head. I saw the Birdman up ahead stooping to stroke the ears of a dog, its tail going one hundred beats to the minute.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ He lowered his pack, a puff of dust exhaling off it as it hit the ground.

  ‘I need a lyrebird.’

  ‘A lyrebird, heh? A bit of my spiel rubbed off, I see.’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said, trying to conceal my annoyance that he was right. His grey hat veiled his eyes. In the tree behind him a raven watched us, her black feathers catching the sheen of the lamplight. Shouldn’t all birds be asleep with the sunset?

  ‘I know what you’re wanting it for, but I can’t just pluck one of God’s creatures from the bush and see it live its poor songbird life in bondage.’

  My heart sank. The Birdman had all the time in the world to dally; the world kept time for him by the seasons and tides and vagaries of the moon. He was free to wander at will, yet I had time always breathing down my neck, chasing me whether I ran or not.

  ‘I’d be wanting to know he was going to a loving home, not to have strange rituals performed upon him. Why, he could be mistaken by someone for a chicken and get plucked and eaten. One for sorrow.’

  I could see my uncle in my mind’s eye, pacing back and forth, his feet testing the patience of the floorboards.

  ‘It is for our act.’ The raven swooped low and instinctively I ducked – her talons were outstretched, as if making for my face. The Birdman reached out his arm and the raven took roost. His hands ruffled her shaggy beard as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a man to do.

  ‘Our? Is there a girl? There always has to be a girl. The world started with a man and a girl in the garden.’

  ‘There is a girl.’

  ‘Good, good. Walk with me. What sort of girl is she? Three for a girl, eh, four for a boy.’

  How was I supposed to answer? Lily was not just a girl. She was the miraculous creature upon which my dreams now hung.

  ‘Go on, mate, spit it out – six for secrets never to be told.’ He had caught me by surprise, my feelings palpable in my chest.

  ‘She is my neighbour, the one who helped me feed the parrot.’

  ‘Oh, ’tis a good thing, a girl of the bush. Not that I don’t trust you, mind, it would just be better that way. A woman’s touch and all that, closer to the homeland, a native by default, I am sure you will understand. See this bird here, that tree, the possum who lives in that tree, the insects that the possum eats, the blossoms that the bees drink from – for all these things I am responsible. The lyrebird even more so, for my people believed that the lyrebird was family. So, if I am to get you this bird, I am entrusting you with my brother. It is only right that I should know he will be taken care of by someone who has at least a skerrick of wild knowledge, someone who will not keep him caged all the time, who will let him pluck and scratch at the ground for choice bugs, fan his tail and sing to his heart’s content. Can you promise that, my friend?’

  ‘Of course.’ I had no more interest in keeping a creature of G_d’s enslaved in cruelty than he did. The raven hopped from his shoulder and hovered in the air for a moment before I felt its claws sink into my shoulder. The magnificence of that sudden grip overwhelmed me.

  ‘She likes you. Ravens don’t go to just anyone.’

  ‘How can you tell a crow from a raven?’

  ‘Crow and raven – cut of the same jet feather.’

  The moon was low on the horizon and my uncle would be wondering where I was, but I had no intention of running as if a riot were behind me now. Lily would be waiting, that I knew. My uncle, he could wait some more. And those jet-black raven’s feathers were soft like the running of water against my skin.

  FIVE

  Billy

  Miss du Maurier was practising her dance steps on the wooden floor. I had helped her roll up the moth-eaten Turkish rug and listened to her torturing the floorboards with the staccato beat of the Charleston. Lily had come back from her shift at the theatre and sat on the settee, her legs crossed, her foot waggling in time to the music as Miss du Maurier danced. Would she get up and join her? I waited with anticipation, imagining the lightness of her step, the swing of her freshly bobbed hair, then Lily started to cough and smoke puffed into the room.

  ‘You really ought to get someone to clean your chimneys, Miss du Maurier,’ I called out over the music. ‘Wouldn’t want the house to catch fire while we are all asleep.’

  ‘Heaven forbid! You are absolutely right,‘ she said, her feet not missing a beat, old hoofer that she was.

  It was then that the nest fell into the flames, followed close behind by the unfortunate bird, making enough racket, billowing smoke into the room. Lily was up on her feet and ready to plunge her delicate hands into the smouldering mess when I promptly intervened, plucking a bunch of flowers from a vase and tossing the water on the fla
mes, saving those precious white fingers from the puckering blisters of a burn. That was when the Jew entered. But that still didn’t stop Lily. She leaned closer, a tea towel open in her hands, and scooped the sludgy cooked bird into her arms as if it was her darling. And just like that they waltzed out together to the old stable. It is bad luck to have a bird in the house. If only I could have wrung its neck without her seeing.

  The thought of him and her in the shed made my skin itch as if a mosquito had taken its drunken fill. I hurried to the top of the staircase, just as the flyscreen door swung back, and I scrambled to the end of the hall and the vacant bedroom that looked over the backyard. As I opened the door I was overwhelmed by the smell of attar of roses, as if the violet walls were painted with the scented oil. The culprit was a bowl of Miss du Maurier’s potpourri sitting on the windowsill. The smell was so rich and thick it almost made me gag.

  They walked through the backyard, happy strides to the old shed. The Jew pushed the door open with an almighty shove and they were swallowed by the darkness within. I raced back to my room and returned with my opera glasses. With a lamp lit within, their shadows appeared like two marionettes, my little neighbour and her accomplice. I twirled the focus and saw a leg and an arm but never the whole article from this height. Across my eyes a shadow as the curtain closed. Then nothing. Dark things can happen in sheds. The brass and mother of pearl was cool against my face, the inscription the coldest of all.

  To Minnie on her 16th birthday from her loving Daddy.

  All the World’s Your Stage.