The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  Yesterday I had seen my aunt’s bescarfed head in the distance. The familiar figure made my heart swell. I hadn’t realised I had missed her. I quickened my step, though I wondered whether, if she saw me, she would veer off the path to avoid me. As I approached, I could see she looked tired, her face wearing new creases, her eyes downcast, following the motion of her own feet.

  ‘Aunt Hephzibah,’ I called out to her, my voice sounding strange to my own ears.

  She came to a standstill, the weight of a pumpkin in her string bag scraping the path. When she looked at me, her smile was weary, her eyes blinking back tears. She abandoned her shopping and threw her arms around me.

  ‘Ari. Ari, are you coming home?’

  When I didn’t have an answer for her, she released me, her expression beginning to stiffen.

  ‘I am debuting my magic act at the Bridge Theatre tomorrow night. Would you and Uncle Israel like to come? I can put your names on the door. You can come as my guests.’ I felt the foolish hope radiate in my chest: would they come, my only family in all the world? In the book my aunt had given me, Houdini’s rabbi father had taken him to the circus, sat beside him in the front row and marvelled. It didn’t seem too much to ask, did it?

  My aunt paused and lifted her bag of shopping again, careful to avoid my eye. ‘I don’t think so, bubele darling.’

  ‘Why not? It is not the Sabbath,’ I said, feeling the anger begin to pop with heat within me.

  ‘No darling, I don’t think it is a good idea.’

  ‘Why? I am sure you would enjoy it, even if Uncle Israel can’t. It’s not as big as the Tivoli nor as grand, but it is a start.’ My aunt knew how much I had wanted this, she had quietly encouraged me and clapped at my meagre tricks those times when my uncle was lost in the snip and cut of paper in his study.

  ‘You could come by yourself, I could arrange a ticket.’ I tried to suppress my exasperation but, as with fire, the smoke will out. I inhaled a gust through my nostrils, for my jaw was beginning to clamp.

  ‘But it is not just you, is it, darling, there is that girl. She is a gentile. Your uncle …’

  ‘What did Uncle say?’

  ‘It would just upset him Ari if I went, you know how he is.’

  Alas, I knew all too well how he was. When Houdini came to Sydney when I was a child, I tried with all my might to persuade my uncle to take me, but he would not bend. My desperation was made more frantic by overhearing my uncle say that Houdini had once travelled to Russia to see the decimation caused by the pogrom’s mad fist, and in my childish mind I wondered, had he come to find me, collect me? When I was a child, Miss du Maurier worked at the Tivoli, where Houdini was to perform. So when my uncle had me tag along to her house for philosophical discussions in her father’s study, I rained upon her ear a hundred and one questions. Had she seen him? What was he like? Did he look as strong in real life as in the pictures? Had she spoken to him? How was the trick done? Could she tell while waiting in the chorus? Could Miss du Maurier tell if he was a good Jew?

  Days after my failed attempt to persuade my uncle to take me, Miss du Maurier delivered an envelope to our door. I had never received a letter before; seeing my own name written on the front was a delightful novelty. My heart leaped just at that, but when I slit it open I got the thrill of my life. On the back of a printed flyer for his Tivoli performance was Houdini’s signature. I couldn’t believe it. My finger traced the letters, marvelling at each curl of ink that spelled his name, as if they were a thread, a line on a map that would lead me right to him. I flipped the page over and over, held it up to the light, peering at it, hoping against hope that there was a special message, an instruction, some guidance just for me. That night I slept with it on the floor next to my bed, every now and again staring at it to make sure it was still there, leaning over and tracing the letters with my fingers, his name so close to the magical letters printed on my hand. I felt an inexplicable link, and a growing resolve. Why else was I marked so? I lay awake, dreaming up a father of a different kind.

  Eventually I slept and dreamed of a hundred doves flying upward, their wings applauding through my dreams, but when I woke there was only one lonely flapping pigeon on my windowsill. I pulled back the covers with a new sense of my direction. Everything made sense. I reached down for the autograph that Miss du Maurier had magicked up for me – my compass, my map and my direction all in one – but it was gone. I fell out of the bed and crawled, searching on all fours, thinking that perhaps a gust had swept it under the bed, but it wasn’t there. I searched under the plaited rag rug, through the sheets, but it was nowhere. I opened the door and hopped down each stair, hoping to find it, my magical autograph, my paper escapist. My imagination ran away with me: if the owner of such a signature could break all bonds, escape all enclosures, then perhaps even his writing could elude the very page it was written upon. No matter where I looked I couldn’t find it.

  I burst into my aunt and uncle’s room: my uncle was just lifting the tallit prayer shawl over his head, his tefillin already fixed, the morning prayer upon his lips. I heard my aunt’s industrious movements in the kitchen.

  ‘Where is it?’ I shouted, surprised at the sound of rebellion in my own voice.

  My uncle stopped, his eyes turning black with anger at the interruption, before he continued his morning ritual. I ran into the kitchen. I knew the punishment would come: not immediately, but it would come in time, if it had not come already. My aunt was there, leaning over the kitchen table, her back toward me, her hands industriously working away. She didn’t lift her head when she heard my footsteps approach; instead her hands moved frantically. When I came around to her side I saw my Harry Houdini autograph torn to pieces. Aunt Hephzibah had been smoothing the fragmented pieces, joining them with pieces of tape. I wanted to scream, but swallowed it back.

  I knew then I would have to hide what it was I wanted to be. I hated him then, for his narrowness, his wanton destruction of words, his flashing scissors, making peepholes to the world beyond, to a world of his own making. In his world there was only the book, never the magic. In destroying my autograph, my uncle may as well have struck off my finger or rubbed my hand with acid. This was my link to a world I felt I belonged to, the one thing that connected me to those faces I would never see.

  Yes, I knew all too well how things were with my uncle. I had been deluded to hope at all.

  My aunt patted my cheek gently. ‘I’ll pray for you, for HaShem to watch over you, for good luck,’ she said before she gathered up her shopping. I watched her head back home, thought of her disappearing through that door I could not imagine ever going through again.

  I was becoming someone my uncle wouldn’t recognise, possibly the man I was supposed to be. More like Houdini. I watched Lily’s hands in the mirror as she worked the oil through my hair, until I was someone else, my white shirt blending into the ivory silk of her dress, her head above mine like a guiding star. Thou shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness. I am the LORD. The words came to my mind unbidden, but I blanked them out as Lily smiled at me excitedly. Together we looked at ourselves transformed, an illusion of magicians, her tender hands, white as gloves, resting on my shoulders.

  THIRTEEN

  Billy

  I had to go back to the house eventually, but every time I passed the front window and saw the glow of electric light in the sitting room windows, revealing their flushed faces, their animated gestures, as they relayed backstage tales to Miss du Maurier who clinked celebratory glasses in her hand, I couldn’t go in.

  Lily and the Jew were perched on the small red velvet settee, their knees not even a hand span apart. I had to circle around the block again. I had to let myself go from the boil to the simmer, until I could seem as innocuous as lukewarm water flowing meekly from the tap. If I had had my knife in my hand the first time I approached the front step, I would not have been able to ignore its hum for blood. The second lap around, my fist itched to feel the slam of flesh into his
bone. A coiled snake in winter could not be as quietly deadly as my rage. Not since the time of my apprenticeship with Cuthbert Crisp had I felt it unwind so in the depths of my belly.

  The first day of my apprenticeship I had learned that his Elixir du Jour was made up mostly of a cordial of urine, dispensed first through Crisp’s bladder and then dispensed a second time by the fair hand of Crisp’s assistant Merle. I had gone home that first night with a bottle of elixir, not for myself mind you, but for my father. It was crass, I knew, but I was curious. Did one have to have the messianic gaze from Crisp to believe wholeheartedly in the elixir’s effects? Was it a scam, or was there a drop of truth in the matter? Piss du Crisp! It hadn’t escaped my notice that in Crisp’s antechamber there was a pamphlet from an Indian swami, printed at least fifty years earlier, about the health-giving benefits of the original amber liquid. My father would be none the wiser. If it shut him up, stopped him calling out the names of whores in the night, so be it. Anything for a bit of peace and quiet until I had enough to pay for my own room elsewhere.

  I put the bottle in the middle of the table that night and in the morning it was empty: my father the sponge had soaked it all up. I watched him closely and, to my surprise, he was unusually chirpy and even asked after my own health. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or throw my arms around him in an embrace. The only other time he claimed me as his son was when his drunken voice hollered at the bottom of the stairs when he was so pissed he couldn’t make it up them by himself. I would go down in my underwear, hoping the neighbours wouldn’t see me, and help the sweaty stink of himself up to our rooms, his bristly cheek pressing against mine, his arm wrapped serpent-tight around my neck. My father’s loving embrace.

  The second day at Crisp’s was wildly different from the first. I may have learned the so-called secret of the elixir, but I still had no inkling as to what gave him his powers of his persuasion. If I knew that secret, the world would become a cornucopia of women, all ready to be plucked by me.

  The bell jangled as I opened the door. Merle was at the front counter refilling the strange prehistoric jars with their dusty greenery. Her hair was pulled back in the same severe bun except for two little kiss curls that appeared over the scroll of each ear. It softened her face and added a little brightness to her cheeks.

  ‘Morning, Mr Little,’ she called out, her happy hum stopping for just a moment. ‘How did your father go with the elixir? Did he find it to his liking?’

  I had forgotten she had seen me take it. All at once I was concerned she would report my theft to our boss and my apprenticeship would be terminated quicker than a dandelion clock is dispersed with a breath.

  ‘Well, I was sceptical about it, yet this morning I have to say that he seemed, well, improved from his usual malodorous self.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it. Some would call what Father and I do a travesty, but I am sure you would agree there is a method in his madness.’ Her father? Doctor Cuthbert Crisp her father – flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood? ‘Go through. Father would like to see you. Shop doors open in a half-hour, so there is plenty of time. We prepared the elixir earlier.’ The way she said prepared stunned me, her eyes lit up with the cheek of it. Far Eastern philosophy be damned, she knew the ruse, yet for a moment had me believing.

  Crisp was sitting in his consulting room, which looked like a whore’s parlour with him eagerly counting his money, pound notes heaped in piles on his table, which he covered with a copy of the Herald as I entered. The shillings that had been stacked as high as the Tower of Babel spilled onto the floor in a shining puddle as I closed the door. I waited for him say something, but he just watched me to see what I would do. Was I being tested already? I reached down to assist, but he swatted my hand and swept the coins into a small calico sack.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the prodigal apprentice returned. I thought we would have seen the last of your pitiful hide yesterday. But, here, you prove me wrong.’ My eyes must have lingered on the money for a moment, but it was moment enough for Crisp to register it. ‘Well then, we haven’t agreed on a price for your services have we? How does this sound?’ He handed me the calico bag, the weight of it satisfying in my damp palm. That room of my own would come sooner than expected.

  ‘I know you want to learn, but first you must observe, just as I will observe you to see if you are worthy. There are things in this business you must watch out for. The fool, for example, who would throw himself under the wheels of a passing cart if he thought it would please me. Not a problem in itself, but an inconvenience if the fool kept the address of my establishment in his pocket. I want no questions asked of me. I hope you are not one of those, Mr Little.’

  I clamped my teeth down on my own tongue to stop it from shaping the words I wanted to throw back at him. Throw myself under a cart? To please him? Preposterous.

  ‘Are you listening, Mr Little?’ His eyes narrowed themselves upon me and I nodded my head, barely able to contain my aggravation, crossing my arms over my chest. Did a flicker of amusement pass across his face? He stood straighter and I felt my cocksure strength sapped from me.

  ‘Another to watch for is the aggrieved family of a patient who comes demanding answers after someone crosses over – in that instant it is essential that one listen. Whatever they say, agree, unless it is to compromise yourself or the business. Money must never be mentioned. Their rage will dissipate with the healing process. However, if all one’s listening and tender-hearted compassion is not performed in the sincerest fashion, then an odious creature from the Underworld may appear, and for him you need all your cunning, for God has cast him in a misshapen and twisted mould – the Journalist!’ He said this with a bitter emphasis, lip twisting. ‘Oh, he will come like a patient, a false ailment upon his lips, the details fleshed out with a storyteller’s precision – that is the tell to his identity. The questions he asks, trying so hard, the clever little worm, to impale me on his hook, but alas, there is not much one can print in the newspaper to discredit me, when all that can be written is already printed on the elixir’s label – Results May Vary. No man was ever sued for that.’

  His voice rang in my ears with the timbre of someone who could not listen to himself with enough admiration, till Merle knocked on the door and his incessant babble ceased. The patients had arrived. I had not even heard the bell tinkle.

  I followed her out into the reception area. Merle handed me a white physician’s coat, just like hers, and as I took it, a blush spread up her throat and I grinned. My, we looked the part! Behind the counter with her, I was surprised at how little space there was. Her tidy little body was already making busy, crammed next to mine.

  She showed me how to fill the bottles and I liked the artistic way the ingredients fell – a leaf of mint, a sprig of rosemary, petals of whatever flower Merle and her father had no doubt swiped from a neighbour’s bush. I cast her enough sidewise glances to give her that infernal blush a hundred times over – just to check for the family resemblance. Between her obtuse plainness and his commanding obliqueness I started to see the sperm of their connection. Her mother must have been a pretty chameleon, to have a daughter who could change her colours so quickly before my eyes.

  The customers flowed in and out with an easy rhythm until there were only two of them left to see the self-proclaimed doctor.

  ‘Do you mind if I knock off early?’ Merle said to me, her fingers patting down one of her newly acquired kiss curls.

  I scrutinised her face, thinking she was teasing me, for I was working for her father and not the other way around, no matter how much my soul wished it. Not knowing what to say, I nodded and she slipped the white coat from her surprisingly shapely shoulders and sallied out through the preparation room door.

  I wiped down the counter, refilled the bottles of herbs from bags below the counter, checked the caps of the bottles, counted the money, got the broom to sweep up the odd sprig that had fallen to the floor. Whatever patient was in with Crisp, this one must be a
chinwagger, talking his ear off with their tales of woe. The last two gents seemed well enough, impatient, but fine specimens of men, the likes of which I had fought beside in the trenches and seen blown to smithereens by their so-called bravery. There is not much bravery in being dead, I am sure of that.

  I kept myself busy while the hands of the clock flew around half an hour. I walked over to Crisp’s door and listened, hoping to catch a lull in the conversation so I could interrupt, but not even a murmur offered itself up to my ears. I pushed opened the door a chink, and then wider. The room was empty. Crisp had vanished like air under the door, undetectable. Puzzled, I spun on my heel, but the two gents who had been waiting ever so patiently for Crisp stood to block my way, their jackets gaping to show me their guns.

  ‘Is your name Crisp?’ they said.

  To the astonishment of my own ears, I said yes. Where had that mad affirmation come from? How was that possible? Little my mind roared, but all that came out of my mouth was Crisp. What had he done to me? I was slow to catch on, the dupe that I was. I called out for Merle but there was no answer except for the sound of my boots scraping the floor as I pathetically tried to resist.

  At the police station, the cell they locked me in smelled, ironically, of piss, which my own bladder ached to add to. All that flaming elixir gone to waste! What could I do but contribute to it, with the indignity of my fellow cellmate looking on. ‘Good on you, mate,’ he slurred as the golden arc hit the wall. I noticed then the splatters of blood congealing upon the floors and I retched over my shoes.

  The first stars were almost out by the time they attempted to charge me for operating without a doctor’s licence, but by then I was rage filled enough to spit out my own name in their faces. The police were thick as two small planks. How could I be Crisp? They put me back in the cell, my cellmate long gone. I thought the concrete slab would be my bed and the flea-infested blanket my cover, but who should stroll in but Professor Doctor Crisp himself, cool as can be. An icicle wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.