The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  We would collect these names for use in the show, hoping some war widow or grieving parent would be still hungry for answers after all this time. I had had enough of the dead as a child when I worked with my father for a couple of bob out of Rookwood, digging the paupers’ graves in that vast necropolis. Blisters ripened like fruit on my young hands as I laboured alongside him. Until he knocked off for a smoko and didn’t come back – enticed to a game of cards in the stonemason’s yard, or hitching a ride to the nearest hotel to coat his lips in a beer’s cold foam while his son did the backbreaking work of a full-grown man.

  Merle walked beside me, my eyes following the forward kick of her skirt to see what I thought could be the curve of a belly. But it was like a bellows; how could I tell the difference between the breath of her skirt and the growing life therein?

  We would always look for the freshest soil, better still if dotted with splashes of flowers: these were the ones that were missed the most. Merle would kneel down and bow her head, reading out the details that could be gleaned from the headstone, freshly hewn from the stonemason’s chisel, or sometimes still only a wooden cross with a name carved upon it. Any passer-by would see a mourning couple – she overcome, he standing supportively by. The worst were the little ones, those brief spans of life that lasted less than a year. Merle wouldn’t falter as she read out the harrowingly brief inscriptions, and I wanted to shake her then, hear her teeth rattle in her head. How could we bring a child into this forsaken world?

  I sometimes tried to grab her hand as it swung by her side, for I had had the taste of her now and I would have taken my fill where I could. I did not care about the dead, and the tombs would have shielded us from the eyes of the living. I didn’t care about the nettles and the wild Scottish thorns. I would have laid my body down for her. I would be her blanket, her shelter, her new skin. The last time she pulled her hand away I slapped her. My hand ringing out like the bell of judgement.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Merle, before you told your father? I could have sorted it out. There are people in Macquarie Street who for a fee will help girls out …’ Before I could continue, her spittle was running down my cheek. She had spat right into my face.

  ‘Shows how much you know!’ she said, wiping her chin. What did she know that I didn’t? I wanted to take her then, drag her to the nearest sandstone tomb and show her in the biblical way all she didn’t yet know about men. But there was no time: we couldn’t be late, for Crisp’s timetable was inscribed in stone.

  At night we shared a plate of greasy chops, the vegetables boiled to mush. The locals whispered amongst themselves at our presence. Crisp took Merle up to their lodgings above and I was cast out to the stables where the horses whinnied in their hay-scented dreams. At the time I thought Crisp was just teaching me another of his veiled lessons, the riddle in the riddle. If only I could have blinked the haydust out of my eyes. With Merle I was but a man of dust and straw and bullshit. Lily was the snow water I would wash myself in, my hands would never be so clean.

  I rapped my knuckles against my own skull to banish the silence and pulled off the nose and beard, glad to breathe without the fumes of theatre glue. There were no more sounds from her room. My mind swam with what they could be doing in there, and nothing gave my jealousy any respite. A better perspective would be had from outside, away from the whole damn lot.

  The cold night air lapped up to me, like a cat in want of attention. The night air made me new and I inhaled it deeply. From outside I looked up to the windows; the light was on, but I could make nothing out in Lily’s room, no shadow of a cooing embrace. The smoke from a neighbour’s chimney drifted out slowly like the plume of a horse’s breath; the shed windows were dark in front of me.

  The shed. Why hadn’t I turned my attention there before? I tried my luck with the handle and, as all handles do, it gave way to my persuasion.

  It was bat-dim in there, and dusty, the ashes long since dead in the grate. The birds on their roosts hopped from one claw to the other, rearranging their feathers, as I entered, then settled. The crow flapped upwards and watched me from its rafter. The dark feathers caught the light as it turned its head with clockwork precision every time I moved.

  Oh, the Jew had set it up all right, a meagre bed and a stack of books, a crate with odds and sods piled upon it. Here were objects even the most seasoned treasure hunter would pass to the rag and bone man without a blink. The crow cawed at me, so I picked up an old iron nail and threw it, but it didn’t move: my aim was poor in the dim light.

  My hands swept under the mattress, but there was nothing; behind the books, nothing; but then I went to that childhood hiding place, the pillow, the place where all innocents conceal their treasures. It took only a second before my hand hit upon them: a box and an envelope. I opened the letter, filled with holes, censored with scissors like in the war, unreadable. The box with threads I shook like dice in a cup, but what was inside would not come out, no matter how I rattled, for there was no opening. The crow hopped down at my feet and looked at me with its transparent white eye, the pupil staring right into me without apology, and I wanted to throw the whole blasted-to-buggery black box at it. The bird was Lucifer itself, waiting for me somehow, but for what?

  I hastily returned the useless things to their hiding place and closed the door, still feeling the crow’s cold pupil bearing down on me.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ari

  We stood in the wings, the trunk at our feet. We had carried it from the house to the theatre between us, like a treasure chest. Around it the floor was all aglitter; someone’s costume had cried a rain of little coloured jewels.

  We had practised without pause, and slept only in short bursts. Beauty, the raven, had played her part, undoing the threads of the swan-feather cape. Lily had unpicked the seams, head bowed over each stitch. Stray feathers floated about the room, tickling our noses until they fell forgotten on the floor, only to be rediscovered clinging to my foot sole, trapped in a shirt sleeve, stuck in a curl of my hair. We had practised and practised, Lily bursting out of the trunk, Beauty flying from her perch on the menorah, but Lily had always remained clothed. It still sat uneasy with me that we were even contemplating such a thing, but she was adamant that it would be but a flicker of light’s worth, a will o’ the wisp, that the cloak would shield her mostly.

  Lily caught my eye as she stroked the hackles of the raven. What did she have to be ashamed of? She was Eve in the Garden.

  From the wings I took good measure of the audience, their faces caressed and softened by the overflow of stage light. This time I didn’t hold any deluded expectations that my aunt and uncle would come, and for this I was glad: a sense of freedom trickled down my neck with the perspiration. For a moment I could feel that my life belonged to me and me alone, as it had before the night my mother and I fled.

  I used to watch my mother readying herself to go out. She would hand me a patterned ivory comb and let me sink it into the silky water of her hair, the whiteness of the comb against her dark tresses like a candle against the night. She would braid it then, the strands solidifying it into one thick rope, ready for her fingers to twist into a bun, a firm seafaring knot.

  Her white blouse was starched and heavy; the sleeves billowed while she strode down the hall in her purposeful boots looking for her gloves and muff. My grandfather’s pocket watch hung from the belt that cinched her waist, appearing and disappearing in the folds of her skirt like the moon on a cloud-tossed night. She was heading out, even though the snow had started to ice the windowsills. My grandmother would be there, darning, her disquiet at my mother’s venturing out unvoiced except for the occasional sharp suck of her teeth.

  For my last birthday, my aunt bought me the biography of Houdini, based on the recollections of his wife. She wrapped it neatly in my laundered clothes folded at the end of my bed, hidden from my uncle’s demanding stare and the flash of his scissors. When touring in Hungary, the land of his birth, Houdini had come up
on a dress that had been stitched with the utmost care and was said to have been worn by Queen Victoria. But before the master dressmaker could send it, the monarch had passed away. So he had a dress fit for a queen but no queen to wear it. The dressmaker was reluctant to sell the last souvenir of his royal contract, but Houdini had the power of persuasion and he persuaded the dressmaker that none but his mother should wear it. He had it altered to fit her right away and sent a telegram and the money for his mother to come and meet him and Bess. While he waited for her ship to berth, he set about elevating his mother to the position she deserved.

  He went to a fine hotel and persuaded them to let him use their Palm Garden for his private coronation, inviting all those old family friends and relatives who had snubbed his mother, turning up their refined noses at her for marrying a poor lonely rabbi many years her senior, rich in his learning and not much else, who had dreams of a life in a country he could call home.

  She made her arrival in the splendid dress and was queen for an evening. How I would have loved to have done something like that for my own mother, to give her a new dress, make her a queen. I remembered the patches on her skirt, only visible from my child’s eye level, the little thick caterpillar of stitches crawling across the once-fine fabric. How I would have loved to buy that queen’s dress for her now.

  When my mother rustled to the door, scooping me up in her arms and covering my face with her kisses before she left, I did not know where she was going.

  My grandmother would call out to her, her voice ringing down the hallway. ‘Why do you do this, Zipporah? What would your father have thought?’

  ‘It has to be done,’ was all she said, before she swept out into the dark. I was not enough to anchor her. All night I would listen to every footfall in the street below, the sound of the tree branches sharing their secrets, the sighing of my grandmother as she turned in her fretful sleep, hoping that my mother would return soon.

  The applause for the previous act rang out, clapping me out of my reverie. I hadn’t even taken in what their song had been about. The performers rushed off the stage, the flush hot upon their cheeks, a thin film of sweat glazing their faces. Lily smiled and nodded at them as they rushed past us, a breeze following in their wake, but they barely acknowledged her. Lily inspected her feet at their rebuttal, pushing at the stray sequin with the toe of her shoe. The curtain closed and a stagehand helped us shift the birdcages, the menorah and the trunk into position, while from the pit the theatre orchestra played, their notes barely covering the voices that rose and fell on the other side of the curtain, an impatient audience. Lily looked up at me, a sense of panic rippling off her which she tried to cover with a smile. She planted the feathered cloak behind the curtain; a sheet had been tied up as a makeshift screen and a girl had been enlisted to help with the puzzle of the buttons of Lily’s dress.

  We took our marks, the stage lights like the rim of dawn on the horizon. The currawong let out her morning song, and the raven replied. The lyrebird’s eyelids blinked, his tail shimmering over his head like a shroud of mountain mist. The parrot ignored it all, running his beak through his plumage until each filament of feather stood apart from the next.

  The curtain rose, and all I could see was the silhouette of the audience in the blinding light. My feet took root on the stage floor. Lily’s hand rose to my back, her touch kindled me. I stepped into the light, my fiddle to my chin, my bow poised. I felt suddenly alive, tall, a green shoot responding to the sun of the expectant faces of the audience. Lily stood beside me, her feathered fan like a giant eyelash modestly lowered. The lyrebird flicked and clacked his tail and leaped from the stand, taking bold steps; from his beak came wild improvisations around my tune. Together they danced, the feathers from his tail and her fan quivering alertly at each other before fluttering to the ground like eiderdown. The music lit them up: Lily’s hair fizzed around her face with each spin, her smile flashed and the lyrebird’s eyes glittered; they courted each other with every step. Until Lily stamped her feet and the lyrebird flicked his tail, a waterfall of feathers dipping over his head in the air towards her, his chosen one.

  The dance ended. Lily took her chair; I wrapped the blindfold over her eyes, my fingertips brushing against the soft flesh of her nape. The currawong was on her shoulder and the white pages audience members had scribbled on, wanting her to guess, were like flares in the darkness. The currawong nibbled at her ear and she cried out the words. I could hear her nervousness creep into them, but our code didn’t falter and was right every time, to the audience’s delight. The last word was still moist upon her lips when she got up from her chair and dashed to change, my violin filling in the void in her absence, though no note, no matter how tenderly the bow glided over the string, could match her.

  Two stagehands positioned the trunk before me, another pair bringing out the screen. Lily appeared in the cape, the feathers floating up around her face: a fierce angelic beauty. She looked at me, her feelings unveiled, and I knew that the thing between us was not just birds and magic, but a tangible, living thing. Together we were more than just two performers working upon a stage. The heart in my chest sang for her.

  Lily stepped in front of the screen the moment I stepped behind it. The raven took her cue and took wing across the stage, settling on the edge of the screen.

  ‘Ladies and gentleman,’ Lily chimed, ‘the Metamorphosis invented by the Master Mystifier, the Grand Illusionist, Houdini himself!’

  She opened the trunk and a little envelope of her flesh peeked out from the safety of her cloak. I stepped in and curled down; the trunk closed, the padlocks clicked and, all alone in the womb-dark, I listened for her voice, pushing back the rolling panic that made the ocean roar in my ears. I could hear the vibrations of the screen as it was dragged across in front of me. The raven let out a croaking caw that was my cue to kick quickly at the secret door I had made.

  My back strained at the top of the trunk to tilt out the hinges and free myself. I could hear Lily’s voice reassuringly through the wood, ‘When I clap my hands,’ she said with thrill in her tone, ‘there will be a miracle, like in days of old, like with Osiris, Lazarus, Dionysus, Jesus …’

  She was buying me time with every syllable. I scrambled, disoriented in the black space, and struggled free. The hinges closed behind me and I was out, Lily’s shadow falling across me. I could hear my cue as her hands went:

  Clap

  Clap

  Clap

  I appeared the instant she disappeared. I could barely hear the audience’s applause, my heart was thumping so loud.

  With a flourish, I pulled back the screen. The trunk appeared undisturbed, just as it should be, but I felt panic slow my movements, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I heard the audience breathe as I undid the trunk, the keys slicing through the locks. I didn’t want her to be deprived of air for one moment more than necessary. The trunk lid flipped up and there, glorious, she rose, my Venus.

  She was the magic.

  I picked up my violin and plucked the notes, my fingers slippery. The heat of the lights belted down on the crown of my head like the harsh afternoon sun. Lily twirled her hand and the raven hopped to her shoulder, her beak pulling the first ribbon. The cloak fell to one side, but she was still hidden. The raven arched over her head to the other arm and released the second tie, and the cloak fell slowly to her knees like melting wax. The raven circled her head. For one brief moment she burned, the flesh of her body like a white flame.

  She was white like the parchment before the Hebrew characters danced upon it, before the scribe fixed its destiny with ink. I looked away, but I had to return my eyes to the holy white curled flame of her, the lights flickering, hovering over her skin. She was a page fit only for God’s hand. She was a pillar of cloud before the lights snapped to black. When they came back on, we were gone, except for the parrot that had settled in the middle of the stage. Abracadabra, Abracadabra, Abracadabra, he pealed, and with a puff of smoke he was gon
e too, the applause like the world’s wild heartbeat in my ear.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Lily

  With a tenderness, the raven plucked at the ribbons that secured my own feathers, tugging at the ribbons as a mother ties bows. The feathered cape fell and for a moment I stood in the loneliest shaft of light in the whole world – my flaws, my imperfections, my failures, all visible. But within moments the brightness burned them away completely, so that I felt as new as if licked with a fresh coat of paint. My nakedness seemed a strange garment new-made by hundreds of amazed eyes.

  When I had been attacked, when he had cursed me as I ran, I had distanced myself from the abomination of my skin, thinking it was somehow the reason for his strike, that worse would come my way, not just curious eyes and quiet sniggers. All my life my skin had made people stare with shock, then try to blink me away, but now it was something so bright, a flare, drawing eyes toward me. No one looked away. This was my skin and I belonged in it. When we had practised, I had not had the courage to show anything but my old trousers beneath the cloak. But before the lights flared up and faded to black, Ari saw me, not just my skin, and an arrow of understanding shot from his eye to mine. The smoke shot up from the floor and together we disappeared.

  When the light rose again Ari and I were below the stage, underneath the trapdoor. The parrot held the stage alone, his singsong voice calling out. Ari reached up his hand and cradled the bird, the green feathers smeared against his chest. The applause roared in my ears, making me shiver, even though I pulled the feathered cloak around me. We stood on the platform and, as it rose upward, Ari took my hand and squeezed it. We took our bow, waves of sound filling my ears, until we were washed offstage, back into our regular clothes, Ari’s hand still holding mine.