The Bird's Child

by Sandra Leigh Price

  He had found his uncle and they had not perished as I had desired. My anger thrummed through me, the knife handle quivering in my palm. She turned and embraced him before she hurried on. Her staccato footsteps roused a neighbour’s dog, barking and scratching at the wooden gate, wanting to be out, but it was silent again at a quick hiss from my lips.

  Then the lights inside the house went out one by one. The click of the door was barely audible, but to me it was clamorous. In the barely lightening gloom the Jew was a mere outline. It was time for him to be Isaac, the sacrifice that his God had demanded of Abraham. He was the goat that would be cast out; his blood would be shed to cleanse me.

  I threw the knife, my bright and shining shooting star, its handle like a comet. She whistled as she flew towards my target. I heard his muffled gasp as the blade came close but not close enough: my accuracy had been tainted by time, rust creeping over the exacting clockwork of my skill.

  I stepped into the streetlight. My knife had pinned him, a moth to the board of the wooden door: the blade had flown straight through the flapping fabric of his mangy coat. He was tugging at the blade handle, but it was a loyal instrument and would not release itself to a hand that was not its master. Before he could register me, I struck him hard across the face. His head flipped back and hit the wall, a smear of blood across his cheek to match my own. His eyes rolled back into his head, and I struck him again. His hands grabbed at my hair, my face, trying to find purchase, but they swung wildly, meeting nothing but air. I pulled the other knife from my belt loop and brought down the handle hard on his temple, and then he was still, his hands hanging limp. His coat tore with a satisfying gash as he slumped to the ground.

  To merely thrust my knife in his guts and twist it like a bayonet held no grace, no ritual and no satisfaction. So I pulled up a lock of his hair and slipped my blade between his scalp and the strands, a clump of brown curls in my hand. As I slashed, he was transformed before my eyes. Without his Samson locks he was weakened; without the vanity of Absalom, he was made meek. In no time at all I had shorn him like a convict ready for the gallows. When I had been a dab hand at shearing, no sheep had ever looked so well shorn. The effect was pleasing: there was a ramshackle artistry in my destruction.

  My blade hovered at his throat, readying for the swipe to the jugular, when he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze to mine. He struck me then with a force I hadn’t expected, sending me crashing backwards, my knife spilling onto the footpath, glinting between us, out of my reach. Using the wall, he propped himself up, the knife now closer to his feet than mine. How could I have hesitated? He reached over and levered the pinning blade from his coat with some remnant of strength, and weighed the knife in his palm. He was not afraid. I could see it in his eyes.

  ‘I ran from Russia, but I’ll not run here, not now and not from you.’

  One of my knives in the space between us, the other in his hand; did he have the guts to wield it?

  ‘Shut up, Jew.’

  He lunged forward then, kicking the abandoned knife into the gutter, the mass of fig leaves hiding it in a sticky embrace. There was no way I was going to go down on my knees in the darkness, pathetic as a beggar. I readied myself. He took a step closer.

  ‘I’ll not be silent and I’ll not take orders from the likes of you,’ he spat.

  How dare he threaten me! She was my Lily of the Valley, my Rose of Sharon, the finest creature in all creation. She had shown her faith in me and by it I had been made a better man. How could she think of choosing the likes of him? If the knife were in my hand, one fling and it would be but a flag in his heart. He spun the handle through his fingers and I counted silently in my head the moment when I would strike. His eyes were pinned on mine, but even so I didn’t see the moment when the knife ceased to be, vanishing from his palms into nothing, my blade made air.

  ‘Abracadabra!’ he shouted and then he shoved me backwards, sending me sprawling, my arse scraping the footpath.

  I searched desperately in the darkness for the knife amidst the leaves, while trying to keep one eye on him. He towered over me and I tried to scramble upright, but with a kick of his foot I was winded and the ground rushed up to me. But I couldn’t see the other knife in his hand. Where had he smuggled that bloody knife? Was it slipped in his sleeve till he found the courage to use it? There was no telling. Panic pulsed through me.

  ‘Fight like a man, Jewboy,’ I taunted him. Let him show me his hand.

  I waited for that magicked knife to reappear, singing for my blood, death by vermin, when he hit me so hard my brain wobbled, and the world turned black.

  The sky was washed with shades of blue, the darkest high above me, near-black like the ocean deep, to the gradual blue of sapphire, every shade of blue like her eyes. How long had I been unconscious? My own blood trickled into my mouth, salty and disgusting. I spat it out. Lily had made the first blow, the Jewboy the second; what would be the fatal third? How could I have lost the upper hand, sitting in the gutter with my blood smeared on my own hands?

  I looked over at the houses, all quiet, no one stirred at Miss du Maurier’s, nor at the Jew’s. But for how long? Time was against me. How long would it be before Lily or the Jewboy told the police? I’d not grace a prison cell again, that palace of piss, shit and blood. Where could I go? All the sacrifices I made, rejected. How could I preserve myself now? My love was no lily at all, she was just as feral as a weed. How could I have been so mistaken? I sought she whom my soul loves; I sought her but found her not.

  Low in the sky hung something bright and shining, the morning star. I stared at it until my eyes blurred. I felt it communicate, in ripples of light, a language I could barely understand. It was calling to me. Calling me. Arise! Had I heard it from the star? Shakily I rose to my feet and began to walk in its direction. My feet led me down to the train tracks, towards the rail yards. Rail workers, black-clad beetles, walked across the yard, the machines, wheels and cogs all silently waiting for their touch. The blacksmith’s hammer rang out against the iron. A whistle sounded and a train left the yard, steam billowing into the sky and disappearing into nothing. The first of the morning birds began their chant, waves of small twitters to my ears as if they were saying something to me over and over, but I could not understand. Wee Lee Mee Eee.

  Wee Lee Mee Eee, the birds trilled. W L M E: letters caught between the notes in quick succession. The letters of the alphabet that Lily had plucked at my instigation. W for William. L for Little. M for mother. E for? The star in the sky seemed to be closer on the horizon, the dawn’s fingers nearly touching it to chase it away, but still it shone out its starry language like Morse code in a fit of spits and spurts.

  I looked over the rail yard, my fingers cold and turning purple. In my pocket I warmed my fingers between the fine threads of her hair like a silk tassel, the feel of it electric, but I felt even more chilled. What use did I have for it now? Carelessly, I dropped it on the footpath. Let it line the nest of the birds for all I cared. Between my fingers the minute snips of the Jew’s hair itched. I blew them to the wind before jamming my hands back in my pockets. Another train left the yard, gaining momentum like a rocket with each clack along the rail line. I could see the driver, a cigarette a beacon on his lip. He was unaware of the star above, sending out her message, wink after twinkle. Whatever was she saying?

  I walked onward in her direction, alongside the rail yard, the track like a whip stretching out. The trees with their low-slung branches were littered with birds that I could not see but only hear, little fragments of different songs; it would take a lifetime to decipher the individual notes.

  Lily had been as corrupt as the rest, hadn’t she? What else could one be if made from Adam’s rib and not God’s breath? Was it my fault she was made of clay? I had dreamed her up surely, my would-be bride, but now she was defiled, the corrupt deserved the corrupt. I ran my hand over the gash she had made in my cheek: the wound had opened anew, and the stickiness of my own blood repelled me. Rea
ching into my pocket to find a handkerchief, I touched the forgotten envelope, feeling it scratch the gravel rash on my palms and my nicked fingertips, catching on the ribboned lining of my pocket as I dragged it out. I tore it open. Inside was a birth certificate.

  As I walked close to the weak glow of one of the street lamps, the birds’ heralding grew steadily louder, their notes a xylophone up my back, and I trembled. The paper corners were chewed, by termites or mice; the page was pockmarked like the moon. I held it up, the words blurry before my eyes. It had my name upon it, my birthday and the name of my father and the name of the woman I had never met.

  Esther. Esther. Esther.

  The star seemed to throw its light with an added flare toward earth. I looked again. Father: William Little. No religion recorded. Mother: Esther Goldin. Religion. Jewish. There was a date and executor of a circumcision ceremony.

  I was awash with revulsion and dry-retched over my shoes. I read the paper again and pierced the flesh of my own palm with my nail. Was this what my father had meant at Crisp’s by ‘misshapen’? What I had thought of as normal was nothing but a deformity, a disgusting covenant with the Hebrew’s Lord. I was as tainted as the thing I hated; I had become my own target. My own blood revolted more than ever. Was there nothing I could do to erase it? Could I shuck off this old skin and grow another?

  The sky wheeled above me. Merle’s tale had had the ring of truth, it was I who had blinkered myself, for I could have verified her tale by looking in the box where my birthright had been used as a scrap to wrap a treasure in, my identity concealed in this fragile piece of a paper. Why had I collected all these things when all I wanted was one little remembrance, that little sweet-faced photograph I had lost. How could she possibly be corrupt? My poor mother who my father had forced himself upon; my mother who Crisp had seen as fruit from the money tree, ripe for the plucking; my mother who I had dishonoured by the example of my pitiful life.

  Had I looked so long for the perfect woman, never thinking she would be the woman who had borne me?

  I would not forsake her now, my mother, my Esther. Her blood ran in my veins. Surely she had watched over me my whole life, my guiding star? Was it her fault that she had no powers against my father’s neglect and Crisp’s malevolence? What stood between us now except an expanse of sky and my own blood, tainted by ignorance? I belonged with her and to her alone. I would reach her even if she lay beyond my grasp; I would follow her until my legs gave out; we would be reunited. See how she shines her light on me?

  In the trench, I had been afraid to meet my maker, afraid to sacrifice my tender flesh and fragile heart, preferring to wound myself briefly than to slaughter myself upon the war’s altar. Now I was unafraid of the grandest gesture.

  The dawn is coming, the sky is spinning, its colour changing before my eyes, but still I see her, all a-glimmer, perfect and divine. The track as I step upon it looks like a ladder beneath my feet, stretching all the way into the blue distance. My eye never leaves her for an instant. I hear the shout of the blacksmith, his tools no longer singing their metallic throng; there is the sound of feet hurrying upon the gravel. Another train hurtles along the tracks; the clickety-clack vibration thrills up my legs, thunders in my heart. A whistle screams and I am deafened. The wheels make fireworks, sparks and catherine-wheels. They are no match for her radiance. Still she shines. The train strikes me a cataclysmic blow, as a match to a Roman candle.

  Then light.

  Only light.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Ari

  Cramped beneath the sandstone and the tarp, my uncle slept through the rain-soaked night. Whatever the Birdman had given him, it had calmed him. The rain falling through the canopy lulled us, but I remained awake for a long while. My uncle’s soft snores were punctuated by the odd mumble beside me, the Birdman speaking in a language I didn’t recognise.

  When I woke the Birdman was already coaxing flames over the billycan, a loaf turning black in the ashes, the smell of cooking bread bringing me to my senses. He leaned back on his haunches, pushed his hat back on his head and soaked in the warmth. Beauty sat in the morning light bashing a small lizard senseless before it disappeared down her throat. The whole bush glowed, the eucalypts turning golden and green by turns.

  ‘Challah bread?’ my uncle croaked. His face had regained some of its colour. Carefully I helped him sit up.

  ‘Only the best damper you’ll see this side of the mountains,’ the Birdman said and picked up the hot damper, juggling it in his hands, blowing off the hot ashes. Beauty rose to his shoulder as he broke it into pieces for each of us, the steam billowing in our faces. My uncle just held it and inhaled the smell, burying his nose into it, the bread crumbling in his hands. I bit into it, watching him closely. Beauty hopped closer and stole a piece that had fallen to the ground. I tossed her another scrap until she hopped up on my hand and helped herself.

  ‘It smells like your mother’s bread, she had a knack,’ he sighed. ‘I think she talked to the bread, coaxed it to rise, used her secrets to make it light and sweet.’ His eyes softened as he looked at me. His talk of my mother, which I had longed to hear since I was a child, came so sensibly and gently from his lips that tears pricked at my eyes. ‘Your mother always loved words, in a different, powerful way. For her, the words of the Torah could protect newborn infants, guide women through labour, aid conception, assist G_d in casting out illness, and serve his children when they needed comfort to enter the World to Come – through her amulets, magic alphabets, atbash and hexagrams.’

  I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. So these were the things my mother had been doing night after night, leaving against my grandmother’s wishes. This was the meaning of the strange markings on the parchment, on my hand. Now I heard him speak it, I could barely take it all in. I was greedy for his words; they took me back to the home I had had before, when it had been just my grandmother, mother and me, before it had been crushed and destroyed in a single dark night. The weight of it felt as if it would crush me.

  ‘Once I read of Hebron,’ his voice faltered, ‘I knew my scrapbook had become a false idol. None of these places suggested as a homeland could bring back those I loved. When I read of Hebron …’ His voice cracked and no sound came out. He covered his eyes, his hand shook and I knew then he thought of all those we had both loved now lost.

  I looked around me at my uncle’s promised land, the mist rising off the silvery scrub, rivulets running down the rock face, the dark blue shadow of the gorge itself, beautiful as Eden. What would my mother and grandmother have made of it here? Beautiful as this country was, it was unforgiving to strangers in its wildness. One wrong step and the scrub would fall in behind and keep you.

  My uncle drew himself straighter and stuttered. He told me something had driven him; he had heard my mother’s voice in the cries of the birds, an angel song out of the mouths of strangers, someone who pressed money into his hand, falling branches making Hebrew letters cast by G_d’s hand for him to find his way. The Birdman looked at me and I thought the same thing: his mind had begun to wander again in his own wilderness. But my uncle’s voice was his own, his eyes steady upon mine.

  ‘Until you came, my boy, you whom I have raged against and tried to twist into a different shape. Yet it is you who come to find me, your hand guided by G_d.’ He gripped my hand, his thumb grazing the letters of my tattoo. ‘My heart’s son.’

  We carried my uncle out of the mountains to the nearest doctor’s house we saw, his breathing steady as he dipped in and out of sleep. The doctor we delivered him to was wide-eyed at our strange arrival, but he did not turn us away. He checked my uncle’s vital signs before donning his black coat and leading us out to his car to take us to the nearest hospital. We bundled my uncle into the back seat, where I supported him; as the Birdman climbed in the front seat the doctor eyed Beauty tentatively, so the Birdman tucked her under his arm, looking for all the world like a farmer with a prize chicken.

  When we arrived a
t the hospital I carried my uncle in my arms and helped settle him in the bed the matron directed me to, the white of the sheets quickly darkened by the soil from our clothes. How light he had become. The doctor on duty promptly gave him a thorough examination before determining my uncle was suffering from exhaustion and needed bed rest.

  ‘You found him just in time,’ the doctor said. ‘Not a month goes past as someone doesn’t go missing in these mountains. Search parties don’t always find them.’

  My uncle’s eyelids moved as if he was dreaming, and the relief of finding him alive suddenly hit me. How close had we come to losing him?

  ‘They come to take the healing waters or to collect specimens, and the bush just takes them, their bones found years later right where the search party had walked by.’

  The mountains would have taken his last breath to their cloudy eyries had it not been for the Birdman. How could I every repay him? He had already found himself a quiet corner, Beauty on his shoulder, his hat over his eyes, his quiet snores puckering the air.

  The matron came in with a soapy bowl of water and a sponge, ready to wash the mountain away. Together we pulled off the Birdman’s patchworked coat, my uncle’s torn jacket and trousers, removed the boots, my uncle’s feet raw with blisters – how far had he walked? – but it was I who insisted on bathing away the dirt, until the bowl ran black, seeing the scratches and cuts on his skin reveal themselves with each wipe of the sponge, tree runes. The hospital nightgown slid down over him and I lay his sleeping head on the pillow, abandoned in sleep like a child.

  I left my uncle for a brief moment to make a quick telephone call from the nurse’s station, to tell Miss du Maurier so she could let Aunt Hephzibah know that I had found him. My uncle had never wanted the telephone put on in case we were interrupted in the Sabbath. The phone rang out at the house. Why was there no one to answer it? I would have to go and tell my aunt myself. The Birdman agreed to stay until my aunt arrived, but Beauty didn’t want to stay; she hopped up onto my shoulder, a black sentinel. I went to thank the Birdman for all he had done, but he wouldn’t hear of it. The coat I tried to return, but he shook his head, ‘It belongs to you now,’ was all he said.