Black Bird

by Michel Basilieres

  And she played dress-up with her infant daughter. They chose the proper clothes together, they bathed together and brushed out each other’s hair, they dressed. Then came the neighbourhood kids ringing the bell, and they were all dressed up too. It was fun for Aline to see the surprise waiting on their doorstep, and what her mother’s reaction might be. For sometimes she smiled and welcomed the gangs of children, and sometimes she screeched and cackled at them like a witch.

  At that, Aline always responded with her own squeaky giggling, as the surprised and frightened kids ran in all directions. Her mother slammed the door. “That was one of those Trembley brats. They’re all bastards.” Together the dressed-up ladies laughed and ate the candy themselves.

  Her mother died young, in the fifties, but Aline still allowed herself to keep playing the Halloween games her mother’d taught her. It was a link between them, a time when the universe or God allowed the dead, good or evil, to circulate without hindrance among the living on earth, and Aline felt closer to her deceased mother. It was the only day she felt able to think the unthinkable: “If you’re so good, God, why have you taken my mother away?”

  She set her one-eyed jack-o’-lantern in the parlour window, lit a candle in its head and went upstairs to dress. She showered and dried her hair with a hand blower set at full to make it frizzy, and powdered it with talc to make it grey. In her bathrobe she pulled out all her black clothes of any kind, and threw them all on the bed. When she’d chosen a long black dress with long black sleeves and a long black shawl, she thought about whether or not to wear jewellery. And what kind? What goes with such a dark outfit? No, nothing at all, unless—yes, just a single, glittering, pure white diamond on a simple ring, like a talisman, the only jewellery a witch should wear!

  And so naturally she thought of her mother’s engagement ring. She remembered she’d left it in Grandfather’s bedroom. She’d better rescue it before he pawned it.

  She stepped into the hallway, thinking of the fun she’d have with the children tonight. She stood in front of his door, dreading to go in. He was still asleep. But it would be worth it to complete her outfit for the evening.

  Aline stole in as quietly as possible, leaving the door open just a crack to let in light from the hallway. She stood just inside until her eyes adjusted, listening to Grandfather rumbling in his sleep. He’d left the window open and it was cold in the room, except by the radiator under the window, which was too hot to touch. She hated being back here. It was harder than she’d bargained for. Somehow it was still musty, like the whole house. No matter how hard she tried to clean it, it was cramped and closed and mouldy. The house defeated her.

  Aline closed the window, tried to shake herself out of her sudden, despairing reverie, and looked over the dresser for her jewellery box. She opened it and searched among the pile of plastic and glass for the one true stone she had. She found it. Instinctively she put it on the same finger as her wedding ring. And then she thought, I should wear only the one ring; any other detracts from its importance. So she took them both off, put on her mother’s diamond again and placed her wedding ring in the box.

  On the dresser was a small framed photograph of Grandfather and Grandmother on their wedding day. They were young, dressed as well as poverty ever allows, standing on the steps of a small parish church. What could she have been like? Grandmother. No one would ever call Aline that. Her husband was too old, and she no longer wanted his children. How could this other woman, smiling in the photo just as Aline herself had on her own wedding day, have lived with such a horrible person for so long? Had his children? Was she aware of his job? She must have been. Yet she was a Catholic woman too: they were standing on the chapel steps with the priest above them in the doorway.

  That must be it. She’d been caught in the same trap as Aline. Lured in and then unable to escape. Grandmother had lived her life as his wife not because she approved or even tolerated him, but because she was Catholic. And now Aline would too.

  On Grandmother’s hand, holding up her bouquet, was a small whitish spot severing one finger: her wedding ring. It wasn’t possible to distinguish it from the one Aline had just removed.

  Aline realized the horrible truth: her very wedding ring had been scavenged from the dead. Her heart sank. She wasn’t bothered by its being used, second-hand; she wasn’t stuck up like that. But knowing that her husband hadn’t enough respect for either of them to allow his first wife to go to her rest with the ring that consecrated her marriage, or his second wife to live among his family with her own ring, her own dignity, was approaching the unbearable. To think that Grandfather had robbed even Grandmother’s grave meant that he’d never thought of either marriage as anything more than a simple change in his civil status. It meant she had found herself among people who knew no respect for boundaries, be they personal, societal or legal. It struck her with dread that she was wearing Grandmother’s old clothes as well. Never before had hand-me-downs or second-hand clothes from a church rummage sale weighed upon her mind; but she realized these dead woman’s clothes were hers simply because her husband hadn’t bothered to throw them out.

  A dead woman’s ring, a dead woman’s clothes. They signified not acceptance into the clan as she’d first thought, but that she was accepted as a substitute and not a person. That her own, individual life was over; she had been declared dead. Without ever having been allowed to live and speak for herself.

  And no one was bothering to do anything with Angus’s things either; they were still boxed and piled against a wall in the basement, like bricks in the very wall. The Desouches did not honour the dead; they lived off them. They built their lives off the dead, scavenged everything wherever they could find it, feared letting anything go as if to save it up was like saving money, putting away for the future.

  But was that a future worth having? To live in the clothes of the dead, eat off their plates, read their books, give their toys to the children?

  Hyde was nervous. It was a new feeling for him; he hadn’t had so much riding on success or failure since his medical school exams, and then he’d been prepared. All he’d had to do that time was show that he’d learned, prove that he knew. This time, he didn’t know. No one knew. This time he was not demonstrating a command of all the facts. This time he was creating knowledge, literally, without precedent. He was on the edge of his profession, and he was edgy. Years had been eaten up in waiting for everything to come together.

  And he was no longer young, not by any stretch. He could easily wait out the rest of his life without another opportunity. Yet he knew as well that some things needed more time. He knew some of his techniques were still too rough, that no matter how great the success he might display for himself tonight, it would be short-lived. His patient would probably not survive long, if at all. He adjusted the camera, inserted a film cartridge and set it rolling. His patient would by no means be a complete, normal subject. It might not walk, or see, or talk, or any of a thousand other normal things. A real mess. But if it lived, if it only lived unaided, for the briefest time … that’s all he wanted, that’s all Hyde needed. Proof. That’s all anyone ever needs. A few seconds of film.

  He was going to use electroshock. (He’d had mixed results with it in the past, remarkable success and shameful failure both, although those experiments had been performed on live subjects. But it did physically stimulate the tissue.) And adrenalin. A dose enough for a horse, in a syringe the size of a caulking gun. Chemicals and electricity: after all, what else was a man? It was time to find out.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. There was no way to tell which scavenged part might suddenly reach the end of its useful life and thereby doom the whole experiment. Loose ends or no, rough, untried techniques or no, there was no time to lose.

  He charged his machines, lit his lights, donned his gloves and filled his syringe. He had no trouble inserting it through the wound in the sutured chest. He pumped the liquid directly into the heart. When the syringe was totally empty he
quickly looked his patient in the eye. He saw nothing, but hadn’t expected to. He turned to his machine, flipped the power switch, set the dial to a low charge and pressed the button.

  It made a sound like a door buzzer.

  But there was no answer.

  He pressed it again, longer. He increased the charge. More. More. He set the machine on full and leaned on the button, gritting his teeth. No, no, he couldn’t fail now, no …

  The overhead light dimmed. In surprise Hyde took his hand from the button. The light came back. “Bah,” he exclaimed, and pressed again with all his force, as if the more pressure he applied, the more power would flow.

  The light blew. The machine stopped buzzing, so Hyde took his hand away. In the darkness he felt his way to the door. Light spilled in from the hallway. He looked back at the operating table, but the patient was inert. Hyde went down the hall to the utility room, where he replaced a blown fuse.

  He felt a physical release of tension, as if he’d stopped after running, or as if he’d finally been released from a small enclosed place. “I have failed, at last. It has happened: my worst fear.” Yet he felt no emotion. He was not hurt or angry. He’d always wondered what he would do, what he would feel, if he should fail in the Great Work.

  Nothing, seemed to be the answer. His worst fear had been realized and the world still went about its business, regardless. He breathed deeply, stretched his back, shut the electrical panel and went back to the operating room.

  Where the patient was breathing.

  There was a lot of pain. And then he noticed he wasn’t quite sure where he was waking up, as if he were hungover in a strange place. But there was an equal amount of pain in his chest, as if he’d eaten far, far more than he should. Except he was also ravenously hungry. He was too weak to rise, so he regurgitated where he was. Fluid rose in his mouth like a combination of searing bile and an oily marinade. It slid down the back of his throat and he gagged loudly, coughing his head up off the pillow. It stabbed the back of his skull, while his chest felt like it was tearing open.

  He flailed his arms, snagging them in the tubes speared into his veins.

  Dr. Hyde approached and held him down. He loomed overhead, laughing through white teeth. “Relax, relax.” Hyde administered an injection and wiped away the waste while the thing that used to be Hubert, among others, slowly calmed.

  “Now,” said Hyde. “Who are you?”

  Hubert blinked slowly and inhaled shallowly—a deep breath hurt too much. His eyes shifted back and forth to take in the surroundings, but they were indistinct in the darkness that lay outside the glare of the overhead light.

  “Who are you?” repeated Dr. Hyde.

  Hyde’s eyes were glowing, his whole body taut, his arms locked straight on either side of the patient, and he gazed directly into his eyes as if looking for something lost down a hole. Hubert looked away.

  “Answer me.”

  He felt a little clarity resolve out of the pain and confusion, and tried to speak. He made a whistling moan but hadn’t much strength.

  “I think fluid’s draining into your lungs. Can you speak?”

  “… yes …”

  Hyde gripped the patient’s arms urgently. “Who are you?” he hissed.

  “I don’t know.” He had an inkling that in some previous life he might have been able to answer the question. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Dr. Hyde. I’m your doctor. I saved you.”

  “Saved me?”

  Hyde giggled. “Yes. Saved you up, as a matter of fact. You’re the ultimate transplant patient. Parts of you from all over. But I need to know—who are you?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Hyde snorted. “That’s not the point. Do you know? That’s the point. Tell me—do you know? Do you feel it?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Do you feel yourself? Do you feel your soul?”

  “I don’t know. What is a soul?”

  Hyde turned away, angry. He stood with his back to Hubert. He faced him again.

  “I’ll explain. It’s possible you have amnesia and your memory will return. But it may not. So here’s the important point: if you know who you are, if you have a self, then you have a soul. But if you don’t—if you’re just an animated amalgam of interchangeable parts—then I’ve created a monster and you have no soul. If you, as an artificial man, have no soul, then the soul of a natural being transcends mere matter. It’s not just parts.” “Parts. Brought me back?”

  “Yes. You were dead. All of your parts were dead. Which part is dominant? The heart or the head? Who are you?”

  “You did this to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Hyde shouted. “To prove or disprove the existence of the soul.” He calmed a little. He reached over and grabbed Hubert by the ears. His face was flushed, and though he shouted, he was restraining himself. “I need to know. I need to know if I have a soul.”

  Hubert stared into his eyes and saw the searching. A rage was building in his head. This man had done something horrible to him. But a sorrow was emanating from his chest. This poor man was still searching his eyes.

  “I will help you find out,” he said. He reached both hands up around Dr. Hyde’s neck and strangled him.

  Hyde was so startled he hadn’t enough time to react. The patient, gazing eye to eye with him, was demonstrating the proper qualities. Conscious, deliberate action. Was it anger he saw in the monster’s eyes, or pity? A desire to help Hyde, or to strike out in revenge? It didn’t matter. What mattered was the success of the experiment. Even though, in this burst of final insight that Hyde saw as a brilliant light, instead of knocking on God’s door, he was nailing God’s coffin shut.

  Hubert watched the surprise flash over the doctor’s visage, and then the fear mounting with the redness of his face, until his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed.

  Hyde was heavy atop him. He couldn’t move. He slept.

  Green helicopters burped out green troops, trucks rolled noisily and brashly through scattering city traffic, and within hours the army had secured all that it cared to secure. No politician was without his guard, no bus or railway station or bridge off the island was unwatched, and the only foreigners granted easy access in or out through Dorval airport were another army: the press. Flashbulbs and tape recorders from around the world descended on Montreal in numbers unseen since Expo 67, because something was happening the like of which had been unknown since 1837.

  All the government buildings were policed, all embassies and consulates watched, every major street patrolled, and all the millionaires in Westmount had their own personal soldiers at attention just outside their front doors.

  But no one was watching the wretched houses on Park Avenue or in St-Henri or the Point or the East End. In those lowly neighbourhoods, unworthy of attention or protection, life progressed as usual, with cheap beer and cigarettes and black-and-white televisions. The parents found what solace they could on their meagre wages and the children excitedly, delightedly, ganged up for trick-or-treating.

  All the graves opened up and the spirits came drifting down from the mountain. It was Halloween and the streets rang with the laughter of goblins and witches and ghosts, demanding their annual due. People all over Montreal handed out bribes of sweets and small coins to ward away trickery, mischief and worse.

  Except in Westmount, where soldiers armed and ready kept the rich anglophones safe from the children of the poor.

  Gangs of ragged scarecrows, and zombies with axes buried in their heads or backs, still ran from door to door long after dark. Aliens with glowing eyes and flashing zap guns demanded their tribute, fairy princesses waved their glittering wands and leprechauns charmed; black-masked stripe-shirted robbers held open bags marked with dollar signs; skeletons rattled, pirates set their beards afire, and a Frankenstein lumbered unnoticed through the streets, bleeding at the seams in his flesh and trailing catheters.

  The cold, ratt
ling damp of autumn clung to him and he sought warmth and relief.

  He was attracted by the noises of laughing, yelling children. He found them running up and down streets dodging cars and grouping at doors, where they were welcomed and given gifts. Flocks of them scattered and split seemingly at random, but when one rang a bell alone, she’d find herself swallowed into a gaggle of revellers before the door opened, and have to assert herself for her share.

  Up and down the street, house lights blinked on and off like fireflies as doors opened to disburse candy to children, and jack-o’-lantern grins flickered in windows. Light and heat—and doors opening to let it out. Hubert fell in with Moonie McCairn and his friends and looked not so out of place with their costumes, and not so outrageously large or adult beside the hulking Moonie, though that was no concern of his. He was handed apples and ravenously enjoyed them; and then the door was shut, and he followed the children again.

  Jean-Baptiste stood naked with his back to the mirror, turned his head and examined himself. The cop had done an excellent job. There were no marks at all. He was surprised, considering the pain he’d felt at the time. It had been a week before he could sit or sleep on his back. During the day he’d stood leaning his elbows or forearms on the horizontal bars of his cell, holding a book in his hands just outside the cage, gazing past the bars to read—bars that disappeared when he was swept into the story.

  Once he was satisfied that his backside was unscarred, he noticed how pale his flesh was. No suntan this year. Not just his torso, but his arms and face. He’d missed the hottest part of the summer. Grandfather’d always said about Montreal, “Ten months of winter and two months of hell.” He’d suffered from the heat in August as everyone had, but he’d been stuck inside.

  Now he was looking forward to getting out, was gathering his things together for his release next morning, but he was not looking forward to going home. Father had never come to visit.

  He thought about the cheque he still had from Woland; maybe he should take a vacation. What else was he going to do with the money, really? He could hand it over as a contribution to the house, as a peace offering. It might help Father with his plans or pay some outstanding bill, or buy some new clothes for whoever needed them. But though that might smooth out his homecoming, even though it was more money than he’d ever had, it wasn’t enough to make a big difference for anyone at home. It might ease things for a week or so, even provide some small treats like an early Christmas, but it wouldn’t be long before the money was gone and forgotten, swallowed into their lives like a mere drop in the proverbial bucket, and then things would be the same as they had always been. They’d skimp and save so as to limp from one week to the next, never daring to spend an extra dollar, always worried there’d be too little on the plates. No, a single injection of cash would do nothing to alleviate their worries.