The Black Peacock

by Rachel Manley

  In the corner at the end of the lower shelf I noticed a black peacock feather tucked away. It had to be Othello’s. Nora had said that peacock feathers in a house were bad luck. Reaching for it, I discovered its spine stuck between the pages of a thin book, the last on the shelf nearest the window. I pulled out the book with its unusual bookmark. Wallace Stevens, a poet I had never read. The broken spine had caused the pages to splay, opening at the poem marked by the feather.

  … I saw how the night came,

  Came striding like the colour of the heavy hemlocks

  I felt afraid.

  And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

  I looked back to the top to see the title. Black Domination.

  I slipped the long feather back into the page and took the book with me, deciding to sit in the sun and read Wallace Stevens rather than write or dust.

  As I pulled a chair from the patio, I could hear Aesop far away, sweeping the yard. The ever-curious Othello walked over from the side of the windmill to see who was there. Othello really was a busybody. I was getting to know his routine. He liked admiration and company, which he pretended to ignore. I would miss him. I sprawled in the chair with the sun on my face, on my shoulders, on my legs, its reprieve of happiness spreading over me. One forgets one’s romance with the sun; it surprises me time after time as if its embrace has no memory. I didn’t want to read anymore, didn’t want to be bothered as long as the gentle warmth lasted. So I was irritated when Aesop’s shadow appeared round the corner.

  “Is it okay I borrow a book?” I asked, holding the cover toward Aesop.

  He shrugged indifferently.

  “I mean, can I take it with me?”

  “You going?” He took a seat on his haunches, his broom, a stake placed strategically in front of him. He looked at me with unconcealed curiosity.

  “Yes. Time to go,” I said.

  “Othello will miss you.” He nodded at the horizon. Othello was now out of view. “He likes women more than hens.” He laughed his cya-cya vulgar laugh. Then he looked wistful. “He loved Mamta, too.”

  “Why do you say ‘loved’? Othello knew Mamta? Is she gone? Was she here?”

  “Of course. This is her home.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Mamta seemed to hang like a dark shadow over this place — over Daniel, over Aesop. Over Charon? Now it was Othello. Aesop pushed himself up by his broom and swept briefly at the step.

  “Is Mamta’s mother here?”

  “Donna? She could be dead,” he said matter-of-factly, brushing a step with his hand then patting it as though they were the thigh of a familiar before taking a seat.

  “Donna lost her senses. Voices always chatting in her head. Mamta more like her mother. They close. Charon got peace like me. He have the gift of silence from they both born, she first come struggling and bawling, he just passing through sweet and peaceful, staring out at de world like he belong. How twins could be so opposite?”

  “Aesop! They’re twins?”

  “Yes. Two peas from the same pod.” He nodded sadly. “Mamta, she loved books like my father. All these book people — my father, Mamta, Daniel, you. They walk in that old room, they don’t see how books gather dust, how they come to mulch, all their secrets leaking into sea air. Who cares? Not a soul remember those books, the people that write them all dead. But they care.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear more. I had the feeling that knowing more would make me somehow feel responsible. But respon-sible for what? Yet I felt compelled to listen to Aesop. He was in an unusually talkative mood.

  “Was Mamta close to your father?”

  “Esopus was a wanderer and a wonderer like Daniel. He gave me nothing but my name. He found my mama here with this land. I must be one of his fables! He take Mama round the world like he borrowed her, never make her his own, and when she die of typhus, he send me back here to the land of my grandmother.”

  The land of his grandmother; this small island about which he evoked a nationalism as potent as any European or American would.

  “Esopus is your father?” I would have never figured that, but it made sense. I was sure Daniel didn’t know this, though he had told me about Esopus. He had met him. He lived in his home, read his books the way one dips from a large collection, wishing one could live long enough to read even a fraction of them. Of course, Esopus was father to this taciturn caretaker.

  “Ten years ago, Esopus turn up here waiting to die. Like he think my mama’s land need him body back.”

  I sat up and put Wallace Stevens down on the table beside me.

  “So Esopus was your father?”

  “When I introduced him to Daniel, they greet each other like two gentlemen. I brought them something to drink. Esopus told some story about going to live on the mainland and invited this stranger to come and babysit his books like he own this place. By the time Daniel came back, Esopus long dead and Mamta like she gone mad with grief. She loved Esopus. They give her drugs on the mainland that only send her madder. I went over and fetch her back. Charon try to calm her with love. I give her every tea in this small forest. But sometimes it’s like she haunted walking up and down. She never stop talk, not even at night to sleep. I send her over there on Battle Beach to stay in her mother’s house with a lady who nurse her mother before she die. Mamta loved water. She lived on the beach as a child. She was like a mermaid. I thought her element would cure her.”

  I was listening for the unharmonious snorting of the old car, hoping Daniel would return. Aesop was slumped as though he’d given up whatever pretense of anger and exasperation he held toward the world. He was a man, sitting with his grief.

  “She was a strong swimmer so I know when the old lady call me and say she disappear and leave her shoes on the beach, she not coming back. But Charon, who never shed a tear for their mother, gone there every day to look for his sister for hours, then for days, then for weeks. Then I see he bury her in his heart for he stop searching the beach, stop staring out at the empty sea. You’d think he found her.”

  “What does Daniel think has happened to her?”

  “I don’t know. He goes down to Battle Beach. Sometimes he there for hours, shading his eyes like he expect her to swim up from the horizon. Say he looking for Columbus! How he knows that’s the gate she pass through to leave this world I don’t know. I never tell him anything and Charon, he never talking. I ask myself what Daniel know. He hiding something about my daughter. Let her haunt him.”

  Aesop cackled knowledgably. I was doomed to hear the story.

  Charon hadn’t wanted Daniel to come back but Aesop said he didn’t care really as it would save him having to look after the house and Esopus’ books. He knew Esopus was on his way out. Esopus he said was a writer too, adding bitterly, “like that make a man a man.”

  “That’s the last home all those little paper philosophers going have right there in the sea spray sticking them millions of pages together. Is so empire fall.”

  I ignored his bitter remark.

  “Aesop, tell me about the peacock in the library window?”

  “I don’t know,” he said and spat at his feet. “It always there.” He pulled a weed from beside the step, but shook out the earth and lay it down gently on the patio behind him as though he planned to plant the weed elsewhere.

  “After you no tourist. We not no tourist island. Why you want to know?”

  I shrugged and was about to defend my interest, but he went on.

  Esopus had hired a specialty mason to put in the glass.

  “That room became his church and that window his passion. So, like everything in that old man’s mind, he find a way to connect the dots. He say his new dream is the perfect bird, a black peacock. He want a new species, like cross-pollen flowers — a jet-black rose — or graft one fruit to another, all mix-up mulattos, Portugee and black like me, now th
ese damn birds. He cross them on the main-land and I bring them over here for him as starlings on the ferry in a fish pot. The peafowls never pretty but Othello was majesty from him small. He know his place in this world.

  “But from the time these black birds come is bad luck. You mustn’t play round with God’s business. That’s nature. Esopus never care nuttin’ bout God’s business. He fly in the Big Man face all him life.

  “Esopus call him Othello, but Donna call him Lucifer.

  “Othello all show and no action. He never breed the hens, neither the black ones nor the others, so Esopus arrange more males to come but they not pretty like Othello and each one die. Othello curse them. He’s a smart bird. He drive them up the top of the Samaans so high they can’t sleep. They preparing for flight all night long. They fill with despair and soon they don’t eat and they die. Othello don’t care. Enough is enough. He hear my wife call him Lucifer. No more devils Donna say and chase him round the yard with the broom. Only time I ever wonder if I hear Charon speak a word. I sure he say bitch, but his mouth don’t move.

  “Bitch or not, Donna show Othello de bright peacock in the window. She want to make him feel shame, but as he gaze at all the pretty light he crow like he blessed by a rainbow. It was always going to be Othello or Donna. I believe is all this blackness drive my wife mad. Esopus really get him black for true, crossing it with one black bird after the other, goose, eagle, who knows what else! Where some people get all these ideas that you must trouble the nature of things. Caribs and Arawaks long dead. He searching for them like he can’t swallow history and done. He don’t follow no law of God or nature, he don’t marry. So he left with a bastard like me who don’t care ’bout him damn books.”

  Othello had returned during Aesop’s monologue. He pecked jerkily at the stony lawn. Aesop gazed at him fondly.

  “You were the old man’s undoing.”

  The sun came and went behind the odd cloud and I’d shield my eyes. Aesop looked at me from the stairs without recognition as if I was a member of some anonymous audience behind the stage lights.

  “My father loved that bird. The perfect specimen, he says, watching that big brute march past him every day. Charon his grandson only laugh watching them. Othello never care for Esopus. Othello play de hand he dealt. Eat, sleep, wake, and mad the hens. He never sire one of them. He won’t be party to Esopus’ experiments.”

  Aesop picked up a few tiny stones and threw them toward the cliff. Othello looked up at the sound of the first as it hit the ground softly, but continued his search for grain.

  “They all got a curse. Esopus, Donna, Mamta, Charon. Even Daniel just waiting for Christopher Columbus like he got his soul to give him back, and smoking the damn cigarettes and trying not to cough. And you — you studying ghosts too. Except for Othello!”

  I retrieved the book, hoping Aesop would go. The sun was out and I wanted to laze and dream, not be exhausted by his island problems.

  “If you boyfriend plan to die when he finish his book, tell him since he says he’s a sailor, I hoping he go out to sea and don’t leave no mess for me to clean up. It’s enough I stuck with more books.”

  “Hmmm,” I said and looked at the bird, hoping he’d rescue me from Aesop’s strange hiatus of confession. I imagined a picture of Daniel dead in a canoe, pushed out to sea. Did Wallace Stevens know there are black peacocks? Probably not, I thought. He was probably writing about death. I’d asked Daniel.

  Aesop jumped to his feet and threw the broom at the bird. It ran a few feet, squawked, and shook itself to recompose his feathers.

  “Othello, you made of sterner stuff. You’ll outlast us all.”

  “Can I keep the book, Aesop?”

  “Yep, you can keep the book.”

  DANIEL

  I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of Henny this morning. She died many years ago. I suppose we hadn’t kept in touch in any significant way, but whenever Timmy and I were in Jamaica at the same time, Henny would have us over.

  It was really hard on Henny. Henny was in love with me. I chose not to know that, even though Timmy tried so hard to tell me. I didn’t want to have to deal with it. It was ruthless to use Henny’s information to track down Lethe. It was cruel to show my feelings, knowing what I knew. But that was okay; untended, her feelings should have just washed away with time. I had no right to let it become anything more.

  But I began to despair of my quest; Lethe had stood me up so many times. Henny was always there to pick up the pieces, to tease me, to goad me into seeing the fool I was, to make it all seem ridiculous, to have another drink, to go to the movie with me instead.

  And so it happened. I was angry, disappointed, lonely, and Henny became my solace. How many times would I turn to her only to receive a call or a note from Lethe that would be enough to make my heart jump, to make me forget about what could or should be, what was kind or honourable, and I would be off to tilt against another useless windmill.

  It is a matter of shame to me that Henny had to visit Lethe. It was the final humiliation. I tried to forget it, but it raises its head every time Lethe brings up the damn snail. Of course it was impaled. Lethe was the thorn on which I impaled my psyche. And Lethe was the thorn in her side, impaling Henny.

  Henny thought Lethe was being merely coquettish, a tease, a siren, a femme fatale using her wiles to attract and then repel me. What Henny never knew, for I never admitted it, was that Lethe remained my vanishing fair harbour. Had I empowered Henny with my information as she had so generously shared hers, she would not have walked up to knock on that door. I have decided I will never tell Lethe. I owe that much to Henny’s memory.

  Lethe has decided to leave. I am not surprised. With her it’s purely instinctive. She shrugs her shoulders and sets off down God knows what road. Somehow she knows it’s time to go. And it’s okay. But how can she know what I haven’t told her — I have completed my story. But she knows, even though she doesn’t know, she knows. Aesop will send it off to post today. Lethe will get it when she gets back to Montreal and to Alex. That’s something else I know and she knows, but she doesn’t know she knows yet.

  For me, the ending is just right. This visit is a final happiness I will take with me for the time I have left.

  Lethe always takes my world and shakes it from its axis, then leaves me longing.

  Once, long ago when I was sick, Nora called. She promised she’d drop by to see me. So it was a pleasant surprise when Lethe arrived instead.

  “I brought you a pie!” she said, looking pleased with herself.

  She offered me the dish and I looked at the pie in awe. Never had I seen Lethe in a kitchen. Never had I seen Lethe cook nor did she seem ever to want to be associated with any form of domesticity. When she ate she did it with disinterest, preferring to gulp down a quick milkshake or a tepid cup of coffee, imbibing her endless diet of smoke, which she explained was preferable to picking her fingers in public, though she often did both simultaneously.

  “Why Lethe, you baked me a pie!”

  She smiled.

  And though I dislike desserts, I made us coffee and sliced two pieces of the pie that I remember was filled with apples, for I felt amused by the irony of being offered that particular fruit by Lethe — and we sat down together side by side and smoked and ate. I was so happy. I was only twenty-two, but at that moment my life felt complete. There are times when I feel low, and that memory comes back, and it restores a man’s courage.

  LETHE

  I must have drowsed off to sleep when I became aware of the presence of sound. Not a rustling, more like a precise bristling. A tensing or tightening, as if there were a fire somewhere. Then I heard Othello cry, and I sat up to see him shrieking blindly to the sky, his loudmouth beak opened wide. He lowered his stare to me, a little shy, a little startled, yet very regal, straining to spread his feathers ever stiffer and wider, the light behind t
hem outlining their fine filigree. They formed a perfect fan, the veiny stalks, the staggered black feather-eyes, velvet on silken lace, arranged in a vast bouquet surrounding his body. His scrawny stick legs staggered, adjusting to balance the weight as he cried out for the world to hear him. I am what I am. The peahens sauntered by him, pecking at the earth, not unconcerned, as they paused to turn their necks round to straighten their own feathers, but they never looked straight at Othello, who called out and stiffly continued his show, turning slowly to reveal his shorter back feathers. He completed his three-sixty-degree turn and faced me again, straight on, his feathers almost hissing, his head like a narrow mask, steely and impregnable, locked into the splendour, the euphoria that lasts as long as it lasts.

  Slowly his demonstration reversed, a circus dismantling in silence, a closing down of the show.

  “Come on, Othello.” I called out. “Seriously now, are you flirting with me?”

  DANIEL

  My book on Columbus is the last of all my stories. It is my end.

  Now I will study only the sea. The seaweed shuffles its truths back and forth, this way and that. Things matter for a little time and then they don’t matter.

  The sea is my home, the sea is my mother.

  The only coast with sand is on the far side of the island, Battle Beach. Its sand is grey. Somehow, this makes the place more real, its texture like disappointment. I go there from time to time, haunted by Mamta. What was her mother’s home is up on the cliff at the far end of the beach, where I believe her mother died. Sometimes I think I see Mamta walking down the beach, glamorous and sardonic, the way she was before her mind began to crumble. She tightens her wrap, her head held high, and turns away as she passes me. If only such a vision were real, true. That would be okay. That would be good. That would release me. On other occasions I fear I’ll see some piece of garment washed up amongst the seaweed that might be hers. I am haunted by the idea she may have last been here, but Aesop won’t tell me anything. If I ask about her, he wanders away, muttering what I’d like to believe was inane nonsense, but what I know is not. The other day it was: “Brown people got this conscience thing. What would only make white people blush, they suffer like a sickness. I hope I don’t catch it.”