Bridge of Clay

by Markus Zusak

  “Pianos?” he’d boomed the first time she went in. He fired an orange peel at the bin and missed. (“Shit, from one meter!”) Deaf as he was, he picked up on her accent. “What would a traveler like yourself want a piano for? It’s worse than a lead weight around your neck!” He stood and reached for the nearest Hohner. “Slim girl like you needs one of these. Twenty bucks.” He opened the small case and ran his fingers along the harmonica. Was this his way of explaining she couldn’t afford a piano? “You can take it anywhere.”

  “But I am not leaving.”

  The old man changed tack. “Of course.” He licked his fingers and slightly straightened. “How much have you got?”

  “So far, not much. I think, three hundred dollars.”

  He laughed his way through a cough.

  Some orange flesh hit the counter.

  “See, love, you’re bloody dreaming. If you want a good one, or at least half-decent, come back when you’ve got a grand.”

  “Grand?”

  “Thousand?”

  “Oh. Can I try one?”

  “Certainly.”

  But till now she never did play any of the pianos, not in that shop or the others. If she needed a thousand dollars, she needed a thousand dollars, and only then would she find a piano, play it, and buy it, all on the same day.

  And that day, as it was, was today.

  Even if she was fifty-three dollars short.

  * * *

  —

  She walked into the shop and her pockets were bulging.

  The shopkeeper’s face lit up.

  “You’re here!”

  “Yes.” She was breathing heavily. Sweating soggily.

  “You got a thousand dollars?”

  “I have…” She took out the notes. “Nine hundred…and forty-seven.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Penny slapped her hands on the counter, making paw prints in the dust, her fingers and palms all clammy. Her face was level with his; her shoulder blades threatened to dislocate. “Please. I must play one today. I will pay the rest as the money comes—but I must try one, please, today.”

  For the first time, the man didn’t force his smile on her; his lips parted only to speak. “Okay then.” He waved and walked, simultaneously. “Over here.”

  Of course, he’d directed her to the cheapest piano, and it was nice, the color of walnut.

  She sat at the stool; she lifted the lid.

  She looked at the boardwalk of keys:

  A few were chipped, but through the gaps of her despair, she was already in love, and it hadn’t yet made a sound.

  “And?”

  Penny turned slowly to look at him, and she was close to collapsing, within; she was the Birthday Girl again.

  “Well, come on then,” and she nodded.

  She focused on the piano and remembered an old country. She remembered a father and his hands on her back. She was in the air, high in the air—a statue behind the swings—and Penelope played and wept. In spite of such a long piano-playing drought, she did it beautifully (one of Chopin’s nocturnes) and she tasted the tears on her lips. She sniffed them up and sucked them in, and played everything right, and perfectly:

  The Mistake Maker made no mistakes.

  And next to her, the smell of oranges.

  “I see,” he said, “I see.” He was standing at her side, on the right. “I think I see what you mean.”

  He gave it to her for nine hundred, and organized delivery.

  * * *

  —

  The only problem was that the salesman didn’t only have atrocious hearing and a shambles of a shop—his handwriting was shocking, too. Had it been even slightly more legible, my brothers and I wouldn’t even exist—for instead of reading 3/7 Pepper Street from his own pen, he sent the delivery men to 37.

  As you can imagine, the men were miffed.

  It was Saturday.

  Three days after she’d bought it.

  * * *

  —

  While one knocked at the door, the other two started unloading. They lowered the piano from the truck and had it standing on the footpath. The boss was talking to a man on the porch, but soon he shouted down at them.

  “What the hell are you two doin’?”

  “What?”

  “We’re at the wrong bloody house!”

  He went inside and used the man’s phone, and was muttering on the way back out. “That idiot,” he said. “That stupid, orange-eating prick.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an apartment. Unit three. Down there at number seven.”

  “But look. There’s no parking down there.”

  “So we’ll park in the middle of the road.”

  “That won’t be popular with the neighbors.”

  “You’re not popular with the neighbors.”

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

  The boss maneuvered his mouth into several shapes of disapproval. “Right, let me go down there. You two pull the trolley out. The piano wheels’ll die if we roll it on the road, and so will we. I’ll go and knock on the door. Last thing we need is taking it down and no one’s home.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Yes, it is a good idea. Now don’t so much as touch that piano again, right?”

  “All right.”

  “Not till I tell you.”

  “All right!”

  * * *

  —

  In the boss’s absence, the two men looked at the man on his porch:

  The one who didn’t want a piano.

  “How’s it going?” he called down.

  “A bit tired.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “Nah. The boss prob’ly won’t like that.”

  The man on the porch was normal height, had wavy dark hair, aqua eyes, and a beaten-up heart—and when the boss came walking back, there was a quiet-looking woman with a white face and tanned arms, out in the middle of Pepper Street.

  “Here,” said the man; he came off the porch, as they shifted the piano to the trolley. “I’ll take an end there if you like.”

  And that was how, on a Saturday afternoon, four men and a woman rolled a walnut-wooden piano down a sizable stretch of Pepper Street. At opposite corners of the rolling instrument were Penelope Lesciuszko and Michael Dunbar—and Penelope could have no idea. Even as she noticed his amusement for the movers, and his care for the welfare of the piano, she couldn’t possibly know that here was a tide to the rest-of-her-life, and a final name and nickname.

  As she said, to Clay, when she told it:

  “Strange to think, but I’d marry that man one day.”

  As you might expect, in a household of boys and young men, it wasn’t so much spoken that one of us was leaving. He just was.

  Tommy knew.

  The mule, too.

  Clay had stayed the night at The Surrounds again, waking Sunday morning, with the box still in his hands.

  He sat and reread the letter.

  He held the lighter and Matador in the fifth.

  * * *

  —

  At home he brought the box inside and put the Murderer’s sticky-taped address in, placed it deep beneath his bed, then quietly did his sit-ups, on the carpet.

  About halfway through, Tommy appeared; he could see him from the edge of his sight, each time he came back down. The pigeon, T, was on his shoulder, and a breeze flapped Henry’s posters. They were musicians, mostly; old ones. A few actresses; young and womanly.

  “Clay?”

  Tommy triangled each time into sight.

  “Can you help me later with his feet?”

  He finished up and followed to the backyard, and Achilles was near the clothesline. Clay walked over and gave hi
m a sugar cube, open hand, then crouched and tapped a leg.

  The first hoof came up; it was clean.

  Then the second.

  When the job was done on all four, Tommy was hurt in his usual way, but there was nothing for Clay to do. You can’t change the mind of a mule.

  To cheer him up, he took two more small white sugar cubes out.

  He handed one over to Tommy.

  The yard was full of morning.

  An empty beanbag lay flat on the porch; it had slid off the ledge of the couch. In the grass was a bike with no handlebars, and the clothesline stood tall in the sun.

  Soon Rosy came out from the shelter we’d built for Achilles at the back. She got to the Hills Hoist and started rounding it up, and the sugar lay melting on their tongues.

  Near the end, Tommy said it:

  “Who’ll help me with this when you’re gone?”

  To which Clay did something that caught even himself by surprise:

  He grabbed Tommy by the scruff of his T-shirt, and threw him on Achilles, bareback.

  “Shit!”

  Tommy had quite a shock, but soon gave himself over; he leaned in at the mule and laughed.

  * * *

  —

  After lunch, as Clay started out the front door, Henry held him back.

  “And where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  A brief pause. “The cemetery. Maybe Bernborough.”

  “Here,” said Henry, grabbing his keys, “I’ll come with you.”

  When they got there, they leaned forward, into the fence, they navigated the graves. At the one they wanted they crouched they watched they folded their arms they stood in the afternoon sun; they looked at the corpse of tulips.

  “No daisies?”

  They half laughed.

  “Hey, Clay?”

  Both were slouched yet stiff, and Clay now came to face him; Henry was affable as ever, but different in some way, too, looking out across the statues.

  At first he just said, “God.” A long silence. “God, Clay.” And he pulled something out of his pocket. “Here.”

  Hand to hand:

  A nice big slice of money.

  “Take it.”

  Clay looked closer.

  “It’s yours, Clay. Remember the bets at Bernborough? You wouldn’t believe how much we made. I never even paid you.”

  But no, this was more, it was too much, a paperweight of cash. “Henry—”

  “Go on, take it,” and when he did, he held its pages in his hand.

  “Hey,” said Henry. “Oi, Clay,” and he met him, properly, in the eyes. “Maybe buy a Goddamn phone, like someone normal—let us know when you actually get there.”

  And Clay, a smile, of scorn:

  No thanks, Henry.

  “Okay—use every bloody cent for a bridge then.” The wiliest of boyish grins. “Just give us the change when you’re done.”

  * * *

  —

  At Bernborough Park, he did some laps, and after rounding the ruin of the discus net, he was given a nice surprise—because there, at the 300-meter mark, was Rory.

  Clay stopped, his hands on quadriceps.

  Rory watched with his scrap-metal eyes.

  Clay didn’t look up, but smiled.

  Far from angry or betrayed, Rory was somewhere between amusement for the oncoming violence, and a perfect understanding. He said, “I gotta give it to you, kid—you’ve got heart.”

  And Clay stood fully upright now, first silent as Rory went on.

  “Whether you’re gone three days or three years…You know Matthew’ll kill you, don’t you? When you come back.”

  A nod.

  “Will you be ready for him?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to be?” He thought about it. “Or maybe you never will come back.”

  Clay bristled, internally. “I’m coming back. I’ll miss these little heart-to-hearts of ours.”

  Rory grinned. “Yeah, good one, look—” He was rubbing his hands together now. “Do you want some practice? You think I was tough down here? Matthew’s a whole other thing.”

  “It’s okay, Rory.”

  “You won’t go fifteen seconds.”

  “But I know how to take a beating.”

  Rory, a single step closer. “That much I know, but I can at least show you how to last a bit longer.”

  Clay looked at him, right in the Adam’s apple. “Don’t worry, it’s too late,” and Rory knew better than anyone—that Clay was already ready; he’d been training for this for years now, and I could kill him all I wanted.

  Clay just wouldn’t die.

  * * *

  —

  When he came back home, cash in hand, I was watching a movie, the first Mad Max—talk about suitably grim. At first, Tommy had been with me, and begged to watch something different.

  “Can’t we just once watch a movie not made in the eighties?” he said.

  “We are. This was 1979.”

  “That’s just what I was going to say! Eighties or even earlier. None of us were even born. Not even close! Why can’t we just—”

  “You know why,” I cut him off. But then I saw that look on him, like he might even start to cry. “…Shit—sorry, Tommy.”

  “No you’re not.”

  He was right, I wasn’t; this was part of being a Dunbar.

  When Tommy walked out, Clay walked in, once the money was deposited in the box. He came to the couch and sat.

  “Hey,” he said, he looked over, but I didn’t take my eyes off the screen.

  “You still got the address?”

  He nodded, and we watched Mad Max.

  “The eighties again?”

  “Don’t even start.”

  We were silent right up to the part when the scary gang leader says, “And Cundalini wants his hand back!” and I looked at my brother beside me.

  “He means business,” I said to him, “doesn’t he?”

  Clay smiled, but didn’t react.

  So do we.

  * * *

  —

  In the night, when everyone else was in bed, he stayed up and left the TV on, with the sound completely down. He looked at Agamemnon, the goldfish, who watched him calmly back, before a last good headbutt at the tank.

  Clay walked to the birdcage, and quickly, no warning, he took him. He squeezed him in his hand, but gently.

  “Hey, T, you okay?”

  The bird bobbed a little, and Clay could feel him breathe. He felt his heartbeat through the plumage. “Just hold still, boy—” and quick, like that, he snapped at his neck, he held the tiny feather; it was clean and grey with an edge of green, in the palm of his still left hand.

  Then he put the bird back in.

  The pigeon watched him seriously, then walked from end to end.

  * * *

  —

  Next, the shelves and the board games:

  Careers, Scrabble, Connect Four.

  Beneath them, the one he wanted.

  He opened it up and was distracted, momentarily, by the movie on TV. It looked like a good one—black-and-white, a girl arguing with a man in a diner—but then, the riches of Monopoly. He found the dice and hotels till he handled the bag he wanted, and soon, in his fingers, the iron.

  Clay, the smiler, smiled.

  * * *

  —

  Close to midnight, it was easier than it might have been; the yard was free of dog and mule shit, God bless Tommy’s cotton socks.

  Soon he stood at the clothesline, with the pegs pegged up above him, in rows of shifting color. He reached up and gently unclipped one. It was once bright blue, now faded.

  * * *

  —

  He
kneeled then, near the pole.

  Of course, Rosy came over, and Achilles stood watch, with his hooves and legs beside him. His mane was brushed but knotted—and Clay reached over and leaned—a hand at the edge of a fetlock.

  Next he held Rosy, very slowly, by a single black-and-white paw:

  The gold in her eyes, goodbye to him.

  He loved that sideways dog-look.

  Then he headed further back, for The Surrounds.

  * * *

  —

  As it was, he didn’t stay very long; he was already gone, so he didn’t remove the plastic. No, all he did was say goodbye, and promise to return.

  At home, in the house, in his and Henry’s room, he looked inside the box; the peg was the final object. In the dark, he saw the contents, from the feather to the iron, the money, the peg, and the Murderer’s patched-up address. And, of course, the metallic lighter, inscribed from her to him.

  Instead of sleep, he turned on the lamp. He repacked his suitcase. He read from his books, and the hours swept him by.

  At just past three-thirty, he knew Carey would soon come out:

  He got up and put the books back in the sports bag, and held the lighter in his hand. In the hallway he felt the engraving again, cut slimly into the metal.

  He noiselessly opened the door.

  He stood at the railing, on the porch.

  Eons ago he’d been here with me. The front door ultimatum.

  Soon, Carey Novac emerged, a backpack on her back and a mountain bike beside her.

  First he saw a wheel: the spokes.

  Then the girl.

  Her hair was out, her footsteps fast.

  She was in jeans. The customary flannel shirt.

  The first place she looked was across the road, and when she saw him she put the bike down. It lay there, stuck on a pedal, the back wheel whirring, and the girl walked slowly over. She stood, dead center, on the road.

  “Hey,” she said, “you like it?”

  She was quiet but it came out shouted.