The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  The next Sunday, the same, and the next, and then it is every Sunday. Now he is accustomed to it — proud of mastering the horse, knowing the rituals. And soon he has learned the order of the liturgy, the hymns, the epistle, the creed, the calls and responses. Lord have mercy. To you, O Lord. Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.

  You like the service, boy?

  The priest is at his elbow as he waits for his grandmother after the prayers — she is talking to a neighbour, a thin woman with a withered face. Standing together, they look like two dried barley stalks.

  You like the liturgy?

  The boy nods.

  I see you following it, the priest says, combing his fingers through his beard.

  In a minute, a bargain: he will be an altar boy, he will help with the services, wash the floor every week, clean the candelabra, scythe the grass in the small cemetery, anything else the church needs. And what will he get in return?

  This is an honour, says the priest, scandalized.

  The boy has seen the prayer books in a corner of the chapel. No one uses them; either they are unable to read or they have the prayers and hymns lodged in their memories. The boy has an inkling, though, a shadow of an idea that these marks, these scratches on a page could be useful. That they might even provide a means of escape.

  I want to learn to read the prayer books.

  The priest is startled, then pleased.

  ···

  In the months that follow, the priest is kind enough towards him — he can spot a starved boy when he sees one — and gives him tea, bread and lard, sometimes even a glass of kvass. A man younger than he looks, etched with frustration, his longing to do great works, his devotion to holiness, all derailed with the denunciation of the Church. Exiled to this barren patch, he provides services to several of these small chapels, his vision slowly curdling inside him. But teaching this boy, he feels a faint echo of his original calling.

  The boy’s grandmother is wary, she is not convinced the boy has a grain of genuine piety. But the priest is the priest, a man with the grace of God in him, someone who should know. And the distinction of having her grandson singled out is gratifying. His father has no opinion, drunk most of the time now, hair matted, glassy-eyed, not enough in him to go after the boy, except to curse him and demand more work.

  The boy tries hard to dull their suspicions, to induce at least a lack of curiosity. What is it they need, what will soften them up, or if not soften them — impossible — at least distract them? Food.

  ···

  How long has the rabbit been here, in the growing dusk? A few hours, a day? Frozen with fear, long ears back, attempting to flatten itself against the ground. The grey-brown fur has been rubbed off its foreleg by the wire snare. He looks more closely at the bloody leg and realizes that the rabbit has been biting it with its incisors, a desperate attempt to free itself.

  He makes the snares from wire, rusty scraps he finds at the sides of the fields or roads. Nooses that grow tighter with every struggling movement of the animal. He sets them out on the narrow paths left by the rabbits, the grass beaten down by their paws, using loose underbrush to block the ways around them.

  He looks in the grass now, feeling for a rock. Here, a good-sized one, he hefts it in his hand. A strange exhilaration comes over him — as always — anticipating the impact, when the animal stops struggling, when its eyes glaze over. Now. He grabs the rabbit’s neck and smashes the stone down on its skull. Immediately he is flooded by a sense of relief, an easing of the tautness, the hardness in his body.

  Rabbit, his father says scornfully.

  Meat is meat, says his grandmother.

  ···

  The priest — wickery, mild, mournful. A weakness for Saint John of Kronstadt and sacramental kagor wine.

  See, he says, pointing out the letters. Ah. Beh. Vey. Geh. Deh. Yeh. Yo.

  The boy rubs his eyes in frustration, the words seem sealed into the page. And they are in Russian, not Belarusian. Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. He is fiercely determined, though, clinging to the idea that deciphering these markings is a key to something, desperate to believe that there is a way out of this deadening life.

  It will become easier, says the priest.

  His expression is a mixture of wistfulness and something like greed. But he is patient with the boy, working through the verses slowly. And once in a while, he gives him a kopeck from a small pouch he wears beneath his cassock.

  At night, under his thin blanket, the Cyrillic letters swim in the boy’s head, almost taunting him. Ah. Beh. Vey. Geh. Deh. Yeh. Yo. It will become easier.

  ···

  Get up, screams his father. You miserable piece of goat dung. You are trying to read? You are too stupid. You will never learn to read. And what good is it, anyway?

  Thwack. The board hits him on the back, on his legs. The boy tries to scramble away, but his father grabs him.

  Who do you think you are? Goat dung. Pig dung. You think you can make yourself better than that?

  Thwack.

  Stop it, says his grandmother. Stop it.

  She stands in front of his father and slaps him, hard enough to leave his cheek reddened, his mouth gaping open in surprise, the boy gaping, too.

  The priest has chosen him, the priest has decided to teach him. That is enough.

  The makeshift lessons go on.

  At eleven, he begins growing so quickly, so intensely that it makes him weak sometimes, as if his strength, his energy, were being siphoned off for this purpose. His body is unfamiliar territory now, he is often surprised by his own large hands — nails split and dirty, palms calloused. Perhaps it is the rabbit — he keeps some of them for himself, skinning them and roasting them over small fires, often burning his fingers or his tongue as he pulls the meat off the bones, gulps it down. Then his growth stops as suddenly as it began, leaving him tall enough, but slope-shouldered, still thin.

  The priest is becoming more gloomy, more mired in the vinegary ruin of his hopes. The boy’s youth tantalizes him, gnaws at him. He paces restlessly, he prostrates himself, he reads by the hour, absently pulling hairs from his beard. He mutters parts of psalms, his eyes blank.

  My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness, I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am utterly spent and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart.

  The boy can feel his eyes on him as he goes about his chores, as he empties the censer, sweeps the altar, cleans the icons with vodka and water. He knows all of them now, these icons, he knows every crack, every stain. Solemn-faced Saint Efrosinia with her small, pursed mouth, descendant of Vseslav the Sorcerer, holding her two-barred jewelled cross, her hand raised in blessing. Pale-skinned Archangel Michael, framed by his grey wings. Saint Cyril, eyes morose, a book under one arm. The paintings are coated with linseed varnish, and the priest has shown him how to wipe the candle soot and dirt off — very carefully — with a rag and the vodka mixture.

  One day he finds the priest holding up his hands as if they were unfamiliar, as if they belonged to someone else. He bangs them against the wall, and then clutches his head, moaning, swaying, berating himself, a stream of condemnation, muttered prayers for absolution. There is something almost sly in his despair, though, as if he sees other failures ahead.

  At other times, he is unnaturally elated, fingering his cross. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones which Thou hast broken rejoice.

  The boy moves around him cautiously, warily. But this man is his link to a larger world, to unimaginable places. Places the priest has been, has seen — Minsk, the monastery in Grodno, Mogilev, the St. Sophia Cathedral in Polotsk.

&
nbsp; A godless place, Minsk, says the priest.

  Just as well, thinks the boy.

  In that moment, he decides on Minsk, this is where he is going. Sooner or later, one way or another, he will get there. If he has to walk all the way, if he has to crawl, he will get there, away from this wretched existence. In Minsk, he will eat until he is sated, he will wear clean clothes, he will have a paid job, even a girl — warm-skinned, sleek-haired, breath like wild fennel — a girl eager to please. He hungers after these last things as much as he does the food, the thoughts of them drumming in his head.

  At night he dreams about the food, though, hard dreams, about sitting down at a table loaded with thick stew, hunks of caraway bread and butter, buckwheat and blood sausage, soft white cheese. The food so close he can smell it, his mouth filled with saliva. But when he starts to eat, the food dries up, shrivels before his eyes until all that is left is a handful of stones and husks.

  There is no rabbit meat in these dreams, no rabbit and mushroom stew, no rabbit sausages, no haunches of roasted rabbit. He is sick of the gamey meat, of skinning them, gutting them, cracking their joints. But it is better than hunger, better than the weasel gnawing in his stomach, and now it helps to mollify his grandmother.

  ···

  Summer. He is fifteen. The flax fields are smudged with pale blue, the cart bumps and rattles along the rutted road. In the distance, plumes of smoke curl where a farmer is boiling milk.

  He finds the priest asleep in the little room at the back of the chapel, his hair dishevelled, a glass with the dregs of sacramental wine beside him. His cassock has been pushed to one side, and he sees the small pouch.

  Now, he thinks. Now.

  Quietly, very quietly, he picks up the knife they use for the communion bread, edges towards the bed. The priest snorts suddenly, mumbles something, and the boy jumps back.

  He waits until the man is still again, until his stertorous breathing is even, then he edges over once more. The thin leather strap holding the pouch is tougher than he thought, and he saws at it frantically. The priest stirs, starts to roll over, but one last slash and the boy has the pouch.

  In a second, he is out the door, as the priest begins to sit up, holding his head groggily.

  He jumps into the cart, and begins whipping the horse up. The horse rears, and then lunges forward.

  The last thing he sees is the priest, staggering into the doorway, his mouth open as the boy drives past.

  The drumming in his head now is so loud he can barely think.

  Minsk. Minsk. Minsk. Minsk.

  Five

  Better wit than wealth.

  Jewish proverb

  A top spinning on its point, around and around, a whirling blur. A dreidel out of season. Now wobbling, teetering for an impossible moment, then falling, clattering onto the table.

  She picks it up, spins it again. And again and again and again.

  She is still stunned by the suddenness of her firing, disoriented by the loss of her cases, the clients — the files halted mid-work, the half-finished thoughts, the half-framed pleadings all cut off instantly. The loss of her ongoing loop of talk with Nate, the familiarity of its rhythms. She misses it all. She even misses Louis, as if the person who had done this was a different entity, a manic spirit that had taken hold of him when his back was turned and then released him almost as quickly.

  A sense of uselessness hovers over her, so easily redundant. Her cases? Perhaps without her around, they are having a raucous party — plaintiffs, defendants rising off the pages of their files, mingling together, brushing up against each other, their causes of action rumpled, their pleadings slurred.

  What did you do? says Gus, alarmed. They are sitting around the table, and he has his gouty foot up on a chair, an ice pack wrapped around it. The dog is lying underneath the chair, having elderly dreams of chasing something, every so often her legs jerking.

  Nothing. Nothing that would explain this.

  There must have been something, says Rudy. He is boiling herbs to make a tonic, and the kitchen smells like stewed grass. Consumed by his health at the best of times — the fainting has seen to that — he has a shelf full of herbs and remedies. Something that she discovered as a child, taking out the small jars and bottles, running her fingers over them, reciting their names as if these alone might have some power — milk thistle, cat’s claw, gotu kola.

  Now she realizes that Gus and Rudy are clinging to the idea that she is in the wrong, that she must have committed some lawyerly blunder, not because they think she is so careless, but because it would mean she could put it right. Without blame on her part, there is no solution. Only Malcolm is on her side, shameless Malcolm, someone who has been fired himself more than once. Secretly pleased she has joined these ranks, by the small vindication it offers him.

  Not her fault, he says, pouring rye into a glass, circling the ice in it.

  The others turn to glare at him. What does he know? Nothing, nothing at all.

  Malcolm — always a liability, she thinks wryly.

  Was he like Malcolm? she asked Gus once.

  Who?

  My father.

  Gus looked as if he was about to strangle on his own tongue.

  Maybe a little.

  Now, as she looks around at them, she wants to say: you don’t understand. But she doesn’t understand herself. She sees the outlines of it, the overall shape — the conversation with Louis, the conversation with Owen — but the harshness of his response is still mystifying.

  And if none of them understand, they all know this: they need her income. She has gone from being an unclaimed child, discarded by another life, to a source of support. The legacies of Gus and Malcolm — the house is swamped in liens and mortgages, several times they have come close to a forced sale.

  Gus, inept, his half-baked schemes producing only debts, fretful creditors, writs of execution. And Malcolm? Always an erratic source of income, often contributing nothing, and now he is in a prolonged dry spell, his targets becoming less credulous. Too many skeptics, he says, as if this were a failing — a crisis of faith on the part of the easily fooled. His strategy is to generate a certain fondness for each of his marks in turn, offering them warmth, respect, solace — whatever his keen eye has seen they need, whatever they crave most. This fondness — half-genuine — means he almost admires their self-preservation, despite the effect on his money supply.

  Rudy, though, Rudy is an illustrator, making elegant drawings for medical textbooks — blue lungs branched like root systems, unnaturally lustrous organs, sinews flowing down arms and legs. A good income once, but the field has overtaken him.

  It’s all software now, he says.

  No longer the same need for his fine pen nibs and coloured inks, his ability to draw a true line, the precision of his shading. Now he wrestles with pixels and vectors, mourning the loss of something he could touch with his flat fingertips, reduced to working part-time.

  The mortgages, he thinks, a few days later, sitting up stiffly from waxing the kitchen floor, folding his cloth over.

  The mortgages, thinks Gus, hammering a stake into the earth.

  The mortgages, thinks Malcolm, looking up from the racing results.

  All the thoughts circulating through the house, winding around chairs, under tables, over counters, up the staircase — all these thoughts have become one thought: the mortgages.

  She is in the kitchen, peeling blood oranges to make a salad, something to do, to make herself feel useful. The recipe is from Nate, and Rudy has already turned up his nose at it. Showy, this salad — the oranges, the torn red lettuce, the green-yellow of the avocados — but the dressing has walnut oil and coriander and she is not convinced that it will taste good. This is a recipe that does not require the oven, though — a finicky old gas hulk, the pilot light lit with a match. She pares the bitter pith off the orang
e segments, then cuts them away from their membranes. Fussy, time-consuming — this is why I don’t cook, she thinks — but then she remembers that time is something she has now in abundance, that she is surrounded by large quantities of time, lying in piles around her. So much time, it is merciless; if she had any more it might bury her, minutes, hours, days closing over her head. She bites into an orange piece absently, the tart-sweet juice filling her mouth.

  Next the avocado — scraping out the flesh, chopping it into cubes, running her tongue over the knife afterwards. Then the dressing — grating the rind off a lime, adding honey, vinegar, salt, the walnut oil and coriander, shaking it up. She smells it, looks at it doubtfully, thinking about their mouths becoming dry and puckered. Gus, walking by the kitchen, a caulking tube in hand, sees her there and stops, surprised. More than surprised, disturbed that she is doing something as unusual as making food, that it has come to this — further evidence of disarray.

  And she is in disarray, no doubt about it, certain assumptions — unknown even to herself before this — in shambles. That she is not the kind of person who gets fired. That Louis is not the kind of person who fires people, at least with so little cause. That the supply of fairness in the world is larger than this.

  But perhaps fairness really is a scarce commodity, she thinks. She has never been under the illusion that it was widespread, but perhaps it is even scarcer than she thought. A finite quantity, rare as mineral dust. Tiny amounts, sprinkled here and there, and between them, a shortage, a fairness wasteland.

  Still, no matter how wary she is, how little she expects, it never seems to be little enough to avoid being blindsided. And all her efforts to control the shape of things, to negotiate with happenstance — to appease it, to distract it, to deceive it — seem futile.