The Singing Forest

by Judith McCormack

  He is reading his notes again, but with more emphasis than usual — even he has been roused by the case. But finally he, too, is coming to a close.

  A brief reply by Louis, a last flourish.

  Reserved, says the judge.

  ···

  She is exultant. They did it. Louis did it. She did it, her part. Did you see that? she says to Nate. Did you see that? she says to Gus. She wants everyone to know, Isabel, the police officers, the people outside on the street. She wants to whoop, to jump. Of course, she feels badly that Louis had another of his lost moments, that he misplaced himself again. But she is still jubilant — she wants to spin around in the middle of the floor, spin and spin until the room is a blur, trailing drops of law from her fingertips.

  ···

  No bomb.

  Isabel is suddenly relaxed again, restored to her tart self.

  Nothing, she says, marveling. Nothing.

  Nothing, says Leah.

  Are you surprised? says Nate.

  Yes and no, she says.

  She feels the bomb threat slowly pulling its claws out of her, beginning to disappear.

  ···

  One more time. One more time, and she will speak to him.

  Have you seen a doctor? Do you know what it is? You really must do something.

  No, says Nate.

  Yes. What if these are tiny seizures? What if he doesn’t remember them? What if he is ignoring them, hoping they will go away?

  One more time.

  ···

  The doctrine of wilful blindness. A jockey, a horse trainer, and another man were playing cards in a private room at an inn. The innkeeper was charged with suffering gambling to be carried on in her licensed premises. She claimed that she was not aware of the card playing and that they did not have the cards of her, but was convicted on the basis that she had taken pains not to know what her guests were doing. I cannot say whether or not I should have drawn the same conclusion myself, said Lord Blackburn.

  ···

  The cells of the eyes replace themselves, his son said once, self-important from school. Some of them. And blood cells, liver cells, the cells of the stomach lining are the same, constantly turning over, new cells generated. After a while, almost an entirely new body.

  If this is true, Drozd thinks now, then he is made of this country, has been made of this country many times over. His skin, his fingernails, his bones built from food grown in this soil, rainwater from these lakes, oxygen from this air.

  I belong here, he thinks.

  They are hounding me, he says.

  Persecution, says his lawyer.

  I have done nothing but mind my own business here. This country has nothing against me. Even in the old country, I did what I had to do. And I was a child. I did what I had to do, we all did during the war.

  Of course, says his lawyer.

  These people who think they can get through a war with clean hands are dreaming. They have no idea what war is like.

  True, says the lawyer.

  It is impossible that they will win this case. Impossible that they would deport someone like me.

  If we lose, we’ll appeal, says his lawyer. It has to go up the ladder anyway, and then we can get a court to review it. We can probably spin this out for years.

  How much will that cost?

  How much do you want to stay here?

  ···

  A child? she says. Sixteen is not a child.

  I’ve worked like a madman for everything I have, he says. I’ve earned it. Why would I let some stupid bitch like you take it away?

  ···

  We do the job, says the doctor. Now you pay us the money.

  She is turning her rings around on her blue-veined fingers.

  The music teacher nods emphatically, bobbing his head.

  They are at the office, wrapping up, a few minutes of talk about how well the case went before they go back to the hotel. Louis has left after summarizing the case for them — or for himself — in the best possible light, buffing up the high points, glossing over the low ones. She watches as he turns the case into something finer, more impressive, although perhaps a little hard to recognize. Then he shakes their hands, tells them he has to go, he has other cases, other clients.

  But this is not what he will be doing, she thinks. No, he will feel he has earned a rest, he will be immersing himself in his books, sinking into them with a sigh. Allowing them to carry him along, drifting through their well-worn pages.

  Now she is sitting with the witnesses, waiting until the taxi comes for them.

  We do the job. What does that mean? What exactly does that mean?

  She turns towards the investigator.

  But before she has time to ask, to say anything, Nate is there, at her elbow, his face tightly set.

  What? she says, half-annoyed, half-alarmed.

  Come here, he says, pulling her up and into the hallway.

  He puts his hands on the sides of her face, then on her shoulders.

  Gus.

  Fourteen

  Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge without Music”

  The rain, fitful, hesitant all day, has stopped now. A bruised-looking cloud is stretching across the horizon, darkening the bottom half of the sky. Above it a band of sun is visible, giving off an unsettling evening light. It slants across the grass, a misshapen willow tree, the gravestones, a small bird sitting on a branch. The bird hops sideways, jerks a black-and-white head, and ruffles its feathers, sending out a chipped, piercing call.

  Underfoot, the grass is still wet, leaving a dark rim on her shoes. She stares at an ant crawling across one of them, watching it move from one side to the other. She should lift up her foot, shake the ant onto the grass, but she feels locked in position, as if every part of her body has become too heavy to move. Even her thoughts seem to be coming from a great distance, like weak radio signals. Faint and slow, drifting into her head, then out again.

  All these people. From his bowling team, from the pub, neighbours. This left-handed, silent man. How did someone so guarded, so close-mouthed acquire so many friends? Perhaps they were people like her, people who had detected the dusty kindness he seemed to exude through his skin. Or perhaps he had given them a hand at some point — repaired a rotten floorboard, a drafty window. What will she do now with his shelf full of hammers and screwdrivers, his jars of washers and nails? These things were so much part of him, she is surprised that they are still there, that they have not disappeared as well.

  She keeps stumbling across this fact, the fact that he is dead, forgetting about it for minutes at a time — it seems so ludicrous, so impossible — and then coming across it again with an agonizing jolt. How could this man, this living being, so full of personhood — decades of experiences, thoughts, memories lodged in him — be utterly, entirely extinguished, from one minute to the next?

  Take this all away, she wants to say now. Rub it all out — the grass, this clump of people, the green tarpaulin on the ground. Take away the bird, take away the pile of dirt, the granite slabs. Pull the inky-purple cloud out of the sky, fill in the dark rectangle in the ground. Erase this picture, this is all terribly, hideously wrong.

  But she has no say in it, in anything, she has wandered into a foreign territory, into the chilly landscape of grief. Desolate, a blasted-out area, a scattering of rocks, nothing living here.

  Val, in a black blouse and skirt, looking paler than ever. She is reciting something in her small voice, something torn out from a magazine. They do not leave, they are not gone.

  Standing beside her, Rudy seems crumpled, his fly-away hair forming a nimbus in the damp air.

  Don’t faint, she says to him. Don’t faint.

  Has she said it out loud?

 
He puts his hand out to steady himself, but there is nothing to grab, and the hand stays there, trembling a little, hanging in the air.

  Next to him, Malcolm seems bewildered, his cockiness has deserted him. She looks for the third one, and then remembers again. In spite of her attempts to hold on to them, her efforts to keep them from vanishing, one of them has slipped through her careless hands. A naïve idea, anyway, keeping them safe, the idea of a six-year-old. A six-year-old who knew too little about death. And too much.

  One of them has always been missing, though, lost even before she had begun to count. Was that her fault as well, her father, another person who dropped out of sight? Perhaps while she was busy thinking about something else, some childish thought. What do fish drink? Why are there stones?

  This rumour of a father, this threadbare myth. A faint memory, and then hearsay. A tale of a tale. Now, a muddy, short-tempered man, knotted up in himself. If that was him.

  This is your last chance, she says to him. Your very last chance. The prodigal brother. The prodigal father. What kind of un-ordinary life have you had? Chasing it like a distracted dog. Did you find what you were desperate to find? Was it worth it?

  The blue-black cloud is spreading out, creeping farther across the horizon, the band of dreary light growing thinner.

  Perhaps it had been worth it to her, though. She realizes this with a flicker of surprise, something that cuts through her wretchedness for a second. If he had stayed, would she have had Gus? Her aunt? Rudy. Even Malcolm.

  His absence, then — an accidental legacy. A gap, with one person after another falling into it, becoming hers. Only on loan, these people, as it turns out. But hers for a while.

  The wind rustles through the trees, a dull patter of raindrops from the branches. The air smells like the clay earth piled on the tarpaulin, the sodden grass. The bird gives another high cry, then abruptly flits away.

  She shivers in her thin shirt — once again the weather has fooled her.

  Someone from the bowling team is talking now, a man in a yellow and black windbreaker, looking uncomfortable.

  He was a good man. A good bowler. He had a hook shot you could take to the bank.

  A gravestone nearby, white marble, grey seams running through it. Morrison, it says. Who is this Morrison, this imposter, to be lying here next to Gus?

  He will have a raised marker — a pillow stone, they call it. Val proposed it, and they all agreed quickly, so that there would be no more talking about it. A pillow stone, as if it were soft and feathery, instead of a lump of granite. So many details to this business of death, this grim love affair with the unknown.

  She swallows a sob in her throat.

  The bowler has finished talking now. She knows she should say something, should talk about Gus. But when she opens her mouth, it seems to be full of nothingness, a nothingness so thick that it stifles everything else.

  Don’t go, she thinks, as they lower the coffin into the ground. Don’t go, she thinks, as they shovel in dirt.

  The sky splinters into pieces, fragments sliding away.

  ···

  She is immensely tired. She is so exhausted she can barely breathe, pushing her lungs in and out. Face down on her bed, staring blankly at a seam unravelling in the coverlet, she wonders if she will ever have the energy again to move an arm, a leg. In her head, a low keening, a dirge. She has lost some crucial instructions for operation, for functioning. Perhaps if she lies there for long enough, she will remember them, perhaps they will come back to her in a rush.

  In the meantime, she has a question.

  What kind of lawyer are you? she says.

  Rabbi Yitzchok turns his head.

  My daughter, he says kindly.

  What kind of a lawyer are you?

  I do what all lawyers do. I argue. I plead, he says calmly. But I am not in charge here.

  He holds out his hands, as if to touch her lightly.

  Who is in charge? This crazy, tragic circus. Who?

  The knife edge of grief is making her bones ache.

  ···

  She pushes herself off the bed, forces herself into motion. Now she feels like a marionette, as if someone is working her limbs for her, making her walk, moving her arms, even her mouth when she talks.

  Take some more time off, says Nate.

  Take some more time off, says Louis.

  Her stricken presence must be unnerving, must be making them uncomfortable. All that raw grief. They treat her gently, warily, but with a vague sense of self-righteousness, as if they are putting up with some breach of etiquette on her part. Look what a mess your sorrow is making, slopping all over the floor like that.

  But she would rather be here than at home. Malcolm has been going to the racetrack, where he is spending money he doesn’t have in elaborate bets — exactas, trifectas, pick threes. Each time, he comes home in a temper, cursing the horses, the track conditions, the drivers, chain-smoking, littering the kitchen with rye and Scotch bottles — every so often, a moment of desolation in his eyes.

  Rudy is worse, though — he sits in a chair, looking out the window, as if he is expecting Gus to arrive at any moment, as if he waits long enough, patiently enough, the world will somersault again, will turn back into something recognizable.

  He should be working, he has a new commission, a reference book for eye, ear, nose, and throat specialists. He should be creating illustrations — a fawn-coloured retina, traced with delicate veins, a cutaway of a larynx, a cochlea curled behind a pale blue eardrum. But instead he sits there, looking out the window, the golden retriever lying mournfully at his feet.

  At least at work she can think about other things.

  We should speak to the witnesses directly, she says to Louis. We should ask them outright. We can do it over a video call.

  The witnesses, the investigator are back in Minsk.

  No, he says.

  We can have Polina interpret, so that the investigator isn’t coaching them. Or at least coaching them at that very moment.

  No, he says.

  But we need to know. We could be suborning perjury.

  No, he says.

  She is too tired to say anything more.

  ···

  Whereas the wicked, pernicious and abominable Crimes of Perjury and Subornation of Perjury have of late Time been so much practised, to the Subversion of common Truth and Justice that it is necessary, for the more effectual preventing of such enormous Offences, to inflect a more exemplary Punishment on such Offenders than by the Laws of this Realm can now be done.

  But we don’t know, she thinks. We don’t know if it’s perjury.

  You never know, says her aunt.

  ···

  Turning lead into gold is quite possible, says Nate. Entirely possible. The problem is that the cost of the ingredients and the process is more than the value of the gold.

  ···

  Drozd, awake. Staring up at the dark ceiling. He dislikes this part of the night, his head full of raging thoughts, his body feels as if he has grit under his skin. He knows that there will be no real sleep now for the rest of the night, he will only doze on and off.

  These people. These vicious, stupid people. All their weaselly talk. How is it possible they can do this to him? How can such scum have so much power over his life?

  But they will not stop. He can see that. And this judge — what does he think? He seems restless when his lawyer is speaking. Although, if the government wins, he will appeal. But if he wins, they will appeal. He is an old man, how much time does he have left? Is this what his old age will be?

  By the way, his lawyer said casually. Was it you that phoned in the bomb threat?

  No, he said, as convincingly as he could.

  He has a glimpse of a bleak future — whatever there might be of it — filled with endless proceedings,
the threat of deportation constantly hanging over his head. Watching his money dribble away, watching his life become poorer and more cramped. And the possibility that he may lose in the end, that he will be exiled to some place he barely knows now, some place where he has nothing, is nothing. Severed from everything he has, all the possessions he has built up, these trappings of his life.

  This house, for one thing — solid, sturdy. These walls stuffed with insulation, pink glass wool. The floors of polished ash wood, the furnace rumbling away in the basement, a comforting sound. Above him, the black roofing tiles, the rain gutters, cleaned only last week of leaves and mud.

  And the house is only the beginning. Inside, the house is filled with things, a collection he had never imagined, could not possibly have imagined. Lamps, cast iron pans, wool blankets, china plates, cushions, pictures on the walls. The oak chest of drawers in the bedroom, the white stove in the kitchen. The cupboards filled with jars and cans, sardines in mustard, currant jelly, oxtail soup. And in the garage, his car — dark green enamel, the leather-like seats. The thought of losing all this makes him feel airless.

  He looks over at Sofija, sleeping heavily, her grey hair loose, some strands across the side of her face. She makes small purring noises in her sleep, not quite snoring. If he has to leave, it seems unthinkable that she would stay without him — that she could even exist without him. Without him, she is nothing, a shadow of a person. And he needs her, to cook his pork roasts, to wash and iron his shirts, to sweep and mop. She is a habit, his habit — the way she nods her head to herself, the almond smell of her soap, the way she fingers her thin silver necklace with the crucifix. But he is suspicious, too — he sees the way she looks at him sometimes, her face closed, hiding her thoughts. Does she think about the possibility of another life, away from him? Foolishly devoted to those grandchildren — she spends too much time making nut cookies for them, listening to them read to her, admiring their schoolwork.