Black Bird Page 2

  And then, relations with the rest of the household were equally confused. To begin with, as Grandfather’s second wife, Aline was now stepmother to the older twins, Uncle and Father, as well as Mother, and grandmother to Jean-Baptiste and Marie. She couldn’t tell Uncle and Father apart, and so never knew how to address them, until she saw that Uncle was missing a finger on his left hand. If it gave her some comfort to have a method of distinguishing her stepsons, it nevertheless made her uneasy to see that naked, tiny stump at the dinner table. But Uncle almost never said a word anyway, which relieved her of the obligation of making small talk with him. He spent much of his time following her husband in silence; the two worked together at the family business, an occupation no one had yet explained to her. On occasion Uncle sat with Father in the evenings, and over a table of empty beer bottles in the kitchen the two would trade stories back and forth, in English. It was practically the only time Uncle was talkative, as if he were releasing words that had been pent up in him until then.

  At these times, Aline was uncomfortable even in the kitchen. She felt like an intruder in their private world, a world made up of anecdotes and tales that she suspected were crude, sensationalistic and unbelievable. She felt the brothers considered her immature because they were so much older than she was; and she felt their eyes on her body, which scandalized her. She was their stepmother, after all, a married woman and a relative. Because they displaced her, belittled her and looked at her as if she were a whore, she resented them even more than she was beginning to resent the new and unwelcome way Grandfather was treating her.

  The only member of the family with whom she felt at ease was her new grandson, Jean-Baptiste. He had in common with his twin sister, Marie, the desire for a better life than that lived in the Desouche house. But while Marie was convinced of the necessity of political action, considering their problems the fault of the English, Jean-Baptiste felt the answer was internal and spiritual. They agreed, however, that the Catholic Church was an impediment to almost everything reasonable; and so he had turned to poetry, while his sister chose revolution.

  Jean-Baptiste had taken the room on the top floor at the back end, the most remote and quiet in the house. Here, in what was almost an attic, he was insulated from the noise of the family and the street, free to read or compose his poems. His room was awash in books and magazines, papers and stationery. Since no one else would publish his works, he had decided to print them himself, and had installed a second-hand mimeograph machine in the attic, hemmed in by boxes of manuscript on one side and pamphlets on the other.

  Jean-Baptiste was the only one aside from Marie who remembered that Aline didn’t speak English. He understood perfectly well her feelings of isolation, since no one else in the family shared his interest in the arts. And since his mother tongue was English, he knew how hard it could be to learn another way of thinking. His French was not perfect, but he attempted to use it for her sake. However, he avoided spending time with Aline because he had no patience for those incapable of helping themselves, and it broke his heart to see her suffering. It’s true he could have invested his own efforts in helping her, but he knew that she would never learn to walk for herself, without whatever crutch was at hand. Obviously, that’s why she’d married Grandfather, who had behaved so much like a crutch during their courtship.

  It was Jean-Baptiste who had warned her, in the first place, that she was making a mistake taking up with the Desouches, and now he felt the case was out of his hands: he’d done what he could and failed. But the more he avoided her, the more she followed him with her eyes, silently wishing she could win more real allies in the house, not knowing that this habit of hers gave him exactly the same feeling of being ogled that she got from Father and Uncle. It wasn’t the arguing and yelling of the family, the small tricks and cruelties they played upon one another, the disrespect they showed for his work; it wasn’t even the impossibly run-down physical condition of the house that made living there unbearable for him. More than anything else it was the quiet way in which Aline meekly tracked him from room to room, from dinner table to living-room couch to bathroom.

  But Aline knew nothing of the others’ feelings or reasons for behaving as they did; she only knew her own anxiety and unhappiness. She was baffled by their irritability, their relations to one another, their ideas, their jokes, their very being. Nothing turned out as she expected, and she was afraid of trying to change anything. Her only respite was in the kitchen, where, if she had no natural talents, at least she had cookbooks. So she timidly advanced from frying eggs and bacon, soaking peas for soup, boiling beef and potatoes, to stuffing chickens, making simple spaghetti sauces and packaged cake mixes. She had no kitchen timer and relied on the clock, but was always forgetting to consult it because she was listening to the radio, so that her dishes were always either over- or undercooked. But if she treated food as if it were someone else’s children, she at least became familiar enough with that one room to feel at ease when she was alone in it. The worn table, the overpainted cupboards, the ancient, round-edged refrigerator under which linoleum had never settled: these were the physical things, along with Grandfather’s body, which by their own age had drained her of enthusiasm, ambition and self-confidence. Hers was the domain of the defeated, the unrealized and the barely adequate; and only there was she comfortable.

  While Aline slept, while Grandfather and Uncle were returning from the cemetery, while Jean-Baptiste wore out his eyes with a novel, while no one could say where Marie was or what she was doing, Father and Mother were exercising their conjugal rights. After years of unhappy marriage during which each secretly resented in the other what they forgave in themselves, making love was the only time they forgot each other’s ugliness.

  Mother couldn’t help her disappointment at Father’s shiny scalp, which emerged where once had been a thick, dark web of hair. Or when his hard, smooth belly had softened, distended and almost maliciously grown the hair he lacked elsewhere. Or especially at the way, even after a bath, a shave and a liberal application of cologne, he still smelled like his own cigarette case. For his part, Father dreaded the scars motherhood had left on his wife and was nostalgic for her former firmness, smartness of dress and coquettish manner.

  Both were reluctant to get into bed at night for fear that the other might be overcome with desire. But even so, when they did make love—once their initial reluctance and embarrassment was behind them, once they had resigned themselves to the effort—they found themselves contemplating the selves of their youth. Neither heeded the wrinkles, the greyed eyebrows or the extra pounds. Both remembered and re-experienced the wordless pleasure of each other’s warmth, the languid expression in the other’s eyes, and the disappearance of the musty room, the unpaid bills on the coffee table downstairs, the whole rest of the world around them. But this brief, infrequent transcendence could neither be lengthened nor multiplied and was for them not the precious gift of a sanctified marriage, but the cruel temptation of a mischievous creator, or the restrictive proscription of an oppressive society. It made them both realize that it wasn’t the deed itself they were reluctant to enact but the partner they were stuck with who drove their eagerness away.

  They were incited and saddened by the sight or company of others to whom they felt physical attraction. They knew they no longer had the youthful vigour that attracts partners and had once attracted them to each other. Nevertheless, they both still had the desire for youth and beauty just as they had the desire for the material things they saw advertised all around them, on billboards and buses, on television and in magazines. Cars, clothes, vacations; blondes, brunettes, redheads. Because there was so little in their own lives, they wanted so much. And they believed that somewhere people enjoyed possessions without responsibilities; people who were younger, thinner, more handsome than themselves; people they imagined they were with when they were together.

  The banging door and stomping of Grandfather and Uncle up the steps broke their spell; they
opened their eyes on each other. Numb, neither could be bothered finishing and so they lay panting. It was just before dawn. Together they resented the returning men who hadn’t the decency to tread quietly. They were tired and drifting off, but jarred awake more than once by flushing toilets, heavy steps and the cawing and flapping of Grandfather’s pet crow. The scratching and whining of Uncle’s dog abated with a few yelps.

  One of Father’s few saving graces was his refusal to take part in Grandfather’s crimes. Mother thought of this and moved closer to him in the bed. In the dark, in their cramped room, he put his arm around her, thankful too that he was here with her and not with them; and also thankful that Mother had never complained of his lack of a steady job, that he’d tried and failed at so many things. For both of them, even indigence was preferable to the family business.

  It wasn’t necessary for Marie to stand by and watch her bombs go off. Timers were accurate, and she knew her business. But she was a perfectionist and insisted on being available in case anything went wrong. Sometimes she wondered exactly what she would or could do if there were no detonation. Would she dare try retrieving the package? If she did, what could she do with it? It was more dangerous to take a bomb apart than to put one together. But she couldn’t bring herself simply to set it and walk away. That was too impersonal, as if she were an anonymous quirk of fate rather than an active, intentional being. That would be like one of those unsigned statements her comrades in the Front de libération du Québec—the FLQ—were always sending to the newspapers. Like the diaphanous, ambient noise of the city itself or like messages from unknown spirits transmitted by Ouija boards. Her work was hers alone, and her insistence on watching it to completion was her way of signing her statements—for they were political statements—just as an artist would sign a canvas, or her brother sign his poems.

  Tonight’s operation was a masterpiece. She dropped the package into the mailbox outside the restaurant just as she’d planned with her cell. The place was full of drunks, stuffing themselves sick with smoked meat after boozing it up all night in the bars. Anglos mostly, of course. The bomb went off like a charm at three-twenty.

  Torn metal, shattered plate glass windows, people screaming and bleeding their way across the floor, across the sidewalk. The fire, the noise, the ambulances, and lastly the reporters with no sense of the humanity of it. It was a symphony of lights. First the explosion itself, a great orange fireball; then the blinking flashers of police cars and ambulances; finally the flashbulbs and floodlights of photographers and video cameras.

  She stood within a crowd of onlookers, herded back by patrolmen, watching the countless cops, firemen, paramedics, victims. When the detectives finally came around to ask for witnesses, she slipped away. Her report was for her cell. And it wouldn’t do to be identified at the scene.

  She walked slowly along the still busy rue Ste-Catherine, mulling over the events in her mind. She ignored the drunken advances of a handful of boors being turfed out long past last call. She walked as if by rote to the meeting place, gave the correct knock at the door, entered. Several faces gazed at her inquiringly. She began to speak. As she related her triumph to her unit of the FLQ, she heard her voice as if from a distance, the words indistinct in her own ears, like the prayers of others in church. But the images in her mind were vivid, the lights blinding, the heat of the flames blistering like an open oven, and adrenalin flowed through her just as it had through those whose world had been suddenly shattered by her actions.

  When she was done, the others began chattering excitedly, smiling grimly, gesturing importantly. Now it was time for the press release. Marie’s job was done, and theirs began.

  She would let the others contact the media. She wasn’t interested in words, unlike her brother. Words were so anemic compared with actions; words were the weapon of her enemies, the English politicians. What had she heard but empty words all her life? No, they could stay up the rest of the night arguing over their text. Marie was going home to a well-deserved rest; next afternoon she could read in the paper just what an impact her actions had had, and what the press and the public thought of her companions’ words.

  She left the basement room by the rear, into the lane. A receiving dock blocked one end. The vapour rising from a sewer screened the other, which opened onto the street. No one would see where she had come from. She would appear out of the mist like a ghost or a banshee. In the dim light just before dawn, if anyone saw her at all in this district, she would likely be taken for a streetwalker.

  Her route took her back past the scene of the bombing. Already the windows were being boarded up and the shattered glass and debris had been swept off the street corner. A single patrol car remained.

  Early morning buses were already running, empty, through the downtown streets. She passed through the campus of McGill University, crossed in front of the building that had been her high school, turned onto her street. At the top of the block the mountain rose, grey from the leafless trees, the fields around it white with snow. Halfway up the block, directly in front of the Desouche house, a police car was parking.

  Uncle’s dog woke before his key turned in the lock, and whined ceaselessly while waiting for him in his bedroom. It leapt and circled him until, receiving a smack for its trouble, it settled back to sleep when Uncle slid into bed and began to snore. When the doorbell rang, the dog’s head snapped erect. Uncle rose and went to the window and looked out, leaning the balls of his hands on the sill. When he saw the police cruiser his chest began to punish him. He ran to Grandfather’s room.

  Grandfather had been trying to silence the crow, which had begun its morning screeching as soon as he opened the door. Aline turned her face to the wall, burying herself in the pillow. She couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t keep the crow elsewhere. Unless he got some satisfaction out of displeasing her. She was surprised to see it when she moved in. He never mentioned it before their marriage. The sight of the enormous, ragged black scavenger sealed the lid on the idea of any time alone together, hidden away from all the rest of the world, even if no real honeymoon was possible. The presence of the crow transformed their marriage bed into a bier.

  Uncle pounded on the door, yelling “Police! Police!” and set the crow off again. Even Grandfather gave out a little screech. He tore the door open. Uncle, in his underwear, grabbed him by the shoulders and shouted again, “Police! Police!”

  Aline sat upright, confused and terrified by the sight of Uncle nearly naked in her bedroom. “What’s going on?”

  “Shut up,” said Grandfather. It wasn’t clear whether he was addressing her or Uncle. He disappeared into the hallway and Uncle followed him. Aline sighed and lay down.

  Grandfather stomped down the hall and banged on Father and Mother’s door. When Father answered he said curtly, “Tell them we’re not here. We’re not here, you don’t know where we are. Understand?” Father nodded. Grandfather grabbed Uncle by the arm and ran him down the stairs, careful to stay out of sight of the windows. The two men hid in the basement.

  But when Father finally answered the bell after the third ring, the police asked for Mother.

  Jean-Baptiste was only a few pages from the end of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He was dazed, still caught in the dreamlike state of reading. He had just read the line, “Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines,” when Marie knocked at his window. He left the warm bed, his body startled by the change in temperature, opened the window and retreated before the blast of winter air. Marie climbed in without a word, carefully closing the window behind her.

  She whispered: “Tell them I’ve been with you all night. All night, understand?”

  Just at that moment the doorbell sounded downstairs.

  Jean-Baptiste looked towards the door. “No, I don’t understand. Okay, you want me to cover for you, but what will they think if we say we were here together?”

  Marie got into his bed and pulled the covers under her chin.
“For God’s sake, they’ll arrest me.”

  “Coat, boots and all,” said Jean-Baptiste. “Would you do it for me if our positions were reversed?”

  They were silent a moment.

  He asked, “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Does it matter? I did what was right.”

  “I just want to know what kind of criminal I’m harbouring. That’s a crime too, you know. I want to know how serious this is.”

  Now there were people walking about the house, making noise.

  “Don’t be so self-righteous. Will you turn me in? Would you turn in Grandfather and Uncle?” She was struggling to take off her clothes under the blankets. There was a knock at the door.

  Jean-Baptiste got back into bed. His sister was cold beside him.

  Father burst into the room. “Jean-Baptiste, wake up. Angus is dead.”

  Angus was his other grandfather, Mother’s father. She sat on the divan sobbing; Father spoke with the police. Marie quietly went to her own room; Jean-Baptiste looked suspiciously after her, but said nothing and instead made tea. Aline began to fry potatoes and bacon. Grandfather and Uncle sat silently in the dark basement, looking up through the narrow window to the street until they saw the wheels of the patrol car driving away. Then they went back to bed.

  Angus had lived on the slope of the mountain, on a street that would someday be named after a man Grandfather counted among his customers, a man famous for opening up people’s skulls and prodding them with electrodes while they were still awake. A man who was the Desouches’ family doctor because he could be paid in trade instead of cash. It was a prestigious street, where many foreign countries had their embassies in large rambling houses older than their countries and more solid than their governments, and where behind closed doors, worse things were done to people still awake.