Black Bird Read online

  Angus had been proud to live there. He’d seemed to think his street somehow more worthy of respect than others. Perhaps because it was higher up the hill, or because so many of his neighbours were mysterious men in dark glasses. Or because so many of the houses were surrounded by fences and cameras. At any rate, he had a way of suggesting that Mother’s street was beneath him in more than just the literal sense.

  It was never any use pointing out to him that he could only afford to live there because he lived alone in a small apartment and spent no money on vices of any kind, or even simple necessities like clothing, preferring to wear what he still insisted were the perfectly useful shirts and pants he’d been issued in the army. Or that, really, it was past time to cancel his dead wife’s pension.

  None of this or any other opinion contrary to his made any impression on him, for Angus was one of the world’s freelance wise men. They’re not rare, these savants, but those to whom they offer advice curiously ignore them. And they’re often intentionally thwarted by their inferiors just to keep them from influence and power or even simple respect. They’ve always paid less than you have, and for better goods. They invariably shake their heads as they say they told you so. They always have another suggestion for getting your life in order. They have a great respect for their own experience, but scoff at anyone’s education. To them the words “expert” and “intellectual” are insults, and metaphors are clouds of smoke and halls of mirrors.

  Angus had been proud of serving in the army, although he’d been drafted and then discharged as soon as the war was over—as soon as they were done with him. He was fond of such abstract concepts as Duty and Honour. To him the abstract was that to which he couldn’t explain his sentimental attraction. But it left him with lifelong respiratory problems: he’d been gassed in those trenches. Which taught him something you can’t learn in school. Which left him teary-eyed still, whenever he heard “God Save the Queen.”

  Mother kept thinking to herself, “I’m an orphan now … I’m an orphan now …” She remembered those things about him that he’d never shown to the others. His sudden changes of heart when he switched from chastising her to forgiving her: “Ah well. You’re still my girl, aren’t you? I guess you’ll just have to take me as I am.” His habit of paying their debt at the corner grocery without telling them. The way there was always more food in the house after he’d been invited to dinner than before. How he used to take the children down to the harbour to see the boats.

  Now there would be the problem of dealing with his things. His apartment. His funeral. Now there would be a dreamlike week, during which everything would be centred on the absence of him. And why had he suddenly been taken in the middle of the night with the desire for a smoked meat sandwich, anyway?

  Mother couldn’t stifle a burst of abuse against “those bastard felquiste swine,” meaning the FLQ; meaning, if the family’d only known, Marie. And then she dissolved again in her own tears. Marie, pale, accepted it silently. She was overwhelmed; her world had changed unexpectedly. It would take her weeks of sullen silence to digest it. It had never occurred to her that anyone she knew personally would be affected by her terrorist acts. Everything had always been aimed against an ill-defined “them” and not an all-too-familiar “us.”

  When they went up to Angus’s apartment they were surprised to find everything already packed. Only the most essential items were unboxed: a single towel, a couple of mugs, his toothbrush and comb. It was precisely as they’d left it when helping him move in years ago after his wife died. The hall was lined with boxes and bags, furniture was stacked upside down and the dresser was empty of its drawers.

  He’d been fond of saying, “Properly used, a single spoon can last a man a lifetime.” Now Mother realized what he’d meant. He left no insurance. He’d always waved his bankbook and said, “Here’s my insurance. Why give money to those crooks?” But Mother wasn’t allowed to draw from his account. Until the estate was settled, the Desouches were forced to pay the outstanding bills and the burial expenses. That was bad news for their already frustrated creditors.

  The services were arranged with the undertakers who occupied the adjoining building on the south side of the Desouches’ own house. They were given a special rate because for one thing they were neighbours, and for another, since he’d been so close to the blast, there just wasn’t much left of Angus to embalm.

  For years, they’d watched others dressed in black filing in and out of the parlour next door. They played a game of counting the limousines and hearses they’d see in a week, or run to keep Uncle’s dog from wandering in to join the bereaved. In summer, Uncle sat on the porch in his undershirt, beer in hand, as mourners slouched on the sidewalk, hot in their suits and dresses, self-conscious beneath his unfriendly stare.

  Now the Desouches all donned their formal clothes. Stiff and not much used, they were long out of fashion and obviously unsuited to their lives.

  When they entered the funeral home for the first time, Grandfather cased the joint like a professional housebreaker. How much easier would it be to collect his merchandise here than to have to tear it from the ground like a miner? Alas, he noticed the building was fitted with an alarm system beyond his abilities to circumvent: tiny cameras in the ceiling corners and motion sensors on every window and door. And as Uncle pointed out, here the corpses would be missed immediately. But Grandfather couldn’t get over the feeling of being let into a bank vault. He fled the parlour “for a smoke,” which he sucked on like an infant at a bottle.

  Passersby saw him tremble and jerk the cigarette in and out of his mouth, saw his discomfort in the suit, saw him standing before the funeral home, and murmured their condolences on their way. Grandfather wondered what they were on about.

  Until Grandmother’s recent demise, Jean-Baptiste had never actually known a dead person. Now, with Angus, it was still a novel enough experience to inspire a glut of new poems which—because they were about the death of his grandfather and because he was so young—were atrocious. But he loved them enough to want to print them himself and hand them around to anyone who would take them. Eventually he had enough to fill a small pamphlet, and began to think of how and where he could find the paper and ink he needed.

  In the meantime, he decided it couldn’t hurt to submit some of these new works to local magazines—even if there were no chance of acceptance. The problem, he knew, was that he just wasn’t sociable enough to become part of the right circles. Which was obviously the only way anybody got published, especially locally. Everybody knew everyone else and they all published one another in their reviews and magazines, and went to each other’s readings and launches, and wrote about each other in the local newspaper, which made them all seem very worldly and important. And no one bothered over whether their work was really any good or whether it was enjoyed by anyone but themselves.

  Jean-Baptiste knew the real problem was that they didn’t recognize good work when it bit them, because they never read anything but each other’s work, and because they watched too much television. The anglophone literary community of Montreal was very small. Although they had heard of people like Calvino and Goethe and Bulgakov, they thought these people were foreign dictators or film stars. Therefore Jean-Baptiste was quite surprised to receive a reply from an editor who, while rejecting the poems he had sent, offered encouragement, asked to see more work and invited him round for a chat.

  “I feel a little like Artaud,” Jean-Baptiste said as he sat opposite the editor.

  “Who?” the editor asked.

  “Never mind,” said Jean-Baptiste.

  The men borrowed a truck and moved Angus’s things to the basement. Mother wanted to sort through them, knowing she’d discover much of it difficult to discard. She spent days below ground looking at brown photos by the light of an unshaded bulb, trying to bring herself to throw out old shirts, opening letters he’d kept from people she’d never heard of. And then closing them again as if afraid of being caught.
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  When Father suggested it was really getting time to begin disposing of some things, she protested.

  “No, not yet. It’s so comforting having them near. Later, in the spring.” For once, Father didn’t press her.

  But Angus’s boxes in the basement were no comfort to Marie. They were a secret torment she dared not share with anyone. It mattered little to her that others had died or been injured. She’d expected that—she had wanted that. It didn’t even matter so much that someone she knew personally, her own grandfather, had died. Truth to tell, she hadn’t liked him very much. He was too much of an Anglo. Too much of a slave to his masters, who preyed on his simple ideas of how the world worked. And used him, as he thanked them for it. If he’d been smarter or more clear-sighted, she could at least have respected him personally, even if he was English. No, she lost no love over Angus. The hard part was watching her mother’s grief. And knowing she had caused it.

  Never before had her mother’s feelings mattered. She’d always felt Mother’s feelings were the result of erroneous ideas, that if she could only see the truth she’d be ashamed of her heritage. The same way Marie was ashamed of her anglo blood. When she was small, even before she began to form her political ideas, Marie had looked at her mother and decided she would not be like her. She wouldn’t be subject to someone else’s will, the way Mother was to Father’s. And when she became a teenager, she began to see the French and the English as being in the same relationship.

  Nevertheless, even if Mother made her angry and represented something she hated, even if Mother had no place in Marie’s world, she was still Marie’s mother. And to see her staring vacantly, to hear her spontaneous sobbing, to watch her face drawn with expressions of madness, was agonizing. Marie knew that as long as those boxes of Angus’s were in the house, she couldn’t bear to be.

  She didn’t even tell them she was leaving. She took nothing with her. She simply stayed away.

  The rift between Aline and Grandfather had been growing since the day the police came. Though Aline was not brave, and was now frankly afraid of Grandfather, she was even more afraid of the police. She’d always believed that anyone who hid from them had reason to. The thought that she’d married a gangster mortified her.

  “This business you’re in with Uncle,” she asked, “it isn’t criminal, is it?”

  Lifting his eyes but not his head from the newspaper, Grandfather mocked her voice. “Criminal. That’s not an absolute, is it?”

  “Mon dieu,” said Aline. Her heart sank. It was the final degradation. The intimacies they’d shared sprang into her mind and repulsed her. She left her pan at the stove, sat at the table and cried.

  “Someone has to pay the bills,” said Grandfather. “Look, we’re months behind on everything. We have to eat.”

  Through her hands, Aline said, “Then it’s true crime doesn’t pay, isn’t it? Good Lord, help me.”

  “Fuck the Lord,” said Grandfather. “He never bought me a meal.”

  She couldn’t get any more than that out of him. He wouldn’t deny the illegality of his activities but he wouldn’t describe them either.

  Now she was glad that Grandfather had a nocturnal schedule. It relieved her of the burden of sharing the bed with him. While he slept during the day, she worked in the kitchen and did the shopping. She tried to encourage Mother to join her at the shops. It had been Mother’s task until Angus had died, and though Aline welcomed the excuse it gave her to leave the house, she thought it would be better if Mother came out of the basement and her depression. For the rest of the time, when Grandfather was not in his room, she slept.

  Eventually she grew used to the crow flapping in its cage and unless it screeched it no longer woke her. Its squalling became her alarm, signalling the entry of Grandfather into their bedroom and prompting her to rise for the day. While she dressed it would continue screeching. It was a great annoyance to Grandfather. Wanting to sleep, he’d bury himself in the bedclothes.

  At last a curious thing happened: Aline began to like the crow. She took its squawking as her own complaining, complaining that she was much too timid to undertake herself. Every time Grandfather flinched at a piercing cry, she felt as if she herself had screwed up the courage to yell at him. As soon as this occurred to her, she ceased resenting the crow’s waking her. She ceased to fear it or be surprised by its sudden outbursts. She began to feel relief; the more it cawed, the calmer she felt. There were times when its screeching scaled ear-piercing heights, spurred on by Grandfather’s desperation, his covering his ears or slapping at the bird. Times when she realized she was actually smiling as if at the laughter of children.

  Naturally, the more Aline came to like it, the more Grandfather hated the crow. Although he’d never been fond of it, now it irritated him more and more, until he couldn’t remember why he’d taken it in at all.

  It had been a whim at first. One he expected to give up after the inevitable fight with Grandmother—this had been while his first wife was still alive. But for a reason Grandfather couldn’t understand, she never said a word. His unstated surprise at her silence had quickly turned into a challenge. If she wouldn’t object to it being in the house, she certainly must object to his moving it into their bedroom.

  Of course Grandmother was not such a fool as her husband, and after so many years of his persecutions, she knew instantly that the filthy bird’s only purpose was to annoy her. Long practice had taught her that her only weapon against Grandfather’s taunts was an iron skin. She ignored the bird.

  Grandfather, on the unimaginative principle that he was more stubborn than his wife was patient, swallowed his anger at this trick turned against him. He too ignored the crow. So successfully, in fact, did they both overlook it that it became just another unpleasant part of being in the bedroom. Like the dull peeling wallpaper or the draft from the hall, or each other’s proximity.

  Now when it seemed that his second wife was actually going to enjoy the presence of this creature, Grandfather was furious. For the first time in years he moved it out of his bedroom and into another part of the house. He placed it on the enclosed back porch. Aline used the excuse that the unheated space was too cold for the bird and brought it back inside the kitchen. She fed it scraps after their meals and bits and extras while cooking. She cleaned its cage, watered it and even let it fly about the room and stretch its wings. It perched on the countertop or the kitchen table, watching her go about her business as if genuinely curious. It followed the movements of her hands with a cocked head and hopped around for a better view.

  Aline’s disposition improved. Yet she dreaded returning to Grandfather’s bedroom every night, even if he wasn’t there. He never made the bed, so his presence was always impressed upon it like a weight on her soul. But it was impossible for her to think of leaving her husband. Her own sense of shame and the proscriptions of her faith saw to that. But the duty of sharing his bed was an albatross round her neck. Then one day as she closed the windows before giving the crow the freedom of the kitchen, she suddenly realized that if it could leave its cage, so could she.

  She moved her things into Marie’s room.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” demanded Grandfather.

  “If thine eye offend thee,” said Aline, “pluck it out.”

  They had run through the letters and past-due notices, they had weathered the storm of phone calls, they had swallowed the abuse of bill collectors; they had even pretended not to be home when the gas man came calling. But eventually he showed up with a bailiff, and Uncle grudgingly answered the door.

  “We would pay it if we could,” he said truthfully. The men nodded, and politely removed their galoshes so as not to track snow into the house, and Uncle led them to the basement door. “Find it yourself,” he said, and left them.

  They discovered Mother among Angus’s worldly remains, like a child with dolls, and they exchanged hellos. When they explained who they were, she showed them the furnace. Under the eyes of the baili
ff, the gas man sealed the meter, and the furnace went out.

  When they left, Uncle took a pair of pliers from the pantry, wordlessly passed by Mother and her things, and broke the seal on the meter. He lit the pilot light, waited a moment to make sure the settings were correct, and went upstairs for a smoke.

  Later the landlord, who was equally unsuccessful in collecting his rent from the Desouches, called the gas company to inform on them out of spite.

  The phone calls began again. Father tried patiently explaining that winter was a bad time for them financially, and also no time to do without heating. But like all public utilities, the gas company was heartless; its employees were the kind of uncaring functionaries who do so well in totalitarian regimes, precisely because they’re able to bury their humanity under their position so completely. They merely follow the rules, as if such abstract guidelines affect only other management decisions and not people. When the woman berating Father for being a deadbeat made this perfectly clear, he hung up the phone, collected a hammer and nailed shut the door to the basement. The gas man showed up not just with a bailiff but with the police, and Uncle himself handed them a crowbar to wrench open the door. When they flicked on the light, they discovered Mother still down there.

  Grandfather, Uncle and Father held a conference around the now permanently sealed meter. Though they had some elementary knowledge of how to jimmy various kinds of meters, plumbing and fuse boxes, they couldn’t simply snap a wire this time. It was already getting colder in the house; but at least that got Mother up out of the damp, unfinished basement.

  Next day Father walked over to the main branch of the public library across from Lafontaine Park, and found a book on natural gas with colour illustrations and complete details on the workings of the system. It never occurred to him that the library would issue him a card, so he simply stole the book, secreting it in his armpit beneath his winter greatcoat. The three men pored over the book all day, getting colder and colder, putting on sweater after sweater, drinking too many cups of hot tea.