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Excerpt
The Bower-Bird
Thunder cracked a whip in the west. In a thunderstorm you weren't to phone. He thought that if it was going to storm he'd make the call before it did.
Someone answered the phone at once. A woman's voice with a breathy quality, rather sweet. When he told his name and asked for Joe, she kept him waiting. "We were in Nam," he offered at last, trying with patience to read her silence. "This is the last address I have."
He had crashed for the night at an inn of sorts, where now he stretched on a sagging bed. The air of his room was sagging, awaiting rain. Under his shoulder were papers for the interview that had led to nothing and now lay scattered over the spread. In the bed light above him a resident insect warmed and sang.
Now she was back and asking him, "What did you say your name was?"
"Will Geer." He spelled it for her. "This is the last address I have."
He heard her speaking in hushed tones. She returned to him. "I'm sorry to tell you my brother is dead."
He took it in, but not at once, letting it settle into him--the way your mother had covered you so as not to wake you in the night, the way, when you jumped and hit the ground, the parachute came down on you, as if you had plunged below the ground and waited for earth to shut you in--and while the words were settling, he said he was sorry and asked her when.
There was always the feeling back in Nam--they'd talked about it on river patrol--that if you made it through the war, you figured you'd never have to die. It was a sobering thing to hear. That Joe was dead? Or to find that after all they were wrong? He told her again that he was sorry, that it had been six or seven years, maybe eight, since he'd been in touch. He tried to recall if Joe had ever mentioned a sister. Perhaps by now he'd acquired a wife.
"When did it happen?" he asked again. When didn't matter, but it was something you had to say.
"A year ago." Again she was speaking in hushed tones. She was back with him. "My mother would like you to come to supper."
He said at once, "I'm on my way back to Tennessee. I was here on business overnight and wanted to call before I left."
"She says she wants it very much. A friend of Joseph's. Just to talk. "There was a pause. "And of course your wife . . . if she is here."
"No wife," he said.
"Please come," she said. "We both want it so very much."
It was the last thing he wanted, of course. He toyed with refusal. He groaned and said he would like to come.
He was wishing to God he hadn't called. Funny the way it was with Nam. Home, he wanted to wipe it out. And then he wanted to be with them, with some one who could bring it back. And when it was back he drowned in it and had to run and later on to get it back. You were something like a rubber band. You pulled away and you snapped back.
He listened to rain invading the land, the rising wind, the thrashing trees, and then the buckshot against the pane. The war was a long, long time ago, and Joe was buckshot against the pane.
He and Joe hadn't been close at first. But it was amazing how close you got when bullets were flying over your head. The fear was like an undertow that swept you down and out to sea.You clung to anyone around. And after the fear was at an end, you kept in touch in a sort of way.The fear had opened up your brain.The guy was there inside your brain. And you were there inside his brain. That was the kind of close it was. And if he was dead . . . well, he was still inside your brain, and what was different was that now you weren't in his. The last thing of all he wanted to do was face Joe's sister and, God, his mother and try to come up with something to say.
He packed his bag for checking out. After he'd managed the supper thing, he'd leave at once and drive all night.
The rain thinned and abruptly stopped. It was early September. Summer was ripe and ready to fall. He drove through streets that were tired of it. He saw it in the listless trees. It was, as she'd said, not hard to find. A shopping center was cropped to galleries, then to cloisters. And it was there beyond a gate among the elms, a large brick building, two stories of it, old with a smudge of the city upon it. The bricks, once white, had weathered into a mottled red. They lived, she had said, in the downstairs part.
She took so long to answer his knock that almost he had turned away. Then she was there, a small woman in long, full skirt and peasant blouse, the waist clipped in with a fringed red scarf, the dark hair coiled and caught behind with a smaller, matching scarf. The face was pale and almost pretty, with pale but animated eyes, and reddened lips. He took the hand that was offered to him. It had an almost feverish warmth. He felt old for his forty-three years, in need of a shave, in need of a job; he was sure it showed and did not care. He guessed she was thirty-eight, or more. He didn't care.
"The friend of Joseph is welcome," she said in the voice that was breathy and almost sweet. She gave him a modest little smile that gathered force, till he dropped his own. Let's get it over, he wanted to say.
He followed her into a small parlor, the kind his great-grandmother had had, with a dark that put a curse on you. A cord from a fixture overhead fell straight to a lamp with an amber shade shaped, he thought, like a quonset hut. It stood in the center of a round table with a cluster of objects it faintly lit. Beside them a frail and elderly woman sat in a wheelchair awaiting him. The amber light was in her hair, a pewter gray and deeply ridged like a ploughed field. He was fairly sure that she wore a wig. It framed a sharp, unyielding face. She stared at him with baleful eyes.
"You knew my son?" He caught the challenge in her voice.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, "we were in Nam."
"He always called it Viet Nam."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Everything gets cropped," she said. "Snipped off. People have to get on with it. Words are snipped, names are snipped, then your life. I suppose your name was snipped from `William.'"
"No, ma'am," he said, "I was born Will."
"He never mentioned you," she said.
But the younger woman broke in at that. "Yes, he did. He spoke of Will."
Her mother listened imperiously. "Did you volunteer for the war?" she asked.
"No, ma'am," he said, and after a moment, "No, I didn't."
"It was a stupid waste," she said. "You may as well sit down." She sighed and turned a little in her chair, as if having seen him, she would leave.
He did not know what to make of her. He had thought he was there at her request.
The younger woman was beckoning him. "We planned to eat in the garden," she said. "It's pleasant now and not too damp. The rain has freshened the air a bit." She smiled at him as if her mother's curious welcome left nothing at all to be explained. She turned and with a swift gesture, she parted what proved to be double doors and he could see what she called the garden.
She beckoned him again to follow. He glanced around at the older woman. She had turned her chair into shadow, but he felt her eyes upon him still.
The younger woman was waiting for him. "Call me Tina if you will. Joseph always called me that. It will be nice to hear it from you."
Small and close, locked in with shrubs, the garden reminded him of the parlor. In the waning light of the afternoon, it was filled with shadows cast by leaves, by clouds which still were on the prowl. The branch of an elm tree dripped with rain. On the plot of grass there was scarcely room for the folding table. He saw there were places set for four.
She sat him down on a metal bench, which first she dried with the fringe of the scarf that clipped her waist. She made a playful task of it, finally drying it with her hand. Rings on her fingers winked with light. She came and went with supper food. In the limited space they were very close. It made him think of the boat in Nam, the way the jungle jammed you in, till you seemed to dream another's dream and he was likely dreaming yours. Things the river made you dream. River dreams in the light of day. Dreams of home with a river haze and a danger smell. At night you never slept to dream. You closed your eyes and went on with it, the waiting, the watching. You woke with your eyes worn out with the scene. It was easy to call it up again. He closed his eyes and was watching her and wanting to be away from her and down the road, away from her. He gave it up and opened them.
He saw that she walked with a slight limp. The damp grass would brush her skirt where her left foot dipped into its rain. As it swept the shrubs, the red scarf about her waist grew ever darker with their wet. Beneath the embroidered sleeves of her blouse her bare arms faintly glowed with it. She appeared to be preoccupied, but he felt her keenly aware of him. She circled the table, making arrangements, shifting things, weaving him into her presence there. He could not escape the soft, hypnotic scent she wore. Nor could he think of a thing to say.
The afternoon was beginning to pale. The highway traffic sound grew shrill, like a long cry from a distant hill. Suddenly she turned to him. "Remember, it's Tina. It will make me happy if Joseph's friend will call me that."
"I will," he said.
As if from a sign, the old lady wheeled herself into the yard and smoothly parked herself at the table. She seemed to have dropped her hostility. She now was affable, even gracious. As she chewed her food with a pensive air, her eyes, narrowed and dark with guile, rested upon the empty place. She talked of former days in the city, how all was altered, not for the best. Each remark was heralded with a rounded sweep of her delicate hand and sealed with yet another sweep. But once in protesting a recent change, she made a fist that enclosed her fork and struck the table with its base. Like an unruly child, he thought. Like prisoners they took in Nam beating their fists for want of words with which to make frustration known. But she was not in want of words. The talk was hers. The daughter served them in silence, her lip caught in a little smile.
He half expected a tardy guest, another relative, perhaps, to take the place that was set for him.
It surprised him to find he was hungry. The food was prepared with skill, he thought. Something fish, with a spiciness. His glass was filled several times with wine. Its fruitiness had an edge to it, but as he drank, his palate found it even smooth, till at last his mood had matched the wine. The voice of the woman receded. He had braced himself for the talk of Joe, but nothing was said of Joe or Nam. He seemed to be any visitor. He could almost believe he was gone from there and eating somewhere down the road, and the girl with a pencil in her hair came and removed the empty place, the knife and fork, whatever else, because there was no one to be there. By now it was clear there would never be.
Tree frogs came to life in the shrubs. A fragment of moon was in the sky. A cloudy breath of spider nets, woven together with drops of rain, was visible now on leaf and branch. The old lady fell silent, dark and motionless as a spider waiting at the edge of her web. Abruptly she laid down her glass and wheeled herself from the table. "Tina will see to you," she said. With an upward, rounded thrust of her hand, she disappeared through the folding doors.
They sat in silence in her wake. At length he asked: "Was there someone who didn't come?"
She took a little sip of her wine. "We set a place for Joseph. Perhaps it seems a little strange. Mother likes it done that way."
He drained his glass. "Why not?" he said.
The small enclosure became oppressive. The foliage, grayed in the failing light, seemed to advance to wall them in. Since Nam he had never been easy with this--with vegetation that hemmed him in. He wanted to be on the highway, but he found it hard to make the move, to say, well, this is all there is. Whatever I had to say to Joe ... but I didn't have anything to say. If he'd been sitting here tonight, we probably wouldn't have said a thing. We'd have dropped Nam on the table there and looked at it without a word.
Her face was smiling in the dusk. Fireflies came and struck her hair. With a swift gesture she captured one, then another, and then a third, and tipped them into her wine glass. She covered it with her little hand, the fingers spread to make a wing. Her rings were flickering with light. "Now they belong to me," she said. "They will drink the wine I have left for them, and then they'll forget about leaving me."
She was close to him. Her arms were covered with pearly down. Perhaps she was older than he had thought. The shoulders, he saw, were slightly stooped. The hand that had trapped the fireflies was delicate and even worn, with the curious kind of translucence that he had seen in the old or ill. She struck him as being ... perishable. He could not think of another word. The fruit that fell from the trees in Nam, you left it there, for despite its bloom, the bruise it sustained had spread throughout.
He stirred. "I have to be on my way."
"You mustn't yet." She closed her fingers about the glass.
"Was there something about your brother in Nam? Did you want to know about that?" he asked.
"No," she said and held the fireflies to her face. She pressed her lips against the glass.
Before he could rise, she stood for him. "I want you to see my room, she said
He did not know what to make of that. "I have a good ways to go tonight ... but I'd like to tell your mother goodbye."
"No, no, my mother has gone to bed. As soon as it's dark she goes to bed. She leaves the visitors to me. I want you to see where I laugh and cry."
She disappeared among the shrubs. "Here," she called, "through the looking-glass." She had slipped toward a rear, protruding wing. The house, he saw, had the shape of an L.
He waited a moment, a long moment. He had never since Nam been easy with entering heavy foliage. Then he followed her through an evenfall of overarching shrubs and vines, soaked with rain, thick with the gossamer of webs, alive with birds that had bedded down. He heard their faint, protesting cries. He found she had opened a door for him.
A curious room burst into bloom. A light and shadow clutter of things, oppressive as her garden had been, as if a gathering of children had played with all the toys they owned and abandoned them when sent to bed. He could not take it in at once.
She was watching him and laughed aloud. "Well, aren't you glad you came?" she asked.
For lack of words, he matched her laugh. "Tell me what it is," he said.
"I made it, the way God made the world."
"It has so much to see," he said.
She smiled. "The way God made the world."
Bowls were crowded with purple asters, the kind that grew wild along the road. Above a mantel were crossed swords. There were lamps of many shapes and heights, some with bright, translucent shades etched with leaves and butterflies. Statuary, shelves of books, wall paintings, easels mounted with landscapes, seascapes. A circular tank of colorful fish, a sheltering palm, an almond tree. Filmy draperies, curios. Figurines of gilt and bronze. Porcelains and colorful glass, garlands of seashells. A velvet hanging with cockatoos, a doorway curtained with crystal beads. Tapestries. A bird cage wound with a silver scarf. A golden harp. Everywhere there were mirrors endlessly repeating the room, till it echoed for him with a frenzied cry of hue and shine and shifting form.
She went to the cage and unwound the scarf carefully as she would a shroud; she must not startle the bird to life. The bird was perched on his tiny swing, his head burrowed in yellow down.
She seated herself before the harp and closed her eyes. The foliage had loosened her coil of hair. It fell about her face and throat, dark and full, with a drift of gray. Her skirt was drenched and clung to her. She seemed to be unaware of it.
He stood before her, drenched as well, trapped and listening while she reached across the strings, as if she gathered in the chords, plunging her fingers into gold, catching a chord that had wandered off.
The objects in the cluttered room began to vibrate as she plucked. The crimson fish in the lighted tank fluttered faintly with each chord. The bird awoke and stretched his wing with a tiny chuckle and flung his head. Wind-chimes wailed a fledgling cry.
It began to seem as if she made a single note and the room itself would sound with it. He had heard it said that for Chinamen the sacred river rushing by intoned the kung of their music. The mighty rivers, the great cities, the giant forests struck the note. From the boat you heard the jungle--chirrs, cries, and chatterings, moist and full with a listening, longing, stuttering breath; and suddenly the silence fell as if the world dropped dead for you; then if you waited you heard the note. If you died you would walk into the sound, be part of it. Even today and now at night he heard the note and was part of it.
She had placed her wine glass on a table, and now the fireflies rose from it. He watched them circling the room, pricking the shadows with points of light. And then they too timed their lamps to glow whenever she touched the strings.
Her eyes were shut. He had a wild impression they were locked with those of the mother, who waited at the jungle's edge and held the two of them in this room captive in its sound. He thought of escaping the whole of it through the jungle of shrubs and birds, with all the art of a silent passage he still possessed. Now he was on the highway, with the heater on to dry his clothes.
He stood his ground because of one patrol at dusk when the boat plunged through the hanging boughs. He heard the branches cry and break, the bird's cry, the bullet's cry, and the cry of someone the men called Cap. Not much of a cry, not much of a guy, but lots of blood.
Her sudden rising shattered it. "I'm going to make you flower tea. Or coffee?" she asked, lifting her hair with both her hands to let it fall. She shook it as if it were full of rain.
"Coffee, please. I'll need to stay awake on the road."
"Sit down," she implored.
He glanced at a fragile upholstered chair and raised his hands in mock despair. "As wet as I am?"
She laughed at him. "No more than I! We'll sit on the floor."
He was conscious of the effort she made. He sensed in her a weariness that she covered for him with smiling words. She was the summer ready to fall, the tired streets, the listless trees.
He did not sit till she came to him with his cup and hers. While he held them both, she brought a rug woven with shining threads. "This is a prayer rug, I think," she said. "I'm not sure, so we needn't pray. But do take off your shoes, in case."
He slipped them off. He could not decide if he stood before a weary child or a woman wise in dalliance.
They sat cross-legged and drank her brew. The old wound in his thigh awoke. Now on the floor, he had a view of the clutter below the clutter above--like the jungle floor with its life that was separate from birds and trees--wooden animals curiously carved, the legs of a table with raven claws. He had once been shown the playground of a bower-bird, how it was decked to lure a mate with bits of glass, glittering stones, flowers, shells, a colorful thread. At the end the bird had built a hut, and inside was the nest itself with berries and flowers replaced each day. He told her of this, for something to say. She listened to him with too bright a smile, as if he had wandered too close to her.
"And did the bird get a mate?" she asked.
"I had to move on. I never knew."
"I wish you had waited so you could say."
"It might have taken him a while. Sometimes she has a look and leaves."
"Poor bird.... he could have me." Her tone was light, but it struck the wound that throbbed in his thigh. She echoed in him. The way the jungle echoed in him, was in his brain, the way Joe was, as if he had never come home from it. He wanted to rise at once and go. But a lethargy had stolen his limbs. A clock on the far wall opened its door and a golden bird came out and sang. And then the clock began to chime.
"Don't count," she said. "The clock has forgotten all it knew. It is very old and forgets the time."
He waited till the clock was still. "I have to go."
"No," she said, "you will sleep tonight in Joseph's room. He would like that. I'm sure of it."
He stared at her in disbelief and then dismay. Her eyes were as weary as his own. "No," he said.
"Yes," she said. "My mother has set her heart on it." There was entreaty in her voice, an anguish in it that broke his will.
He could not account for his lassitude. It occurred to him she had drugged his coffee. He dismissed the thought. "I can't," he said.
She had risen to her knees. Her full skirt was caressing him, damp but warm with clinging to her. The scent she wore was in his throat. "Why leave tonight? Is it your job ... or your wife?" she asked.
"I don't have a job or a wife," he said.
"Never a wife?"
"Not since Nam."
"Well, then, of course you have to stay."
Slowly he put on his shoes and knew how tired he had become. He followed her into a narrow hall, then into a room that was simply furnished. It amazed him to find his suitcase there. But he was too weary to question it. He found a bathroom adjoining.
He fell into sleep the way he did. He was always at the jungle's edge. A bird screamed, and then another ... and then a third that was Cap's scream. And then he entered the dark of the sound, slowly dissolving into sound. He never entered the jungle; instead the jungle entered him.
But in the night he was back in Nam. The particular cry that came from Cap, that gave him sleep and took it back. Almost a cry of joy it was, a child's cry on Christmas morn. And they were slipping in the blood. Joe had turned, come back for him and dragged him below as shots were coming down like rain. One of them got Joe in the arm. I guess I owe you one, he said, and Joe said, Don't forget it, kid.
It wasn't the worst God-awful scene. There were things that could blow his brain to bits. He had let it stand for all the rest, letting it all run into one, and then surrendered himself to it, and that was the way he dealt with Nam. Now he could do it in his sleep ... guess I owe you one, he said, and Joe said, Don't forget it, kid.
Well, I'm here, he said, swimming out of the scene. I'm here for the night. I ate a meal with a bloody place that was set for you. Is that enough? It wasn't enough. And then he locked the door on Joe, which wasn't the easiest thing to do when he was lying in Joe's bed.
He awoke early, just at dawn. He seemed to be lying with his wife. She'd gone away when he left for Nam. But now, mysteriously, she was back. She must have heard he was home from Nam. I'm out of work, he wanted to say, but now you're back it will be all right. He had only to turn and hold her. It had always been, the dream he had that she was there. All the time he was married to her, she was lying there but not there. Nam had been a long, bad dream, and then for real she wasn't there. Six years of marriage had come to this, dreaming and waking to find her gone.
He showered, shaved, and quickly dressed. The clothes still wet from the night before he rolled and stuffed into his bag. He would get some coffee down the road. But he would not leave without good-bye. He opened the door and all was still. The sun glistened. on shrubs and grass. Birds were chittering overhead. The trucks were shifting, rushing by, as if they rode the darkness down. He found her door and gently knocked. At last she came in a white robe, her hair falling about her face.
"I'm sorry if I woke you," he said, "but I couldn't leave without good-bye. And tell your mother, please, for me."
She opened her door. "Please come in. I was awake. I never sleep. But I dream dreams that are full of things. Like my room they are full of things."
He stepped just inside the door. She seemed to deny there had been a night to break their talk. The fireflies still winked for them.
"Isn't it strange that I can dream and be awake?"
"I do it all the time," he said.
"Are they good dreams?"
"No," he said.
She held his eyes. "My dreams are wonderful," she said. But her eyes clouded and let him go. "If I go to sleep they will slip away. ... But sometimes I could die for sleep. How wonderful to go to sleep and wake up with your arms full."
She seemed to be asking him for sleep ... and for the waking he'd never had.
"I'll leave before the road is jammed."
"But no," she said, "you must see Mother."
He was forcibly struck by the change in her. Perhaps his coming and thoughts of her brother had taken their toll of her in the night. Her evening sheen had been brushed away and the dark beneath had been exposed. For an instant he heard the stifled cry that woke his own.... The room, bereft of its lamplight, looked a jumble of make-believe, slightly garish in early light, like an aging tart when morning comes and the rouge stands out on her pale face. The roadside asters drooped their heads. The silver scarf that had wound the bird hung like tinsel from the cage.
She smiled at him. "You mustn't see the room like this. It isn't fair. It's still asleep." It seemed to him that she spoke of herself. A change had overtaken him, as if in the night they had spoken words, dream words he could not recall, that had never been spoken in dream at all but bound them all the more for this. In the breaking day she was known to him, as if Joe might have talked of her. The empty place they had set for Joe mysteriously was filled by her. There echoed in him a patience broken, ill-mended in her, the graying hair, the dark stains beneath the eyes, the eyes themselves, haunted, pale, with a kind of loss that he shared with her. When you were small, you were given something to have and hold, and when you were grown it was taken back. Your life, was it? He couldn't say. You only knew it was gone from you.
"Mother won't be up," she said. "If you could wait ... do you think you could?" She was a child who asks a favor. A child who carries a woman inside and waits forever for her to be born.
He heard himself: "Look ... put something on and we'll go somewhere nearby and eat."
She looked away as if it might be forbidden her. He was suddenly afraid it was, that she wouldn't go and he would leave and it would end. But she said, "Wait here. I have to dress."
He watched her slight, retreating limp, the bower-bird with a broken wing, her robe brushing the golden harp. He heard its whisper in the gloom. The rug they had sat on the night before was still in place. He could detect like shadows the dampness where they two had sat. Insubstantial shadows that took their place with all the rest. The sea in the painting close at hand lashed at him with a senseless rage. The prancing charger had lost a hoof; the knight, one green and marbled eye. He closed his eyes to wait for her.
It had seemed to him that back from Nam he was given a world to throw away. Nothing was worth the trouble to keep. But this was something you didn't apply to a woman who hoarded every scrap making a heap to fill her life ... to fill her arms when she woke from sleep, if she ever slept.
"You've gone to sleep," he heard her say.
"Not me," he said. "You could get shot for that in Nam."
He opened his eyes and saw that she had dressed for him, done up her hair. It was unlike the dressing up of the night before, in a way that he could not define.
"Do I look better now?" she asked.
"I never answer a question like that."
He drove her to the place she said. They drank coffee. Beyond the glass, the early pigeons preened for them. He ordered an egg; she ate nothing. The shop was stocked with odds and ends. Over the rim of her coffee cup her eyes swept them abstractedly. She had taken him to a curio shop that was into serving early food. At once she appeared to come to life. Still, her face was the face of a child who wanders alone, staring at all the shop displays to keep from knowing that she is lost. At the moment she seemed unaware of him, unaware that he was in step with her, had been in step for half his life. Somewhere beyond was a radio.
"Your work?" she said. "What is it you do?"
A child with a couple who ate at a table next to them was staring at him. "Not anything at the moment," he said. He did not want to speak of it. His past was like the curio shop, crammed with memories of jobs that hadn't worked out for him. "The war never went away," he said. "Was it that way with Joe, you think?"
"He never talked about the war."
"Tell me how he died," he said.
She smiled at him and turned her head.
"Don't tell me if it hurts to say."
"Joseph had my mother's thing. Except with him it was quicker, you know."
"I wish I had kept in touch with him."
"Well, now you have."
"When it's too late."
She seemed uneasy with talk of Joe, frightened perhaps. She folded, unfolded her paper napkin. He brought himself to say it at last: "I wish I could do something fine for you. I have no money. I lost my job."
He felt her answer sweep his face: "There isn't a thing I need," she said.
He watched her pale and restless hands. Today, he saw, they were free of rings. The fact was vaguely moving. "I need to work on a ranch somewhere. Out in the open." He laughed then." Away from Nam. In the city it gets me by the throat."
Her eyes rested upon his own. "Men can go any place they dream." He heard the faint cry in her voice.
He stood then and was telling her, "I'm trying to see Joe in your face," aware that he hadn't tried before, aware that he hadn't wanted to.
She covered her face and shook her head.
While he paid the bill she lingered over a glass swan molded of various shades of green. When he bought it for her, her eyes filled. "I'm sorry," she said as she brushed the tears. "You shouldn't have spent your money for this. It's sure I'll never see you again."
They had scattered pigeons to reach the car. "I wouldn't be too sure of that."
"Yes," she said, "be sure of it. Somewhere it's written down in stone."
(Continues...)
Copyright © 2000 Helen Norris. All rights reserved.
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