The Afterlife of Birds

by Elizabeth Philips

  “I have to admit I didn’t get it,” she says, looking at him thoughtfully. “I used to think it was kind of morbid. Interesting, I could see it was interesting, but — well, Henry, I didn’t think it was healthy exactly. But the way the bones fit together —” She plucks at the neckline of her T-shirt, a quick, irritated movement. “I mean — they’re like sculptures. I’m not saying this right. Anyway. Those birds should be somewhere people can see them. In a museum or something.”

  AFTER MARCIE LEAVES, Henry moves the crow from the counter to the kitchen table. He takes the skulls down one by one and carries them into the bird room. Except the bear skull, which he just can’t hide away, and so places it in between the elk and moose on the sideboard — not ideal, but it’ll do for now. Then he brings out six of the birds, the best of them — rock dove, goose, goshawk, spruce grouse, merlin, magpie — and places them on top of the cupboards.

  If he moved to some little speck of a town he could buy a ramshackle old house and make it into a local tourist attraction. Henry’s Museum: all the bird skeletons you’d ever want to see, and a fine array of skulls too. There’d be an official road sign on the highway, on the outskirts, like the signs you see in front of other tiny, much unvisited places. Farrview: Home of Gertrude’s Doll Museum. Gronlid: Home of Henry’s Bird Museum and Emporium. What would he sell? Talon necklaces, quill pens, down comforters, and penis bones, a surefire cure for impotence. Prairie-grown rags and bones.

  The phone rings, jolting Henry out of his reverie, and his brother’s too-loud voice is saying something about a pair of running shoes.

  “You’ll need to find my locker at Gord’s Gym, and you’ll need the combination.” Dan describes where the locker is and spouts a string of numbers. “You got that?”

  “But Dan, why can’t you get them yourself?” Henry exclaims in frustration.

  “Because I’m in Banff.”

  “Banff? Since when?”

  “When did I get here — a while ago — anyway, I’m running a marathon here in September. I wanted to run one in Ohio in August but Laz didn’t think I’d be ready by then.” And then Dan’s giving him a PO box number in Banff — not his, Laz’s.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Henry says sullenly. “I’ll send them.”

  “I really need those shoes, and send me that bone too, would you?” Dan is jabbering on. “The cock stick. The wolf wang —”

  “Wolverine,” Henry corrects him, even though what he actually has for Dan is a little fox tool, and he doesn’t particularly want to send it to him. He’s got two of them, actually, on his night table, and he likes seeing them there, keen as exclamation marks, when he wakes up each morning. Why should he send Dan anything? He’s footloose and fancy free.

  “Awesome!” Dan cries, “send it with the shoes.” He says something incomprehensible then — could it be that he’s running while talking to Henry on the phone?

  “Have you seen Rae?” Dan pants, his breath a tearing sound, because yes, it does seem that he’s pounding up some mountain road as he talks.

  “Yeah, a few days ago.”

  “She sent me pictures,” Dan is saying, “you know, after she lost — all her hair. I told her she looked fine — don’t think she believed — but I knew she wouldn’t want me to see her like that.”

  She sent him some pictures — so obviously he did see her like that. Henry remembers Rae in the garden, the disappointment, the hurt coming off her in waves — because Dan said he’d come, and didn’t. How could he, he’s in the mountains with Lazenby.

  “It’s gorgeous — here. My phone’s gonna die soon — but listen — you’ll love this. All the streets are named after animals, eh? Bear, Cougar, Caribou, but where am I staying? Muskrat Street. Can you believe they named a street after a big rat?”

  “Huh,” Henry says.

  “Anyway, I gotta go.”

  And Henry’s left with empty air hissing on the line.

  “That’s my brother: Desperate Dan,” Henry says aloud. Runaway Dan. And he’s just going to keep running; he’s not going to come home. He doesn’t care about the uncertainty around his mother’s business, or anything of the other messy details he’s left in his wake. He’s going to recede into the distance while Henry stays where he is, bringing groceries and Russian novels to an old woman who sees with perfect clarity out of one eye, who tells him stories of other places and times, which is how a guy who doesn’t run gets to travel.

  ON THE EDGE OF SLEEP THAT NIGHT, Henry sees Marcie, and Mrs. Bogdanov is handing her a child, the boy in the photo, who is laughing now, and Michael is there too, and then Marcie transfers the child into Michael’s burly arms. Michael whispers, a buzz of Russian consonants (which somehow Henry understands) into the small whorl of the boy’s ear, never fear, you are the strongest of all the boys by far. And now Michael shows the boy the bear in the cage and they stand for a long time looking at it, as days pass, weeks and years, the bear grows smaller and smaller, until the only thing that moves is the creature’s heart, battering against its ribs.

  Twenty-Two

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON Henry waits on Mrs. Bogdanov’s front step. She hasn’t called him to ask, but he’s decided to check up on her anyway. She isn’t coming to the door, though he’s been knocking on and off for a couple of minutes. He backs up onto the sidewalk and peers at the brick facade, which is as impassive as ever. He can’t imagine that she’s gone out. Maybe Michael has taken her back to the doctor?

  He remembers the key, fishes it out of his pants pocket, and opens the door a crack. He hovers at the threshold, calls her name, but there’s no answer, and after a long pause — half-expecting a rebuff, as if he were breaking in — he steps inside. The house has the becalmed feeling of an empty building. At the foot of the stairs, he calls up, his hand on the polished newel post. It’s clear that he should leave, but he remembers her exhausted expression yesterday and quietly climbs the stairs.

  On the second floor, he sees a shape in the gloom, just where he left her lying almost prone in front of the TV yesterday. “Mrs. Bogdanov,” he blurts, rushing into the room.

  The black and red quilt lies in a tangle, draped between the chair and the footstool, as if it has just been thrown aside. She isn’t here, in the sitting room, or in either of the two bedrooms. He hurries down the stairs, takes a cursory look around the kitchen — the potatoes are in the bowl where he left them — and then he’s on the front steps again and locking the door.

  At home, he checks his messages. Nothing. He dials Mrs. Bogdanov’s number and the phone rings and rings.

  Henry wanders from room to room; it’s four in the afternoon, then five. He settles on the couch with a book, but he can’t take the words in. He tells himself he’s being stupid, he’s being presumptuous — who told him to worry about Mrs. Bogdanov? Well, Michael did. He could contact the man, and inquire about her, without sounding any alarms.

  But what is Michael’s last name? He’s heard it; can hear Mrs. Bogdanov saying it to him one day, in connection with one of her stories.

  Henry’s in the kitchen, contemplating the apple tree, which still has a few flowers clinging to a branch, white petals with a tinge of pink in them, and it comes to him — Slatkin. He gets out the phone book. There it is, Michael Slatkin, on a street in Caswell Hill.

  A woman answers after just one ring and Henry asks to speak to Michael.

  “Who is this?” she asks, her voice high, peremptory.

  He says his name. “I’m Mrs. Bogdanov’s … I work for Mrs. Bogdanov.”

  “Hang on a minute.” There’s a murmuring of women’s voices in the background.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Bogdanov,” he says with relief. “I was over at your place — you weren’t there. I thought I — well, I was concerned.”

  “Henry, of course I am fine. Why are you calling Michael?” She sounds harried.

  “He asked me to stop by your house.”

  “When was this?”

  “Today. I mea
n, he asked me yesterday, to come by today. He wanted me to see that you had everything you needed.”

  “Oh, he is so kind.” Her voice thickens with emotion. “Michael is — he’s in the hospital. Since last night.” She’s almost whispering now, as if she doesn’t want to be over-heard.

  “Oh no,” Henry says.

  “Yes. A stroke, and it’s bad, very bad,” she stutters, and he can barely make out her words. “His daughter — well, I must get off the phone.”

  Henry sits down in his armchair in the living room, surrounded by the books on the arms of the chair. He knows so little about Michael really — except that Maria Bogdanov hasn’t been the same since the man came to live in this city. She’s been more lively, and even more voluble — at times almost agitated — telling stories Henry’s never heard before. This man she cares about — desperately, it seems to Henry — Mikhail, the bear-man, is gravely ill.

  That evening, he drives to the brick house again, and she’s there, and the patch is no longer on her eye.

  They sit down in their usual chairs, except she doesn’t offer to make tea. The eye that was so recently operated on is bloodshot. She is twisting a Kleenex in her hand.

  He doesn’t know what to say to her. “Did the doctor take the patch off?” he asks.

  “I took it,” she says, waving a hand dismissively.

  He clears his throat. “And how is … Mr. Slatkin?”

  “The same. Not good.” Her lips are compressed into a tight line. “He is a man like no other, Henry.” She speaks wearily, listing in her chair, a palm against one cheek supporting the weight of her head.

  After a silence she grips the arms of her chair and hauls herself upright. “I will tell you something, the most important thing, and then you will know.” One of her hands squeezing the other so hard the fingers go white.

  THE AUGUST MARIA WAS FIFTEEN, just before the outbreak of the war that was called in Russia the Great Patriotic War, they were better off in the village than they had been for many years — they had enough food, and no one was ill. If the adults seemed guarded, if petty squabbles arose and rumours flew, most recently about a neighbour who had gone missing, a sweet man who played the balalaika at village gatherings, well, Maria wasn’t going to let that trouble her. She was more worried about her grandfather, who had recently developed a nagging cough, and had scolded her that morning — he who was never gruff with her, never unjust — as if it were her fault the hens weren’t laying. And that afternoon he hardly noticed as she and her sister prepared to go out, to join the rest of the young people from the village who were setting off on a hunt for mushrooms.

  Still, Maria couldn’t help but feel happy as she and Katerina strolled along the path toward the woods, the sun shining as it had most days lately, the crops ripening nicely in the fields. The youngsters, about twenty of them, soon split up into twos and threes — Mikhail, with whom Maria had scarcely exchanged more than a few words since the theft of the rabbits, went off with Katerina and two other girls, while Maria set out alone. She was making her way toward a stand of pine at the edge of a meadow, a place very few of the others knew about, where she hoped to find a real prize, a rarity — a prince among mushrooms.

  The day was perfect for a mushroom hunt, warm but not hot, a swath of blue sky above, long fingers of sunlight touching the ferns on the forest floor. As the trail wound down into a ravine, she walked confidently, humming to herself, stopping here and there to pick ryzhiki, the rusty ones, their caps marked by concentric red rings. The underbrush was dense, the path steeper than she remembered, and when she leaned against a birch to catch her breath, she thought she heard a man cry out in pain. The back of her neck itched in alarm as she thought of the forest spirits, how they came upon women alone in the woods and swept them away. Sometimes the women were returned, dishevelled, their clothes on inside out — or worse, naked and shivering. Sometimes they simply vanished. As she fought her way through low pine boughs, she told herself those tales were nonsense, meant to frighten children into staying close to home.

  Maybe it was their missing neighbour, trapped under a fallen tree — this happened sometimes to men out cutting wood. When she rounded the next bend, she almost stumbled over a fallen tree trunk, and she heard another cry, so close — and then the trunk moved, and a flash of white twisted toward her: a face.

  “I tripped,” Mikhail said as she knelt down beside him. He was grinning, despite his awkward position on the ground, a burly young man with muscular arms and legs and a head of coarse dark hair.

  “My ankle,” he said, “a sprain.” He asked for her hand and grasped it and together they propelled him to his feet.

  “Where are the others?” she asked, and he shook his head. “I slipped away from them.”

  He gasped when he tried to put weight on his injury. “You will have to be my cane,” he said, half-teasing, half-apologetic. He sagged against her, and she could feel him struggling not to put too much strain on her shoulder.

  Pretending to be annoyed that he’d ruined her chances of gathering more mushrooms, Maria made a show of putting the few he’d managed to glean into her basket. “For payment,” she said.

  She was delighted, really, to have come to the rescue of this older, handsome boy — this man. To feel his strong hand on her wrist. Her sister would be envious, but that couldn’t be helped.

  As they limped together toward home, Maria anticipated, with some satisfaction, coming out of the woods with a wounded Mikhail on her arm.

  DURING THE WEEK THAT FOLLOWED, she thought about Mikhail often, his reassuring bulk, his easy humour, but she didn’t see or hear from him.

  Whenever she asked her grandfather Yuri about the rumours circulating — about the missing man — he hushed her and thought up one more chore for her to do. Even her mother was preoccupied, short-tempered, turning her back when a woman from the other side of the village tried to draw her into conversation about the missing man’s daughter, who had been seen crying as she hauled water home from the well. Perhaps the man had run off with another woman, Maria thought, leaving his family to work through harvest without him; it wouldn’t be the first time this had happened.

  Over the next few days, the villagers worked in the communal fields and in their own gardens, seeming to enjoy, despite their grave expressions, the warmth of the sun and the vigour of the oats and barley — and Maria thought that perhaps the bad feeling that had been disturbing the life of the village had passed. But everything changed the day Mikhail followed her to the edge of the woods. He seized her arm too tightly and pulled her into the twilight of the trees where the branches met over their heads.

  Spinning her roughly toward him, his face, pressed close to hers, appearing almost swollen, he said, “The rumours, you’ve heard them?”

  She nodded.

  “And you heard the shots two weeks ago, very early in the morning?”

  She shook her head.

  “But Yuri, he heard them?”

  She hesitated. “I think so.” Her arms hurt — she wished he’d let go of them.

  “What did he say about the shots?”

  “Nothing, he wouldn’t tell me.”

  Mikhail’s gaze was hard on her face and she couldn’t look away. “Nothing? Maria, this is important. Because there are rumours, not just that he heard the shots, but that he was there when they were fired — and that he was seen.”

  “My mother told him to forget about it, that it was just someone out hunting, and he shouted, ‘Who goes hunting in the dark.’” Her mind was whirling. All she knew was that Yuri, whose stamina was legendary, had seemed defeated these last weeks, his face haggard. And what was Mikhail saying now, that her family must leave the village — steal away in the night — because it was too dangerous for them to stay, and now that he’d talked to her it was dangerous for him too.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, rubbing her arms now, as if to warm them. “I will help you.” And his face changed, a light coming into his e
yes. “I will do more than help you,” he said, “I will come with you.”

  And then he told her what she must do.

  They went home along a trail on the far side of the meadow, a path she hadn’t known was there, and separated just before the outskirts of the village, so as not to be seen together.

  She found her mother alone in the house and spoke as Mikhail had spoken to her, matter-of-factly, but with urgency. Her mother took off her apron. She chafed the flour from her hands and told Maria to fetch her grandfather from the garden.

  MIKHAIL CAME OVER THE NEXT EVENING, very late. They drew the curtains and put the lamp down on the floor. It was strange, everyone lit from underneath. And at first her grandfather was reluctant to speak, to answer Mikhail’s questions. Her mother’s face was white, and she whispered something into Yuri’s ear.

  “Your father,” Yuri said finally, his voice tight with contempt, “he is well.”

  “He’s never been well,” Mikhail answered. “You know this better than anyone.” He looked beseechingly at Yuri, as if willing him to believe what he was saying. “And I have to tell you that he is getting worse. He sees enemies everywhere, even,” and Mikhail lowered his eyes, “even in his only family.”

  The men had a quick exchange then, talking so fast that Maria couldn’t keep up, but her grandfather’s expression was more trusting, though he had to struggle not to cough as they talked.

  “I must ask,” Mikhail said, “if you have some money put by?”

  Her grandfather shook his head, “A bit, but not as much as we will need.”

  “I have some,” Mikhail said, “and I can get a little more — enough, I hope.”

  Katerina was crying, and her mother was stroking her hair as the men worked out the details and agreed on a date for their departure. They would travel sometimes by cart, sometimes by train, crossing the border into Poland, then making their way to the coast, and boarding a ship there for England.