The Afterlife of Birds

by Elizabeth Philips

  She lays a palm on Michael’s shoulder. His eyes are closed now. One breath, two breaths. Nothing for two, three beats. Another breath. Breathing and then not breathing. Is he going to die in front of their eyes? Henry’s own chest constricts and he steps toward the bed. Maria takes Michael’s hand and massages the fingers, rubs the thick palm. After a minute or two, his breathing evens out, and Henry moves back to the window. The children are gone now; the clouds are still there in the east, a tower of cumulus.

  “I will come again soon,” Mrs. Bogdanov says, and tenderly places her hand against Michael’s cheek. She gets to her feet, looks around for Henry, and nods. She staggers a little as she moves toward the door, like someone seasick or drunk. As he waits for her to go out ahead of him, he catches a glimpse of Michael’s large expressionless face, and his throat burns.

  Outside, the wind has risen. The wiry branches of newly planted trees beside the parking lot are trembling. He helps Mrs. Bogdanov into the car and she clutches at the skirt of her dress to keep it from getting caught in the door.

  MRS. BOGDANOV COMES IN to the sitting room with the tea, and stands there with the tray in her hands. She’s changed out of her dress and is wearing her usual dark pants and white blouse. He gets up to take the tray from her and she must not be quite herself because she lets him.

  “Ah,” she says, dropping into her chair.

  They occupy themselves for a few minutes, drinking the hot, acrid tea.

  “Well,” she sighs. Her face looks blasted, her eyes hollow with fatigue.

  She pulls a photo out of a book on an end table, and shows it to Henry. It’s the one of Michael wearing a heavy fur coat and looking like a bear. His boots, which Henry didn’t notice before, are bound up with what appears to be string, and they look as if they would fall apart if the knots came undone.

  “Michael, always so strong, just like my grandfather. I must have told you about the bear?”

  “Oh yes,” he says. “Your grandfather built the cage —”

  “There is another story,” she says, trapping her hands between her knees, as if to prevent herself from making any sudden gestures.

  “The story I’m speaking of,” she says, “happened seven years before I was born.”

  IT’S A FINE, LATE SPRING DAY, at a time when there have been many changes, and when there are many more to come, and a man taller than any man Yuri has ever seen is driving a cart rapidly toward him down the village street. The man is called many things, Yarik or the Bear Wrestler or Golovan the Giant, and he has foul breath, and it is said that he’s never seen the inside of a house. In the back of his cart, there’s a cage, and soon the cage will have a bear in it — because the bear, which Yuri has tended for many years, cannot be cared for any longer. Count K and his family are packing their bags and will be gone by nightfall, fled to who knows where — perhaps never to return. Yesterday K gave Yuri an old pistol, with instructions to shoot the bear after he and his family were safely away.

  Yuri knows that the bear’s pelt, even scarred as it is, is valuable, and that the gall is much sought after for potions to cure fever and quicken eyesight. When the man appeared yesterday and offered to transport the bear, for a suspiciously small fee, to the refuge of a distant forest, Yuri distrusted him immediately. But what choice does he have? He has agreed to the giant’s price, as long as Yuri is permitted to come along on the journey, to ensure that the bear doesn’t end up as a coat on the big man’s shoulders.

  Now the giant climbs down from his cart and swaggers in his huge boots toward him.

  “You brought the money?” he says.

  Yuri nods. The oaf smells like he sleeps in a barn.

  “This way,” Yuri says, and the giant hoists himself back onto the cart and Yuri walks ahead of him into the woods.

  When they reach the bear’s enclosure, Yuri directs the giant to unlatch the wooden door of the cage, and he does so; the door is hinged at the bottom, and cleverly drops down to the ground to act as a ramp. Meanwhile Yuri lifts the rope from where it hangs on a nearby tree bough, one end fashioned into two nooses, a larger and smaller loop. He picks up the bucket of food that has been sitting all morning just outside the bars, and carries it with him into the pen.

  Yuri stands still for a few moments, and he sings a few notes from their old song. The bear’s weak eyes waver toward him as Yuri steps in and drops the big noose over the black head and the smaller one over the muzzle; he holds the rope loosely in his hand, just tugging on it enough to let the bear know he’s there at the end of it.

  “Open the door of the pen,” Yuri sings out softly to the giant.

  And Yuri and the bear walk though it and he leads the bear over to the cart, and the bear, as sadly docile as a whipped dog, walks up the ramp into the cage.

  Golovan the Giant closes and padlocks the door, and leans against it, lips lifted in a grin, his huge yellow teeth stained and broken and sharp.

  AND THEN THE THREE OF THEM are on the road, and the bear is moaning, or maybe it is he, Yuri, who is moaning. Both are suffering the rough track, the jostling cart, the hard boards under their not-so-young bones, while the giant sits contentedly, his black, hooded eyes trained on the path ahead.

  Very soon, Yuri is farther away than he has ever been from everything and everyone he knows.

  HE SHOULDN’T HAVE COME ALONE. That is what Yuri feels that first day, the trees dark overhead, that he is so starkly, now, without. The giant has his large stinking self and the bear has his claws, his teeth. What does Yuri have? A pistol that’s so old it may not fire. And his boots, which have been repaired again and again, and for which he is grateful, because the bones of his feet are weak, almost deformed, after two decades of hard labour in the count’s fields.

  YURI SLEEPS THROUGH TWO NIGHTS on the cold ground, aiming first his face and chest, and then his back toward the fire. The giant’s face is craggy, like a cliff edge, in the seething orange light. He never seems to see Yuri; or maybe Yuri isn’t really here at all, maybe the giant is travelling alone with a frightened bear.

  The giant makes a coarse stew of beef and onions. He feeds himself, and Yuri feeds the bear, and then scrapes out what is left, crouched over the pot like a thief. The stew is very good, made of the best cuts of meat Yuri has tasted for a long time. He scours the pot with a heel of hard bread.

  WHEN, ON THE THIRD DAY, they reach the forest, Yuri’s fear does not deepen, as he anticipated, instead it narrows to a fine point, like the tip of a needle — and then finer, to a spear made of a single hair.

  These are the woods Yuri has only heard about in the old, old tales. The trunks are as wide across as a team of horses, and so tall that he cannot see their crowns — more than once he nearly swoons as he bends his aching back and looks up. The air is a fragrant mixture of acid and sweet; the forest floor, sodden with the tannic brown layers of decayed wood and leaves, seems to undulate under his feet. Yuri imagines falling headlong into a dark, brooding lake, what they call in the old stories the eye of mother earth.

  Now that they’ve arrived, he asks the giant to release the bear, but the man shakes his head. Yuri touches the pistol under his shirt, but knows he won’t draw it. They drive on, deeper into the forest, on a track that only the giant can discern. An hour. A half day. A full day.

  AND NOW IT’S MORNING. And Yuri is awake by the ashes of the fire. He is unable to move. Are his hands tied, has the giant bound him with ropes? No — he can see his right hand lying on the earth in front of him. He is held down, flattened by an unseen weight. The giant, K’s pistol in hand, unlocks the door to the cage and throws it open. The first ray of sun stabs through the canopy of trees and finds the animal’s eyes, a mineral gleam, and the bear’s head appears, scanning this way and that, like a pendulum just starting up.

  The giant backs away, pistol levelled, as the animal leaps down from the cart, fur matted with straw and excrement, a collar of raw flesh at his throat. And the flesh is familiar to Yuri, and painful to see, as
if the bear were a man, after all, beneath his black robe.

  The bear shuffles closer and closer, his breath fetid on Yuri’s face. He wants to shut his eyes but he cannot. Golovan, where are you? he tries to shout.

  Nyet.

  It’s the only word he can force out in a thin gasp; he spits, trying to say more, to recall to the bear the many years their fates have been, however unwillingly, through good and bad times, joined. The bear’s gaze swivels toward something or someone behind and to the north of where Yuri lies. A huge rock, a boulder, tumbles across Yuri’s field of vision and halts abruptly at the bear’s feet, and as it rears back the creature’s face changes from the face of a prisoner with a scar across his muzzle to the face of a wild animal with a luxurious covering of fur that stands up around his head like a bristling halo.

  The bear shakes himself, pivots, and runs, his limbs flowing as if he has never been caged, never chained — and he disappears into the impenetrable wall of trees.

  Yuri watches his hands uncurl; he presses them against the ground and with a great effort forces himself to his feet, swaying, waiting for his breath to find its keel. The massive blue boulder is gnarled, twisted in on itself like a man folded in sleep. Yuri puts his hand on the stone and the smooth surface is warm. He holds his palm there until both stone and hand are cold, then he climbs into the cart and takes the reins. The horse, which has waited patiently, head down, an absence in the form of a grey gelding, stirs to life, and the cart turns.

  The horse finds the path that leads out of the forest, and in three days Yuri is home.

  He returns to chaos — to civil war and revolution — but for years afterwards he has more muscle, the strength of a younger man, in his back and legs, his hands and feet. And he has the giant’s steady grey gelding, and the cart, and he can earn enough to feed his wife and daughter. And in time, his daughter takes a husband, and two grandchildren are born into their house, the eldest, Katerina, and the youngest, Maria.

  THAT NIGHT HENRY SLEEPS SOUNDLY, a sleep without dreams, until he awakens in the very early morning and it’s very dark, and he wonders if Michael is lying just as he was when they left him, if his erratic breathing has returned. The room seems airless and Henry fumbles to open the window, sucking in the cool, night-scented air.

  He goes to the kitchen, turns on the light, and gets to work. His hands know what to do, how to fit the last pieces together, and by sunrise, Amy’s crow — his crow — is done.

  The crow is soaring, its wings fully extended, skull elevated, seeking the horizon. He takes the bird out into the backyard and holds it up above his head, the bones starkly defined against the blue sky. It is an off-white, heavy-headed arrow.

  When he comes back in, the phone rings, and Mrs. Bogdanov tells him that Michael died in the early morning hours. And before he died, he sat up, and spoke; he said something tenderly, in Russian, that his daughter didn’t understand.

  Twenty-Five

  UP ABOVE THE CITY, it’s windy, and Marcie hangs on to her straw sunhat with one hand and the wooden bridge railing with the other. The sun is so bright it’s painful. Below, at the edge of the torrent, six pelicans swim in a circle, jabbing their long jowly beaks into the water, fishing for the whitefish and pike that fall, momentarily stunned, over the weir.

  “Seems unfair,” Marcie has to shout.

  “It is,” Henry shouts back. “There’s no such thing as a free ride.” He has a hand on her arm; she won’t blow away in this gale but he feels like he just might. They’re up here because Marcie, quoting some book she’s read, said that a vigorous walk might “bounce this baby out.” Her brow is damp, and she’s only just caught her breath after the climb up the stairs.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asks, his mouth at her ear. Did she catch that or did the wind steal his words?

  The plan is to cross to the other side, walk upriver to another bridge and circle back this way. A bottle of water is clipped to his jeans, and he’ll save it all for her if she insists on going ahead.

  Marcie puts a hand against the small of his back. “Steady on, Henry,” she says. And he’s surprised by the brush of her other hand at his cheek, and the wet beneath his eyes. Though it’s no wonder his eyes are tearing, what with the sun and relentless wind, and Maria Bogdanov cloistered away with Michael’s daughter and her family, planning the funeral.

  Marcie slips an arm around him. “I’m really sorry about Michael,” she says. “It must be agony for Mrs. Bogdanov, losing him now, when she only just got him back.”

  Henry looks blearily down at the stippled surface of the river.

  “Let’s go sit in Rae’s garden,” Marcie says.

  “No bouncy walk?”

  “I’ll bounce all the way down to the car,” she says, and then her hat blows off.

  “IT WAS A NICE HAT,” Rae says with a sympathetic pout.

  Marcie laughs. “It was worth it — you should have seen it fly in that wind, almost to the waterfall — and guess what, it floats!”

  “It’ll look spiffy on a pelican.” Rae’s smile breaks into a no-holds-barred-Rae’s-back-in-action grin. Today her hat is a cottony head wrap, a swirl of greens, the lime of new leaf mixed with a darker mint.

  The three of them are lounging on the patio, sipping a fizzing orange concoction that Rae’s served in frosted glasses.

  Her garden is burgeoning. White pansies, blue campanula, and tiny lavender florets of alyssum are already blooming. And at the centre of the bed, two yellow zinnias, half-open, like shy suns. The soil is wet from a recent watering.

  “All the plants are filling out nicely,” Marcie allows. “And that peony’s really perked up.” Henry and Rae turn simultaneously toward the pink bouffant blossoms like shaggy doll heads nodding by the back steps.

  “It’s got a gorgeous sweet perfume, too,” Rae says.

  Henry and Marcie sniff and shake their heads, and Marcie says, “The breeze is blowing it away.”

  Rae, sitting between them, takes first Marcie’s hand then Henry’s in her own. “Did I ever say thank you? I mean, for this?”

  “It was all Marcie,” Henry says.

  “You did all the he-man stuff though, didn’t you, Hank,” Rae teases him, and then draws their hands together, kissing them both on the backs of their knuckles before she lets them go.

  HALF AN HOUR LATER Marcie is on her knees, pulling up a patch of chickweed. When Rae protests that she shouldn’t be, Marcie argues, “I intend to give this baby a darn good squeeze. He — or she — needs to get a move on now.” She aims an earthy finger at a plant a few feet away. “Rae, where did that columbine come from?”

  “You didn’t plant it?”

  “Well, Rae,” Henry says, “if you let Marcie into your garden, I have to warn you that anything can happen.”

  Rae laughs. “And all I have to do is sit here, it seems.”

  Henry’s just strung up the tiny white garden lights Rae wanted in the Russian Olive when the front gate bangs open and someone barges in carrying a square cedar planter exploding with flame-shaped bronze and dark green leaves. The tall spiky things advance awkwardly toward them, the visitor’s face entirely forested over.

  “Henry, take this, would you?”

  He grips the cedar box by its sharp bottom corners and glimpses his mother’s face through the foliage. The planter is top heavy, an awkward weight, and he sets it down carefully on the patio, next to Rae’s chair.

  “Evelyn,” Marcie cries, leaping to her feet, while Rae rises a bit more slowly.

  “Don’t look so shocked, girls,” his mother says. “Sometimes I do actually leave the greenhouse.”

  Marcie gives her a huge hug, and his mother says, “Lovely to see you too — you two, I mean,” patting the rotund curve of Marcie’s sundress.

  “And Rae,” his mother turns and her arms enfold Yvonne Rae, holding on for a long moment, and when they separate they both look crushed, Rae’s blouse, his mother’s shirt, their fractured smiles.
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br />   “But my,” his mother says, “you do look wonderful.”

  And Henry really sees Rae then, in her pale green blouse embroidered with hot pink diamonds along the neckline, her sun-swept face and arms and her quick gestures — her hands fairly dancing around the plants in the cedar box. “What is this marvellous thing?” she asks.

  “Well, when Marcie emailed me photos of the garden a couple of days ago, I thought, I know what that patio needs. Cannas. So here they are — plants with real spine. Which I know you have, Rae,” his mother says, straightening the collar on Rae’s blouse, “but a little more never hurts.”

  Rae’s smile falters and she bites her lip as they all admire the canna lily leaves and the several spear-like flower heads thrusting up in their midst.

  “What colour are the flowers?” Marcie asks.

  “There are two different cannas in there. This one is a fire engine red,” his mother points to the canna with the bronze leaves, “and that one will be an amazing deep apricot.”

  As soon as they’re all seated around the table, Rae springs up again. “Where are my manners,” she says. “Obviously, more refreshments are called for.”

  Once Rae closes the door behind her, Henry’s mother says, “I had another reason for coming today. I was going to call you, Marcie, after I saw Rae — and I wanted Henry in on this too.” She looks Marcie, then Henry, in the eye. “I’ve had this idea.”

  “Uh-oh,” he says, “could be trouble.”

  “Sh,” Marcie shushes him.

  “Well, you know I’m not crazy about the new guy.”

  Henry taps the arms of his chair. His mother’s so not crazy about the new guy that she doesn’t ever use his name. “I thought you were going to wait till August, give him a chance to get into the swing of things.”

  “I plan to keep him on until — yes, thank you, Henry — the end of August. Then in September, I can manage by myself for a bit. I’ve asked Terry and Johanna,” the local women who work for her during the high season at the greenhouse, “if they can stay for an extra couple of weeks and they said yes.” She pauses for a moment. “But around September 15th or so, I’m off to Australia.”