The Bird Artist

by Howard Norman

  Not looking at me, she slid her dress up over her head and folded it neatly near the blanket. “I lost a little weight in hospital,” she said, “but it’s the same old me, except for all the new thoughts I’ve been having.”

  I thought this: For all my painting of rapturous shorebirds, long-necked herons, ibis in dusky light, I did not have the means to describe how passionate I felt toward Margaret just then, without having yet touched her. Her very skin seemed to hold twilight, delay it, and I retreated to the edge of the blanket. She slid over to me and began to unbutton my shirt. She put my hand on her breast. Looking at my face she said, “Fabian, this is where I collided with Dalton Gillette, when I was thirteen years old. I thought that this very spot was a good place to start courting again. I’m sure you agree.”

  12

  Isaac Sprague

  Late in September 1912, I had supper with Margaret and Enoch at Spivey’s. We met at seven o’clock and sat at the same table. That morning Enoch had returned from ten days along the northern coast, and would leave in a week for Halifax. When our meal was served, Enoch said, “Here’s something,” taking a bite of codfish stew. “Back in December 1901, when that Italian fellow Marconi—” He took a few more bites by way of backing up to where he had originally intended to begin. “Do you remember, Margaret, me telling you that in 1866 I saw the Great Eastern, wonder ship of her day, at Heart’s Content, towing up the first Atlantic cable?”

  “Yes, Pop, I do.”

  “And that in December 1901 that Italian fellow Marconi got the first wireless signal across the ocean? Well, of course I’ve mentioned this so many times we could almost dance to it. But what I haven’t yet told you is they’ve just completed a statue of Marconi in St. John’s. I want to take you to see it. It overlooks their harbor. Very prominent. A big piece of granite, Marconi carved leaning over his wireless, granite table, granite people huddled around, listening in. A moment for posterity. I never thought a statue could bring tears to my eyes. But this one did.”

  “I’d like to ask Fabian along.”

  “Fine by me.”

  I began my meal then. “There’s an engraving of an auk —an extinct bird that couldn’t fly. In a museum there. I saw it a number of years ago. I’ve lost count. But I’d like to see it again.”

  “The person whose auk it is, what’s his name?” Enoch said.

  “Ole Worm.”

  “Not a local name.”

  “No, he’s a Dane.”

  “A lowly curse of a name.” Enoch chuckled alone at his own turn of phrase. “Worm.”

  “Maybe not a peculiar name in Denmark, though, Pop,” Margaret said. “I don’t know. I haven’t been there.”

  “Well, as I see it, you wouldn’t have to go to Denmark to think of Worm as a peculiar name.”

  “Let’s spend two whole days in St. John’s, Pop. A real outing. We can stay in a hotel. A big city like that would specialize in hotels, I imagine.”

  “There’s a number of them there.”

  Bridget brought three helpings of pudding to our table. “None of you has ever turned down dessert,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Enoch said.

  Bridget went back into the kitchen.

  “Fabian here has been working on a letter to Mr. Isaac Sprague,” Margaret said.

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “He worked on it every night for a couple of weeks, Pop. You know the red-throated loon Fabian’s got tacked up?”

  “For years above his desk.”

  “That’s the one. Well, he worships it, but in the letter he berates it to Mr. Sprague, his teacher. Fabian’s hurt as a child that Mr. Sprague hasn’t written back to him.”

  “A person writes a letter,” Enoch said, “a person expects a reply.”

  “He’s a busy man,” I said.

  “I don’t think you ever should send a nasty, angry letter.” Margaret looked right at me. “I think you should write it but not send it.”

  “I’m not expecting he’ll teach me again. I just wanted him to—”

  “To what?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. To write me back.”

  “What’s that you told Sprague about his loon, the one you worship? I read the letter carefully, Fabian, but I can’t remember.”

  “The wing looks a bit too high on the shoulder.”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Boy, you and this Sprague do get down to details, don’t you,” Enoch said.

  “We used to.”

  “I’d tear up the angry letter and write another,” Margaret said.

  “And what would you write, then?”

  “Just what my pop said: Dear Mr. Sprague, A man sends a letter, a man expects a reply.”

  “All right, I’ll try that.”

  “Fine, then. It’s settled. You write it, I’ll deliver it.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Good pudding,” Margaret said.

  “Fabian, speaking of letters—” Enoch reached into his back pocket and produced an envelope. “It’s postmarked Canada, no return address, you’ll notice. I got it from Arvin Flint, up in Cook’s Harbour.”

  He set the letter in front of me on the table.

  I cleaned a butter knife with my napkin, then slid the knife along the envelope. I took out the letter and unfolded it. For some reason, before I read a word I counted the pages: sixteen. All the words were printed in capital letters and the sentences were wide apart. In a rush of memory, I saw my father hammering a nail, oiling a door, scaling fish, but I could not for the life of me conjure up an image of him reading or writing. It certainly was possible that he could not write longhand. He never read to me when I was a boy; my mother had taken on that task and had, I thought, enjoyed it. My father had liked sitting in the same room as she turned the pages, reading in an animated, even boisterous fashion, if the story called for it. Later, my father might refer to the story, though. He liked Blackbeard the Pirate, for instance. He once said, “There were cold-water pirates in Newfoundland. But old-fashioned saber and yardarm pirates seldom got this far north. They preferred the tropics. Tropical islands where they could revel and plunder. I got those words from books, ‘revel,’ and ‘plunder.’ I tried using the word ‘plunder’ once when talking to Romeo Gillette, and he just said, ‘What?’ All we ever got from history up here in Newfoundland was thieves like Bassie. Well, I suppose to somebody reading a book down in the tropics, a bank robber like my brother would fall into a colorful tradition of sorts.”

  “Who’s the letter from?” Margaret said.

  I had just read, on the final page, without having read anything else: TRY AND NOT FORGET ME. YOUR LOVING FATHER, ORKNEY VAS. I slid it over to Margaret.

  Margaret read it. “I’ll be damned,” she said. She handed the page back to me. “Should we leave you alone here to read it, Fabian?”

  “No, I’ll read it later. I’m going to finish my pudding. I’ll read it later.”

  I put the letter in my shirt pocket and said nothing for the rest of the meal. Margaret had tea. I had coffee. We paid for supper, each exactly a third. Enoch and Margaret walked home. I went to my house and sat on the porch steps. I did not open the letter just then. I went into the kitchen, percolated coffee, poured five cups and lined them up on the porch step. I lit a lantern. I sat staring at the envelope. The words FABIAN VAS, WITLESS BAY, NEWFOUNDLAND were perfectly centered. I took out the letter.

  DEAR FABIAN,

  THE NIGHT I RETURNED FROM ANTICOSTI, I ALREADY KNEW. ENOCH HAD TOLD ME. WHEN WE ENTERED THE HARBOR I ASKED HIM TO ANCHOR OUT A WAYS AND HE DID. I STOOD ON DECK LOOKING AT THE VILLAGE LIGHTS. I LOOKED AT THE LIGHTHOUSE. I LOOKED AT WITLESS BAY A LONG TIME AND THOUGHT, SUDDENLY I’M A STRANGER TO MY LIFE. ENOCH CAME UP BESIDE ME AND SAID, IT’S TIME WE EITHER TAKE YOU SOMEWHERE ELSE OR WE TIE UP. I COULD HAVE GONE SOMEWHERE ELSE. I BELIEVE THAT ENOCH WOULD HAVE TAKEN ME RIGHT BACK TO HALIFAX HAD I ASKED. I COULD HAVE THEN SENT A LETTER, FOUND OUT THE EXACT DATE OF YOUR WE
DDING, EVEN MET YOU AND ALARIC AT THE HAGERFORSE GUEST HOUSE! I COULD HAVE STOOD UP AT YOUR WEDDING AND BOTHO AUGUST WOULD HAVE BEEN ALIVE. BUT THINGS DID NOT GO THAT WAY, DID THEY?

  FABIAN, SON. AS BASSIE TOLD YOU, I REALIZED I WAS WRONG, VERY WRONG ABOUT CORA HOLLY. IT WAS ALL MORE A NEED FOR ME TO SEE YOU OUT IN THE WORLD MARRIED THAN ANYTHING. IT WAS WRONG. I’M SORRY. ALARIC BANVILLE MIGHT HAVE BEEN CORRECT IN SAYING THERE’S ALL SORTS OF WAYS FOR A MARRIAGE TO BEGIN, BUT THERE ARE WRONG WAYS AMONGST THOSE, AND WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU IN HALIFAX HAD TO BE ABOUT AS WRONG AS COULD BE. ROMEO TOLD BASSIE THE WHOLE STORY AND BASSIE IN TURN TOLD ME. I AM TRULY SORRY.

  AT THE HAGERFORSE GUEST HOUSE I SLEPT IN ROOM NUMBER 5. WHEN I ARRIVED THERE, HAVING FLED THE AUNT IVY BARNACLE IN LAMALINE, HAVING HELD THE LANTERN TO MY FACE BECAUSE I KNEW YOU’D BE WATCHING, I SMELLED LIKE LARD IN A BUCKET, WHEREAS THERE WAS THE SWEET SMELL OF TOILET SOAP IN THE BATHROOM. NEVER HAD A BODY EARNED A HOT BATH SO WELL, ABOUT THE ONLY THING I DID DESERVE, I SUPPOSE. THE FRESH CLEAN SHEETS WERE A HEAVEN. AS A MATTER OF COURSE, I COULD NOT TELL MRS. HAGERFORSE MY RELATION TO YOU, NOR LAUGH WITH HER, PARTICULARLY NERVOUS BUT JOVIAL WOMAN THAT SHE IS, IN THE DRAWING ROOM ABOUT THE TURNS A LIFE CAN TAKE. NOR COULD I CRY OVER WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN A FATHER AND SON IN FRONT OF HER. NOT THAT I HAVE A GOOD WORKING PHILOSOPHY ABOUT ALL OF THAT ANYWAY. I JUST DON’T.

  IT MAY BE OF INTEREST OR ENTERTAINMENT TO YOU TO KNOW HOW IT WENT WITH ARVIN FLINT. HE WAS NOT DIFFICULT TO PERSUADE. I MET UP WITH HIM IN BURGEO. ARVIN USED TO BE IN THE CONSTABLE PROFESSION. HE STILL CARRIES A SIDEARM. I SAID TO HIM, I’M LEAVING MY FAMILY, CAN YOU TAKE ME TO HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, I’LL MAKE IT WORTH YOUR WHILE. I SHOWED HIM SOME OF THE MONEY I EARNED FROM SHOOTING BIRDS. I SAID I’D MAKE MY WAY INTO A NEW LIFE FROM HALIFAX.

  BASSIE, YOUR LONG-LOST UNCLE, FOLLOWED A LETTER I HAD SENT TO HIM AND CAUGHT UP WITH ME HERE IN CANADA. OF COURSE THAT WAS AFTER HE’D COME TO SEE YOU AND THE HEARING, WHICH HE REPORTED TO ME IN DETAIL. NATURALLY HE TOLD ME ABOUT ALARIC BANVILLE’S DEATH ON GUY FAWKES DAY. AS YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT TOOK ME ABACK. I’M RELIEVED, AS CONCERNS THE HEARING, THAT YOU GOT MY MESSAGE FROM BASSIE AND ACTED ON IT. AND WHAT IS TRUE IS THAT BY YOUR ACTING ON IT, I FEEL A KIND OF REDEMPTION. I FEEL REDEEMED BY YOUR GOING FREE. I KNOW THAT YOU WENT FREE BECAUSE BASSIE TRAVELED ALL THE WAY TO ST. JOHN’S TO FIND OUT AND BROUGHT THAT NEWS BACK TO ME. YOU SEE, FABIAN, LOOKING BACK ON THINGS I ONLY WISH THAT I’D HAD A STRONGER DOSE OF WRONGHEADED CONVICTION THAT RAINY NIGHT TO WALK UP THE ROAD AND MURDER BOTHO AUGUST MYSELF. INSTEAD, I LEFT YOU TO MAKE THAT VERY CONVICTION UP ON MY BEHALF IN THE HEARING. THAT IS MY CROSS TO BEAR. THAT, AND SHOOTING SO MANY BIRDS ON ANTICOSTI ISLAND, ALL FOR MONEY AND FOR A MISGUIDED WEDDING.

  HAD I STAYED HOME AND NOT GONE TO ANTICOSTI, IT IS TRUE THAT ALARIC BANVILLE MIGHT HAVE DRIFTED PERMANENTLY TO THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE HOUSE FROM ME, BUT NOT TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. NOT THERE.

  WELL, I’M JUMPING AROUND A BIT HERE. BUT LET ME SAY THAT I SLIPPED OFF THE AUNT IVY BARNACLE IN LAMALINE BECAUSE I COULD NOT BEAR THE HUMILIATION THAT I’D BEEN HANDED, AND BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID FOR MY LIFE. PAIN I COULDN’T SHAKE OFF FROM THE ADULTERY, ADDED TO COWARDICE, IS ONE NASTY RECIPE, AND I CONCOCTED IT MYSELF AND SWALLOWED IT. AND ITS EFFECTS MADE ME SLIP OFF THE MAIL BOAT AND FLEE INTO CANADA.

  AS FOR YOUR MOTHER, I ALLOW MYSELF TO GRIEVE FOR HER BY THINKING OF OUR EARLY YEARS TOGETHER. I TRY AND STOP MY THINKING THERE, AND OFTEN I AM SUCCESSFUL.

  DURING THE LAST FIVE MONTHS BASSIE AND I HAVE ENGAGED IN THREE ROBBERIES AND ARE MOVING INTO THE HEART OF CANADA. THERE WAS A BANK, ANOTHER BANK, AND A MINING CAMP PAYROLL WHICH WE TOOK EN ROUTE FROM A TRAIN. I AM CERTAINLY FIELDING TROUBLE IN MY LIFE NOW. TROUBLE GALORE, NOW THAT I AM RUNNING WITH BASSIE. WHEN WE WERE CHILDREN WE BROKE INTO OUR OWN FATHER’S SHED WHERE HE MADE GOOSE AND DUCK DECOYS AND STOLE TWO OF THEM. WE THEN WENT TO A DIFFERENT TOWN AND SOLD THEM THERE. AS THE STORE OWNER REACHED INTO HIS TILL TO PAY US WE SAW MONEY. THAT SAME NIGHT WE ROBBED THE TILL OF IT. I NEVER TOLD ANYBODY OF THIS PERSONAL HISTORY AND THAT INCLUDES YOUR MOTHER. I TELL YOU NOW, BECAUSE I HAVE, GOD HELP ME, RETURNED TO A FORMER WAY OF LIFE, A WAY OF LIFE I HAD LONG BEFORE I EVER MET ALARIC. I NEVER INTENDED TO RETURN TO THIS. I NEVER WANTED TO, NOR THOUGHT IN MY WORST DREAMS THAT I WOULD. YET NOW I HAVE. IT IS PATHETIC AND WILL SUSTAIN ME FINANCIALLY UNTIL IT ENDS, AND A LIFE SUCH AS THIS ONE CANNOT END WELL.

  I SEE THAT I AM STILL JUMPING AROUND HERE. IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I WROTE OUT WORDS LIKE THIS. I NOTICE THAT IT TAKES PRACTICE, NO MATTER HOW CLEAR YOUR THOUGHTS ARE. PLUS WHICH THIS IS A LETTER I’D NATURALLY HOPED NEVER TO WRITE.

  FABIAN, CONSIDERING THAT WE MAY NOT ACTUALLY SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN, HERE IS SOME ADVICE. I WOULD ADVISE THAT IF YOU START ACTING MORE MARRIED TO MARGARET, SHE’LL NOTICE AND IT COULD LEAD TO MARRIAGE.

  SON, IF YOU COULD JUST ONCE CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF ME IN ONE OF MY STRONGER AND FINER MOMENTS, SAY TALKING AMONGST FRIENDS IN GILLETTE’S STORE AFTER A DAY’S WORK AT THE DRY DOCK SIDE BY SIDE TOGETHER, A LITTLE MONEY JANGLING IN OUR POCKETS, THEN I WOULD BE HAPPY.

  TRY AND NOT FORGET ME. YOUR LOVING FATHER, ORKNEY VAS

  Through the rest of September and October 1912, I worked steadily on the mural. I charcoaled and painted. I would arrive at the church at six o’clock, work until noon, eat lunch, then continue at least until supper, sometimes late into the night. I sketched thick-billed and common murres on Green Island, Leach’s petrels, herring gulls, black-legged kittiwakes, shearwaters. Puffins on Witless Bay Island and at Bay Bulls. Much of October I completed sandpipers and moved inland. I finished the general store, sawmill, Helen’s garden. I detailed the inlet where Enoch and Margaret’s house was situated. In that inlet, I crowded a buff-breasted sandpiper, little blue heron, ring-necked duck, blue-winged teal, and hooded merganser. I then added a small cove that did not really exist in Newfoundland and painted a garganey there. The last two days of October, I painted Lambert’s trout camp; I put osprey and kingfisher in the air directly over Lambert as he gutted a trout. Off to the side, his crippled owl tore at a trout head on the ground.

  November. The first of this month I reserved for the murder.

  I did not depict anyone actually shooting Botho August, only my painter’s rendition of the aftermath. In the mural —now—Botho stands in the topmost window of the lighthouse, black wings spreading from his back, three splotches of blood on his nightshirt. He is the presiding angel of Witless Bay. I stepped back to look. I left him that way. I painted the gramophone in on the roof.

  In the mural, Odeon Sloo and his family are unloading a horse-drawn wagon in the lighthouse yard. The door is open.

  Out in Witless Bay Harbour, my mother is peacefully rowing a dinghy. She has an umbrella fixed to a thwart, shading her from the sun. On a nearby swell, there are black ducks. On a buoy off to her left is a cormorant.

  Reverend Sillet is standing above the weathervane atop his church. Except for this act of levitation, I think that his portrait is an admirable likeness, right down to his ever-present handkerchief in his black suit jacket pocket, button-down shoes.

  On the rotted dock at the southernmost point of the harbor, Margaret is a grown woman riding her bicycle.

  Village life, plain village life, is what the rest of the mural contains. People drying cod, milling about in front of the church, children fishing from docks, the Aunt Ivy Barnacle just leaving the wharf; though I did add a bevy of gulls marauding off from its bow, one of Klara Holly’s letters in each beak. Water, clouds, sky, birds, and no murder taking place—my perfect day.

  In my estimation, I completed the mural on November 4.

  I had much apprehension about showing it to Sillet. It was not that I truly believed I had attained any sort of redemption by having painted it; nor would there be any lack of redemption if he did not approve. More, it was the act of being judged by him at all, and my knowing that the next Sunday the sheets would be taken down and the congregation would see where their money had gone.

  Jittery or not, I wanted to celebrate. I got dressed up, called on
Margaret at her house, asked her to come and see the mural, then out to Spivey’s for supper.

  “I’ll act as if I was in a real hurry,” she said, “and that not to waste time, I have to change clothes in front of you.”

  In the church, she studied the mural for quite a while. She tilted her head, stepped up close, stepped back, sat in a pew, and shifted expressions. “You’re not included in it,” she finally said. “Is that the artist’s modesty, or cowardice?”

  “I was waiting to ask where you thought I should be.”

  “Well, it’s your masterpiece, Fabian. Though considering what liberties you’ve taken with certain people, Sillet in particular, up there rusting with his weathervane, I’d guess he won’t call it a masterpiece.”

  “I thought I’d paint me lying facedown in the mud. In the lighthouse yard.”

  “That word ‘redemption’ has really got to you, hasn’t it? Fabian, if you believe that just by painting it you can become the man you murdered—go ahead, think that. Paint yourself in Botho’s place. I for one wouldn’t be persuaded. I wouldn’t take it to heart. Though I’d bet bottom dollar that Sillet would praise you to the rafters.”

  “Margaret, I told you the arrangement. I just want him to leave you and my family out of his sermons.”

  “Whitewash the whole thing, Fabian. Now. Before it’s too late. Before you lose your soul.”

  “I can’t.”

  “In the least, then, don’t consider me part of this arrangement. Don’t you dare. I’d rather stay in sermons as a murderous harlot. It doesn’t bother me. Not one bit.”