Bird

by Sophie Cunningham

  After the fright of that we walk home slowly, like we don’t believe that another bad thing could happen in the one day.

  ‘Mama,’ I ask, ‘will Big Betty be okay?’ Betty lives in the zoo on Vasilevsky Island and is the only elephant I have ever personally met. I love her best of all the animals. Mrs Amadova once told me that she’d seen an elephant in the wild. It had thick rough skin, a trunk that waved around like an extra arm, and little tiny eyelashes. I loved Mrs Amadova, and still do even though Mama says mean things about her like, ‘I just don’t see how a school teacher from Stalinist Russia can have travelled the world as widely as Mrs Amadova.’ Once she even said, outright, that Mrs Amadova made things up. But I don’t care if Mrs Amadova makes things up or not. What she says feels true.

  Mama is sad when I ask about Betty. She says, ‘I think the zoo’s been bombed, darling, and it is hard for them to get all the animals out. Especially the big ones.’ I feel even worse later that night when Mama tells me we will be getting less food because of the rations. ‘What?’ she raises her voice in mock outrage, when she sees my long face. ‘You want more than two slices of bread a day? Smotri, rastolsteyesh! You’ll turn into a tolstukha, a fatso, before this winter is done. Anyway, you mustn’t worry, I don’t want to get fat. You can have some of mine.’ She touches my cheeks. My bony cheeks. I think I am going to scream. I feel hungry at the very thought of less, but Mama puts her hand up, as if to shush me. ‘And I have kept some canned meat and fish aside. So we will be less hungry than some.’ Then she smiles her beautiful smile and says, ‘There is nothing, darling, that I won’t do for my little Bird.’

  By the middle of October it is snowing. I am always hungry. I am always cold. One morning as I stand in the ration line it is hit by a shell. Luckily it is a long queue. When the dust clears I step over dead people so I don’t lose my place. On the way home I call in to visit Saskia, clutching my loaf made mostly of sawdust. I want to ask her why I don’t feel anything anymore but I don’t know how to say it: my feeling that I am being twisted out of shape.

  ‘You are very courageous,’ Saskia says, ruffling my hair. ‘You are a survivor.’ She seems so proud of me I can’t bring myself to tell her what I did a week ago, when Mama sent me to queue for meat and the old man ahead of me got the last piece. ‘Go find another queue,’ he said, ‘if you want your monthly pound of dog,’ so I snatched the rations out of his hands and ran away. I don’t tell Saskia that. Or that that very same night Mama came home all bruised, without any bread. Like a punishment.

  ‘Someone took it from me, Bird. But look!’ Mama’d tried to cheer me. ‘I have brought you a book. A story will sustain us tonight! And perhaps we can have one of our tins.’

  The book was called Great Expectations. ‘An English book, Bird, but printed here, in Leningrad,’ Mama explained. ‘And now it’s trapped here with us. So no food, but plenty of Charles Dickens. You must be careful with it, darling. This is a very grown-up book for such a little girl.’ I don’t feel like a little girl anymore, but I say nothing.

  Most days I take the book to my spot in the library to read. I underline the bits that seem important, like Mama always does when she reads. When Nikolay comes over to play I explain to him that I love the names. Pumblechook, Orlick, Hubble, Drummle, Startop, Pocket and Jaggers. I love Estella, and try to show Nikolay why by performing her. ‘You address nothing in my breast,’ I declaim, hitting my hand against my chest. ‘You touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?’ I bow slightly as I finish my brief performance. ‘Isn’t she wonderful? She is not desperate, or hungry for things.’

  ‘I think Estella is cruel,’ he says. Nikolay is my best friend, but he is also an idiot.

  ‘This is a grown-up book,’ I tell him. ‘If it is too hard for you, perhaps you’d better go home.’

  Nikolay looks like he might cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘here, let me keep you warm.’ He holds out his arms. Even to me, his arms seem too small and thin. Nikolay used to be chubby and actually, he was a bit too clever also. He was full of himself. Now his glasses hang on his face and he seems frightened. I can see the knobby bones of his elbows and knees; I can see the pounding of his heart. I ignore him and he sits next to me without saying anything more. I don’t talk to him, either, but I am very happy he is there with me.

  I have become all puffy and shiny. My belly is big and hard. Nikolay taps it with his fingers. ‘Like a drum,’ he announces. He lets me clap my hand on his belly and it is the same.

  I am too tired to do anything. It is too hard for me to walk anywhere, when I am so tired and it is so cold. I have never been so cold in my entire life. The snow has stopped the street cars. The drivers do not turn up to work. The teachers at school have stopped turning up. They are all dying, Nikolay says. At night I dream that wisps of dead people are writhing through the air, like smoke. I dream I am breathing them in.

  Mama goes to work at the library most days and sometimes I go with her. People stand in long queues to ask her questions: How do you make matches? How do you make candles? Can we eat wood? How do you make soap? She tells people they need animal fat for candles and ignores Peter when he asks her where she thinks people will get such a thing from. Mama gives them lists of the plants you can get sulphur from. She tells people to soak the wood before they add it to food—to leach the poisons out.

  If I don’t go to the library I stay home with Nikolay. We play cards and read, or sometimes just cuddle up under piles of blankets and clothes and go to sleep.

  One day, when we are playing with Nikolay’s trucks, he says to me, ‘Papa died yesterday.’

  Nikolay’s father went crazy weeks ago. The hunger, Mama explained to me; it drove him mad. ‘It is happening all over the city,’ she said. ‘The biggest men, the strongest men, are dying first.’ One night he just screamed and screamed, then tried to snatch the baby off Nikolay’s mama’s breast so he could drink her milk.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I say, ‘about your Papa.’

  Nikolay keeps pushing his truck around the floor. ‘He stole my food,’ he finally says. ‘And Mama’s, and the baby’s.’

  I sit beside him and pat him. I can feel his backbone through his coat.

  ‘He hit us,’ he elaborates, ‘to make us give him food.’

  I go to hug him but he pushes me away.

  ‘I am glad he’s dead,’ Nikolay finally comes out with it.

  ‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to say. Then, ‘Would you like to play pussycats?’ Nikolay looks bored by the idea but lets me drag him out into the snow.

  Pussycats is my favourite game. You have to go through all the steps: you have to pet the pussycat, then rock it in your arms, like it is a baby. Then you have to pour it a bowl of milk. Nikolay hates this game and hangs around on the steps like he is about to go inside. I keep playing because when he is annoyed he doesn’t look so sad. I sing:

  Pussy, little kitty,

  Kitty—little, grey tail.

  Come to us and stay the night,

  To rock our little baby.

  I will give you a piece of cake

  And a jug of milk

  A girl watches me sing. A big girl. She is holding a black cat. She has gas masks hanging over her arm.

  ‘A real pussycat! What do you call it?’

  ‘Blackie,’ the girl says. ‘You see I have two gas masks? That is one for me and one for Blackie.’

  ‘Nikolay,’ I call him over. ‘Look.’

  I stroke Blackie. His skin shivers under his fur. Maybe because he is scared but maybe because he is happy. Then I hear a low rumble; he is purring.

  ‘He likes you,’ the girl says. ‘But I must go now. It is too cold for Blackie to be out.’

  I turned to Nikolay. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

  ‘He’s okay,’ Nikolay says. ‘He has nice fur.’

  Apart from Blackie, all the cats have gone. Mama says they starved, but I know that most of them have
been eaten. The pigeons were first to disappear and now the dogs have been eaten too. Nikolay tells me that. Nikolay tells me all the things I’m not supposed to know. Anyway, meeting Blackie must have been a sign because the next day I find a kitten of my own. She is in a lane I pass when I walk to and from the ration line. I see something moving under a pile of rubbish and that is when I realise that the rubbish is a dead mother cat and that it is one of her kittens moving. A kitten who is still alive. She is small and fluffy and grey, with some white spots on her tummy. She is the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I put her in my pocket and carry her home.

  ‘What kind of kitten do you think she is?’ I ask Mama and Mama says she is a grey tabby.

  ‘I will call her Pumblechook,’ I say but instead of looking impressed by the name I’ve thought of for my kitten, Mama looks sad.

  ‘She is suffering, little Bird, and I can’t bear to watch. If you want to keep her a bit longer, keep her in your room.’

  I am angry at Mama but I do as she asks. I sit on the bed while Pumblechook kneads me: left paw, right paw, left paw. ‘I am not a pincushion,’ I scold her, but I’m not really mad. Then she chews on my pinkie like she is looking for milk. She sucks and chews all my fingers, one after the other, each finger in turn. The next day I see she has sores on her and is licking them.

  ‘Little,’ I say, ‘you make it worse.’ I push crumbs of bread into her mouth but that doesn’t stop her eating away at herself. Mama comes in and sees her lying in the palm of my hand.

  ‘She will die,’ Mama tells me. ‘She is dying.’

  I have a thought. The thought makes me sick. ‘Do we have to eat her?’

  ‘Of course not. She is your Little and you are mine. This hunger,’ Mama says, ‘will not kill our spirits.’ She leans down and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Better we die before we become like some people around here.’

  The next day Pumblechook is a scrap of fur and bone. There is no pussycatness left inside of her at all. I look around the apartment for wood to build her a shrine but Mama tells me we need it all for the stove. I go outside into the cold and look for somewhere to bury her but the earth is frozen hard. I stand for a while, trying to figure out what to do next, then suddenly I am sick of the whole thing. She is only a stupid cat. I throw Pumblechook away and I hear her—I hear it, she is an it now—hit a stone step with a clunk. She is frozen, hard as rock already.

  Nikolay comes up behind me and touches my shoulder. ‘This won’t last forever,’ he says.

  ‘I think the blokada has stolen my heart from my body,’ I tell him. ‘I think it has put ice where my heart is supposed to be.’

  On Christmas Eve Papa comes home from the front. Soldiers get more rations than civilians, so Papa looks better than anyone else we know. He is still tall. He is still handsome. He is brave too, but when he walks in the door and sees Mama lying on the couch he starts to cry. I don’t want him to cry, I want him to give me food. When he does, Mama has to stop me eating too fast.

  ‘You’ll be sick, darling.’ She turns to Papa. ‘She’ll be sick, André.’

  ‘How is Mikhail?’ I ask.

  ‘Papa doesn’t know,’ Mama says. ‘Go to your room now. We need time to talk. Husbands and wives need time to talk to each other.’

  I go to my room but I still hear Mama whispering her secrets to him. Does she think I can’t hear? ‘With a pillow she did it. She told me he was her favourite, that she wanted him to be spared this hell on earth. But now she is mad. She has pulled all her hair out; she goes outside without a coat. I will die before I do such a thing to any human being,’ Mama says. ‘To do it to my own child, well, then I would be in hell already. Promise me that you will kill me before such a thing would happen.’

  ‘My darling,’ Papa is tender, but his voice is louder. Mama is the good one. Papa and I are not so good. He knows me well enough to know I am listening at the door. ‘It will not come to that. If we are to die, we will do so as a family. Anna? Bird? Come here.’

  I go back into the kitchen. Something in his voice scares me. Perhaps he means for it to happen now? ‘People,’ Mama has told me, Mama keeps telling me, ‘have been dying by their own hand.’ Is that what Papa wants us to do? Die by our own hand? But instead he snuggles me and plays with my hair. He tells me he loves me. For the next thirty-six hours things are perfect, and then Papa goes back to the front.

  I find Mama’s ouija board at the back of a cupboard. She has tried to hide it from me because she thinks it is dangerous to use when there is so much death. Mama understands the world of spirits and because of her I should know better but I don’t. I look at the board closely: it is a large shiny wooden board with all the letters of the alphabet carved around its edges. Some nights before the war began Mama used to ask her friends around to use the board with her. Papa always went out because he didn’t approve of such things. Also, he liked to drink with his friends. Mama made me go to bed early but I wouldn’t sleep. Instead I’d lie and listen to all the carrying on in the kitchen. Mama would dress up—she always loved to dress up—like a gypsy woman. She wore colourful scarves and hooped earrings. She waved her arms around like an actress, and every now and then would begin to giggle like the whole thing was a joke. If I got up and looked through the crack in my door I could see candles flickering and women sitting around the table holding hands.

  Mama always held her head back slightly as she spoke and would raise her hands, to the air: ‘Oh spirits from beyond. We have friends and family whom we love and whom we miss. Please let us speak to them.’ Then everyone put a finger on the cup. Sometimes this drama would be followed by nervous laughter, as if the grown-ups were playing a game. Other nights, though, everyone was deadly serious, and the cup would race around the board. Mama wrote down the letters the cup moved to and read them, and the words they formed, out loud. Once, only once, one of Mama’s friends burst into tears. Then there were shooshings, and there-theres, and the sounds of tea being made.

  I take the board into my room then go across to Nikolay’s and knock our secret knock on the door. I have to do that these days because Nikolay’s mother hasn’t opened the door since the baby died. When Nikolay answers I take him by the hand.

  ‘I have something special to show you,’ I tell him.

  ‘What?’ Nikolay follows me into my room. It is as cold as ice. I don’t even sleep in it anymore, I sleep with Mama because it is warmer, but I don’t want to go into the kitchen just now because Mama is in there.

  ‘Tonight we are having a séance,’ I announce.

  ‘What’s a séance?’

  ‘I want to talk to Mikhail,’ I say. ‘And this board will help me talk to spirits. Sit down.’

  ‘You don’t even know he’s dead,’ says Nikolay.

  ‘I do,’ I sound braver than I feel. ‘Sit.’

  Nikolay sits down opposite me, cross-legged, on the floor. Suddenly I see how terrible he looks. He is like an owl, with no feathers left to fluff up against the weather. I probably look terrible too but Nikolay always tells me I look nice. I lean forward and touch his knee.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Bub.’ Bub is my latest nickname for Nikolay. It is meant to be insulting, like calling him a baby, but Nikolay likes it. ‘I won’t ask your papa to come.’

  Nikolay nods. ‘Good,’ he says.

  I reach across the board and take both his hands in mine. I hold my head back at the angle I have seen Mama use and I whisper, as loudly as I can, at the ceiling: ‘Oh spirits from beyond! I have a brother who is with you. Please let me speak to him.’ Then I put Nikolay’s fingers, and mine, on the glass and wait for something to happen.

  Nothing does.

  ‘Maybe it’s too cold,’ Nikolay says.

  He is right. The glass was damp when I put it on the board and now it’s frozen into place. I lean down and breathe on it to warm it up. Suddenly my arm starts to convulse and the glass is skating all over the place. Nikolay sits back in fright and I have to stop him lifting his fingers off th
e glass. ‘Don’t let go!’ I say.

  Perhaps I am breathing too fast because it is like I am fainting or have a fever and Nikolay and the board and the cup are a very long way away. The room doesn’t make sense. Everything is moving in slow motion.

  There is ice on my eyelashes and under my nose. There is ice on my cheeks. I look into the distance and try to catch Nikolay’s attention but his glasses are covered in ice or fog and I can’t see his eyes. Where have the walls gone? Where is the ceiling? It starts to snow. I look into the cavernous night. The stars are bright above me. I can see Nikolay, far away in the fog. There are bodies—frozen stiff, covered with snow—stretched as far as the horizon. Then I see Mikhail standing a long way away. One of his arms is shattered and his hand hangs limply. His other hand he holds to his heart. He is wearing the most glorious smile. ‘My suffering in this lifetime is over,’ he says.

  I try to answer but the cold takes the air from my lungs and burns the inside of my throat. Then Mikhail is so close I can touch him. He is lying on his side; white with snow, solid as ice. His chest is blown away but his heart is red; full of blood; still pumping. I want him more than I have ever wanted anything. I want to warm myself against the fire of his heart.

  I let go of the glass to reach out to him and then the next thing I know I am lying on the bedroom floor and Nikolay is slapping my face. Mama is standing in the doorway.

  ‘Stop screaming!’ Nikolay shakes me.

  Mama leans down and picks up the glass. She smashes it against the wall. The sound is terrible. It is the sound of Mikhail leaving me. Mama kneels down and strokes my forehead. I put my arms around her neck and hold her tight, even though I can feel how weak she is. Skin and bones. Nikolay can’t stop crying. He loves me! I want to tell him I love him too but he gets up and runs from the room.

  *