“He looks a little… scraggly. Is he healthy?”
“You know, he feels more than we think. He’s listened to our discussions for months. He’s sad; he knows it’s time to go. He’s always loved my wife. She couldn’t bear to be here when you came.”
“Do you think he’ll be all right living with me?”
“I think so. He wants to be with whoever will have him. He knows that by instinct, and he won’t be too distant from those people.”
They stood next to each other and watched the bird. The man swallowed, traced his finger on one of the bars.
“Some birds live as pairs. They are faithful to each other until death!” he burst out, and saliva drops shone on his chin. “The macaws in Brazil, they’re faithful to the death!”
She nodded carefully.
“All right, if you want him, take him. Take him at once. I can’t deal with this. And I have to… keep packing.”
“How much do you want for him?”
“Just take him, he’s yours.”
“But the ad…”
“Take him! Fuck the ad! I don’t want a thing, not even for the cage!”
“I don’t think I can take the cage.”
“No cage?”
“It won’t fit in my car.”
He took a step to the window, looked out. When he turned back to her, his eyes were red. He took a deep breath, got ready.
“Well, I’ll have to throw it out, then, or try and sell it. No, the hell with it, I’m not going to deal with any more damn ads. And we have to clip his wings, or he can be taken by impulse and fly away, and he won’t last a minute with those magpies out there; they’ll hack him to pieces.”
Justine cried out softly.
“No… we can’t.”
She took off her scarf. It was long and thin, and she had wrapped it a few times around her neck.
“Don’t cut his wings. Let me try this… instead.”
She twisted the cage door open, and slowly, stiffly, stuck in her arm. She was a bit afraid, the man was making her nervous; she’d rather be alone. The bird opened his beak, which was black and somewhat bent. He gave out a small sound. “Come,” she whispered. “Climb up on my arm and sit down.” The man moved behind her.
“You’re familiar with animals, right?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, which was more or less true.
The bird took a hesitant step toward her and then sat at once on her hand. He was heavy and warm. She drew her arm back to herself. The bird kept sitting.
She placed him on the kitchen table and slowly wrapped the scarf around him. He made no attempt to escape.
She took him into her arms like a child.
“Soooo,” the man whispered. “Sooooo…”
He was almost singing with a one-toned voice, he then turned his lips to the ceiling and gave a sound that was almost like a yoik. Justine burst out in sweat on her back.
She went to the door and tried to get her shoes on.
“I’ll help you!” The man fell to his knees in front of her, pressed her feet into her shoes and tied the shoelaces with strong, double knots. He was silent now. He opened the door and followed her out. While she was getting in the car, he bent over the bird and kissed him loudly on the beak. Then he turned toward her, with a feeling of dismay.
“He usually strikes back when I do that. It usually works.”
“Uh-huh.”
Justine laid the bird down on the front seat. He looked like he was sleeping.
“Look, it’s like a head of cabbage,” said the man, and she noticed that he stopped using “he” and said “it.”
While she started the engine, he left his hand on the open car window. It was a narrow and somewhat childlike hand.
“Well, gotta go,” she said, and shifted to first. The man’s knuckles turned white.
“OK then,” came from somewhere above her.
When the car started to move, he let go and made a gesture as if he were waving her back. It wasn’t until she got on the highway that she realized that she forgot to ask the bird’s name.
She let him live in her room. She brought in a tree from the garden and placed it in a Christmas tree stand. She anchored the tree with a hook in the wall. The tree became the bird’s sleeping perch. After a few hours, he had pecked off every single leaf on the branches.
He liked to be in the kitchen or come to her when she was sitting and looking out over the water. She began to find his droppings everywhere. At first she was careful to spread out newspapers and clean up after him. Now this happened more sporadically, when she realized that the house was hers and hers alone, and she must take care of it because her things were worth taking care of.
And so was she.
The roots of the fallen tree. A child could crawl underneath, even if the roots could fall, it never did happen, and she sat there and let earth fall onto the back of her neck.
The animals: small animals, with snouts, shimmering fur tufts. Or the deer, standing still right where the forest met the meadow, wet nostrils, the whites of its eyes. On the other side of the shading roots, they surrounded her, circled in, and she was Snow White, left behind by the Hunter. She thought of him and a light swelling arose between her legs; she had already had her first blood, but she was still a child, and yet.
And he led her into the forest and lifted his rifle. Aimed right at her left breast.
She sat next to the dead deer once he left, she looked at its wound. He had dug around in there, taking its heart with him. What was a deer? She did not know, but the body was mangled and now the Hunter was carrying its heart to the woman who lived in Snow White’s home.
I did what you asked me with the girl.
Sudden fragility, then the mirror, looking at her reflection.
Satisfaction.
The foxes came, and the mice. And like snowflakes, the feathers of the owls fell upon the place where Snow White was sitting, warm and covering snow.
Animals made Flora ill, made her shudder and feel nauseous. A cat sneaked into the front hall, and she chased it out with a broom, its fur and tail straight up.
When Pappa said good night, Justine told him about it.
His face melted and he stroked her hand weakly, for a long time, but weakly.
Every evening for evenings on end, she asked Pappa for a pet. A cat or a dog or a bird. Maybe he would have liked to give her one, but Flora’s moods controlled him completely.
“They are flea-covered, filthy things,” she would say and her painted, porcelain eyes would stare without mercy. “Bacteria. Smells. Animals are animals and should not be in human homes.”
The blue fox fur was another matter. It was dead. She received it one day in the middle of winter, a conciliatory gesture. Flora often needed to be appeased.
Chapter SIX
Berit Assarsson was late getting out for lunch. She didn’t know where she wanted to eat, her hunger had dissipated, but she still needed to stuff something into herself if she was going to make it through the rest of the day.
She was editing a book on sailing. She really didn’t know all that much about sailing, but since the book was going to be published and she had been given the job of making sure that it was ready to go, she didn’t want to reveal her weaknesses to all and sundry.
Tor had had a boat when they met, and of course it was nice to glide out among the islands and seek night harbor in a protected cove. But all the rest of it. He lost his temper easily and expected her to keep track of all the ropes and their ends, and in a crisis he always forgot that she just couldn’t do it. So there were always arguments and hard feelings.
They sold the boat and bought a summer place instead. For a summer place, it was fairly large, a house built at the end of the nineteenth century situated on Vät Island. It had been winterized, so they were able to celebrate Christmas there, which they often did. This past Christmas, both of their sons brought their girlfriends with them.
Berit went into the food halls at Hötorget. It was just past one o’clock in the afternoon, and the worst lunch crush was over. She ordered an avocado salad with shrimp and a large café au lait and sat down at one of the tables near the flower department. Such wonderful tulips you can get nowadays, what wonderful colors! If only the weather would change to be just a bit colder so that snow would come and lighten things up a bit.