The Butcherbird Stories Page 6

  The children also dispersed from the water’s edge. The red-headed girl placed the swimmer’s scarlet robe on the rock he had sat on, breathing deeply, just a short time before. She asked her father whether a sponge was a type of fish and what sort of creature produced a pearl— perhaps they were a special kind of egg. She asked about whether Jonah’s leviathan swam only in oceans and seas or sometimes also in the deep blue Danube.

  Bruno’s wife got out of bed during the night to tend to Klemens. He was having a screaming nightmare. They’d been frequent of late, and often he jumped up and down on his bed in terror—eyes wide open and dreaming.

  Bruno listened to his wife walk down the hallway and open the children’s bedroom door. His daughter would be sleeping despite the noise. He could hear the murmur of his wife’s voice as she began the long process of soothing their son. Bruno had often wondered at the cause of his distress and told himself it was pointless to once more attempt to figure it out.

  That morning Bruno had walked his children to school—his daughter skipping ahead, his son dragging his feet. Nina carried a fairground balloon on a string, having kept it alive for a week already. It had lost about a third of its size but it straggled along behind her, bobbling in the air at the height of her head. She had even come up with a name for the emerald-coloured balloon. Nina would cry a little when Esmeralda burst or lost so much air it couldn’t rightfully be called a balloon anymore. She would go on, as buoyant as ever. Bruno was amazed by the way his daughter managed to carry with her so little fear, pain or sorrow. Far more familiar to him was the way his son moved through the world.

  Klemens kicked rocks off the path and was careful not to step on any cracks on the way to school. The years of his own schooling had been agonising for Bruno and his son was suffering through the same troubles. Klemens would only say that everything was fine when he was asked. He walked ever more slowly as they neared the schoolhouse. Bruno told Klemens they would be late and there would be punishment for tardiness. That was all he could tell his son. He seized his small hand and pulled him along as though his arm were a string to a different kind of balloon—one that had to survive being burst a hundred times a day.

  Gretchen stopped by the dresser when she returned to the bedroom. She poured herself a glass of water from the carafe she kept there. Her nightgown had fallen open at the neck and he could see most of her bosom. He also saw the terrible scar on her chest, over her left breast. It looked more like a vivid welt. The mark trembled as she swallowed the water in her glass and seemed to swell as if someone had hurt her only a few minutes before.

  When Gretchen was thirteen she stole earrings from a merchant whose children she was babysitting. They’d been taken from the madam’s jewellery box, or so said the merchant. Gretchen told Bruno they’d been left on a window ledge in the bathroom and the window was open. She didn’t deny stealing them but pointed out that they might have been stolen by any number of hands passing along the alleyway outside. She felt that mitigated the act. The merchant had used a poker from his fireplace to create that mark on her chest. Gretchen noticed Bruno looking at the livid scar and turned away to retie her nightgown before settling back beneath the blankets.

  Bruno moved to the edge of the bed and sat up. It was the middle of the night and there was nowhere sensible he could go. He sat there looking out the bedroom window. Light from a full moon illuminated the wooden slats of the barn outside and made the decrepit structure look as if it might be able to lift from the ground as in a dream. A mouse walked across the centre of the bedroom floor and paused at Bruno’s slippers. It had a sniff before it entered the right slipper. Bruno wondered if the mouse was ill or old. Strange to see one moving so slowly, not keeping to the safety of the skirting board, as though without a care in the world.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” his wife asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll get back into bed soon. You go back to sleep.”

  “I’m awake now,” she said and rolled to her side so she could face her husband, even if his back was towards her. “I was debating whether to tell you who came to the door today. It’s such a sad story. Would you like to know?”

  “Please sleep, my dear. If you start talking, you’ll be up for hours.”

  “Conrad Samson. I thought he was coming past to say hello to you. But the poor man was peddling soap.”

  “Why would he come to see me?”

  “You were friendly enough at Winfried’s funeral.”

  “We just talked. We’re certainly not friends.”

  “Well, anyway, he was much thinner. Desperate-looking, to tell you the truth. He’s a door-to-door salesman these days,” she told him.

  “He owns a soap company. Why was he knocking on the door?” he asked her.

  “No, he doesn’t own it anymore. He sold the business and went to America. That didn’t work out. So he’s back, working for the company he used to own.”

  “He seemed so colossal at the funeral. They were ready to open a new factory. Who would have imagined he’d sell the business? No-one could have predicted that.”

  “It’s one of those reversals of fortune you read about in books. He might have lost absolutely everything but his wife has decided to take him back. I’m sure they will rebuild.”

  “Will they? Do you think so?” Bruno barked the second question. He returned his voice to a whisper and said, “It’s always a lovely future in your romances where lovers overcome any ordeal, but we’re still getting over the fire, aren’t we?” Gretchen was quiet. If they talked about the fire that had burned down their own business there really would be no more sleep for either of them tonight.

  “You’re not wrong, dear.” Bruno said quietly. “I hope they do. They might move on if not rebuild. That’s got to be enough.”

  “That’s what I was thinking, that exact thought: I hope they do. I even invited them over for dinner.” She reached out a hand and rubbed Bruno’s back. “For Papa’s birthday.”

  “What? Why would you do that?” Bruno turned around to look at his wife.

  “The poor people lost all their friends as well. You know how it is. No-one wants to be around failure. He really was very nice after I gave him a cup of tea and bought some lavender soap. He kept going on about the new lease of life he’s been given.”

  They listened to the bedsprings squeak from the other room as their son turned over in his sleep. “We should do that for Klemens. There are other schools. I think he’s having trouble at this one,” Bruno said.

  “He’s almost old enough for a trade.”

  “He has a good mind. It’d be a waste.”

  “What’s a good mind worth if it can’t earn a living? He’s such a dreamy boy, I really worry. I don’t know how to wake him up.”

  Bruno didn’t point out how many nights she was forced to do just the opposite. The trouble was that Klemens was too awake. Bruno stood up and took a step towards his slippers, wondering if the mouse had moved on.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got an unpleasant feeling in my legs. Restless energy. I should walk.”

  “Maybe you should rest. It will pass.”

  “Did Conrad look unwell?” Bruno asked.

  “Not really. You could say hungry. He leant forward across the table to grasp me by the wrist. But not like that, not lustful, more as if to arrest me, afraid I would forget him as soon as he stopped talking.”

  Bruno sat down. “We were friends … when we were children. We were best friends.”

  “He mentioned that. He said he still had some vivid memories of your time out at his Uncle Winfried’s orchards. Did you have a fight? He made it sound as though there was some falling-out that he didn’t want to mention.”

  “No, not really. There are some things that just happen. No-one makes a decision. No-one understands. And yet we act as if we have and we do. Anyway, it was a lifetime ago and I don’t have your memory.”

  Gretchen took th
at as a cue to begin telling him about her best friend when she was a girl. Bruno already knew everything there was to know about Lora with blonde hair so light it was almost white and the ways she wore it or tied it up with colourful ribbons.

  He sat on the edge of their bed rubbing his face with his hands, stretching out the skin around his skull, rubbing his eyes and then scratching at his beard. He listened to Gretchen’s stories and was often taken aback by how much his wife recalled. She carried around her whole history as though it were written in a volume as big as the Bible and was able to recite him a chapter of it whether he was in the mood to listen or not.

  Bruno’s own childhood had fallen into a chasm of forgotten life and the only things that returned to him were echoes—of things dropped into his mind from a great distance, vanishing into the watery darkness below. He recalled that he and Conrad had loved each other, as he sat listening to his wife tell him a story he already knew by heart. He didn’t feel anything for Conrad Samson now but he was struck by the intensity of that loving friendship in the swoosh of its massive form falling through the abyss of lost memory, as though it were an entire house dropping away.

  Gretchen reached out a hand and tugged on his elbow. Bruno let himself be coaxed back into bed.

  He said, “Let me look after Klemens if he has any more trouble tonight. You should get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sleepy.” She moved across him, loosened the bow at her neck and let her breasts fall from her nightdress. “I’m not sleepy at all.”

  He forgot about Conrad Samson. He was able to release thoughts of the doctor he had forced to pronounce a death sentence on Conrad, and to let all his troubling recollections slip away. When they finished making love, Bruno and his wife slept well past dawn.

  There were days the two boys left the house in the morning and didn’t return until they were ravenous for dinner. They talked about what could be caught in the woods and what were the most effective ways of killing.

  They agreed ducks on the lake would be easy. Bruno could use the hunting knife he had stolen from his father before they left town for the country and Conrad would pluck off the feathers and pull out the guts. They could roast the duck and sleep in the boatshed. On at least one night they wouldn’t return late in the evening, as they sometimes did, so hungry that they ate like animals— almost directly from the hands giving them food. No plates, cutlery or a place in their stuffed mouths for ‘thanks’. They wouldn’t return until the next morning and everyone would be astounded by the two boys when they ambled back to Uncle Winfried’s mansion.

  Bruno and Conrad walked by the abattoir and decided they would go and see how the cows were killed. They heard the noise the animals made as they were herded within steel barricades and the grunts as they were harassed through to slaughter by shouting men. They saw the blood pooled on the ground near the windowless building’s walls. The smell was worse than anything they might have seen, making them gag as they approached. The two boys persuaded themselves they had better things to do than watch cows slump to a concrete floor.

  Uncle Winfried’s property was ringed by closely planted horse-chestnut trees that marked the boundaries of his land. The two boys climbed up the tall trunks most mornings and walked across the domed crown of stout branches at the top as though the dense foliage were part of a long green cloud floating near the ground. They had been best friends for three years and sometimes didn’t need to talk for hours. Both felt stronger, braver and brighter simply being in each other’s company. Walking all the way around Uncle Winfried’s property made them feel as if they were princes of a vast kingdom that they would soon inherit.

  After the abattoir they made their way along a path that led them towards the lake. Before they got to the water they discovered a flock of geese in the middle of the road. Both boys ran towards the birds, yelling and waving their arms to make them scatter—neither of them aware that a flock of geese wouldn’t frighten as other birds did. The geese raised their heads high, hissing like twenty furious cobras.

  Bruno and Conrad found themselves stumbling into the flock and fell to their hands and knees. Getting to their feet again wasn’t easy. The beaks of the geese hit rapidly from above, again and again. The birds knew to strike at the faces of the two boys. Feathers fanned out around them—a blinding wild white movement. Birds from behind the front ranks of geese came diving in as well and for a few cacophonous moments it felt as if the world were imploding in a blizzard of violence.

  Bruno and Conrad burst through the wall of feathers and began running, yelling as they paddled their arms. Geese won’t give chase as dogs will, yet the boys kept going until they were exhausted. They had run down a path that led to a farmhouse. The building looked dilapidated and they assumed no-one lived there.

  Wildly exhilarated, they charged at a chicken coop and ripped out the thin planks of rotting wood, wanting to scatter the chickens. The birds huddled and awaited their fate, no matter how the boys yelled or stamped their feet. Conrad and Bruno couldn’t summon the courage to even kick these stupid birds, so they snatched up the eggs that they found in the coop and started throwing them, chasing each other through the farmyard.

  A man stepped out from the old cottage onto the front porch. He held a rifle. He didn’t question why two boys he’d never seen before had destroyed his chicken coop or why they were throwing his eggs around the yard. He fired his rifle into the air above their heads. The stunned boys stood stock-still.

  “Mumble and whisper whatever lies and secrets you’re keeping in your rancid souls, for God and his weeping angels to hear,” he drawled as he reloaded. “You’re descending to the fucking fires of hell.”

  Men had always spoken to Bruno and Conrad with a degree of civility. Even when they were angry, adults talked to them as though they were children. But this man, Mr Macht, was a supervisor at the local abattoir and spoke as if he were more familiar with talking to petrified animals.

  “You brats, about to meet the devil. He’ll be your father now,” he muttered to himself as much as them, levelling the rifle—was about to shoot when Bruno bolted.

  Conrad didn’t move. He had an unbroken egg in one of his hands and he lifted it as an offering. His eyes were large and wet. He looked like a child who had misbehaved and hoped he would be excused in the way he’d been forgiven in the past.

  Mr Macht walked down the sagging wooden steps from his front porch. He took the unbroken egg.

  “Fucking brimstone, smell it? You little cunt?” Mr Macht asked with the same harsh voice as he gave the top of Conrad’s skull a brutal rap with the metal barrel of the rifle. Conrad shook his head, nodded, and then wobbled as the piss ran down his thighs in a hot gush.

  Bruno didn’t run straight to Conrad’s uncle. He hid in the woods, first in a hollow tree and then in the boathouse by the lake. He scurried here and there, thinking that the man with the rifle would find him at any moment. It was long past nightfall by the time he returned to the mansion.

  Conrad’s uncle had already gone to bed. The cook had left food out on the kitchen table for Bruno and Conrad. Bruno was so hungry he ate both plates. He knew he should have woken Winfried to tell him what had happened but he’d been afraid for so many hours that he crept to the guestroom. He didn’t light the lamps because he didn’t want to see Conrad’s bed. Bruno slipped beneath his blanket and fell asleep far more quickly than he expected.

  In the morning, Conrad wasn’t in bed and it hadn’t all been a nightmare. Bruno was still in his clothes from the day before. There were marks on them from the broken eggs and a feather from the geese, as well as smears of mud from the woods. Bruno changed his clothes and washed his face and hands.

  He stared at Conrad’s empty unmade bed. Bruno could see the shape of the body in the pillow and sheets. His best friend kept books on the bedside table so he could read before going to sleep and as soon as he awoke in the morning. Bruno enjoyed reading as well, but he kept all his books at home because what he was in
terested in was history and archaeology, occasionally astronomy, and he never felt like reading those kinds of things unless he was alone.

  He took a breath and was now ready to talk to Conrad’s uncle about the events at the cottage. He left the guestroom, wanting to raise hell for his best friend. Conrad was sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. He had a few bruises, scrapes and some swelling on his face and arms. Uncle Winfried said it was a shame they had fought yet he was sure they would make up. Boys fight all the time, he told the cook, and then went out to tend to his orchards.

  The boys said nothing to each other. Conrad went to the guestroom and lay in bed without moving. He didn’t cry as far as Bruno could hear and he didn’t touch the books on his bedside table. Bruno offered to read one of them to him. He was told to go away.

  The next day they boarded the train that was to take them back to their town and families. Every minute they travelled, the silence became more unbearable. An hour went by without a word being spoken. The second hour felt suffocating. As though coming up for air, Bruno blurted, “I’m sorry I ran away, Connie. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

  Conrad said, “I don’t blame you, Bruno. I don’t know why I didn’t run as well. I wish I had. I really, really wish I had run with you.”

  Bruno was leaning forward. Their knees weren’t far from touching.

  “But I’m still sorry he beat you.”

  “We probably deserved a beating. He ate those eggs every day and we destroyed his chicken coop for no reason.”

  The silence went on and Bruno could see Conrad had not forgiven him even though he seemed so reasonable.

  Bruno reached forward to touch his best friend’s knee. “I really am sorry for running away, Connie.”