The (Other) You Read online

  Birds were feeding ravenously on the ground, jabbing at one another with their beaks, squawking. The smallest birds were grackles with long blunt-edged tails. The largest were vultures. Birds tore at hunks of suet with their beaks and claws, cocking their heads as they swallowed. Within a few harried minutes the wife was more than ready to retreat from the bird sanctuary but the Professor insisted upon following one of the paths into the marshy interior.

  On the lower branches of a skeletal pine tree were slate-colored birds the size of ravens—the very species the couple had seen the day before at the Albanos’ former home. Among these ungainly birds was one smaller and more slender than the others, not so ugly, with silky iridescent feathers, eyes that glowed with light as if lit from within. Indeed, this bird exuded an air of extreme alertness, awareness of the human couple. Its feathers shone fiery-blue, its head was cocked in the Professor’s direction.

  How strange, the wife thought! As if the bird recognized her husband . . .

  Entranced, the Professor stumbled ahead. Unlike the other slate-colored birds emitting hoarse cries, the slender bird emitted cooing seductive sounds. It shrugged and shifted its wings suggestively, lifted its clawed feet from the limb and lowered them again in a ritual-like dance. Its acid-bright eyes were fixed upon the Professor who, without realizing it, had left the path and was walking on marshy soil, into which his crepe-soled shoes were sinking.

  Is it you? Agustina?

  My dear. My darling . . .

  Do you remember me? I’ve become so old . . .

  To the astonishment of his wife the Professor began speaking to the bird in Italian, incomprehensible to her, somehow shameful, with an air of pleading.

  To a bird! Speaking Italian, gesturing with his hands.

  The wife was terrified that something might happen to her husband, so far from home . . .

  Within the past year he’d had “episodes”—just one or two. (That she knew of.) Not strokes, or rather not quite strokes. Blackouts lasting for a few seconds. By his account he did not seem to lose consciousness but became light-headed, dazed. A vastation. It awaits us all. There will be a time, a place. At such moments the Professor stood very still as blood drained from his brain and his knees grew weak, just barely his legs managed to support him. As his heart thudded like a fist rapping against a door shut against it, and the moment passed, or perhaps did not pass, entirely.

  You! It is you, Agustina—isn’t it?

  But what has happened to you? To me? To our lives?

  Clearly he could see, the eyes of the slender slate-colored bird with the iridescent feathers were the beautiful dark eyes of Agustina, glowing with a fierce, fiery light. Staring at him boldly, defiantly. Yes, it is me. But you—what has happened to you?

  Agustina did recognize him, then. She’d been aware of him years ago—the anguish of his desire for her. When he’d hoped to speak with her, to murmur some awkward little joke out of earshot of her parents, perhaps even, daringly, to brush his hand against her bare arm, to feel the soft hairs stiffen, she’d turned abruptly from him. And then she’d fled to another part of the house.

  Yet, days later she’d been awaiting him at the window. That pale face at the window, he had never forgotten.

  What you did to me—tried to do . . . I could not bear the shame.

  He cupped his hand to his good ear. What was Agustina saying? His heart beat quickly in alarm, opposition.

  I—did nothing! I loved you and would never have hurt you . . .

  “Leonard, please! Stop this.”

  His wife spoke sharply, despairingly. She plucked at his arm trying to hold him back but he brushed away her hand as he might have brushed away a fly. In his excitement he dared to approach the base of the tree where the raven-like birds were shrieking and shaking their ungainly wings.

  The smaller bird had become agitated too, no longer cooing but emitting hoarse cries like the others. A female bird it seemed to the Professor’s wife, in its fright and agitation. Eyes bright as acid. Silky slate-gray feathers. The bird fluttered panicked to a higher branch of the tree, out of reach of the Professor, excreting a pale, soft liquid that glistened along the tree trunk, and splattered onto the Professor’s head and shoulders. You could see that bird lime, greenish-white, covered much of the tree’s lower branches, and was encrusted on the ground.

  “Leonard, please! Do you even hear me?”—the Professor’s wife pleaded with him to return to the path. Yet stubbornly the Professor continued to address the smallest bird, in Italian, in an effort to speak cajolingly, seductively, swiping at the bird’s droppings on his head, hands, clothing. His glasses were askew on his face, splattered with the milky-white liquid. Desperately his wife pulled at him, stopped his flailing hands, held him tight. The largest of the birds, nearly the size of a hawk, swooped furiously at them, jabbed at the Professor’s head with its sharp beak, drew blood. The wife screamed. In the scuffle the Professor’s glasses fell into the marshy soil but the wife snatched them up before they were broken.

  Managing to pull her husband away from the shrieking birds, to walk him forward with her arm around his waist. All of the wife’s senses were keenly alert, she knew herself under attack, threatened. She knew that she must protect her husband, his life was at risk. Somehow, by some miracle, the distraught man did not lose his balance and fall into the marsh where the birds might have swooped upon him and pecked out his eyes.

  At last they were back on firmer soil, and out of the nightmare bird sanctuary. The wife wept with distress and relief, dabbing a tissue against the Professor’s bleeding scalp as the Professor stood stooped, obedient and unprotesting.

  The wife hailed a taxi to return them to their hotel for it was too far for the Professor to walk, in his condition.

  Once at the hotel, safely in their room on the eighth floor, the Professor’s wife undressed her exhausted husband. In the bathroom she washed his befouled hair, face, hands. She then led him to their bed, and pulled a sheet over him, and prayed that he would sleep, sleep, sleep as long as his stunned brain required, even if they should miss dinner that evening which the Professor had planned at a three-star restaurant recommended in the Blue Guide.

  The wife made no attempt to sleep. The wife wondered if she would sleep for the remainder of the trip.

  Thinking—If he should collapse, or die. In this hateful place. What will I do!

  Arrange for the body to be shipped home. For the children would wish to see their father a final time.

  But no. In his will Leonard requested cremation.

  In which case does the wife make the arrangements, or will someone at the Royal Grand Hotel make the arrangements for her, for a fee? And would she then be allowed to bring the ashes home, in a proper receptacle?

  Imagining returning through U.S. customs. Having to declare her husband’s ashes. Having to show the urn (if it was an urn) to the customs inspector. (And what is that mixed in with those ashes? Could it be cocaine?) The wife—the widow—is arrested, taken away weeping by airport police as fellow travelers stare at her with curiosity, pity, revulsion.

  7.

  One of Mairead’s major attractions, according to the Blue Guide, is a gondolier cruise on the river, along the Promenade, just before sunset. This, the Professor is determined not to miss.

  They are leaving Mairead in the morning, earlier than planned. But the Professor is determined not to miss the cruise along the river.

  Sir! Madame—an aggressive gondolier calls to them in heavily accented English particularly annoying to the Professor, for its suggestion that he has been mistaken for an ordinary American tourist. Only five euros! Hurry before desk.

  Desk?—must mean dusk.

  Bobbing on the water the gondola is sleek-black as a polished shoe. Plainer than the fabled gondolas of Venice, as the gondolier is not costumed but dressed in a white muslin shirt, oak-colored trousers. His hair is black as pitch with a faint iridescent streak, stiff-moussed on his head as a wig; around his
neck is a crimson scarf, knotted.

  As the couple strolls along the Promenade the gondolier calls to them to climb inside, he will assist them, but—Hurry! Almost desk.

  The Professor’s wife shudders. Though the late-afternoon air of Mairead is very warm, steamy-humid. Pulls away from the Professor who is looking at her expectantly. “I—don’t think so. Not just now. No.” She has begun to breathe with difficulty.

  The Professor has been reading in the Blue Guide, how “spectacular” the view of the Royal Palace and other historic buildings of Mairead is from the river. One of those experiences not to be missed.

  But the wife balks, frightened.

  “But why not, darling? We’ve been in boats together before. The river current isn’t swift. There are other boats around, nothing could possibly happen to us . . .” The Professor speaks patiently, he is determined not to become exasperated with his wife, on their final evening in Mairead. He has fully recovered from his collapse of the previous day, in the Royal Bird Sanctuary; so far as his wife can determine he has forgotten his mortifying encounter with the silky-feathered raven-like bird. If he wondered at his clothes encrusted with bits of chalky birdlime that can’t be scrubbed out, he has said nothing about it to his wife who will arrange discreetly for the clothes to be dry-cleaned, when they return home.

  And today, Blue Guide in hand, the Professor has been enlivened, exhilarated, on the eve of their (premature) departure from Mairead which will be (the wife surmises) something of a relief to him as well as to her.

  In lowered voices the Professor and the wife discuss the gondola ride. The Professor is puzzled by the wife’s reluctance, as the Professor’s wife is vehement; she doesn’t have to explain or defend herself, she insists. “I just don’t want to climb into that ‘gondola.’ I don’t want to be taken on a river cruise at desk.”

  The Professor points out that they have come so far to Mairead, and this is the eve of their departure. The wife points out that they have no idea if the gondolier is even licensed—“He could be anyone. A criminal.”

  The Professor laughs. He is trying not to become seriously annoyed. “Darling, you say such ridiculous things.”

  “Stop it. Stop laughing at me. I’m going back to the hotel. I will go back home—alone. I don’t need you.”

  “But—what on earth are you saying?”

  “I don’t need you. I never have.”

  The wife is breathing strangely. Can’t catch her breath. The air is humid, hot. Feculent-smelling. For (of course) the river that gleams and glitters with light like the scales of a great beautiful fish is polluted from industry upriver.

  The wife hates the gondolier staring at her, avid and eager. That hunger in the eyes of strangers, she has come to recognize, and to dread. She presses her hands over her eyes. Her vision oscillates. Hurt by her words, the Professor says that she can return to the hotel if she wishes but he is going to climb into the damned gondola, and see Mairead from the river, which is the only way to truly see it.

  The wife cries, “No! No.”

  But in the end, the wife will not be able to leave the husband. Her dread of the river is less than her dread of abandoning him to the river and of being abandoned by him. Nor could she make her way back to the hotel alone, though it is only a few blocks. She takes her husband’s arm, trembling. Of course, it is nothing. There is no danger. The Professor holds her hand affectionately. Turns her hand palm upward, kisses the clammy-cold skin as he has not kissed it in—how many years? Isn’t this something they have done many times in their long marriage?—a journey of some sort together, embarked upon with innocent enthusiasm, naivete, misguided perhaps, a mistake, never quite so wonderful as they’d anticipated, but worthwhile nonetheless, as they will agree in retrospect? Why would this forty-minute cruise on the Po River be any different from their previous adventures? Why is the wife behaving so irrationally on the very eve of their departure from Mairead?

  “Darling, come.”

  The solicitous gondolier helps the elderly couple into the sleek-black gondola polished like a shoe. Even before they are settled in the hard seat, that hurts their buttocks, the gondolier begins poling the vessel, with long ravishing strokes, making the murky water ripple, lap, splash. Within minutes they are well out into the river which is wider and windier than they would have expected. And colder. Swiftly they are moving away from shore and staring now at the facade of the Royal Palace, pale gold in the waning light. From this angle the palace looks ancient and heraldic, like aged ivory. The many windows of the Palace flash thin blades of light. There is no movement at any of the windows or on the stone steps beside the Promenade—the Promenade itself has become deserted. Where have the other pedestrians gone? It is hardly sunset. The sky is a bright pale waning orange, an exquisite watercolor, rapidly fading to dusk.

  “Oh! It is beautiful,” the wife says, deeply moved. She is beginning to cry, tears leak from her eyes though (she would have said) she has no tears to spare, no more tears in this lifetime. Gently the Professor kisses her cheek, squeezes her thin fingers—“Didn’t I promise you, dear? Why do you always doubt me?”

  Assassin

  Assassin. Hissing sound like snakes. First came to me through the steam radiator. Waking open-mouthed and the inside of my mouth raw and festering from what had been done to it while I’d been made to sleep a drugged sleep in this terrible place.

  Then, the whisper of hope—Assassin. Assassin!

  The room I was assigned at Saint Clement House, this was the first insult. This was unforgivable. The room, the bed, the bed with a lumpy smelly mattress, on a high floor of the House. Had to climb stairs. With my swollen ankles, weight. Panting like a dog. Had to make my way along the winding corridor like a rat in a maze. Insult at my age. Pre-diabetic was the diagnosis. Hypertension. To be assigned such sleeping-quarters, in a bloody attic, low ceiling, no privacy, I would have to share a dreary dripping lavatory with strangers, it was not fair or just.

  Saint Clement House where residents are the staff, and the staff are residents. You will look out for one another, they told us. Smug bastards all of them. There are (paid) nurses, nurses’ aides, attendants but not many of these and so we are all obliged to assist one another (unpaid) when required. Dr. Shumacher is the resident psychologist but Dr. S. does not reside in the House and does not linger in the House any longer than is necessary for the bastard is clear of us by 5 P.M. and on his way. I was meant to be an equal of Dr. S. (for I am educated) but was cheated of my destiny by reason of my sex (female). Also, unacknowledged enemies in the government. After my discharge from the “hospital” where I was kept (against my volition) for eight months. Deemed not ready to return to a normal life and so sentenced to a halfway house as it is (laughably) called. Half-arsed halfway house it is. And now, the worse insult, to be assigned one of the fifth-floor dormer rooms where at fifty-three I am old enough to be the grandmother of most of the residents. And I am not a junkie, or a souse. I am not gaga like some. I am not a filthy slut—hardly. But forced to cohabit with such crippled specimens of humanity for the sake of a bed and food to eat until I am well enough again to live by myself and tend to my own needs.

  My only friend does not live here. My dear friend like a sister I have known since St. Agatha’s grade school is Priss Reents who is my age and stout like me and with a plain honest face like raw bread dough. When I am well enough again, Priss Reents has said I might live with her, in a room in her house if I could pay just a few dollars a week to help with rent and expenses. It is very surprising—Priss Reents is a cleaning woman for the P.M. himself, would you believe that?—yet it is so, for thirty years Priss Reents has worked for the same cleaning service that is assigned to the P.M.’s residence at Queen’s Square. But if you ask the woman what the P.M. is like she will blink and stammer and seem not to know.

  Guess I don’t see much of him, or any of them.

  A dull female, not like me.

  Well, I’d known that Priss Reents
cleaned the P.M.’s residence and had done so for many years but it never struck me much until the other day waking like I did stunned and swallowing not knowing at first where the hell I was. Hissing in the radiator—Assassin.

  Love the sound of that word—Assassin!

  Not killer—not murderer. Those are common words. Not even executioner. (Though there is something about this word, I am beginning to admire.)

  Assassin. Executioner. In the service of fairness and justice.

  The insult of my room on the fifth floor and how we are fed here in the half-arsed halfway house. Cold gluey oatmeal one morning and when I spat out a mouthful onto my spoon, disgusted to see what resembled a small wizened piece of meat.

  Your own heart—the whisper came to me, laughing.

  Yet, the idea of assassination did not occur to me for some time. I have lost track of the days since that time but it might have been a month at least. What began in the hissing, in a dream, and spread out of the dream, like a potato sprouting roots in dank soil—Assassin.

  Somehow it came to me that I would saw off the head of the arrogant bastard P.M. This would be my destiny, not the other—not to be Dr. S. and lord it over the mentally enfeebled, addicts and sluts, for I’d been cheated of that career. But this, I would not be cheated of and would go down in history like the Hebrew Judith in her triumph over Holofernes.