A Bird's Eye (6 page)

My mother did not have the needs of an adolescent but the hunger of someone who believed that her time was running out. If it hadn't been the German, then someone else? But it was the German.

So she put her ear to his door and listened. It was only nine o'clock, but perhaps he was already sleeping. He did keep unusual hours, sometimes going out at ten in the evening, sometimes not leaving the room at all.

His voice startled her. “Is someone there?”

She backed away. “It's only me. Mrs. Kleeman. Bella. I brought you a piece of cake and a cup of tea. But if you don't want it . . .”

The door opened. He stood in his undershirt tucked into his trousers. “Yah, please come in. It is most kind of you.”

Without his glasses, his face looked even rounder, his eyes smaller. He stepped aside to let her in. “Here I am two days with the rent late and you bring me cake. But I have half of it for you.”

There was no table, so she put the oval tray on the dresser. He had rearranged the room, moving the bed against the wall to make a small space by the window for an artist's easel. She had never seen one before except in the movies, and it was almost exotic. Small jars of paint rested on a wooden stool spotted with colour.

“I see you have brought two cups. You will join me?”

“Yes. You're an artist?”

“No, no. Not at all. I just make little pictures and sell them. Down on the boardwalk by the lake, where people like to stroll on the weekends. Come and see if you like.”

He led her to the other side of the easel. A board rested on it, divided into twenty small squares. Each square was a little painting in progress: a girl with a balloon by the Eiffel Tower, a dog asleep with the Colosseum in the background. The red and blue had been painted in all of them, but the rest was only sketched.

“They're so pretty.”

“I have no imagination. I paint the same over and over. Children like them. Young men buy them for their sweethearts. They make the world small, like a story, a plaything.”

“You have paint on your face,” my mother said. And because she hungered for tenderness herself, she put the tip of her finger to her tongue and then touched his face.

“Bella.” He held her hand there. With his own hand he reached up to touch her birthmark and then, his fingers caressing her neck, pull her close.

At dinner, a spot of paint on my mother's neck. She kept touching it with the tip of her finger.

I wanted to know more about what the man in the tuxedo had done onstage, and the library was the only place I could think of to go, although I didn't feel optimistic. And although I believed that most, if not all, of human knowledge was contained within the walls of the Gladstone Library, I doubted that the sort of knowledge I sought could be found in books. Still, as soon as I thought of it, I headed to the library, not considering the fact that it was after dark and the place might be closed. And sure enough, I stood on Bloor Street and looked at the dark building, outlined by a spill of light from the gas station beside it. I was about to turn away when I noticed a single bulb above a side door, and at that same moment the door opened and a woman stepped out. She juggled a set of keys to lock up. Tall, in a cloth coat and a hat that looked too small for her head.
What would Corinne do?
is what I thought to myself before walking quickly up to her.

“Please, miss. I want a book.”

She turned around and looked at me. She had a long, appealing face, like a horse. “I'm sorry. The library is closed until morning.”

I must have looked crushed, because her face softened. “Do you have a library card?”

“No, miss.”

“You look familiar. Have you been here before?”

“Sometimes.”

“And no library card. All you have to do is have your mother and father come in. This is just the sort of hurdle we have to overcome with you immigrant families. Well, my evening engagement was cancelled anyway. It wouldn't hurt to go get some work cleared off my desk.”

She put the key back in the lock and opened the door again, turning on a light. I followed her in through the back rooms, past coat racks and crowded desks and a battered lunch table, up the stairs and into the broad reading room. I was naive enough to believe that she must have read every book on the long rows of shelves.

“I think it best if we keep most of the lights off,” she said. “We might draw the interest of the local constable and have to explain ourselves. Now, the card catalogue is right here if you haven't used it. What is the book you're looking for?” She took a flashlight from a desk.

“I don't know which one exactly.” The truth was, I didn't know if there was such a book.

The librarian pointed the flashlight at me. “Can you tell me the subject?”

“Magic.”

“You mean witches and sorcerers, that sort of thing?”

“I mean what a man does in the theatre. With cards and cigarettes and making things disappear.”

“Conjuring. So that's what has brought you so urgently to the library. As good a subject as any. Let's look under the subject heading. You see here? We have just a few titles. Most are for children. I believe that Hoffmann's
Modern Magic
is the best, but it's hardly intended for someone your age.”

“I want to see it, please.”

“We'll just write down the Dewey number. And now to the books.”

She swung the flashlight beam to the carpet and led us to the shelves. She leaned down and ran her finger along the spines until she pulled out a small, thick volume. Standing again, she put it in my hands. The author was listed as “Professor Hoffmann.” The book fell open to a small picture, an engraving of a hand lifting up a pan to reveal flames rising from inside. I read the words underneath.
Borrowed rings and live dove produced from an omelet
.

“Can I take it home?”

“Unfortunately, it's a reference copy, which means that it doesn't circulate. You have to use it in the library. But I'll tell you what. I've got some work that I can do. You sit down and read for an hour. I can give you paper and a pencil if you want to make notes. And afterwards, I'll keep it at my desk and you can come in during regular hours. Would that do?”

“Yes, miss, thank you.”

“And what is your name?”

“Benjamin.”

“Very good, Benjamin. I am Miss Pensler. You sit over here. I think we can risk turning on one reading lamp.”

At the desk, I turned one page after another. What I saw was too wonderful, and too much to take in.

My uncle's intention may not have been to keep his sister a prisoner in their home, but the effect didn't look much different to me. The visits of Tobias Whitaker, accompanying her brother home, were at least a break from the monotony of her days, but it wasn't as if she enjoyed them much. Mr. Whitaker was attentive to her, often bringing a box of chocolates or a bouquet or even the latest copy of
Picture Play
or
True Story
, which he supposed she might like. He looked pale as a china dish to me, whenever I saw him (Hannah slipping me the chocolates), like some kind of cold-blooded animal needing to borrow another creature's warmth.

One early evening, Mr. Whitaker appeared at the door. Hayim was still at the factory — he kept long hours — and she had dismissed the maid in order to be alone. She stood holding it open to the cold evening air. Here was Hayim's friend, weaving a little from drink and crumpling his handsome hat in his hand.

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Whitaker, but my brother is out.”

“I've already been to see him. And now I've come to see you, if that's all right.”

“Of course.” She felt the flush of her cheeks. Her brother had always encouraged her to be friendly to Mr. Whitaker, and now he was coming to see her by himself. She ushered him into the sitting room, walking slowly so as to make her limp less noticeable. But it was his own nervousness that alarmed her, how he fiddled and looked anxiously about and licked his lips. She sat first and he perched across from her on a silk settee.

“The maid has gone out, but I could make some tea.”

“Oh no, don't bother. Perhaps I could just take myself a small drink.”

“Of course.”

She watched as he went to the side table and poured himself a glass of Seagram's. He drank it down and sat again.

“Forgive me, Miss Kleeman. Hannah. I have been trying all evening to fortify my courage, you might say. And now I must say what I've come for.”

He stood up and startled her by immediately dropping to his knees, his hands flailing. She could see his red hair was thinning, which made her feel more warmly towards him. He reached up and grabbed her hands.

“Please, Mr. Whitaker.”

“No, I won't let go. I've been captured by your sweetness, your goodness. These visits are the highlight of my days. I wake up each morning thinking of you.”

“You're being horrible to me. I didn't think you were like that. When my brother gets home —”

“But he knows I'm here. He says that the difference in our faiths isn't a problem for him. He doesn't object to your conversion. My family has a good name, and that counts for something in this town. I want you to marry me, Hannah.”

Her breaths came so quickly that she became almost faint. He had to support her arm. To be the deepest concern of a man. To escape this house. To be loved. Tears stung her eyes and sobs convulsed her. She felt absolutely stupid, but she just couldn't stop.

Miss Pensler had told me to come during regular hours, but I would wait for her instead at the end of the day so that the two of us could have the library to ourselves. I think that it was already becoming my way, to operate in secrecy, in the shadows of near dark, and somewhere between the rules. Miss Pensler herself must have enjoyed our little conspiracy for, despite sighs and eye rolling, she always let us back in.

It says something about my feelings that, instead of keeping these visits always to myself, I decided to bring Corinne with me. And Corinne was eager to go. She liked reading much more than me; I wasn't interested in any story but the one I was trying to write for myself. But really she wanted to come because she was suspicious of this Miss Pensler who didn't mind spending some of her free evening hours with me. “Just don't tell me that she's got literature on her mind,” Corinne said, stretching out the word:
lit-a-ra-toor
. This jealousy by my sixteen-year-old lover made me uncomfortable and proud at the same time, and I didn't know if I should reassure her or encourage it, but in any case I was far too inexperienced to attempt either.

And so one evening Corinne trailed behind me, suddenly unsure, as I went up to the door just as Miss Pensler was coming out.

“I brought a friend with me,” I said.

“Now Benjamin, you know the library has closed. Letting one person in is bending the rules enough. If Mr. Clare finds out, I could be dismissed.”

“Who's Mr. Clare?”

“The head of the branch.”

“Aren't you the head?”

“I certainly deserve to be. Well, come in, then, before somebody sees.”

Corinne followed and I could feel her wariness even without looking back. We went through the workrooms to the stairs and up into the reading room.

“Go turn on the lamp and I'll get Professor Hoffmann for you.”

After she left us, Corinne said, “I saw it.”

“What?”

“In your hand. The coin. It caught the lamplight.”

“Ah, damn.”

“How long have you been doing it?”

“Maybe half an hour. Passing it back and forth.”

“Pretty good. Anything else?”

She never asked to see what I had been practising and I suspected she was trying to get on my good side. But I opened my hand to show her the quarter. Then passed my other hand over it and the coin was gone. Corinne nodded solemnly.

Miss Pensler returned. “Here you go. We can't stay too long, I have an engagement this evening. Would your friend like something to read? I've got a lovely illustrated book of Aesop's fables just in. They're very short.”

“I'm a good reader,” Corinne said, sounding more herself. “I just read Daphne du Maurier, and before that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.”

“I see. Then I'll point you to our latest fiction.”

I watched them go off. Corinne looked back at me and stuck out her tongue.