Silent Bird Read online

  At the conclusion of my story, El Gato did indeed escape the fridge. He was a survivor. But he never again managed to keep warm. Giving up all notions of lifelong companionship, he roamed the hills and villages of the Languedoc region, sleeping alone under the vines, old burlap bags and other scraps.

  A dismal ending, I know. I also knew that real children’s stories should have happy endings. Like Mr. El Gato meeting the future Mrs. El Gato inside the refrigerator and marrying near the butter dish, leaving the past behind, living happily ever after.

  But I didn’t believe it. And if I didn’t believe it, how could I draw it?

  “Will you publish this story?” Monique asked.

  I told her no, it was not right for that.

  “But I like,” she said.

  Jeannot said he liked too. Or maybe he said he was hungry. In any case, when he kept talking to Monique, and Monique began translating, I realized with dawning excitement that he and I were beginning our first real conversation—with her help, of course.

  She said, “He asks what you do in France.”

  “I’m traveling. Just like this, living quietly and working.”

  A pattering of French.

  “And in America? You have job?”

  I said I was between jobs. That I had worked for a short while creating ads for a magazine but didn’t like it.

  “He asks why Montpellier. You have family nearby, perhaps?”

  “No, it’s kind of a long story.” I mentioned my Mom living alone on Long Island and Grandma not remembering things since her stroke. I didn’t say that she was probably dying and that I’d left anyway because I was afraid I would die too if I stayed, just more slowly.

  “Will you go to university?” Monique asked. “Study French at Fac de la Lettres?”

  “No, I went to university already and got a useless degree in art.”

  More blank looks.

  I described my major at Stony Brook and my desire to see Europe, explore my roots a little. Monique seemed to understand that, at least. She told me about her love of American literature and relishing her contact with American students and expatriates of all ages. I asked her where I could find this American Library. She promised to show me.

  Jeannot cleared his throat. He had one more question.

  “How many times will you stay in France?” Monique translated.

  I said I didn’t know.

  “You will work here?”

  I couldn’t; didn’t have permission.

  “You like your flat, yes?” Monique asked after more consulting.

  That was more than one question. I said I loved my studio and this plaza but was rather tired of the commute to the toilet.

  They laughed. Jeannot’s dark eyes looked almost conspiratorial, as if he were recalling my private difficulties with toes and fungi and tubes of medicine that resembled toothpaste. On impulse I told Monique that story too, thus drawing her into our circle. And my reward was that before she left to wait on someone else, we set a date for the library.

  Finally Jeannot and I were alone. How sweet, I thought, to be sitting together as friends, not lovers. I closed the sketchbook, and he reached out to touch my cheek. “Chérie, come with me, please.” Dropping some francs on the table, he gently pulled me to my feet and led me in the direction of Centre Ville.

  I asked “Ou?”—”Where?”—but he put his finger to my lips.

  A few skinny, cobblestoned alleys later we turned into the huge pedestrian Place de la Comédie, which I’d read was the largest pedestrian plaza in Europe (it looked exactly like a small plaza, only bigger). We stopped at the window of a handsome restaurant with ornate iron tables out front. Through the window I could see a bar and luxurious seating and a grand piano in the dining room. The sign read: La Peña.

  “Brésilien,” Jeannot said with great satisfaction.

  I nodded: “Oui.”

  He unrolled his magazine and showed me the cover: this very same restaurant entrance in shiny color. “Je traivail ici.” He pointed at his chest and at the restaurant and at the magazine.

  Me, Tarzan. Work Here.

  “Very nice,” I said in English. “Food bon?”

  “On y va?” he said by way of answering, and I followed him away from the lovely Brazilian restaurant, though what I really wanted to do was pull him inside to play that magnificent piano.

  Instead, we went back to my little studio and played there. Funny, though: the time at the café with Monique and the walk to and from the Brazilian restaurant felt more intimate to me than anything Jeannot and I did the rest of that rainy afternoon.

  Our relationship seemed to be changing, growing more charged, more intense, even if the sex was just…sex. Hot and empty at the same time.

  As usual, at least for me.

  IV

  That night, after dropping off to sleep next to Jeannot, I had the dream.

  Lightning pulsed in the black sky. Thunder boomed. The ferryboat rocked. I clung to my father’s leg as he sat on a bench. “The giant’s gonna come!” I cried half-gleefully, hiding my face. Then I peeked out, both hoping and dreading to see it happening.

  Daddy looked down at me, his smile a warm surprise. I didn’t know he liked the Giant.

  “But it’s not raining,” I whispered. “He can’t come unless it’s raining!”

  Now Daddy leaned his head back and laughed: ho-ho-ho, like Santa Claus. “You funny little moppet,” he said, tucking me under the chin.

  I climbed onto his lap and laid my head on his chest and looked up at his face. Dark eyes, handsome cleft chin, lines around his eyes, that big lumpy Adam’s apple in his throat…and his breath all stinky, like cough medicine. Again.

  “I miss Mommy,” I said. “Don’t you?”

  The thunder boomed louder than ever, making me jump. It started raining.

  I leaped to my feet and ran to the railing. Nothing out there but endless black ocean and scary flashes of light. Raindrops ran down my face. I rubbed my eyes, wishing as hard as I knew how to find Mommy on this boat too.

  “It’s all right, love. Everything will be just grand, I promise.” Daddy held out his pinky, and I held out mine. The footsteps of the giant shook the boat, and I woke up in a narrow bed next to a man I barely knew, in a country not all that far from the place I’d gone in the boat.

  I hated that dream.

  But not as much as I’d hated experiencing it as a little girl.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I

  “I am happy to see you,” Monique cried, rising from her desk at the Bibliothèque Américaine. It had been less than forty-eight hours since we’d first met, yet she kissed my cheeks like a dear old aunt at a family reunion. “You find me, no problem?”

  “No problem,” I said. “Only one person works here. How hard could it be?”

  “Voilà, your library!” She gestured at the room: grand book-lined walls and oversized windows revealing bits of the Roman aqueduct that had been there long before King Charles the Handsome started burning Templars in the South of France.

  Books…in English! I felt like a shipwreck survivor glomming onto civilization. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follet, zoomed into focus. Lovely English! Blissful English! I opened the book, feasting my eyes. I wanted to take a bite out of it.

  I said, “I can borrow them?”

  Monique laughed. She had frank gray eyes that approved of you or disapproved of you, and I was awfully glad they approved of me. “Of course! She is free, this library.”

  “And you have a children’s section?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Maybe one day one of my books will be there.”

  “Why not? I believe this. I believe in dreams.”

  I got the official tour, such as it was: one homey reading room, a quiet work room with quaint roll-up desk and Corona typewriter, and children’s area with small tables, gaily colored chairs and scrumptious titles on the shelves such as Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat. The sight of that classi
c excited me more than the thrillers.

  Back at her desk, Monique wrote down a number from my passport and handed me an official library card and checked out my books. I noticed that her desktop was covered with photos of cheerful, contented people: a grinning old lady, a playfully smirking dark-haired man—must be her husband—holding a flaxen-haired toddler with one bewitching front tooth.

  “This is my mother. And this is Big Louis and Small Louis,” Monique explained proudly.

  She served me a puny cup of black coffee that looked awful, so thick you could use it to pave a parking lot. And I drank it down. She told me about her husband participating in the upcoming Bastille Day gondola tournaments, and I told her about the July 4th celebrations back home, with barbeques and fireworks and flags galore. Then she asked about Jeannot.

  “How is your little friend—your boyfriend?”

  I hesitated. “He’s not…exactly my boyfriend.”

  “No? I am surprised. Does he know this?”

  What a strange question. “Well, we never defined it. Don’t get me wrong, Jeannot is wonderful. I care about him very much. But it’s not…serious. I’ve only known him a short while. About a month.”

  She didn’t respond, and I had the unpleasant sense that I had disappointed her. But that didn’t make sense. She didn’t know me or Jeannot. Why did it matter how we defined our relationship? Then the library door opened, and Monique glanced past me. A young woman walked in, pausing to read the bulletin board.

  “Anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll be in France,” I said, wanting—needing—my new friend to understand. “I mean: I love Jeannot’s company. He’s so…sweet and easygoing. But we can’t really talk. He doesn’t speak English and my French sucks. We just enjoy the moment. What’s wrong with that?”

  The young woman had reached the desk now. She gave a small, uncomfortable cough. “Pardon, you speak of Jeannot Courbois?” she asked in laborious English.

  I nodded, surprised.

  Monique said something quickly in French, and that something turned into a conversation. I glanced from one woman to the other, hoping for a translation, recognizing Jeannot’s name more often than made sense.

  Who the hell…?

  Tall, long-limbed, and green-eyed, this creature was the sexiest, most I’ve-got-it-put-together French person I’d ever encountered. She clutched a retro-style fur purse that came off as sophisticated despite resembling road kill. On her feet she sported a pair of heels I would need crutches to walk on. Her hair, lightened to the shade of nutmeg, was flat, shiny, and impossibly straight. What ever happened to Big Hair? Not that I had to work at Big Hair.

  Finally Monique explained. “The mademoiselle says she knows Jeannot very well. She is from his village. This is a big coincidence, yes?”

  “Good friends—us,” the other woman added helpfully. She thrust out manicured fingers for a limp shake. “Thérèse Bonnet.”

  I shook the fingers but forgot to talk.

  Monique said, “She overheard you say his name and…was surprised. This is why she spoke.”

  “Yes,” agreed this Thérèse person, her green gaze giving me the once-over. Staring at me in that way that made me so damn uncomfortable, whether it came from men or women. I recalled my mother’s words. I am just a person.

  Ironically, I could also see Thérèse judging my clothes as substandard—my unfashionable T-shirt and flip flops. And I had the sudden, not so pleasant urge to poke her eyes out. This was a library, for God’s sake! Why dress up to go to a library on a hot summer day?

  Why carry a faux-purse that looked like an eviscerated gopher?

  Monique said, “She explains that they attended the same lycée.”

  “Lycée?”

  “School for children. They were infants together.”

  “Oh.”

  “Name?” Thérèse asked, eyeing my shirt again. My chest?

  I crossed my arms. “Pilar. Pilar Russell.”

  “American.”

  “Long Island,” I clarified, as if that mattered.

  She frowned, shrugged, and said in French: “Jeannot did not speak to me of you,” or something like that. Then she turned away to peruse the books, her rear end twitching, dead gopher banging against her hip.

  “Ugh,” I said to Monique. “That was fun.”

  She smiled knowingly. “Perhaps you will call this man your boyfriend now?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said and plunked down my coffee cup, thanked her, and left the library, flip-flops a-flapping.

  I walked across town, stopping at a café for a milky coffee I could stand the taste of. I didn’t know where to go next, didn’t really feel like seeing anyone or doing anything.

  But somehow I ended up at Jeannot’s apartment.

  II

  He opened the door looking more American than French. Real casual, cut-off shorts, no shirt, and feet bare. He hadn’t shaven. A bunch of music sheets in his hand fluttered to the floor as he stood staring back at me. And why shouldn’t he stare? I hadn’t visited his apartment since The Night of the Living Toe.

  “Bonjour,” he said, opening the door wider, ignoring the fallen paper.

  I pointed at it and said in French, “You write?”

  “Yes. My compositions.”

  I walked in, my arm brushing against his chest. It was damp with sweat as if he’d been working out. He had been working out, I guess, at the piano. I did know him that well.

  In the living room, a tray of food held the discarded end of a baguette, a soiled napkin, a heel of cheese. A glass of red wine barely touched. Pencil and sharpener on the coffee table, pinning down more sheets of music, some filled, some empty, some crossed out and erased: neither filled nor empty. Not finished.

  Jeannot sat on the couch and waited. I sat across from him. We hadn’t kissed hello. His eyes seemed very bright.

  “You came here,” he said at last. “I did not expect this, but you did. You came to me.”

  And I nodded, because I understood him. I understood his French!

  That alone seemed like a miracle when I very much longed for a miracle. I can do this, I thought. I can speak to this man in his own language, in French…

  III

  Once upon a time I’d read an article explaining how the brain cells for second and third languages are housed in a different part of the brain than the first, with each subsequent language hogging more and more brain space. And so I had truly believed I would never learn a third language; that my words in English and rudimentary Ladino Spanish had confiscated all available square footage. No Rooms for Rent. Why should my head make way for all these French invaders? I would never be able to sound like an adult here in my adopted city. I would never fully understand Jeannot or Monique or random annoying strangers like that woman at the library. I would always be Other.

  Except there was another truth that I had forgotten: I had languages in my blood. My mother’s Uncle Jack had been fluent in eight languages. I had his genes too, and that counted for something.

  “Today I disputed with my chef,” Jeannot said now (approximately). “I asked him permission to play my music at La Peña, on a night I do not work my normal job. But he said no.” He paused. “And I thought of you. I wanted to see you…but I did not call. I hoped you would call me. And then you came.”

  This was ridiculous; my eyes misting over at how nice he was—how warm and genuine and non-manipulative. Everything in his apartment felt simple and friendly. The sun poured over us because the shutters had been left wide open. I went to the sheets of music on the floor and gathered them into a pile. Then I handed it to Jeannot and sat right next to him. I could smell him, the apple shampoo. The sweat. The frustration, though with his boss, not with me.

  Or maybe with me too, just a little. I should have come sooner.

  “I am happy to be here,” I said in French.

  He nodded, pleased, though at the content of what I’d said or the miracle of French, I wasn’t sure.


  He talked some more about work—about his determination to perform in the most authentic Brazilian restaurant in the city of Montpellier and something about his boss refusing to see him outside the category of waiter. I didn’t grasp every detail, of course. But I got the gist of each sentence, like a verbal pearl in those countless grains of French sand.

  “Play for me,” I asked softly.

  And so he did. The measures slowly expanded and swelled into something passionate and lush: the Amazonian jungle again. I heard the unmistakable chorus of birds, hinting of morning-song and exhilarating hot days and colors as bright as crayons. When he finished I threw my arms around him.

  “I love it, Jeannot. Your music is so beautiful…”

  “You believe this?”

  “Yes! You are professional.”

  “No, I am not. Right now I am a waiter.”

  “But in here”—I patted my heart—”you are a professional musician. I can hear it.”

  He smiled. “And you really mean this?”

  “Yes, of course. Don’t you?”

  “It is my dream.”

  “Good! I believe in dreams.”

  I was quoting Monique.

  IV

  Jeannot and I made love that day, maybe for the first time. We made the kind of love that belongs in a song—and that kind of intimacy seemed safe enough, at least for now.

  Carpe diem, I thought. Seize the Love.

  At about midnight, I kissed his warm sleeping face and let myself out of the apartment, but not before I wrote him a note. I will return tomorrow, I scribbled in French.

  This, too, spelled Big Change.

  V

  “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,” Shakespeare writes in Macbeth.

  So it was for me and my days with my new boyfriend. They crawled and shifted and slipped into tomorrow, becoming next week and the next and then July 4th, America’s birthday. I spent that nostalgic holiday at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, loudly singing the national anthem while he laughed and took pictures. Then more days flew off the calendar, and it was France’s turn: July 14th, Bastille Day.