GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2019/20
NATALIA THEODORIDOU
‘Pas de Terre’
SHE COMES HOME ONE DAY. She opens the door then closes it behind her and stands there. The word “shattered” flies to my mind. She looks like someone who ought to be bleeding but isn’t. Her skin is unbroken. Her hair tidy, pulled back tightly, too tightly.
What happened? I sign.
She opens her mouth, no doubt thinks of a bird falling out, closes it. He, she signs. He.
Did someone hurt you?
She nods. Stops. Nods again.
It’s quiet in the apartment. I almost tune out the flapping of wings from outside, the endless chirping. A bird flies into the kitchen window and breaks its neck.
I walk close and fold her into a hug, kiss her cheekbones, her eyes, her clavicles. She’s rigid. Are you okay?
No.
Do you want to talk about it?
No.
Watch a film?
Okay.
#
I put on Arsenic and Old Lace. Subtitles on, as always.
(Always means: since the plague. Since films got infested too.)
In it, Cary Grant is Mortimer. His estranged bride, in shock at having found out the truth about his murderous aunts, is about to tell on them to the police.
He shuts her mouth with a long, impassioned kiss. A bird fights to escape, trapped between their lips.
“What’s this woman screaming about?” the policeman asks in subtitles and birds.
“It’s way past her bedtime,” Mortimer replies, as if he's married to a child. Goldfinches fly out of his mouth. They sit on the china, the doilies, the grandfather clock.
The woman keeps trying to talk, so he does it again, the shut-up kissing, and then again: more birds come out, half-choked, fluttering about until he physically sweeps her off her feet and drags her outside, to the street and the moonlight and the honeymoon ahead.
She forgets all about the crimes, the prison of his lips.
“Oh, Mortimer!” she exclaims, out of breath.
#
Was it your boss, I ask, after.
She says nothing.
Was it him? He always seemed like the biggest prick to me.
She looks away, says nothing.
Has he done anything like that before?
She says nothing.
You must report him. You must speak up.
A bird catches my eye as it throws itself against the living-room window, from the inside, trying to get out. It’s a robin, I think, a tiny thing. Did she say that bird? What did she say? When? What word was this, why didn’t I see it come out of her mouth?
I get up to let the robin out.
He might do it to others if you don’t speak up.
#
She doesn’t go to work for two days, and then it’s the weekend. I cook for her, we listen to wordless music, watch old French films we both like. She sleeps a lot.
Outside, the world is full. It’s hard to walk about in the city these days. We still have no idea what caused the plague; people have even blamed Twitter. Silly. I’m just glad I don’t have to go anywhere. Film work has been terrible for a while. Things were bad enough when it was just live voiced words that were replaced by birds. Almost impossible to get a good shot. Also birdshit everywhere. But we managed, with some canned footage, some pre-recorded bits, a lot of voice synthesis software. When it started happening with recorded and digital speech as well, though, production ceased completely. Until someone figures out a workaround - one that doesn't end up all Hitchcock all the time. Or until the film industry finally embraces some combination of manual and written communication, like the rest of the world. A lot of us have been delving into Signing Exact English. It’s not like SEE and sign languages are new; plenty of people have been using them already, and certainly before the plague - the rest of us need to put the work in. And maybe ask ourselves why we never bothered before while we're at it.
But anyway, the point is I mostly stay home these days.
I fiddle with my video art project when she sleeps. Corralling birds from scene to scene, splicing frames together, watching the words turn coal tit and nightingale and sparrow, genre-defying filmbirds, subtitled with poetry. A dictionary of flight. The world as aviary.
Then Monday comes, and she jumps into the shower and puts on the peacekeeping makeup and grabs her bag.
What are you doing? Where are you going?
Work, she signs. She points at her face, the makeup. Peace won’t keep itself, she says.
Are you going to report him?
She shakes her head.
Why not?
I can’t.
Why not?
I just can’t. She opens her mouth, thinks of birds, no doubt, closes it. Then: It will do damage to the work we’re doing. It’s good work. People need us. Depend on us. On him. On the work we do for him. I can’t do this to them.
I barely manage to keep my mouth shut and sign instead. Are you just afraid of losing your job? How can you work there after what happened? Not that I know exactly what happened, since you won’t talk to me.
She leaves. Slams the door behind her.
#
I work on the project some more. Bunch of new scenes. A woman sings in a tower. She’s a prisoner - her birdwords fly out the window, free, untranslatable. Another scene: The woman in the shower covers her mouth while panicked birds fly out between her fingers. Another: The silent woman who insists on playing her music has her finger chopped off. Not even a bird escapes her lips.
#
I remember the first time I saw it happen.
A colleague and I were watching a low-budget slasher flick I'd edited a decade ago, during my year-abroad in France. Black & white, for added film-school artsiness. The scream queen was hiding in her bedroom. The killer was at the door. She let out the softest sigh. My colleague paused the film and walked closer to the screen.
What is it? I asked. I hadn’t seen it yet.
Look, he signed. He pointed at something near the bottom of the frame. A parakeet. It was perched on the scream queen’s metal bedpost in full colour, green and red and a hint of yellow.
What’s that? Did you do that?
No, I said. I didn’t.
#
I text her I love her and I’ll be there for her if she decides to do something about it.
Hours later, she responds: You should be there for me no matter what. Then: Is this about me? Or about you?
I don’t respond.
In the scene I’m working on that afternoon, a group of men are beating on a guy. He’s on the ground, and we can only see him from behind. His skin is bare. The men kick his back and stomach, shouting birds at him.
#
When she comes back, we don’t say any words. I wrap her in a blanket and hand her a scalding hot mug of tea. She’s right there but isn’t. She’s somewhere far away, somewhere I cannot reach. Where are you, I sign, come back to me, I’m here, but she doesn't look at me, so no words come out of it.
I go to the kitchen to pour another mug for myself. When I walk back into the living-room, I catch her pressing the hot china against her skin, tentatively at first, then holding it there until she flinches and pulls it away. She doesn’t make a sound.
I miss your voice, I tell her.
I think I’ll go stay at my mum’s for a while, she says.
#
The project grows more violent, the words in it shorter, the birds frantic, darting, the bodies rendered, eventually, always. The birds crowd the frames, film plumage blotting out landscape and plot.
Once, I think a mockingbird throws itself against the inside of the screen. I shut the laptop and put on a DVD instead.
In it, Annette Bening is slapping herself over and over again, screaming birds. The subtitles read: “Shut up. Shut up, stop it, you weak, you baby.”
#
She doesn’t come back from her mother’s. I work on the project, make tea, study SEE online, sleep, wake up, work again, tea again, sleep again. My dreams become bird-infested with words never spoken before, unknown words. I walk through the feathered streets of the city, birds overheard - I mean overhead - and underfoot and the ground too crowded to land, even the buildings look sky-bound.
A while becomes a week, then several weeks, then months. I miss her. I make two mugs of tea and pour one down the drain. I try holding the hot china against my skin. I pull away the next moment, hissing a redpoll, maybe, or a warbler - I didn’t get a good look before it flew into the next room. I don’t go after it because it’s dark in here, the sky is thick with birds and I don’t want to turn on the lights just yet, so I lie down and dream my bird-infested dreams again.
#
Then a scandal breaks, people are coming forth in droves, perpetrators getting punished, the mighty are falling, except the highest-ups don't, they never do. Then someone jumps off a building, lands on a bed of crushed bird bones and feathers.
She knocks on the door that afternoon. She doesn’t need to knock. This is her apartment as much as mine. But she does knock, so I don’t know it’s her until I open the door and find her standing there. Her eyes are rimmed with red.
We fall on each other like starved animals, landlocked, ground-limbed, beasts that have never known flight and never will. I’ve missed your voice, I sign, but she doesn’t see me, her eyes are closed and her mouth is open, moaning starlings at the ceiling.
#
Are you okay? I ask her, after.
No, she says. She traces the scar on my abdomen with her fingers, the old stab wound. There was no group of men. Just one guy. The shame of it, I want to say, I get it. But I reported it anyway. They never caught him.
You heard about the girl who fell? I almost say “flew”, but I don’t.
Yes, she says. She jumped. She didn’t fall.
Yes. I pause. Don’t you think it’s time to share your story now? I sign as gently as I can. My hands stutter. All these other people coming forth, I say. You can make a difference now.
She turns and looks at me. Her eyes are gleaming. Really? she says. People are already asking. Things like, are you exaggerating?
Her signing is frantic, erratic. Our signing is imperfect; we’re just not that good at it yet. She struggles ahead, alternating between signs and fingerspelling.
They ask: Did you imagine it? Did you dream it? It can't be that bad. Not for all of you. Not for every one of you. And why didn't you speak up all this time? Why didn’t you come forward sooner? When they should be marveling that anyone ever decides to come forward at all.
I sit up. That’s not me, I protest. I’m not saying these things.
She’s not paying attention to me. She goes on signing. What if we took the reticence of victims as a symptom of abuse? Would we stop accusing them of it? Would you blame the trapped for not being free? The shackled for not giving you a hand? The wounded for bleeding and making a mess? Well, you might. But you’d be an asshole.
I keep my gesturing as calm as possible. All I’m saying is we need to do something about it. Can’t just sit there and take it and take it and take it.
Don’t you get it? I already feel guilty for not reporting him. You think I’ve never thought about all the other people he might do it to? That I haven’t blamed myself? I’ve thought that a thousand times already. I think it a thousand times a day. I blame myself a thousand times a day.
There’s nothing you can do, then? Because I think you have a choice. You always have a choice: do nothing, or do something. There must be. You must. Otherwise we’re powerless.
She stands up, starts dressing. I’m still naked.
To do something, she says, first you have to survive. She misses a button on her shirt, has to undo all of them, do them up again. And why is this my responsibility? He's put me in an impossible situation, she signs between buttons. An impossible choice is no choice at all.
Look, I’m sorry, I only want to help. I have to do something.
Coming forth is a valid choice, admirable even, but so is keeping this to myself. For any reason. Placing the burden of this on me is further burdening the victim. Besides, what if I speak and my words don’t land? What if they do nothing? Change nothing?
I open my mouth, think of birds, close it. I say: At least you will have tried. Like I did.
You don’t get it, she says.
Don’t I?
No, you don’t. It’s not the same. You don’t know what you're talking about.
I...
No, you know what, just stop.
If she used her voice now, her birds would be wild. Her words would be falcons and eagles and condors.
You don't get it, she signs again. You don't know. I'm glad you don't. But you don't. So just stop.
#
She leaves. She left.
I think I've seen this scene in a movie once. The girl said words much like these, only with her mouth and without thinking of birds. The boy didn't understand. Despite all of his own scars.
It made him feel angry. Then alone.
Will I ever?
I make some tea. Put on a film. Something French, slow, with long takes, little dialogue.
The woman in it has avian cancer.
I mean ovarian. Ovarian cancer.
She has three grown children, a husband who works long hours. They are normal. They have tea. He goes to the gym sometimes and watches TV often. She is unhappy.
She denies treatment, until the disease eats her up from within. Her husband does not understand why she won’t help herself. He leaves her, hurt. He has muscles with which to do things. He feels offended. He feels powerless.
He will never.
I pause, make more tea.
The woman spends the entire film being mostly quiet. In the final moments, just before the credits roll, she breaks into song, the way oppressed women tend to in clichéd films, as if voice, and voice of a particular kind, is all that ever matters.
The woman voices briefly, intensely.
This bit is not subtitled, so I don't know what the lyrics to the song used to be. Now they’re lyrebirds and blackbirds, dozens of them.
I hold the hot mug against my skin as the birds multiply. They fill the entire frame until I can see nothing but black feathers and curly tails. The mug scalds my skin. This time I don’t flinch.
A blackbird throws itself at the TV screen. More follow. Soft bodies push against the glass. I hear a crack, then another. My head is light. Then the glass shatters, and there is nowhere in the world to land.