BIRDS OF PASSAGE, CHAPTER 6: A baby is a miracle, and no mistake
The stuffed chicken is roasting in the oven, finally. It took Alice the better part of an hour ot get the stuffing in under the skin in the Hungarian way. The rich, flavourful food of Hungary is one thing that Daniel has liked, and the trick being to convince Daniel to like Budapest — in spite of a bad start, in spite of the barricades, in spite of everything — tonight’s will be a Hungarian meal.
The csipetke that Alice made with egg and flour for the cauliflower soup are plump and ready. The red cabbage that Eszter surprised them both by finding in the pantry just needs reheating at the last minute — and, Alice decides, tasting it, more caraway and vinegar.
She spears the biggest of the potatoes with the fork. Then she dumps the lot into the colander and covers them with a tea-towel. She hasn’t made dessert. She doesn’t eat dessert, and sugar is bad for Peter’s teeth. Peter has gone back to the living room, where he is creating a streamlined vehicle of some kind out of Space Lego.
There will be at least six of them for dinner, ten if Veronika and all Eszter’s children come too. One chicken for ten is plenty. Gábor must want to talk to Daniel about the theatre; he was pleased with the invitation. Veronika has been unwell, Gábor explained, and Alice did not press the point. The pale Veronika sits through every dinner in sorrowful silence like an Afghan hound, and departs without so much as a thank you. Is this a deliberate insult of plain bad manners? Or both? Reaching into the china cabinet for the good plates that Eszter has given her to use, and brushing her thick hair out of her face with her arm as she straightens, Alice sticks her tongue out at Veronika.
She’s lost in reverie somewhere in the heat and warmth of the bath when the front doorbell rings loudly. Instantly she’s alert, listening as Peter goes to the door. But it isn’t Daniel, it’s Pierrette. Still, Alice yanks out the plug and dries herself quickly. What to wear?
What to wear? Alice has always hated having to choose what to wear. The only thing worse is deciding what clothes to buy. That’s why she always buys clothes through the Sears catalogue in Montreal. They’re cheap and they’re practical. Today she has to contend as well with the certainty that Pierrette wil look like a million dollars. Alice does not want to look like some wilting lily in comparison. She goes to her closet, and her red shirt catches her eye. Why not? It’s bright. And it’ll conjure up the right memories. But what can she wear it with? She pulls out a cream-coloured, imitation leather tunic, and finds a comfortable, flat-heeled pair of pink shoes and some beige pantyhose that have only a small run in the back. No one will notice.
She was wearing the red shirt when she and Daniel, bursting with plans, decided over dinner one night in January that they really were going to Hungary. They were both wanting to get away from Montreal. The political rhetoric that winter was more than Alice could bear. Daniel, for his part, was discouraged by the cool response to his new playa reworking of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters set in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. From then on, during all the months before they left, they revelled in uncertainty and self-congratulation, dreaming of a new start. It hasn’t worked out like that.
Daniel was invited over to set up the Atrium Theatre, the first English-language theatre in Budapest, and so he had to leave the Broken String company in Montreal in his partner’s care for the duration. But setting up the Atrium had been frustrating, with one hitch after another ever since July. And then, on top of that, Daniel’s adaptation of The Three Sisters turned into an unexpected success with the international critics. It is now in rehearsal for anew run at Place des Arts, and then it’s going on to New York. In comparison with all that, the Atrium in Budapest had started to seem far of the beaten track.
But now that he’s been over to see to the new run of his play, maybe he’ll come back ready to see he year out. Maybe, too, Budapest will start to appeal to him more.If not, Alice knows, they’ll be in serious trouble. Having started this job of her own at the Ministry of Education, she wants to see it through. She’s set her heart on spending the whole year here. She wants to be here when the cherry tree blossoms, when the storks return, when the roses bloom. And besides, she just isn’t ready to face Montreal again.
These days there is no sign of the great white stork within thirty kilometers of Budapest. Daniel having had better, or at least other, things to do than scour the countryside for nesting birds, Alice went on these expeditions alone with Peter. The closest nest she found was in a village on Szentendre Island north of the capital. The already fair-sized nestlings were peering down at them and, when the mother swooped in, there was a great clattering of beaks. It was early August at the time, and the dirt road through the village was lined with marigolds and nasturtiums and shrubs crowded with berries the colour of burnt orange, burgundy, and cream. A round middle-aged woman, dressed all in black from her headscarf to her stockings and shoes, came out of the village church and smiled at them through brown teeth. They watched her walk the length of the road and turn into one of the stuccoed cottages painted the saffron colour that the Habsburg Emperor had once loved and that had been known ever since as Franz József Yellow. Two men with deeply lined, weather-beaten faces came out of the little bar across the street and lit up a parting cigarette. It was nearly lunch-time, and the smell of bean soup and spiced garlic sausage drifted over from a nearby kitchen window.
“How do the storks know to return to that very nest?” Peter wanted to know. They had got out of the car and were standing beside each other with their arms loosely around each other’s waists.
In another year Peter would be as tall as Alice.
“It’s hard ot believe, isn’t it? They have to fly for thousands of miles. The ones that have already made the passage fly by the stars at night, and from landmark to landmark by day, showing the young birds the way.”
“And what about the ones that used to nest on our street? Why did they stop coming back there?”
“The whole city changed,” Alice said. “The water got polluted, the air got polluted. It was poisoning them to death. They knew they had to go somewhere else.”
“But we like it here, don’t we?”
I do, she thought, kissing the top of his head. Do you? Do you really?
A woman’s voice sounded shrilly from one of the little cottages, and two of the children who had been leaning over the enormous sow in the pen went running inside, scattering the indignant russet hens around the gate. Knowing their own soup would soon be on the table, the other children moved off in the other direction. The baker rattled down his wooden shuter for the day, padlocked it, and went in for his lunch by the side door.
“People here think the storks bring them good luck. Babies, too, mind you, but not only babies good luck of al kinds. Just imagine how worried they must have been when the storks didn’t come home one spring.”
“A baby is good luck?”
“It is,” Alice said. “A baby is the greatest good luck there is in the world. A baby is a miracle, and no mistake.”
