Work Text:
There are two birds on the side of the street. Bloodied, beaten, missing patches of their feathers, they nuzzle into each other’s chests.
They are dying.
You stoop down, careful not to get blood on your nice loafers (Vati would not be happy if you made a mess of yourself), and examine them curiously.
“Hallo,” you say, if only to distract yourself from their sad little coos. “I can help, you know.”
This prospect fills you with glee. Vati says a boy of your age should be cautious around all the tools at the pharmacy, but he apparently doesn’t care enough to notice when you steal some of them. You open your bookbag and pull out three things: a needle, a spool of thread, and a roll of gauze. This is the sort of thing your father says would be “impolite” to talk about with anyone at synagogue, the sort of dirty work that you have only been able to see on occasion.
A smile comes to your face. Gently, you pick up the birds, wiping as much schmutz off their pretty white feathers as you can. It would have been such a shame if you’d left them to die in the gutter, wouldn’t it?
You try to keep your hands steady, about as best as you can. You’ve never quite had a surgeon’s hands, not like Vati does, but that isn’t about to stop you.
“It’s okay,” you tell the birds. “It’s okay. I’m going to fix you, see?”
Carefully, you thread the needle in and out. There’s little spurts of blood, little unpleasant noises, but you’re not one to give up, not even when red begins to splatter on the lenses of your spectacles.
In and out, in and out…
You blink, rock back on your heels, look at what you’ve done. You admire your handiwork.
Yes, you decide, a good job.
A rush of pride comes to you easily. You giggle and tilt your head at the conjoined bird-thing, touching it with your pointer finger. It still feels so soft! It hasn’t woken yet, but you figure that can’t be much to worry about.
Oh, but —
The sky above you is getting darker and darker by the second. The wind bites at the bits of your nose it can get to under your scarf. You shouldn’t be out here for much longer, should you?
And your mother should be calling you in for dinner in a little while, you think. She promised she’d make kugel and brisket sometime soon. And though Mame is quite forgetful at times (Vati has taken to calling her scatterbrained), she always remembers her promises. What if by the time you get back, the brisket is already cold? Or what if you die of hypothermia out here, and you never even get the chance to eat it? You shudder. It’s not a particularly nice thing to imagine, but your brain does it anyway.
If you stay on the streets for too long, old Frau Aichhorn will come out and wave her cane at you and say Herbert, you little nuisance, next time I’ll be calling for your mother, and though she never really does, you don’t want to be lectured by her any more than you have to. It has been getting darker earlier as of late, and the wind has become sharper, and the beginnings of slush-snow are starting to clot on the ground. So you decide you are best off doing as you are told and coming home soon as you can — you would rather not catch cold and be stuck in bed. What if the snow becomes thicker, but you are too sick to build snowmen with all the other children? What if you get a terrible new fever the world has never seen before and die? The thought of being covered in blisters or gangrene or a pale, sweaty sheen does not make you feel particularly good.
So you scoop up the bird-hybrid in the hands that you think must be too big for a boy of your age, like a puppy’s oversized paws, and you scamper along until you see the familiar slightly-bent street lamp that means you are almost home. Just down the block.
It’s getting dark, for sure, but not too dark. Maybe half past seventeen, give or take.
You round the corner. The light on the side of your house is on, if a little faintly. Up the little set of stairs you dash, the wind picking up your coat behind you.
“Vati, Mame,” you call, rapping at the door with your free hand, “I’m home! I’m home!”
It swings open only moments later, and there is Mame, looking very relieved to see you.
“Ach, Herbert, come inside,” she says, gently pulling you out of the wind and into the nearby warmth of the sitting room fireplace. “It’s cold out there, you know—”
Mame is a slight woman, pale and fragile-looking. You like the way her dark curls tumble down her back, and the way gray strands weave through them in swirling patterns. It makes you think of the rare times you’ve gone to the seaside.
“Hi, Mame,” you say. “I was going out and studying the stray animals.”
Mame tuts, shaking her head. “Oh, darling,” she coos, “come here.”
You don’t need to be told twice. You bury yourself in Mame’s arms — you can almost feel the swell in her stomach where your unborn brother is growing (if you remember what Frau Dietrich taught you about women’s bodies correctly, that’s the womb, right?) You don’t like the thought of all of Mame’s attention being devoted to a baby — you’re supposed to be the baby, aren't you? Now that Elke is old enough to work at the pharmacy, and probably nearly old enough to be married off in a few years…well, your dreams of being treated like an only child will be over soon enough. You are Herbert now, not Bertchen or Berti. But maybe you still have a few months to pretend.
“Mame,” you say, muffled by her blouse.
“Ja?” She backs away, then carefully kneels down to your level. “What have you got there, ziskayt?” she asks, peering into your cupped hands. (She does not call you ziskayt in public, not anymore, but it feels nice to hear it at home.)
Then, with a glimmer in her eye… “Hooh!” Her face lights with excitement — smiling, she turns her head in the direction of Vati’s study. “Ansel, darling! Come look at what your son brought in!”
“Alright, alright,” comes Vati’s voice, gruff as usual, although you know he cares very much. “One moment, Zelda, one moment.”
Mame leans over and whispers to you this is thread from the pharmacy, isn’t it? and when you nod guiltily, a smile paints her lips and she whispers ach, you little thief…but if it is for the sake of progress, I suppose I can let it slide with a quiet little laugh in her voice.
The door opens, and Vati, the giant that he is, comes clomping down the hall. When he reaches you, he pauses, and gently pushes a few of your fingers aside. “Let me have a look, hmm?”
You nod enthusiastically. Maybe he’ll even tell you he’s proud of you!
“Alright,” Vati says, tutting, “ja, this is very good stitchwork here, at least for a boy of your age…of course, your unsteady hands…yes, you fixed this part here quite well…yes, yes, a job done well, bubale.”
“So it will wake up soon?” you ask, delighted.
Vati’s face falls. A grim sort of expression comes to him; you think it is strange, considering just how proud he had seemed moments earlier.
“No, Herbert, you misunderstand,” he says. There is, you notice, a tiny little bit of blood in his moustache. It must be from his shift. “The birds, by the looks of it, were well on their way to death already. There was precious little you could have done.”
“But…” You bite your lip to stop any tears from falling. You know what death is. You aren’t stupid. But you thought maybe you were different, somehow. “But I thought I fixed it. I thought I saved it, Vati.”
“Bubale, you must understand…even we cannot cure death.” Vati sounds stern, although not cruel. That doesn’t make you feel any better about it, especially not when he’s speaking to you as if this is something you have no knowledge of. “No one can.”
Why not? That’s all your mind can think to ask. You don’t understand. Why not?
Your lip trembles. “I wanted to make it live. I wanted— I wanted to be important, be—” Hot tears spill down your cheeks; you sniffle and wipe your nose with your sleeve, but it’s useless now. “I wanted to make it more than it was before.”
“And it is, Herbert, see?” your father says, gently tracing the stitching with his pointer finger. “But it is not alive. It cannot be.”
A flash of anger rises in you, the tears becoming bitter. You wrench your hands back and clutch the bird-thing to your chest.
It doesn’t look beautiful, not anymore. It just looks dead.
“I will make it live,” you say, voice cracking. “One day, I will make it live.”
Your hands are still covered in blood. Mame puts her arm around you, but she says nothing except for shhh, darling, shhhh. You hate it. Why do you need this so badly? Why don’t they understand?
You’re hungry in a way you cannot explain, not even to your parents. Your fingers itch for the needle and thread, and maybe even more. The fear you feel does not stop that.
One of the four little eyeballs comes loose in your hands.