At the Edge of the Woods Read online

  Later, recalling the incident with my wife, I marveled at how children come up with ideas that would never occur to an adult.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, sipping herbal tea. “When I was little, I went through a stage where I insisted I wanted a penis. My poor parents.”

  “A penis?”

  “Yes, I thought department stores sold everything.” She sighed, and then laughed suddenly. “Even penises!”

  “But what floor would they be on?”

  “Gosh, who knows. Anyway, I was sure a department store would have them.” She was trying to stifle her laughter. The teacup in her hand swayed, and tea spilled onto the table. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “They don’t sell grandmas anywhere,” I complained. “They’re not pets.”

  She wasn’t listening to me. She was laughing. She sounded as if she were trying to copy the sound of her own laughter.

  My son wanted a grandma all his own to dote on him. In other words, he set out to make a pet of someone who would make a pet of him. That was the only explanation for what he’d done.

  My wife and I might have been the cause of this whole thing. We would break hard, stale bread into tiny pieces and scatter them from the kitchen door. We didn’t do it to attract birds. We just thought that rather than throw the bread away, it would be better to feed it to them.

  Thrushes began coming quite close. Sometimes if we left the door open, one would hop right into the kitchen, watching us as we sat chatting at the kitchen table. One brown female was especially brave.

  My wife would put a finger to her lips, signaling to the boy to sit still and not make a sound. Our time would stop. The thrush would wag her tail with a trembling motion, moving time forward. She would hop all the way under the highchair to pick up a bit of cold cereal our son had dropped. Then she would try to pick up another piece, but since the first one kept her beak open, this didn’t go well. She would tilt her head in all directions and poke at the second bit, but she could never quite manage to pick it up. Hungry chicks were waiting for her. Pipi, pipi, pipi. We could hear them calling her in the distance. Easy does it. Oh no! The first bit fell out of her beak; now she had to start all over. We exchanged glances, trying not to laugh, but sounds escaped us. We moved. Quick as a flash, the thrush beat her wings and flew outside.

  “Must be good for birds, too, huh?” our son asked, looking up at his mother. “’Cause it’s organic, right?” Jordans Organic Morning Crisp, which my wife bought at the store, was a favorite of his.

  “Right.” She smiled.

  “That bird might taste good, too,” I said. “Like organic chicken.” They ignored me.

  We went outside. We could see a pair of chicks, tail feathers twitching as they begged for food. Pipi, pipi: their cries flew through the air and were sucked into the woods. I felt as if I, too, were being begged for food. The mother bird carried food to their open mouths without a moment’s rest.

  “They’re bigger than she is,” said our son, in a tone implying that his case was different. “Big babies, that’s what they are.”

  My wife and I looked at each other and laughed. Our son realized we were laughing at him and scowled at his mother. Seeing his sulky face, she laughed even harder.

  We threw breadcrumbs to the thrush mother and her chicks. Our son was thrilled. Day by day the birds lost their wariness and came closer. This seemed to give him great satisfaction.

  The mother bird had the nerve to come hunting for food in the kitchen even when we weren’t there. Not just the floor but the tabletop and even the stove would be soiled with little reddish-brown droppings like crushed cherry pits. We started having to close the door when we left the kitchen.

  It was around then that our son began saying he wanted a grandma all his own.

  * * *

  When she finished her tea, the old woman began to talk, wiping away her tears. From time to time there was the sound of someone trampling dry leaves. Someone could have been outside, listening to her story.

  “I wanted a child,” she said. “It was back when the country was occupied. My husband was in the demilitarized zone. I went to see him. Walking, of course.”

  I looked at my son. Realizing that my eyes were on him, he shook his head firmly.

  From the woods came the sound of coughing. The interval between coughs was smaller than usual. He looked out the window, holding his breath.

  “The railway tracks had been blown up by bombs. There was a temporary ferry next to the bombed-out bridge. Every boat was packed with people and their belongings. When I got off the ferry, I walked some more. I walked twenty-five miles a day. Fortunately I had on a pair of wool socks. When I found a stream, I’d take off my socks and wash my feet. All I really did was soak them in the cold water.”

  There was the sound of coughing. The old woman began to squeeze her exposed left breast, wringing it as if it were a cloth, in evident pain. My son looked away. However hard the old woman squeezed, nothing came from the dried-out breast.

  “You had a terrible time,” I said. My son nodded solemnly.

  “My husband’s unit had been disarmed, and they were in a barracks in town. He had only a two-day pass. I arrived a day early and stayed that night in an inn near the station, which was half-demolished.”

  “Only two days?” I asked. My son looked up at me in surprise.

  “I waited for my husband at the barracks gate. He looked well. I ran to him, threw my arms around him, and pressed my lips to his. He tasted of tobacco.”

  I looked at my son. He looked away.

  “Just a minute, please,” I said. “How about another cup of tea?”

  She nodded. It was hesitant, but definitely a nod. I stood up, teapot in hand. My son got off his chair and came over to me.

  “It’s dangerous,” I said. “Out of the way.” Still, he clung to my legs.

  I took the kettle off the stove and poured the rest of the hot water into the teapot. The old woman’s figure was reflected in the window. She was looking down, fiddling with her nipple with the tips of her fingernails. I noted that her nails were dark around the edges, as if she’d been clawing at the depths of night.

  The sound of coughing went on. It sounded like someone unable to escape the rope within him, trying to end his life. How many more knots will it take before the final knot, the one that ends the coughing?

  I set the teapot on the table and sat down. My son pushed his chair over right next to mine and sat. He gripped my sleeve with one hand.

  After a brief pause, I poured the old woman a fresh cup of tea.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Not at all,” I replied.

  She sipped her tea and went on with her story:

  “I said to my husband, ‘I want a child. Your child.’”

  I nodded. That was all I could do. My son tugged hard on my sleeve, his eyes riveted on the old woman.

  “‘What are you talking about?’ he said. He seemed really upset. ‘There’s a war going on. I could die anytime. How could I do something so irresponsible?’ I shouted at him, ‘I know!’ I tugged him and pushed him with all my might down into a clump of grass by the side of the road. ‘But I want a child! Your child!’ I said it in a loud voice, clutching him.”

  I sipped my tea. My son, watching me, held out his hand. He didn’t like tea, but I handed him the cup anyway. He slurped some. Then, making a face, as if he’d tasted something nasty, he handed it back.

  “I had only one night to spend with my husband. If I let it go by, I would never have his child. It was a very quiet night. I straddled him and cried out loudly, flinging myself around; then in the darkness I saw it. The steel body of the locomotive stopped at the station platform was darker than the night. It never budged. But it made a sound. Struck by the core of the night, it rang with a high-pitched sound: kin, kin, kin. Our lovemaking was fierce. The sound struck us. And we made a baby. My son.”

  Overcome, the old woman buried her face in her hands. She t
rembled violently, and a sob escaped her. I looked up. The kitchen windows were all closed. And yet in the air there hovered the sour smell of decayed leaves from deep in the woods, leaves that would never dry out. Steam rose around the old woman. The steam was not from her tea.

  “Oh!” my son cried out.

  A puddle was forming at the old woman’s feet. He covered his nose and mouth with both hands.

  I went to the bathroom and filled the bathtub with hot water. I put some detergent in a bucket, grabbed a cleaning rag, and went back to the kitchen. My son was standing a little distance from the old woman. He was clutching a table leg and staring spellbound at the expanse of urine that had spread like melted wax, sparkling in the light.

  I put my arm around the old woman’s shoulders and led her into the bathroom. I took off the wet, yellow-stained robe stuck to her bottom and tossed it in the washing machine. Then, after rinsing her off in the shower, I poured a generous amount of liquid soap in my hand, worked it into a lather, and placed my hand between her legs. I moved my fingertips carefully and washed her clean. She gave no resistance. She was standing perfectly still, one hand on my shoulder.

  “Can you finish washing yourself in the tub?” I asked.

  She nodded, looking vaguely abashed.

  * * *

  While she bathed, I mopped the kitchen floor and cleaned up the excrement on the chair. It was considerably more work than cleaning up thrush droppings. I thought I heard the sound of coughing now and then from the woods, but that was the least of my problems.

  When the cleaning was done, I changed my clothes. Then I knelt in front of my son and looked into his eyes. “When the old lady finishes her bath,” I said, “tell her to put on the bathrobe hanging on the bathroom door. Okay?”

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the store.” I stuck my wallet in my pants pocket. “To buy diapers.”

  “Nooo,” he wailed. “Don’t leave me, Daddy. I wanna go too.”

  “Come on, you know we can’t leave her here all alone.”

  “But…”

  “She’s your grandma, isn’t she?” I said in a strong tone.

  His head dropped, and he went silent.

  “If anything happens, call me right away on my cellphone.”

  With that, I got in the car and drove through the hills to the shopping center.

  * * *

  As I was tossing two packs of adult diapers into the back seat of the car, it finally struck me that something was wrong. What had I been thinking, leaving my son alone with that strange old woman? Did I do it because I’d convinced myself that she really was his grandma? As if now that he’d claimed her for his own, she would stay with us permanently in our house?

  I called home from the parking lot.

  The line was busy. He might be talking to his mother. If so, that was a relief. It meant he was all right. I redialed the number several times on the way home, but the line remained busy.

  I turned on the car radio. Someone was reading aloud the ups and downs of the stock market in a monotonous drone. I quickly changed the station. Strains of Offenbach’s La belle Hélène came on the air. It was just at the point where everyone was urging Helen’s husband, Menelaus, to go to Crete. I was not in the mood for this, but despite myself I smiled. Soon I saw the hilltop village and tossed the phone on the passenger seat.

  * * *

  The moment I opened the front door, I had the feeling that the sound of coughing was coming from inside the house. I heard the television from the living room. Maybe the old woman and my son were nestled comfortably on the sofa, watching TV. Like a cat and its owner.

  “Where’s your grandma?” I asked.

  He was absorbed in the television and didn’t hear me. Or possibly he could hear only his own voice, filling his mouth.

  “Where’s your grandma?” I asked again.

  “Quiet!” he said, his face serious.

  Fed up, I went over to the TV, stood in front of it, and turned it off without a word.

  “Hey! What’re you doing! No fair! Come on!” He was on the verge of tears.

  “Grandma,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulders.

  “What do you mean, ‘grandma’?”

  To keep from frightening him, I steadied my voice. “Your grandma. The one you brought home from the woods. Where is she?”

  “Oh, her,” he said in a relieved tone. “She went home.”

  “She did?”

  “Yup.”

  “When?”

  “Um, I think when I was talking to Mommy on the phone.”

  “You called Mommy?”

  “No, she called me. She says she’s fine. She wants you to call her back.”

  I went into the bathroom. The tub was empty, and it and the tile floor had been scrubbed clean. The bathrobe still hung on the back of the door. I looked inside the washing machine. No sign of the white garment she’d been wearing.

  In the kitchen it was the same. The cups and teapot were washed and neatly laid out to dry in the dish rack. The white porcelain of the sink shone with a smooth, caressing light. The strong smell of cleaning solution stung my nostrils.

  I went back into the living room, where my son was sunk in the sofa watching TV.

  “Did you and your grandma do all that?”

  As if mindful of my previous impatience, he answered right away. “All what?”

  “The cleaning up. Did you and she do it together?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I told you, I talked to Mommy on the phone.”

  “So your grandma did it all by herself?”

  “What do you mean, ‘grandma’?” He looked at me stupidly.

  I was dumbstruck.

  The sounds emerging from the TV drew him back to the screen. His expression as he stared at it could not have been more intent. His muttering began to mingle with the sound of the TV, and like a wound closing, the world sought to regain its proper shape. There might be a place for me in that world. But I had a feeling that I would be denied entry. The one who entered would not be me. All of the sounds humming at the bottom of the space around us invaded and filled me. That was how they rejected me.

  * * *

  I couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore, and called my wife. I wanted to know what our son had told her. Had he even talked to her at all?

  “Grandma? He never said anything like that.”

  At least they did talk. That much was clear.

  “No? Then what did he say? The line was busy the whole time I was gone. What were you two talking about all that time?”

  “I don’t know. Was it really that long?”

  “Twenty minutes, at least.”

  “Maybe he left the receiver off the hook?”

  “Could be. Anyway, I’m glad you called him. Thanks.”

  “Oh.” She sounded slightly surprised. “He called me.”

  Still holding the receiver, I turned and looked at my son. He was lying sprawled on the sofa, still watching TV. His feet were up on the back of the sofa and his head looked about to fall off the cushion, but he appeared unaware of the position of his body. His mouth was moving. I could almost make out the sounds wriggling inside his mouth. I pressed the receiver hard against my ear.

  “What’s wrong?” my wife asked through the receiver. “What is it?”

  “He says you called him.”

  “Did I?”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “You’re no better,” she said. “Did you ever find The Origin of Species?”

  “Not yet. He found his very own grandma, though…”

  “Where could it have gone?”

  “Don’t ask me. I don’t know where she came from in the first place.”

  She laughed. “Not her. Your book, I mean.”

  I hung up the phone. Then I asked my son, “You still want your own grandma?”

  There was no answer. For an instant, the coughing from the night woods split the sound of the television. Perh
aps I should slip outside. In the smooth windowpane without flaw or distortion, my son was alone in the living room.

  THE OLD LEATHER BAG

  The other line was long.

  The one my wife was told to get in moved ahead smoothly, like a string being reeled in by an invisible hand.

  The other line moved not at all. Its flow blocked, the line grew denser and denser, till it might have ruptured at any moment. No one was in charge. No barrier, no rope, no cordon provided order. Despite this, the packed line did not overflow and come surging over. People squeezed together, shrinking their shoulders, pressing against one another, cheek by jowl. They endured patiently.

  In the old station’s open ceiling, which resembled the skeleton of a giant bird with wings outstretched, the hovering murmur was a cold, clinging mist. It took my wife some time to realize that what she heard wasn’t the voices of the dead trading faraway whispers, unaware that anyone was listening.

  She saw a mother holding an infant, its face pressed against her breast. Bound fast in the chill of the murmur, mother and child appeared frozen. White breaths emerged from the mother’s mouth, then vanished. The infant seemed to be stifling something.

  Stifling what? Not crying or laughter, not a scream. Something more powerful: the joy of life. A force that welled up unbidden and unsought, engulfing a tiny being even when it was wrapped in the warm film of sleep.

  But who or what was forcing the infant to stifle this? Over its head my wife saw only a face like a fatigue-cracked wall where a withered vine of hope barely hung on. What lay beyond that wall, she could not see.

  Whether the agent had brusquely stamped her passport or cast a suspicious glance at her train ticket, my wife couldn’t recall. Nor could she remember whether words had been spoken or what the agent had looked like—or even whether the agent had been male or female.

  Now here she was, seated aboard the high-speed train that connected two countries. She reclined her window seat and looked out idly at the still-motionless scenery. Her hand held a plastic cup of coffee. She tried to sip the scalding beverage through the little hole in the lid, burned her tongue, nearly dropped the cup.