Magnus Hill and The Misery of Blackbirds

Prologue

Prologue

Isabel

June 1978

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

He is missing, again. The crib is empty.

I fling my eyes around, but he is nowhere to be seen. The hands of dread, colder than the weather outside, creep up for my neck while I look at the windows. They are all locked as I left them before leaving for the hospital.

I go dead silent. And though I am aware that in my one hand is an envelope and in the other a grocery bag, I can't tell which is on which side.

My ears stiffen to detect the faintest of the faint sound that can lead me to him, but after failing to hear any, I find myself racing across the living room towards the kitchen.

I barge in to find it deserted as well.

Yesterday, I found him just there, by the fridge playing with the ice cubes. Today, the fridge door is shut, and so is the kitchen window. He did not come here.

I throw the grocery bag and the envelope on the countertop and rush out. I come hurrying around the dining table and bend to first look under it and then straighten myself up to look across the window, into the garden.

I stagger past the table to reach the window and find no one in the garden save for a crow sitting on the fountain, on one of the wings of the marble cupid. It is staring at me. The sun has slid behind a cloud, and a dull melancholy is now spreading over the grass. I turn around with haste, and my eyes land on the stairs.

I whisper, "No."

"No -No -No... No," I keep whispering, and the hands on my neck get tighter with each 'No.'

For this will be too much to take in has he climbed them. This will powder my grip on reality. But, before everything, how he came outside the crib? How in the name of God did he manage to come out crossing almost double his size walls?

He is not even a year old. He cannot even crawl the right way. I don't know if he did it on his own or someone took him out.

He came out yesterday too. And I could not find anyone in the house. I ignored. And so, now this is in my face, the punishment for my neglect.

I hurry across the living room to the stairs.

Someone took him out, the thought takes steps up the list of possible explanations as I up the stairs.

Someone breaking into the house after I am leaving? My brain buzzes as I rush. I cannot afford to lose him, I think. I have already lost his father. And my mind immediately revolts and corrects the statement. No, you have already killed his father!

"But the baby must live," I whisper. "He must live. If not for me. For his mother." And with this, I remember the envelope. The letter. Her letter.

What would I write back? That your baby-boy jumped out of the crib and escaped from the house? That he fled. Or that I let someone abduct him.

I leave the stairs and those thoughts behind. I am now speeding down the corridor, peeking in every room on the way, and shouting his name.

And just at the next bend, towards the passageway and to the guest room, I hear a voice. A man's voice. An old man's.

Someone is inside, inside the art room of my dead husband. But who? I give a fearful look at the door. It is open, ajar.

The kidnapper? I swallow.

I creak open the door. And I see the baby standing on his two legs. Two small, chubby legs.

I see him strutting down the room, like a man, to the balcony where there is a canvas board. In his tiny hand is a brush. He climbs up a low stool, stands on the top, and gently applies a stroke on the painting. His bald baby-head has grown hairs— white, loopy hairs. The voice I heard is a song he is crooning.

And before my eyes set themselves free and my body abandons my soul, I let out a cry. With my scream tearing across the art room, he falls off the stool on all four and begins to cry.

#

Alicia

May 2003

Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

He is still standing.

And I don't know why I am afraid when, in reality, I should be severely depressed.

But I am not afraid of him. In fact, I have known him for a good three years, and I can bet he will do nothing to hurt me. Not so much as a glare, he would cast.

But I am afraid.

Maybe because of all this thundering storm that is crashing against the window panes since mid-night.

The rain has thickened and is raging down in bundles of thousands of silvery beams, each plump with gallons of water as if clouds have been ripped apart.

Window glass, in front of me, is all wet. I can see his figure, though blurry, from where I am sitting. He is leaning against his car, facing my way, but he cannot see me. I have kept dark inside. He then must be observing the architecture of my house. It is the oddest one in my street— actually, the oldest.

And he must be wet by now to the last layer of his clothes.

But why?

Why not leave simply? Why make a show?

What is there in to prove this much affection now?

I saw him getting inside the car, but then, I don't know why he came outside without even turning off the engine. Not that I can hear it idling over all these streams of water gurgling down the drains all around me, but I can very well see the brake lights. The smears of red glow shimmering in the deluge.

And it has been fifteen minutes since he is standing there just like that.

He must be waiting, mustn't he be? For my opinion to change. For me to come outside and run and hug him.

How stupid he is!

That was just an accident! I was drunk. And I was lonely. And I trusted him because he was my friend.

How could he take that for love!?

But I think giving it a thought, like for once, just for once, because I should not be thinking about this, because I will not like anybody to know that I am thinking about this.

And I weigh, secretly, the chances of love between us. And I feel like a stone-hearted bitch. A cheat. I despise myself.

And seriously, I can't tell about it because I don't know what I wanted then.

But for now, I know what I want. I want him to leave. I plead him to leave.

And now, just now, it clears what I am afraid of.

I am not afraid of the weather. Or him.

I am afraid of the neighborhood, the people. The eyes.

That what would they think of him? Or me? Or his recent visits?

Especially when it has not been even a week since my husband's corpse arrived at the door.

Especially when they are still trying to see his blood on my hands.

They all think I have murdered him.

And I know I should not care what they think.

But the trouble is. Like them, even I think much the same.

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