In the Shadow of Blackbirds(39)
He pushed his fingers into my flesh. His pupils looked as small as pinpricks. “Swear upon his grave you’re not lying.”
“I swear upon his grave. I still believe your photos are fakes, but I’ve seen him and heard him, and I just felt him whisper against my skin. He thinks something’s still killing him.”
Julius’s face paled. “What did he say?”
“He told me monstrous blackbirds are tying him down and torturing him. The air burns whenever he comes, and he’s terrified, like he’s reliving his death over and over.”
Julius swayed. He dropped my arm and leaned against the lamppost to steady himself, his skin chalky white.
“I’m sorry, Julius. Did they tell you anything about the way he was killed over there?”
“No.”
“Did they mention birds? Or capture by the Germans?”
“No.”
“If he comes to me again, I’ll ask him more. He begged me to keep him with me, but I don’t know how to hold on to him. I was hoping your friend would help, but—”
“Just make him leave. Make him go wherever it is he’s supposed to go.”
“I will if I can. I feel so sorry for him. He’s suffering.”
Julius pushed himself off the streetlamp and lurched back to his car, where Aunt Eva waited, clinging to the passenger-side door with blanched fingers. I followed, and we all sat in the Cadillac without a word.
Halfway back to the house, Aunt Eva turned to Julius. “Do you think she’s going out of her mind with grief?”
He sniffed and wiped at his nose. “She’s sitting right there. She can hear you.”
“The lightning seemed to change her. She even feels different when I touch her. Is she really seeing him?”
Julius didn’t answer. He held the wooden steering wheel with his right hand and rubbed the bottom half of his face with his left, and I could tell from his rigid jaw and troubled eyes that the fraudulent spirit photographer believed in his brother’s ghost.
I COULDN’T SLEEP.
I thumbed through Stephen’s envelopes and reread several of his letters to hear his living voice inside my head. Most of his messages were written on stationery as blue as the sea—his favorite color—with his initials, SEE, monogrammed at the top.
One letter, from April 1917, stood out because of his discussion of the war and our friendship.
Dear Mary Shelley,
Happy birthday! How old are you now? Fifteen? Are you still as short as you used to be? Were you really short, or am I just remembering you that way because you’re two years younger?
You probably already know this, but people teased me for being friends with a brainy girl. If I ever acted cold toward you when the taunting got bad, I apologize for my idiocy. None of those people ever write to me these days, so it seems stupid to have worried what they thought. They disappeared into my past without a trace, but the friend I considered abandoning because of them still makes me laugh with her brutally witty letters and bold honesty. I have never met a single soul like you, Shell.
So this is war. The declaration changed Coronado and San Diego overnight. The men are all enlisting and everyone is hurrying to make sure we all look like real Americans. One of our neighbors held a bonfire in his backyard and invited everyone over to burn their foreign books. I stood at the back of the crowd and watched people destroy the fairy tales of Ludwig Tieck and the brothers Grimm and the poetry of Goethe, Eichendorff, Rilke, and Hesse. They burned sheet music carrying the melodies of Bach, Strauss, Beethoven, and Wagner. Even Brahms’s “Lullaby.”
I kept wondering what you would have done if you had caught people dropping books into a hissing fire. I imagined you running over, reaching into the flames, and asking, “Have you all gone insane? Do you realize you’re killing art and imagination, not the Kaiser’s army?” But I stood there like a coward and kept quiet. I was afraid.
I know this letter has turned much darker than what a birthday letter ought to be, but I find it hard to talk to people around here. Everyone wants to categorize the world as good or bad, right or wrong. There is nothing “in between” in their eyes.
Be careful, Shell. It’s a dangerous time to have unusual ideas. Make sure you truly know people before you offer them your trust. There are monsters lurking everywhere, it seems, and they sometimes disguise themselves as friends, neighbors, and patriots. God, I hope no one ever finds this letter and accuses me of being a traitor. That’s not how I feel at all. I love our country. I just feel we’ve all gotten a little lost.
Stay safe. Happy birthday.
Your friend,
Stephen
I had forgotten that particular letter. Perhaps I had pushed it aside in my mind because the contents made me uneasy, but I now realized every sentence—from his shame over his thoughts of abandoning me to his curiosity about my reaction to book burning—was a testimony to how much I meant to him.
I tucked the blue stationery back into the envelope and closed my eyes with my fingers folded around the crisp edges.
THE THREE O’CLOCK CALL OF THE CUCKOO DOWNSTAIRS drew me out of sleep again.
My room appeared to be empty and still. The air didn’t burn. I rolled onto my back and settled my head deep into the pillow, half drifting back to sleep.