THE CANARY

 

 

As Pina counts the Japanese eggplants that have sprouted—a bounty that she couldn’t have imagined—she calls down to Sylvie, who she hears putzing with her roses.

“Isn’t it a beautiful morning, Sylvie?”
“Yes, it is. That’s one thing I’ll say for Sonoma—the weather is extraordinary. Coming from Seattle, and Minnesota before that, I almost feel like it’s unfair. Shouldn’t we have to make up for it in some way? I don’t know, pay a good weather tax.”
“That’s funny,” says Pina, “very Puritan of you.” The trouble is she’s never sure about Sylvie’s humor, but what can you expect from a woman who spoke at length about taking her own life.

Pina moves over to her galvanized planter of basils and peppers. “Hey, Sylvie, would you like some of my surplus sweet basil? It’s growing faster than I can use it.”

“Oh, that would be nice. If I only had pine nuts I could make a pesto.”
“I’d offer you some if I had them, but you can also use walnuts, which I don’t have either.”
“Neither do I.”

They speculate on what peanut pesto would be like, as Sylvie has a bag of shelled peanuts.

“I think it would taste like a Thai dish,” Pina says, “and for that matter I can offer you some Thai basil.”
“Golly, suddenly the world is my oyster.”

There goes her humor again. Pina decides to let the matter of the basil rest. They are visible to each other now. Sylvie’s head is tilted back, looking up at Pina, who finds herself studying the rings around the older woman’s neck as if these uneven circles represented the aging of a very mature tree. Clearly, the conversation is not yet done, which Pina takes as a good omen—perhaps her downstairs neighbor plans to stick around for the duration.

“How’s your boyfriend?” Sylvie asks, unexpectedly.
“You mean, Charlie?”
“Well, I don’t know how many boyfriends you have, Pina.”

Is Sylvie being hostile now?

“The one who lives here in the complex.”
“That’s Charlie.”
“Charlie,” Sylvie repeats as if she were committing a difficult name to memory. “Charlie sounds like an interesting man. I hear the two of you sometimes when you’re talking out on the deck. I know I shouldn’t listen, but I can’t help myself. You two are better than daytime TV.”

Pina feels herself blush. What exactly has Sylvie heard? Does she hear them when they make love, as well?

“Charlie has a parrot, doesn’t he?”
“Right. Roscoe.”
“Roscoe. And I’ve heard you say that Charlie has taught Roscoe not only to speak, but to reason with language.”
“Reasoning might be a reach. I don’t think Roscoe is going to attain great heights of cognition.”
“But, still, a thinking bird. Anyway, Charlie sounds like a very kind man. He’s sweet to you. Don’t take that for granted.” Sylvie eyes fix meaningfully on Pina.

She nods. It’s true, of course, what Sylvie is saying, but something about her forthright manner is unnerving. She senses herself wanting to withdraw from Sylvie’s intense gaze.

“Pina, I want to give you a piece of advice that my mother gave me when I was young—when you find a kind man, hold onto him.”

She feels a lump in her throat and can think of only a single word in response: “Thanks,” which feels criminally insufficient.

“I followed my mother’s advice,” Sylvie continues, her eyes softening into memory, “and I’m very glad I did.”

 

Two hours later, Pina is still replaying the conversation with Sylvie. She wonders if Vince could be described as kind. Surely, he’s been kind at times, but kindness more than likely wouldn’t make a top ten list of adjectives to describe him, a list that would include charming, self-absorbed, good-looking, clever, jazz-loving, superior, contemptuous. She quits before enumerating any further, as the attributes drifts further from Sylvie’s mark.

At Charlie’s, during lunch—an omelet she whips up with shallots, gruyere, and plenty of basil—she tells him about her conversation with Sylvie, without mentioning the kindness bit.

“We can’t talk anymore when we’re on the deck over there—Sylvie overhears everything we say.”
“Maybe we should spend more time there, Pina,” Charlie says with a mouth full of omelet, “we’re keeping her alive. We’ve become her raison d’être.”
“Very funny. She probably hears us when we make love.”
“Then we should make love more often.”
“You’re shameless, Charlie.”

He wipes his mouth with his napkin and bends toward her, kissing the tip of her long nose. “Ti amo, Pina, Ti amo.”

Not only is he kind, he’s irresistible.

 

After lunch they watch Erich von Stroheim’s 1924 masterpiece “Greed” on one of Charlie’s huge computer monitors. It seems wrong to her to watch a film during a sunny day, but Charlie’s persuasive powers get the better of her. At lunch she mentioned that she’d finally finished reading McTeague, the tale of the San Francisco dentist who’s life goes off the rails, and Charlie insisted they find a link to von Stroheim’s “legendary” film of the novel.

“I haven’t seen it for thirty years,” Charlie said, his face marbling with enthusiasm. “Now that it’s front of mind, I don’t think I can live another day without seeing it.”

Pina has only watched a handful of silent movies in her life—a few Chaplin films and a Buster Keaton or two, so “Greed” is a revelation.

Charlie explains that the original film was seven plus hours but that the studio cut it to two hours and destroyed three quarters of the reels. “The studio burned all but ten of the original forty-five reels,” Charlie says, with fresh outrage, “to extract the bit of silver from the nitrate.” Von Stroheim was devastated and, indeed, when the film starts on Charlie’s computer, the first frame shows a quote from the director:

No matter if I could talk to you three weeks steadily could I describe even to a small degree the heartache I suffered through the mutilation of my sincere work.

Pina has Charlie pause the frame so she can reread the quote. “It’s not even grammatical,” she says.

“Von Stroheim was Austrian and sincere,” Charlie says, kindly. “You know, he saw McTeague as a Greek tragedy.”
“But Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, with all due respect, I can’t see how the demise of a bumbling fool and his miser wife can form the arc of a tragedy.”
“That’s a very elitist view, Pina. It’s really a story about hard-working people who have little but tragedy in their lives.”

She feels mildly chastised, but persists. “If we’re talking about the formal elements of tragedy, I’d have to say that McTeague is closer to bathos.

Charlie makes a clown face at her. “Oh, so you found McTeague bathetic, Pina,” he jokes.

She concentrates on the film now and is taken aback by how much it moves her. The acting is surprisingly good and the frames of spare text are used so efficiently you almost forget that there is no sound. She’s not sure how the director achieves it, but he’s given his characters an elemental quality, perhaps through the mix of stills and motion. Captured in stills, you’re able to see the characters’ souls, their tragedy. Pina’s almost ready to say uncle.

Charlie chirps in from time to time to rave about the director’s innovations. “Look at how many angles he shoots from. Can you imagine the lighting he had to set up to achieve the deep focus? And all of it on location, from San Francisco to Death Valley.” Charlie tells her that Stroheim filmed in Death Valley for two months in high summer to capture the scenes that take place there.

All along, Pina considers the simple man, McTeague, content with his practice in his “dental parlors.” He has humble pleasures: his pitcher of steam beer on Sunday, the six songs that he can play on his concertina, and his canary in its gilded cage. When McTeague’s new wife wins the lottery, the giant oaf loses all of his comforts. But does the story rise to the level of tragedy? No, she won’t let that question alone. Do any of our lives merit such a designation? She thinks of Vince. She can’t stop thinking of Vince. If he were to succumb to opioids, would his fall from princely doctor qualify as tragedy? If Sylvie takes her own life is that tragedy? She thinks not. And yet, who is she kidding with her formal charade? Why is she trying to insulate herself?

She remembers a conversation she had years ago with Vince about symbolism. She pointed out something as being symbolic—the fact that she can no longer remember what it was underscores the point of Vince’s response, which still chills her to the bone.

“Pina,” the would-be poet said with the coolness of a surgeon, “everything is symbolic.”

She finds something touching about McTeague, even while he’s on the lam for murder. He is so damn human in his foibles. His trail leads in circles. Although he tortures and kills the wife who brought suffering to his life, he is kind to his burro. And then there is the canary, the only thing he manages to keep with him until the end. He carries the bird in its cage, through the mining camps and straight into Death Valley, squandering some of his scarce water to keep damp flour cloths over the birdcage. Finally, at least in Stroheim’s version, he lets the bird free from its cage. They are both doomed. McTeague hears the bird’s final chirps right before his own death rattle begins.

 

This evening Charlie calls her from his television headquarters. “Pina, come have a drink with me.”
“Alright, be there in a minute.”

That’s about the only thing he could say to get her to his back room, where Roscoe perches in his cage. Charlie has become a news hound; he can’t get enough of it. He’ll sit for hours listening to CNN and MSNBC. Sometimes he even tunes into Fox News, just to get a look at the enemy’s spin. She hardly ever joins him in front of the TV.

Charlie’s trained the parrot to caw: “TRUMP, THE RAVING NARCISSIST,” every time the president’s name is mentioned. To Pina, these news shows are an endless loop of bluster. The host prompts the talking heads to spout outrage, and they then find ingenious ways to agree with each other.

Pina’s just pulled a chicken out of the fridge and turns electric stove to 475. It’s Mario Batali’s recipe, Balsamic Roast Chicken. She feels guilty for using it, given that Batali’s history of abusing women has been fully chronicled. But the chicken is so damn good, and Batali probably pirated the recipe from some old world Italian years ago. Pina salted and peppered the chicken three hours ago and stuffed it with two thickly sliced onions, three pieces of prosciutto, and a hardy rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano. When the bird comes back to room temperature in the roasting pan, she’ll pour a cup of Lambrusco over it and rub it down with two tablespoons of balsamic. The chicken, roasted at so high a temp, will be sumptuous with the onions, and render a marvelous gravy. She’ll serve it atop three heads of buttered and broiled radicchio, with a side of basmati rice cooked in the broth from the last Batali chicken.

She mixes herself a second Campari spritz. Charlie will be nursing his martini until dinner.

“So what’s the news?” she asks.
“Pina, Pina, Pina, where you beena?” squawks Roscoe.
“What’s the good word, Roscoe?”
“Word, word, I know a thousand words,” brags the parrot.
“The only good news,” Charlie says, “is that Donald Trump isn’t getting any good news.”
“TRUMP, THE RAVING NARCISSIST.”
“His poll numbers are in the toilet, his hateful rallies are sparsely attended, and now with Russians paying bounties for the killing of American troops, there is pressure on the child monster to explain his trust of Putin over our intelligence agencies.
“Actually there’s more good news. The state of Mississippi is taking the confederate reference off their flags; confederate statues continue to tumble; more and more rogue cops are getting arrested; police departments may not be defunded but their monies are being reallocated; the Washington Redskins are changing their name, and the Cleveland Indians are considering changing theirs. I’ve always had a soft spot for that much-loathed city since they got the rock & roll museum. I think the baseball team should change their name to the Cleveland Rock & Rolls, and then rebuild the city with a bunch of music clubs.”
“Any new Karen out there?” Pina asks. She’s taken particular pleasure in watching one raging white woman after another self-immolate on social media. After seeing a video of a woman go berserk in a supermarket, tossing her groceries out of her cart when told she had to wear a face mask, Pina wondered if she’d be capable of such irrational rage.
“You saw the couple out front of their St. Louis mansion with an assault weapon and a handgun. I think that they’re the latest Ken and Karen.”
“Charlie, do you think America is going to devolve into fear and loathing?”
“Some of it already has. That’s Trump’s specialty.”
“TRUMP, THE RAVING NARCISSIST.”
“You’ve created a monster, Charlie.”
“I know.”
“Can’t we run away? Get out of this country.”
“It’s not a bad idea, Pina, but there’s no place to go. We’re Americans, no other country will accept us. Not Canada. Not Europe.”
“Can’t we sneak into Mexico?”
“We better do it quickly. Mexico will be shutting the border soon. The state of Sonora, beneath Arizona’s flashpoint, is considering shutting down right now, and if we get caught trying to sneak across, Mexico will keep us in internment camps for the foreseeable future.”
“So in other words, we’re under house arrest.”
“You could say that, but at least we have each other.”
“And you think that’s a good thing, Charlie?”
“I do.”
“I do too.” Pina pours down the rest of her Campari. “Just don’t let me drink myself to death while you nurse that damn martini.”

Charlie smiles at her.

“You know what Sylvie said about you, Charlie? She said you were kind, and I don’t think she was mistaken.”

The buzzer of the electric stove asserts itself; it’s time to put the chicken in.