THE CANARY

As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance.

-Ernest Hemingway, “Cat in the Rain”

There was only one American staying over in the hostel that day. She did not know any of the people she passed in the hall to and from the small, clean room she shared with her husband. The other guests on her floor traveled in groups of twos or threes, she noticed. Both the men and women glided with casual grace down the uneven staircase which separated the floor’s bedrooms from its long line of communal toilets. These other guests had to squeeze into a tight single file when passing the American wife on the stairs. The halls were built a very long time ago, and showed this through both their width and the height of their ceilings. Though they walked one after the other, and silently, the American wife could still tell which groups were together. Usually, after she or they had turned a corner, words in languages she did not know filled the air of the stagnant hall.

Like the others in this wing, the room the husband and wife shared faced east, towards the mountain. This mountain was the one which the many pilgrims trekked to in autumn months, the front desk woman had explained to her, in English, as she checked them in. Some other guests preferred ocean or city-facing rooms. But the mountain is also very good. After the American wife nodded, the woman turned her attention back to the husband, and continued on about payment details in Spanish. 

The view was very good, she conceded upon returning to the room now. The mountain sat alone some many miles off; its back to a forest whose name she did not know; its front slope tapering off against the furthest rampart of the Old Town. When the wife moved to the far right side of the room, she could just make out the edge of the bay; its blue water crashing again and again against the mountain’s northern side, and white foam disappearing into the many fissures of cracked volcanic rock.

The American wife watched all of this from behind a pair of open patio doors. An afternoon breeze carried into the room a strong yet not unpleasant scent of salt and fish, as well as several notes of birdsong; a bird the wife instantly recognized to be a canary by its generous use of trilled repetition. She rested her head against the patio door’s frame, and closed her eyes like one dreaming sweetly.

“Honey, do you hear the canary?” 

The American wife’s English husband lay, naked, on a full size bed pushed against the room’s left wall. With his legs twisted in the wrinkled linens, he had tucked one arm behind his head to provide a propped angle from which he gazed at the book held in his other hand. His eyes were downcast as they made slow work of scanning the paperback’s pages. He gave no sign that he perceived either the birdsong, or his wife’s words. As the silence stretched thin, the wife opened her eyes.

“When I was little, Daddy kept canaries. I’m positive that’s the kind of bird it is. Did I ever tell you about Daddy’s canaries?”

She spoke these words in a reverie, with her eyes glued to the sight of the thin flaxen drapes before her, which lifted and curled again and again in the Spanish wind. Each yellow rumple of the curtain’s fabric looked to her like a single feather, long and fine. Like a canary tail feather; plucked out and held upright by a large, square hand. 

A muscle in her left cheek jumped then. She shook her head once, twice, without knowing she did this. She purposefully focused her gaze, and the feathers once more became drapes—beautiful drapes dancing in a Spanish wind.

She hoped suddenly the breeze would perform the same magic on the folds of her sundress, or even her long locks of yellow hair. The wife found herself wishing that the wind might already be doing this—for if it had begun before her thinking of it, that would be best—and her husband had noticed, and seen, and looked at her yet.

She craned her head another inch to the side, and, finding him still absorbed in his book, allowed her body to continue its turn fluidly, as if an entire tour of the bedroom had always been her design.

To the English husband’s left, against the same wall and directly across from the wife in the room, sat a porcelain wash basin, on the side of which a white washcloth lay, damp and used, though neatly refolded. Also on the basin’s rim rested tubes of lipstick and mascara, miniature jars of facial cream, Brazilian hair oil, and a sweet-smelling stick of travel-sized deodorant. Above these treasures, a small, circular mirror hung loosely against the blank wall; its reflection partly obscured by flecks of dirt and white streaks of toothpaste, the latter of which dripped in many vertical lines down the mirror’s face. From behind the bars of grime, the wife inspected herself. Her hair, long and heavy, sat still and untouched by the afternoon wind. She ran a hand over the sleek top of it, and found herself thankful that her husband had not yet looked up from his book. 

“I’m thinking of cutting my hair.” The wife said this to her husband. 

Her husband did not respond. 

She waited a moment, dried her damp hands against the fabric of her long blue sundress, and tried again:

“Frank, I’m thinking of cutting my hair.”

The English husband, Frank, exhaled a wordless reply, and turned the page of his book. 

“I wasn’t allowed to cut it as a girl. Did I ever tell you that?”

The American wife now used the mirror’s reflection to part her lovely hair straight down the middle, and smooth its more uncompromising ends flat against her chest. The hair hung just over one inch from the bottoms of her breasts. She raised her palms, faced inwards, to hide the last six inches of it. She appraised herself, then swung the hair behind both shoulders, and tucked the remaining front pieces behind each ear. 

As she continued to survey herself thusly, the canary interjected once again. Upon hearing its song, the wife reached up, and returned her hair to its natural order. 

“This is how I’ve worn it since I was eight years old.” 

She no longer looked at herself in this mirror as she said this, but opted instead to organize the toiletries which lay around the sink’s rim. She placed each small item this way and that, occasionally changing the order and whether the object stood vertically or lay on its side. She performed this operation with the focus of one performing a grave and solemn task. It took multiple long minutes before she found herself satisfied. Her face lightened once more, and she went, again, towards the terrace doors.

This time, stepping fully out onto the skinny balcony, she discovered the rays of sun to be very warm against her brow and bare shoulders. It was June in Spain, and both hot and bright. She brought up a hand to shade her small brown eyes.

In the cradle of land nestled between the mountain and the modern city’s edge, the latter from which she now gazed, lay the remnants of the Old Town. The American wife had decided before ever arriving that she would like the Old Town. It would be what she referred to as “a very charming thing.” Contemplating it now, she felt correct in this earlier assumption. She allowed herself to become fully enchanted by its cobblestone streets, which crept inwards in the form of a loose spiral; bordered at the edges with crumbling, medieval walls. From her place above, the whole thing looked to the wife like the curved body of a small pink shrimp: already boiled, peeled, and ready to be devoured. 

In the town square, many people, faceless from this distance but dressed in light, cool garments, slipped past each other quickly; never stagnating, but moving continuously forward together like an undammed stream. Vendors, the sole roadblocks, waved their arms wildly; only the top half of their bodies visible from behind parked carts. One woman in a large straw sunhat immediately drew the wife’s focus. She rested half-reclined against a wall of the old fortress; her hat’s brim tilted fashionably low over her mouth. And with a hat like that, the wife decided, the mouth would undoubtedly have to be scarlet, or maybe carnelian. This idea made the wife smile. 

Near the red-lipped woman, an adolescent boy stopped to adjust the balance of a towering paper grocery bag against his right hip. The wife imagined the groceries to be for his family; a large family, with many children, and two dogs who fought often for control of the apartment’s best sunspot on which to nap. The boy with the groceries then passed a mother who had dropped her purse on the ground to better grip the forearm of a small, tottering child. Faced away from the American wife, she could not tell if the woman meant to soothe or scold the little one. The wife also could not tell which option she herself hoped for, though both thrilled her. 

Looking at these three created in the American wife a deep contentment, and so she looked some more.

Many tourists filled the square also, sitting with their legs spread wide beneath umbrellaed tables or lugging wheeled suitcases behind them under the heat of the June sun. One couple, pushing cream colored matching luggage, looked very similar to Frank and herself. Near the plaza’s center, the woman paused momentarily to wipe her palms against the back of her pants. The American wife watched as the husband’s left hand shot out quickly, and wrenched the carry-on away before his wife could grab it once more. He walked on ahead of her then with both his and her bags in tow. She followed.

The American wife suddenly felt very hot. She moved her body to the balcony’s shadiest corner as the lone canary continued its song—though above or below her, she could not tell. To her, the music approached relentlessly, and from all angles. 

She began to wish the owner would silence it.

“Had I told you about the canaries?”

Another huff from Frank: neither denial nor confirmation.

“We had the males in the kitchen and the females in Daddy’s study. Daddy preferred the females. They didn’t sing, and so they couldn’t disturb his reading.”

As she continued to gaze outwards, she noticed that the Old Town’s activity lessened with distance from its epicenter. At its outskirts, almost total stillness, save a few couples moving lazily between apartment buildings; hands intertwined, going to or from lovemaking in hot, dim rooms. 

“He was funny. You remember that, him being funny? When he thought they got sick for the outside world, he’d take them on little walks in the garden. Only they were still in their cages. So every once in a while I’d look out my bedroom window as a girl and see my father, shirtless and in pajama bottoms, walking through the morning mist. Holding birdcages.”

Small vehicles drew her eyes further inward, their drivers speeding much too quickly through tight, undulating streets. Faster and faster the cars accelerated; their motion adding a texture of frenzy to the otherwise calm afternoon scene.

“He’d grip the birdcages by this golden knob at the very top. Their cages were very pretty, very ornate. ‘They’re pretty girls,’ He used to say. ‘Pretty girls deserve pretty places to live.’”

Women selling traditional clothing and hand-painted crafts set up shop halfway to the maze-like town’s center. They looked hot, and, when one, arms filled with colorful fabric, approached a passing girl, the American wife felt her own face heat up with embarrassment. She went back inside.

“He’d take them out early, when no one else was awake. But I could see from my room.” The wife returned to the mirror then, fully facing the glass. “And I would watch him, twisting around and around for his birds, so that they could see the entire garden, or even peek over our square hedges to look towards the farther pastures and that great big ravine beyond…I remember I told him once I thought that was mean. It was meaner to take them out and show them than to leave them in the study.”

Finding himself at the end of a chapter, Frank set the book down with its pages open against the sheets and its spine turned to the ceiling. He rolled his head to face the woman who stood peering into the room’s mirror; her sharp profile silhouetted against the early afternoon light. She looked very beautiful looking away from him; busy with the task of running a washcloth fervently over the mirror’s face. 

“Where will you cut it to?”

“Hm?” She turned to him then, but left the cloth in her hand still pressed hard against the glass.

“How short will you cut your hair?”

“Oh, very short I think. I’d like a drastic change. Maybe my shoulders. Or even my chin. Would you like that?” She turned away from him, and gazed deeply into the spotless mirror.

“I think your hair is lovely now.” He stood; his legs moved quickly across the sandy floor until he reached her. She made no move or sound when he took her body into his arms.

“But would you still like it if it were short?”

“Hm, I don’t know.” He swept her mass of hair around and over her right shoulder, then pressed his lips softly to the left side of her exposed neck. “What if I didn’t recognize you?”

“Well, I like it long. But I’ve always wondered what it might look like short. Did I ever tell you I wasn’t allowed to cut it as a girl?”

“Mhm.” The husband’s fingers worked quickly; slipping both of her sundress’s straps past the curve of her warm shoulder blades simultaneously.

The dress fell fast, its thin linen caressing the wife’s body on its way to the ground. The fabric pooled around her ankles, and had the appearance of a small blue pond in which she stood. Suddenly, the image of Venus came to her mind. She frowned slightly, and brought her hands up to cup her naked breasts.

“Frank, the patio doors are open.”

“No one is looking.” But he was already walking towards them then. She watched as he took the two golden knobs in each of his strong, square hands.

The American wife looked to the mirror one last time as he pulled the doors shut. With all of her yellow hair collected against one side of her face, she turned her head to and fro, and watched as no thin bars dissected her image. Her husband reappeared behind her, and rested his head against one naked shoulder.

“If you want to cut it, then cut it. Do it here. Maybe you can practice your Spanish at the salon.”

She said nothing, but studied all the while her very yellow hair. In the room’s silence, she could once again make out the canary’s song, though just barely. The harmony repeated continuously; the same note, though higher, more breathless each time. She was grateful when Frank’s lips hit the skin of her ear, and drowned the bird out.

With the doors fastened against the breeze, the now-dim room grew hot, and each long strand of hair stuck messily against her forehead or inside the folds of her armpits. She tried to smooth it back herself, but Frank had already begun to gather the hair all into one large golden knot, which he held in his dominant hand as he led her to bed.