The Wallcreeper. Nell Zink
threatening letters to Nelson Mandela about socialized medicine. They practiced twenty-seven kinds of window-dressing and I had typed letters about them all. But even the veterinarian in regulatory affairs whose life was spent tweaking a children’s book about cats that sing opera was less secretive than Stephen. No one at the company knew Stephen birded, not even Omar’s wife. I only learned the truth when he pressed my wedding present into my hand: two-thousand-dollar binoculars.
What were we doing back of Interlaken that day, anyway? Stephen with a fishing hat, binoculars, camera equipment, a scope and a tripod on his back, me with a fishing hat, binoculars and a stadium kit, stalking around like thieves casing an entire landscape. Driving a huffing VW diesel up higher than you’re allowed to go, driving through gates and across cattle guards to a private “alp” because birds like cars and hate people. Then back down with a whinchat, a shrike, two hawks and a chough, not much of a haul until we hit the species of least concern.
In December there was a cold snap, and Stephen came home in a state. “There’s an evasion,” he said. “We need to go north.” All sorts of birds from far, far away that wintered in places like Denmark had decided even Holland was too cold, and were heading south in dribs and drabs, fetching up in swirling eddies near Zurich after they caught sight of the Alps.
“Oh, you go,” I said. “I’m reading a book some guy raved about in the Times called The Man Who Loved Children.”
“Sweetie,” he said. He sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no!” I said. “It’s not like you’re thinking. He has seven kids and he hates them. He’s going to save the world with eugenics and euthanasia. I could go with you. But are you really sure I need to spend the weekend stumbling around on frozen dirt clods helping you level your tripod?”
“We could try again instead,” he said. “Sex party weekend.”
“I’m still kind of all tore up,” I said. “You go.”
“Twee,” the wallcreeper remarked. “Twee!”
“Is it his suppertime?” I asked.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Stephen said. “Do you know what’s happening to his gonads?”
“No.”
“As his chin turns black, his testes are swelling from the size of pinheads to the looming, ponderous bulk of coffee beans.”
“Wow,” I said.
He kissed me. “His tiny heart is throbbing with love for someone he’s never seen. I love you, too, you know.” He embraced me, squeezing me very tight. “I love you so much, Tiffany.” The wallcreeper protested. “Cool your jets, Rudolf,” Stephen said.
He had named our bird after Rudolf Hess because its colors were those of a Nazi flag, with black on its chin for the SS in spring. To imply a certain tolerance for at least the form of his joke while rejecting its content, I had to suggest we name it after an anarcho-communist and came up, off the top of my head, with Buenaventura Durruti. But Rudolf stuck. So its name was Rudolf Durruti.
Sometimes I would sit and go over things Stephen had said during our whirlwind courtship, fitting them into a context I was learning only slowly. It was hard. He had told me so little about himself, intent on taking note of my little foibles so he could, for instance, surprise me with tickets to Berg’s Lulu.
The birds were Stephen’s intimate sphere. He didn’t have to be cool or funny or even appetizing about them. “Breeding and feeding,” Stephen called their lifestyle, making them sound like sex-obsessed gluttons (that is, human beings) instead of the light-as-air seasonal orgiasts they were in reality—ludicrously tragic animals, always fleeing the slightest hint of bad weather in a panic, yelling for months on end to defend territories the size of a handball court, having brief, nerdy sex and laying clutch after clutch of eggs for predators, taking helpless wrong turns that led them to freeze to death, drown, starve, or be cornered by hunters on frozen lakes, too tired to move.
To Stephen they were paragons of insatiable, elemental appetite. I saw them differently. I imagined two ducks, loyal partners. When the hunters cornered them, would they turn to face them, holding hands? Hell no. They would scatter like flies in as many directions as there were ducks. The duck who got hit would look up with his last strength to make eye contact with his lifelong friend, who would shake her head as if to say, “Hush now. Don’t rat me out just because you’re dying.” Love would conquer all.
When my parents and my sister came for Christmas, I finally got out to see the old city. I took my parents to a craft market so Stephen could sleep with my sister. She worked as a bikini barista in greater Seattle and liked a good time. But he didn’t sleep with her. She became irritable. She came into our bedroom with only panties on, asking to borrow my bathrobe. Stephen looked up for about a quarter of a second.
Berne was beautiful. It had colonnades like Bologna and boutiques like New York. On three sides of its grid, it fell away to a wild river in a gorge. The river enfolded the city like a uterine wall. Across the bridge bears stalked back and forth on the banks. It was too small to move through. All you could do was change positions in place. From the top of the church tower you could see all of it. Every speck. I went with my sister to cafés. She said she would marry Steve in a minute, but in Berne her eyes caressed everything and everyone. Everything in Berne had a delicious texture advertising a rich interior. Nothing was façade. It was clean all the way down forever and forever, like the earth in Whitman’s “This Compost.” I told Stephen I wanted to live there. He claimed in the old city you couldn’t have a washing machine because the plumbing was medieval.
Our apartment was fifteen minutes from downtown Berne. Our trolley stop was next to a gas station, which is where Elvis the Montenegrin worked behind the counter, selling beer and candy. His shift ended around the time Stephen went to work. I bought the International Herald Tribune every day.
Pretty soon Elvis knew I spoke English. Soon after that he knew what baked goods I liked and how I liked my coffee. He knew how to smile charmingly and ask for sex by name. The first time I invited Elvis to our apartment, I realized that even the hottest hot sex with Stephen had been all in my head. I had hypnotized myself because Stephen had a job that could support us both and secretarial work bored me. I saw that I had followed the chief guiding principle of the petty bourgeoisie in modernity and made a virtue of necessity in telling myself my husband was a good lover. Elvis raised my consciousness. But there are reasons they call it necessity, so I decided Stephen’s stability was good for me. Elvis was flighty. He had tight pants and a degree in superannuated theory from Ljubljana. He was always broke a week before payday. “I take what I want,” he liked to say. He was hopelessly in love with his own thoughts, watching them like a show on TV, zapping through the channels. But he trusted his eyes, which was nice. He would absent-mindedly taste my sweat, or try the weight and flexibility of my hair, comparing it to heavy gold as if he had pulled off the heist of the century. My eyes struck him as particularly expensive. Objectifying my body saved him from objectifying my mind. He moved gracefully through and around me like a wave. My thoughts were my business. I thought, Elvis is a good lover.
Stephen unexpectedly announced that he had been to a music shop and acquired two telephone numbers. “I’m an operator,” he explained. Even his taste in music was news to me. When I met him, his things were already in storage, and by the time the container with his vinyl collection arrived from Rotterdam, I was in the hospital. “Why, why, why do the wicked ones rule,” he sang suddenly. He joined a sound system where everyone was younger than he was. I thought maybe something about his narrow escape from fatherhood had inspired him to become younger. He grew his hair an extra half-inch and started drinking energy drinks. He used headphones because his music might upset Rudolf, who was molting. I never had to go to their shows. Stephen said he needed his space, because we were going to be together for sixty-plus years.
So his knob-twiddling was the first thing I found out about Stephen other than myself and birds. The birds were secret from his coworkers, but they were all I got.
In