The Hawk by Thomas Trofimuk / Fiction / Untitled Books

"Earlier, his mother, inside a morphine haze had been talking about bathing in brown sugar. But now, when he went to say goodbye, she spoke clearly and calmly."

The Hawk by Thomas Trofimuk

It was 4 a.m. and he'd fallen asleep in a most uninviting chair. A nurse woke him up. There was something about palliative care nurses that Pinsky liked - a sort of resigned kindness - a grace and an implied forgiveness about everything. He'd come to the hospital around midnight, after handing out candy to a cacophony of kids in Halloween costumes - kids who'd been stuffed into parkas and scarves first because it was cold. Earlier, his mother, inside a morphine haze had been talking about bathing in brown sugar. But now, when he went to say goodbye, she spoke clearly and calmly. "I love you," she said. Her body was twisted into an almost permanent fetal position and her eyes were closed but Pinsky remembered that her face was strikingly beautiful. She looked like a small sleeping bird. He remembers whispering: "I know" and then gently touching the side of her face. He was torn inside that moment - because he wanted a release from pain for her, and at the same time, he did not want to let go. But then these things were outside his control. Her will to live, even subdued by morphine, and her body had a time schedule outside of anything he wished.

When he arrived home in the morning, he stood in front of his bed inside a dilemma - sleep, or having a shower and going to work. Go to work, or get some sleep. There was no such thing as a soft deadline when it came to writing speeches. There was a fixed date upon which the speech would be delivered. The deadline was resolute. But there were three other capable writers in his unit.

He woke up around 11 a.m., made coffee, and went out into the front garden, which was in a state of stasis. It was cool. Earlier in the fall there had been a small snowfall but that snow was gone. Now, there were scattered leaves, turned earth, browns and grays - the skeleton of the garden in decline. This bare bones garden had problems with some of the stone placements and Pinsky was determined he would make adjustments before the ground was too frozen.

When working with rocks, one needed reinforcements. The only reinforcement Pinsky had in the house was a lone bottle of Veuve Clicquot in the crisper, next to three iffy tomatoes. He wasn't entirely sure how long the champagne had been there. He poured the last of the coffee into a mug and took the champagne and a flute onto the deck. Pinsky well knew that many people would be concerned about his drinking before noon, and drinking alone, and of course, Veuve Clicquot is good stuff - he intended to drink the entire bottle. These proper people might point to his pre-noon drinking as symptoms, as signs of a problem. But his mother was dying, so such rules and warning signs were, in Pinsky's mind, rendered invalid. He had impunity. He embraced this impunity. His entire life was slightly off kilter so those dogs could snip and snap all they wanted. He was more or less "away" and could barely hear them.

Two of the cats were on the deck. The big furry tabby and the slender black cat came to sit with him. Pinsky had three or four cats, depending on the day of the week. He just let cats into the house, fed them and every year or so, he took an informal census. Then he would take them all in for shots or spaying, or whatever was needed. These two had entirely sensible and simple names: Big Cat and Black Cat. There was also a Siamese Cat, who was a regular, and a Gray Cat who was an infrequent visitor. Black Cat hopped up into Pinsky's lap and began to kneed, the way cats do - his purring audible. Pinsky had a small electric heater, beside his chair, turned on high. It only took the edge off the chill. He'd come out and placed the champagne and coffee on the deck, and then gone back into the house to pull the thick overcoat over his sweater, and to find his leather gloves. Pinsky knows full well that popping a champagne cork is bad form -some smart-ass waiter in a restaurant said it bruises the wine - but he was looking forward to seeing which of the cats would leap after it first. He was betting on Big Cat, who would probably think there was a mouse in the shrubs. But the cats were more interested in the percussion of the pop than the trajectory or landing spot of the cork. Both cats snapped their heads toward the sound of the cork popping and then toward the landing spot but neither leapt.

Just before noon, Pinsky had his first glass of champagne, with the cats on the deck, and with much work to be done in the garden.

Despite the heater, Pinsky can see his breath. He looks around the small, enclosed garden and takes another sip of the buttery dry Veuve. "Goddamn that's good," he says to Black Cat. If it wouldn't lacerate your liver, I'd let you have some." The cat looks at him and then out into the garden. "Well boys, should I do some work, or just do the prep work?" The prep work involved more than just sitting. It entailed walking slowly along the garden path and looking at the rocks with new eyes - seeing the possibility of different placements - of new angles - and basically making the garden more simple, and hopefully, more beautiful. He would make the journey from the house to the street and from the front gate back to the house many times - stopping frequently to make notes or a small sketch. "I think perhaps one more glass of champagne," Pinsky says. Big Cat looks up at him and Black Cat then turns away to make the jump from the deck to the garden floor.

Near the bottom of the bottle of Veuve, the phone rings and Pinsky knows what the call is. There's no need to rush inside. Sometimes you just know. News like that can wait. Three cats are on the deck now - the Siamese cat has joined the others - watching him push on a particularly stubborn hunk of granite. He has decided that this rock is upside down, that he originally buried the wrong end. The lines of this rock will lean into the garden now, and they will also mimic the boughs of the apple tree. Pinsky hears his cell phone ringing in the house. It's on the desk in his office, down the hallway, past the half-renovated bathroom. This call also passes without being answered. If he had any doubt lurking in the back of his mind, the cell phone ringing in such close proximity to the land-line call puts it to rest. But he really didn't have any doubt. Maybe it was his mother's apparently lucid moment at 4:30 a.m.

Pinsky puts his back into a final shove and the rock careens over onto its side. He begins to fleck the clumps of dirt from the bottom, which is about to become the exposed part of the rock. Once it's fairly clean, he starts on a new hole. The existing hole is going to have to be widened because the rock - flipped over - will sit at a slightly different angle. Pinsky manages to focus on this rock and its future placement regardless of the fact that he knows what those calls were about. The land-line phone rings again. It takes all of Pinsky's strength to push the rock up and into the new hole. Once he's satisfied with the position he'll walk around the garden, on the pathway, and make sure it feels right. When he looks up, only Black Cat is there, but something's wrong. The cat is puffed up and backed into a corner on the deck, against the house, and it's looking up into the apple tree. The cat looks petrified - is growling low. The reason is perched in the tree on one of the top branches. Pinsky thinks it's a hawk but isn't sure which. Could be a Swainsons but it's got a red tail. He finds out later that it is indeed a Red-Tailed hawk. From ten metres away, it's a pretty big bird. No wonder the cat is frightened. The bird is bigger than the cat. Pinsky decides that he'll just keep working - he'll watch the hawk out of the corner of his eye. He's going to have to pour some water around the rock once he's got it packed in and he'll have to get that from inside the house as the outside taps have been shut off against the cold and the hoses packed away in the garage for winter. He looks sup again. The hawk is still there, intently following his actions, blinking - its head movements smooth and even. Black Cat has moved under the deck.

There're only a couple mouthfuls of champagne left so Pinsky picks up the bottle, intent on forgoing the elegance of a flute. "Well," he says, looking up at the hawk. "Thanks for coming by." And before he can drink, the hawk unfurls its wings and takes flight. From where he's standing in the confines of the small garden, it seems that the bird flies straight up and disappears - like a kite hit by a sudden gust of wind. Pinsky stands there at the bottom of a funnel of tall, barren trees with his mouth open. He's astounded by the beauty of this hawk and feels honoured to have seen it, to have been visited. It's the middle of the goddamned city after all. Apparently this city is not so far removed from nature. Not yet. Pinsky is still staring up into the flat gray sky when it begins to snow - just like that, a fine silt of white over everything.

Pinsky doesn't put it together. He's too much in awe. He doesn't connect this hawk to his mother. He just accepts the gift - the beautiful, unexpected brushing-up against nature. He wishes for another bottle of the Veuve - because he does not feel drunk in the least. But he does feel pleasant. Oh my...Can one feel pleasant? Or does it have to be "pleasantly" something, like pleasantly disposed. Or is that disposed towards pleasantness. This muddled sort of 'round-about thinking makes Pinsky think that perhaps he is drunk. But he's certain that he does not wish for any kind of human comfort. He's fine with the cats and whatever hawks want to drop in.

Years down the road he'll be sitting at a café looking into the bottom of a second espresso cup - maybe there will be a cognac snifter on the counter - and it'll come. Hawk's visit. Mother's death. Hawk's visit. Mother passing away. And only after this soft comprehension will he begin to tell the story of how the hawk came on the morning of his mother's passing. Frightened the crap out of the cats. Stayed and watched him work in the garden for quite a while. And then was gone.

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Thomas Trofimuk's most recent novel Waiting for Columbus is published by Picador.

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Tuesday, 30 March, 2010

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Issue 40 / January 2012

"Earlier, his mother, inside a morphine haze had been talking about bathing in brown sugar. But now, when he went to say goodbye, she spoke clearly and calmly."