Jim Crace - The Gift of Stones

But he had never seen such a buoyant, stately fleet of birds before, not in such numbers, not in such rhythmic unison. He looked up at their heavy breasts, their long necks and at the slow and ponderous greeting of their wings which seemed too brief and effortless to keep such heavy birds aloft. They passed across the elderberry rocks so low that a man on horseback could have picked them from the sky like pears. And then they rose a little on the heath, repulsed it seemed by the pungency that they encountered — re-encountered — there. This was their annual resting place. A single, leading goose swooped down like a hawk, its wings half-folded, its body dropping in a whiffling spiral dive. And soon its companions had spiralled, too, and dropped exhausted on the heath like pigeons hit by stones. Already there were other arrowheads spread out above the sea and soon the pungent heath was throbbing, panting, with the brief distress of voyagers whose voyage now was done.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Catch us a goose.’ She handed him a heavy, knuckled stick. ‘They won’t taste at their best until they’ve fed. But I can’t wait. Just the thought of goose is making soup inside my mouth. Go on, go on. Pick something plump.’

My father had not killed before. His village had been fed by trade, not harvesting or slaughter. Already several neighbours were walking with their sticks down to the weary geese. My father followed them. He’d watch and learn their craft.

The geese were tired — but they were not entirely senseless. They understood the purpose of this human delegation armed with sticks. They scattered. They lowered their heads and necks and hissed if anyone came close. The trick, it seemed, was to stand quite still and wait. Goose-brained is what the villagers called a man whose memory was poor. There was good cause. These geese forgot the danger of the sticks once there was no noise or movement. They shuffled back to graze the grass and reeds at the butchers’ feet. Six or seven paid the price. One clout across the shoulders was the best. Their weaving bodies — so sinuous and subtle on the wing — were dumplings on the heath. Killing those few was simple. It took no skill. My father stood stone-still. Quite soon he had a trusting congregation of grazing geese. He chose the plumpest, took one deep breath and grasped his stick.

Of course my father could not allow his butchery to be a speedy, plain affair. One blow, one goose, one feast. He could not — at least, in his retelling of that day — resist the role of the buffoon. ‘That wretched dog of hers,’ he said. The dog, it seemed, was just as keen as all the people there for goose. It had sunk down, its nose far-stretched, its tail tucked in, and followed father across the heath. It had found a spot in thigh-length grass where, out of sight, it could come close to father and his congregation. It took the lifting of the stick as some command. It came out of the grass with the speed and manners of a thunderclap. Its single bark sent every goose haywire. Save one. The plumpest in the congregation. It seized the bird by its wing, which was as inefficient as catching lobsters by their claws. The goose began to beat the heath with its free wing. My father’s stick came down, and struck the dog a glancing blow across the back. It opened up its mouth and let its prey — except some feathers — go free. The goose — unable to distinguish man from dog — went for my father’s legs. Its black and yellow bill was stronger than it looked. It bit. My father fell. The goose tugged on his coat and the dog — unnerved by father’s blow — stood back and barked.

We would be fools to swallow such a comic tale — the dog, the stench, my father down and caked in sap and pus and marsh — but catch a goose he did. He swears to that. Perhaps the dog regained its courage and seized the bird again. Perhaps my father and his flailing stick struck lucky. Perhaps a springtime neighbour, taking pity on the one-armed clown, simply stepped across and dealt the final blow.

THE WOMAN showed him how to pluck and draw a goose and not waste time. The feathers must be pulled soon after death, she said, before the flesh turns cold and stiffens. She started with the feathers underneath the wings, and then the down upon the breast, and then the tougher flights on wings and tail. She seemed more animated than she had ever been before, and laughing as she worked. It was the thought of father’s antics on the heath. The baby and the dog seemed happy too. Her laughter touched them all.

Once all the feathers had been pulled she singed the carcass in the fire. The plucked goose-skin became a landscape cleared by flames. She laid the blackened bird upon its back and cut its pinions and its neck. Now the crop could be removed and the entrails loosened with two fingers. She cut the body between tail and vent, worked free the gizzard and drew away the giblets in one piece so that no bitterness was spilled upon the flesh. She threw the giblets to the dog. All was achieved with the focus and the craft that father recognized from men like Leaf. She’d reshaped the goose.

Next day, his stomach tight and queasy from the goose’s grey and muscular flesh, my father returned to his village.

‘Take them a bird,’ she said, smiling at the prospect of another drama on the heath; the dog, the stick, the spongy earth, the bludgeoned body of a goose, my father (tumbled like a drunk and caked in marsh) flailing with one arm. He shook his head. ‘Goose meat is far too good for them,’ he said. He had grown selfish as all men do when they discover families, homelands, of their own. His other life was not for cousins. They had their flints, their skills, their status in the marketplace, the certainties of work and trade. He had the outside world, its geese, its sailing ships, its makeshift dwellings in the wind. They’d have to do without his geese.

He took them other gifts instead, the stories that he’d found upon his way. There was the story of the talking goose. It was snow-white except for a golden bill and feet. It said … and here my father could devise a goose-borne message that would tease whatever audience he had assembled at his feet. There was the story of the woman and her magic dog. They lived inside a house made out of hair. The dog could cook and stitch and start a fire. The woman hunted rabbits with her mouth. There was the story of the boy who had the gift of flames. He could spit fire. Those people who stayed close to him need never fear the cold. There was the story of the stench which, bruised and angered by a traveller who had held his nose when passing, hid inside the traveller’s bag and (depending on my father’s mood) came out to cause all kinds of mayhem in the world.

THE PATTERN that emerged was this — my father was two men. One was the husband-brother-son, the clumsy, willing settler on the heath who’d turn his hand to anything — to feeding the small child with paste from beans and fish; to hunting mushrooms, chasing crabs; to coddling embers in the smoke at night as the woman and her daughter rocked and hummed themselves to sleep. This was the man who came to love the girl and treat her as a daughter of his own. He knew the sweet stewed-apple smell of the childish water that she passed. He helped her understand and say her first few words: drink, dog, no, bird, kiss, hot. He invented faces and new sounds for her amusement.

The other man was the minstrel-king of lies, the teller of wide tales who could not (they said) even pick his nose with his one helpless arm. He couldn’t shell an egg. Yet, with his tongue, he could concoct from, say, geese, ships and smells, a world more real than real.

They did not question his migrations or interrupt the voices that seemed to summon him away every week or so. The villagers — or those at least whose hearts were not shut by custom and by work to father’s world of fraud and flam — could see his need for gathering more tales on their behalf. There were none to be unearthed amongst the workshops and flint-piles of the stoney village. The knappers had no tales. Such diversions must be hunted in the outside world and plucked and drawn and served up to them, reshaped and heated by my father.