Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

Soon after this, the first snow fell. It snowed in the night. In the morning, the ground in the yard outside was covered with a lacy pattern, the imprints of the feet of birds. There were hundreds of tiny birds, yellow and brown, in the woods behind the farm. They came from Finland and were going to Italy and had got lost. Herr Enrich found one frozen and brought it in while we were at breakfast. It lay on the palm of his hand. Its feet stuck foolishly in the air, like matchsticks. Its eyes were glazed.

Herr Enrich stroked the yellow feathers in its brown wings. “This is the smallest bird in Europe,” he said.

Walt never talked to anyone much, but this time he spoke up and said it was true: he had read it in the Salzburg paper. He got up and fished out the local paper from a pile on a bench by the stove and pointed to the headline. Herr Enrich read it aloud: “SMALLEST BIRD IN EUROPE VISITS SALZBURG.” I just sat and stared at Walt. I didn’t know until that minute that he read German or that he ever bothered to read the local paper. It wasn’t important after all, you don’t say to your wife, “Hey, I read German.” But I felt more than ever that I needed a friend, someone simple enough for me to understand and simple enough to understand me. The rest of the people at the table went on talking about the bird, and when they had finished discussing it and had all touched its frozen wings, Herr Enrich opened the door of the tiled stove and threw the bird inside. I looked again at Walt, but he didn’t seem to notice how horrible this was.

Mrs. de Kende, the Hungarian woman, smiled her toothy gold smile at me over the table, as if she sympathized. I had never liked her until then. We sat on after the others had left, and she leaned forward and whispered, “Come up to my room. We can talk.” I was glad, although she was too old to be a friend for me, and I really disliked her looks. Her hair was black and dry, and rolled in an untidy bun. There were always ends trailing on her neck. Her room was next to ours, but I had never been in it before. It was stuffy and rather dark. She had an electric plate and a little coffeepot. “I creep up here to make coffee,” she said, shutting the door. “I can’t drink the stuff Frau Enrich makes. Don’t ever tell her I’ve invited you here.”

“Why not?”

“She might be jealous. She might take it as a slander against her coffee. She might think I was trying to get something from you; American coffee. She might make trouble. Much trouble.” She spread out her fat fingers to show how big the trouble would be. “You don’t know how people are,” she said. “You don’t know what the world is.”

I sat straight in my chair, like a little girl on a visit. I drank the coffee she poured for me. It tasted like tap water.

“Good?” she asked me.

“Oh, yes.”

I began to take in the room. It was littered with clothing. The bed wasn’t made; just the covers pulled over the pillows. From the back of a chair, a dirty cotton brassiere hung by a strap. The word “marriage” came into my head. It reminded me of something — a glimpse of my married sister’s bedroom on a Sunday morning, untidy and inexplicably frightening.

“What a funny little girl you are,” Mrs. de Kende said. “You remind me of the little bird Herr Enrich brought in.” She put down her cup and took my face in her hands. Her fingers were cold. I tried to smile. “One longs to speak to you,” she said. “I long so for a friend.” She let me go and looked around the room. “I have a terrible secret,” she said. “The burden of a secret is too much for one person. Some things must be shared. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do understand.”

Mrs. de Kende looked at me for a long time in a rather dramatic way. I began to feel silly, and didn’t know what to do with my empty cup. I hoped she wouldn’t touch me again. Suddenly she said, “My husband is a Jew.”

“Well,” I said. I was still fretting about the cup, and finally put it on the floor.

“Never tell,” Mrs. de Kende said. “Swear.”

“I won’t tell.” There was no one I could tell. I still hadn’t a friend. Walt wouldn’t have found it interesting, and Laura McColl thought all foreigners were crazy.

Mrs. de Kende seemed disappointed, as if I should have had some reaction. But I didn’t know what she wanted. She said, “Do you realize what would happen if it were known? We wouldn’t be welcome in this house. It would be terrible,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hands. “My husband would lose his clients. None of the dentists would buy from him. De Kende isn’t our real name. How could it be? The Kendes were aristocrats. Oh, what a foolish woman I am,” she said. “Look at my life, at the way I am forced to live. I am the daughter of an Army officer. God is punishing me for having married a Jew. Forgive me, Holy Mother of Jesus,” she said, closing her eyes.

I sat with my hands in my lap and wished myself away. At last, because she didn’t seem to notice me anymore, I got up quietly and went to my room. It was the first visit I’d had with anyone in Salzburg, except for the McColls.

That afternoon, I had to see Laura. Walt wanted us to be friends, so whenever she asked me over for tea, I took the bus in to Salzburg and listened to her complaints about Marv. Tea really meant having drinks. Laura would make sweet drinks for me, putting in lots of fruit and sugar so that I wouldn’t taste the liquor, but I always had a headache coming home on the bus later on. Laura had a lot of time every day to think about her troubles. She had a maid, and a nurse for the baby, and the long autumn afternoons got on her nerves. She met me at the door, wearing velvet slacks and a pullover with a lot of jewelry. We settled down, and she started in right away about Marv. Although it was early, all the lights were on. They lived in a furnished apartment full of glass and china shelves, which seemed to take up all the air and light. It was the maid’s day off, so the nurse brought in our drinks. She was young and thin and wore rouge. Laura watched her in silence as she carefully lowered a tray with bottles and glasses and a bowl of ice to a table near us. Suddenly Laura said, “Look at that bitch.” I must have seemed stupid, because she said, “I mean her ,” and pointed with her foot to the nurse. “This bitch that Marv’s brought in,” she said. “Wouldn’t you think he’d have more respect for his own baby? That’s what it is now,” she said. “He’s not satisfied having them outside. Now he has to have them in the house.” I looked at the nurse, but she didn’t seem to understand. “Oh, Cissy,” Laura cried, “he’s got her in the house, to be around me, to look after my baby,” and she sent the bowl of ice flying across the room. I heard glass shatter and closed my eyes, as if I were still with Mrs. de Kende, hearing that awful praying. When I opened them, Laura was crying softly, and the nurse was on her knees cleaning up the mess. There was more color than ever in her cheeks. She was young, but she looked hard. Laura was hard, too, but in a different way. I suddenly felt sorry for Marv, caught between these two women — although, of course, he didn’t deserve pity.

Usually, I never talked to Walt about Marv and Laura. When he asked about my afternoons in town, I would say that Laura and I had drinks and told each other’s fortune with Laura’s Tarot cards. He seemed to think that was a good way of spending time. But that night, I thought I had better tell him something. It had been such a terrible day for me, with the scene in the morning, and Laura in the afternoon, it seemed to me that he might listen and be sympathetic. When we were alone, after dinner, I started to tell him about Laura and the nurse. He cut me off at once. He said that Marv was his best friend, and that Laura had a lot of imagination and not enough to do. All right, I thought, you big pig, see if I ever tell you anything again. I sulked a bit, but he didn’t notice. So then I remembered my headache from the drinks, and complained about it, which made him nice. I decided to remember that: If I’m sick, he’ll be nice.