13, Rue Therese - Elena Mauli Shapiro [65]
So why not commit a few harmless little crimes?
THE SILENCE IS UNNERVING and the darkness is complete. Tonight Louise cannot sleep without Henri’s regular breathing next to her, without the sound of cars passing in the narrow street below and the moving yellow glow of their headlights. There isn’t a speck of light or noise—only a vague smell of mold. Louise sits up in bed and looks around. The stillness brings her a random memory, flitting forward like a moth to a light.
A few summers ago, Henri’s mother had bought a baby duck at the Sunday market, just to have a little someone swimming around the pond. The duckling, looking for parental figures, became attached to the chickens in the yard. Since he looked enough like a chick (small and yellow and downy), the chickens loved him back. He pecked happily for feed at their feet.
When Henri and Louise came to visit, they found the old woman angry at her duck, who had by then grown white and feathered with a long neck, like a small goose. The duck was not fulfilling his duck duties: he would not go near the pond. The chickens had taught him to be afraid of the water.
“This is ridiculous,” she’d grumbled at her son. “Aren’t these animals supposed to have an instinct for the water?”
Henri shrugged. “Instinct? We’ve bred flying out of these farm ducks. But he can probably be taught to swim.”
“How’s that?”
“We can fling him in a few times. He’ll figure it out.”
She laughed at this suggestion, having not thought of something that simple. Anyhow, it was a sound idea, so she told him to do it.
The duck was trusting and let himself be scooped up by Henri, who walked to the pond carrying him under his arm like a small sack of potatoes. He then hoisted the duck with both arms and flung him into the water as hard as he could, landing him approximately in the middle of the pond. When the animal’s body hit the water, he panicked extravagantly and paddled back in a great flurry of flapping flings, his webbed orange feet working so furiously that he nearly levitated above the surface.
How Louise had laughed with her husband and his mother at the duck’s refusal of his nature, at his mad scramble for safety and his total bewilderment.
It took quite a few flingings for the duck to understand that he belonged in the water. He eventually grew placid and confident there, bobbing along and diving to eat whatever it is that ducks eat in the secret murky depths. He was happy, having learned the place he belonged, but he was never again quite so trusting. He always ran away whenever anyone tried to pick him up.
After Henri’s mother died, the duck was sold along with the chickens to a neighboring farmer.
Henri—how will Henri react when she comes home? He’ll have to react; he’ll have to say something. He ought to get angry. She tries to picture him that way, and cannot remember the last time she heard him raise his voice. What if they have an argument? What if he turns beet red and screams, demanding an explanation? Louise almost looks forward to that, to his infuriated eye gleaming with passion. What if she screams back and runs to the kitchen and starts throwing dishes on the floor? She wonders how he would react if she burst into tears in front of him. If he burst into tears in front of her, she simply wouldn’t know what to do with herself—no, such a thing would never happen. Impossible.
For all that, if he guessed how she had defiled their marriage, some intensity of feeling would likely be wrung from him.
Yet she is not entirely sure that she has defiled the marriage, her mind cannot gain purchase on what she has done. Her grip slips. Her marriage is the structure on which her