The Pigeon

Haus had been staring out of the window when he noticed a tattered, dirty pigeon pacing around the sidewalk avoiding the footsteps of passerbys. From the window he could see parked cars and people on their bicycles colliding against the pedestrians and their unassuming glances. His flat was small, homely, and many surfaces collected dust despite the weekly cleanings ordered by the landlord. In the corner of his flat was a statuette of a dove given to him by his older brother Strauss who had moved out of Nottingham four years ago to live in an estate with his fiancé and baby. How did the statue not collect dust? Haus passed it off as a simple coincidence despite having multiple dreams of being bludgeoned with the statue by a burglar.

”Haus, bread and butter or hot cakes with syrup?” his aunt, whom shared the flat with him asked. “Hot cakes please and thank you, Aunt Greta,” he said, departing from the window and walking over to his wardrobe cabinet. “Strauss should be coming in the next week, eh?” she asked, going into the kitchen and turning nobs on the stove top. Haus could not help picture his brother exactly as how he last saw him; perfectly content and with a gleeful sneer while holding the hands of his gorgeous wife and infantile son. Nothing could worry him but the thought of losing those close to him, Haus thought, and he, nothing of joy but the loss of loneliness. “Yes, he should be coming.”

Haus sat on his bed eating breakfast as the world outside his window started and stopped. Lights flickered and and neon signs buzzed. Voices bellowed and cars sounded their horns angrily. It was a world that did not have time for the slow and the lame. His head throbbed and his eyes ached to shut and stay closed, but Haus continued to survey the world from his little window as if he was on the lookout for someone in particular despite not even knowing the names of those in the neighboring flat. He swallowed the last bite of his breakfast and set his dish on his night stand. Almost immediately upon setting down the dish, it was picked up by Aunt Greta as if she was standing by in anticipation of collecting it. Her apron was messy and she looked as if she had been working in a restaurant kitchen despite barely starting her house work an hour ago.

Haus began to think of the times before and how his brother and he would stay up past midnight talking about this and that. It all fell apart when Strauss found out about his brother’s habitual outings to the alleyway whereupon he discovered Haus’ cage full of cats. They were flayed, burned and gutted. Near the cage, on the ground was bird seed. Birds such as pigeons, rock doves, sparrows and quail ate gleefully almost oblivious to the bloody massacre scene that lay before them. This event caused the schism between the brothers that eventually metastasized to Haus’ heart causing a stupendous weight of sorrow and grief. Soon after this event, Strauss became engaged to his then girlfriend and a year later Strauss III was born. He hadn’t seen his brother in years and longed for him.

As Haus lay in bed after breakfast, waiting for nightfall, he recalled how the pigeons would run from the cats never able to enjoy a meal in peace. He turned his head, alleviating the pain but for one brief moment. He recalled how the children in the city would chase away the birds, laughing while doing so, and how they’d beg for a cat to let them pet it. He exhaled deeply and continued to listen to the day outside his window. He recalled one day when he saw a man installing spikes on a storefront’s marquee. He recalled the blood splatter on the alleyway floor followed by a screech — Gould playing Bach.
“Care for a walk with me, Haus-y?” Aunt Greta said in a light tone, knocking while she opened the door as if her tonal change would make up for her intrusion. “A walk — where to?” “Just around the block, for a bit, never hurt anyone, right?” “Let me get my clothes on,” “Oh, just grab your coat!” she reasoned. He threw on his coat and hat and they ventured out into the noisy afternoon mayhem.

The two walked and said little. They didn’t speak as much as they surveyed the day to day life that unfolded around of them. They stopped by La Petite, a cafe which had the best croissants and breakfast sandwiches. Aunt Greta purchased four almond croissants, two for their walk and two for an evening snack at the flat. They left the cafe and continued walking, still without word. Here and there, a cough or a sneeze, maybe a laugh or a sigh, but no actual vocalizations of worth. They happened upon a crosswalk and both turned to the other with a smile. “How is your head?” Aunt Greta asked, biting into her croissant as she await the anticipated lengthy response of her nephew. “The pain gets worse when I lay or walk. It is best when I am either sitting upright or at a standstill,” he replied. “You’re like your mother. She would always bear the pain without complaint or the yearn for pity,” “am I?”, “Yes, and she’d be upset about this,” she said, as they both crossed the street. “Oh, why is that, Aunt Greta?”, “She wanted her sons to be open. She wanted her sons to let their pain be known, she — I always told her, your sons will be like you the older they get, and she didn’t believe me. You suffer in solitude — it is sad.” Approaching a culdesac which held a park, they stood watching a stone fountain that was adorned with fluttering doves and knats. Some couples and some children sat around the fountain on quilts relaxing and taking in the day or dreading the night. “Your brother knows about your cancer. It is why he is coming,” Aunt Greta said, finishing her croissant and crumbling the pastry paper in her hand, “he wants to reconcile what you’ve both had.” Haus took a piece of his croissant and crushed it between his fingers and tossed it toward the pigeons, “there is no reconciliation for who he thinks I am.”

The week passed and it was now a Tuesday. Haus sat in the corner of the room on a chair running the index finger of his right hand across the scorched tip of his left hand’s index finger. The scar was worn with pride and a bit of derision. He received it three years earlier on a cloudy Saturday night in an alley. A cat had been toying with an injured pigeon that was cornered against a dumpster and a fence when Haus threw a net over the cat and fastened the tassels, successfully locking the feline in the bag. He sat staring at the car in the net for a good hour as he went back and forth between the desire to free the cat and the desire to kill the cat, ultimately deciding on the latter. The factor which cemented the flame onto the cat was the scorn Haus had received throughout his lifetime. Why should I? Who gave me mercy? Did God have mercy on me when he refused to endow me? Did women have mercy on me when I pleaded for companionship? Did this cat have mercy on all the helpless birds destroyed at its hands? And so Haus blowtorched the net along with the cat. Screeches from Hell bellowed. Virgil, in Hell, knew another soul was to soon embark and God knew a room was never going to be made for Haus. The screeching came to a hault. The adrenaline soared and shot down like a roller coaster. A numbness in his left hand started then began to burn like he had plunged his hand in a bucket of ice water. He hadn’t realized but in his murder frenzy, he accidentally blowtorched his own hand.

“Knock knock,” a familiar voice said, instantly transporting Haus from the violence into a calm serenity. The door to the room opened and in walked Strauss holding a bouquet of some colorful flower of a species Haus didn’t know. He stood from the chair and reached out to Strauss, embracing him like a toddler hugging his mother. They never hugged. They never held each other. They never truly showed each other love, but both knew the other loved him, even in light of their differences. “How’d you know which door?” Haus asked, taking the flowers and placing them on a countertop. “Greta showed me,” said Strauss, removing his coat and sitting down on the chair in which Haus had been sitting. Haus sat on his bed and rested his head against the pillow and the cold wall. It soothed him. “I came to say bye. You know that,” “oh, I do,” “so, goodbye. I would tell you that you are going to a place that you’ll flourish and be in joy, but we both know that’s not true.” Haus pulled the blanket up to his chin and exhaled deeply, “a place of pain, is it not? Where I am going, familiarity will be.”

“I wish you had just dealt with grief the same as the people out there,” Strauss pointed at the window and shook his head.

“I wish more than you know.”

“Why’d you have to turn into this wannabe vigilante?” Strauss shouted, standing from the chair with tears in his eyes. “Do you think you’re a tough anti-hero just because you murdered some helpless cats who had preyed on prey? Do you think one day, somewhere out there, some poor bastard is going to read about you in some shitty zine on some shitty website and say oh he is just like me? Do you think that the pigeons and the mice that you sought to avenge give one shit about the carcasses you lay out before them as they feed?”

“Strauss,”

“— did you ever wonder why no one wanted to be in the same room as you? You did this to yourself. You wanted to be an outcast — you craved to be the lonely character who looked down upon the happy people,” Strauss continued. “Y’know, Haus, y—you’re just a narcissist who happens to have brain cancer. You believe you are this tragic character who others aspire to be, but in reality, it is sad. You’re just a sick man on his way out.”

Silence ensued. Even the world outside the window seemed to simmer down. Aunt Greta was at the laundromat, but had she heated the commotion, she’d try to mend it with a meal. There was no mending, there was no meal.

“Those things I am. You’re right. I am everything that I do not want to be. I am like a pigeon who stays in the outskirts of a building, pretending to be tough and alone, but hurries to eat the remnants once the flock has gone.”

“And still you try to be this character,” Strauss said, throwing his hands up and bowing his head in comical fashion. “You’re just a guy, Haus. You’re a man who is dying. A man that has no one and enjoys it. You enjoy being you. You wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?”

“No,” Haus said with a slight sneer as he cuddled closer to the wall.

“What did she tell you?”

“Aunt Greta?”

“Yes.”

“That your goal was to reconcile. I laughed.”

Strauss looked at his brother wistfully, eyes still red with tears. He stood from the chair and opened the window. A gust of cold air entered and took with it all the heat from inside. Car horns and pedestrian soundscapes loudly sang. “I came to bid farewell. The pieces to our broken relationship were in your hands. The hammer which shattered it was yours also. And worst of all, you chose to keep them in shards,” Strauss said, shutting the window and walking toward the door, “may your death bring joy to lives you destroyed.” Strauss disappeared beyond the door.

Four weeks had passed before Haus fell comatose and withered away in his bed. Aunt Greta blessed his body, in tears, and watched as the medical examiners removed him from the flat and loaded him into their van. Strauss, in the final act of kinship for his brother, carried out his will by scattering his remains mixed with bird seed across the woodlands outside Nottingham.