Mishka’s Birds

On the last day of his life, Bertrum woke to the sound of tapping, insistent and purposeful. He stared up at the ceiling and puzzled at the odd intrusion. Shadows of early morning slipped across the flaking paint, down the walls and around the dresser to pool in the dust-laden corners of the room.

The tapping stopped. A moment of quiet. And then it began again. Three quick strokes, pause. Three quick strokes, pause. He turned his pillowed head. At the window the sun’s glow revealed a small figure at the bottom of the drape, the shadow of a bird, bobbing just beyond the curtained pane.

Tap tap tap, pause. Tap tap tap, pause.

Bertrum sat up, his hair tousled, and eyes full of sleep. He rubbed his face and brought his hand down to caress the empty place beside him on the bed. “Good morning, sweet Mishka.”

The tapping persisted.

Bertrum pushed the blanket away and swung his feet to the floor and stood. He went to the window and watched the shadow at its work.

Tap tap tap, pause.

He drew the curtain back to see a jay at the sill. He watched the bird at its task for several measures, and then the jay stopped and cocked its head to look at him with a knowing eye.

Bertrum swallowed. The bird tapped three more times, shook its wings and flew off.

Bertrum watched the bird disappear beyond the trees and stood gazing through the window at the garden, the small plot of land within the slatted wooden fence that had defined the proximity of his life with Mishka for near to forty years.

In the center of the little garden sat a dovecote, built by him for her, in the old style, with shaped rafters and peaked roof, some thirty-three years past. Through the screened panels of lattice, Bertrum could see stirrings and the flutter of waking birds. Mishka’s orphans. In the morning air he could hear them, even through the closed sash, the cooing of her doves, the warbling of finches and songbirds.

He let the curtain slip from his hand and turned back toward the room, filling with sun. In the bathroom he readied himself. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, and when he set his comb down he stopped. Mishka’s hair brush lay on a small porcelain tray, and a few hair pins there as well.

He thought of her at the mirror, drawing the brush through her long silken hair, her smile in the reflection as he stepped close to put his arms around her waist. The glint in her eye as he pressed his face to her neck. The smell of her, as she reached back to pull him closer.

Bertrum sighed and picked up the brush and held it. He could see the finely woven strands of her hair within the bristles, soft brown turning to gray.

“Mishka, my dove. Are you here?”

He carried the brush into the bedroom and stood at the dresser, where a black and white portrait of a young couple stood, among some loose change and a wilting rose bud in a vase. He gazed at the portrait, his own young face filled with adoration, and the exquisite face of his young bride, her eyes forever smiling and hopeful.

He brought the brush up and drew his breath in through his nose and filled himself with the scent of her. “Mishka, my sweet, I don’t think I can bear this.” He set the brush down on a small table, by bottles of medicine no longer of use.

The sound came again, and he turned to the window. The small shadow bobbed.

Tap tap tap, pause.

Again, Bertrum went to the curtain and drew it aside. Again the bird stopped and looked at him and tapped three more times and flew away.

He watched it circle the garden and land upon the roof of the dovecote. The bird looked at him and let loose a demanding raspy caw.

Bertrum moved from the window and pulled on his pants and buttoned his shirt and stepped into his shoes. The small house was filled with morning quiet, the little living room waiting, the dining table set for a meal they would not share. He went through the kitchen and the service porch, bright in the early sunlight, and he stepped into the garden, the air damp with dew and the smells of an earthly place.

From the dovecote came the soft cooing and chatter of Miska’s children. Bertrum walked to the little hut and turned the latch and stepped inside. Among the fluttering of feathers and the rippling coos, and the finches singing, he stood with eyes closed and let the birds speak to him of Mishka’s love, a finch on his shoulder with much to say.

Bertrum looked down at his feet, at the soil floor littered with years of droppings and feathers and the husks of seeds. He looked up to see the garden through the latticed screen, the window of their bedroom beyond. He swung the screened gate open and stepped back into the garden. The finch on his shoulder teetered from side to side. A moment passed, and with a burst of fluttering wings, the birds spilled through the open gate and into the light of the morning, a plume of white and gray and flecks of yellow and orange spiraling up into the sky.

Bertrum watched the birds disappear.

*

That evening Bertrum sat in the living room in his reading chair by a small table. In the light of the lamp, Mishka’s chair sat empty. A vase of flowers, several days old, cut by her hands, petals and leaves littering the table and the cover of a book half-read.

He felt an aching in his chest, tinged with nausea.

“What, my love? What am I to do?”

Bertrum sighed and closed his eyes. Mishka in the kitchen making tea, the light that followed her when she moved about the house, her figure delicate and lovely within the folds of her dress.

The caress of a hand on his cheek. You must take your medicine, Bertry. Why have you stopped? He opened his eyes, Mishka’s voice adrift in the shadows. 

“What is the use?” he answered. The quiet of the room enfolded him. Again he closed his eyes, and dreams came, of Mishka’s touch, the song of her voice, the balm of her laughter. She kisses a finch held aloft on her finger, and turns to him with a smile.

A sound at once familiar, Bertrum startled in his chair.

Tap tap tap, pause.

Bertrum rubbed his eyes and pushed himself from the chair and walked through the kitchen to the porch. The jay at the window. Tap tap tap. The bird cocked its head and flew off.

Bertrum gazed through the window at the moonlit garden. The gate of the dovecote adrift on its hinges, and within the lattice a veiled figure delicate and luminous. Bertrum rubbed his eyes and opened the door and called out, “Mishka?”

A soft cooing in the still night air.

He stepped into the garden and peered through the moon-drenched shadows. “Are you there, my love? Is it you?” The dovecote shimmered in the moonlight, the roof with a blanket of fluttering silver. Mishka’s birds, waiting.

Bertrum wondered at the coverlet that stirred and cooed in the dim light.

The jay alighted on a branch above.

A sharp pain gripped him and he grabbed his arm and gasped. He staggered back and fell to the ground, and with eyes wide, Bertrum gazed up at the star-filled sky. A lightness both frightening and beautiful, he felt himself letting go, slipping free. The jay let loose a startling caw and the birds burst forth, to carry Bertrum up and into the night.

Nicholas Deitch is a writer, teacher, architect, and advocate for social justice. A lifelong lover of the written word, he has worked to hone his writer’s craft in fiction through the writing and rewriting of a novel, Death and Life in the City of Dreams—the story of a dying city and those who fight to save it. As a means of exploring the deeper human struggle, Nicholas began to write other pieces—flash fiction and short stories, publishing several in literary journals, including the London-based Litro Magazine and the Santa Barbara Literary Journal. In 2019, his short story, “Grace Eternal,” received the honor of Best Fiction at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference. The story is one in a collection entitled The Boatman in the Shadows, a series of stories about the last day of someone’s life, now expanded to include other such moments of revelation, transcendence, and of letting go. Originally from Los Angeles, he now lives in Ventura, California, with his wife, Diana.