FIONA AND THE CRANES
by Tala Bar © 2006
I
"Fiona, customer!" George's loud whisper woke Fiona from her reverie, and she turned to talk to a small man, shorter than her own tall figure, who looked at her under his bald head with large, kind eyes.
"Ah," he said, "I see you've got the latest book of Japanese poetry!"
"This?" She looked at the thin book she was holding, which had an Eastern-style crane drawn on its cover. "Do you want this one, sir?"
"Thank you, I've got it already. Just show me to the poetry section and I'll be happy on my own."
After she had turned away from him, having led him to his goal, George said, "Please, don't forget yourself again, Fiona. The customers like you, so don't lose your edge."
"Yes, sir," she said absently, as he turned back to sit at his desk. He was a bulky man whose loud voice covered a cultured and mild personality. Fiona looked again at the crane on the book, an expression of yearning returning to her eyes. Did she really see the bird turning its head to look at her, Fiona? She closed her eyes and shrugged, then put the book back on the shelf and turned to another customer, to lead her to the science books.
The customers did like her, with her tall, graceful figure and quiet manner, who treated them with respect and indifference at the same time. She used to be a high school teacher of language and literature in the big city. An ugly divorce, and the death of her only child after a severe illness, made her lose her trust in people; she abandoned her job and came to this small, country town to work in a bookshop, trying to forget the very essence of her life.
George, the bulky shop owner, was more attentive than she would have liked, sometimes pushing his advantage almost to the limit acceptable; but she knew how to stand her ground and gently push him off. Otherwise, he was a decent employer and, on the whole, she could not complain. He was an intelligent and interesting man, but so had been her husband, who had cheated on her almost from the very beginning of their marriage. Fiona did not complain there also, but the yearning had settled in her heart and she did not know how to answer it.
At lunchtime, she had taken off as she sometimes did, instead of eating in the back room of the store. It was a gloomy, cloudy day though dry, and Fiona walked to the nearest cafe for coffee and salad. As she was munching on her meal and sipping from her cup, she let her eyes stray through the window along the street. Sometimes she discovered in it things she had not noticed before, and today her glance fell on a notice attached to a second floor balcony, which would not be clearly seen from the street below. "Astrologer and Crystal Gazer" it announced, and Fiona smiled slightly to herself. She suddenly recalled one just like that in the small town where she grew up, before she had ventured to the big city to meet her future husband and the bitterness of her life.
A picture spread before her mind's eye. There were wide fields around that small town, which was not unlike the one she was living in now. Some of these fields were cultivated, others lay wild, full of standing water that created widespread marshes. Tall grass and bulrushes grew on that land, and in the right seasons migrating birds landed there to search for food. Then Fiona remembered. Among the ducks and geese, for which she never cared much, there were those other birds, impressive in their tall, gray form, very graceful. She asked about them, and was told that they were cranes. The sense of yearning suddenly ravishing her heart was reminiscent of those days.
Fiona had never been happy at home. Her father was a mechanic who spent his weekends drinking with his buddies; her mother was a tired housewife, spending her days looking after the house and her children, and her nights looking after her husband. Both were ignorant people, neither of them had ever opened a book.... Fiona's elder sister married in her teens and was already beginning a family of her own; her younger brother had joined a company of wild youngsters, going in and out of the local jail.... To escape it all, Fiona would roam the fields after school, particularly going to look at the birds in their seasonal arrival; and as she watched the gray, graceful cranes, she would sometimes hear them calling to her, "Come with us, Fiona, come fly away!" Her evenings she spent with the books of poetry she had borrowed from the local library, not having enough money to buy her own.
When she was eighteen, Fiona packed up her few belongings and went to the city. For two years she worked and saved, and for two others she attended college. Then she met that handsome young stud with whom she fell in love and who got her pregnant. He did her a favor and married her, but by the time she had her child, he had been having affairs with other girls. Fiona divorced him, went back to school and to work, finished her studies and got a job teaching at high school. She seemed to be happy with her hard life, but then her daughter got ill and died in the space of a couple of weeks. The shock was too much for her; she chucked her job and left the city, answering a notice about a job at a bookstore in a small town. But only after leaving the city she realized that she had not seen one crane since she had left home....
Fiona sighed silently. She rose and went to pay for her meal, then went out. A ray of sun peeped from among the clouds and fell on the Astrologer's sign across the street. Fiona looked at her watch and found she had twenty minutes to spare. Ah, why not, just for a lark? She crossed the street, entered the building and climbed the dark stairs to the second floor.
***
"There you are!" said a husky voice from behind the slightly open door. Instead of advancing, Fiona stopped, wondering how the woman had seen her. Then, reflecting a little, she figured out that the "seer" probably had a mirror in front of her, helping her to be regarded as all-seeing. She pushed the door and entered, not really knowing what to expect. In the town of her childhood, she had never visited the Astrologer, having been busy living her life.
Soft pastel lights in blue and rose played around the room, mingling to one lilac hue and breaking again to their essence. Various artifacts were spread all over the room -- stones and rocks, plants and flowers, and colorful charts on the walls. In the middle of all that, a woman sat at a table with similar artifacts in front of her, including a large crystal ball. She was examining Fiona with small, sharp eyes, not inviting her to sit but waiting as if to see what the visitor would do on her own.
Having feasted her eyes, Fiona looked at the "seer" at last, a little surprised by what she saw. 'Just like a bird,' she thought, staring at the woman's long, red, pointed nose, 'and a crane at that!' She giggled inside, but keeping a respectful silence on the outside.
"Indeed!" the woman said, suddenly, and smiled. At once, she became completely human, with a benevolent expression on her plain face. "Please, sit down and tell me all about it."
"I have a feeling you know most of it," Fiona said on impulse, completely unlike her rational self.
"I feel the yearning, yes, but I'm not sure of its nature. And what is that about cranes?"
"I wish I knew myself. Anyway," Fiona looked at her watch, "I don't really have time, I have to go back to work." And she turned to the door.
"Come again, then, another time," the woman called after her, as she started climbing down the stairs.
'Unlikely,' Fiona told herself as she left the building and hurried toward the bookshop.
II
Winter was cold and bleak. Fiona spent her time between the bookshop and her tiny apartment, almost never venturing out. The loss of her child weighed on her heart like a heavy stone, reflecting the heavy clouds in the sky. George was even more obnoxiously attentive, presenting her with little gifts, trying to touch her in a supportive way; she reacted by keeping her face frozen and her body rigid.
One day a woman came into the store, and Fiona thought she looked familiar. Then she saw her long, sharp nose, which was redder than ever, and recalled the enigmatic Astrologer.
"I heard you have that book of Japanese poems," she said to George at the desk, and he pointed Fiona to her.
"Here you are," Fiona said, taking the book from the shelf. The crane on the cover turned its head to her and uttered a sound that pierced her heart.
"Don't let the pain mask your yearnings, dear," said the Astrologer in a husky, crane-like voice. She took the book from Fiona's paralyzed hand and turned to pay for it.
When she was at the door, Fiona had recovered from her astonishment and came up to her. "What'd you mean by that?" she demanded.
Two beady eyes looked at her from under a fur-lined hood. "Watch for the cranes!" she commanded, then disappeared behind the door.
From then on, but quite unconscious to what she was doing, Fiona took to roaming the town, as if searching for she did not know what. Then, one day, she seemed to have found what she did not know she was looking for. It was an ordinary small park, with its ordinary bunch of trees and shrubs, most of them now denuded. As Fiona took to visiting the place regularly, she saw them sometimes standing covered with snow, along bare flower beds which looked as dead as the winter. At the center of the little park was a small, ordinary pond, which was sometimes covered with thin ice. But thickets of bulrushes growing around half the pond always looked green, the only inviting patch in the whole park.
In those frequent visits, Fiona's heart would pinch, as she recalled the marshland outside the town of her childhood; she also remembered the seasonal visits of the cranes, and a few lines began to cite in her mind:
Beauty in gray,
Where are you coming from?
Where are you going?
Will you not take me with you
To places unknown?
It was a little poem she composed when quite young, never appreciating its worth or meaning. Now, having left her hometown, having left her husband and let her child leave her, living as she was in a strange place which meant nothing to her, what was left but the yearning for the cranes to come and carry her away?
***
At last the winter was over. It melted away as the leaves sprouted on trees and shrubs, as the water returned to ripple on the face of the pond and a few early ducks and geese appeared, to swim happily on it. But Fiona still did not think much of them, still waiting, expecting....
Then, one day, she heard the yearned-for loud cries, and saw the arrow-shaped little flock in the blue sky among the white clouds. First the birds circled high above, then they slowly landed among the bulrushes. They posed, they searched for food, they conversed among themselves in their loud voices; then they flapped their wings and made short, dancing steps, preparing to rise and fly away to their homeland further north.
Fiona's heart fluttered. She wanted to call to the cranes, ask them to take her with them to wherever they were going. She moved her arms and they began flapping like wings, then opened wide and flapped harder. She felt her body's slim line and her suddenly thinned legs dancing, and the next moment, as the birds flew up into the sky, Fiona was rising in the air after them, looking at the distancing earth and flying with the cranes into unknown lands.
THE END