Pigeons in a time of famine


The world was a grey place once, concrete grey and striped with grey. Grey was the sky, and grey the pavements too: slate and clay; slate and clay. The pigeons all stretched out their scrawny lives and lived, as creatures must.

And in that colourless spectrum, between the puddles and chip-papers, they would hop and hunch inside their feathers as the air grew dark or light again. Before the dawn came, the Anglia Square would be a ghetto of pigeons, between the glassy shopfaces, half out of the wind.

Before dawn there were only pigeons to mourn the city, to pity the cold mechanical horse that bobbed forth-and-back all day when a pound was dropped through its coin slot. Before the dawn came, even its red and blue paint seemed grey; if it could only move for its self, or stop when exhausted, the pigeons might not have felt so sad for it.

It was a terrible thing to be a pigeon in those days, to spread one's ashen wings and swirl above the shoppers, the black coats and mousy hair; umbrellas fighting with the wind or furled and dripping. It was a tragic life, to scrounge at the corners of the city and feed one‚s children on pickings and dogends.

Yet the pigeons were not hateful birds. They wore their poverty like overcoats; they sat upon the highest places and drizzled the whole world with their compassion. Their souls were dignified as tarnished spoons; pigeons bore witness to the sadness and the tearing of the wind.

Every night they prayed. The god of pigeons was a bent old woman with a scarf on her head, though nobody had fed the pigeons in living memory. The god of pigeons was kindly like a hot-air vent. She was patient and grey, but bore her greyness calmly for it was the curse of all things living.

The pigeons kept the image of their god beneath the mechanical horse, crumpled and smudged from the damp. They rarely pulled her out, in case she ripped from pulling; they knew she was there and that was enough. She was an illustration on an old religious tract, perched all over with birds, crosshatched with creases and printer‚s ink. The words around her meant nothing, of course, for pigeons did not study them; the pigeons read the writing of paving slabs instead, and the lines of spikes along the Poundstretcher sign. But the picture was their most beloved thing; the god of pigeons warmed their poor grey hearts.

Sunrise lifted the sky as the pigeons prayed, and they softened the morning with their cooing as the light came. And though they did not gaze at her face, the pigeons held the icon of the bent old woman in their great fluttering souls.

The shops opened all at once and the people came after, to cross and cross the Square, to make the horse nod in arcs as children clung against its fibreglass bridle. It rained for a time, and the rain turned icy, and then for a time it didn‚t rain; a small girl tripped and fell against the ground. The bleed of red against her shin made the pigeons shake their wings and cry. The Square unfilled with people and the sky turned empty; in an hour more the lights in the shops all stuttered out; alarms were set; doors were locked.

There were only pigeons then, until a knot of kids came to swagger and swear; to hug their ribs and perch on the metal benches. They tried to prise the money from the mechanical horse but found they couldn't, so they shared a fag between them and laughed and kicked their shoes, and the look in their eyes was just as grey as can be.

Then one flicked the flint on his lighter, made a little flame leap for one bright moment. The pigeons gasped. His mate pushed at his arm and they shoved each other, bickering, baring their teeth. And suddenly, there was a crisp packet in the mate's hand, burning and melting away in clots, and he threw it at the bin with a squawk of delight. It took the boys a while to get the whole bin alight, for the litter was soggy and could hardly be coaxed to burn; but suddenly there was a fire, lazy and gorgeous, licking at the rubbish. Then they looked nervously at one another, and laughed away from the Square with their shoulders slouched, as casually as they dared.

It is a fact that the opposite of pigeons is fire; the opposite of all that ashen life is fire. Fire is all brightness, all rage, a bellow of joy that is gone in a moment. Fire is the blood of the world. The pigeons all shuddered and gaped, and they cooed for ecstasy and fear. And they gathered by the ragged dozen and stared; the pigeons of Anglia Square wondered at this strange pain, this leaping orange pain.

The bin was not very full, and made of metal that would not melt, however hard the pigeons wished; in a little while the flames sank deep inside. The pigeons were possessed by grief at the losing of it; they found themselves flapping to every corner and ledge, picking out tatters of paper, a flattened latte cup. The pigeons gathered small things as though their existence depended on that fire, and with them they fed the flames, begged as only pigeons might that the light and hurting should last a little longer.

So the flames ate up all the stuff to burn in the whole of Anglia Square; there was not very much. All the while the fire grew less and less, and the pigeons gathered closer in.

In all their dusty heads were thoughts of the god of pigeons, folded and thin in her hiding place beneath the mechanical horse. She might burn for a moment, hold the night away for a second or two. But they made no move to prise her out, for pigeons are wise creatures; so they filled the Square with their gentle voices as the night grew cold.

© Padrika Tarrant 2007


Broken things and broken people: a woman becomes a gas explosion; a kitchen
knife crawls after a little girl to keep her safe; and an old lady hears her
mother calling from a cupboard.

Broken Things is a collection of short fiction by Padrika Tarrant.

It will be released in September 2007 by SALT Publishing. Full details at
http://saltpublishing.com/books/smf/9781844713431.htm