Roasted Pheasants

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ROASTED PHEASANTS Marcos Henrique Silva

When the realtor unlocked the front door, he probably didn’t feel the stench that hovered over the building for so many days and nights for the feast had been over for a nearly a month. There were no leftovers rotting on the dining room table, providing an afterfeast for rats in the dead of the night. Neither there was any sign of the casualties that must have taken place there. All the dwellers had vanished without a trace a month back and, up to that point, the police had failed to track them down.

However, as he was walking through the dusty rooms he did notice that something human was still lingering everywhere, especially in the walls. He went as far as to touch them, as if trying to reach a dear face hidden behind the plaster. As he was sitting there, he finally saw a set of heart-shaped pieces of paper carefully folded and nestled one inside the other. He picked up the thing, disassembled it and began to read the following lines: She lived in an old four-story building downtown. As she was a history major back then, nobody ever got why she would rent a place so far away from campus and, which is worst, live alone in a neighborhood full of drug addicts and perverts of all sorts. Besides being old and out of repair, the building was poor illuminated. Every night, when she came back from college, she had to climb 8 flights of stairs in order to get to her apartment on the fourth floor, and she once told me that she was always frightened while climbing those dark stairs. She never got used to the sound of invisible people mumbling on the landings, or to doors bursting open in the middle of the dark. I asked her why she didn’t just move and she said she couldn’t as she had issues with old haunting-like places such as that one and she was willing to settle this down before moving on.

Anyway, she kept on living her odd life and we could leave it at that, but one evening, when we were getting on the bus that would take us downtown, out of the blue, she invited me over for dinner. I didn’t see it coming; you can take my word for it, so much so that I didn’t answer right away. As far as my imagination went, she must had been keeping dirty little secrets up there and, unless she was up to

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something, she wouldn’t let anyone in, let alone a guy like me, who had loads of secrets of his own. But the invitation seemed so unrehearsed that I couldn’t turn it down. Eventually, I spat out the words of acceptance and off we went to her mysterious abode.

It was about 7 p.m. when we got there and the old tenement looked like a burning vertical trap against the twilight skies. With the wide windowpanes gilded by the last rays of sunlight and with the front façade wiped out of its stains and flaws, the building could be easily mistaken for a huge prop for a low-budget movie. Right in the hallway, something struck me as odd; this scent of roasted fowl pervaded the whole place. The old building smelled so good that I forgot about its dilapidated state and followed the scent, almost floating like one of those cartoon characters.

Strangely enough, the apartment was not only locked, but also as empty as eternity. As soon as we got in, she dragged me to the kitchen, which was coated in yellow tiles from floor to ceiling. Then she said: We have pheasant for dinner and took two gorgeous, perfectly roasted fowls out of the oven. I was taken aback, I mean, how come the dinner was ready if she’d spent the whole afternoon in the university and there was no one else there to cook it? As far as I know, pheasants don’t cook on their own. I was about to ask, when she grabbed my arm and said: _ Please, don’t ask any questions. Let’s not spoil the fun; otherwise, one of us shall join the absent guests.

I really didn’t know what she meant by “join the absent guests”, but I got a feeling that she was threatening me in her own elusive way. I let it pass, but I noticed that her hand was cold and shaking, which was strange, because she was not one of those fragile, prone to fainting girls. Then she asked me to help her to carry the plates to the dining room and I had the opportunity to see what a large, creeping piece it was. On my way in, no detail managed to grab my attention, but now they were assaulting me like gnats and there was no ignoring them. I noticed, for instance, that one of the dining room walls had been recently painted and that the masonry had been repaired. Despite the attempt to make the surface look even, I could see three rectangular signs, long and narrow as niches, hidden behind the thin layer of paint.

Whatever that meant, it was none of my business, so I let it pass.

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As we began to help ourselves, I asked her to open the front window, as it was so hot in there. She nearly ran amok when I said that, dropped her knife, fork, and began to shake like a jelly. Then she picked the silverware up and scolded me for making such a foolish request, all the while pointing those piercing instruments towards my face: _ Are you crazy? The neighbors across the street are the nosiest sons of bitches I have ever met. If I open the window, they will spy on me and make up stories. No, no, I won’t do that. Besides, I am not in a confrontational mood tonight.

I had to handle this situation before and you can rest assured, it was a messy business. _ Okay, it was only a suggestion! Don’t get so upset over trifles. I don’t feel that hot and you may become a roasted chic for all I care. You know, join the absent fellows, I said, trying to make a joke.

I think she didn’t get the joke, which left me embarrassed, for I didn’t know what else to say in order to calm her down. To make matters worse, one of my shortcomings is my lack of resilience. Once I get entangled in my own mistakes I can’t set myself free, as if I am trapped in a verbal quicksand, always choosing the wrong words, the ones that are likely to drag me to the bottom. It was not different that time: _ Such a fancy dinner for a Tuesday night! And why have you prepared so much food? Who is going to eat all that stuff?

Furious as she was, she didn’t miss her cue and lured me into her crazy scheme. _ Oh, let’s cut out the witty remarks! Grab a thigh and follow me. I have something to show you.

Another flaw of mine is that I usually do what I am told, so I grabbed my pheasant thigh and began to nibble at it while following my crazy hostess, who was not eating at all, just holding the luscious thing in her left hand, like an extinguished torch or something. I realized she was one of those people that never eat, at least not in front of their guests. I myself was not hungry anymore, but out of politeness, I kept taking small bites out of the thigh. To my surprise, she was leading me out of the apartment, towards the dark hallway, then she stepped in front of the nearest flat and opened the door. I was appalled by this unexpected gesture, but I could not

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help asking her if she knew the people who lived there. She said there was no one living there right now, but didn’t explain why there was a furnished apartment for renting on such an old, dilapidated building. As I was stuck in the doorway, she urged me to come see the place: _ Come on, you need to see this. It’s a rule of the game! _ We can’t go in there without permission. We would be trespassing on private property. If you want to see the place, you should call someone, a janitor, I don’t know, someone who is responsible for maintenance. _ In case you didn’t notice, there isn’t a janitor here, or a caretaker, whatever you call it. It’s just us and dozens of apartments to explore. If you had come earlier this month, you’d find a different scenario. It was a helluva a job putting everyone in their places, but that doesn’t matter now.

When I finally brought myself to go in, I regretted my decision right away, because entering a furnished apartment after dark whose owners were nowhere to be found was one of spookiest experiences I have ever had. All that furniture gathering dust, family pictures hanging on the walls and other details really gave me the creeps. Someone had even forgotten to turn the lights off and some chandeliers and lampshades looked like they had just been shining over people’s actions; people who had probably just left in a hurry, or dragged out of their homes like pogroms’ victims. Such a grim picture must had been somehow painted on my baroque eyes for now and then she would stop before a peculiarly somber spot and laugh with a sarcastic smile. _ Let me show you my favorite place.

I was feeling kind of dizzy, so I don’t know how I came to a blank wall with two spotlights shining on me. I think the light made me feel so bad that I was about to faint, or puke, but she slapped me to keep me awake. I guess it was too late for that kind of thing…

The son of a bitch thought he could avoid our indoors tour by pretending to faint, but I knew better and for the next thirty minutes I dragged him through apartment after apartment, showing everything worth noticing. Once in a while, he would start feigning a seizure, or something of that sort, but I would always fight back and push him up against the wall. As I was pressing my pelvis against him, I felt his boner, which was another kind of weakness, one that was impossible to conceal or pretend. Eventually, he stopped pretending and just followed me like a zombie. Obviously, he was not quite himself anymore, but I knew he could walk all right, so we kept going. The scent of roasted pheasants pervaded the whole building and I think this increased his awareness of danger and kept him from falling apart.

5 However, when we came to the last apartment on the 4th floor, I realized that he couldn’t go any further, so I changed my plans on the last minute and led him to one of four wardrobes that I had placed strategically on each floor. They were beautiful pieces of furniture, with inlaid doors and carved moldings, which I had borrowed from an antique shop located in the same building. I think I don’t have to say this store is now closed for good and that I don’t intend to return the items.

At the end of the hallway, just beside the wardrobe, an old Venetian window opened to a courtyard. I set it ajar and quickly a perfume of carnations filled the air. It was the first time that we smelled something other than poultry that whole evening. This change in the olfactory scene worked miracles on my half-conscious friend, for he breathed a sigh of relief and looked at me with an expression of appeasement on his face, as if saying: “I surrender. I will do whatever you want me to do, as long as you do it fast.”

Just like in a fairytale, we walked into the wardrobe and began our journey through a maze of dark and narrow, pathways, a landscape as different as it could be from the real world. I took advantage of the dark to take a bite out of the pheasant thigh and swallowed the chunk against my will. Pretty soon I was feeling dizzy myself and thought I had better hurry up, get this thing done. Then I handed him the five sheets of yellowish paper and a pen and said: _ Tell this story while you can. We are the only ones here to write it down before it fades away.

He began to write like crazy, as if possessed by the spirit of a chronicler, and come out with a good piece of storytelling. However, as I had given him a head start, he passed away before me without finishing the tale. So I took from where he left and managed to put a full stop at the end of a few more paragraphs. The next thing I did, I folded the five sheets of paper into heart shapes that gradually decreased in size, nestled one inside the other, like a matryoshka and slipped it under the door. Then I lied down beside my travel mate and, before joining the absent guests, I was able to see the light under the door. After all, we were not as far from the real world as we thought.