The Bird Artist Read online

  I tell all of this in summer 1923, twelve years after I murdered the lighthouse keeper Botho August. Since his retirement last year, Enoch has been to St. John’s twice, but Margaret and I still have not been at all. In fact we have not left Witless Bay. Our daughter, Claire Helen Vas, was born on July 17, 1913. Typical, I suppose, but we keep saying, “She looks like Alaric,” or Orkney, or me, or Margaret or Enoch, though this year, Claire has looked more like Margaret than ever, I think. She knows one grandfather, Enoch, and that is some consolation. But there are no photographs of Alaric, Orkney, or Margaret’s mother, Claire, whom our daughter is named after. Someday I will try sketching those faces. As far as I know, Mekeel Dollard has the only photograph album in Witless Bay to speak of, but none of the Vas or Handle family is in it. I think that I should have a family portrait taken. Who can take it? Perhaps Romeo Gillette. I think he learned how to take photographs in London. Mekeel Dollard just might lend him her camera.

  There has been steady work at the dry dock. As for painting, it has not been poor fare; I have already sold drawings of an ibis and a merganser this year, and it is only July. I am hardly in demand, though, and last year there were no requests at all, and only one the year before that, a kittiwake for a private patron in Halifax. I imagine life will go on like this, when it comes to birds. On his last run, Enoch brought home a new journal, Canadian Naturalist. I intend to try it unsolicited with murres, red knot, and teal.

  We have become friends with Odeon and Kira Sloo. Their daughter Millie looks after Claire now and then. We have eaten at Spivey’s together, and at each other’s houses.

  I am a bird artist.

  Just yesterday Isabel Kinsella hissed, “Slieveen!” near the orchard. Yet I have to say this was a rare occurrence. Isabel was just out for a walk, I imagine, lost in thought, when she saw me and was overcome.

  Also by Howard Norman

  The Northern Lights (1987)

  Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad (1989)

  Acclaim for The Bird Artist

  “Excellent … . What The Bird Artist undertakes is redemption by art, and it succeeds.”

  —Louis B. Jones, The New York Times Book Review

  “Enchanting … . It’s as though Norman has accepted a challenge to wring beauty out of stone and eloquence out of simplicity.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of those rare finds, a powerful tale that is engrossing and carefully drawn.”

  —Vogue

  “A marvelously operatic novel … language that is strict, laconic and evocative.”

  —Time

  “Vivid and finely imagined … . With lyrical grace and sparkling humor, the author has created a delightful jewel box of a world that, once you’ve entered, is hard to leave.”

  —Harper’s Bazaar

  “Mr. Norman writes well, in a stripped-down style that suggests a Viking galley—nothing superfluous, everything working to perfection.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly

  “Norman creates a spare but vivid style that presents its own somber beauty.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Easily his finest work … . Norman’s description of Newfoundland’s climate is lean and precise, as is his rendering of his characters’ perilous emotional states.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “The Bird Artist manages to be both spare and rich … . What is haunting about Norman’s work is his characters’ ache for transcendence.”

  —Times Literary Supplement

  THE BIRD ARTIST. Copyright © 1994 by Howard Norman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by St. Martin’s Press under license from Pan Books Limited.

  eISBN 9780374706272

  First eBook Edition : January 2011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Norman, Howard A.

  The bird artist / Howard Norman.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-13027-9 (paperback)

  1. Newfoundland—History—Fiction. 2. Artists—Newfoundland—

  Fiction. I. Title.

  [PR9199.3.N564B57 1995b]

  813’.54—dc20 95-5216

  CIP

  First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanada Ltd.