Pigeon Variations - Ch 5 - German Impressionists

From the kitchen window, Pyser could see the smashed bottles and rubbish in the street, scattered like the lost possessions of Saturday night. Seagulls wheeled and screeched, diving down to scavenge the cold burgers and chips dropped onto the pavement. He wondered if any of the seagulls were people he had once known.

Anne was asleep in bed. He cut a line on her kitchen table and snorted, pouring himself a glass of wine. His one wish was that if he turned into a bird, it wasn’t a pigeon. He hoped that for once in his fucking life he might show some class, some style and stand out from the flock. Even if it wasn’t an eagle or hawk or peregrine falcon, then he’d settle for a jay, a skylark, a robin red breast or a fucking seagull for that matter. Just not a pigeon.

Not that he had a choice. Nature’s hardly a fucking democracy. He accepted his blood was bad. He was from pigeon stock. No two ways about it. Scientists and animal rights activists debated how much a person remembered about their human form after they transitioned. Some said memories remained. That your identity carried over. Others argued the exact opposite, saying there was no empirical evidence for memories to survive Human Avian Transitions (HATS). So many opinions. It could leave you baffled. All he knew for sure was that one day he would turn into a bird. A doctor he had seen in his early teens told him that this was nonsense. That such things were not predetermined. Pyser knew different.

There were books on the floor in the living room that Anne had taken from her shelves. He assumed they’d start fucking straight off the bat when he arrived after finishing his shift, but each girl had their own individual way and preferences. You could never be sure what they liked in the sack. She had poured him wine and was talking ten to the dozen. She was animated and enthusiastic about ideas. She told him about the artists she admired, such as the German Expressionists, rolling off names and showing paintings in books. He thought she’d said impressionists at first and imagined they were a group of shit German comedians he’d never heard of. But they were Expressionists. Artists. And art was her thing. She desperately wanted to be a painter and had tried to make a living after leaving art school.

“I was once in an exhibition with Sexton Ming,” she said.

Like that meant fuck all to him.

“Do you paint much these days?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not really, no.”

“You just talk about it when pissed?”

“Pretty much.”

Brighton was full of failed artists. It was like a mecca for mediocrity. Failed filmmakers. Failed novelists, sculptors, photographers. And then you had the so-called musicians. It seemed to him that every other wanker in Brighton was a failed fucking DJ or singer in a band.

Everyone talking, talking, talking about fuck all until they were blue in the face.

It was so fucking boring to be around. 

“Have you ever been to a psychic?” asked Anne.

He shook his head. “Me mum did,” he said.

“I saw one last week.”

“What did he say?”

“She said we’re living in a time of fire.”

“In what sense?”

“I think she meant the riots and the wars and the burning buildings. There’s a destructive energy in the world.”

“Fire can be the start of something new.”

“That’s what she said too.”

“Any chance you’re feeling hot yet?”

His come on was clunky. Too obvious.

She politely ignored him like he’d done an accidental fart. “I believe that sickness and illness reflect how we feel inside about ourselves. If you’re unhappy in your life and disconnected from your true self, if you’re not living the life you’re supposed to, then I think physical illness becomes a manifestation of spiritual malaise.”

“Mental illness, maybe.”

“I mean actual physical conditions like heart disease.”

“What about children with cancer? How could they be living differently? What spiritual discontent would they be going through?” he said, handing her an Otto Dix art book with a thin line of coke on it. He liked to pick apart the things people said when they were trying to be intelligent. 

She held up a hand to refuse the sniff. “A friend of mine,” she said, “was diagnosed with breast cancer. She’d been telling me for three years how unhappy she was with her husband, that the marriage felt dead. She detested her job in finance too and kept saying how she wanted to quit and do something meaningful with her life.”

“You have to be well off in the first place to think like that,” said Pyser.

“That’s not fair.”

Anne didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t worth getting het up about. She was another spoilt, lonely middle class drifter. He thought about repeating his question about children. There was little point. They weren’t talking or having a conversation. This was pissed-up noise. They were making less sense than monkeys shrieking in the jungle. And that was fine. He didn’t mind talking shit now and then. In fact, it was better than trying to say something meaningful. That normally ended up with him wanting to punch someone’s lights out.

He let her talk and imagine she was being intelligent and profound.

When she finished her glass, he saw she was struggling to focus. He took her hand and led her into the bedroom before she completely passed out.