That night in her grandmother’s house, Sofia had a dream that she had arrived at the Black Market. She saw a large table. It was in the middle of a barren field. But it was clear that despite the landscape, there were people feasting and drinking at the table. Over top of the table was a large black banner attached to a stick on either side. She could see the letters painted in white on the sign. They said: BLACK MARKET.
There was a woman sitting at the table. She had the same physique as Sofia’s mother. But she was wearing a black felt hat tilted over one eye, so Sofia couldn’t make out her face. She was laughing like her mother. She had her legs crossed underneath her chair like her mother. She was dressed like her mother when she was getting ready to give a speech.
Sofia ran and ran towards the table. But it never seemed to get any closer. She couldn’t get close enough to see whether it was her mother, and whether she was still alive.
Sofia and the Goose walked into the kitchen the next morning, and Balthazar and Abelard were sitting quietly at the table, as though they were expecting them.
“We’ve come to a conclusion,” Balthazar announced.
“I don’t know if I would exactly call it a conclusion,” Abelard said.
“What would you call it? A decision?”
“No. No. Not that.”
“We think it’s because of you, Sofia, that the war happened to begin with. The Enemy came because they were furious at the wealthy. Look at this house. It could fit three families in it. But it was occupied by one old lady.” Balthazar paused and then looked at Sofia. “We will have to ask you to leave.”
Sofia had not expected this. “I’m not going to leave. This is my house!”
“Hmmm,” Balthazar said with a smile. “I thought you might say that.”
“It’s my house. If you find you can’t stand me, then you will have to leave.”
Abelard leaned his elbow on the table and put his chin in his hand. He looked at her with his large eyes, which he blinked in a bewitching manner. Sofia was momentarily hypnotized by his curious expression.
“It is a beautiful home,” he said. “I never thought I would find myself staying in such a place.”
At that moment, Balthazar came around behind her and put a black cloth bag over her head. She began struggling wildly. She wouldn’t let the boys get a hold of her. She was thrashing her arms and legs in every which way she could. The Goose came to her aid. He started biting the arms of the boys, and Sofia managed to pull the bag off her head.
Balthazar grabbed the Goose by the neck and lifted it in the air. The Goose stopped gobbling and began instead to emit gasping, squawking sounds.
“Stop moving, or I will shoot this fucking goose in the head,” Balthazar said.
And Sofia did. She straightened up her body and sat upright on the floor. Balthazar put the bird down. Abelard put the black bag back over her head.
Sofia was on the back of a speeding motorcycle behind Abelard. The Goose was attached in a basket on the side. Although she could not confirm this with her eyes because she still had the black bag over her head. Her hands were tied behind her back. She called out to the Goose to see if he was still there, and he gobbled back.
It was peculiar to be in this darkness. She tried to make sense of the sounds. She wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to make sense of them. But in the darkness, the woods began to take on different properties. She couldn’t help but believe what her senses, other than her eyes, were telling her.
There was a tree that pulled its roots out of the ground, like a child pulling its feet out of rubber boots. And it began to run along beside her. There were grey horses galloping ahead. A fat bear roared from the roadside. There were birds that were flying beside her head.
After the motorcycle stopped, Abelard untied them and pulled the black bag off her face. She stared all around her at the unknown road. Abelard tossed Sofia her bag, in which they had allowed her to pack her clarinet and silver knife, as though these two things would save her from the wilderness. She had also rolled up the map she had drawn, which, although rudimentary, was her most practical possession now. And she had in her inside pocket her important piece of paper, which she stroked with her hand for a moment, as though checking to see that her heart was still there. After Abelard had driven away, Sofia and the Goose stood on the side of the road, looking up and down it. She held up her map, trying to determine where they might be.
She inhaled deeply. In the Capital, Sofia had lived in a neighbourhood whose streets were lined with expensive shops. And she was quite sure she could tell where she was on the street while wearing a blindfold. Because of the different smells. She would be able to tell whether she was in front of the bakery or the restaurant or the café.
What in the world did nature smell like other than nature? It smelled like mud all the time. There was the smell of blackness and boots and skinned knees. It smelled like garbage and potato peels. The air smelled cold. It smelled of bare hands. It smelled like the inside of a coat. It smelled the way her hands did after holding a fistful of coins. It smelled like cracks in the wall.
It smelled like a bucket of brass doorknobs. It smelled like the footprints of horses. It smelled like steel wool. It smelled like leather boots and gunpowder and running water.
It smelled like a tin that had first stored tea, but then later, so many things. It had been used to store letters and safety pins. The air smelled like rulers and the graphite of a pencil trying to record its trajectory towards infinity. Is there a difference between infinity and nothingness? It smelled like cherry pits when you spit them out on the street. It smelled like a smack in the face. It smelled like a split lip. It smelled like black thread.
The Goose, meanwhile, looked at his big webbed feet in an aggravated sort of way. Because he was a goose, he decided to have a tantrum. “I wonder if I didn’t make a mistake in coming with you,” he said suddenly. “I should have gone straight to the Capital.”
“Oh, certainly. You would be someone’s delicious soup right now.”
“I am not simply a goose. I am a speaking goose. And I have sophisticated ideas. I left the farm precisely because no one could hear me over the racket. I was looking for a child. An intelligent child who needed tutelage. Who would offer me secure lodgings in exchange. You stole me from the future I was supposed to have. I should be living in a very large house. I should have a nursery. Why can’t I have a nursery? I deserve to have a nursery.
“Why can’t I have walls that are covered in murals? It doesn’t take any effort to find a muralist. Muralists are always looking for work. I should like to have furniture with a French name, like an armoire or a divan. I doubt you have ever even heard of such things.”
“There’s a war on. It’s not really my fault. If we were in the Capital, I would provide you with everything you need. I would give you a wonderful life. We could go to the park and eat boiled eggs. I could take you for chocolat chaud at a café that has paintings of girls holding umbrellas on the walls. We could go to the cinema. I assure you, I am a very cultured child. When we get to the Black Market, I will provide you everything you need.”
“I apologize, Sofia. I did not mean to take my frustrations out on you. Perhaps we should just go to the Capital, then?”
“The war is about taking away everything special in the country. They don’t think we deserve it. But the Black Market will be filled with everything they took away. When we get to the Black Market, we can drink milky coffee. Oh, it’s so much better with milk. And we can sit across from each other and have conversations about all manner of things. There are subjects that are so much easier to talk about over a milky cup of coffee. It makes you talk about what is right and wrong in the world.”
“So you didn’t know the difference between right and wrong before you started putting milk in your coffee?”
“Correct.”
“Well, sometimes I wonder whether you haven’t chosen to deliberately derail me with your tales of hocus-pocus and the Black Market. You decided to be our navigator. You have led me so far from my original destination.”
“I am trying my best. You didn’t exactly help defend me against the boys. You could have said something too.”
“Men are not afraid of a goose’s rage. And they use it as an excuse to wring our necks. My neck is the most elegant thing about me. It is what allows me to express myself. It moves and looks in so many directions. It is what makes my movements not only functional but also meaningful. It means I am. My life has meaning. I have a soul and not only a purpose. But men look at my neck and all they can think about is putting their hands around it and killing me. And they believe that is its primary purpose. My neck is there for them to wring, and is consenting to be wrung. It is their natural right to wring it. I know there are people who consider a swan a more dignified creature than a goose.”
“I believe it is well established.”
“It is debated.”
“Well, there is no ballet called Goose Lake, is there?”
“You are wrong. You have a rudimentary knowledge of art. It is normal for children to appreciate classical notions of beauty. Because your knowledge is not evolved yet. You will see when you get around twenty years old that all those ideas will seem boring to you. They were meant to sing you to sleep as a baby. And then you will see that things you once found banal, grotesque, frightening, odd, unsavoury will be where you find deeper beauty, for lack of a better word.
“A goose is a metaphor for these times. Everyone is trudging through the mud. Marching. Marching. Like geese always have. You don’t hear about swans trudging through the mud, do you?”
“Why on earth would they when they can fly?”
“The swan is an ideal. But the goose must walk among men.”
“Beautifully said.”
“Thank you,” the Goose said. “I am delighted to be freed from those boys. But of course, if I’m honest, you were rather harsh with them. Those criticisms are likely to stick with them. The wounds will grow infected. The gangrene will set in, and it will consume them. Is that the way your mother spoke to you? Is that where you learned it from?”
“Unfortunately, yes. She would criticize me. And her comments stayed with me. Like something I swallowed but couldn’t digest. They are more like magic spells being cast on you. She will tell you that you are boring. And then you will be worried for years that you are boring. You won’t want to say anything for years. She effectively damns you to boringness.”
“Mothers are always cursing their children, aren’t they?”
“They are supposed to love you unconditionally, but in truth, everything you do annoys them. They complain about the way you raise your spoon to your mouth.”
“Nobody is really born free.”
“No. The umbilical cord is like a chain that is never truly cut.”
“It’s terrible to imprint on your mother. Geese imprint on other geese. But not necessarily their mothers. Sometimes they imprint on other things. I knew a goose that had imprinted on a cow. He was always wandering off towards the pasture and would graze with the cows. They ignored him, but he accepted that as his fate. Even though he would have been so much better off coming to join the flock. There was another goose I knew that imprinted on a car. He was always standing in the middle of the road, honking away. Until he was run over. A ridiculous and tragic death.”
“And who or what did you imprint on?”
“Nobody and nothing. I was always independent, you see.”
Sofia laughed. She too felt independent of her mother suddenly. She felt strangely good about herself. She had erupted. It had had consequences. The boys had kicked her out. But they had thrown her out because she had made them throw her out. And she knew that part of her had wanted to be evicted. Because she had realized that even though she loved her grandmother’s house, she did not want it. The boys were right that it was not her house. No, what she needed now was at the Black Market.
The sky suddenly darkened. Sofia and the Goose both ran for cover behind a bush in the ditch. Sofia was so frightened that she felt as though she were under water and couldn’t breathe. She thought this might be her last moment.
She regretted only half listening to her mother most of the time. One afternoon she was sitting in the bathtub when her mother came in to stare in the fogged mirror and began offering Sofia some astute idea about the world. As she was speaking, Sofia had lowered herself under the water. So her ears filled up with water. And her mother’s voice sounded like a whale singing somewhere in the ocean depths.
Then the sky became light again, and Sofia realized that what she had been frightened by was simply a passing cloud. As she pulled herself out of the ditch, she thought she would get her mother’s memoir back. She would get to the Black Market. She would have all the missing words and ideas her mother had meant to share with her.
Hunger led Sofia off the road and deeper into the woods. She followed the sound of food like a little beast now. She perked up her ears, and they led her to water. The stream sounded like someone dropping sugar cubes into a cup of tea. The murmuring of the water sounded like voices at a restaurant. The gurgling sounded like a cash register being run up. She closed her eyes, and the sound of the water summoned the Capital to her mind.
“Are we going to catch a fish or what?” the Goose inquired.
Sofia opened her eyes. They were the grey shade of underwater stones.
The Goose was a great help fishing. He swam around and dunked his head under the water as his butt shook in the air above. It was as though someone underneath the deep had grabbed his neck and was throttling him. But then he reversed himself and cried out: “There’s a school of fish moving that way. Go cut them off by the rock!” She ran over to see. She climbed up onto a large rock, lay on her stomach, and hung her face over the water to see what there was to see. She could not see anything other than her reflection. It looked so murky under the water, but then it seemed to become clearer. As though someone were rubbing fog off a bathroom mirror. Then she realized she wasn’t looking at her reflection at all.
What she had seen made her body begin to quiver so violently. She picked up the Goose and held him in her arms.
Once she was looking in a pond in the city for a mermaid. Her mother scoffed, “What do you think, they dump mermaids in there like goldfish?” And Sofia had felt embarrassed. Her cheeks had flushed like they were the temperature of tea right before you drank it and it wouldn’t burn your tongue. She was determined never to mention mermaids again. It was at that moment that she stopped believing in mermaids.
It was not a mermaid she saw in the water now. It was a girl lying on her back with her arms spread. She was fully dressed, except she was wearing only one shoe. She looked as though she was on a class expedition. She was wearing a pinafore with a red scarf around her neck.
When Sofia saw the dead body, everything stood still. She was suddenly out of time. She was in a state of shock. She looked all around her. Nothing was moving. She was the only thing still alive. Everything around her was frozen and incapable of movement. The birds in the sky were motionless. The water had stopped moving. There was a leaf that was suspended mid-flight. The trees had ceased to rustle. And were now absolutely quiet and still.
Then the water began to move again, taking the mermaid away. And then an entire school of uniformed girls came down the river and passed by. It was as though they were all deep in sleep. Some were lying on their bellies, looking into the depths of the water. Some were staring at the birds above them. Some had closed their eyes and were dreaming. The red ribbons danced around their necks like goldfish. There was one girl who passed close to Sofia’s feet by the bank. There was a bullet hole in her forehead and the girl was looking straight up at it.