A Bird's Eye Read Online Free PDF Page A

them in a loud and excessively friendly voice. He was always dressed in the latest style, for he had an English tailor on Bay Street, which marked him as newly rich in a manner that he did not quite recognize.
    The Kleeman factory was at the west end of Adelaide Street. All the metalwork was done there, the casting and stamping, while the celluloid tubes were bought from another factory to be turned on lathes into barrels. Then came the assembly and finishing. While other makers produced pens in all sorts of colours and even patterns, Kleeman pens were only black, which Hayim believed would emphasize their practicality and economy. His office was on the ground floor, and in the first years Hannah had been the bookkeeper, having gone to secretarial school. But as the company prospered, he had insisted that she give up working.
    She hated where they lived. She missed her old friends from the factory, whom Hayim forbade her to see. She often walked the few blocks to Allan Gardens, for she loved the warm, scented air and rare flowers in the Palm House, but she did not feel comfortable among the women and nannies and prettily dressed children. Nor could the beautiful if unfashionably long dresses that Hayim insisted she wear disguise her limp.
    Not that Hannah wasn’t grateful. Gratitude was her stock-in-trade; it was all she had to offer — to people who were kind to her, who overlooked her deformity, who protected her. Most of all, to Hayim. She feared him a little, she did not enjoy his company, but nevertheless she doted on him. And after all, he had no wife yet to look after him. Did he eat sufficiently? Was he working too hard? Could he not put aside the anger he felt about one thing or another?
    She liked me to visit. A year ago I had knocked on the door and a maid had answered. But hearing a boy’s voice, Hannah had come to the door. She felt a terrible guilt about Jacob and so was happy to welcome me into her home. I came every couple of weeks, not for her sake but for my own. She always plied me with food and gave me a present — a new book, the few dollars in her purse, a pair of leather gloves.
    Today she wore a new crepe gown. I tried to guess what it cost. We sat having tea and delicious small cakes that she had sent the maid out for when I arrived. At the window of the front parlour, she looked out to see that dusk was slipping into night. Even to a boy it was obvious how lonely she was and that she was glad for my company, asking me about school and friends and my mother and father, causing me to make up more lies than I could keep track of. She mostly talked about my uncle, who told her about the problems in manufacturing and supply, the difficulty of securing government orders without belonging to the right clubs, the impossibility of joining those clubs. Even so, the business was successful. The Pen That Works — that was what the newspaper advertisements said.
    Aunt Hannah, as she asked me to call her, crossed the room to the phonograph and looked through the new stack that Hayim had brought home for her. She liked to play her new records for me; they were the one luxury that pleased her. She chose Fritz Kreisler playing Brahms’s violin concerto, and as it came on she stood with her eyes closed and I watched how it transformed her, the way music could do that for some people. And right then the front door opened with a bang and she quickly lifted the needle.
    Voices, laughter. “Hannah? Hannah, I want you to meet someone.”
    My aunt was never comfortable with strangers, but she especially hated when her brother brought home guests — business associates or, worse, men he met at one of the restaurants he frequented. I sat rigidly in my chair, for my uncle was not nearly so fond of my visits. Hayim came in with a tall man with orange hair parted in the middle and a slack, rubbery face.
    â€œHannah, why are you hiding in the corner? Ah, I see our nephew is also here. This is