The Birdcatcher

Also by Gayl Jones

FICTION

Corregidora (novel) (1975)

Eva’s Man (novel) (1976)

White Rat (short stories) (1977)

The Healing (novel) (1998)

Mosquito (novel) (1999)

Palmares (novel) (2021)

POETRY COLLECTIONS

The Hermit-Woman (1983)

Xarque and Other Poems (1985)

Song for Anninho (1999)

Song for Almeyda and Song for Anninho (2022)

OTHER WORKS

Chile Woman (play) (1974)

Liberating Voices: Oral Tradition in African American Literature (criticism) (1991)

BEACON PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books

are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 2022 by Gayl Jones

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

25 24 23 22 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text design by Michael Starkman at

Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

First published as Die Vogelfangerin by Rowohlt

(Neue Frau imprint), Hamburg, Germany: January 1986

(translated into German from the English language manuscript).

Names: Jones, Gayl, author.

Title: The birdcatcher / Gayl Jones.

Description: Boston : Beacon Press, [2022] | Summary: “Set primarily on the island of Ibiza, the story is narrated by the writer Amanda Wordlaw, whose closest friend, a gifted sculptor named Catherine Shuger, is repeatedly institutionalized for trying to kill a husband who never leaves her. The three form a quirky triangle on the white-washed island”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022010991 | ISBN 9780807029947 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780807030004 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3560.O483 B57 2022 | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20220318

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010991

For my editors,

Angela Praesent (1945–2009)

and Helene Atwan

If I’m set on getting islands,

Others are set on worse.

—SANCHO PANZA

Book I How to Catch Foxes

1

Ibiza. I have left Brazil and am living on the white-washed island of Ibiza with my friend Catherine Shuger, a sculptor who has been declared legally insane, and her husband, Ernest, a freelance writer of popular science articles. We are all expatriate Americans: exiles.

Standing on the terrace, sheltered in the smell of oranges and eucalyptus, washed in sunlight, you’d swear this was a paradise. But to tell the truth the place is full of dangers. The dangers, however, are not directed toward me but toward Ernest. You see, Catherine sometimes tries to kill her husband. It has been this way for years: He puts her into an asylum, thinks she’s well, takes her out again, and she tries to kill him. He puts her in another one, thinks she’s well, takes her out again, she tries to kill him: on and on. You’d think we’d learn by now; you’d think everybody’d learn, don’t you? But somehow we keep the optimism, or the pretense, bring her out, and wait. She’s like the fucking trapdoor spider.

Here she’s sitting now: We’re both out on the dandelion-bright terrace. I’m writing this, and Catherine’s scribbling in her therapy notebook that her last psychiatrist told her to keep. Ernest is inside behind the glass door working on an article on laser medicine. Here Catherine sits in a pink silk nightie and blue flannel housecoat, though it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and hot as fresh cow dung out here. Underneath I know what she’s wearing too—Lady Jockey drawers (Look, Amanda, Jockey makes drawers for women! I’ve got to get some of these!) and a champagne-colored (champagne!) Danskin bra. And looking so sweet! If you didn’t know her story, well, you could eat her up the way she’s looking now: wrist on her chin, her jaws as innocent and plum as cherubs’.