There Will Be No Violins: 3

When Quinn first came to Sydney, she lived in a house in Redfern.

She was barely working, but she had a little money saved, and so she was surviving. She had left home in a desperate escape attempt, leaving anything and everything behind that she could not face.

She took a small room in a town house turned hostel, and did not speak to anyone. Her lease was for only a few months, and classes started soon, and it didn’t bother her that she would spend most of her time alone and in total isolation from the world.

There was a corner store at the end of the block, an off-brand former 7/11 that sold Pop-tarts and two-minute microwave noodles and Diet Coke, and she would stock up on nonperishable junk food late at night when she’d be certain to avoid human contact.

Microwave noodles are a vital food stuff for the under-stimulated and desperate. They are unsustainable as a dietary staple. But you can survive for a long while on Maggi chicken noodles.

In her room, Quinn would spend her days streaming porn and true crime documentaries on her laptop, reading long and bleak Russian-aspiring novels on her Kindle, and occasionally completing a freelance project that would top up her dwindling funds.

There was a mattress on the floor, next to her piles of clothes and her books. There was a small electric heater to guard against the Sydney winter, and a single window overlooking the street, touched by a tree that was at least as old as the townhouse.

The light that came in was dappled and green.

She would often spend whole days in bed, not moving, her eyes fixed on the laptop screen, her mind numb. She would watch one video after another, barely registering what she was seeing, her consciousness blurring into the bright images and the constant motion.

One morning, a bird began to build a nest on the outside ledge of the window. It was the perfect location for a home — it was protected from the elements, and in no danger from the occupant of the room, because Quinn hadn’t opened the window once in all her time living there. She spent hours watching the bird. It was a beautiful thing, full of wild and manic energy that saw it dart from place to place with an almost cartoonish speed.

After days of watching the bird build and rebuild and listening to its frantic chirping, Quinn decided to open the window, just a crack. The bird did not seem disturbed by this intrusion, and so she opened it a little further the next day.

She watched it finish its nest, a collection of sticks, twigs, leaves, and chip packet foil, and it made it its home, next to Quinn’s own mouldy room, and they became neighbours for a time. The bird laid its eggs, 3 of them, beautiful and perfect in every way, and it nurtured and waited for them to hatch. It was the nexus of life.

Well, eventually they hatched and Quinn had a reaction that she had not expected.

She had not cried when she had left her home, and she had not cried when she had left her most recent boyfriend. His name is immaterial. But looking at the birds, tiny and insignificant as herself, with nothing but their mother to protect them against a cruel environment of violence and fear and danger, with the barest comfort of instinct, a wave of catharsis swept over her.

Quinn crumpled like paper and crawled onto the mattress, sobbing, and heaving and screaming silently until she had nothing left to give. Her tears ran dry, and she stretched out. She shivered and trembled for what felt like hours.

One day, Quinn came home and found that the bird was gone.

The nest remained.

As did Quinn.

She carefully reached through the window and took what remained of that tiny nest with her. She cradled it in her arms, and for a few years she carried it from home to home, and kept it on a bookshelf, and then it disintegrated.

Quinn does not think it helpful to share every piece of yourself with the world. In your rush to expose your intimate secrets and the workings of your fucked-up psyche, she thought, you could lose a part of whatever it is that gives it any meaning in the first place.

Quinn believes that the most intimate pieces of yourself are your last best hope.

She read something like that on Instagram.

The truth is this.

For the rest of her life, Quinn knew she was going to be running from something. It would only ever be a few steps behind, and she would feel its breath and know its teeth were snapping at her heels every day, everywhere she went.

It had her scent, and it would never give up its pursuit of her.

Eventually, when she was too tired to keep running, it would take her. It would take her whole.