Vega Magpie

Jungmannova Street

I would have preferred a dog. Some towering St. Bernard clothed in white and brown, or a squat bull terrier with bloodshot eyes. Even Felix the Cat would do, because it’s cold on this side of the Danube. Snuggle me, Felix. Make across the pond seem not so far away. But you rarely see stray dogs in this part of the city—anthropomorphic felines, never—and what I’ve found is a hurt bird on a cold wet Bratislava backstreet. I am a hurt bird. What happened with Jano Jančar left a stone in the ribs large enough to make my sternum pop.

Tram 9 idles now where I left it at the end of the line, the light glowing warm within its tubular red and cream carriages. If there’s a human heartbeat aboard, I can’t make it out. The forward compartment is obscured by darkness. All is still and lunar. A magpie it will have to be.

The business of approaching a damaged corvid is a delicate one. Kek kek kek, it calls as I inch closer. Indeed it is, sir! Now please back away before I call out in witch’s tongue and condemn your firstborn child to the salt mine! The bird’s pronounced white breast still shines despite the hour, dirtied some from its predicament in the gutter wash. I kneel down and as I do it fans out its good wing, tips white like a gloved hand, the other wing tucked as if giving shelter to an unseen fledgling. Woock, the bird calls in a feeble attempt to push itself away. Hey! I glimpse the dull blue on its coverts. Female. The tram starts back toward the old bridge with two honks like a lone goose in search of a grassy lakefront. Wock wock-a-wock wock, cries the bird. Off with you and anyone dressed the same!

Hesitation overcomes me. If she could crow-hop, she would. If she could fly, she would have caught the next gust of wind sweeping in from the mountains, and I would be alone again. Instead she makes do with kinked legs, slowly pushing away from my timid reach.

“I won’t hurt you.”

Kek kek kek, she replies. Tell that to your friend! Her call rings out into the frigid night. What a sviňa I am. Woock! Pig? Useful half-breed idiot, more like!

“But you’ll die here.”

I swoop in to gather her into my handkerchief. Though she struggles at first, the magpie acquiesces, remaining still as I ferry her back to my Lachova Street flat. Fear of snapping some tiny bone soon subsides. Somewhere up above a man yells obscenities.

“Ty Maďar!” he shouts. Crude and violent. The walls are thin here. Liquor is food and Hungarians are to blame for all manner of misgivings.

Woock woock! Distracted by the man’s spleen, I trip on a phantom lip in the pavement. You’ll kill us both, you clumsy bastard! Better get inside before these guilt pangs cost my new friend her life.

A wave of heat brings a flush to my cheeks as we enter Block 20. In the stairwell we pass Pani Hansmannova, the severe, heavyset super who regards me with familiar suspicion. Her babushka reminds me of Jano’s sorela.

“That’s the super,” I whisper after she’s moved on along her patrol.

Kek kek, murmurs the bird, low enough that only I can hear it. If it’s cahoots, it’s cahoots, a notion she now seems to accept as a matter of survival. Sorela? My god…

Inside Apartment 8, I arrange a makeshift bed for my avian convalescent: a nest made of my three red throw pillows, its middle space lined with the soft hand rags I use for kitchen chores and early Sunday wipe-downs—clean, but streaked with unsightly grease stains. The bird quickly burrows into the hideaway and exhales deeply. I stand there a long while, watching her drift toward a cozy dream, wondering if ever there was such a thing. Has this cold city ever known such a ludicrousness? I never reach an answer, but watching her leads me to a fine enough name: Vega. As long as she stays with me, the bird’s name will be Vega.

Apartment 8, Petržalka

In the morning Vega is upright. I notice her perched on the sill as I go to put the water on and continue to the kitchenette anyway. It’s still too early to stop and consider what I’ve just seen. Soon I’m standing in the kitchen doorway, cupping a short mug of stir-in and watching a magpie groom herself atop my windowsill.

I am a non-entity in the shadow of her methodical routine. She ducks her pronounced black beak under her left wing, plucking downward one-two-three, watches the slow fall of a few molted feathers to the faded blue carpet below. When she finishes with both sides, Vega wipes her beak on the sill before shaking her entire frame like a labrador just out of water. More tiny plumage drifts down as my new houseguest hops a full half turn to face me. 

Wooock wooock wooock, she calls from the bottom of her diaphragm. Do birds have diaphragms? Of course not! Are you always so unwell in the morning? I don’t know how to explain this stubborn condition now thirty years in the making. My missteps cling to me like grippy wetland muck.

“And you? You heal fast for a half-dead crow.” Somehow, her battered wing has recovered function after the short night of sleep.

Kek. She turns her unblinking gaze to the window. Magpie! It’s starting to rain, a cloud having gathered above the narrow space between the next apartment block and my own. I think I see Vega shrug.

Clever, clever bird.

I go to the cupboard for crackers, a paltry haul and totally against the rules of hospitality. It’s that or bouillon cubes and I don’t feel like boiling more water. I try Jano in Bratislava proper. We haven’t talked since Chorvátsky Grob. A windswept patchwork of dim windows and motionless clotheslines fill my kitchen window to the score of No Answer. The stone lodged beneath my ribs has shifted down into the gut, a sickening reminder of what I said in Anton’s wine cellar when that pot-bellied fool began pouring it on. He really gave it to Jano, used words my immigrant mother would sometimes mutter under her breath while ferrying me to school in South Chicago. And the sorela. The partisan with the round-drum PPSh-41 standing guard over Jano’s private gallery. The intuition in her purposeful face. How useful you’ve proved to be. To the enemy of our motherland, America. You betrayed us.

When I turn around, Vega is on the edge of the dining room table. She doesn’t even look at the square cracker I’ve tossed to the floor. Instead she bobs her head up and down, up and down. Kek kek kek, she calls. Truth hurts, sviňa. She flies to my shoulder to muss my hair with a few quick pumps of her two-foot wingspan. Wock wocka! she cries. Dull-speaking and ignorant in a cold country! She parachutes to the floor, grasps the salt cracker in her black beak and lobs it into the center of my shabby living room. Such is rendered the fool, comrade. Or didn’t your mother tell you? Now be a good host and fix this bird a proper meal.

It has been two weeks since Vega moved in. Three knocks awaken us on this chilly Saturday morning. Woock woock, whispers Vega from her new roost atop the armoire. Pani Hansmannova. It’s only as I open the door that it occurs to me that I’m still in my long johns.

“Pani Hansmannova, good morning.”

“Samo.” She looks me up and down from behind the brim of her black-framed glasses, her hazel eyes made bug-sized by the extra thick lenses. “I see I woke you.”

She’s a plump woman in the old Slavic way, how it shows in her round upper cheeks and inflated midsection. Strong and stable. For a white-haired pensioner, she maintains a tight grip on her tenants. Fierce alacrity, direct like a cattle prod. She could reach two bare hands into a pot of boiling water without flinching. She’s likable that way, with her tacit demand for sober courtesy and, by God, don’t be thick. Don’t trifle with someone who has waited in line for bread rations. Kowtow if a wild bird, uncaged and undeclared, is hiding somewhere in your one-bedroom Petržalka flat.

“Only barely. I was on my way to put the coffee on.”

I think I hear a faint ruffling of feathers somewhere behind me. The super’s searching eyes put a quiver into my frayed nerves.

“Pour me a cup. I have something to discuss with you.”

I can’t keep this up much longer. The tells are shamefully obvious as I pass through the living room on my way to the kitchen: a water bowl on the far sill with a blue feather floating in it; salt-cracker crumbles on the end table; a streak of white excrement running down one side of the armoire. All that, and mine might be the only flat with an open window during the late fall cold that has recently swept in across the Austrian border. Vega insists on it.

“Ježíš Maria, boy. Is a window open? It’s four degrees centigrade, for God’s sake.”

I put a warm cup of coffee into Pani Hansmannova’s hands.

“My mistake. Must have left it open. I cooked with heavy garlic last night.” I rush to shut the window. “The whole place stunk.”

Still no sign of Vega. The super sets the cup down next to what could be mistaken for spilled milk, but is definitely a faded splotch of crusty white bird shit.

“Listen. We have a strict policy here. No pets.”

“I—”

“Let me finish.”

Now Vega pokes her head up above the top trim of the armoire and quietly hops up to perch on the edge, all in full view over Pani Hansmannova’s shoulder.

“It’s strict, Samo. In ’95 they evicted a single mother who brought home a mangy little street kitten to cheer her ailing son.”

I try to keep my eyes fixed on her as Vega spreads her wings to hop a moon-gravity half turn. She defecates before turning to face the center of the room again.

“Now, for the life of me I cannot find an explanation for this squalor you live in. This filth. But I’ve a hunch I won’t like it if it is what I think it is.”

Vega pushes her wings out and pokes her head forward, open-beaked and gawking.

“Pani Hansmannova—”

“Please, Samo. Really, I am old and without lovemaking for two decades.”

Vega recoils, bobs her head side to side in disgust. The super waves a weatherworn finger at me.

“Frankly, I don’t care anymore. To live in peace is my only desire. Only take care of it, or I’ll make it so your visa expires before you find another place anywhere in the borough.”

At the door, Pani Hansmannova stops. Vega ducks back behind the top trim of the armoire.

“By the way, did you hear about this business with the painting? It’s in the paper. Why no sorela belongs in a home to begin with. An artifact! What scandal!”

Once the door is closed, Vega flies down onto the couch where she tosses onto her side, a magpie’s way of asking me to rub her breast feathers. Kek kek kek, she calls as she rolls back to her feet. It’s a bird. It’s a plane.

“Please, shut up.”

Woooock, she continues. What a splendid relic, that Hansmannova. National treasure. Oh, he’s heard, Mrs. Super. He’s definitely heard.

Old Town

Odd thing to cross the bridge to Old Town with a magpie perched on my shoulder. The bus driver lets me on, but at the next stop the MHD ticket checker isn’t having it. Actually, he tells me to “fuck off with that thing,” if I understand correctly. So I decide to walk the last leg in lieu of a transfer.

Wock wock wock, Vega calls. Where to?

“Jančar residence.”

While I buzz up to Jano, an unhoused man asks us for a smoke, regards Vega as if she’s another stiff with ten cigarettes tucked into her breast pocket.

“Fancy, fancy,” says the man.

He motions toward the door. When he was still alive, Jano’s father befriended my mother in the art trade, right around the time the command economy stood up Pani Hansmannova’s panelaky on the other side of the river. Party man. Enough cachet to lay hold of a place on a cobblestone street near Rybárska brána, in an old building with a large oaken door no less. On his deathbed, he handed Jano the deed and keys, told him the code to a hidden vault in the flat. His favorite work he kept for himself, my mother told me. The partisan standing on guard.

“Dalej,” crackles Jano’s cheerful voice through the intercom, just the pretense I need to turn the man away.

Kek kek kek! Vega calls. Off with you and don’t you know! The man limps on toward the old theater, cursing Americans and their stupid birds.

Jano’s flat is immaculate, arranged with low furniture and minimalist end pieces. A long arc lamp with marble base dangles a chrome half globe over the reading chair by the far window. Everything as crisp, silver, and white as the first time I saw it, distributed with architectural precision. Principled and sound. Jano Jančar top to bottom.

“Samo. Too long. Now tell me, is there a crow on your shoulder, or have I finally cracked?”

“A magpie. Her name is Vega.”

“Pleased to meet you, Vega. And good to see you again, coward.”

He shoves me gently, playfully, but with narrowed green eyes sharp enough to cut diamonds. Beyond him, the false door to the gallery he showed me the first time I was here, the blank space on the wall that had appeared in the interim.

“Damned fucking fool.”

Woooock, calls Vega. Sviňa!

“She knows.”

“All of it?” asks Jano.

Woock wooock.

“She agrees. I’m a shit.”

“Whole thing is a shit. Bread was stale. Burčiak unfit to drink. Hard to tell who Anton’s people are. Maybe he didn’t even know.”

“An absolute shit, Jano.”

“Bah. You’re no shit, my dear.”

Woooooooooock. Vega’s call rattles the mirror hanging on the far wall.

“See?” says Jano. “The bird agrees. Let’s drink to it.”

As Jano turns toward the kitchen, Vega departs my shoulder to head him off. The balcony door swings open, with it a gust of steady wind that floats her like an up-mountain thermal. She looks like she’s treading water the way she beats her pearl-tipped wings just above the eyeline of my only friend in the city. In a moment, she relaxes to let the wind sustain her in flight, just as she and her cousins like to do on high ridges of the Small Carpathians.

Wock wock-a wock wock she calls. As God intended!

“Christ, Samo. What is this?”

Wooock she calls again. Quiet!

“I think she fancies you. That or she’s punishing me.”

Wock pjur weer, she sings. Wock pjur weer. They didn’t kill you, now. Did they? How nice, how nice. How nice to be alive.

“Vega.”

This ornithology is entirely new. She comes to me then, landing at my feet and rolling over the way she liked to do back in Apartment 8.

“Vega?”

In a moment she’s on her feet, crow hopping through the open balcony door and out into the glare cast by the blanket of low clouds dominating the sky. She boosts herself up to the railing with a single flap of the wings, stretches them wide once more before dipping down out of sight. As soon as she’s gone, the wind dies and Jano turns around to face me. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his handsome nose. I’ve never seen such an opulent smile.

Chorvátsky Grob

For all I know, Vega could have been one of the crows roosting out in the man’s vineyard that night at Anton’s. Jano had invited me to break bread. I’d just come to Bratislava and he was my only contact.

“It’s goose season,” he told me.

We were sipping wine in the gallery. Three framed sketches along a short and narrow hallway, the sorela under a mounted brass picture light at the end. Family icon, he said. A rare work. And those sketches are your mother’s.

“Anton has a cellar. He’s in the trade.”

In the darkness I could only just make out the vine rows before we descended into the underground fermentation room. Surrounded on all sides by large metallic tanks, we stood under a single fluorescent light. Anton held court at the wooden table, handing out fresh bread topped with goose fat, freshly chopped white onion, and sliced homemade klobasa. There was plenty for all of us there, Jano, myself, and two of Anton’s colleagues.

“Tell us about your American friend, Janko.”

Anton walked me to one of the fermentation tanks, where he drew me a glass of cloudy yellow cider.

“Bur-čiak,” he said deliberately. “Cider wine,” now in English.

“Our parents were quite close in the seventies. His mother was an artist. And he speaks Slovak, you cow.”

Anton raised an eyebrow at me.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Not so well, I’m afraid.” The wine tasted like suspicious champagne. Sweet, bubbly, and possibly dangerous.

“Nonsense. You barely have an accent.” Anton’s shoulder slap nearly spilled my drink.

Soon Anton and the colleagues were good and tipsy, bantering loudly in a manner I could just barely understand. Could have been my half-learned understanding of the vernacular. More likely, it was the sweet terrible nectar that Anton was siphoning into my distended belly. Before my glass ever reached empty, he’d whistle me over to the spigot again for a refill. Something about the gold chain and black polo t-shirt—the tight designer jeans and Italian loafers—made it impossible for me to decline.

“Your Yankee can drink, Janko. Thought he was another one of your buzeranti.”

In my condition I mistook the word for another of Anton’s digs. But it wasn’t, judging by the subtle shift in energy that came over the room. The colleagues were staring down forward at nothing, both of them red-faced and swaying.

“Go fuck yourself, Anton,” said Jano.

I soon realized I was the only one laughing. Drunk, drunk.

“See? Even he knows it, the sviňa.” This time Anton slapped my shoulder hard enough to spill the burčiak from my glass.

“No, no. Jano just wanted to show me the…what was it, Janko? The partisan?”

Someone’s eyes darted to and from me so fast I nearly missed it. One of the colleagues now suddenly alert.

“All manner of gossip about Jančar party ties. C’mon, Janko. I’m only kidding.” Anton stepped through me toward Jano to grab him by the neck. He tousled his hair with a rough hand.

“Right, you little buzerant?”

I desperately wanted to step in, but there was no language for me to use. What words I had in the first place, Anton’s vintage had long drowned in my foggy brain. So I stood there like a stuffed pig.

Sviňa.

Jano finally wrested his head from the chubby bastard’s grip.

“That’s enough, if you goddamn please, Anton. Stop.”

The colleagues and I watched as Jano gathered himself on the other side of the goose table. He smoothed the front of his sweater, quietly mumbling to himself. Finally, he picked up his glass and took a long drink.

“Say your goodbyes, Samo.”

I looked at Anton, whose greasy lips now held an unlit cigarette. He smiled at me with glassy drunk eyes. On the way out, Jano told me I’m a damn chatty fool. A damned, chatty, drunk American fool. This much I understood.

The Tram Home

Before the tram home from Jano’s place in Old Town, I stop in Hlavná Stanica to buy tickets for the big train to Slovenia. I’m feeling the swig of vodka from the man who sat next to me on a park bench. We drank while waiting for the transfer on the way here, no bird this time to shoo him off.

“American…foo. I think I still have a brother in New York. Astoria, maybe. I went there once. Big wide streets is all I remember. Big wide streets and tall buildings.”

I’d been there once myself, with my mother. I pictured it while a murder socialized around the fountain in front of us. Sadly, it didn’t include the bird I was looking for.

“Crows, car horns, and dirty pigeons,” I said.

Nouns and adjectives. At the ticket counter, my language starts to fail me altogether. Vtak, I say to the lady at the ticket window, instead of vlak.

“No bird for Ljubljana. Train, yes,” she jokes. She slides two round-trip tickets under the window. “Train, yes.”

Back in Apartment 8, a tall glass of orange juice helps the buzz subside. Na zdravie,  I say to no one. It’s the one phrase I’m still confident in. I toast the man on the bench and then the apartment across from my window. I toast Vega and Pani Hansmannova. The latter hasn’t said another word to me since I took the magpie to meet Jano. Already Vega has become a fond nostalgia I can no longer make out, one I see in my mind but cannot be sure of. Like the partisan standing guard. I toast her, too.

The clock gives me fifteen minutes. My suitcase is packed and waiting in the bedroom, us having planned the trip a week before at Anton’s. The bowl is still on the sill, though the blue feather now lays flat on the water’s surface, each of its tiny fibers completely soaked through. A stain like a short downward spill of off-white paint still graces the armoire. Any native could smell the act from a kilometer away.

My suitcase makes primitive music as I drag it down the stairwell and into the street. A very good man is waiting for me in an old Citroen outside the apartment block. He honks twice and it reminds me once more of Vega. She’d chide me for saying that. Kek, kek, kek! A magpie honks more beautifully than that, sviňa! True, the car sounds more like a goose calling out beside a manmade lake. Or a lonely midnight tram.

Honk, honk.

The hurt bird, not yet dead.

Guide to the Slovak language used in this story:
sviňa: pig
Ty Maďar: literally, “you Hungarian”; used commonly by Slovaks as a pejorative
sorela: Official art style of Stalinist Czechoslovakia
Pani: something akin to “Mrs.”
Chorvátsky Grob: Literally, “Croatian grave”; also the name of a village outside of Bratislava
Petržalka: Borough of Bratislava known for its Communist-Socialist-era apartment blocks
Ježíš Maria: Literally, “Jesus Maria,” a common exclamation among Slovaks, especially older ones
MHD: Mestská hromadná doprava (Municipal Mass Transit)
panelaky: slang term for the many Communist-Socialist-era apartment blocks throughout Petržalka and the rest of Eastern Europe
Dalej: literally, “come further”; used to invite someone in who has knocked on the door
burčiak: cloudy grape cider extracted during the winemaking process
buzerant (plural, buzeranti): bugger; bummer (homophobic slur)
Na zdravie: cheers
vtak: bird
vlak: train

Anthony Martin lives in San Diego. He once called Bratislava home. His words appear in Funicular Magazine, The Black Fork Review, LEON Literary Review, Maudlin House, BULL, and elsewhere.

Published July 15 2025