The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski [25]
I heard some sound from the village. Afraid that the miller might wake up, I went on my way, touching my eyes from time to time. I walked more cautiously now, for I knew that eyeballs did not have strong roots. When one bent down they hung like apples from a tree and could easily drop out. I resolved to jump across fences with my head held up; but on my first try I stumbled and fell down. I lifted my fingers fearfully to my eyes to see whether they were still there. After carefully checking that they opened and closed properly, I noticed with delight the partridges and thrushes in flight. They flew very fast but my sight could follow them and even overtake them as they soared under the clouds, becoming smaller than raindrops. I made a promise to myself to remember everything I saw; if someone should pluck out my eyes, then I would retain the memory of all that I had seen for as long as I lived.
5
My duty was to set snares for Lekh, who sold birds in several neighboring villages. There was no one who could compete with him in this. He worked alone. He took me in because I was very small, thin, and light. Thus I could set traps in places where Lekh himself could not reach: on slender branches of trees, in dense clumps of nettle and thistle, on the waterlogged islets in the bogs and swamps.
Lekh had no family. His hut was filled with birds of all varieties, from the common sparrow to the wise owl. The peasants bartered food for Lekh’s birds, and he did not have to worry about essentials: milk, butter, sour cream, cheeses, bread, hunter’s sausage, vodka, fruits, and even cloth. He would collect all this from the nearby villages while carrying around his caged birds and hawking their beauty and singing abilities.
Lekh had a pimpled, freckled face. The peasants claimed that such faces belong to those who steal eggs from swallows’ nests; Lekh himself asserted that this was due to his spitting carelessly into fire in his youth, claiming that his father was a village scribe who wanted him to become a priest. But he was drawn to the forests. He studied the ways of birds and envied them their ability to fly. One day he escaped from his father’s hut and began to wander from village to village, from forest to forest, like a wild and abandoned bird. In time he began to catch birds. He observed the wondrous habits of quail and larks, could imitate the carefree call of the cuckoo, the screech of the magpie, the hooting of the owl. He knew the courting habits of the bullfinch; the jealous fury of the landrail, circling a nest abandoned by its female; and the sorrow of the swallow whose nesting place was wantonly destroyed by young boys. He understood the secrets of the hawk’s flight and admired the stork’s patience in hunting for frogs. He envied the nightingale its song.
Thus he passed his youth amidst the birds and trees. Now he was rapidly growing bald, his teeth were rotting, the skin of his face was sagging into folds, and he was becoming slightly shortsighted. So he settled down for good in a hut he built himself, in which he occupied one corner and filled the others with birdcages. At the very bottom of one of these cages a narrow space was found for me.
Lekh spoke often of his birds. I listened avidly to everything he had to say. I learned that flocks of storks always came from beyond distant oceans on St. Joseph’s day