The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski [34]
In the late afternoon, as the sun was setting, I saw the first farm buildings. When I approached, some dogs leapt out from behind a fence and rushed at me. I crouched before the fence, waving my hands vigorously, hopping like a frog, howling, and throwing stones. The dogs halted astonished, uncertain of who I was and how to act. A human being had suddenly acquired dimensions unknown to them. While they stared at me, dumfounded, their snouts bent sideways, I jumped over the fence.
Their barking and my shrieks brought out the owner of the hut. When I saw him I immediately realized that by an unhappy quirk of fortune I had returned to the same village from which I had fled the night before. The peasant’s face was familiar, too familiar: I had seen him often at the carpenter’s hut.
He recognized me at once and shouted something to a farmhand, who rushed in the direction of the carpenter’s hut, while another farmhand kept watch over me, restraining the dogs at their leashes. The carpenter came, followed by his wife.
The first blow pitched me off the fence directly at his feet. He raised me and held me so I would not fall and slapped me again and again. Then, holding me like a cat by the neck, he dragged me to his farm, toward the charred smell of the smoldering ruins of the barn. Once there he threw me down on a pile of manure. He delivered one more blow to my head and I fainted.
When I came to, the carpenter was standing nearby preparing a sizable sack. I remembered that he used to drown sick cats in sacks like this. I flung myself at his feet, but the peasant kicked me away without a word and calmly continued preparing the sack.
Suddenly I recalled that the carpenter had once told his wife about partisans who hid their war trophies and supplies in old bunkers. I crawled toward him again, this time swearing that if he would not drown me, I would show him a pillbox full of old boots, uniforms, and military belts, which I had discovered during my escape.
The carpenter was intrigued, though he feigned disbelief. He squatted at my side, gripping me hard. I repeated my offer, trying as dispassionately as I could to assure him of the great value of the objects.
At dawn he harnessed an ox to his cart, tied me by a string to his hand, took along a large ax, and, saying nothing to his wife or neighbors, set off with me.
On the way I racked my brains for a way to tear myself loose; the string was strong. After we had arrived, the carpenter halted the cart and we walked toward the bunker. We climbed onto the hot roof; for a while I acted as if I had forgotten the direction of the opening. Finally we reached it. The carpenter avidly pushed aside the tin panel. The stench hit our nostrils, and from the interior the rats squeaked, blinded by the light. The peasant leaned over the opening, but he could not see for the moment because his eyes were not accustomed to the darkness.
I slowly moved to the opposite side of the opening, which now separated the carpenter from me, pulling taut the string by which I was tied. I knew that unless I succeeded in escaping in the next few seconds, the peasant would kill me and throw me into the depths.
Horror-stricken, I tugged suddenly at the string, so hard that it cut my wrist to the bone. My abrupt leap pulled the carpenter forward. He tried to rise, yelled, waved his hand, and dropped into the maw of the pillbox with a dull thud. I pressed my feet against the uneven concrete flange over which the slab had rested. The string grew tauter, scraped against the rough edge of the opening, and then snapped. At the same time I heard from below the scream and the broken, babbling cry of a man. A fine shudder shook the concrete walls of the bunker. I crept, terrified, toward the opening, directing into the interior a beam of daylight reflected from a piece of tin sheet.
The massive body of the carpenter was only partly visible. His face and half of his arms were lost under the surface of the sea of rats, and wave after wave of rats was