Mouroir

Birds

There was the house of my old father on the outer edge of the town against the first gentle slope, among clusters of reeds trying to frighten away the birds with a pattering of leaves, and other trees with dark green foliage and equally green the splotches and grooves of shadows. Against the plain yellow walls of the upright house, very high veranda in front all along the length of the house, bench behind plants in tins on the stoep, my old father a bit seedy on the bench in the insipid autumn sun. Birds all over, a flock-a-flap of birds, a chirring and a chirping and a cheep-cheeping and a chattering and a chopping of bills and fluted tones; birds in the branches, in the dust baths of the plot of ground, on the roof ridge and the chimneypot, on stoep and windowsills — a constant up and down and fluttering of wings as if old blue bedcovers are ripped in fist-sized strips. Sometimes my father slowly walks home up the hill with on either side of him an attendant in uniform and then his head explodes with light. Just once a year the house is taken over by a league of veteran war criminals, do they stage their annual gathering there. Peep down the trapdoor into the cellar: there they sit around a table stacked high with quicklime bleached bones, the boniness of their skulls in the murky light, the protuberances above the eye-ridges and the lumpy skins over the necks, the purple hollows under the eyes. Do they sit there purling with light-flames in the sockets, caressing with emaciated bird-skeleton hands the musty thighbones and ribcages.

But when it is summer with clouds in procession like carnival floats shinily showering water and other days absolutely blue we are on C’s farm among the ultimate hummocks here and lagoons edged with coarse grass and bulrushes there hard by the sea. Do we drive in C’s jeep with the flaps against the rain over pasture and fallow land always back to the farmyard. C’s head is greyish and bent with compassion for all life. His wife is called Elefteria. Elefteria wears big black farm shoes and she has wrinkles all around the mouth. She feeds the ducks and the Muscovy ducks, the turkeys and the peacocks and the geese and the bantams. She feeds also the sparrows⁴ and the robins and the babblers and the shrikes and why not the starlings too. When you are on you best behaviour and ask most sweetly you may, exceptionally, be allowed into the parlour. Come into my parlour, said the flier to the spy. Walk softly-softly, don’t make any unconsidered gestures, first stand as still as death. Paintings are hanging behind glass there on the walls. The one picture depicts birds. Now approach on your toes. Look intently, listen well: that painting is a window through which you may have a view of a room full of doves. And then the dove choir starts singing, so that your chest may be filled to the lump in your throat by the dark, poignant, queer song — an enchanting old French freedom anthem. It’s Elefteria who trained the birds in this way. What unity! What a union! What a unit! Each dove is capable of one phoneme or sibilant only, but the ensemble is orchestrated to a swelling cantata. And blinded by tears you move along to the kitchen. Meisie, the older daughter, enters from outside with a bundle of wood and goes to squat against the wall. She is ash coloured, she is an alcoholic, but when you look more closely at her you will notice how attractive she still is and how nicely smooth her thighs for someone who spends the whole day on the land gathering fire sticks. Minnaar, that’s the son of C and Elefteria, is a heretic somewhere far away, and a second daughter teaches in Robertson, but Meisie has never been further than the farm. She laughs modestly and more than just a little tipsy. Under her skirt she is naked. And now the doves in flight drag a sparking veil over the loft, and away! C stands on the whitewashed steps, his grey head smoking in the sun. In days of old⁵ there were constantly adopted children in his house. Now only one is left (times have changed) — a leprous boy. He comes out, laughs, claps his dull hands with the rose-coloured weals, claps his hands with joy because now that it no longer rains he will be allowed to go for a short ride on one of the many shiny bicycles parked against the wall.