The Painted Bird

19

Early in the morning one of the teachers called me out. I was being summoned to the office of the principal. At first I thought it must be news from Gavrila, but on the way I began to have my doubts.

The principal was waiting for me in her office, accompanied by the member of the Social Commission who thought he had known my parents before the war. They greeted me cordially and asked me to sit down. I noticed that they were both rather nervous, though they tried to conceal it. I looked anxiously around, and heard voices in an adjoining office.

The man from the Commission went into the other room and talked to someone in there. Then he opened the door wide. A man and a woman stood inside.

They seemed somehow familiar, and I could hear my heart beating under the star of my uniform. Forcing an expression of indifference, I scrutinized their faces. The resemblance was striking; these two could be my parents. I clutched my chair while thoughts raced through my mind like ricocheting bullets. My parents . . . I didn’t know what to do; admit that I recognized them or pretend that I didn’t?

They came closer. The woman bent over me. Her face was suddenly creased by tears. The man, nervously adjusting the spectacles on his moist nose, supported her on his arm. He also was shaking with sobs. But he quickly overcame them and addressed me. He spoke to me in Russian and I noted that his speech was as fluent and beautiful as Gavrila’s. He asked me to unbutton my uniform: on my chest, on the left side, there should be a birthmark.

I knew I had the birthmark. I hesitated, wondering whether to expose it. If I did, everything would be lost; there would be no doubt that I was their son. I pondered for a few minutes, but I felt sorry for the crying woman. I slowly unbuttoned my uniform.

There was no way out of the situation, no matter how one looked at it. Parents, as Gavrila often told me, had a right to their children. I was not yet grown up: I was only twelve. Even if they did not want to, it was their duty to take me away.

I looked at them again. The woman smiled at me through the tear-smudged powder on her face. The man excitedly rubbed his hands together. They did not look like people who would beat me. On the contrary, they seemed frail and ailing.

My uniform was now open and the birthmark plainly visible. They bent over me, crying, hugging and kissing me. I was undecided again. I knew that I could run away anytime, jump on one of the crowded trains and ride it until no one could trace me. But I wanted to be found by Gavrila, and therefore it was wise not to run away. I knew that rejoining my parents meant the end of all my dreams of becoming a great inventor of fuses for changing people’s color, of working in the land of Gavrila and Mitka, where today was already tomorrow.

My world was becoming cramped like the attic of a peasant’s shed. At all times a man risked falling into the snares of those who hated and wanted to persecute him, or into the arms of those who loved and wished to protect him.

I could not readily accept the idea of suddenly becoming someone’s real son, of being caressed and cared for, of having to obey people, not because they were stronger and could hurt me, but because they were my parents and had rights which no one could take away from them.

Of course, parents had their uses when a child was very small. But a boy of my age should be free from any restriction. He should be able to choose for himself the people whom he wished to follow and learn from. Yet I could not decide to run away. I looked at the tearful face of the woman who was my mother, at the trembling man who was my father, uncertain whether they should stroke my hair or pat my shoulder, and some inner force restrained me and forbade me to fly off. I suddenly felt like Lekh’s painted bird, which some unknown force was pulling toward his kind.

My mother remained with me alone in the room; my father went out to take care of the formalities. She said that I would be happy with her and my father, that I could do anything I wanted. They would make me a new uniform, an exact copy of the one I was wearing.

As I listened to all this, I recalled the hare which Makar once caught in a trap. He was a fine large animal. One could sense in him a drive for freedom, for powerful leaps, playful tumbles, and swift escapes. Locked in a cage he raged, stamped his feet, beat against the walls. After a few days Makar, furious over his restlessness, threw a heavy tarpaulin over him. The hare struggled and fought under it, but finally gave up. Eventually he became tame and ate from my hand. One day Makar got drunk and left the door of the cage open. The hare jumped out and started toward the meadow. I thought he would plunge into the tall grass with one huge leap and never be seen again. But he seemed to savor his freedom and just sat down, with ears pricked up. From the distant fields and woods came sounds that only he could hear and understand, smells and fragrances that only he could appreciate. It was all his own; he had left the cage behind.

Suddenly there was a change in him. The alert ears flopped, he sagged somehow, and grew smaller. He jumped once and his whiskers perked up, but he did not run away. I whistled loudly in the hope that it would bring him to his senses, make him realize that he was free. He only turned around and sluggishly, as though suddenly aged and shrunken, moved toward the hutch. On his way he stopped for a while, stood up, and looked back once again with ears pricked; then he passed the rabbits gazing at him and jumped into the cage. I closed the door, though it was unnecessary. He now carried the cage in himself; it bound his brain and heart and paralyzed his muscles. Freedom, which had set him apart from other resigned, drowsy rabbits, left him like the wind-driven fragrance evaporating from crushed, dried clover.

My father came back. Both he and my mother hugged me and looked me over and exchanged some comments about me. It was time to leave the orphanage. We went to say goodbye to the Silent One. He glanced suspiciously at my parents, shaking his head, and refused to greet them.

We went out into the street and my father helped to carry my books. There was chaos everywhere. Ragged, dirty, haggard people with sacks on their backs were returning to their homes, quarreling with those who had occupied them during the war. I walked between my parents, feeling their hands on my shoulders and hair, feeling smothered by their love and protection.

They took me to their apartment. This they had been able to borrow with great difficulty after they had learned that a boy answering their son’s description was at the local Center, and a meeting could be arranged. At the apartment a surprise awaited me. They had another child, a four-year-old boy. My parents explained to me that he was an orphan whose parents and older sister had been killed. He had been saved by his old nurse, who handed him to my father at some point in their wanderings during the third year of the war. They had adopted him, and I could see that they loved him very much.

This only contributed to my doubts. Would it not be better for me to stay on my own and wait for Gavrila, who would eventually adopt me? I would much prefer to be alone again, wandering from one village to the next, from one town to another, never knowing what might happen. Here everything was very predictable.

The apartment was small, consisting of one room and a kitchen. There was a washroom on the stairs. It was stuffy and we were crowded, getting in one another’s way. My father had a heart condition. If anything upset him he grew pale and perspiration covered his face. Then he would swallow some pills. My mother went out at dawn to wait in the endless queues for food. When she returned, she started cooking and cleaning.

The small boy was a nuisance. He insisted on playing whenever I was reading the newspaper reporting the Red Army successes. He would clutch my pants and knock over my books. One day he annoyed me so much that I grabbed his arm and squeezed it hard. Something cracked and the boy screamed madly. My father called a doctor; the bone was broken. That night, when the child was in bed with his arm in a cast, he whimpered quietly and glanced at me in terror. My parents looked at me without a word.

I often left secretly to meet with the Silent One. One day he did not turn up at the appointed time. They told me later at the orphanage that he had been transferred to another city.

Spring arrived. On a rainy day in May the news came that the war was over. People danced in the streets, kissing and hugging one another. In the evening we heard the ambulances throughout the city picking up all the people injured in the brawls which broke out at the drinking parties. During the days that followed I visited the orphanage frequently, hoping to find a letter from Gavrila or Mitka. But there was none.

I read the newspapers carefully, trying to figure out what was happening in the world. Not all the armies were due to return home. Germany was to be occupied and it might be years before Gavrila and Mitka would return.

Life in the city was becoming more difficult. Every day masses of people arrived from all over the country, hoping that it might be easier to make a living in an industrial center than in the country, and that they would be able to earn back all that they had lost. Unable to find work or living quarters, bewildered people tramped the streets, struggled for seats in streetcars, buses, and restaurants. They were nervous, short-tempered, and quarrelsome. It seemed that everyone believed himself chosen by fate merely because he had survived the war, and felt entitled to deference on that account.

One afternoon my parents gave me some money for the cinema. It was a Soviet film about a man and a girl who had a date to meet at six o’clock on the first day after the war.

There was a crowd at the box office and I waited patiently in line for several hours. When my turn came I discovered that I had lost one of my coins. The cashier, seeing that I was a mute, put my ticket aside to be picked up when I brought the rest of the change. I rushed home. Not more than half an hour later I came back with the money and tried to get my ticket at the box office. An attendant told me to stand in line again. I did not have my slate so I tried to explain with signs that I had already stood in line and that my ticket was waiting for me. He did not try to understand. To the amusement of the people waiting outside he took me by the ear and roughly pushed me out. I slipped and fell on the cobblestones. Blood started dripping from my nose onto my uniform. I quickly returned home, put a cold compress on my face, and started plotting my revenge.

In the evening, as my parents prepared for bed, I got dressed. Anxiously they asked me where I was going. I told them in signs that I was simply going for a walk. They tried to convince me that it was dangerous to go out at night.

I went straight to the theater. There were not many people waiting at the box office and the attendant who had thrown me out earlier was idly strolling in the yard. I picked up two good-sized bricks from the street and sneaked up the staircase of a building adjoining the cinema. I dropped an empty bottle from the third-floor landing. As I expected, the attendant came quickly to the spot where it fell. When he bent down to examine it I dropped the two bricks. And then I ran down the steps into the street.

After this incident I went out only at night. My parents tried to protest, but I would not listen. I slept during the day and at dusk I was ready to start my night prowl.

All cats are the same in the dark, says the proverb. But it certainly did not apply to people. With them it was just the opposite. During the day they were all alike, running in their well-defined ways. At night they changed beyond recognition. Men sauntered along the street, or jumped like grasshoppers from the shadow of one streetlamp into the next, taking occasional swigs from the bottles they carried in their pockets. In the dark gaping doorways there were women with open blouses and tight skirts. Men approached them with a staggering gait and then they disappeared together. From behind the anemic city shrubbery one heard the squeals of couples making love. In the ruins of a bombed house several boys were raping a girl reckless enough to have ventured out alone. An ambulance turned a distant corner with a screech of tires; a fight broke out in a nearby tavern and there was the crash of broken glass.

I was soon familiar with the night city. I knew quiet lanes where girls younger than myself solicited men older than my father. I found places where men dressed in smart clothes with gold watches on their wrists traded in objects the very possession of which could get them years in prison. I found an inconspicuous house from which young men took piles of leaflets to post on government buildings, posters which the militiamen and soldiers tore down in rage. I saw the militia organize a manhunt and I saw armed civilians killing a soldier. In daytime the world was at peace. The war continued at night.

Every night I visited a park near the zoological garden, on the outskirts of the city. Men and women assembled there to trade, drink, and play cards. These people were good to me. They would give me chocolate which was hard to get, and they taught me how to throw a knife and how to snatch one from a man’s hand. In return I was asked to deliver small packages to various addresses, avoiding militiamen and plain-clothesmen. When I returned from these missions the women drew me to their perfumed bodies and encouraged me to lie down with them and caress them in the ways I had learned with Ewka. I felt at ease among these people whose faces were concealed in the darkness of night. I did not bother anyone, I did not get into anyone’s way. They regarded my being mute as an asset which ensured my discretion when I carried out my missions.

But one night it all ended. Blinding searchlights flashed from behind the trees and police whistles shrilled in the silence. The park was surrounded by militiamen and we were all taken to jail. On the way I nearly broke the finger of a militia officer who pushed me too roughly, ignoring the Red Star on my chest.

The next morning my parents came to take me away. I was brought out all dirty and with my uniform in shreds after a sleepless night. I was sorry to leave my friends, the night people. My parents looked at me puzzled but said nothing.