The Roar of Morning

TWO

Birds die in the blue of morning. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, or read anything about it, so I assume I’m the only one who knows about a phenomenon that takes place at every sunrise on the southern slopes of the Great Mountain, when birds dive deliberately to their deaths against a sheer cliff face.

I have observed this strange spectacle four times now, and each time it has moved me deeply. In order not to be seen by the birds, you must conceal yourself well before daybreak, because the transition from dark to light is swift, and after that it takes only a few minutes for the birds to emerge from the trees in the valley below. From such a high vantage point the sunrise is a rather different experience than from my terrace. First you see the hazy black of night, deep in colour to start with but quickly turning to a bluish glow that is drawn across the landscape like a semitransparent veil. Low in the eastern sky, faint streaks of greyish white and pink appear, but are soon dispelled by the first rays of the sun, which hesitantly define the outlines of things and then drench the whole landscape with white light, bringing it to life. At that moment the birds burst out of the treetops with piercing cries and fly upwards with violent wing beats. The sound of their communal screeching can be heard from far away. Suddenly they fall silent, and for a moment they appear to be hanging motionless in the sky. But then they shoot forward, resuming their shrill cries, and dive at great speed towards the cliffs, the sunlight gleaming on their yellow heads and bright green wings. Just before they hit the wall of rock, they bank sharply and soar upwards, grazing the edge of the cliff and heading east towards the new sun. But two or three of the birds do not break their headlong descent or soar upwards: they swoop on towards the cliff and are dashed to pieces against it.

Each time I witness it this spectacle seems absurd. Firstly there is the contradiction of the magnificent birth of a new day and the suicide of the birds, creatures that for me epitomise nature. Then there is the abrupt way in which the birds about to crash break off their aggressive screeching at the sun, without leaving so much as an echo. Yet when I sit tipsily on my terrace in silence and darkness, and the night, oblivious to the emptiness and melancholy of mankind, is populated with monsters, before the cocks have crowed, I am amazed that the scene with those birds makes such an impression on me: haven’t I always, even as a boy, associated the dawn with death?

In my nocturnal reveries I have often puzzled over the antics of the birds at the Great Mountain. At first I decided it was an optical illusion, as science knows of no species of bird that practises self-destruction. In the whole animal kingdom, in fact, there are very few examples of animals taking their own lives: voles will drown themselves en masse if they have become too numerous in a particular habitat and conditions are unfavourable; and according to local superstition, scorpions will give themselves a fatal sting if they are in mortal danger and cannot escape. But I quickly reject the idea that I was deluding myself. I wasn’t drunk when I observed the spectacle — and I had seen it not once but four times.

Another hypothesis that seems to me more plausible is that the birds crash to their deaths not because they want to commit suicide, but because they suffer from some biological defect, such as the blindness common in older birds. The inbuilt radar that warns them of obstacles in their flight path may have malfunctioned, or they may have suffered paralysis of the wing muscles during gliding, so that they are unable to gain sufficient height in time.

A third explanation, and one I tend to prefer, is that the self-destruction is a conscious decision taken when the birds are no longer capable of mating.

For all we know, this phenomenon may have some biblical connotation that mere humans are unable to fathom. After all, the scriptures abound with birds of all kinds. Moses warns the people not to make “the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air,” and in his strictures against adultery the author of Proverbs talks about a bird “that hasteth towards the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his wife.”

The Great Mountain, as its name crudely suggests, is the highest peak on the island. Its northeastern slope, on the windward side, has been fenced off and declared a national park. On Sundays tourists come to picnic and gawp at the green gourds and the white and purple orchids. The leeward side is very steep, and inaccessible because of the dense vegetation and the piles of boulders. Only the heroically inclined climb to the summit from this side. I’m one of them, though I have never actually reached the top. I stop halfway, because that is where the birds give their early-morning display.

Perhaps it’s time to go and see the birds again; it must have been six months since I was there.

On that occasion I left home at about three in the afternoon after the usual set-to with the dogs. I was going to be away all night, so they had to be fed. But it wasn’t their usual feeding time; all four left their food untouched and stared accusingly at me as if I had betrayed them. I hoped that as soon as I had gone they would pounce on the liver, their favourite dish, because if they didn’t the ants would make short work of it and the dogs would go hungry until the following morning. In fact, the animals started playing up the moment I put my shoes on. The few times a year that I wear shoes to go into town they start yelping in chorus because they know I’ll be gone for several hours.

But finally I was ready to leave. On the seat next to me was my old briefcase, stuffed with: a woollen blanket (it can be freezing at night up there among the stars), a half-bottle of whisky (also to keep out the cold — but not a full one, as I did not want to be drunk when I saw the birds, and because I needed to keep a cool head for coming down the next morning — real climbers know that the descent of a mountain is often more dangerous than the ascent), a torch (only to be used in emergencies), a few sandwiches (if I didn’t eat them I could always crumble them up for the birds), a thermos filled with ice-cold pineapple juice (for the thirst and the after-thirst), a reserve packet of cigarettes (just imagine dying for a smoke in the wilderness in the middle of the night!) and a tube of red ointment (the label claimed that it had a soothing effect, promoted the healing of cuts, grazes and other injuries to the skin and was also nongreasy, a nonirritant and soluble in water). When I worked in town I used the briefcase for papers and books, but I had converted it into a rucksack with the help of two old belts, because when you climb mountains you need not only both legs free, but also both hands.

It took only twenty minutes to drive to the Great Mountain. I turned off the asphalt road onto a sandy track, which after a few hundred yards became bumpy and gradually narrowed until it finally ceased to exist. I parked the car, hiding it as well as I could among some tall bushes. On this island unattended cars are often stripped bare; everything that can be removed, unscrewed or ripped off is taken. I didn’t lock the doors, because there are also some high-minded thieves around who are only after money. They rummage through your car and if they don’t find any cash, they just go away. But if all the doors are locked, they feel obliged to break one open.

I strapped the rucksack to my shoulders and set out in good spirits for the foot of the mountain. Outside it was even hotter than it had been in the car; there was scarcely a breath of wind. The sun was halfway across the western sky, at the point where its heat is even more blistering than when it is at its zenith around noon. The terrain was not easy to negotiate: everywhere there were deeply gouged dry river beds dotted with prickly pears and low thorny bushes. I also had to pick my way between the stumps of hundreds of saplings that had been illegally felled for use as fence posts. Everywhere I heard the rustle of lizards; at each step I took, tiny brown creatures darted away. The larger specimens were a dirty blue colour with white patches. I saw no rabbits, although they are plentiful on this mountainside. However, I did find some shallow burrows, skillfully camouflaged and usually containing a litter of three blind young. Nor did I see any deer, although occasional sightings are reported by keen amateur naturalists.

The ground now began to rise steeply and became more wooded: indju and wabi trees that can be found everywhere on the island; paintwood trees with their fantastically fluted trunks; the shorter gourd trees with violet flowers on both branches and trunk, their graceful boughs swaying this way and that suggest a beautiful long-haired woman walking in the wind; and here and there a solid and graceful candle tree with its shiny evergreen leaves. And of course cactuses everywhere, with their vicious spines.

It was a slow and arduous climb. The mountainside was very steep and I had to be careful not to slip. Had I fallen, I could have broken an arm, a leg or even my neck — but at the very least I would have been pierced all over by scores of cactus spines, which break off agonisingly in your flesh. I had already acquired several grazes on my arms and legs, but they were not serious. In the very steep stretches I grabbed a sturdy bush or branch and hauled myself upwards. There were boulders everywhere, but they did not help much. They all looked grey, but when I grabbed hold of one of them, its surface turned out to be so rough that it tore open the skin of my hand, whereas another rock that looked just the same turned out to be so slippery that I could not get a grip on it.

Halfway to my destination I noticed that the vegetation had changed yet again. The prickly pears and columnar cactuses gradually thinned out, and I saw more and more globular cactuses, which soon started to dominate the landscape. There were a few splendid specimens: ribbed spheres adorned with neat ranks of spines and surmounted by a white-haired phallus with pale red flowers. But most of them just looked like some prickly animal that had rolled into a ball. I also saw trees whose names I did not know, some of them swarming with yellow parasites, as well as huge trees that were leaning over at an angle of forty-five degrees but still had not fallen. In an enormous columnar cactus, also leaning precariously between heaven and earth, I saw the nest of a warawara, in the inaccessible site these birds of prey always choose. I reached my destination at about six.

I was exhausted from the climb and needed some time to catch my breath. I drank some pineapple juice and lit a cigarette. In this spot giant hands — perhaps belonging to the same supernatural beings who built the pyramids of Egypt — have scooped out a huge triangle from the mountainside, forming a kind of terrace covered with low undergrowth but as level as a football pitch, with the cliff face as a backdrop. At the top of the cliff some large boulders protruded over the edge. I just hoped they were not planning to roll down on this of all nights. At the front of the terrace was my observation post: a hexagonal pillar of rock without the slightest irregularity that rose from the greenery below like a white bastion. At the top the pillar is hollowed out, creating a giant bathtub, whose rough walls look like the crenellated ramparts of a fortress. A natural stone bridge links the top of the column with the terrace. It had been from behind the fantastically shaped battlements of this fort that I had already observed the birds a couple of times without being seen by them.

Once I had recovered my breath a little, I shouldered the rucksack again, tore some branches off the shrubs and crawled on my hands and knees to my lookout post. Although the stone bridge is about eighteen inches wide and less than six feet long, crossing it is a scary business with the yawning abyss beneath you. But with the help of my guardian angel I reached the far side in one piece. Now I had to hurry, because it would soon be dark.

With the branches I had brought with me, I swept the bathtub as clean as I could. All kinds of vicious creatures could be hiding under the dry leaves and loose stones. I was particularly on my guard against scorpions. I get them in my own house occasionally, but they are the reddish-brown kind whose bite can sting and itch painfully, but which are otherwise harmless. However, their larger black relatives that live under stones and in withered cactuses are much more poisonous and can cause severe pain and fever. Country people say that you also develop a raging thirst, but that you mustn’t drink any water, for then the poison will spread through your body and could be fatal. As a precaution I folded the bottom of my trousers tight around my legs and pulled my socks up over them. God knows what damage the poison glands of those diabolical creatures may do to certain body parts located below the belt. I took the blanket out of the briefcase and laid it down neatly folded in a corner of the fort so that it could serve as a seat for the time being.

Darkness fell quickly. The blue vault of the sky turned grey and the forest below was plunged into semidarkness; only on the highest treetops was there still a soft, silver glimmer that gradually faded. Near the summit of the mountain a young falcon hovered in its brown fledgling’s plumage. The gaps between the bushes on the terrace opposite filled with ghostly silhouettes and mysterious blackness, and a dull red glow lit the steep cliff face. Then everything went dark and the wind got up. In the space of a few moments the setting sun took away all the beauty it had brought. The walls of the fort towered above me and I was sitting in the large square of darkness. I had my first shot of whisky.

Who could say how many slaves had met their deaths in the place where I was now sitting? The island’s black population still tells strange stories about slaves who used to fly back to Africa. They still firmly believe that slaves who had eaten no salt were capable of this feat. The slaves sought out a high place, raised their arms to heaven, and took off on their flight to another continent. I can’t believe that, even three or four hundred years ago, people were stupid enough to think that. But if the stories do have any basis in truth, this spot must have been an ideal takeoff point.

From a military point of view too, the place clearly had strategic importance. Were this island to be invaded — by Venezuela or Cuba, for example — and were the defenders of the town obliged to retreat from superior forces, they could withdraw to this high ground. The troops could camp on the terrace and five or six marksmen could position themselves in this natural fort. The fantastically shaped battlements would not only provide cover from enemy guns, but also enable the defenders to return fire unseen and hold out for a long time against their besiegers, who would be forced to clamber up towards them.

Later that evening the legions of mosquitoes moved into action — annoying little creatures that tried with all their might to get into my nose, ears and eyes. This aggression forced me to light up another cigarette and have a stiff drink. Alcohol, so beneficial and effective against so many things in this world, might also repel insects. In this spot the silence was even more oppressive than on my terrace. But here too the nocturnal darkness that had by now washed over everything had its own sounds: the wind through the trees and around the rocks, the rustling in the undergrowth, the dull thud of a stone dislodged from the cliff face, the unrecognisable call of an animal — sounds that in some mysterious way finally seemed to convey the same message of comfort.

I must have dozed off, because I suddenly awoke with a start as a sharp gust of air struck my face, as if some heavy shape had sped past, narrowly missing me. I recovered from my fright when I saw a large owl glide silently over my lookout post a few times and then swoop down to a rocky niche opposite. It perched upright in the aperture, its chalk-white underside clearly visible, looking like the statues of the Virgin you can see in Catholic shrines.

I had not sighted an owl for years. It is said they can see a hundred times more acutely than human beings, and that their hearing is so sensitive that even on the darkest night they can fly straight towards their prey, mostly mice and lizards, guided only by the tiny noises these creatures make. They swallow the mice and lizards whole and later regurgitate the hair and bones. Perhaps owls should be held up as an example to mankind. They mate for life and use the same nest year after year. There is another species of owl that is feared as a harbinger of death. It has a long, angular body resembling a coffin when it is in flight. If you see one of these, you must cross yourself quickly.

After some time, my white owl flew up out of the niche and, without a screech, disappeared into the night as abruptly as it had come. I decided that I might as well turn in. I spread the blanket out on the rocky ground, had a nightcap, and lay down.

The twentieth century was drawing to a close. I lay on my back and looked up at the silver disc in the sky. I am tall and skinny, so my feet touched the southernmost tip of Argentina and Chile, while my head lay against the coastal ranges of Venezuela. I spread my arms so that my left hand touched the Atlantic coast of Brazil and my right the Pacific seaboard of Peru. I stretched my arms above my head and my fingertips counted the Caribbean islands. It was dark over the whole continent and all the islands, and the darkness lasted the whole night.

In the hidden blackness of the selvas and on the pale, duncoloured beaches, thousands of vague phantoms, the damned from five hundred years of Latin American history, emerge from their shadowy realm to torment the human beings of today, robbing them of their guns and jewels. The aerial roots of the mangrove forest lining the creeks waft their noxious breath over the landscape. Centuries-old trees, their branches malevolently twisted as if they wished to strangle all those who have been silently sinning for so long, wear a satanic leer in their weathered crowns — the grimace of pain and impotence that cannot be erased because it is the suffering and helplessness of our ancestors. We are destined to feel its consequences to our dying day, when we pass on the burden to our firstborn son. Today’s suffering is caused by what happened yesterday. For centuries a passive god has passed by the continent and the islands in silence.

The torch of the sun that appears at dawn brings light but no lightening of the load. This is the primeval sun created in the first chapter of Genesis that surveys the entire continent and all the islands, that knows everything because it can extract every secret from the earth with its piercing light. It stores the gamut of human experience in its fiery womb which, filled to the brim, boils, splits and expels the charred excess in a blinding orgasm that astronomers in Europe and the United States observe as the red excrescences of the solar corona; but it continues uninterrupted on its orbit around the world of men, uncovering new deeds and storing them in its temporarily unburdened womb. The South American sun commits a thousand murders every day, because it is not just the chronicler, but also the instigator of the blackest human deeds. At six in the morning it rises treacherously amid silver streamers that jubilantly unfold, and at six in the evening it smothers itself in the yellowish-red miasma of the swamp that fills the western sky.

In the false dawn of each new day, its first rays unravel the web of the previous night and dispel the last of the morning dew’s sparkling coolness. The continent and the islands awake and know that, on this day like all the others, no one can escape the supremacy of the sun. Knowing itself inviolable, the orb rises ever faster into the sky, embracing all things with its rampant heat. Struggling or resigned, human beings, animals, plants and all inanimate things reluctantly absorb the erectile sultriness. The higher the fireball climbs, the deeper, the deeper the heat penetrates into the gaping pores. Everything and everybody is infected and the carcinoma of heartless deeds can once again start to spread.

I woke up a few times during the night, partly because of the strange surroundings and the hard bed, but also because of the unpleasant thought that I might be stung by a scorpion or some other insect. At one point I tried to look at my wristwatch, but couldn’t make out what time it was. I did not switch on the torch for fear of betraying my presence. Eventually I noticed that the night sky had taken on a lighter hue and from this I concluded that it would soon be daybreak. I folded the blanket neatly into a cushion I could sit on and took up my old position in a corner of the fort. I drank the rest of the pineapple juice and longed for a cigarette, but thought it better not to strike a match.

The dawn was longer coming than I had anticipated. Now and then I thought I could hear the creaking of a windmill, but it must have been something else, as I knew there were no windmills in this high country. It could have been the rattling of the ankle chains of a slave whose ghost, still bearing the scars of the floggings he had suffered, wandered endlessly through the night. This, at least, was how the country people explained such nocturnal noises. The Roman Catholic Church had been unable to expel completely the African god brought from Angola and Calabar, unable to banish the invisible child-snatcher that roams the primeval darkness of the island, unable to suppress the illicit worship of saints.

Finally the sun broke through and the first misty light began to grope its way over the landscape, slowly revealing itself to the greenery and bare boulders in the valley. In the distance the birds flew up from their roosting places in the treetops and raised their coarse screeching to the heavens. High in the air they fell silent, grouped themselves into ragged V-formation and dived down in a swift parabola amid renewed cries. The flock flew upwards again, brushing the top of the cliff face, but I saw that at least two of the birds had not made it. In the place where they had crashed I saw a small crowd of feathers glistening in the sun, like the luminous green of an exploding firework.

I took a swig of whisky and lit a cigarette, greedily inhaling its smoke. It would be best not to tell anyone about this morning ritual of the birds. If it ever becomes widely known, people will come from far and wide to watch. The travel agents in town will advertise in the press, offering excursions to “the only place in the world where splendidly plumaged birds commit mass suicide in the light of the morning sun.” The island authorities would apply for European development funding and use the money to convert the dilapidated private house on the other side of the mountain into a luxury restaurant with an exotic menu. The plateau next to me would be cleared of trees and undergrowth so that open pavilions thatched with palm leaves could be built for tourists to spend the night in. The natural bridge would be fitted with railings and the ramparts of the little fort protected with wire mesh to prevent the children who had been brought along to see the suicidal spectacle from falling off the mountain. The result of all this would, of course, be the rapid departure of the birds from the area.

The brief display was over and it was time to begin the descent and head home. I gathered up my things and stuffed them into the briefcase. I unwrapped the sandwiches and left them behind. Just as I was about to leave, a lizard appeared on the white wall. It was a tree lizard, more slightly built and darker than its relatives that scuttle along the ground. At first it watched me without moving, and then began to make agitated movements with its head. Finally it raised itself up and several times extended the brilliant blue and orange fold of skin under its throat like a fan. Some say that lizards do this when they feel threatened, others claim the male does it to attract the female. The boys of the island believe that if a lizard spreads its fan several times in succession it is insulting their mothers, and they promptly stone it to death.