The Birds (9 page)

Early in the morning, while Hege was getting him his breakfast, he said to her: “It’s away and back with me now.”

“What do you mean?” she asked patiently.

“Like this.”

With his finger he drew lines in the air above his head, in the same direction as the woodcock had been flying.

Hege was already busy with her next task. Always on the go. Mattis would very much have liked to share with her the things he was thinking and feeling at the moment, but Hege was blind, unable to see them.

“Wait, Hege, there is a lot just now.”

“Well, be quick then,” she said.

“How little you know about things.”

He said it in a friendly way and half afraid; after all he was talking to one of the clever ones.

“Yes, so you say,” Hege replied.

“Streaks hither and thither,” he said.

“And while you’re asleep,” he said.

“Every single night,” he said, rounding the whole thing off.

She looked at him as at a grown-up now, and then said something: “You’re lucky, seeing things the way you do. I don’t, I can tell you.”

She had stopped now, wasn’t simply rushing off to her eight-petaled roses. Today once again she had heard a tone in his voice that made her pause.

“How do you see things, then?” he asked, forgetting himself.

Spoiled the moment completely. She gave a start, even though she was really to blame.

But inwardly Mattis was bursting with song: him and the woodcock. He felt an urge to walk through the little wood, right underneath the invisible streaks in the sky. That was his path, a path full of joy. He wasn’t disappointed this time, either. After a little while he had to stop.

You are you, a voice inside him seemed to be saying, at least that was what it sounded like to him.

It was said in the language of birds. Said in their writing.

He was standing by a dried-up patch of bog right underneath the woodcock’s path. Standing looking spellbound. Reading a message or whatever it was that had been left there for him.

In the smooth brown surface of the marshy soil were the faint imprints of a bird’s feet. A number of tiny, deep round holes had been dug up as well. The woodcock had been there. The deep holes had been made by the woodcock’s beak which it thrust down into the ground to dig up morsels of food, or sometimes just to prick out messages.

Mattis bent down and read what was written. Looked at the graceful dancing footprints. That’s how fine and graceful the bird is, he thought. That’s how gracefully my bird walks over the marshy ground when he’s tired of the air.

You are you, that was what was written.

What a greeting to receive!

He found a twig and pricked an answer in an empty space on the brown surface. He didn’t use ordinary letters; it was meant for the woodcock, so he wrote in the same way as the birds.

The woodcock’s bound to notice it next time he’s here. I’m the only one who comes here and the only one who writes.

It was a quiet, well-hidden spot. Impossible to imagine a better meeting place. Tall trees stood round the little patch of bog, and the sunshine found its way into a small clearing, falling thickly and warmly onto the marshy ground and drying it up so that graceful, shy creatures could dance upon it.

Ought he to settle down here for the rest of the day and the evening, and wait for the bird to come and perhaps land right beside him?

It was tempting, but he pushed the idea firmly aside. He didn’t dare. After all, the bird might get frightened – and something might be spoiled that mustn’t be spoiled for anything in the world.

There was a greeting here now. That would have to do.

Tomorrow he would come back and see how the woodcock had got on with reading it. He went home whistling to himself, but said nothing – Hege was closed to things like this.

OFF HE WENT the next day full of excitement, and he wasn’t disappointed. Not far away from his own writing the beak had pricked out a new message.

Mattis had expected this, but it had such an effect on him that he had to sit down on a stone.

Something really had been started between them.

And what did the bird say, in its wonderful language?

Mattis was in no doubt. It was about great friendship. Prick, prick, prick. Eternal friendship, that was what it meant.

He brought out the twig and solemnly pricked out that he felt the same.

It was easy to express oneself in bird language. There was so much they were going to tell each other. There were more footprints here now. To Mattis it looked like dancing. Something had made the solitary bird dance.

But I mustn’t stay here spying.

Mattis looked around him and said aloud: “Great things.”

He used ordinary human speech. It felt coarse and commonplace. He would have liked to have started using bird language for good – to have gone back home to Hege and never spoken in any other way. Then she might have begun to understand some of the things that were now hidden from her.

But he didn’t dare, he had a fair idea of what would happen. Most likely they’d lock me up. They’d refuse to have anything to do with the finest of all languages, they’d laugh at it.

But with joy still bubbling through him he bent down and made a few more pricks. He could have filled the whole patch at this moment. But he mustn’t do that – there had to be room left for the woodcock as well. Each day they were going to come flitting in here with light, dancing steps, to prick down all that was in their hearts.

The third day after the discovery it was the same, and the fourth day, too. Hege asked what he was doing over in the woods so often?

“Hm!” he said.

She didn’t pursue the subject.

He felt an ever-growing temptation to lie in wait for the bird, but managed to resist it. He waited impatiently for each new day to begin.

On the fifth day there was no fresh greeting for him. What had happened? And weren’t the woods quieter than usual too?

Inside him the words were painfully taking shape: the woodcock is dead.

No! No!

After four days of exchanging written messages he had become so engrossed in it all that he pictured terrible disasters as soon as there was no new message in the bog. All the same he pricked
down something of his own before he went home. In the evening he sat outside the house waiting for the woodcock to arrive. Hege was asleep.

Soft, rainy air, just right. A sudden realization shot through him: One day the woodcock won’t be flying across here any more. And one day there won’t be a woodcock any more.

“Who’s moaning about disaster?” he said with sudden confidence into the rainy air, for there came his missing bird, familiar and wonderful, following the same path, uttering the same cries. Mattis only just managed to stop himself rousing Hege from her sleep.

When he got to the meeting place the following day there was a new message for him, too.

That’s the way it is with us, he thought.

And there was still an empty patch waiting to be covered with pricks and dancing toes.

BUT ONLY A couple of days later Mattis began to feel ill. All of a sudden. He kept on wandering in and out of the house. When Hege started asking questions he replied: “It’s my stomach, sort of. But only sort of.”

“Is it something you’ve eaten, or is it the weather?”

“Neither one,” he replied, wandering outside again.

The woodcock was in grave danger, that was what it was.

That morning he’d met a youngster up on the road who had asked if it was true that there was a woodcock flying right across his house? Yes, yes there was, Mattis had replied, happy that someone should ask. Up till now he had had to force his news on people.

Then suddenly he felt a cold shudder go right through him, and regretted bitterly every word he’d said. From a sudden gleam in the youngster’s eyes he realized that he’d been talking to a fowler.

“But it’s stopped now! It’s too late in the summer. I haven’t seen it for a long time.”

The youngster had just laughed – he knew better:

“Do you think I don’t know when that sort of flight stops?”

Mattis’s little lie fell flat to the ground. Mattis wanted to ask him not to do the bird any harm, but he was too slow, as he so often was when important things were at stake.

“Goodbye,” said the youngster quickly and set off with long, springy steps. He was tanned and strongly built, too, obviously one of those terrific workers everybody wanted to get hold of, and was willing to hire for the highest wage – and one of those the girls liked to have around.

But Mattis couldn’t forget that gleam in the youngster’s eyes. He was a fowler, and he might come back with a gun and lie in wait for the woodcock at the edge of the forest and simply shoot it down.

Perhaps that very evening. Was it any wonder his stomach felt peculiar?

He didn’t want to discuss it with Hege, because she’d realize then that it was he himself who’d told the news to the fowler. He’d tried to comfort himself by saying that everybody knew about it by now, but it was no use. Today he’d told the news to a fowler who’d come for the sole purpose of questioning him. Mattis had realized too late.

His stomach felt worse as time went on.

Outside it was turning into a nice warm evening. Overcast and the right smell of rain in the air, too. Mattis walked round the house, his face turned toward the bushes the whole time, as if to prevent someone from lying in wait there with a gun.

The whole thing seemed so hopeless. The surrounding woods might be hiding a hundred youngsters with guns, even though he
couldn’t see a single one. Yet he felt he had to go on trotting around the house, staring into the bushes, into the patches of darkness that began to gather there. More and more frightened of the invisible guns. There might well be lots of them.

No, no, no.

He circled round the house. What good did it do really? The birds flew high in the air, and he couldn’t warn them until they were right over the roof – and not even then.

He gave a sudden start: the flight was beginning. His heart stopped beating.

The bird came.

One, two, three, and away! Like a streak through Mattis. And the bird was allowed to continue its flight, no gun went off.

Perhaps it was just imagination after all? No, his fears were not dispelled. The gun was bound to be here somewhere, it just didn’t go into action the first time.

Mattis continued his pointless journey, round and round. Then he shouted a warning “Hey!” in to the bushes. There was no reply.

“Hey!” he said in a louder voice.

No reply. But a moment later there came a sound of something snapping. A soft, dangerous sound.

Where was it? He hadn’t heard where it came from. He shouted louder. He was certain there was someone there.

“Don’t!” came his next shout, straight out.

“No one must do harm here!” he shouted.

A deathly silence hung over the forest.

There wasn’t much time left now, either, before the woodcock was due back a second time.

“No!” he shouted. It sounded weak and breathless. He wasn’t sure if it was a warning to the hidden marksman not to commit a crime, or a warning to the flying bird not to come back this way. It was probably a bit of both.

Tonight the forest was changed beyond recognition. The forest where Mattis normally felt safe – tonight everything seemed sinister and uncanny. The evening sky was flooding the clearing with light, yet from somewhere in among the bushes the barrel of a gun was probably poking out. This had a paralyzing and shattering effect on everything.

Mattis was just about to shout for the third time when he heard the swishing of a bird’s wings. His mouth remained open without uttering a sound.

No, said a voice inside him, silent, like a kind of lament. Powerless.

Bang! came a thunderous report from the depths of the wood. So far away that Mattis hadn’t spotted the place. And up in the air a bird gave a little cry.

Bang! came the muted echo from the hillside.

Mattis stood rooted to the spot. First the thunderous noise went rolling past him like a dark cloud, then the dead woodcock came toppling down from the evening sky and thudded to the ground a few steps from where he stood.

Still Mattis couldn’t move. He tried to bring some order into his thoughts – they were in complete confusion. But there came a young lad rushing out from the bushes – and at the very same moment Mattis had his body under control, he jumped forward and picked up the warm bird that was filled with lead, smoothed its ruffled feathers and saw its dark eye.

The bird was looking at him.

No, no, don’t think like that. Mustn’t. The bird’s dead.

Dead, why dead?

It looked at me first.

In the meantime the marksman had reached the clearing, he was half running, flushed with joy at his kill. It was the youngster he’d talked to earlier in the day all right, strong and happy.

Mattis was still standing with the bird in his hand.

“What a hit!” said the youngster, balancing the gleaming gun in his hand. “I could only just see the bird, he was flying as swift as an arrow, so I just took a potshot.”

Mattis made no reply.

“I don’t suppose you understand this kind of thing,” said the
youngster, “but it was a damn good shot. And dead before it hit the ground, I see.”

Mattis stood there with the bird, looking lost. Silent. The hand with the bird dangled loosely at his side – it looked as if he’d forgotten what he was holding.

The youngster asked, surprised: “D’you think it’s yours?”

Mattis said nothing.

“Give it here. I want to go home and show them what a good shot I am,” he said, winking and nodding at Mattis in a friendly way while he threw the gun over his shoulder and got ready to leave.

Mattis did not hand over the bird, made no move to obey, looked helplessly at the youngster. The boy took a sudden step backward.

“Why don’t you say something?” he began again, no longer as happy as he had been when he came rushing up.

Mattis pulled himself together, he wanted to say something about the dark eyes that had looked at him – but then he noticed they were gone. They were shut. Nothing more to be said about them. He didn’t let go of the bird.