Pictor's Metamorphoses (17 page)

(Better-educated readers will be interested in the following particulars about Schalaster. He was the star witness and the often-quoted authority in that eschatological treatise on the Bird phenomenon, which meanwhile has once again sunk into oblivion; moreover, after Bird's disappearance, Schalaster was the spokesman for that small faction in Montagsdorf which believed unconditionally that Bird was still alive and would reappear at some future time.)

“When I saw him for the first time,” Schalaster relates,
*
“I was a little boy who had not yet entered school. In the orchard behind our house the grass had just been cut, and I was standing near a cherry tree, one of whose lower branches hung down almost to my height, looking at the hard, green cherries, when Bird came flying down from the tree. I realized at once that he was different from all the other birds I had seen, and he landed amid the grass stubble and hopped all around. With curiosity and admiration I ran after him through the garden; several times he looked at me out of his lustrous eyes and hopped farther away, it was as when someone dances and sings for himself alone, and it was quite clear to me that in doing so he meant to entice me and cheer me. There was a white patch on his neck. He went dancing over the lawn as far as the back fence where the nettles grow, soared over them and landed on one of the fence posts, where he twittered and gave me another friendly look, then he disappeared so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was quite alarmed. Even on subsequent encounters I often remarked this: no other animal can appear and disappear at such lightning speed as Bird—and always when one is least prepared for it. I ran indoors to my mother and told her what had happened; directly she told me that it was the bird with no name, and it was good that I had seen him; it brought good luck.”

Departing somewhat from many other accounts, Schalaster describes Bird as small, scarcely larger than a wren, the smallest part of him being his head, a wonderfully clever and nimble little head. His appearance was unremarkable, but one recognized him right away by his gray-blond crest and by the way he looked at one, which other birds never do. The crest was, even if quite a bit smaller, like that of a jay, and it often bobbed up and down in a lively fashion; Bird was in general very animated, in flight as well as on foot. His movements were supple and very expressive; with his eyes, with the nodding of his head, with the bobbing of his crest, he always seemed to have something to communicate, something to remind you of, like a messenger always on an errand; and whenever you saw him, you had to stop for a while and think about him, what he might have wanted and what he signified. He did not like to have anyone spy on him or lie in wait for him, and no one ever knew where he had come from. Quite suddenly he would just be there, sitting nearby and acting as if he had always sat there, and then he would have this friendly look. And yet we know that birds, as a rule, have hard, shy, glassy eyes and do not look at people, but Bird looked at people quite cheerfully, and to a certain degree benevolently.

Even in olden times there were many and varying reports and legends about Bird. Today one hears less and less about him, people have changed and life has become harder; almost all young people go to work in the city, families no longer sit together on the outside stairs on summer evenings or around the hearth on winter evenings; no one has time for anything any more, a young person today scarcely knows a few wildflowers or a butterfly by name. Nonetheless, even today one occasionally hears an old woman or a grandfather telling stories about Bird to children. One of these legends about Bird, perhaps the oldest one, goes as follows.

Bird from Montagsdorf is as old as the world, he was there when Cain slew his brother Abel, and he drank a drop of Abel's blood; then he flew away with the tidings of Abel's death and he tells of it to people even today, so that they do not forget this story, and so they are constantly reminded of the sanctity of human life and the importance of living together as brothers.

This Abel legend had already been written down in olden times and there are songs about it. But the scholars say that although the legend of the Abel bird is indeed very old and has been told in many countries and many languages, its application to the Bird of Montagsdorf is fallacious. They would have people bear in mind that it would be completely absurd for this Abel bird, many thousands of years old, to settle down in this one region without ever having shown himself elsewhere.

Now, for our part, we certainly could bear in mind that in fairy tales things don't always necessarily happen as rationally as they do in the academies, and we could ask if it is not the scholars themselves who are responsible for so much uncertainty and so many contradictions in the matter of Bird; because before their time, to the best of our knowledge, there had never been disputes about Bird and his legends. If someone told a tale about Bird different from that of his neighbor, his version was calmly accepted; in fact, that people could think and tell so many diverse things about Bird only served to honor him. One could go even further and rebuke the scholars: not only should they have the extirpation of Bird on their conscience, but also in their present investigations they are guilty of endeavoring to efface all memory of him and his legends until nothing further remains, for it certainly seems that explication into nothingness is the special province of scholarship. But who among us would have the sad courage so grossly to attack the scholars, to whom knowledge owes, if not everything, so very much?

No, let us turn back to those legends told of Bird in former times, fragments of which are still being told today by the country folk. In most of them Bird is taken for an enchanted, transformed, or cursed being. The legend that Bird was an enchanted Hohenstaufen, the last great emperor or magus of the line that ruled in Sicily, who knew the secrets of Arabian wisdom, may well be due to the influence of those who made the Journey to the East, in whose history the region between Montagsdorf and Morbio plays a decisive role, and whose tracks one comes upon throughout the region. Generally it is said that Bird was once a prince, or even (as, for example, Sehuster believes he heard) a sorcerer, who lived in a red house on the Hill of Snakes and was held in high esteem by all who lived in the region. But then the new law of Flachsenfingen went into effect, which resulted in many going hungry, because sorcery, spell-casting, self-transformation, and other such arts were forbidden and marked with infamy. In those days the sorcerer had planted blackberries and acacias all around his red house, which soon disappeared in a thicket of thorns; he left his house and land and, accompanied by long trains of snakes, disappeared into the woods. As Bird, he returns from time to time to ensnare human souls and again to practice sorcery. Naturally, magic is the only explanation for the peculiar influence he exerted over so many; the storyteller is silent as to whether the sorcerer practiced magic of the white or the black variety.

Those remarkable fragmentary folktales which point toward a kind of matriarchal culture, and in which the “Foreign Woman,” also called Ninon, plays a role, also indubitably exhibit the influence of those who made the Journey to the East. Many of these tales relate that she succeeded in catching Bird and holding him captive for years, until the village finally became indignant and set its bird free. There is also the rumor that the foreign woman Ninon had known Bird long before he had assumed the shape of a bird, while he was still a magus, and further that she lived with him in the red house, where they bred and raised long black snakes and green lizards with blue peacock's heads. Even today the Blackberry Hill above Montagsdorf is full of snakes, and even today one can distinctly see how every snake and every lizard, when it comes to the spot where the threshold of the sorcerer's workshop had been, pauses a moment, raises up its head, and then bows. Now long deceased, a very old woman from the village, Nina by name, is said to have told and sworn to the following tale. Very often, while out looking for herbs on the Hill of Thorns, she would see the vipers bow down at that place where even now the stump of a small rosebush, many hundreds of years old, marks the entrance to the former House of Magic. Yet other voices assert most definitely that Ninon had nothing whatsoever to do with the magus; she came to the region only much later, in the distant wake of those who made the Journey to the East, long after Bird had become a bird.

*   *   *

A
N ENTIRE GENERATION
has not yet gone by since the last time Bird was seen. But old people pass away so unexpectedly, even the “Baron” is gone now, and it has been a long time since the cheerful Mario walked without stooping, as we knew him to, and one day there will suddenly be no one left who experienced the days of Bird at first hand; that is why we want to write down the details of Bird's story, however confused they may seem, to record what happened to him and how he met his end.

Even if Montagsdorf lies rather far off the beaten path and relatively few people know the quiet little wooded ravines that surround it, where the kite rules the woods and the cuckoo's cry is heard everywhere, nonetheless it was there that the strange bird was often seen, and it was there that the legends about him sprang up. There it is said the painter Klingsor lived for many years in his noble old ruin; the gorge of Morbio became known through Leo's Journey to the East (moreover, in an even more absurd variant of the tale, it is said that Ninon obtained from Leo the recipe for bishop's bread, on which she fed Bird, and in doing so tamed him). In short, our region—which for centuries was utterly unknown and utterly irreproachable—was now under discussion throughout the world; far away in cities and at universities, people wrote dissertations on Leo's path to Morbio, and these people took an intense interest in the various stories of the Bird of Montagsdorf. And so all sorts of rash statements were made and written, statements which the more serious scholars of folklore are now at pains to suppress. Among others there arose more than once the absurd contention that Bird was identical with the famed Bird of Pictor, who had dealings with the painter Klingsor, and who possessed the gift of transformation as well as a great deal of secret knowledge. But that bird, famous through Pictor, that “Bird red and green; lovely, daring,” is so precisely described in the literature
*
that one can scarcely comprehend the possibility of such a mistake.

And finally the learned world's interest in us natives of Montagsdorf and our Bird reached a climax, just as the story of Bird reached its own climax in the following way. One day, into the hands of our former mayor, the aforementioned Sehuster, there came a letter from the office immediately superior to his own. Addressing himself to the Current Occupant of the Office of Mayor of the Said Locality, His Grace the Ambassador of the Ostrogoth Empire, writing on behalf of Privy Councillor Lützkenstett the Erudite, sends the following communiqué to the mayor with the urgent request that he make known to his community the following proclamation: A certain bird with no name, commonly referred to as “the Bird of Montagsdorf,” under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, is being researched and sought after by Privy Councillor Lützkenstett. Whosoever has anything whatsoever to communicate with respect to the bird, its habits, its diet, the maxims and proverbs, the legends and tales, etc., pertaining to it, should direct same through the Mayor's Office to the Imperial Ostrogothian Embassy in Bern. Further: whosoever shall deliver the bird in question, alive and in good health, to the aforementioned Office of the Mayor, shall receive from the Embassy a consideration in the sum of one thousand gold ducats; while, for the delivery of the dead bird or its skin, only one hundred ducats will be offered in payment.

For a long time the mayor sat studying this official document. It seemed to him that the authorities were up to their old tricks again, and their request was uncalled for and ridiculous. Had this same request been addressed specifically to him, Sehuster, on behalf of the learned Goth, or even on behalf of the Ostrogothian Embassy, he would have dismissed it out of hand, without extending the courtesy of a reply, or he would have intimated in a few words that such foolishness would not be tolerated by Mayor Sehuster, and the gentlemen could all go jump in the lake. But, alas, this request came from his own superior; it was an order and he had to obey it. Even farsighted old Balmelli, the town clerk, after reading the letter to himself at full arm's length, and suppressing the scornful smile which such affairs seemed to merit, attested: “We must obey, Herr Sehuster; there's nothing we can do. I will post it as an official notice.”

After a few days' time, the whole community had read the poster on the notice board of the Town Hall: Bird was free as a bird, he was wanted abroad, and a price had been put on his head; the Swiss Confederation and the Canton had declined to offer asylum to the legendary Bird; as usual, they didn't give a damn about the common man and that which he loved and cherished. This, at least, was the opinion of Balmelli and numerous others. Whoever wanted to catch the poor bird or shoot him to death did so at the bidding of a large sum of money, and whoever succeeded in doing it would be a wealthy man. Everyone talked about it, everyone stood near the Town Hall, crowding around the notice board, expressing himself in a lively manner. The young people were most pleased of all; they decided immediately to set traps and to prepare twigs with birdlime. Old Nina shook her gray, sparrow-hawk head and said: “It's a sin, and the Bundesrat ought to be ashamed. These people would turn in the Saviour Himself for a price. But they will not get him, God be praised, they will not get him!”

As he read the poster, Schalaster, the mayor's cousin, remained completely silent. Without uttering a word, he read it over very carefully a second time, neglected to go to church, where he had meant to go on that Sunday morning, slowly walked toward the mayor's house, went into its garden, changed his mind quite suddenly, turned around, and ran home.