Not until the arm of the crane slowly sweeps to one side do the crows take to the air. I follow their flight across the roof of the station, the platforms, the November-dulled green of the park. The continuous breaking away from the formation, the little pursuits, the way individual crows drop out, wheel around, looking to slot in again, as though each morning they had to reassert that the skills they were practicing yesterday until the hour of sunset have not been lost overnight, as if they could shake off sleep only through their play.
Now a crow is heading toward the imposing building on the other side of the embankment, fluttering as it nears the dark stripe of crows marking off the clear composition of the facade, with its large windows, against the sky. At the instant the crow settles on the parapet, the black line is torn apart at one point, the bird’s close-packed fellows become agitated, and I can hear somebody calling out, “We’re not in Dresden here,” I can hear Ludwig Kaltenburg, laughing: “We’re in Moscow, can’t you see?”
There stands the professor on the roof of the Institute for Transport Studies, bending his knees, leaning over, spreading his arms, he begins to run, slowly straightening up and croaking at the same time. Most of the crows observe this performance without moving, just here and there a bird is infected by Kaltenburg’s flying motions and follows him, as though to humor him. The crows commandeered the building shortly after it was completed, the city pest-control people didn’t know what to do about it, even the Society for Sport and Technology turned out to be helpless, Kaltenburg was called in, offering to try to tempt the birds away from the building.
He’s not going to pull it off. He makes another round of the roof, but he can’t disperse them, the first crows are already returning inquisitively from the station, Kaltenburg is attracting the birds. He could see it as a defeat, but he regards it as a triumph, his last carefree winter in the city—“They’re simply familiar with this architecture”—his breath clouding in front of his face—“and why would you want to chase them away when you know they come from the Soviet Union? We should welcome them every year, our feathered friends, and joyfully allow them whatever space they want.”
I have opened the window. Soon a taxi will pull up in front of the house, Klara will get out carrying her small suitcase, glance upward, and spot me up here. The air smells like snow.
With sluggish wingbeats a single crow moves through the light flurry of snowflakes.
They come from Siberia, from the Urals, the Baltic, and with the approaching cold once more this year they will gather in the Elbe valley. Hundreds of rooks, along with carrion crows, hooded crows, jackdaws, will form huge clouds of birds that will pulsate above us, fray at the edges, then reform as patches of black.
Acknowledgments
My thanks are due to the following bodies for supporting my work on this noveclass="underline" the Fund for German Literature (Deutscher Literaturfonds), the Saxon Ministry for Art and Science, the Leuk Castle Foundation (Stiftung Schloß Leuk), and the Municipality of Leuk, Canton Valais.
Among the many people who have shared their knowledge, observations, and memories with me over the years, there are two in particular whom I wish to thank: Renate Glück, for a conversation continued since 1996 about a Dresden I could never have discovered without her; and Dr. Siegfried Eck, custodian until his death in September 2005 of the Ornithological Collection at the Museum of Zoology, State Natural History Collections Dresden, who awakened my interest in ornithology.