It works both ways, of course. Even as the word “alien” evokes the start of fear, so our deepest fears and darkest torments have evolved into symbols of alienness. The symbols must keep pace with culture, it is true. For most of us, a horned-tailed-and-hoofed devil is no longer an apparition of terror; we are more likely to be struck with real fear by the familiar yellow radiation symbol, or by the image of a hairy-legged multimagnified germ-laden fly.
But the Devil was Lord of the Flies long before the microbe hunters traded in their bells and candles for microscopes and agar cultures. Mermaids sang in wondrous strange seductive tongues hundreds of years before zoologists began to puzzle out the language of mammalian porpoises. And the archetypal duality of love-hate, good-bad, hope-guilt, took the form (centuries before anyone coined words like “schizoid” and “alienist”! of the shape-changer—the werewolf.
DOG EAT DOG
by Jules Feiffer
. . . and as far back as the dove meant peace, the crow and raven were croaking portents of doom . . .
THE JEWBIRD
Bernard Malamud
The window was open so the skinny bird flew in. Flappity-flap with its frazzled black wings. That’s how it goes. It’s open, you’re in. Closed, you’re out and that’s your fate. The bird wearily flapped through the open kitchen window of Harry Cohen’s top-floor apartment on First Avenue near the lower East River. On a rod on the wall hung an escaped canary cage, its door wide open, but this black-type long-beaked bird—its ruffled head and small dull eyes, crossed a little, making it look like a dissipated crow—landed if not smack on Cohen’s thick lamb chop, at least on the table, close by. The frozen-foods salesman was sitting at supper with his wife and young son on a hot August evening a year ago. Cohen, a heavy man with hairy chest and beefy shorts; Edie, in skinny yellow shorts and red halter; and their ten-year-old Morris (after her father)—Maurie, they called him, a nice kid though not overly bright—were all in the city after two weeks out, because Cohen’s mother was dying. They had been enjoying Kingston, New York, but drove back when Mama got sick in her flat in the Bronx.
“Right on the table,” said Cohen, putting down his beer glass and swatting at the bird. “Son of a bitch.”
“Harry, take care with your language,” Edie said, looking at Maurie, who watched every move.
The bird cawed hoarsely and with a flap of its bedraggled wings—feathers tufted this way and that—rose heavily to the top of the open kitchen door, where it perched staring down.
“Gevalt, a pogrom!”
“It’s a talking bird,” said Edie in astonishment.
“In Jewish,” said Maurie.
“Wise guy,” muttered Cohen. He gnawed on his chop, then put down the bone. “So if you can talk, say what’s your business. What do you want here?”
“If you can’t spare a lamb chop,” said the bird, “I’ll settle for a piece of herring with a crust of bread. You can’t live on your nerve forever.”
“This ain’t a restaurant,” Cohen replied. “All I’m asking is what brings you to this address?”
“The window was open,” the bird sighed; adding after a moment, “I’m running. I’m flying but I’m also running.”
“From whom?” asked Edie with interest.
“Anti-Semeets.”
“Anti-Semites?” they all said.
“That’s from who.”
“What kind of anti-Semites bother a bird?” Edie asked.
“Any kind,” said the bird, “also including eagles, vultures, and hawks. And once in a while some crows will take your eyes out.”
“But aren’t you a crow?”
“Me? I’m a Jewbird.”
Cohen laughed heartily. “What do you mean by that?”
The bird began dovening. He prayed without Book or tallith, but with passion. Edie bowed her head though not Cohen. And Maurie rocked back and forth with the prayer, looking up with one wide-open eye.
When the prayer was done Cohen remarked, “No hat, no phylacteries?”
“I’m an old radical.”
“You’re sure you’re not some kind of a ghost or dybbuk?”
“Not a dybbuk,” answered the bird, “though one of my relatives had such an experience once. It’s all over now, thanks God. They freed her from a former lover, a crazy jealous man. She’s now the mother of two wonderful children.”
“Birds?” Cohen asked slyly.
“Why not?”
“What kind of birds?”
“Like me. Jewbirds.”
Cohen tipped back in his chair and guffawed. “That’s a big laugh. I’ve heard of a Jewfish but not a Jewbird.”
“We’re once removed.” The bird rested on one skinny leg, then on the other. “Please, could you spare maybe a piece of herring with a small crust of bread?”
Edie got up from the table.
“What are you doing?” Cohen asked her.
“I’ll clear the dishes.”
Cohen turned to the bird. “So what’s your name, if you don’t mind saying?”
“Call me Schwartz.”
“He might be an old Jew changed into a bird by somebody,” said Edie, removing a plate.
“Are you?” asked Harry, lighting a cigar.
“Who knows?” answered Schwartz. “Does God tell us everything?”
Maurie got up on his chair. “What kind of herring?” he asked the bird in excitement.
“Get down, Maurie, or you’ll fall,” ordered Cohen.
“If you haven’t got matjes, I’ll take schmaltz,” said Schwartz.
“All we have is marinated, with slices of onion—in a jar,” said Edie.
“If you’ll open for me the jar I’ll eat marinated. Do you have also, if you don’t mind, a piece of rye bread—the spitz?”
Edie thought she had.
“Feed him out on the balcony,” Cohen said. He spoke to the bird. “After that take off.”
Schwartz closed both bird eyes. “I’m tired and it’s a long way.”
“Which direction are you headed, north or south?”
Schwartz, barely lifting his wings, shrugged.
“You don’t know where you’re going?”
“Where there’s charity I’ll go.”
“Let him stay, papa,” said Maurie. “He’s only a bird.”
“So stay the night,” Cohen said, “but no longer.”
In the morning Cohen ordered the bird out of the house but Maurie cried, so Schwartz stayed for a while. Maurie was still on vacation from school and his friends were away. He was lonely and Edie enjoyed the fun he had playing with the bird.
“He’s no trouble at all,” she told Cohen, “and besides his appetite is very small.”
“What’ll you do when he makes dirty?”
“He flies across the street in a tree when he makes dirty, and if nobody passes below, who notices?”
“So all right,” said Cohen, “but I’m dead set against it. I warn you he ain’t gonna stay here long.”
“What have you got against the poor bird?”
“Poor bird, my ass. He’s a foxy bastard. He thinks he’s a Jew.”
“What difference does it make what he thinks?”
“A Jewbird, what a chuzpah. One false move and he’s out on his drumsticks.”
At Cohen’s insistence Schwartz lived out on the balcony in a new wooden birdhouse Edie had bought him.
“With many thanks,” said Schwartz, “though I would rather have a human roof over my head. You know how it is at my age. I like the warm, the windows, the smell of cooking. I would also be glad to see once in a while the Jewish Morning Journal and have now and then a schnapps because it helps my breathing, thanks God. But whatever you give me, you won’t hear complaints.”