And did he try to fly?
No, he didn’t. His wings just quivered.
The Bird
First I saw the wall and that darkish picture: a landscape, a garden, or just a vase of flowers; then, in the middle of the room, the top of a long dining table, with a fruit bowl that was sometimes empty, sometimes filled with oranges and bright-red Jonathan apples; and, finally, on a tall narrow table in a corner, the telephone, extraordinarily large and black. It was like an animal lying in wait, although that isn’t the most suitable comparison; in fact, it didn’t have anything animal about it, save perhaps that controlled aggression, being so black and cold and mineral. Anyway, the sense that it was watching and waiting was evident, at least to me, who saw it — studied it! — so many times. There wasn’t much else to be seen in the room: the backs of two or three chairs, the arm of an armchair, the side of a cupboard or sideboard. That was all.
Then I would focus on the next floor, where the girl sat at a school desk, perching her knees on the side and supporting her back on the chair, thighs completely bared and face shielded from my eyes by a book wrapped in blue paper that she held in both hands. But the book was too close to her nose and eyebrows for me to be fooled; sometimes her eyes appeared as well, as if she were adjusting a visor, and then she covered part of her thigh with one hand, lowered the book more and more with the other, and — when I moved my hand with outstretched fingers at the level of my forehead to attract her attention — slammed the book onto her desk, returned to a normal position, and rested her elbows dutifully on the wood of the desk, attentive, concentrating on the book, occasionally reaching out for a notebook and jotting down a sentence or two with a pencil or fountain pen; I turned my back, took off my pajamas — only the upper part of my body was visible — and started twisting and turning by the window, opening my arms wide and breathing deeply, or raising them above my head on tiptoe, at which point I surprised her staring in my direction, craning her neck like a bird, her forehead almost touching the windowpane, while I flashed a mocking smile and gave her an open-handed wave; she covered her face with the book, perhaps blushing, I couldn’t tell, she was tall and pretty, with legs as full and white as her breasts. I drew the curtain and lay on the bed. In the next room Matilda was groaning.
From the bathroom I saw the boy with the violin: lean and lanky, screeching all day in his pajamas, with the window open for hours. The neighbors must have grown used to him, as you grow used to the sound of cars and trams in the street until you no longer even hear them. The boy’s mother often walked around in her slip, it’s true she was slimmer than Matilda and still quite young; she would sit deep in thought by the window, or perhaps, like me, she was curious about what went on in the house opposite. She had broad hips, which she swayed as she passed from room to room, and large, rather loose, breasts. Her husband appeared less often; he wore a mustache and had large thick hands, I’d like to have seen those slaughterman’s or woodcutter’s hands fondling her hips, but unfortunately their bedroom was on the street side of the house.
Again someone came to see Matilda. I pulled the pillow around my ears, so I could sleep.
The schoolgirl’s father is a captain, or even a colonel, I don’t know much about ranks; sometimes he goes into her room and stops in the middle, she’s wrapped up in her work and doesn’t notice him, he hesitates but finally steels his nerve, tiptoes up to the chair where she sits holding her forehead and gripping a pencil between her teeth, and timidly strokes her hair, happy that he always finds her deep in a book; only then does she deign to turn around and cast a glance at him, maybe even a smile, and then he exits as stealthily as he entered. A large black car comes to pick him up every day. I’ve never seen her mother. I’d wriggle around in my bedding, adjust the pillow beneath my head, remove it and put it back again, place another over my ear, pull the bedspread up under my chin, but then I would be too hot, so I’d throw it to the bottom of the bed and lie flat on my belly, one knee bent, squashed against the hard mattress and its strong metal springs. I’ve never seen her leave the house to go to school or anywhere. Nor have I ever come across her in the street. It’s true I haven’t done anything to make it happen: I haven’t lain in wait for her behind that tree across the street, or on a porch, or in the front hall of that old house on the corner, nor have I loitered at the gates of the school where I assume she must go, I don’t even know her name; only once, when I saw her putting on her uniform, gathering her books from the table, and stuffing them into her satchel, did I quickly get dressed, run down the creaking, screeching wooden stairs and stroll around in front of the house for a few minutes, then cross to the other sidewalk, whistling and holding my hands behind my back, probably more funny-looking than suspicious, although a guy I hadn’t noticed before looked at me a few times, first amused, then intrigued, and finally severe, and winked and pursed his lips, but maybe that’s only how it seemed to me, and he too looked funny, more funny than suspicious, with a hooked nose — an aquiline nose, he probably says to comfort himself in front of the mirror — I spat and moved away, and since then I haven’t repeated the scene, it was too humiliating. I must admit that I’d have liked her to come to me: to climb the narrow creaking staircase, pause blushing in front of my front door, then give a couple of short timid rings, until Matilda, in her pink slip and yellow-broom slippers, hurried out — she never allows me to open the door — and finally ask in a tiny, not too faint voice whether I lived there; excuse me, does a gentleman in green pajamas live in your house, a man with a, how shall I say, athlete’s body, he does gymnastics every morning by the window, you see, he undresses and I can’t help but see his chest. . Matilda sighs, she’s always emotional when she speaks to strangers; she covers her breast with her hand and, yes, of course, young lady, he’s at home now, in that room there.
The bed creaked horribly beneath Matilda and her nighttime guest. I sweated under the bedspread, twisting from side to side, so as not to hear Matilda’s groans and the creaking of her bed, the squeaking springs, the man’s grim panting, her sighs of pleasure, all the sounds that passed through the door between our two rooms, I’ll have to move out, I can’t stand this any longer. I pressed the pillow more firmly around my ears, I must think of something else, something completely different, I buried my face in the pillow: several men carrying a stretcher — or coffin? — on their shoulders head toward a river, the sky is blue, but a thin fog has woven itself around the group. The fog becomes denser and denser, I can no longer see anything, suddenly a door slams, and without meaning to I lifted the pillow from my ears and listened, a little afraid, to the shuffling of bare feet in the corridor, in fact it’s ridiculous, I again covered my face with the pillow and smiled, I felt my irritation passing, a sweet torpor came over me and, lo and behold, there is the bird Irina bought at the flea market, that brightly colored screeching bird, nearly every color under the sun but not at all vulgar — strange, rather, perhaps because of its long neck and its small yellow eyes that look right past you. I no longer heard a thing: thick red velvet curtains fall around me; I opened one eye. A reddish light filtered through from somewhere, and the door handle could be heard moving, and I was back in childhood, scared by the sound of crashing furniture, the formless shapes in the corners, the creaking floorboards, the soft felted steps, no, the shuffling of little feet or claws, a muffled cracking, then padded steps, the steps of a bird, maybe a peacock. Sudden breathing next to my ear, then the warm arms of Mother or Irina.