“When they meet they will talk to each other in such a way that everyone understands,” Levadski said. “Human beings should also find a common language. After all, we are animals too.”
“That is the way it once was,” said Levadski’s mother. “Your father and I lived in a world like that. We had sub-scriptions to all sorts of bird journals: Cabanis’ Journal of Ornithology, the Zoological Garden, the Journal of the Zoological Botanical Society of Vienna, Nitzsche’s Illustrated Hunting Journal, bird conservation papers, and many others. They were all sent to us by post. We shopped at the Polish market, went to the Russian saddler, the local Jew sewed my wedding dress for me. Everything worked fine. The world was connected through trade, it was an aviary with the most diverse birds, who admired and enriched each other. We could send letters to all the countries of the globe, even to the director of the Caucasian Museum in Tiflis who was a bird lover and, moreover, a Prussian.”
“What is a Prussian?”
“A Prussian is also a human being!” Levadski’s mother laughed.
And so, time passed. While Levadski’s behind was parked on the school bench in Lemberg and he ripped one pair of trousers after the other, his mother remained in the forester’s hut, planted a vegetable garden and learned Polish, so that she could subscribe to a handful of bird magazines and read them in the native tongue of the land of which she was now a citizen.
When Levadski was in his fourth year of study and poring over his thesis concerning the numerical deficiency of Corvidae, his mother sensed that something was about to happen in the world. “A Flood is nearly upon us!” she wrote to the student Levadski at the Institute of Zoology in Lemberg.
My Dear Son,
Far be it from me to waste the valuable time of a future scholar with complaints that you seldom write home. The reason why your old mother has reached for her pen is an entirely different one. I ask you to open your eyes, ears and your good little heart now and acknowledge the contents of this letter in all seriousness.
My son, something is brewing in this world. The non-migratory birds like the crested lark, wren and the common treecreeper have turned their backs on our little place, the forest and the fields. There is no sign of the house martin either. House sparrows are now nesting under the eaves. I can no longer remember the last time I saw a house martin standing before a puddle, stuffing mud into its cheeks as building material for its nest, it was such a long time ago.
All these signs, my son, as you yourself know, are alarming. Our dear father would have said: the rats are leaving the sinking ship. He would have been right.
For months I have been dreaming the same dream almost every night. A green woodpecker is building its breeding nest in our china cupboard. In my dream I know this is a great honor and fortune, but I am not happy about the visitor. I am worried about our best stoneware dinner service that has outlived your father, the decline of the monarchy and four years of war, even our three-year absence. I think about this and feel rotten — a green woodpecker is nesting beneath our roof and I am thinking of the wretched dinner service and unable to enjoy the important guest! From time to time I hear the laughter of the bird from the china cupboard, which sounds like gluckgluckgluck. Sometimes I see the long woodpecker’s tongue, darting back and forth through the keyhole. It is sticky and encrusted with the crumbs of white stoneware.
This dream doesn’t bode well either. A Flood is nearly upon us. This is clear to me, and it should be clear to you, too. What I would like is for you to drop everything and come home straight away. Your old mother will deal with the rest. If you pronounce me mad and don’t take this letter seriously, I will, as God is my witness, follow in your father’s footsteps.
Levadski read the letter, put it down on the bed and scratched his neck with both hands. A strange woman. He picked up the letter again and read it once more. “My Dear Son, Far be it from me …”
“Damn it!” Levadski swore at the paper-thin wall, where an old photograph and a sketch depicting two rheumatic lumberjacks bowing to each other were hanging. He got up and straightened the frames. In the photograph, Levadski’s father sat on the box of a carriage, with a full head of hair and no beard. A shaggy dog of indeterminate breed was sleeping on his lap. Levadski’s mother was resting her beautiful head on his right arm. The sketch depicted a cuckoo perched on a rustic wooden table with an egg in its open beak, set against the backdrop of an enchanted rococo scene, a wildly overgrown arbor, a swing and thunderclouds in the distance. At the bottom right stood the year of Levadski’s birth beside his father’s signature: Landscape with cuckoo, nothing special, but with the deepest affection for my little dove. Your little dove forever.
Levadski straightened the pictures again and took a step back. “No,” he said, taking the pictures off the wall and placing them in the open jaws of his suitcase. He also packed his best Sunday shirt and the folder with his thesis concerning the numerical deficiency of Corvidae.
When he was already seated in the third class carriage between clucking sacks of hens and little old sleeping grannies, he remembered he had forgotten to register for the approaching banding of the kingfishers in the Carpathians. “Never mind,” Levadski sighed, closed his eyes and, insofar as the hard backrest of his seat would permit, drifted into the memory of the last banding of this magnificent bird he had been allowed to participate in. He thought of the outstretched invisibly thin net and how he touched the trembling animal for the first time. In that moment, the bird was a single heartbeat. Levadski smiled in his half sleep. After banding, the bird was completely tame and sat pensively for a while on the back of his hand. Months later a bird like this would be captured by an Egyptian colleague or found dead. Thanks to the band number it was known that kingfishers from the Carpathians flew over Turkey to the brackish water of Lake Burullus in the northerly Nile Delta, to spend the winter there. This is what they did, had done since the last ice age, and would continue doing, until something intervened.
The sack beside Levadski’s left leg started to crow. Without opening her eyes, the little old granny opposite him gave the sack a kick. Something made Levadski think he would miss this year’s banding of the birds.
With pins and needles in his legs, Levadski stepped off the train. On the deserted platform two male dogs were fighting in a puddle. As Levadski passed, they sprayed him with dirt and bombarded him with abuse; in his imagination, with words of an obscene nature.
To his great surprise, the village road was paved. There was a tree missing in front of the forester’s house. Whether it had been a nut, an apple, or a plum tree, Levadski could no longer remember, no matter how hard he tried. At one of the windows sat his mother, wrapped in a white lace curtain like a bride, almost exactly as he had left her a year ago. The house seemed to have shrunk since then and grown into the earth. Or was his mother sitting on a stool to make the wait more comfortable?
Inside the house it smelled of onion tart, Levadski’s favorite dish. The crumbs in the corner of his mother’s mouth fell to the ground the second she smiled at him. Whistling, Levadski washed his hands in a bowl. He dried himself on an elaborately embroidered towel and wondered why his mother had put out one of her wedding linens. She had never before made everyday use of anything from her dowry. Hidden in a heavy wooden chest, she had saved the treasures for an uncertain future and spread them out on the lawn every few years to bleach them. And now?