Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
FOR THUCYDIDES
On March 23, 1987, a leaf in the evergreen
ivy climbing the side of a house on the
Felsenberg seemed wilted. When a man's
shadow fell on the leaf, it rose up, spreading wings
infinitely yellower underneath--the strongest color
seen in a long time. Then, a second brimstone butterfly
flew around the corner of the house, a twitching
shadow on the wall. The butterflies alit, revealing
a pair of dark spots on their veined, lemon-yellow
wings, one dot above the other; their heads retained
something of their former caterpillar states.
Throughout the winter they had hung unnoticed in
the bushes, rolled up like cigarettes. Next to one of
the butterflies, a first bee landed suddenly. Again, as
the butterfly flew off, its underwings emitted their
deep shine into the world, forcing one's glance
back into a look around. This was after the ten
o'clock news on the radio. The sun grew warmer,
and both butterflies disappeared. By midday, deep
in the front garden, the granular snow of the firn
began to stir. The grains of snow began to topple as
if of their own will. They fell away, rolling to the
side, and grew more diaphanous and transparent
with each glance. Across the entire blanket of snow
and throughout the garden there was a constant,
endless jolting, lurching, beginning-to-flow, trickling,
and--if one brought one's ear close--a
rustling. It was the snow melting. Some of the
grains settled on the incline, gleaming under the
warm sun like the concave mirrors of tiny cosmic
telescopes. At the same time, the blanket of snow
sagged visibly, and between the several blades of
new grass piercing it. The rocket of a first crocus
flashes up, still half-shrouded in leaves, the deep
blue tip aimed towards the equally blue outer
space. Seen through a magnifying glass, the crystallized
firn was full of soot. These were the events of
the morning of March 23, 1987.
Chapter Two
THE PIGEONS OF PAZIN
I spent the night of the 22nd to the 23rd of
August, 1987, in the central Istrian town of
Pazin, in a hotel on the edge of a rocky precipice,
a so-called "sink-hole," at the foot of which, far
below, Dante is said to have entered into the
Inferno. Someone was still playing the accordion
after midnight, and a small owl, so timid it seemed
tame, hooted continuously in the dark pines along
the sink-hole's rim. Then in the darkest night, a
rooster crowed, reminding me of the enormous
bumble-bee I had seen the day before, stirring up
pale bluebells. I remembered the cicada in an apple
tree and St. Martin on a fresco in Beram's solitary
church. I had always been offended by this saint
who cut his robe in half, but now, for the first time,
I began to understand him. Towering above the
poor, naked beggar who smiles like a half-wit, St.
Martin divided his cloak and, reaching down from
his horse, draped it around the man's shoulders.
The enormous saint looks down sorrowfully upon
such "conditions."
The next day in Pazin was a Sunday. Tides of
silence washed over the city so that the gurgling of
pigeons reigned high up in the trees, especially in
the cedars. At the bottom of another sink-hole (the
area is known for these vertical pits), I came upon
dead trees standing in a lake covered with pea-green
algae. Later, at the train station, more than a few of
the young Yugoslavian rices appeared disfigured, if
only because of the gaps between their teeth, and I
thought of the petrifying, Medusa-like gaze which
I myself, already exposed, sometimes used unconsciously
or even against my will, in order to expose
others. I knew I had to overcome this habit completely,
to breathe it away, to breathe it out of
myself--or, rather, to veil it so that I could perceive
things even more clearly. (So I reflected under the
chestnut trees outside the Pazin station, remembering
the beautiful night in the hotel and the first rays
of sun on the window frame.) Now the noise--yes,
noise--of the pigeons high in the trees, like the
sound of conversations below, became decisive,
urgent, as if up in the treetops they believed themselves
unique. From the trees dropped a snowfall of
small white feathers. With a hoarse caw, one of the
pigeons flew down and minced around the station
square before fluttering majestically straight back up
into the leaves, its feathers whispering like a shaken
sack of straw. The pigeons were very light in color
with a dark, emblematic stripe on their tailfeathers.
Their dainty heads were even a shade lighter. They
were convinced they were unique. Where were
Pazin's sparrows? I watched a circle of them whirl
up from the dust--a seventh-day creation. Nearby, a
pigeon, with a bobbing head and a piece of straw in
its beak, left the sparrows' realm suddenly and was
soon just a shadow in the sunny foliage. Large and
small flies, previously unnoticed on the sticky oil-cloth
in the station buffet, were lapping up spilled
drops.
Were those flocks of birds in the crannies of the
sink-hole walls also pigeons, illuminating its depths
with their bright wings? Similarly, a single white
butterfly's wobbling search for its mate intensified
the green darkness under the chestnut trees.
Meanwhile, waiting passengers (who had become
quite numerous) stood around under the pigeons'
din like a collection of unnecessary things.
So I have decided to skip my train and to stay
in Pazin with Sunday's pigeons. Then occurred the
first of that day's so typically Yugoslavian coincidences:
I saw a child with a white eye-patch--the
train to Pula has arrived--just as, simili modo, last
night I saw a slender young girl wearing a bright
frayed bandage on her knee, a bandage that seemed
almost a decoration because of its fringes and the
charming way the girl straightened her knee. (The
train to Pula has departed.) And I also noticed the
station's pillars, here in Pazin, slender, round and
fluted in the old Austrian style. A small flag pole
stuck out of the cornice under the enormous main
capital. The sparrows had become barely visible,
mere whistling shadows over the asphalt. The train
to Dirska pulled in, the one I had previously
planned on taking. Passengers scrambled to the
train's doors despite its having stopped. Soon, this
train too had gone, leaving behind only one
woman in a black dress with a white aster on her
purse. The pigeons, momentarily quiet, now hesitantly
began, one at a time, to echo the train's
whistle. I took my time, of which I had plenty.
Many of Pazin's houses still bear traces of the
original gables. The former trapezoids of these
Istrian houses--squares topped with triangles--have
been expanded and filled in to form rectangles.
Meanwhile, the pigeons with their dark, guttural
cooing completely blanketed the entire town; and
the many holes in the railroad worker's blue shirt
turned out merely to be groups of flies, which were
doubtless squatting all over my back as well; wasps,
burrowing in the garbage, scared off whirls of the
flies. My head ached from seeing and hearing so
much. One pigeon, just landed, let its dark pinions
hang down from the lighter colored feathers of one
wing as it circled and pecked, and then let the pinions
hang from the other wing, looking like some
kind of amphibious vehicle--then it hopped down
into the gutter. The back of its neck gleamed quite
brightly as it flew up into the station's canopy.
Nothing airier than the wafting breezes, I thought.
And then, in the noonday stillness, all the roosters
in this small town began to crow at once. A cat
slunk into the station square, and although small,
began stalking the flighty birds like a lion. In the
alley leading down to the sink-hole was a rooster
with a glowworm in its beak. I freed the glowworm
which sat stunned a while before finally raising its
head. In a garden near the hole, a turkey in a wire
cage raised its head in the same way. Then, finally,
near the sea on this Sunday evening, a palm frond
shuddered like a thousand birds.