#ForestasFriend ❤️
On our adventurous journey
into the amazing world of metaphor, let us now hop stop on the Polish-American novelist Jerzy
Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.
The Painted Bird was published in
the year 1965.
The title, ‘The Painted Bird’ is in itself a very poignant metaphor!
At many intermittent
pitstops during the entire duration of the novel, you could sure feel for
yourself, your eyes getting moist, and your heart getting indignant, even as you tend to empathise in one way or the other, with the protagonist of the novel!
Well, the novel in a nutshell is
about a little boy’s struggle for survival in the backdrop of the Second World
War.
The young boy, like Moses in the Scriptures, is cautiously sent off by his
parents, from their tenements from off a turbid city life, to the countryside,
where they believe he will be safe and secure until peace happens again.
Unfortunately, the
little boy’s predicament is far from their hopes and expectations! He is made
to wander like an aimless nomad from place to place, from village to village,
to seek for himself a place to stay!
And upon every place that his feet trods, he is shooed
away with such hatred and vehemence, just because of his ‘dark complexion’.
This way he is doubly destabilized!
His danger is now two-fold!
The first one from the Nazi forces, and the second from the villagers who
fleece him to the core because he tends to be different
from them - in his complexion!
Most of the
people - the peasants, the carpenters and the villagers whom he meets along the
way are very curious and skeptical at the same time about his ethnic identity!
Some among them consider
his dark-hair and his dark complexion as an ominous sign foreboding evil! Some
others connect him with black magic, having wicked, dark powers on him!
Yet
some others feel that, he’s a gypsy, or a Jewish run-away! [Since taking in a
Jew was considered a severe crime that comes along with the death punishment,
many of the village folk are afraid to even give him refuge!]
Some others like
the carpenter feel that, the black hair of the boy might result in lightning
falling on them and destroy them!
At one instance, the villagers mob up together,
because of their intolerance towards difference, pelt him with stones, whip him hard,
and throw him into a pit filled with manure, where he almost drowns!
Though the
poignant story has a whole lot of incidents and events that the boy has to face
up to, and survive his ordeal, one particularly poignant incident in the novel attracted
my attention quite much!
It is when Lekh, the bird
catcher of the village engages the boy to help him out with his work.
The boy then
narrates his ‘duty’ to Lekh thus -
My duty was to set snares for Lekh, who sold birds in
several neighboring villages. There was no one who could compete with him in this.
He worked alone.
He took me in because I was very small, thin, and light.
Thus
I could set traps in places where Lekh himself could not reach: on slender
branches of trees, in dense clumps of nettle and thistle, on the waterlogged
islets in the bogs and swamps.
Although Lekh’s father, wanted him to become a priest,
Lekh was drawn to the forests.
He studied the ways of birds and envied them
their ability to fly.
One day he escaped from his father’s hut and began to
wander from village to village, from forest to forest, like a wild and
abandoned bird.
In time he began to catch birds.
The next few
pages are such a treat for the ornithologist, or the connoisseur with birds!
That way, these pages so remind you of a Ruskin Bond, or an Olga Tokarczuk as well!
Just a sample for
us all -
The voice of the cuckoo could mean many things.
A man
hearing it for the first time in the season should immediately start jangling
coins in his pockets and counting all his money, in order to secure at least
the same amount for the whole year.
Lekh had a special affection for cuckoos.
He regarded
them as people turned into birds - noblemen, begging God in vain to turn them
back into humans.
He perceived a clue to their noble ancestry in the manner in which
they raised their young.
The cuckoos, he said, never undertook the education of
their young themselves.
Instead, they hired wagtails to feed and look after
their young, while they themselves continued flying around the forest, calling
upon the Lord to change them back into gentlemen.
Lekh viewed bats with disgust, regarding them as half
birds and half mice.
He called them the emissaries of evil spirits, looking for
fresh victims, capable of attaching themselves to a human scalp and infusing sinful
desires into the brain.
Now comes the
intriguing part on the birds. Says the boy –
On the way home we set more traps; Lekh was tired and
withdrawn. In the evening, when the birds fell asleep in their cages, he
cheered up. Restless, he spoke of Ludmila.
His body trembled, he giggled,
closing his eyes. His white pimply cheeks grew flushed.
Sometimes days passed and Stupid Ludmila did not appear
in the forest.
Lekh would become possessed by a silent rage. He would stare
solemnly at the birds in the cages, mumbling something to himself.
Finally, after prolonged scrutiny, he would choose the
strongest bird, tie it to his wrist, and prepare stinking paints of different
colors which he mixed together from the most varied components.
When the colors satisfied him, Lekh would turn the bird
over and paint its wings, head, and breast in rainbow hues until it became more
dappled and vivid than a bouquet of wildflowers.
Then we would go into the thick of the forest. There
Lekh took out the painted bird and ordered me to hold it in my hand and squeeze
it lightly.
The bird would begin to twitter and attract a flock of
the same species which would fly nervously over our heads.
Our prisoner,
hearing them, strained toward them, warbling more loudly, its little heart,
locked in its freshly painted breast, beating violently.
When a sufficient number of birds gathered above our
heads, Lekh would give me a sign to release the prisoner.
It would soar, happy
and free, a spot of rainbow against the backdrop of clouds, and then plunge
into the waiting brown flock. For an instant the birds were confounded.
The painted bird circled from one end of the flock to
the other, vainly trying to convince its kin that it was one of them. But,
dazzled by its brilliant colors, they flew around it unconvinced.
The painted
bird would be forced farther and farther away as it zealously tried to enter
the ranks of the flock.
We saw soon afterwards how one bird after another would
peel off in a fierce attack. Shortly the many-hued shape lost its place in the
sky and dropped to the ground.
When we finally found the painted bird it was usually
dead. Lekh keenly examined the number of blows which the bird had received.
Blood seeped through its colored wings, diluting the paint and soiling Lekh’s
hands.
Stupid Ludmila did not return. Lekh, sulking and glum,
removed one bird after another from the cages, painted them in still gaudier
colors, and released them into the air to be killed by their kin.
One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he
painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue.
When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh
freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle
began. The changeling was attacked from all sides.
What a striking metaphor! What a poignant description, wherein birds painted on them by the birdcatcher,
are attacked by their own kin!
No wonder the
Germans sent the Jews and the gypsies to ghettos and concentration camps just because
they viewed them as ‘painted’ or different!
The boy’s words, ‘Wouldn’t
it be easier to change people’s eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and
then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn in them?’ are such heart-rending words!
Towards the end
of the novel, when finally his parents meet up with him in an orphanage, he
says in such poignant words –
I looked at the
tearful face of the woman who was my mother, at the trembling man who was my
father, uncertain whether they should stroke my hair or pat my shoulder, and
some inner force restrained me and forbade me to fly off.
I suddenly felt like
Lekh’s painted bird, which some unknown force was pulling toward his kind.
The boy’s
identity hence, is determined NOT by
his character, but by his outer complexion!
Added, society’s expectations to
conform to their dictates is yet another malaise that confronts the individual,
in this novel!
I’m so reminded of Martin Luther’s famous speech titled, ‘I Have
A Dream’, where he says,
‘I have a dream that my four children will one day
live in a nation where they will NOT
be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.
The Painted Bird was published just two
years after this historic speech of Martin Luther’s was delivered!
In this novel, then,
Kosinski skillfully juxtaposes the violence of the village folk at the micro
level with the inhumane violence of the Nazi army at the macro level!
By doing
so, the novelist conveys to us the poignant message that, the Holocaust was not
only the result of the Nazi oppression, but also because of a refusal to accommodate
difference!
In short, a
distrust of difference!
To be continued…
image: amazondotcom
