THE BIRD PAINTER IN TIME OF WAR by Carol Emshwiller

  Carol Emshwiller takes a painful look at the collateral damage sustained by innocents like...

  I paint birds in enemy territory. I risk my life to paint them. My people are desert people. They think I’ve made the birds up—that I’m painting fairy tales just so I can sell them to the gullible. I don’t think I could invent such fancy birds by myself. So far I’ve only been able to smuggle some feathers to prove to my own people that there do, indeed, exist birds of a beauty they’ve never even thought of.

  The enemy farmers know I’m a foreigner but they don’t guess where I’m from. I ask, with some of their words and with drawings, if such and such a bird is around. I pay them in pictures. I don’t have any of their kind of money. I don’t even have my own kind. That would be a sure giveaway.

  If their soldiers catch me, they’ll take me for a spy. They’ll think my paintings full of secret messages. Who cares about birds? they’d say. And they’d be right. Who does? Not very many in any country.

  I doubt if I’d have the energy or the will to defend myself. I stutter. Even more so when I’m nervous. The birds don’t care. I can imitate their calls. I can whistle, squawk, quack and squeak. I’m good at those, no problem.

  I eat what comes to hand but I won’t eat birds. I can usually find tree ears or chanterelles and there are roots. But I won’t eat quail or duck or sage hen as most do. I do eat fish and crayfish.

  I used to photograph wars, but that was before I looked up, not for the hiss of a mortar but for a different, exciting sound, and there, in long lines, were the snow geese flying north.

  That was a long time ago, and an entirely different war.

  I prefer the people here where I don’t talk their language that well. Then not talking is normal. A silent cup of tea with gestures. A place by the fire on a rainy night. These people are not great talkers, anyway. I and the farmer can sit and smoke and nod, his wife and children nearby, happy, or so it seems, for each other’s silent company.

  If I see a good barn I may not even ask. I may just bed down there secretly. Of course there’ll be a dog, but I’m good with dogs. I always sit a bit before imposing myself on their space. Sometimes I manage to get out a series of Gs. Guh, guh, ghu, ghu, good dog.

  Children ask what’s wrong with me. I always say, “L, l, l, lots of things.”

  To avoid detection, when I leave my desert for their mountains, I always cross the border where the cliffs are steep and the forest thick. It’s not easy with my folio and sketch books on my back.

  After climbing the ridge, I’ll hit the road to the village. I never get far. I’m always looking down at the plants along the roadside, as much as I look up to see what’s flying by. I don’t bother with the names of either birds or plants. Words are my adversaries. Besides, the names will be different in their language.

  It’s the perfect time of year. All sorts of birds are passing through. Half way up the hills on their side of the border, I stop, turn around and rest. I can see the tops of the flags that fly from their fort just below me. I’m well past their lines. From now on I’ll just look like one more farmer with a big bundle.

  But there’s not a single bird call nor rustle of ground squirrels. I hold still—just as everything else does. I hear the snap of twigs. Something’s happening just above the fort.

  Then I see soldiers in the colors of my own side, circling past not far below me. They’re going to hit from behind, where the cliffs look down on the fort. They’ll drop mortars right into the central courtyard.

  These days forts aren’t worth much. I don’t think the enemy uses this one for anything but barracks. Those cannons along the ramparts are a hundred years old. I heard reveille as I passed by. The enemy will be there. My side could do a lot of damage.

  I wonder if I should try to warn the enemy. What would save the most bloodshed?

  I climb higher, wondering what to do.

  But then I hear a sound from above. I stop again. Hold still...

  ...and a soldier backs up right into me. This time a soldier of the enemy, looking down on those skulking soldiers of my own side. He’s alone, but loaded down with rifle and grenades.

  At first I think a boy and I think, does the enemy use children as its soldiers? But I start to suspect. I look down at her body.

  She sees my look. “Yes,” she says, in the enemy language, “I am,”

  and points her gun at my chest. “What are you doing out here? Trying to sneak across the border?”

  Exactly what I am doing. Of course what I answer is my usual. “I, I, I, I, I.”

  “What’s in your bundle?”

  I hand it to her. She moves away, tries to keep her gun on me and open the bundle at the same time. Not easy.

  Then she forgets all about the gun. She even forgets about me.

  I have two smaller paintings I brought with me to trade for a meal, or a bed in case the weather turns bad. One is of the bird I call a golden wing. The other is of a pair of black and white longtails with red heads. I tried to capture the luminosity of their throats. There are flowers in each painting. People like that. In one there’s dew on the petals and a sunrise in the background. They’re not completely realistic. After all, I was a photographer, I got tired of reality.

  She can’t stop looking. Ten ... maybe fifteen minutes. I sit down. Later she turns to me, a look of wonder on her face. All she says is, “You!”

  I nod.

  She sits beside me, the paintings at our feet. She gives three big sighs in a row, says, “I’d like to forget all about the war. I’d like to run away and never come back.”

  I keep nodding. I don’t want to have to try to say anything.

  She looks at me again—all admiration. “Easy to see you’re not a soldier.”

  Then she looks at the signature.

  My name will tell her I’m a foreigner.

  “Nor. Nor? Where’s that from?”

  I took that name from the word for bird in my language.

  I don’t lie. “I, I’m yu, yu, your ... enemy.”

  “Not my enemy.”

  Her eyes are greenish blue.

  Then, below us, the bombardment begins. My people against her people.

  She picks up her rifle. She’s about to take off, but I grab her arm.

  “N, n, n, nothing you can d....”

  A trumpet sounds down in the fort.

  “You’re trying to save them.”

  “No. S, s, save.... you!”

  But she twists away and off she goes.

  I pack up my paintings and head up. I want to be back where the birds are singing. I need to paint. It calms me.

  I don’t stop until the sound is muffled and distant and until I start to hear birds again and the rustle of ground creatures.

  I get out my sketch pad and a crow quill pen and sit, hardly moving. And soon, here comes a redheaded yellowbeak with topknot and right behind him his drab but, in her own way, equally beautiful mate. I start to sketch, then give each drawing a wash of watercolor, wait a few minutes until they dry and pack up.

  I was concentrating so hard I didn’t notice that the distant explosions have stopped, though there’s a volley of rifle shots now and then.

  I climb out on a jutting rock. I’m almost at the top of the cliff. Behind me is the high flat land of the enemy. I watch the sun setting across the valley where my people live. I watch a flock of snow geese fly by. I hear them. They’re low, getting ready to land for the night. I watch until even the stragglers pass. Then I climb below the jutting rock and lie down.

  I wonder how things went at the fort and with the girl. I wonder if she’s still alive or if she rushed in, threw her grenades and was shot right away. I hope she had more sense.

  Can a mere bird painter rescue somebody? Especially a bird painter who can hardly talk?

  I feel bad that I let myself spend the afternoon sketching—making myself forget while others were in danger and maybe pain ... of course it’s pain they’ve gotten themselves into. Even she. But the joy on her face when she looked at my paintings! And then at me! It’s enough to make me fall in love. But I don’t ever let myself. How could I say what needs to be said?

  With secret signs and hand signals? A wink? A leer? Maybe with a parrot on my shoulder to talk for me in squawks? I refuse.

  Besides, I have my birds.

  But could I rescue?

  I give up on sleeping.

  I can at least see if she made it down to her own people. After I find out, I’ll escape back to my solitude.

  * * * *

  I leave my bundle under the jutting rock. No moon. There’s an owl. That reassures me. I disturb things that skitter away. Then I trip and fall flat. Branches scratch my face. I hit my chin on a rock and almost knock myself out. There’s a mini landslide. I make a terrible racket. I lie still and listen.

  Nothing.

  But right after that, my own side captures me. They don’t treat me very well. Before they ask me anything or try to find out who I am, they throw me down and kick me a few times. Then bring me to a bonfire and to a colonel. I stutter more than usual. I don’t make any sense at all. They take me for a moron—it’s not the first time—and chain me to a tree.

  I’m worried about my paintings and sketchbooks under that overhang (they’re not well hidden), but I’m mostly worried about the girl. I don’t even know her name. I can’t ask about her. But then I can’t as

k about her anyway. They don’t have time to listen to me trying to get the words out.

  * * * *

  In the morning I open my eyes to white feathers. A fog of white. Tiny bits of down. I’m hurting and stiff but I’m charmed. Enchanted. It’s as if I’ve found my way into a bird world. I sit up and then I realize there’s nothing to be enchanted about.

  Every little group of soldiers has a campfire with a spit and something cooking. The battle was long over, but that evening they had nothing else to shoot so they shot the snow geese as they came down low, looking for a resting place.

  They eat and then bring me their leftovers, but, hungry as I am, I won’t eat snow goose.

  Finally they unchain me, bring me down to the ruined fort where they’ve set up headquarters. The outer walls still stand, but inside it’s a mess. The inner walls are stone, too, but the roofs were mostly wood and they’re splintered and broken. Everything in the rooms is scattered and covered with debris.

  They have ways of hurting that don’t leave a mark. If I could think of a secret I’d try to tell it to them, but I never pay attention to anything except birds and flowers. And the more I need to talk, the worse my sputtering gets. I find myself making the bird sounds that come to me so easily, quacks and screeches and squawks.

  Afterwards they don’t bother tying me up. They let me lie in the courtyard. Discarded. Soldiers walk back and forth around me and don’t pay any attention.

  * * * *

  Later I hear somebody calling, “Nor, Nor. Get up, Nor. Please. Can you get up?”

  It’s dusk. The fort is quiet. Quieter than it should be, not a soldier in sight. It seems the army has left for some other battle.

  “Nor.”

  I know who it is.

  I stand up and hobble over to a tiny window in a stone wall. She reaches out. I grab her hand. Without thinking I kiss it and then hold it to my cheek. Then I worry about what I’ve done, but she reaches with her other hand and places it over my hand. Perhaps words aren’t so necessary after all.

  “Are y, y, you aw....”

  “What have they done to you? You look....”

  I’m thinking: Nothing you can see, but then I remember my bruised chin and scratched face from my fall.

  “They’ve gone,” she says. “Can you let me out?”

  The door is chained shut, but I use a piece of debris as a crow bar and pry the hinges out.

  We run out the broken gates, around the fort, and start up behind it. I’m yet again climbing the cliffs at the hardest place. I know the way well but now I’m hurting. I wonder if I have a cracked rib.

  * * * *

  It’s exactly under that jutting rock where I hid my things that we finally stop, and there’s my bundle, slashed. Everything scattered. My paintings are not only cut, but shot at. I suppose the next best thing to shooting real birds is shooting paintings of them. They burned the sketch books. Just the metal rings are left. They cooked another snow goose there.

  I sit down, discouraged. It’s the girl that yells, “Oh no! Oh no!” over and over. She runs around gathering up pieces and trying to fit them back together.

  I say, “D, d, don’t.”

  She says, “But I want these. Can I have them?”

  I shrug.

  I sit beside the dead campfire, while the girl, on her knees, keeps trying to piece together parts of the paintings and I finally remember to ask her name. It’s Milla. I think it means cloud. It fits her.

  She keeps looking up at me with the same admiration as before and I realize I’ve done it—I’ve actually rescued her. If not for me coming down for her, who would have been there to let her out?

  She pieces together about half of one of my paintings. The middle is full of bullet holes and cuts.

  “Look. The sunset and the flock of ducks in the distance is still there. I want it. Please.”

  “C, c, ‘course.”

  “Except you could sell this as it is.”

  “No. You c, c.”

  “But what can I do for you that would be worth as much?”

  “N, n, no.”

  Then we hear honking way above us. Another batch of geese, but high. You can just barely hear them.

  Then there’s gunfire below us. None of the geese fall, they’re way too high. Somebody is shooting just for the fun of it. It stops after the geese pass, but the shooters are so near, we think we’d better get out of there.

  But they’ve heard us. They start shooting in our direction before they know which side we are, or we them. We flop down flat.

  But it might be my own side.

  I stand up. I shout, “S, s, stop,” in my own language.

  Behind me Milla shouts, “Stop,” in her language.

  Good. We have both languages going. Then one of them says,

  “Stop,” in the enemy’s language. It’s Milla’s people.

  Right in front of me, and in flower, is the bush the hummingbirds love best, and there, the hummingbird. How can it be? Right between shots? I still have a red feather in my button hole. I don’t know how it lasted here through all this. The bird hovers over it. I stand still. It hovers over my face. Checking, am I food or not? Perhaps my scratches are red enough to tempt it.

  I come to, to someone crying. I’m comfortable. There’s a pillow. There’s a feather bed. I think: Some day there will be nothing to cry about. Or at least there’ll be no shooting and plenty of feather beds. Then I think: Hummingbird!

  I open my eyes and sit up.

  The crying stops.

  There’s a little girl standing in the doorway. She says, “Oh!” And then, in the enemy language, “I thought you were dead.”

  I’m not a good judge of children’s ages, but she can’t be more than six or seven.

  I say, “N, n, not yet.”

  She says, “You had blood.”

  “D, did I?”

  “You stayed in bed all day. I wouldn’t like that.”

  “I, I, I....”

  “You talk funny.”

  “I, I ... Yup.”

  “They didn’t want me to see you but I did anyway. Lots of times. Like now. You’re a secret. But how come you get all these nice things?”

  “Wh, what? N, nice?”

  Then I see, beside the bed, there are sketch books, pens, and paints, and a large tablet of watercolor paper.

  “I wish I could have them. Or even just one little bitty thing.”

  “Which?”

  “Paints.”

  “I ... I’ll ... share.”

  Then Milla comes in, carrying a tray.

  “Sassuna! What are you doing here?”

  She’s wearing slacks and a flowery blouse. Everything much more revealing than her uniform.

 

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