The Painted Bird

by Jerzy Kosiński

What were parents for if not to be with their children in times of danger?

It was also believed that sharing fire, especially borrowing it, could only result in misfortune. After all, those who borrow fire on this earth might have to return it in hell.

I wondered whether the loss of one’s sight would deprive a person also of the memory of everything that he had seen before. If so, the man would no longer be able to see even in his dreams. If not, if only the eyeless could still see through their memory, it would not be too bad. The world seemed to be pretty much the same everywhere, and even though people differed from one another, just as animals and trees did, one should know fairly well what they looked like after seeing them for years.

Then a new kind of train appeared on the line. Living people were jammed in locked cattle cars.

Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people.

Never before had I seen such a striking uniform. At the proud peak of the cap glittered a death’s-head and crossbones, while lightninglike signs embellished the collar. A red badge bearing the bold sign of the swastika cut across his sleeve.

The church always overwhelmed me. And yet it was one of the many houses of God scattered all over the world. God did not live in any of them, but it was assumed for some reason that He was present in all of them at once. He was like the unexpected guest for whom the wealthier farmers always kept an additional place at their table.

But hatreds of large groups of people must have been the most valuable of all. I could barely imagine the prize earned by the person who managed to inculcate in all blond, blue-eyed people a long-lasting hatred of dark ones.

It was common belief that the rope of a suicide brings good luck.

man-made lightning

Brother fought against brother, fathers swung axes against sons in front of their mothers. An invisible force divided people, split families, addled brains. Only the elders remained sane, scurrying from one side to the other, begging the combatants to make peace. They cried in their squeaky voices that there was enough war in the world without starting one in the village.

I was wondering why, if God could make sinners into pillars of salt so easily, salt was so expensive. And why didn’t He turn some sinners into meat or sugar? The villagers certainly needed these as much as salt.

If it was true that women and children might become communal property, then every child would have many fathers and mothers, innumerable brothers and sisters. It seemed to be too much to hope for. To belong to everyone! Wherever I might go, many fathers would stroke my head with firm, reassuring hands, many mothers would hug me to their bosoms, and many older brothers would defend me against dogs. And I would have to look after my smaller brothers and sisters. There seemed to be no reason for the peasants to be so afraid.

From God’s point of view it seemed to make more sense if everyone lost the war, since everyone was committing murder.

From him I learned that the order of the world had nothing to do with God, and that God had nothing to do with the world. The reason for this was quite simple. God did not exist. The cunning priests had invented Him so they could trick stupid, superstitious people. There was no God, no Holy Trinity, no devils, ghosts, or ghouls rising from graves; there was no Death flying everywhere in search of new sinners to snare. These were all tales for ignorant people who did not understand the natural order of the world, did not believe in their own powers, and therefore had to take refuge in their belief in some God.

The trees stood stiffly like sinister monks in black habits guarding the glades and clearings with the broad sleeves of their branches.

What gorgeous use of language.

Here and there nurses directed emaciated people in striped clothes; the soldiers looked at them in sudden silence—those were the people saved from the furnaces who were returning to life from the concentration camps.

It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway. They collided with or charmed one another, hugged or trampled one another, but everyone knew only himself. His emotions, memory, and senses divided him from others as effectively as thick reeds screen the mainstream from the muddy bank. Like the mountain peaks around us, we looked at one another, separated by valleys, too high to stay unnoticed, too low to touch the heavens.