The Painted Bird

by Jerzy Kosiński

for me survival was an individual action that earned the survivor the right to speak only for himself. Facts

he does not simply compare; he actually enters a fictional role, expanding it in terms of his own experience, his own creative and imaginative powers.

The New York Times reported that The Painted Bird was being denounced as propaganda by reactionary forces “seeking an armed showdown with Eastern Europe.” Ironically,

One of them replied that they had come to punish Kosinski for The Painted Bird, a book that vilified their country and ridiculed their people.

Only by enveloping himself in the realm of pure logic, abstracting himself from the world of letters with its implicit commentary on human affairs, could my father transcend the hideous events that surrounded him daily.

She told me that the human soul discards the body in a similar manner and then flies up to God’s feet. After its long journey God picks it up in His warm hands, revives it with His breath, and then either turns it into a heavenly angel or casts it down into hell for eternal torture by fire.

With my friend dead I no longer had anyone to wait for in the morning.

Someone jabbed me from behind with a rake. I jumped aside. Someone else pricked me with a sharp prong. Again I sprang away, crying loudly. The crowd became more lively. A stone struck me. I lay down, face to the earth, not wishing to know what might happen next. My head was being bombarded with dried cow dung, moldy potatoes, apple cores, handfuls of dirt, and small stones. I covered my face with my hands and screamed into the dust which covered the road.

One time we attended a child with a rotting leg, covered with wrinkled brown skin, from which a bloody yellow pus oozed. The stench from the leg was so strong that even Olga had to open the door every few moments and let in a draft of fresh air. All day long I stared at the gangrenous leg while the child alternately sobbed and fell asleep.

what a childhood hahha

While I stood at the bottom, trembling with fever and chill, Olga pushed the earth back into the pit until I was buried up to my neck. Then she trampled the soil around me and beat it with the shovel until the surface was very smooth. After making sure there were no anthills in the vicinity, she made three smoky fires of peat.

Fire, they said, is no natural friend to man. That is why one must humor it.

And with a rapid movement such as women use to gouge out the rotten spots while peeling potatoes, he plunged the spoon into one of the boy’s eyes and twisted it. The eye sprang out of his face like a yolk from a broken egg and rolled down the miller’s hand onto the floor.

The eyeballs lay on the floor. I walked around them, catching their steady stare. The cats timidly moved out into the middle of the room and began to play with the eyes as if they were balls of thread. Their own pupils narrowed to slits from the light of the oil lamp. The cats rolled the eyes around, sniffed them, licked them, and passed them to one another gently with their padded paws. Now it seemed that the eyes were staring at me from every corner of the room, as though they had acquired a new life and motion of their own.

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.

The peasants listened to these stories thoughtfully. They said the Lord’s punishment had finally reached the Jews. They had deserved it long ago, ever since they crucified Christ. God never forgot. If He had overlooked the sins of the Jews so far, He had not forgiven them. Now the Lord was using the Germans as His instrument of justice.