(1965) The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski Read Free Book Online Page B

warmed it during the day.
    At times, feeling the wind on my brow, I went numb with horror. In my imagination I saw armies of ants and cockroaches calling to one another and scurrying toward my head, to some place under the top of my skull, where they would build new nests. There they would proliferate and eat out my thoughts, one after another, until I would become as empty as the shell of a pumpkin from which all the fruit has been scraped out.
    Noises woke me. I opened my eyes, uncertain of my surroundings. I was fused with the earth, but thoughts stirred in my heavy head. The world was graying. The fires had gone out. On my lips I felt the cold of streaming dew. Drops of it settled on my face and in my hair.
    The sounds returned. A flock of ravens circled over my head. One of them landed nearby on broad rustling wings. It approached my head slowly while the others began to alight.
    In terror I watched their shining black-feathered tails and darting eyes. They stalked around me, nearer and nearer, flicking their heads toward me, uncertain whether I was dead or alive.
    I did not wait for what would come next. I screamed. The startled ravens leapt back. Several rose a few feet into the air, but touched ground again not far off. Then they glanced suspiciously at me and began their circuitous march.
    I shouted once more. But this time they were not frightened, and with increasing boldness advanced ever more closely. My heart thudded. I did not know what to do. I screamed again but now the birds showed no fear. They were only two feet from me. Their shapes loomed larger and larger in my eyes, their beaks grew more and more vicious. The curved widespread claws of their feet resembled huge rakes.
    One of the ravens halted in front of me, inches from my nose. I yelled right into its face, but the raven only gave a slight jerk and opened its beak. Before I could shout again, it pecked at my head and several of my hairs appeared in its bill. The bird struck again, tearing out another tuft of hair.
    I turned my head from side to side, loosening the earth around my neck. But my movements only made the birds more curious. They surrounded me and pecked at me wherever they could. I called loudly, but my voice was too weak to rise above the earth and only seeped back into the soil without reaching the hut where Olga lay.
    The birds played with me freely. The more furiously I swiveled my head to and fro, the more excited and bold they became. Seeming to avoid my face, they attacked the back of my head.
    My strength ebbed. To move my head each time seemed like shifting a huge sack of grain from one place to another. I was crazed and saw everything as through a miasmal fog.
    I gave up. I was myself now a bird. I was trying to free my chilled wings from the earth. Stretching my limbs, I joined the flock of ravens. Borne abruptly up on a gust of fresh, reviving wind, I soared straight into a ray of sunshine that lay taut on the horizon like a drawn bowstring, and my joyous cawing was mimicked by my winged companions.
    Olga found me in the midst of the swarming flock of ravens. I was nearly frozen and my head was deeply lacerated by the birds. She quickly dug me out.
    After several days my health returned. Olga said that the cold earth had driven the sickness out of me. She said that the disease was picked up by a throng of ghosts transformed into ravens which tasted my blood to make sure that I was one of them. This was the only reason, she asserted, they did not peck my eyes out.
    Weeks passed. The plague subsided and fresh grass grew on the many new graves, grass that one could not touch because it surely contained poison from the plague victims.
    One fair morning Olga was summoned to the river-bank. The peasants were pulling from the water a huge catfish with long whiskers stiffly sprouting from its snout. It was a powerful-looking, monstrous fish, one of the largest ever seen in that region. While catching it one of the fishermen had a vein