But be that as it may, I assure you that my mother’s illness immediately gave me the impression of something self-willed. Call it my imagination, but the fact still remains that the moment I heard the news of my mother’s illness, a striking and complete change came over me, even though the message suggested no imminent cause for alarm. A hardness that had encompassed me melted away instantaneously, and I can say no more than that the state I now found myself in bore a great resemblance to my awakening on that night when I left my house, and to the moment of my anticipation of the singing arrow from above. I wanted to visit my mother right away, but she held me off with all sorts of excuses. At first she sent word that she looked forward to seeing me, but that I should wait out the lapse of this significant illness, so that she could welcome me home in good health. Later she let it be known that my visit would upset her too much for the moment. And finally, when I insisted, I was informed that recovery was imminent and that I should just be patient a little while longer. It seems as though she feared that a reunion between us might cause her to waiver in her resolve. And then everything happened so quickly that I just barely still made it to the funeral.
I found my father likewise ailing when I got there, and as I told you, all I could do then was to help him die. He’d been a kind man in the past, but in those last weeks, he was astonishingly stubborn and moody, as though he held a great deal against me and resented my presence. After his funeral I had to clear out the household, which took another few weeks; I was in no particular hurry. Now and then the neighbors came by out of old force of habit, and told me just exactly where in the living room my father used to sit, where my mother would sit, and where they themselves would. They looked everything over carefully and offered to buy this or that. They’re so thorough, those small-town types; and once after thoroughly inspecting everything, one of them said to me: It’s such a shame to see an entire family wiped out in a matter of weeks! — I of course didn’t count. When I was alone, I sat quietly and read children’s books; I found a big box full of them up in the attic. They were dusty, sooty, partly dried out and brittle, partly sodden from the dampness, and when you struck them they gave off an unending stream of soft black clouds; the streaked paper had worn off the cardboard bindings, leaving only jagged archipelagoes of paper behind. But as soon as I turned the pages, I swept through their contents like a sailor piloting his way across the perilous high sea, and once I made an extraordinary discovery. I noticed that the blackness at the top corner where you turned the pages and at the bottom edge of each book differed in a subtle but unmistakable way from the mildew’s design, and then I found all sorts of indefinable spots, and finally, wild faded pencil markings on the title pages. And suddenly it came to me, and I realized that this impetuous disrepair, these pencil scrawls and hastily made spots were the traces of a child’s fingers, my own child fingers, preserved for thirty some-odd years in a box in the attic, and long forgotten!
Well, as I told you, though it may for some people not be an earth-shattering event to remember themselves, it was for me as if my life had been turned upside down. I also discovered a room that thirty and some-odd years ago had been my nursery; later it was used to store linen and the like, but the room had essentially been left the way it was when I sat there at my pinewood table beneath the kerosene lamp whose chain was decorated with three dolphins. There I sat once again for many hours a day, and read like a child whose legs are too short to touch the floor. For you see, we are accustomed to an unbounded head, reaching out into the empty ether, because we have solid ground beneath our feet. But childhood means to be as yet ungrounded at both ends, to still have soft flannel hands, instead of adult pincers, to sit before a book as though perched on a little leaf soaring over the bottomless abysses through the room. And at that table, I tell you, I really couldn’t reach the floor.
I also set myself a bed in this room and slept there. And then the blackbird came again. Once after midnight I was awakened by a wonderful, beautiful singing. I didn’t wake up right away but listened first for a long time in my sleep. It was the song of the nightingale; she wasn’t perched in the garden bushes, but sat instead on the rooftop of a neighbor’s house. Then I slept on a while with my eyes open. And I thought to myself: There are no nightingales here, it’s a blackbird.
But don’t think this is the same story I already told you today! No — because just as I was thinking: There are no nightingales here, it’s a blackbird — at that very moment, I woke up. It was four in the morning, daylight streamed into my eyes, sleep sank away as quickly as the last trace of a wave is soaked up by the dry sand at the beach. And there, veiled in daylight as in a soft woolen scarf, a blackbird sat in the open window! It sat there just as sure as I sit here now.
I am your blackbird — it said — Don’t you remember me?
I really didn’t remember right away, but I felt happy all over while the bird spoke to me.
I sat on this windowsill once before, don’t you remember? — it continued, and then I answered: Yes, one day you sat there just where you now sit, and I quickly closed the window, shutting it in.
I am your mother — it said.
This part, I admit, I may very well have dreamed. But the bird itself I didn’t dream up; she sat there, flew into my room, and I quickly shut the window. I went up to the attic and looked for a large wooden bird cage that I seemed to remember, for the blackbird had visited me once before — in my childhood, like I just told you. She sat on my windowsill and then flew into my room, and I needed a cage. But she soon grew tame, and I didn’t keep her locked up anymore, she lived free in my room and flew in and out. And one day she didn’t come back again, and now she had returned. I had no desire to worry about whether it was the same blackbird; I found the cage and a new box of books to boot, and all I can tell you is that I had never before been such a good person as from that day on: the day I had my blackbird back again — but how can I explain to you what I mean by being a good person?
Did she often speak again? — Aone asked craftily.
No — said Atwo — she didn’t speak. But I had to find bird food for her and worms. You can imagine that it was rather difficult for me: I mean, the fact that she ate worms, and I was supposed to think of her as my mother — but it’s possible to get used to anything, I tell you, it’s just a matter of time — and don’t most everyday matters likewise take getting used to! Since then I’ve never let her leave me, and that’s about all I have to tell; this is the third story, and I don’t know how it’s going to end.
But aren’t you implying — Aone cautiously inquired — that all this is supposed to have a common thread?
For God’s sake, no — Atwo countered — this is just the way it happened; and if I knew the point of it all, then I wouldn’t need to have told it in the first place. But it’s a bit like hearing a whisper and a rustling outside, without being able to distinguish between the two!