I’m in bed at last and switch off the reading lamp. Then I lie in the small square of darkness as I used to. I reach out and take the pistol off the bedside table. The metal has gone cold quickly because of the air-conditioning. “Birds die in the blue of morning too,” I say, or think, and pull the trigger. Apart from the four dogs, no one will probably hear the shot. I have no near neighbours and at this hour there are no pedestrians on the road.
But I usually fall asleep quickly and without any problem, only to be overwhelmed by imaginings that seem to be the visual equivalent of the sounds of the night accompanied by my musings. A dense flight of ugly waterfowl with long legs and retracted necks crosses the plain on the north coast and sails low over the great boulders, whose whimsical, eroded shapes give them the look of massive tombstones. Snakes poke their slimy heads out of the crevices in the cliffs and scrutinise their surroundings through narrowed eyelids; they press their snouts into the ground and slide slowly forward, so that the horny layer covering their bodies is sloughed off; hundreds of cast-off snake skins are left to stink among the rocks. Small, thickset creatures with stubby tails bend themselves double and spit saliva onto the sack-shaped reproductive organ that bulges from their rectum. From a bay choked with driftwood and empty plastic bottles toxic fumes rise, and on the surface of the dead water millions of tiny creatures float, entangled in slippery threads to form a mass of purple jelly. Blue-black fish flap sluggishly about in the mud near the springs that well from the rough limestone. Then, like a speeded-up film, these become mere snatches of images: a long claw with three toes and pointed nails — a thick, rough coat — branching horns above a protruding snout — grooved teeth with poison seeping down them — a leering head with mobile, protruding ears — callused, hairless patches on a rusty-brown coat — prehensile feet like a giant’s hairy hands. .
It sometimes happens, though, that at about three, with the advent of the crowing cocks and the gnawing conscience, I manage to allay my fears with a stiff shot of whisky and decide to stay outside and wait for the sunrise. That means, of course, that I have to fill at least two hours with drunken philosophising, but it’s worth it.
When the sun comes up, I have to change my position so that I can look eastwards. I sit on the projecting rim of the big flower pot, in which weeds, not flowers, flourish.
There follows the ritual duel that puts an end to night. The bronze morning light seeps hesitantly through the resisting darkness, and the hills stand out more sharply against the sky, like reclining goddesses with drawn-up knees and enormous breasts. Then the peaks are surrounded by a halo of silver and the tropical sunrise explodes triumphantly over the landscape, a glittering tidal wave of light rolling down the slopes. In these few dazzling moments each day, I think in my drunken way, the heavens warn man of the hellfire awaiting him.
In a few minutes the miracle is complete. The sun now climbs quickly into the sky and casts sharp contrasts of light and shade across the island.
TWO
Birds die in the blue of morning. I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, or read anything about it, so I assume I’m the only one who knows about a phenomenon that takes place at every sunrise on the southern slopes of the Great Mountain, when birds dive deliberately to their deaths against a sheer cliff face.
I have observed this strange spectacle four times now, and each time it has moved me deeply. In order not to be seen by the birds, you must conceal yourself well before daybreak, because the transition from dark to light is swift, and after that it takes only a few minutes for the birds to emerge from the trees in the valley below. From such a high vantage point the sunrise is a rather different experience than from my terrace. First you see the hazy black of night, deep in colour to start with but quickly turning to a bluish glow that is drawn across the landscape like a semitransparent veil. Low in the eastern sky, faint streaks of greyish white and pink appear, but are soon dispelled by the first rays of the sun, which hesitantly define the outlines of things and then drench the whole landscape with white light, bringing it to life. At that moment the birds burst out of the treetops with piercing cries and fly upwards with violent wing beats. The sound of their communal screeching can be heard from far away. Suddenly they fall silent, and for a moment they appear to be hanging motionless in the sky. But then they shoot forward, resuming their shrill cries, and dive at great speed towards the cliffs, the sunlight gleaming on their yellow heads and bright green wings. Just before they hit the wall of rock, they bank sharply and soar upwards, grazing the edge of the cliff and heading east towards the new sun. But two or three of the birds do not break their headlong descent or soar upwards: they swoop on towards the cliff and are dashed to pieces against it.
Each time I witness it this spectacle seems absurd. Firstly there is the contradiction of the magnificent birth of a new day and the suicide of the birds, creatures that for me epitomise nature. Then there is the abrupt way in which the birds about to crash break off their aggressive screeching at the sun, without leaving so much as an echo. Yet when I sit tipsily on my terrace in silence and darkness, and the night, oblivious to the emptiness and melancholy of mankind, is populated with monsters, before the cocks have crowed, I am amazed that the scene with those birds makes such an impression on me: haven’t I always, even as a boy, associated the dawn with death?
In my nocturnal reveries I have often puzzled over the antics of the birds at the Great Mountain. At first I decided it was an optical illusion, as science knows of no species of bird that practises self-destruction. In the whole animal kingdom, in fact, there are very few examples of animals taking their own lives: voles will drown themselves en masse if they have become too numerous in a particular habitat and conditions are unfavourable; and according to local superstition, scorpions will give themselves a fatal sting if they are in mortal danger and cannot escape. But I quickly reject the idea that I was deluding myself. I wasn’t drunk when I observed the spectacle — and I had seen it not once but four times.
Another hypothesis that seems to me more plausible is that the birds crash to their deaths not because they want to commit suicide, but because they suffer from some biological defect, such as the blindness common in older birds. The inbuilt radar that warns them of obstacles in their flight path may have malfunctioned, or they may have suffered paralysis of the wing muscles during gliding, so that they are unable to gain sufficient height in time.