Nature Stories (9781590175682)

by Renard, Jules; Bonnard, Pierre

  My friend covers her face and I turn my head away, frightened because this nasty creature may knock into me.

  People say that they would kill us by sucking our blood.

  It’s an exaggeration.

  They’re harmless, they’ll never touch you.

  These daughters of the night don’t hate light. They’re just looking for candles that they can blow out with their rustling wings.

  THE BIRDLESS CAGE

  FELIX CAN’T UNDERSTAND why we shut birds up in a cage.

  “It’s a crime to pick flowers,” he says, “and personally, I want to smell one only on its stem. And similarly, birds are made to fly.”

  Nevertheless, he’s bought a birdcage and hung it in his window. He’s put a nest of cotton wool in it, a saucerful of seeds, and a cup of pure water, replenishable. There’s also a swing and a mirror.

  And when people are surprised and ask him about it, he says, “Every time I look at that cage, I feel pleased at my unselfishness. I could have put a bird into it and I didn’t. If I wanted, some brown thrush, some spruce little bullfinch hopping around, or one of the other variegated birds would be enslaved in there. But one of them is still free, thanks to me. That’s something, at least.”

  A CANARY

  WHAT ON EARTH can have prompted me to buy that bird?

  The man who sold it to me said, “It’s a male. Give it a week to settle in and it’ll start singing.”

  Well, he persists in failing to utter a note and keeps doing everything wrong.

  As soon as I fill his mug with seed, he gets them out with his beak and tosses them to the four winds.

  I tie a biscuit onto a string between two bars of his cage and he eats the string. He pushes the biscuit away and hammers at it until it falls down. He washes himself in his drinking water and drinks his bathwater. He leaves his droppings in both of them, indiscriminately. He imagines that canary bread is just the place for birds of his species to hollow out a nest and then, instinctively, tucks himself into it.

  He hasn’t yet realized what salad leaves are for; he just tears them into shreds.

  It’s pitiful to watch him when he really wants to peck up a seed. He rolls it to and fro with his beak, squeezing it, crushing it, and twisting his head about like a little old man who’s lost all his teeth.

  He can’t understand what his sugarstick is for: Is it some sort of stone jutting out, a balcony, or a rather useless kind of table?

  He prefers his pieces of wood. He has two of them, one on top of the other, crosswise. It makes me sick to watch him jump. He’s as stupid as a mechanical clock which hasn’t got any hands. What pleasure does he get hopping around like that? Why does he feel the need to do it?

  If he takes a rest from his wretched gymnastics, he perches on one leg, throttling the stick in one claw and blindly groping for the same stick with his other claw.

  When winter comes and we light the stove, he thinks it’s spring, time to molt, so he sheds his feathers.

  My lamp is bright and it disturbs his nights and upsets his sleeping times. He goes to bed early in the evening. I leave him to enjoy the shades of night. Perhaps he’s dreaming? I suddenly bring the lamp closer. He opens his eyes: What? Daytime already? And he quickly starts fussing around, dancing, pecking holes in a lettuce leaf, opening his tail, unfolding his wings.

  But I blow out the lamp. I’m sorry I can’t see his bewildered reaction.

  I soon get fed up with this dumb bird who can only live back to front and I set him free through the window. He doesn’t understand freedom any better than being in a cage. Someone will easily catch him by hand.

  And for goodness’ sake, don’t bring him back to me!

  Not only am I not offering any reward but I’ll swear that I’ve never known that bird.

  THE FINCH

  A FINCH IS SINGING on the end of the barn roof. It repeats its native note always with the same intervals. When you’ve been watching for a long time, your eye becomes blurred, you can’t distinguish him from the massive barn. The whole life of these stones, this hay, these beams and tiles is breaking free through a bird’s beak.

  Or, in fact, the barn itself is whistling a little tune.

  THE BULLFINCHES’ NEST

  ON A FORKED BRANCH of our cherry tree there was a bullfinches’ nest, pretty to look at, round and perfect, all hairy outside and soft as down inside. Four baby birds had just emerged. I said to my father, “I’m almost tempted to take them and bring them up.”

  My father had often explained to me why it was criminal to put birds in cages. But doubtless tired of repeating the same thing, he couldn’t find anything more to say. A few days later I said to him, “If I want to, it’ll be quite simple. I’ll put the nest in a cage, hang the cage on the cherry tree, and the mother will feed the little birds through the bars, until they don’t need her anymore.”

  My father didn’t say what he thought of this idea.

  So I installed the nest in a cage, hung it on the cherry tree, and what I’d predicted happened. The older birds didn’t hesitate: they brought along beakfuls of caterpillars for their youngsters. And my father kept watching from a distance, as amused as I was to see these colorful comings and goings, this flight of bloodred and sulfur-yellow.

  One evening I said, “The young birds seem pretty strong. They’d fly off, once they’re freed. So I’ll let them have one more night together and tomorrow I’ll bring them into the house and hang their cage up by the window, and I’m pretty sure that there have never been any bullfinches better looked after than these.”

  My father didn’t contradict me.

  Next day I found the cage empty. My father saw how utterly amazed I was.

  “I’m not inquisitive,” I said, “but I should like to know what idiot opened that cage.”

  THE SPARROW

  SITTING IN THE GARDEN UNDER the hazelnut trees, I’m listening to the sounds of birds and insects in their leaves or in any unwary tree.

  Silent and quite lifeless as we approach it, it’ll start to live as soon as it thinks we’ve gone, because we’re as quiet as it is. After being visited by a bullfinch, who flutters around the hazelnut trees, taking a few pecks at the leaves, and then flying off without having noticed me, here comes a sparrow, who lands on a branch just above me.

  Although he’s already quite sturdy, he must be young. He’s holding on tightly to the branch with his feet, not moving, as if flying has exhausted him, and he’s chirruping very gently. He can’t see me and I can have a good look at him. Finally I have to move. When I do, the sparrow opens his wings very slightly and closes them, completely unperturbed.

  For some unknown reason, I sit up straight, without thinking, and holding out my hand, I very softly call out to him.

  And, rather awkwardly, the sparrow comes down from his branch and lands on my finger!

  I feel as moved as a man discovering that he had a hitherto hidden charm, like a man who dreamily and absentmindedly smiles at a woman he doesn’t know and she smiles back.

  The sparrow self-confidently flutters his wings to keep his balance on the end of my finger and his beak is ready to swallow anything.

  Just as I was about to go and show it to my family, a little boy, Raoul, who lives next door and who seemed to be looking for something, came running up to me.

  “So you’ve got him?” he said.

  “Yes, I know how to catch these!”

  “He got out of his cage,” said Raoul. “I’ve been looking for him all morning.”

  “So he’s yours?”

  “Yes, I’ve been training him for the last week. He’s started flying quite long distances but he’s very tame.”

  “Here’s your sparrow, Raoul, but don’t let him escape again, because I’ll strangle him, he gives me the creeps.”

  THE SWALLOWS

  I

  THEY TEACH ME SOMETHING EVERY DAY.

  They put full stops in the air with their little chirps.

  They draw a s
traight line, put a comma at the end, and then quickly go on to the next line.

  They put crazy brackets round my house.

  They fly from my cellar to my attic too quickly for the pool in my garden to make a copy of their flight.

  Their light, feathery wings make loops and flourishes that you couldn’t possibly imitate.

  Then, two by two, they embrace and join together to put ink spots on the blue sky.

  But you need a friendly eye to follow them, and while you may know Greek and Latin, I can read Hebrew, which is what these birds who live in chimneys are tracing in the sky.

  II

  THE WREN: I think swallows are stupid; they think chimneys are trees.

  THE BAT: And say what you like about me not knowing how to fly. They keep on losing their way in broad daylight; if they flew at night, like me, they’d be killing themselves all the time.

  III

  As I look, I can see a dozen swallows with their white rumps eagerly, silently, and restlessly swooping and crisscrossing in a space no bigger than an aviary. To me they seem like women weaving in a great hurry because they’re running out of time.

  THE MAGPIE

  HE’S ALWAYS GOT A LITTLE snow left on him from last winter. He hops along the ground with his feet together. Then he casually takes off, heading straight for a tree.

  Sometimes he misses it and lands on the one next to it.

  He’s so common and so despised that he seems immortal, wearing evening dress (tails, of course) all day long, nattering away. He’s certainly unbearably smart—he’s the most French of all our birds.

  THE BLACKBIRD

  I

  THE JAY: “Always dressed in black, you miserable fellow!”

  THE BLACKBIRD: “I’m sorry, minister, it’s the only suit I’ve got.”

  II

  That blackbird with his yellow beak...he must have jaundice.

  THE GOLDEN ORIOLE

  I SAID TO HIM: “Give that cherry back to me immediately!”

  “Certainly,” the oriole replied.

  He gives me the cherry and, with it, the three hundred thousand larvae of nasty insects which he swallows every year.

  THE PARROT

  NOT BAD AT ALL, in fact rather good for the old days when birds couldn’t talk. But nowadays, every stupid animal can do clever things.

  THE LARK

  I

  I’VE NEVER SEEN A LARK and it’s pointless to get up early. The lark doesn’t live on earth.

  I’ve been tramping over clods of earth and dry grass since early morning.

  Groups of gray sparrows and bright-colored goldfinches are floating over the thornbush hedges.

  The jay is reviewing the trees in his official uniform.

  A quail is skimming over the alfalfa in a straight line, as he always does.

  Behind the shepherd, who can knit better than any woman, the sheep are following each other; they all look alike.

  And everything is suffused in such a new light that the crow, a bird that foretells evil, is making people smile.

  But just listen with me.

  Can’t you hear pieces of crystal being crushed in a cup of gold?

  Who can tell me where the lark is singing?

  When I look up into the sky, the sun burns my eyes.

  I’m going to have to give up trying to see him.

  He’s a bird who spends his life in the sky, and he’s the only one whose song is able to come down to earth.

  II

  He’s falling-down, dead drunk: he’s been trying yet again to poke himself into the eye of the sun.

  THE KINGFISHER

  I DIDN’T GET A BITE this evening but I’m coming home with a strange sensation.

  As I was holding my fishing rod up, a kingfisher came and perched on it.

  We haven’t got a more striking bird.

  It looked like a big blue flower on the end of a long twig. The rod was bending under his weight. I was swelling with pride at having been taken for a tree by a kingfisher.

  And I can swear that he didn’t fly off because he was afraid; it was merely because he thought he was moving from one branch to another.

  THE HAWK

  FIRST OF ALL, he circles around the village.

  He was just a fly, a speck of soot.

  He’s making smaller circles and gradually growing bigger.

  Sometimes he just hovers. The chickens don’t look happy. The pigeons fly back under the roof. A hen gives a little squawk to tell her chicks to come closer. And you can hear the wary geese cackling to one another from farmyard to farmyard.

  The hawk is hesitating, hovering at the same height. Perhaps it’s only the weathercock on the belfry he’s objecting to?

  You’d think he was suspended in the sky by wire.

  And suddenly, the wire breaks, the hawk swoops down: he’s picked his prey. It’s a dramatic moment down here.

  But to our surprise, he stops before landing, as if he can’t face it, and with a sweep of his wings, soars up again.

  He’s seen me standing, waiting for him in my doorway. I’m hiding something long and shining behind my back.

  THE WAGTAIL

  SHE’S FLYING AND RUNNING about round our legs all the time, very casually—and impossible to catch, with little chirrups challenging us to tread on her tail.

  PARTRIDGES

  THE PARTRIDGE AND THE PLOWMAN live peacefully side by side; he’s behind his plow, she’s in the alfalfa nearby. They’re keeping their distance; they don’t want to get into each other’s way. The partridge knows the plowman’s voice and isn’t worried when he shouts and swears.

  If the plow creaks or the ass starts braying, she remains quite unconcerned.

  And so peace reigns, until I come along and disturb it.

  But here I am. The partridge flies off, the plowman grows uneasy and the ox and the ass too. I fire my gun and the whole of nature is thrown into confusion by the sound of this uninvited visitor.

  First of all, I flush out some partridges in the stubble, then I go into a field of alfalfa, then into a meadow, then along a hedge, then into a patch of wood, then...

  Then, I suddenly stop, I’m in such a sweat.

  “Oh, they’re absolutely diabolical! How they’re making me run!”

  In the distance, I’ve glimpsed something under a tree, in the middle of the meadow.

  I go up to the hedge and peer over.

  I reckon that there’s a bird’s neck sticking up under that tree. My heart immediately starts thumping. There can only be partridges in that grass. When she heard me, the mother must have made a signal to her chicks and they know that they must lie flat on the ground. She herself has crouched down so that only her neck can be seen. But I’m hesitating, the neck’s quite still and I’m afraid of being mistaken and shooting at a root.

  Here and there, at the foot of the tree, there are patches of yellow: Partridges or clots of earth?

  If I make them fly away, the branches of the tree will make it impossible to shoot at them. I’d prefer to shoot them on the ground, thereby committing what all serious sportsmen describe as murder.

  But what I think is the neck of a partridge shows no sign of movement.

  I continue to watch.

  If it is a partridge, she’s showing an admirable ability to remain watchful and still, and the others are showing that they deserve such an excellent guardian. Not a single one is budging.

  I’ll try a trick. I hide myself completely behind the hedge and stop observing them, for as long as I can see the partridge, she can see me.

  So now we’re both invisible. There’s a deathly hush...

  I’ll take another look.

  Oh, now I’m sure! The partridge has been taken in by my disappearance. The neck had moved up and when it was lowered, she’s given herself away.

  Slowly I raise the butt of my gun to my shoulder...

  That evening, tired and well-fed, before going off to sleep, full of game, I think of all the partri
dges I’ve been shooting at and imagine what sort of night they’ll be having.

  They must be panic-stricken.

  Why have some of them failed to return?

  Why are some of them in pain and pecking at their wounds, unable to keep still?

  And why has someone started frightening them all?

  Barely have they landed when one of them raises the alarm. They have to get away, out of the stubble and grass.

  They’re continually having to get away, and they’re frightened when they hear quite familiar sounds.

  They’ve stopped fluttering around, they’ve stopped eating or sleeping.

  They can’t understand it at all.

  If the feather from a partridge wounded by me were to come and stick itself on my hat, the hat of the man who’s proud of having shot it, I’d think that was right and proper.

  Whenever there’s too much rain, or too much sun, or the dog can’t pick up the scent, or I’m shooting badly, or we can’t find any partridges, I consider that I’m shooting in self-defense.

  There are some birds—magpies, jays, blackbirds, thrushes—with which any self-respecting man won’t fight, and I respect him for it.

  I only like fighting partridges.

  They’re so tricky!

  Their trick is to fly off before you get there, but you can catch up with them and teach them a lesson.

  Or else they wait until you’ve gone past, but they can fly off too soon and then you can turn around.