In the beginning there were only a few, and it’s hard to say why they came. We never had any before. They peered through the keyhole of the moon, I guess, they looked at our town and saw that it was good, they came in ones and twos to test the branches of the trees for comfort and sturdiness, and turned their faces toward the sea. There must be some magic in the wet air, or the salt, because the firstcomers became more brilliant, and the sounds they made in their throats softened into bell tones and chuckles like a running brook. They are now the cellists of the heavens. And the skies filled with new cacklers, grey-bodied shriekers, come by the thousands to sit in that eerie crowd and watch the light over the water.
Even the deaf could recognize a new migration because of the color of the feather piles. In the spring when the new flocks arrived the tones suddenly shifted to neutrals, and over the course of the warmer season those dull colors refracted in our good sea light into a rainbow of outlandish brilliance. What was once a family of dull mauve clickers turned into an iridescent purplish clan of brilliant percussionists; their tiny clicks became as intricate as a drummer keeping 11/12 time with one hand and 12/12 time with the other.
Why the resentment, you may ask. Isn’t a thing of beauty a joy for ever? Shouldn’t the increase of beauty be the multiplication of joy, the magnification of grace, shouldn’t it lift the heart and soothe the spirit? Well, imagine, I ask you: imagine the silent sky of the morning, and the pale lift of dawn, that magic time when everything is hushed and expectant. Picture the moments when there seem to be enough space for the delicate dream thoughts to rush and expand, when the world opens up and lets you in.
But now, those birds! Birds with their sensitive eyes and delicate slumbers, they felt the sun coming up over the water before we began to stir from our dreams. They started shaking their bright wings and calling their morning greetings to each other. When it was only a few, we could forgive them. But then the cellos began their mourning and the flautists sent up their trills, and the drummers and cymbals chimed in, and before you could rub the sleep from your eyes the whole damn orchestra was out there vying for attention. There was no such thing, anymore, as the peaceful hour at dawn.
The noise continued all day. The grandmothers with their brooms went out into the streets to remove the feathers; they swept and gave each other long-suffering looks. On the outskirts of town there were constant plumes of smoke, where the feathers were burned. You sometimes saw a brilliant green flash, an emerald’s wink, a feather that rose up over the flames in the column of smoke to dance and twirl in the heat. But the fire always got them in the end.
At the beginning some of the women collected the feathers and sewed them into dresses, or used them to decorate their hair. The men made masculine belts and some of them experimented with crests, but in the end it was not enough. Crests are lovely on a jay, but no man managed to make one look equally dashing. The birds grew more and more brilliant, and more and more numerous, and their shedding was too much for the most ardent seamstress to stay ahead of. But the really unconscionable thing is that the feathers that fell were never quite as radiant as the ones still on the birds. By the time you finished a dress, even the piles of trash in the streets outshone you.
The birds averted their eyes from the pyres. They tried to speak more melodiously and fly more gracefully. They put all their effort into delighting our senses. They were a tribe of artists in training, learning from each other, each one more accomplished and more musical, more athletic and luminous, than the last.
But we despised them. Their polite gazes, the turn of their heads as they observed us, the serene satisfaction that hovered around their beaked faces as they fluffed and preened and grew steadily more lovely – it was unbearable.
In the end we decided that something must be done. We stayed up late at night, tiptoed through the alleys with shielded lanterns, and gathered in the church. The decision was made. We took saws and rakes, hammers, baseball bats, we armed ourselves with whatever was handy, and we went out to the stand of trees that lay between the town and the sea, where all the birds were snoring melodiously.
And then we began. We hacked at the trees with axes, the women raised their voices in animal screams. For once we disturbed their sleep. The birds roused themselves from their brilliant dreams in shock, an animated fluttering, even their cries of alarm were harmonious. A few fell, and to them we were merciless. But the rest took off from the trees in a glorious rush of wings and they flew blind into the night. There was a shower of feathers that were shaken loose, the last feathers thank God, the last ones that would fall.
We didn’t watch them go. We were busy with the trees. We tore them down, their sad crumpled roots pulled from the earth. There couldn’t be a home for the birds to return to, a place that would attract them again.
Since then the wind that blows from across the sea strikes the village more harshly, and the smell it carries with it seems somehow changed. Maybe it’s because the trees stood between us and the ocean. The light too, once all the gleaming plumes were finally cleared from all the corners, seems softer. Lovers venture out at dawn to walk together on the quiet sands, listening to the waves – and even though the whispering of leaves is missing, the lovers are once again filled with the silence of the morning sky, able to be absorbed completely by each other.
Women look a little more tired in the new, paler light. But then again, they no longer suffer by comparison. Once again it is possible that a lovely girl might be the finest thing to see for miles around. The men start gossiping about the pretty ones with what seems like relief – they can compare one to the natural world without casting her in the shade. Her hair like the golden sea grass in the wind, her skin like the inside of a polished shell, her eyes like an early summer twilight. No one mentions the birds.
But I have a secret. When the last piles of feathers were burned, when we were gathering them up in our hands and throwing them on the fire like confetti, I put one in my pocket. It’s not very long, its shape is a little rounded. It’s a worker feather from the middle of the wing, not one of the decorative ones. I hung it in the attic, where the light from the little round window comes in and makes the dust dance off the floor. It moves slowly in breezes too faint for me to feel.
Sometimes I go upstairs to look at it, and each time it seems that the colors have changed – I could swear that it started out a caramel color, but day by day I feel it is shifting, pulling in more light. It has traceries of fire running along its edges, it reflects the blue of the sky into something more brilliant, it has veins of amethyst and lapis shadows and when the spring comes it turns bright beetle-shell green. It is every color that vanished when the birds left.
I can hardly stand to look at it. In the end, I still can’t decide what lies heavier on the heart: unbearable, exquisite beauty; or the memories it leaves in passing, ripples in the wake of its loss.
