“Just look at that!
I thought it was all nonsense, just a boy’s amusement; and it has turned out like this!”
“You sold it too cheaply.”
“Yes; well?”
On market-days she sold them for a ruble, and was more surprised than ever. What a lot one might earn by just playing about!
“And a woman spends whole days washing clothes or cleaning floors for a quarter of a ruble, and here you just catch them!
But it isn’t a nice thing to do, you know, to keep birds in a cage.
Give it up, Olesha!”
But bird-catching amused me greatly; I liked it. It gave me my independence and inconvenienced no one but the birds.
I provided myself with good implements. Conversations with old bird-catchers taught me a lot. I went alone nearly three versts to catch birds: to the forest of Kstocski, on the banks of the Volga, where in the tall fir-trees lived and bred crossbills, and most valuable to collectors, the Apollyon titmouse, a long-tailed, white bird of rare beauty.
Sometimes I started in the evening and stayed out all night, wandering about on the Kasanski high-road, and sometimes in the autumn rains and through deep mud.
On my back I carried an oilskin bag in which were cages, with food to entice the birds.
In my hand was a solid cane of walnut wood.
It was cold and terrifying in the autumn darkness, very terrifying.
There stood by the side of the road old lightning-riven birches; wet branches brushed across my head. On the left under the hill, over the black Volga, floated rare lights on the masts of the last boats and barges, looking as if they were in an unfathomable abyss. The wheels splashed in the water, the sirens shrieked.
From the hard ground rose the huts of the roadside villages. Angry, hungry dogs ran in circles round my legs. The watchman collided with me, and cried in terror:
“Who is that?
He whom the devils carry does not come out till night, they say.”
I was very frightened lest my tackle should be taken from me, and I used to take five-copeck pieces with me to give to the watchmen.
The watchman of the village of Thokinoi made friends with me, and was al — ways groaning over me.
“What, out again?
O you fearless, restless night-bird, eh?”
His name was Niphront. He was small and gray, like a saint. He drew out from his breast a turnip, an apple, a handful of peas, and placed them in my hand, saying:
“There you are, friend. There is a little present for you. Eat and enjoy it.”
And conducting me to the bounds of the village, he said,
“Go, and God be with you!”
I arrived at the forest before dawn, laid my traps, and spreading out my coat, lay on the edge of the forest and waited for the day to come.
It was still.
Everything was wrapped in the deep autumn sleep. Through the gray mist the broad meadows under the hill were hardly visible. They were cut in two by the Volga, across which they met and separated again, melting away in the fog.
In the distance, behind the forest on the same side as the meadows, rose without hurry the bright sun. On the black mane of the forest lights flashed out, and my heart began to stir strangely, poignantly. Swifter and swifter the fog rose from the meadows, growing silver in the rays of the sun, and, following it, the bushes, trees, and hay-ricks rose from the ground. The meadows were simply flooded with the sun’s rays and flowed on each side, red-gold.
The sun just glanced at the still water by the bank, and it seemed as if the whole river moved toward the sun. as it rose higher and higher, joyfully blessed and warmed the denuded, chilled earth, which gave forth the sweet smell of autumn.
The transparent air made the earth look enormous, boundlessly wide.
Everything seemed to be floating in the distance, and to be luring one to the farthest ends of the world.
I saw the sunrise ten times during those months, and each time a new world was born before my eyes, with a new beauty.
I loved the sun so much that its very name delighted me. The sweet sound of it was like a bell hidden in it. I loved to close my eyes and place my face right in the way of its hot rays to catch it in my hands when it came, like a sword, through the chinks of the fence or through the branches.
Grandfather had read over and over again “Prince Mikhail Chernigovski and the Lady Theodora who would not Worship the Sun,” and my idea of these people was that they were black, like Gipsies, harsh, malignant, and always had bad eyes, like poor Mordovans.
When the sun rose over the meadows I involuntarily smiled with joy.
Over me murmured the forest of firs, shaking off the drops of dew with its green paws. In the shadows and on the fern-leaves glistened, like silver brocade, the rime of the morning frost.
The reddening grass was crushed by the rain; immovable stalks bowed their heads to the ground: but when the sun’s rays fell on them a slight stir was noticeable among the herbs, as if, may be, it was the last effort of their lives.
The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they fell from bough to bough. Flaming crossbills pecked with their crooked beaks the knots on the tallest firs. On the end of the fir-branches sang a white Apollyon titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking askance suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the net which I had spread.
And suddenly the whole forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly pensive, was filled with the sound of a thousand bird — voices, with the bustle of living beings, the purest on the earth. In their image, man, the father of earthly beauty, created for his own consolation, elves, cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels.
I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and had scruples about squeezing them into cages. I would rather have merely looked at them; but the hunter’s passion and the desire to earn money drove away my pity.
The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The blue titmouse, after a careful examination of the trap, understood her danger, and, approaching sidewise without running any risk, helped herself to some seed between the sticks of the trap.
Titmouses are very clever, but they are very curious, and that is their undoing.
The proud bullfinches are stupid, and flocks of them fall into the nets, like overfed citizens into a church. When they find themselves shut up, they are very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers with their stout beaks.
The crossbill entered the trap calmly and seriously. This grasping, ignorant bird, unlike all the others, used to sit for a long time before the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like the woodpecker, always escorting the titmouse.
About this smoke-gray singing-bird there is something unpleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one.
Like the magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things.
Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home through the forest. If I had gone by the high-road past the villages, the boys and young men would have taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle. I had already experienced that once.
I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but I felt that I had grown older, had learned something new, and had gained strength during that day.