When the wind blows at night, the darkness shifts and sounds have their shapes. They can’t be seen, but they enter the ear like material objects. The inside of the skull must be as vast as the entire neighborhood in order for everything to fit.
He was about to toss his cigarette away and go back home when he heard something. Air was moving across the tops of the trees like a huge black kite. The branches tore open the taut covering and from its far side, somewhere by the narrow ravine or the top of the mountain, came scattered sounds. As if from over there, from under the sky, from the heart of the gloom, a frolicking band of children had run up with their calls and shouts and Indian war whoops. The sheet of the wind undulated, stretched, and all at once began to close up like a roller blind. He was left in a total vacuum. The air rushed off that way, reaching the mountaintop. He knew it from the heavy rumbling in the ancient beech trees there. A flurry ran across the crest and in a moment of stillness he heard a woman’s piercing, hysterical laugh, which, as it reached its highest note, turned into a sob. Then other, similar voices joined in, and it was only the next blast of cold air that drove the stolen echo into the depths of the night. He flicked his cigarette butt away. The red spark vanished at once. He couldn’t tell if it had fallen into the snow or if a gust had swept it out of sight.
At moments the wind lifted up from the earth, passing over the peaks of the mountains, high up and far away, and the roar never died down even for a moment, as if over there, at the invisible frontier of the sky, a waterfall had opened up—as if, in the new Flood, air would take the place of water.
Then he heard it again. A lot closer. About halfway down the mountainside. It was like a pack of dogs short of breath—that was what he thought to himself. Dogs whose barking had been thrust back down their throats by the wind, so the only sound they could make was a shrill, intermittent yelping. Dogs that were unable to bark. Then he heard one more sound and felt his skin crawl.
*
The next day he went there. The wind had stopped. The snow and mist had the color of milky glass. The trees looked like a detailed drawing on which water had been spilled. The blood had darkened already, but when he swept a little snow aside with the toe of his boot, he saw that underneath it was bright and live. He looked around. A broad, empty stretch of ground separated him from the woods. He thought to himself, come on, it’s daytime, but he couldn’t overcome his unease. He studied the tracks. This was where the animal had fallen, but it had still had the strength to get back up and keep running away. The marks of wolf paws were distinct. Tufts of dark brown fur with a gray underside had been left in the disturbed snow. The crows led the way from there.
It was a young doe. It looked like a discarded bundle of sticks and dirty rags. He found pulled-off bones with the remains of flesh still on them. The wolves had each taken their own share, gone off a little higher up, and eaten at a safe distance from one another, in a wide semicircle around their main course. Then they’d descended, taken another portion, and returned to their places. It had probably lasted till morning.
Now everything was so still it was as if nothing would ever happen here again. He thought about the nighttime commotion and remembered all those parties where people speak in raised voices, talking on top of one another, their hands occupied with gestures and silverware, and it’s only the ironic light of dawn that brings calm.
He went back down. That was all the crows were waiting for.