L’éloquence ne tord pas son cou.
SUDDENLY the owl slackened her flight and alighted on a forked branch: a sense of tedium, a vague discomfort had begun to overcome her. Not that the dawn had begun to whiten the sky, though it was beginning to push up behind the horizon and the stars had grown a little pale to the east. The uproarious day was approaching, and a touch of brightness already veiled the most distant peaks from the owl’s eyes. There was no doubt: the baleful sun was loping like a wolf and soon would appear in greedy triumph behind the ridges.
The owl’s nausea and melancholy grew in response to the unrolling of that arc of sky, which carried with it that shadow of light. Now the east was already whitening and the feral pallor was spreading by imperceptible tremors. The dead turn white, and so does the night that dies. And now a benumbing sound, not yet fully uttered, dully swarmed at the valley’s borders: the voice of the light getting ready to scream its clangorous tumult.
The first murmur of the leaves erupted in the breeze, while the whiteness became more pronounced, impregnating the curtains of the air. The song of the first bird arose with a crash; it went on alone for a while, then other voices joined it, the chorus swelled. From this moment on it overflowed without check, rising from a murmur to a hum, a swarming and then a din. The olive trees turned silver, and then the sky, the wind, the clouds; they all became golden, and veiled themselves in blood. The dust of emeralds and jade swayed in the heights, and the coral dust of the cirrus. But at each instant an arcane fire blew over the faded mists and lit them up, transforming them into vivid slopes. In unison with the din, the day acclaimed itself.
Shrill chirpings, impatient moans lifted to meet the oncoming sun: the encircling shadows fled, and the last creatures of the night. Against this adverse element the owl shrank into herself, dismayed, and already the contours of things had blurred. She felt lost, because the tide poured roaring into her; she could not fight this and was compelled to seek her last refuge. Just as man in the shadows of night still preserves in the deepest part of himself a last flicker, a spark of light, so in the unleashed day the owl keeps lit the fire of darkness. But sometimes the small fire flickers, the spark threatens to go out, the shadows teem up like whirlpools of subterranean water from some dark gorge; or the darkness grows pale and in its place spread the light and din.
The sun was pressing through the crests of the mountains and, set in the sky, it looked like a luminous boil—which soon, in a moment, would burst. The owl waited with contracted lids for its loss of darkness. A long moment passed; it seemed incredible that the boil should last that long—the skin of the sky must surely split, it was so taut and shiny. And yet it still stretched and became even shinier, without bursting. An infinite gap of anguish—when a frightening evil threatens us, let it at least come quickly, so that we can throw ourselves into its arms!
The crested lord of the day suddenly emerged with a crash, quickly towering over the arid expanses of rock. Then the final dread overwhelmed the owl and blindness surrounded her. And with his appearance, the horde of ignoble courtiers began singing his praises with greater boldness; and his handmaidens, the lights and colors, began to sway, to flow, to dance, The purplish mists, the night’s residue, scattered, putting up a last despairing struggle. But the presence of the master instilled courage and arrogance in that whole pack of slovenly solar beings. Oh shameless roar, oh unleashed clashing of water, oh reeling of lightrays, of boughs, of leaves! At that moment you thought yourselves the masters of the earth, and of all the creatures of the woods, the air and sea! You are fat, proud progeny now, but when time has run out for your heavenly satyr, he will plunge sheerly behind the mountains or into the salty depths, and other somber, brown shadows will regain mastery over the world.
But this is the end for the owl. The roar deafens her, the flashes and glare blind her; she will die from this light and this din. Disheartened and hopeless, her eyes staring, she tries vainly to see through the agitated brightness and sways and sighs on her branch. None of the diurnal beings notice her and her muted sigh is swallowed by the air.
The clangor and the dazzle gather and grow compact. The shrieks and flashes are unbearable; ever more vivid, ever louder; tongues, blades of bellowing fire. They grow even more intense; and the flashes no longer flash but are a single flash, dilating fixed, immense and blinding, an intolerable, lacerating sight! The roar, the shriek is a howl, a yowl; high and swollen it fills the hollow of the sky. The fearful blacksmith of the day—and one can no longer tell whether it is light, sound or heat—hammers burningly at the eyes and entrails; the universe blazes up. The heart pounds frantically in the death agony.
A shot, a blinding, incandescent flare; the roar subsides into a hum and ceases; the owl plunges into the white light of death.
“Well, how do they work?”
“Eh, I’d thought they didn’t have enough gunpowder in them! Don’t you see? It dropped down alive. I’ll have to doctor these cartridges.”
But although she still fluttered there on the ground before a dog which was sniffing her suspiciously, and perhaps still tried feebly to fly, the owl no longer knew what was happening and was happy.
“Aren’t you going to pick it up?”
“What would I do with it?”
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal