In their tiny shell-like boats fishermen, two to a boat, dipped their nets in the water. On the banks, boys were carrying on their heads baskets full of flapping silvery catches.

And then he noticed that groups of wanderers in the distance were lifting their faces tô the sky, pointing to something with upraised hands.

And soon the sky came out in a colored rash, in blotches which grew and spread, and was filled with a strange tribe of birds, circling and revolving in great criss-crossing spirals. Their lofty flight, the movement of their wings, formed majestic scrolls that filled the silent sky. Some of them, enormous storks, floated almost immobile on calmly spread wings; others, resembling colored plumes or barbarous trophies, had to flap their wings heavily and clumsily to maintain height upon the current of warm air; still others, formless conglomerations of wings, of powerful legs and bare necks, were like badly stuffed vultures and condors from which the sawdust was spilling.

There were among them two-headed birds and birds with many wings, there were cripples too, limping through the air in one-winged, awkward flight. The sky now resembled those in old murals, full of monsters and fantastic beasts, which circled around, passing and eluding each other in elliptical maneuvers.

My father rose on his perch and, in a sudden glare of light, stretched out his hands, summoning n e birds with an old incantation. He recognized them with deep emotion. They were the distant, forgotten progeny of that generation of birds which at one time Adela had chased away to all four points of the sky. That brood of freaks, that malformed, wasted tribe of birds, was now returning degenerated or overgrown. Nonsensically large, stupidly developed, the birds were empty and lifeless inside. All their vitality went into their plumage, into external adornment. They were like exhibits of extinct species in a museum, the lumber room of a birds' paradise.

Some of them were flying on their backs, had heavy misshapen beaks like padlocks, were blind, or were covered with curiously colored lumps. How moved my father was by this unexpected return, how he marveled at the instinct of these birds, at their attachment to the Master, whom that expelled tribe had preserved in their soul like a legend, in order to return to their ancient motherland after numerous generations, on the last day before the extinction of the tribe.

But these blind birds made of paper could not recognize my father. In vain did he call them with the old formulas, in the forgotten language of the birds—they did not hear him nor see him.

All of a sudden, stones began to whistle through the air. The merrymakers, the stupid, thoughtless people had begun to throw them into the fantastic bird-filled sky.

In vain did Father warn them, in vain did he entreat them with magical gestures—he was not heard, nor heeded. The birds began to fall. Hit by stones, they hung heavily and wilted while still in the air. Even before they crashed to the ground, they were a formless heap of feathers.

In a moment, the plateau was strewn With strange, fantastic carrion. Before my father could reach the place of slaughter, the once-splendid birds were dead, scattered all over the rocks.

Only now, from nearby, did Father notice the wretchedness of that wasted generation, the nonsense of its second-rate anatomy. They had been nothing but enormous bunches of feathers, stuffed carelessly with old carrion. In many of them, one could not recognize where the heads had been, for that misshapen part of their bodies was unmarked by the presence of a soul. Some were covered with a curly matted fur, like bison, and stank horribly. Others reminded one of hunchbacked, bald, dead camels. Others still must have been made of a kind of Cardboard, empty inside but splendidly colored on the outside. Some of them proved at close quarters to be nothing more than large peacocks' tails, colorful fans, into which by some obscure process a semblance of life had been breathed.

I saw my father's unhappy return. The artificial day became slowly tinted with the colors of an ordinary morning. In the deserted shop, the highest shelves were bathed in the reflections of the morning sky. Amid the fragments of the extinct landscape, among the ruined background of scenery of the night, Father saw his shop assistants, awakening from sleep. They rose from among the bales of cloth and yawned toward the sun. In the kitchen, on the floor above, Adela, warm from sleep and with unkempt hair, was grinding coffee in a mill which she pressed to her white bosom, imparting her warmth to the broken beans. The cat was washing itself in the sunlight.

The Comet

1

That year the end of the winter stood under the sign of particularly favorable astronomical aspects.