3

What Happened in the Night

* The boy heard the hard-edged sound in the middle of the night. He came awake, reached out for the floor lamp, and, once it was on, sat up and looked around the room. The time on the wall clock was just before two. The boy could not imagine what might be happening in the world at a time like this.

Then the sound came again-from outside the window, he was sure. It sounded like someone winding a huge spring. Who could be winding a spring in the middle of the night?

No, wait: it was like someone winding a spring, but it was not really a spring. It was the cry of a bird. The boy carried a chair over to the window and climbed up onto it. He pulled the curtains back and opened the window a crack. In the middle of the sky hung a large white moon, the full moon of late autumn, filling the yard below with its light. The trees out there looked very different to the boy at night than they did in the daylight. They had none of their usual friendliness. The evergreen oak looked almost annoyed as it trembled in the occasional puff of wind with an unpleasant creaking sound. The stones in the garden looked whiter and smoother than they ordinarily did, staring up at the sky impassively like the faces of dead people.

The cry of the bird seemed to be coming from the pine tree. The boy leaned out the window and looked up, but from this low angle, the large, heavy branches of the pine hid the bird. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to memorize its color and shape so that tomorrow he could find it in his illustrated encyclopedia. His intense desire to know had brought him fully awake now. Finding birds and fish and other animals in his encyclopedia was his greatest joy. Its big, thick volumes lined one shelf of his room. He had yet to enter elementary school, but he already knew how to read.

The bird fell silent after winding the spring several times in a row. The boy wondered whether anyone else had heard the cry. Had his father and mother heard it? His grandmother?

If not, he could tell them all about it in the morning: a bird that sounded just like the winding of a spring was sitting in the pine tree last night at two oclock. If only he could catch a glimpse of it! Then he could tell everybody its name.

But the bird never raised its cry again. It fell silent as a stone, up there in the branches of the pine bathed in moonlight. Soon a chill wind blew into the room, as if giving him some kind of warning. The boy shuddered and closed the window. This was a different kind of bird, he knew, not some sparrow or pigeon, which showed itself to people without hesitation. He had read in his encyclopedia that most nocturnal birds were cunning and cautious. The bird probably knew that he was on the lookout for it. It would never come out as long as he waited for it to appear. The boy wondered if he should go to the bathroom. That would mean walking down the long, dark corridor. No, he would just go back to bed. It was not so bad that he couldnt wait until morning.

The boy turned the light out and closed his eyes, but thoughts of the bird in the pine tree kept him awake. The bright moonlight spilled in from beneath the curtains as if in invitation. When the wind-up bird cried one more time, the boy leaped out of bed. This time he did not turn on the light, but slipping a cardigan over his pajamas, he climbed onto the chair by the window. Parting the curtains just the tiniest bit, he peered up into the pine tree. This way, the bird would not notice that he was there.

What the boy saw this time, though, was the outline of two men. He caught his breath. The men knelt like two black shadows at the base of the pine tree. Both wore dark clothing. One had no hat on, the other wore what looked like a felt hat with a brim. Why are these strange men here in our garden in the middle of the night? the boy wondered. Why wasnt the dog barking at them? Maybe he ought to tell his parents right away.

But his curiosity held him at the window. He wanted to see what the men were doing.

Then, without warning, the wind-up bird cried out again. More than once, it sent its long, creaking sound out into the night. But the men did not seem to notice. They never budged, never looked up. They remained kneeling at the base of the tree, face-to-face. They seemed to be discussing something in low tones, but with the branches blocking the moonlight, the boy could not make out their faces. Before long, the two men stood up at the same moment. There was a good eight-inch difference in their heights. Both men were thin, and the tall one (the one with the hat) wore a long coat. The short one had on more form-fitting clothes.

The shorter man approached the pine tree and stood there, looking up into the branches. After a while, he began patting and grabbing the trunk with both hands as if inspecting it, until, all at once, he jumped up onto it. Then, with no effort whatever (or so it seemed to the boy), he came zipping up the tree like a circus performer. The boy knew this tree like an old friend. He knew that climbing it was no easy feat. Its trunk was smooth and slippery, and there was nothing to hold on to until you got up fairly high. But why was the man climbing the tree in the middle of the night? Was he trying to catch the wind-up bird?

The tall man stood at the base of the tree, looking up. Soon after, the small man disappeared from view. The branches rustled now and then, which meant that he must still be climbing up the tall pine. The wind-up bird would be sure to hear him coming and fly away. The man might be good at climbing trees, but the wind-up bird would not be that easy to capture. If he was lucky, though, the boy was hoping he might be able to catch a glimpse of the wind-up bird as it took off. He held his breath, waiting for the sound of wings. But the sound of wings never came, nor was there any cry.

There was no sound or movement for a very long time. Everything was bathed in the white, unreal light of the moon, the yard like the wet bottom of a sea from which the water has just been suddenly removed. Entranced, motionless, the boy went on staring at the pine tree and the tall man left behind. He could not have torn his eyes away if he had tried. His breath clouded the glass. Outdoors, it must be cold. The tall man stood looking up, hands on hips, never moving, as if he had frozen in place. The boy imagined that he was worried about his shorter companion, waiting for him to accomplish some mission and come climbing down out of the pine tree. Nor would it have been strange for the man to be worried: the boy knew that the tall tree was harder to climb down than up. But then, all of a sudden, the tall man stalked off into the night, as if abandoning the whole project.

The boy felt that now he was the only one left behind. The small man had disappeared into the pine tree, and the tall one had gone off somewhere. The wind-up bird maintained its silence. The boy wondered if he should wake his father. But he knew he could not get him to believe this. Im sure you just had another dream, his father would say. It was true, the boy did often dream, and he often mistook his dreams for reality, but he didnt care what anybody said: this was real- the wind-up bird and the two men in black. They had just disappeared all of a sudden, that was all. His father would believe him if he did a good job of explaining what had happened.

It was then that the boy realized: the small man looked a lot like his father. Of course, he was too short to be his father, but aside from that, he was exactly the same: the build, the movements. But no, his father could never climb a tree that way. He wasnt that agile or strong. The more he thought about it, the more confused the boy became.

The tall man came back to the base of the tree. Now he had something in his hands-a shovel and a large cloth bag. He set the bag down on.the ground and started digging near the roots of the tree. The shovel cut into the earth with a sharp, clean sound. Now everybody was bound to wake up, the boy thought. It was such a big, clear sound!

But no one woke up. The man went on digging without a break, seemingly unconcerned that anyone might hear him. Though tall and thin, he was far more powerful than he looked, judging from the way he used that shovel. He worked steadily, without wasted motion. Once he had the size hole he wanted, the man leaned the shovel against the tree and stood there looking down. He never once looked up, as though he had forgotten all about the man who had climbed the tree. The only thing on his mind now was the hole, it seemed. The boy did not like this. He would have been worried about the man in the tree.

The boy could tell from the mound of earth the man had dug out that the hole itself was not very deep-maybe just up over his own knees. The man seemed satisfied with the shape and size of the hole. He turned to the bag and gently lifted a blackish, cloth-wrapped object from inside it. The way the man held it, it seemed soft and limp. Maybe the man was about to bury some kind of corpse in the hole. The thought made the boys heart race. But the thing in the cloth was no bigger than a cat. If human, it could only be an infant. But why did he have to bury something like that in my yard? thought the boy. He swallowed the saliva that he had unconsciously allowed to collect in his mouth. The loud gulp he made frightened the boy himself. It might have been loud enough for the man to hear outside.

Just then, as if aroused by the boys gulp, the wind-up bird cried out, winding an even bigger spring than before: Creeeak. Creeeak.

When he heard this cry, the boy felt intuitively that something very important was about to happen. He bit his lip and unconsciously scratched the skin of his arms. He should never have seen any of this, he felt. But now it was too late. Now it was impossible for him to tear his eyes away from the scene before him. He parted his lips and pressed his nose against the cold windowpane, transfixed by the strange drama that was now unfolding in his yard. He was no longer hoping for other members of the family to get out of bed. No one would wake up anyway, no matter how big a sound they made out there. Im the only person alive who can hear these sounds. It was that way from the start.

The tall man bent over and, handling it with the utmost care, laid the thing in the black cloth in the bottom of the hole. Then he rose to his full height and stared down at it lying there. The boy could not make out the look on the mans face beneath the brim of his hat, but he seemed somehow to be wearing a grim, even a solemn, expression. Yes, it had to be some kind of corpse, thought the boy. Before long, the man reached a point of decision, lifted the shovel, and began filling in the hole. When he was through shoveling, he lightly tamped the earth beneath his feet and smoothed it over. Then he set the shovel against the trunk of the tree and, with the cloth bag in his hand, moved away with slow steps. He never looked back.

He never looked up into the tree. And the wind-up bird never cried again.

The boy turned to look at the clock on his wall. Squinting in the darkness, he could just barely make out the time as two-thirty. He kept watch on the pine tree for another ten minutes through the opening in the curtains, in case something should move out there, but an intense sleepiness overtook him all at once, as if a heavy iron lid were closing over his head. He wanted to know what would happen with the short man up in the tree and the wind-up bird, but he couldnt keep his eyes open any longer. Struggling to slip off the cardigan before he lost consciousness, he burrowed under the covers and sank into sleep.