206
DORIS LESSING
smile. I smiled back. Without raising his eyes from his book, Willi
cleared
his
throat. It was a comic sound, like bad theatre, and both
I and Paul burst out into one of the wild helpless fits of laughing
that often took members of the group, singly,
in
couples, or col–
lectively. We laughed and laughed, and Willi sat reading. But I
remember now the hunched enduring set of his shoulders, and the
tight painful set of his lips. I did not choose to notice it at the time.
Suddenly there was a wild shrill silken cleaving of wings and a
pigeon settled fast on a branch almost above our heads. It lifted its
wings to leave again at the sight of us, folded them, turned round on
its branch several times, with its head cocked sideways looking down
at us. Its black bright open eyes were like the round eyes of the mating
insects on the track. We could see the delicate pink of its claws
gripping the twig, and the sheen of sun on its wings. Paul liffed the
rifle-it was almost perpendicular-shot, and the bird fell among us.
Blood spattered over Jimmy's forearm. He went pale again, wiped
it off, but said nothing.
"This is getting disgusting," said Willi.
"It has been from the start," said Paul composedly.
He leaned over, picked the bird off the grass and examined it.
It was still alive. It hung limp, but its black eyes watched us steadily.
A film rolled up over them, then with a small perceptible shake of
determination it pushed death away and struggled for a moment in
Paul's hands. "What shall I do?" Paul said, suddenly shrill; then,
instantly recovering himself with a joke: "Do you expect me to kill
the thing in cold blood?"
"Yes," said Jimmy, facing Paul and challenging
him.
The clumsy
blood was in his cheeks again, mottling and blotching them, but he
stared Paul out.
"Very well," said Paul, contemptuous, tight-lipped. He held the
pigeon tenderly, having no idea how to kill it. And Jimmy waited
for Paul to prove himself. Meanwhile the bird sank in a glossy
welter of feathers between Paul's hands, its head sinking on its neck,
trembling upright again, sinking sideways, as the pretty eyes filmed
over and it struggled again and again to defeat death.
Then, saving Paul the ordeal, it was suddenly dead, and Paul
flung it onto the heap of corpses.
"You are always so damned lucky about everything," said
