DOROTHEA STRAUS
139
from the low, broad forehead, the heavy black eyebrows, the small
pointed ears, that body, thin as a razor blade, moving gracefully, lightly,
as though in defiance of gravity? Was he the embodiment of a folk tale:
a mischievous demon who stole the souls of pure village maidens and
tweaked the noses of pious scholars bowing over their religious tomes?
He said only, "How nice to see you. May I sit down?" His accent
was faintly foreign, his words, staccato, issuing like ice pellets from his
narrow lips.
My husband had known him in New York City, and now Jerzy
Kosinski told us that he was about to return there for the publication of
his first novel,
The Painted Bird.
The conversation that afternoon was
unremarkable, but when he fixed his glance on me, with his black, wide–
set eyes, and commented, "I like your witch's hat," it was as though he
were admitting me into a charmed circle. Although I had no idea, then
or now, what this occult order might be, I conserved the black leather
hat until it fell apart, its tall crown collapsed, its brim grown shapeless
and frayed.
As soon as it was issued, I read
The Painted Bird,
and, for all the time
I knew him, Kosinski was defined by this book.
It
recounts the experi–
ence of an eight-year-old boy, let loose, alone, in the forest, fleeing the
Nazis. The child comes from a wealthy, upper middle class home,
privileged with books, toys, a nanny, and cultured parents, but from the
first pages he is presented as a wild Gypsy, whose dramatic dark coloring
makes him easy prey for his blonde, Nordic predators. The narrative tells
of his wanderings and his miraculous escapes during the war years. He
seeks asylum in huts and farms and, everywhere, he is exposed to murder,
rape, sadism, sodomy, incest, and the spells of half-human peasant crones.
The small protagnoist is wily, agile, and resourceful; he has the courage
of those unacquainted with self-pity. A sprite, he manages to survive,and
terror rends him as strong as an army of one. He is oddly detached from
the suffering of human beings; his pity is, chiefly, for animals who accept
their hideous fates with dumb stoicism. The death of a single cart horse
brings tears to the reader's eyes, while the corpses of men and women
are cause for nausea and shock. Armed with his "comet," a type of
lantern used as seeing eye, stove, body warmer, and amulet, the boy lives,
at intervals, in the woods.
In
winter he glides over the ice with the help
of a handmade contraption, part skates, part sail. He binds himself in rags
against the cold.
In
summer, he feels close to the small creatures of the
forest and somehow manages to evade the fangs of the wolves. His rap–
port with nature is spontaneous, unpoetical, difficult to explain in a
pampered city child - but it is never doubted. Magic has its own reasons,
unsuspected by the rationale of the psychologist. At the close of the
