Nine Tales for Children

Karel Čapek

plus one additional tale by Josef Čapek

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The Bird's Tale

 

Do you know what birds say when they talk to each other.  They only speak in human language very early in the morning when the sun's just coming out, and while you're still asleep.  Later on, when there's lots of light, they don't have the time to say much - you see they're always so busy getting seeds, digging out worms or snapping at flies in the air. 

A bird father will go out and stretch his wings, while a mother bird has to stay home to look after the children.  That's why birds only talk to each other early in the morning when they open the windows of their nests, put the bedding out to air it, and cook breakfast.

"Morning," calls the blackbird from his nest in the pine tree, to his neighbour the sparrow who lives under peoples eaves.  "It's already time."

"I know, I know," says the sparrow.  "Time to fly off, find something to cheech cheech cheech, something to eat, you know?"

"I agree, agree," cooed the pigeon on the roof.  "It's lots of work, brother.  Little grain, little grain."

"It is," agreed the sparrow climbing out of his bed.  "It's because of these cars, you know?  When there were more horses about there was grain scattered everywhere, but now?  Now these cars fly past and leave nothing behind, nothing, nothing!"

"Horrid smell, horrid smell," said the pigeon crossly.  "Hard life - rrrr!  Better just give up the effort of it!   However long I circle round and coo, what do I get for all this work?  Not even a handful of grain.  These are awful conditions."

"And do you think it's any better for sparrows?" objected one of them.  "Believe me, if I didn't have a family to feed I wouldn't go out at all."

"Like that sparrow in Prague, in Dejvice," said a wren from the thicket.

"Dejvice?" said the sparrow.  "I know someone who lives there, 'Philip', he's called."

"That's not him," said the wren. "This lazy sparrow's name was Joseph.  He was very hard to get on with, he never washed properly, never kept himself groomed and all he did all day was complain: it's too boring in Dejvice, he thought, too dull, other birds fly away for the winter to the south, down  to the Riviera or to Egypt, all these starlings and storks and swallows and nightingales, it was only the sparrow who slogged all his life out stuck in Dejvice.  'Well, I'm not going to put up with it either,' declared this sparrow called Joseph; if one of those swallows who live in Růžek can fly down to Egypt why can't I do the same?  And that's what I'm going to do, I tell you, I'll just pack my toothbrush, my nightshirt and my racket and balls so that I can play tennis while I'm down there.  Just you see how I'll beat all the best players; I'm already better than them and I've got some better tricks, I'll pretend to serve the ball, but instead of the ball I'll fly over the net myself and when they swing their rackets at me I'll veer out of the way, see, see,see?  And then when I've beaten all of them I'll marry a rich American and buy Waldstein Palace and make a nest under the roof, only I won't use ordinary straw, I'll use rice straw and ratafia and sea grass and horse hair and squirrels' tails, see?!'  - that's how this little sparrow boasted, and every morning he would shout about how he was sick of Dejvice and how he was about to fly down to the Riviera."

 

"And did he go?" asked the blackbird from the pinetree.

"He did," continued the wren from the thicket.  "He waited just until the 28. October so that he could hear the bands playing for Independence Day - he always made sure of that - and then he set off for the south first thing in the morning.  The trouble is, though, that sparrows never do fly off to the south, and so they don't know the right route to take.  And this sparrow, Joseph, didn't have enough money with him so he wasn't able to spend the night in an inn.  Sparrow have always been a working class sort of bird, as they spend the whole day flying from roof to roof.  In short, Joseph the sparrow got only as far as a town called Kardašova Řečice and couldn't go any further because he didn't have another penny; he was even glad when the mayor of Kardašova Řečice gave him some friendly advice, saying: 'you rootless fool, you good for nothing, do you really think we've got enough horse droppings here in Kardašova Řečice for any tramp, foreigner, wanderer or fugitive that comes our way?  If you want us to let you stay in Kardašova Řečice then your not allowed to peck for food in the main square or in front of any pub or on the roads, that's reserved for us who've been here a long time, you can only search for food in the backyards of the houses; and as mayor, so that you can build yourself somewhere to live, I can officially let you have the scraps of straw you'll find in the shed behind number 57.  Now, sign this, to show this is where you live, and now get out of my sight'. And so that's what happened; Joseph the sparrow from Dejvice, instead of flying down to the riviera, remained in the little town of Kardašova Řečice."

"And is he still there today?" asked the pigeon.

"He's still there today," said the wren.  "I've got an auntie in Kardašova Řečice and she's told me all about him.  She says he just laughs at the other sparrows in Kardašova Řečice and never stops shouting about how there's nothing but boredom there, no trams like in Dejvice, not as many cars, not even a sports ground like Slavia and Sparta in Prague.  Simply nothing.  And that he has no intention of staying and slowly dying in a place like Kardašova Řečice, he had an invitation to go to the riviera and was only waiting for some money to arrive from Dejvice.  And he talked so much about Dejvice and the riviera that even the sparrows in Kardašova Řečice began to believe they'd be better off somewhere else, they stopped pecking around for food and just chirped like sparrows do anywhere else in the world and complained and talked loudly about how anywhere was better than Kardašova Řečice!"

"Well," said the tit sitting in the dogwood bush, "that was stupid of them.  Not far from here, where the land is so fertile, there was a swallow who read in the paper that we're badly off here, but in America they're all so clever and they can do anything and all that sort of stuff.  So this swallow got it into her head that she would go off to America to have a look.  So off she went."

"How did she go to America?" retorted the wren.

"I don't know," answered the tit, "by ship I expect.  Or else she might have gone by airship.  She could have made a nest inside an airship, or a cabin with a little window so that she could stick out her head and even spit down below.   Anyway, she came back after a year and said she'd been in America and that everythere is different from here; no comparison, she said, the way they're so far advanced there.  For instance, there aren't any larks there, and the houses are so amazingly high that if a sparrow built his nest in the roof of one of them, and an egg fell out of it, the egg would be falling for so long that before it hit the ground the young sparrow would hatch out of it on the way down, he'd grow up, get married, have a clutch of children, grow old and die at a blessed old age, so that instead of a sparrow's egg hitting the ground it'd be an old, dead sparrow.  That's how tall the houses are there, she said.  And something else this swallow said; she  said that in America everything's built out of concrete and she'd learned how to use concrete herself; and all the other swallows should come and she'd show them how to make a swallow's nest out of concrete instead of mud like all these silly swallows have been doing so far.  So all the swallows flew in from all four corners of the country, there were so many swallow that humans had to put up seventeen thousand three hundreed and forty nine meters of telephone and telegraph wires so that the swallows would have somewhere to sit.  Once all the swallows had gathered together, this American swallow said: "Now pay attention, boys and girls, this is how they build their houses and their nests in America, out of concrete.  First of all, you get a big pile of cement.  Then you get a big pile of sand.  Then you pour water onto it and make it into a sort of paste, and this paste is what you use to build a modern nest.  But if you haven't got any cement you can't make a nest of concrete, only mortar.   Then you make a paste of lime and sand, but that lime must have been slaked.  First I'll show you how to slake lime."  As soon as she'd said that off she flew straight off to the building site, where the bricklayers were working, to get some unslaked lime.    She took a tiny amount of lime in her beak and quickly flew back.  But it's damp inside a bird's beak, and that lime began to slake and to hiss and to burn.

The swallow was shocked when this happened, she dropped the mouthful of lime and shouted: 'Well, now you now how to slake lime.  Oh my dog, that burns!  Jeans on ice, that hurts!  Barking smell, yay yay yay, oh flit, oh oh oh, oh la la, ooh-ah, now that's how to slake lime!'  When the other swallows heard him shout and complain they didn't even wait to see what would happen next, they shook their tails and flew back home.  'I don't want to get my beak burned like that,' they said to themselves.  And that's why, to this day, swallows still build their nests from mud and not from concrete like that swallow from America wanted to show them.  - But never mind, now I've got to go and do some shopping."

"Mrs. Bluetit," called out Mrs. Blackbird, "if you're flying off to the market would you get a kilo of worms for me, some nice long ones; I won't have the time today because I've got to teach my children how to fly."

"I'd be glad to, Mrs. Blackbird," said the tit.  "My dear, I now how much work that is, teaching children how to fly properly."

"And do you know," said the starling on the birch tree, "who it was that taught us birds to fly?  I'll tell you; I was told this by one of the crows on Karlstein Castle who flew this way once, when there was all that ice about.  This crow is already a hundred years old, and he heard this from his grandad, who was told it by his great-grandad, who was told it by his grandma's great-uncle on his mother's side, so it must be true.  Well, you know how sometimes in the night you can see a falling star.  But some of these falling stars aren't stars at all; they're golden angels' eggs.  When things fall down from the sky it makes them very hot so that they shine like fire.  And that must be true because this crow from Karlstein told me so.  Only, humans call these angels' eggs something different - a meter or a motor or a mentor or something like that."

"Meteor," said the blackbird.

"That's it," agreed the starling.  "And in those days birds still weren't able to fly, they ran around on the ground like chickens.  And when they saw these angels' eggs fall from the sky they said to themselves that they'd like to sit on these eggs so that they can see what sort of bird will hatch from them.  And this is completely true because this crow said so.  They were just talking about this one evening when there was a loud bang in the wood nearby.  A golden shining egg had just fallen, with a loud whizz, out of the sky! All of them jumped up and started running about, especially the stork as he's got the longest legs.  It was the  stork who found the golden egg and picked it up; but the egg was still red-hot after falling so far through the sky and the stork burned both his hands but he was still able to carry this red-hot egg back to the other birds.   Then he rushed as fast as he could into the water so that he could cool down his burning hands.  That's why, ever since, storks have waded in water, so that they can cool down their hands.  That's what this crow told me."

"And what else did he say?" asked the wren. 

"Then," the starling went on, "the wild goose waddled up so that she could sit on the hot egg to hatch it.  But the egg was still so hot that the goose burned her bottom and had to jump into the pond to cool it down.  And that's why geese, ever since, have swum in water.  Then one bird after another came forward and sat on the angel's egg so that it would hatch."

"The wren too?" asked the wren.

"The wren too," said the starling.  "All the birds in the world sat on the egg so that it would hatch.  Only when they told the chicken it was her turn, the chicken asked: 'What?  What?  How?  How?  What?  When can I sit, sit?  I have to peck, peck.  How? That's how it is.  I'd be daft, daft.'  So the chicken didn't go and sit on the angel's egg.  After all the birds had taken their turn sitting on the golden egg, there hatched from it one of God's angels.  And when it was free of the shell it didn't start to peck or to cheep like other birds, it flew straight up into the sky singing Alleluia Hosanna.  And then it said to the birds: 'Birds, how can I thank you for the love you showed in sitting on my egg?  From today on, you will be able to fly like angels.  Watch this, what you have to do is move your wings and suddenly you're up in the air.  Watch now, one, two three!'  And on the count of three all the birds began to fly, and they can still fly today.  Only the chicken can't fly because she wasn't willing to sit on the angel's egg.  And all that is God's truth, because that's what I was told by the crow from Karlstein."

"Watch out then," said the blackbird. "One, two three!"  And at that, all the birds shook their tails waved their wings and flew up into the sky, each one singing his own song and each one making his living in his own way, just like they had been taught by the angel from God.