Stupid Ludmila was a strange woman and I feared her increasingly. She was well built and taller than the other women. Her hair, seemingly never cut, cascaded down her shoulders. She had large breasts, which hung nearly to her belly, and strong muscular calves. In the summer she went around dressed only in a faded sack which revealed her breasts and a clump of red hair at her crotch. Men and boys would tell of the pranks they played with Ludmila when she was in the mood. The village women often tried to trap her but, as Lekh said with pride, Ludmila’s tail was windblown and no one could catch her against her will. She would disappear in the undergrowth like a starling and creep out when no one was around.
No one knew where her lair was. Sometimes at dawn when peasants walked to the fields, scythes on their shoulders, they saw Stupid Ludmila waving to them amorously from afar. They would halt and wave back to her, stretching their arms lazily as their will to work weakened. Only the calls of their wives and mothers, approaching with sickles and hoes, brought them back to their senses. Women often set dogs on Ludmila. The largest and most dangerous one ever sent to attack her decided not to return. After that she would always appear holding the animal by a rope. The other dogs would flee with their tails between their legs.
It was said that Stupid Ludmila lived with this huge dog as with a man. Others predicted that someday she would give birth to children whose bodies would be covered with canine hair and who would have lupine ears and four paws, and that these monsters would live somewhere in the forest.
Lekh never repeated these stories about Ludmila. He only mentioned once that when she was very young and innocent her parents ordered her to get married to the son of the village psalmist, notorious for his ugliness and cruelty. Ludmila refused, infuriating her fiance so much that he enticed her outside the village where an entire herd of drunken peasants raped the girl until she lost consciousness. After that she was a changed woman; her mind had become addled. Since no one remembered her family and she was considered not too bright, she was nicknamed Stupid Ludmila.
She lived in the forests, lured men into the bushes and pleased them so much with her voluptuousness that afterwards they could not even look at their fat and stinking wives. No one man could satisfy her; she had to have several men, one after another. And yet she was Lekh’s great love. He made up tender songs for her in which she figured as a strange-colored bird flying to faraway worlds, free and quick, brighter and more beautiful than other creatures. To Lekh she seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.
Every day at noon Lekh and I would walk toward the clearing where he hoped to meet Ludmila. When we arrived Lekh hooted in imitation of an owl. Stupid Ludmila would rise above the tall grass, bluebottles and poppy flowers intertwined in her hair. Lekh rushed eagerly toward her and they stood together, swaying slightly like the grasses around them, almost growing into each other like two tree trunks rising up from a single root.
I watched them from the edge of the clearing, behind the leaves of ferns. The birds in my bag were disturbed by the sudden stillness and chirped and floundered and excitedly beat their wings against each other. The man and woman kissed each other’s hair and eyes, and rubbed cheek against cheek. They were intoxicated by the touch and smell of their bodies and slowly their hands became more playful. Lekh moved his big, calloused paws over the smooth arms of the woman while she drew his face closer to hers. Together they slid down into the tall grass which now shook above their bodies, partly concealing them from the curious gaze of the birds gyrating over the clearing. Lekh would say afterwards that while they lay in the grass Ludmila told him stories of her life and her sufferings, disclosing the quirks and kinks of her strange untamed feelings, all the byways and secret passages that her frail mind wandered through.
It was hot. There was not a breath of wind and the treetops stood rigid. The grasshoppers and dragonflies buzzed; a butterfly suspended on an invisible breeze hovered over the sun-whitened clearing. The woodpecker ceased pecking, the cuckoo grew silent. I dozed off. Then I was awakened by voices. The man and the woman stood clinging to each other as if grown into the soil, saying words to each other I did not understand. They separated reluctantly; Stupid Ludmila waved her hand. Lekh strode toward me, repeatedly turning to look at her as he stumbled, a wistful smile on his lips.
On the way home we set more traps; Lekh was tired and withdrawn. In the evening, when the birds fell asleep in their cages, he cheered up. Restless, he spoke of Ludmila. His body trembled, he giggled, closing his eyes. His white pimply cheeks grew flushed.
Sometimes days passed and Stupid Ludmila did not appear in the forest. Lekh would become possessed by a silent rage. He would stare solemnly at the birds in the cages, mumbling something to himself. Finally, after prolonged scrutiny, he would choose the strongest bird, tie it to his wrist, and prepare stinking paints of different colors which he mixed together from the most varied components. When the colors satisfied him, Lekh would turn the bird over and paint its wings, head, and breast in rainbow hues until it became more dappled and vivid than a bouquet of wildflowers.
Then we would go into the thick of the forest. There Lekh took out the painted bird and ordered me to hold it in my hand and squeeze it lightly. The bird would begin to twitter and attract a flock of the same species which would fly nervously over our heads. Our prisoner, hearing them, strained toward them, warbling more loudly, its little heart, locked in its freshly painted breast, beating violently.
When a sufficient number of birds gathered above our heads, Lekh would give me a sign to release the prisoner. It would soar, happy and free, a spot of rainbow against the backdrop of clouds, and then plunge into the waiting brown flock. For an instant the birds were confounded. The painted bird circled from one end of the flock to the other, vainly trying to convince its kin that it was one of them. But, dazzled by its brilliant colors, they flew around it unconvinced. The painted bird would be forced farther and farther away as it zealously tried to enter the ranks of the flock. We saw soon afterwards how one bird after another would peel off in a fierce attack. Shortly the many-hued shape lost its place in the sky and dropped to the ground. When we finally found the painted bird it was usually dead. Lekh keenly examined the number of blows which the bird had received. Blood seeped through its colored wings, diluting the paint and soiling Lekh’s hands.
Stupid Ludmila did not return. Lekh, sulking and glum, removed one bird after another from the cages, painted them in still gaudier colors, and released them into the air to be killed by their kin. One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens flew amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the fresh-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone.
Lekh grew thin and stayed in the hut more often, swigging homemade vodka and singing songs about Ludmila. At times he would sit astride his bed, leaning over the dirt floor, and drawing something with a long stick. Gradually the outline became clear: it was the figure of a full-breasted, long-haired woman.
When there were no more birds to be painted, Lekh began to roam the fields with a bottle of vodka sticking out from under his jacket. Sometimes as I rambled along nearby, afraid that something might happen to him in the swamps, I would hear him singing. The man’s deep, sorrowful voice rose and spread grief over the bogs like a heavy winter fog. The song soared along with the flocks of migrating birds but grew remote as it reached the abysmal depths of the forests.
In the villages people laughed at Lekh. They said that Stupid Ludmila had cast a spell over him and put fire in his loins, a fire that would drive him insane. Lekh protested, hurling the most vile curses at them and threatening to send birds against them that would peck out their eyes. Once he rushed at me and struck me in the face. He shouted that my presence scared his woman off because she was afraid of my Gypsy eyes. For the next two days he lay ill. When he arose he packed his knapsack, took along a loaf of bread, and went into the forest, ordering me to keep setting new snares and catching new birds.
Weeks passed. The traps that I set according to Lekh’s orders more often than not caught only the tenuous, filmy gauze of cobwebs that drifted in the air. The storks and swallows had flown away. The forest was becoming deserted; only the snakes and lizards increased in numbers. The birds perched in their cages puffed up, their wings graying and still.
Then came an overcast day. Clouds of barely discernible shapes screened the skies like a thick feather bed, hiding the anemic sun. The wind whipped over the fields, wilting the blades of grass. The huts, cowering against the earth, were surrounded by vacant stubble, blackened and brown with mildew. In the undergrowth, where careless
