atmosphere.
The swallows are preparing to migrate.
They appear as though life is carrying on as normal. They fly around madly, as usual, shrieking away. They streak across the sky with their beaks open, shoveling insects. They appear as always from their thousand invisible nests, up in the air, in rusty leaking gutters, in the holes between the stones and the collapsing roofs of this village over which they have taken possession, away from the world. Adult swallows, and others only just born and learning to take their first short mad flights, swoop down as usual and skim across the water in the troughs, almost smashing themselves against its stone edges. And yet, and yet … there’s a new frenzy, a new agitation, a greater disturbance in their behavior. They gather at points far up in the sky, shrieking even louder. Who knows what they are saying? Who knows what’s going on among those clouds of tiny bodies in flight? What’s sparked it all off? How do they first start gathering high up there, in the first flocks that circle in ever greater numbers over these deserted ruinssoon to be abandoned, perhaps without any of them even knowing it? More and more of them swoop madly down over the troughs, as though they were building up reserves of water for the great long journey who knows where, emerging like darts from the low archway and from the curve in the road and diving down to skim the water with their open beaks, shrieking, splashing the smooth surface with the tips of their frantic wings. Who knows if they know where they’re going? Whether at least one of them knows and is able to tell the others, or whether they decide on the route once they’re on their way, in those first immense circles full of myriads of tiny brains of a few grams that cross the sky in every part of the world, so dense that it is hard to understand how all those wings in there can move?
They perch in greater numbers on the edges of old derelict houses, on the roofs and the few remaining old wires. Then they rise up again in flight. It seems they’re going back to daily life, it seems as though nothing has changed, that there’s no plan to leave, that it’s been delayed for who knows what reason, for some imperceptible change of temperature and air composition that they alone have fast detected, living so high up in the sky. It seems still early to go. It’s still summer. And yet, the day after, all this incredible restlessness resumes. New and even larger flocks gather, once again they start flying raggedly here and there to attract other swallows that are still alone. But they break up again immediatelyafter, and in a few seconds each goes off in a different direction. But higher up, still higher up, other flocks are reforming. And then more still. Until suddenly the first great boundless teeming clouds of screeching swallows head off on that mad journey, not even knowing where they’re going.
Up there they knew it before anyone else, that something on the land has changed, that something enormous is going on, that summer is coming to an end, that the sky and the land will soon no longer be the same, that fall, winter will begin.
This morning, when I went to take the car from the stable, I saw a layer of swallows blackening everything, on the few wires and on the roofs, on the tops of the dry canes still sticking in the ground where vegetable plots had once been, as though they were all there to say goodbye to me before they flew off.
I drove down slowly so that I could take another look at them. I reached the village, then took a walk along its narrow streets, not thinking of anything. I arrived at the shop. This time there was no one there. Just the old woman who was shifting some sacks of seed. I took some pasta, some potatoes, a few tins, choosing those with tops that were less rusty. Every now and then I held my hand over my nose for the stench. A pair of fat cats, overfed by the old woman, came out from who knows where on
The swallows are preparing to migrate.
They appear as though life is carrying on as normal. They fly around madly, as usual, shrieking away. They streak across the sky with their beaks open, shoveling insects. They appear as always from their thousand invisible nests, up in the air, in rusty leaking gutters, in the holes between the stones and the collapsing roofs of this village over which they have taken possession, away from the world. Adult swallows, and others only just born and learning to take their first short mad flights, swoop down as usual and skim across the water in the troughs, almost smashing themselves against its stone edges. And yet, and yet … there’s a new frenzy, a new agitation, a greater disturbance in their behavior. They gather at points far up in the sky, shrieking even louder. Who knows what they are saying? Who knows what’s going on among those clouds of tiny bodies in flight? What’s sparked it all off? How do they first start gathering high up there, in the first flocks that circle in ever greater numbers over these deserted ruinssoon to be abandoned, perhaps without any of them even knowing it? More and more of them swoop madly down over the troughs, as though they were building up reserves of water for the great long journey who knows where, emerging like darts from the low archway and from the curve in the road and diving down to skim the water with their open beaks, shrieking, splashing the smooth surface with the tips of their frantic wings. Who knows if they know where they’re going? Whether at least one of them knows and is able to tell the others, or whether they decide on the route once they’re on their way, in those first immense circles full of myriads of tiny brains of a few grams that cross the sky in every part of the world, so dense that it is hard to understand how all those wings in there can move?
They perch in greater numbers on the edges of old derelict houses, on the roofs and the few remaining old wires. Then they rise up again in flight. It seems they’re going back to daily life, it seems as though nothing has changed, that there’s no plan to leave, that it’s been delayed for who knows what reason, for some imperceptible change of temperature and air composition that they alone have fast detected, living so high up in the sky. It seems still early to go. It’s still summer. And yet, the day after, all this incredible restlessness resumes. New and even larger flocks gather, once again they start flying raggedly here and there to attract other swallows that are still alone. But they break up again immediatelyafter, and in a few seconds each goes off in a different direction. But higher up, still higher up, other flocks are reforming. And then more still. Until suddenly the first great boundless teeming clouds of screeching swallows head off on that mad journey, not even knowing where they’re going.
Up there they knew it before anyone else, that something on the land has changed, that something enormous is going on, that summer is coming to an end, that the sky and the land will soon no longer be the same, that fall, winter will begin.
This morning, when I went to take the car from the stable, I saw a layer of swallows blackening everything, on the few wires and on the roofs, on the tops of the dry canes still sticking in the ground where vegetable plots had once been, as though they were all there to say goodbye to me before they flew off.
I drove down slowly so that I could take another look at them. I reached the village, then took a walk along its narrow streets, not thinking of anything. I arrived at the shop. This time there was no one there. Just the old woman who was shifting some sacks of seed. I took some pasta, some potatoes, a few tins, choosing those with tops that were less rusty. Every now and then I held my hand over my nose for the stench. A pair of fat cats, overfed by the old woman, came out from who knows where on
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