The Shadow by Neil M. Gunn Page B

hawk is now standing on his prey between the first of the birches. I am assailed by a feeling of terror. Every instinct urges me to fly. I see the hawk’s head. It stoops and plucks. There is something suddenly so terrible and authentic about this that I must get away, sick, my heart in my throat, terrified. But I don’t. I watch. There is a surging within. I advance, uttering raucous sounds, like one rescuing her child from a lion. The hawk sees and waits. The curve of his beak, intolerant cold anger, his eye. He is up and off in a low swoop down the gully. He is gone!
    Brave now, I approach, but sickened at the thought of what I shall find. A young blackbird; a patch of white skin. I stand staring down. It is lying on its side quite still. I don’t want to touch it, but I must. I must see its death, how death took it. I bend, am putting out my hand, when the blackbird, as if awaking out of a dream, in visible astonishment lifts its head, looks at me (I see its eye still), and then, and instantly, simply flies away. It is the most extraordinary thing! It flies away, piebald, black and white. From one big patch every feather is missing. Half-plucked but otherwise clearly all right! It is so ludicrous that in my amazement and relief I am going to laugh—when someone laughs for me. He comes out from behind a clump of birches wearing the same light green tie. The sight of my face amuses him still more. He comes towards me—out of the wood.
    He begins talking about the hawk, the laughter pressed back into his eyes. He explains that he has been watching the hawk for a long time. The hawk had been hovering, working up the gully; he had stalked it—and flushed the blackbird. The blackbird had actually done a swerve—too late. The hawk’s action had been flawless. Marvellous. Didn’t I think so? With a consciousness of complete unreason, I said that I didn’t particularly think so; I said that I thought the whole thing was horrible. But, he answered, it happens! His voice, his manner, brought in all creation. I assured him I had seen it happen. He was, he said, aware of that, and glanced about the air as if looking for more hawks. This elaborate effect of giving me time to compose myself, as though I were an overwrought child, was particularly insulting. I am not interested in hawks, I said. He glanced at me—and laughed. I turned away.
    One minute, he called, because I think you are entirely wrong; you don’t understand what’s happened; you are crediting the blackbird with your own emotions, your own admirable and humane reactions.
    Really! I answered.
    Whereas, he assured me, the blackbird felt nothing at all, or next to nothing.
    Now I seemed to know this argument so well, in my bones and blood out of past talk, that I could not let it go, The new realism disposing of the old sentimentality! Not that one would mind that, of course, or something like that, if it was genuine, but it is so obviously an effort at justifying the new realism which produces death that, after world war number two, it is just too sickening, too unforgivably glib. I don’t say this to him, or even clearly think it, for it chokes me. I probably say Really! again, or, So long as you know! I should have left him at that, but somehow I couldn’t. Perhaps I was deeply angry, perhaps I wanted to clean him up. That he was enjoying the situation, that he wanted to exploit it and me, was positively blatant.
    But you saw it yourself, you saw the whole thing happen, he argues. Why are you afraid to discuss it?
    Your assumption that I am afraid to discuss it is about as valid as your capacity to identify yourself with a blackbird, I suggest.
    Really! he echoes me. Can you suggest any other assumption?
    One so obvious that normally one is not forced to produce it, namely, that I do not wish to discuss it with you.
    Well, that’s direct enough, he agrees with a solemn effect of restrained laughter. But wait