Читать книгу Little Bird - Camilla Way, Camilla Way - Страница 17

L’Hopital des Enfants, Rouen, Normandy, 5 November 1995

In the hushed white room the people come and go. At first fear lies heavy upon her senses, like a thick layer of snow, and she’s scarcely aware of the sharp, acrid smell, the bright lights, the repetitive swish and whine of the swing door through which emerge yet more faces and footsteps and hands and eyes that probe and stare, probe and stare. And so she sits on the little, white bed, dressed in crisp, white pyjamas, the small, carved bird gripped tightly in her fist. She sits, motionless and calm but in the depths of her, behind that still, quiet gaze, she has returned to the forest and sees only the leaves, smells only the bracken and the river, hears only the birds that call to each other from the trees.

At night, from somewhere behind the now-still door, shoes squeak upon linoleum, machines bleep, urgent trolleys trundle past. And beyond her window, from out of the orange-tinged blackness where the grey buildings loom and sulk across the street, drifts the distant noise of a world she can’t even begin to fathom; the sounds of growling, mumbling traffic, of unimaginable lives being lived beneath an unimaginable sky. And when sleep at last comes for her, it takes her on its soft, silent wings, back, back to the forest, where she flies and swoops and soars, to rest once again within its leafy arms.

And yet she has a brave heart, this child that has emerged from the woods like a hatchling from its egg. Slowly, gradually, beneath that thick, freezing fear there begins to stir the first tentative shoots of something else: a strange long-dormant impulse that grows ever more insistent. Gradually, she becomes accustomed to the faces that appear to her each day, and her ears begin to tune into the sounds that they make, a strange but infinitely seductive sound that seems to pierce the fear and confusion like sunlight through leaves.

And then: something else. Like the dragonflies that used to flit across the surface of the river, long-forgotten images begin to land briefly upon her memory: a woman’s face, a certain smell, and, stranger still, snatches of a nursery rhyme, words spoken by her and understood; a woman’s voice responding to her own. But they are impossible to hold onto for very long; too soon they take flight, disappearing once more into the sky. Nevertheless, some deep, instinctive part of her begins to respond to the voices of these white-coated strangers, to unfurl and reach towards them like a seedling towards the sun.

At first she tries to offer the birdcalls that had once given her such pleasure in the woods. But although the people smile and nod their encouragement at her whistles and her coos, her chirrups and her twitters, she knows that they’re not right, are not what’s needed now. Sometimes she feels as if a flock of frantic sparrows are trapped inside her chest. In vain she tries to free them, but her throat will not obey her, will only allow, at best, meaningless gurgles and grunts. Her frustration grows until, from out of the strange, dark world that lies beyond her window, into the white, hushed room walks the woman with the pale blue eyes.