Summary “Why did I kill the coronet” Astafyev
It was a long time ago, maybe forty years ago. In the early autumn, I returned from fishing on a mown meadow and near a small, dried-up boschazhina, overgrown with a tamnik, over a summer, I saw a bird.
She heard me, sat down in a sloping bristle of sedge, hid, but my eye felt, frightened him and suddenly rushed to run, clumsily piling on one side.
From a boy, like a dog hound, you do not have to run away – surely he will rush into the pursuit, the wild excitement will kindle in him. Watch out for the living soul!
I caught up with the bird in the furrow and, blind from the chase, the hunting passion, overcame its raw rod.
I picked up a bird with a withered, seemingly boneless calf. Her eyes were pinched by dead, colorless eyelids, the neck, as if stuck in the frost, was hanging out. The feather on the bird was yellowish, with rust on the sides, and the back seemed to be dappled with rotten gluten.
I recognized the bird – it was a corncrake.
And the thin, almost weightless body of a bird, whether it was a simple coloring, or maybe that without a foot it was, but before that I felt sorry for her, that I began to rake out a hole in the furrow with my hands and bury it so simply, foolishly ruined living creatures.
I grew up in a hunter’s family and later became a hunter myself, but I never fired without the need. With impatience and guilt, already deep-rooted, every summer I wait for home, in the Russian lands, kosteleley.
Already the bird cherry blossomed, the bath was showered, the cheffer on the fourth leaf let it go, the grass moved to the stem, daisies fell on the eel and the nightingales at the last breeze sing along the songs.
But something is lacking in the early summer, something is lacking to it, something is under-formed, or
And one day, in the morn – ing morning, beyond the river, in the meadows covered with still young grass, the crust of the coronet was heard. Has appeared, the tramp! Got the same! Creeps and squeaks! Hence, the summer has fully begun, then, haymaking soon, then everything is in order.
And every year like this. I’m waiting and I’m waiting for the coronet, I inspire myself that this long-ago dergak survived by some miracle and gives me a voice, forgiving that ignorant, adventurous lad.
Now I know how difficult the life of the corncrake is, how far to get to us, to inform Russia of the withered summer.
He winters the corncrake in Africa and leaves it in April, hurrying up there, “… where the poppy dawns wither, like the heat of a forgotten campfire, where green-wooded forests drown in the blue dawn, where the meadow is still oblique, where the cornflower’s eyes…” . He goes to make a nest and lead the offspring, feed him and quickly take his feet from the disastrous winter.
Not adapted to flight, but fast on the run, this bird is forced twice a year to fly the Mediterranean Sea. Many thousands of corncakes die on the road, and especially when flying across the sea.
How goes corncrake, where, in what ways – very few people know. Only one city gets in the way of these birds – a small ancient city in the south of France. The coat of arms of the city depicts a corncrake. In those days, when there are kristelis around the city, nobody works here. All people celebrate the holiday and bake from the test of the figure of this bird, as we in Russia, bake larks to their arrival.
Bird corncrake in the French ancient city is considered sacred, and if I lived there in the old years, I would be sentenced to death.
But I live far from France. I have lived for many years and have seen everything. He was at war, shot at people, and they shot at me.
But why, why, how shall I hear the scraping of the corncrake behind the river, my heart will tremble and once more I will suffer a torment: why did I kill the coronet? What for?
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