The White Pigeon
Paulding, Gouverneur
THE WHITE PIGEON By GOUVERNEUR PAULDING ALICANTE is a small town with a harbor. Along the water-front runs a wide avenue shaded by palm trees. To the left of the docks and the shipping are the...
...It was a queer sort of obstacle race...
...It was doubtful whether he would be able to intercept the bird before it disappeared beneath the pier...
...At the end of the next pier there were no customers...
...It was not far enough...
...It is limited by what we see and we never look behind closed doors...
...For a moment the old priest looked straight out toward the sea...
...In summer, that is, for in winter, the waiter says, only vegetarians and foreigners swim...
...It gave two short flashes and one long and then it stopped for half a minute -then it gave them again...
...We all shouted at the man on the other pier not to frighten it and let it get near...
...It was easy to see how he could have passed the rod with the net over his head and saved time...
...It was very beautiful...
...They were big fish: they swam very fast...
...said the Spanish priest who sat with us...
...Out of the frying-pan into the fire," our waiter said...
...It is a matter of immediate visual repulsion...
...By extension we have general loves and hatreds but they are as weak as ethics without religion...
...Look," I said, "that is more lovely than any swan...
...There was not a breath of wind: it was December: we sat out of doors in the sunset and watched the color change on the quiet sea...
...We love or we hate the people we know and they are a fraction of living people too small to express...
...Ships were calling for assistance, ships were disabled, ships that were badly loaded sank-and crews were lost...
...It was dark now and the stars were out...
...You change your clothes in cabins on these piers and climb down a ladder from each cabin into the sea...
...To the left of the docks and the shipping are the bathing establishments...
...If the bird got beneath the pier and out of reach of the net it would drown...
...Does it bother you a great deal...
...The water was wetting its wings and it began to realize its danger...
...A half-empty bottle of grenadine, on the shelf above them, occupied the attention of a solitary fly...
...We all kill flies because they are so small we cannot imagine their suffering...
...We cursed him for being slow...
...You could see the fish clearly...
...So did we...
...You want the old cab horses to die somewhere out of sight...
...We sat down again at our table...
...At the end of each pier is a small restaurant and cafe where you sit and watch people swim...
...The waiters playing cards on the other pier left their game and leaned over to watch...
...He took it out of the net and held it by its wings...
...God is omniscient and no man nor any conception of man could suffer what God knows or what he sees...
...I thought it was a gull...
...We all talked at once...
...The sun had set and the sea had lost its color...
...A British ship was loading manganese...
...I saw, floating directly beneath me, a white bird...
...An attendant from the bathing establishment went into a locker room and came out running with a long pole and a round net at the end of it...
...Then he opened a door back of the restaurant and went inside...
...What do you mean...
...But its wings were getting heavier with the water and the distance was too great...
...I had the sensation that something passed me in the air but it was out of my field of vision...
...Even the Bremen and the Berengaria were three or four days late...
...The cranes were working and as they dumped the manganese it made a yellow dust in the air...
...But now the man with the net had saved it...
...That is why we have not made God in our image," he said...
...Long ago people who lived here thought it was and on an afternoon like this they could feel that the whole world was at peace...
...The water was transparent and you could see the bottom...
...And that was Spain...
...The Mediterranean here was peaceful but it was not the only sea...
...The newspapers had stopped that...
...Our pity goes for fragments of things, for the half of a story, for incidents...
...That," said the priest, "is a pigeon and it has fallen into the sea...
...The air was cool and calm...
...They would jab at the bread and it would bob...
...It struggled at intervals and advanced...
...By foreigners he means the English...
...A man had a net now on the other pier...
...We all leaned over the rail and watched the pigeon...
...The Atlantic, the Channel and the Bay of Biscay were in a terrible state...
...The man with the pigeon shrugged his shoulders, looked appraisingly at the pigeon, shrugged his shoulders again, and grinned...
...Many of us would dislike to have to kill a chicken and you foreigners go pale when our bulls kill the horses in the arena...
...It was in ballast and you could see the propeller blades half way out of water turning slowly...
...A beggar on a lonely road but not the fifty beggars between here and your hotel...
...Newspapers were extraordinary things...
...The Spanish who had been throwing bread to the fishes had seen it now and they shouted...
...We sat on the terrace and watched the sun go down...
...The pole frightened the pigeon...
...They tended to make no one place complete because they forced on one a certain consciousness of what was happening everywhere else...
...If it remained equally distant from the two piers no one could reach it and it would drown...
...Three piers run a hundred yards out over the shallow sea...
...Consider the story of the white pigeon," the old priest said...
...It started to beat its wings but they were wet and it could not rise...
...He was ducking under the rails that divided each cabin from the next and at the same time had to pass the long rod with the net along the outside of the balcony...
...Back of that there were mountains, endless rows of mountains with between them a few plains here and there...
...Some of the bread was in pieces too big for them...
...To the left the coast curved out to a lighthouse and they were testing the light although it was too early to turn it on...
...To our right were the docks and the smoke going up in the still air from a few tramp ships...
...No, it does not," I said...
...On the other pier the man who held the pigeon called across to our pier: "Where did it come from...
...Everyone was happy that the pigeon was safe...
...They swam swiftly up and down waiting for the bread to get soggy so that they could tear it to bits...
...Back of the town there was a cliff...
...He climbed over the rail and we held on to him as he reached out as far as he could...
...It turned its head and looked at the pier...
...The cafe manager came out...
...We pity what we actually see before us and not even that if we see it too often...
...The pigeon now was desperately tired and its wings were heavy...
...It had its white wings slightly extended on the water...
...If one of them got hold of a piece too big to swallow the others would attack him and he would let it go...
...I stood up and leaned on the rail and looked down at the water...
...We felt it would have been filthy to sit there and let it drown...
...Then it was absolutely motionless...
...It was aiming for the shore between the two piers...
...In another minute," someone said, "it would have drowned...
...On top of the cliff there was a fort...
...Finally the man on the other pier reached it with his net...
...I said...
...Visibly the bird was beginning to tire...
...Next to us some Spanish were throwing bits of bread to the fishes...
...Yet by beating its wings against the water it began to move forward toward the other pier...
...The papers those days were filled with shipwrecks and storms...
...He would duck under a rail, pass himself the rod, run a few steps, and then do it all over again...
...I mean that we live by appearances," he said...
...It seemed impossible and remote as we looked out on this water as quiet as any lake...
...Yet clever people accuse us of making God in our own image," he said...
...Four waiters were playing cards at a table...
...The manager shouted orders...
...No one knew...
...The white of the wings was losing color where the water soaked through...
...Only"-he paused -"they do not die out of the sight of God...
...Both terms mean crazy people...
...A ship had left the harbor...
...We had felt very sorry for that lovely white bird...
...But when it rested you could see it sinking...
...The pigeon did not struggle...
Vol. 11 • March 1930 • No. 21
