Flamingo Boy. Michael Morpurgo

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СКАЧАТЬ of infection from the mosquito bites I had been scratching. I do know that one evening, walking down a long, straight road to nowhere, as it seemed to me, a causeway with pink lakes on both sides, and not a bend in sight, I began to feel strange, as if I were no longer part of myself. My head was full of a throbbing pain that weighed heavy on my forehead. I kept having bouts of dizziness that brought me near to losing my balance, to fainting. Sometimes it felt as if my legs were not my own, that they were stumbling on by themselves, and not under my control at all.

      I remember there were flamingos nearby, strolling languidly through the shallows, lifting their heads between feeding and peering at me quizzically as I passed by. The mosquitoes were gone and I was thankful for that, but then I felt the dreaded wind coming in again, in vicious gusts, trying to blow me off the causeway into the lake. I shouted at the wind to go away, and the flamingos took off in a flurry of beating wings and honking, leaving me alone on the road.

      “Not you!” I cried to them. “I didn’t mean you. Come back! Please come back!” But they did not. Now I had only the cruel wind for company.

      I knew I needed help, but there was no one about, not a house in sight, and the road behind and ahead of me went on forever, as far as I could see, into the gathering gloom of the evening, daylight lingering now only in distant streaks of sunset. The lakes on either side of me were no longer pink but blood-red. But then, to my great relief, the flamingos returned. They came flying over my head, floating in on wide black wings to land nearby, in their hundreds, honking happily at me, telling me, I thought, to keep going. So I did, somehow. They seemed to be walking along with me, through the shallows, escorting me, on either side of the road.

      I marvelled at the elegance of these creatures, at the oddness of their balletic gait, and their absurd, outsize curved bills, at the incongruity of their startling pinkness. Their stick-like legs seemed to be wading backwards through the water, and yet, impossibly, they were moving forward. There was no logic to their knee joints. Their bills were fishing backwards too. How did they do that? They could stand one-legged in this wild wind and not fall over. They ran on water to take off and land. How did they do that?

      My legs were giving way under me, becoming weaker now with every step. I knew they must collapse at any moment. My senses were reeling, my head swirling, my knees buckling. The flamingos nearby were looking at me in astonishment, honking to me, calling to me. I felt myself blacking out, falling, and there was nothing I could do about it.

      There is a time between sleeping and waking when dreams are at their most intense and real, so much so that you cannot be sure that the dreamtime has ended or the waking has begun. Dream or not, there was an evening sky above me, and I was lying awkwardly, uncomfortably, on my back, on stony ground. A dog was snuffling at my ear. I was sure it was a dog, because it smelled like dog, and its nose was cold and wet on my ear. The honking of the flamingos echoed through my dream, calling me awake.

      Gentle fingers were opening my eyelids, stroking my hair and touching my cheek. An urgent voice was calling to me, but not with any words I could understand. I was still desperately trying to remain cocooned in my dream, unable or unwilling to wake. I was being lifted then. I could hear grunting, heavy breathing, stumbling footsteps. I knew I was being carried, but whether this was all happening in my dream or not I still had no idea, and neither did I care.

      I heard the howling of the wind, felt the cold of it on my cheek. Only then did I really begin to believe that I might be coming out of my dream. I felt strong arms around me. I was being carried. Whoever it was who had rescued me was struggling to keep going, groaning and staggering with the effort of it. But still I could make no proper sense of what was going on around me. My rescuer seemed sometimes to be speaking to me with the gentle honking voice of a flamingo, but then out of the honking came strange and unintelligible words: “Renzo Renzo.” He kept repeating these same words over and over again. I gave up trying to understand what he was saying, what was happening to me, and soon slipped back into the comforting world of oblivion.

      

       CHAPTER 4

       Renzo Renzo

      I was warm through when I finally woke. I found myself lying on some kind of a couch, by a crackling fire, with logs blazing, a dog lying at my feet, his nose close to the burning embers. Sitting opposite me at a small table was a woman, a flowery shawl around her shoulders, her hair gathered into a silvery bun. I could not see her face, because her head was bent. She was intent on writing in a notebook, and did not look up. I never saw hair so silver.

      The dog stirred and scratched vigorously, which was when she did look up, and noticed I was awake. She spoke in French, which puzzled me at first. I was still muddle-headed, I suppose, not knowing quite where I was nor how I had got here. For some moments, in my confused state, I just stared at her, until my memories gathered themselves, and fell more into place. I could remember now the walk along the long road to nowhere, the flamingos on either side of me, the pink lakes, my throbbing head, the man carrying me who seemed to be honking like a flamingo.

      The woman was speaking English to me now as she put down her writing book and leaned forward. She had a heavy accent, but her English was quite understandable.

      “You prefer that I speak English? I hope you will forgive me, but I looked in your bag to find out who you were,” she said. “And I found this, your passport.” She picked it up from the table beside her, to show me, and opened it. “You are Vincent Montague. Yes? A British passport, so you are a British flamingo, non?” She could see I was bewildered at this, and smiled. “Lorenzo, he will be so pleased he found you. Usually, he brings back a French flamingo, or an egret maybe, or a frog or a rabbit, or a terrapin, but they are always French. You are the first British flamingo he has ever brought home!”

      I must still have been looking puzzled. She went on to explain. “Lorenzo – Renzo he calls himself – is the one who found you half dead on the road. He likes always to keep an eye out for his flamingos. He loves his flamingos. In spring, he likes to be sure no one is out there stealing their eggs. Very few do these days, but he likes to keep watch, just in case. And now, in summer, there are always fledglings, who sometimes become separated from their mothers, and are too weak to survive. So he is on the lookout for them too. He is out there on the marshes, patrolling most nights. He told me it was the dog who found you – Ami, we call him – which means Friend in English, but I expect you know this. You speak a little French, perhaps?” I shook my head. I knew some French from school, but had never dared to speak it, and I did not want to have to start now.

      “It does not matter,” she went on. “You are English – I did not expect anything else. Lorenzo tells me he carried you home. A long way, he said, and you were heavy too, but he is strong. Years of work on the farm, it makes you strong. I have made you soup, and I have some cheese also. And you must drink water, lots of water. Water is the great healer.”

      She got up then, and put her notebook down on the table beside her. “I will tell Renzo you are awake.” She came and laid the back of her hand against my forehead. “You are better, but still too hot. Water,” she went on, picking up a glass on the table beside me. “It is empty. You will need more water. Renzo will bring some for you. He is the doctor. You are his patient. I am just the nurse.” She walked away then, calling for him. “Renzo! Renzo!”

      I was left alone with Ami, who was a very large brown dog. He sat by my knee now, gazing up at me.

      “So СКАЧАТЬ