“You aren’t upset with me, are you?”

  “Why would I be?”

  “You know I’m no good when it comes to talking in front of a crowd.”

  “Neither am I, but I felt that I had no choice.”

  My heart ached as I then remembered that a sense of having had no other choice had once motivated all the heroic victims of social uprisings with tragic endings. But Lara would be different. Nothing would happen to her, the way it had to them. I was determined to see to it that she remained safe from any harm that could arise from these kinds of matters from now on.

  The island was buried in darkness, the houses dead silent. There was neither music nor laughter to be heard rising up from among the gardens. As the night wore on in all its oppressiveness, I caught even myself entertaining—or should I say, trying to entertain—thoughts of what our lives would be like if this were a touristic island.

  Five-star hotels, airplanes landing and taking off from the sea, a marina full of anchored yachts, glittering hotel casinos, shapely girls in bikinis playing volleyball on beaches, young men surfing, an endless assortment of restaurants, job opportunities for everyone, wealth…How could the islanders possibly fail to be tempted by it all?

  It seemed to me that this dream had most impressed folks whose children had made lives for themselves elsewhere, seeing as how no young person would have wanted to live on this remote and monotonous island. A touristic explosion could lead them all to come here and reunite with their families.

  Throughout the night, listening to Lara’s soft and rhythmic breaths as she slept, I went on imagining that other life. It was only later that the reasons became apparent, coming from someplace deep within me. And I must admit, I felt a little ashamed. I was doing it in order to avoid thinking about the Writer. Despite his urging me to speak out at the meeting against the slaughter that was about to take place, I hadn’t. Instead, and to avoid meeting his eyes, I ran off as soon as the meeting was over. I knew damned well that he thought I deserved blame, and I was ashamed of my weakness. I couldn’t see him. No, no—I simply couldn’t see him. I didn’t have the courage to look my dear friend and literature teacher in the eyes.

  THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN as many as a million birds in the sky. They would flap their wings, turning, swirling around one another, then break up again, flying in V-formation, suddenly turning around and amassing in chaotic flocks. These were birds that migrated to distant lands, traversing seas, plains, and countries. As they made their way across the ocean, they would reach a point over which they would fly amid one another in circles. The air was thick with the sound of chirping. It was a sound almost loud enough to fill the world. They were crying, shouting, demanding an explanation and lamenting desperately to each other.

  “Where is the island?” they were asking. “Where is our island? We would always stop and rest at this island whenever we flew long distances, and our ancestors did too. But now our island is gone. Where are we going to land? Where are we going to alight? The island has disappeared. Under these conditions, there’s no way we can go on. We won’t make it to shore.”

  I was able to understand these conversations, without it seeming the least bit strange. In fact, I was surprised that I hadn’t paid attention to the seagulls’ conversations before then. It was as if I’d known their language for an eternity.

  Thousands of chirping birds circled in jumbles in the sky, circling ceaselessly. They reached a point where they could no longer move their weary wings. They needed to find a bit of land on which to rest and gather their strength to complete their flight across the ocean, but the island they’d used as a resting point for thousands of years, etched into their genetic codes, had simply disappeared; it had, perhaps, sunk to the bottom of the ocean in an earthquake. They circled and circled, slowing down little by little, descending little by little, and then one among their midst, a silver-backed seagull, fell headlong toward the ocean. As the other birds looked on in shock, it splattered onto the glassy surface of the ocean—and died!

  The others circled and shrieked some more, then another seagull struck its body on the ocean’s surface, committing suicide. Then another, then another, then another!

  By sundown, each and every one of the thousands of the birds circling the sky had ended its life. Bird carcasses floated on the waves, blanketing the surface of the ocean.

  Then there was a deep silence. It was as though the world had ended.

  BREATHLESS, it was then that I woke from the dream. Lara, who had draped an arm and a leg across my body, sensed my waking and asked, raising her head, “You look like you’ve just returned from the dead. Take it easy. Did you have a strange dream?”

  “Yes!” I said, and told Lara about the dream, its every detail still as real as life itself. “Our island was gone,” I said. “It had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, so the migrant birds were unable to find a place to alight as they crossed the they’ve done for thousands of years. They committed suicide, one by one, and the ocean swallowed them all.”

  Lara comforted me, stroking my head. “I seem to remember there being something like that,” she said. “If I’m not mistaken, one of the old seamen saw that happen.” Perhaps this bit of information had lodged in my subconscious. Perhaps it hadn’t been a premonition about our island after all. We got up and went out to the yard, steeped heavily in the delicately sweet scent of jasmine; we drank a cup of chamomile tea. But nothing we did made a difference; we couldn’t relax. We were terribly on edge in anticipation of the events of the next day.

  The Writer was right, and I didn’t want to even so much as speculate about what he’d meant when he’d said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

  And now the nut harvesting season was here. These were days during which we should have been gathering nuts, instead of knocking ourselves out dealing with the paring of the trees into sculptures, border stipulations between houses, and enmity against seagulls.

  Have I told you about that? Have I mentioned the pine nuts yet? I don’t remember. But I think…no, I don’t think I have. I’ve told you, as a writer, this is as far as my skills go. I remember now that I failed to share this with you as I was describing our life on the island. I apparently skipped over this crucial detail right before the attack on the seagulls; my wanting to tell you about it now is awkward timing, but I’ve grown impatient to do so, because it’s of consequence.

  At any rate, let me briefly share this information with you: There is a fascinating genus of pine tree found on our island. A rare and precious variety of nut by the name of Pinus pinea grows on these trees. Because those nuts are worth a great deal of money, during this season we always climb these trees and gather up their pine cones, filling sacks with the nuts they contain. The sacks are left with the grocer, who sends them off with the next ferry. The merchants in the capital pay good money for them. It’s the grocer again who receives the payment, distributing it evenly among the island’s households. This money is enough to pay the small sum needed to cover the cost of our newspapers, milk, meat, etc. It is what constitutes the source of our modest living on the island.

  That night Lara and I mused with some bitterness about the fact that this was the nut harvesting season, and had it not been for the trouble caused us by these events, right now we would be enjoying the happiness of the season. We felt miserable.

  And yet what great times we’d had during those same days the previous year! The folks who had risen early would call out to their neighbors as they walked by their houses. Those who were able to catch up fell in step with the caravan and headed toward the forest. Everyone’s hands were full with the day’s lunch, refreshments, the sacks for holding the nuts, baskets, and more, and we’d carried them with great cheer. Those who hadn’t been able to catch up would come later.

  That kind of lateness was not a problem, because no one was counting how many hours each person worked or how many nuts each one of us had gathered. Everyone simply did as much as they could, or felt like doing. The ones who took the most breaks were our musician friends, and when they did, the sounds of flutes and guitars would fill the forest. As we would go about gathering the nuts, sometimes there would be a melody accompanying us to which we knew the words, and we’d accompany the musicians in turn. There were also times they would play music we’d never heard before, so I think they were improvising every once in a while. Yet their music was always comforting to us. There were times when they were less than eager to play music, politely turning down our requests by saying, “A little later.” Birthdays and celebrations were another matter, however. They would come out and play from the heart on these occasions. And last year they’d played each and every one of our requests. When they didn’t know how to play the song in question, they just made something up, and we’d laugh.

  My attention returned to the present with the sound of Lara’s voice. “We must stop this massacre!” she said. “We should warn our neighbors before it’s too late.” Then, despite the time being long past midnight, she sprang up with an energetic leap. “Come on,” she said, “get up, let’s go.”

  She grabbed me by the hand, dragging me behind her. Our first stop was the retired notary at Number 29. Intent on waking them up, once we got there we saw that no one was sleeping anyway. In fact, the residents of Number 30 and Number 27 were there as well, whispering among themselves in the garden.

  When they saw us, we weren’t surprised to see the look of delight on their faces, glowing in the light of the garden lamps. They were discussing the same subject, of course, wishing to stop this action from taking place.

  Spoiling the peace on our island, the proposed killing was an undertaking that struck a raw nerve in us. We had been living side by side with those seagulls for years, and we’d grown used to each other. We had no problems with each other. The unprovoked murder of these innocent creatures and the destruction of their eggs was simply unacceptable. We absolutely had to stop this business from taking place.

  The notary gentleman, who had a very temperate nature and whose opinion was much respected among the islanders, said: “I’m sure that most of our neighbors share our attitude. They wouldn’t want to harm a single living creature, but today, they were at a loss for what to do. That decision was made despite their disagreement with it.”

  So we put our heads together and discussed what could be done at that hour. We could have convinced them to take preventive action, but it was late and the slaughter would begin in five or six hours.

  We had a few moments of spontaneous silence, lost in thought.

  I saw Lara get up and go into the house. She returned a few minutes later with a piece of paper in hand.

  “I’m going to read you something!” she said.

  “Listen.”

  Then she read the following brief poem:

  “The wind heeds no prohibition

  Seagulls are not for locking up in chains

  Any more than is one’s heart.”

  I was baffled; I couldn’t make any sense of her efforts with poetry when we were in the jaws of desperation.

  Everyone must have thought the same, given the sudden silence among us. Unable to resist at this point, I said, “That’s beautiful! Did you write this poem just now?”

  “No, no!” she said. “You’ve got it wrong, it’s not my poem, it’s a poem by Pushkin that I’ve just changed around a bit, that’s all! The actual one is about eagles.”

  The notary asked, “So what are we supposed to do with this poem?”

  “We’re going to write up a notice.”

  “What kind of a notice?”

  “We’re going to put this poem at the top, and underneath, we’re going to add some lines expressing how crazy all this business is and prevail upon our neighbors not to go through with it.”

  “And then?”

  “Then, within half an hour, we’re going to slip this notice under everyone’s door. We’ll deliver them by hand to the people who are awake.”

  “That’s my Lara!” I thought. Within her delicate, slender frame was hidden an extraordinary energy and fighting spirit. She wouldn’t give in, driven to do all she could even with just hours to go before the slaughter was to get under way. That was my love! That was my soul mate! That was my one and only, my woman! My betrothed, who soothed the wounds of my soul with her words and wrapped the wounds of my body with her feminine powers.

  “Come on, let’s get going!” I said. “Let’s make copies of the notices and pass them out to the houses. We can do it in an hour.”

  The notary gentleman and Number 27 expressed their doubts that the plan would work. And besides, those who had come to a decision had already come to one: What could a notice change at this late hour? And a poem, at that! A variation on a Pushkin poem; they didn’t believe it would be of any use.

  Exclaiming “The pen is mightier than the sword!” Lara ran into the house again, ignoring them, and began to write up a notice. I went beside her, read what she had written, and told her how much I liked it. I believed that the energy overflowing from her body would in itself be enough to convince everyone.

  But things didn’t turn out the way she had expected. The notary and his friends told us, after having thought matters over, they weren’t willing to take the risk of stepping on residential premises at night when there were armed guards on the island. A plan of this nature might have worked in the past, but had we forgotten the incident at the President’s house, not to mention the grocer’s son, who got a beating? In an atmosphere as tense as this one, this could be a dangerous undertaking. People could get shot.

  They proposed an alternative: it might work to wait along the road that led to the seagulls’ cove early in the morning and hand out the notice there. Lara, an impatient soul, was less than satisfied with this approach, but at this point, there was nothing more to be done.

  That night we slept fitfully, for no more than a couple of hours. Even sleeping in each other’s arms was not enough to chase away the nerves that had consumed us.

  At the first light of dawn, we ran to the road leading to the seagulls’ cove. There was no one around. The white-hot sun had just begun to send out its bright rays of light over the ocean surface. The early birds were chirping among the trees. We felt a touch of coolness that energized us, making our bare shoulders shiver in the morning air.

  We waited like that for a while, then stood up when we heard voices approach us. The President, his aides, Number 1, and Number 8 showed up one after the other, each with a shotgun in hand. The President, meanwhile, wore a pair of sunglasses, just like his aides. They were walking toward the seagulls’ cove, ostensibly in high spirits.

  They registered surprise when they saw us and tried to make sense of what we were doing there. They were perplexed as to the presence of Lara, who, of course, was there to oppose the slaughter of the seagulls. Had she changed her mind, or did she have some ulterior motive?

  “Good morning!” the President said, smiling jovially. If anyone were unaware of the events up until now and of who this man was, one would have instantly concluded that standing before us was a cute old man who was simply saying good morning. Dressed in his white outfit, he looked quite handsome and clean-cut, the very image of discipline and refinement.

  “Have you come to join us?” he asked. “Let’s give you a shotgun each.”

  “No!” said Lara; “we aren’t murderers!”

  Upon which the President grew beet-red, quivering with anger.

  “Watch your words, young lady!” he said. “Don’t you forget who you’re talking to.”

  Prompted by the President’s anger, his aides moved toward Lara. I—with a courage I hadn’t known I possessed—stepped in between them. I gave the notices in my hand to the aides, and then to the President and the others.

  I could feel their surprise.

  The President read it. “What is this?” he asked.

  “A declaration of peace!” I said.

  With as much astonishment as he had shown in the previous moments, the President read it aloud:

  “ ‘Dear neighbors. We have drawn up this notice to warn you about this morning’s massacre of the seagulls. The island belongs to the peace-loving seagulls, and they are our neighbors. They settled on this island long before us and have made it their home for thousands of years. To murder these innocent creatures who do us no harm can only be explained by a lack of conscience and a bloodthirsty heart. We therefore call upon you dear, peace-loving islanders not to take part in this crime of humanity and to raise the flag of peace and well-being!’ ”

  The President paused for a moment, then continued:

  “The wind heeds no prohibition

  Seagulls are not for locking up in chains

  Any more than is one’s heart.”

  For an instant he seemed dumbfounded at what he’d just read, then broke out into a fit of loud laughter. Not fake in the least, but genuine, unrestrained laughter that brought tears to his eyes. His guffaws spread to the others, who now were laughing too.

  “And the poem! This poem!” he was saying as he choked on his guffaws. Through spasms of laughter, he tried to go on reading.

  “Just listen to this: ‘The wind heeds no prohibition’ and…and…‘seagulls are not for locking up in chains.’ Have you ever read anything so stale, so unlikable, or so silly before? Have you? So then: ‘Seagulls aren’t for locking up in chains’!”

  Number 1 said, “You’d think the poem was about Joan of Arc, not the seagulls, bless their little hearts!”

  They exploded into laughter again. Meanwhile the President’s aides, who were the only ones not to laugh, kept Lara and me under their careful watch.