The
story is set in the first few weeks of World War II, when a six-year-old
Jewish boy from a large Polish city is sent by his parents to the shelter
of a distant village. The boy is entrusted to the care of a peasant
woman, but within two months of his arrival she dies. The parents do
not know this, and the child has no way of making contact with them.
He wanders through the countryside of war-torn Poland, among people
who are hostile towards him. For a while, he lives under the protection
of Lekh, a solitary young man who makes his living as a bird trapper.
Lekh loves a woman, Ludmila, with whom he has passionate sexual relations.
Ludmila was raped as a young girl and is now crazed with sexual lust.
The farmers call her "stupid Ludmila". She sometimes disappears
for several days, and it is during one such period of separation that
Lekh, out of sheer frustration, paints one of his birds in beautiful
colors and releases it. The bird tries to join a flock of its own species,
but the other birds attack and kill it because they do not recognize
it as one of their own.
The
story of the painted bird is a metaphor of how society casts out and
destroys individuals who are “different”. This is exactly
what the little Jewish boy experiences in the cruel, perverted and hostile
rural community in which he is trying to survive.
