Peacocks

Peacocks are among the most conspicuous animals in Boaz Brandstetter’s commune, where their unrestrained movement through the old house makes them more than background decoration. A peacock’s imperious progress among the other birds becomes a recurring emblem of the estate’s lively, untamed communal world.

A Presence in the House

In one letter, the narrator describes a peacock marching through the passages and staircases like a brainless, arrogant supreme commander among the pigeons. The comparison gives the bird a comic, almost military authority: it seems to command the house simply by occupying it. Around it, the commune’s daily life unfolds through singing, cooking, and work, while abandoned rooms and the encroaching garden show how much of the estate is still being reclaimed.

The peacock belongs to a menagerie that also enters the household’s intimate routines. Boaz Brandstetter has found his little daughter a tortoise, and she turns the narrator’s electric shaver into an imaginary telephone. In half-hour calls to Jerusalem, she reports to her father on her relationships with the goats, geese, and peacock. The bird is thus not only part of the landscape she inhabits but one of the creatures through which she keeps up a playful connection with her absent father.

The Last Free-Roaming Bird

As the commune expands and the property is restored, its animals and spaces are reorganized. The garden is cultivated, trees are pruned, new saplings are planted, and pigeons are evicted from the house and moved into a large dovecote. The peacock alone retains the freedom to wander through the bedrooms, hallways, and staircases.

That exception preserves the bird’s earlier role as the house’s self-appointed commander, while making its freedom more striking against the increasingly ordered surroundings. The cleaned rooms, rewired electricity, concrete floors, heaters, and farm outbuildings mark practical changes to the estate; the peacock’s unrestricted passage leaves a pocket of unruliness within them. It remains a visible sign that the restored house is also a lived-in, animal-filled home.