Birdy

by William Wharton

  When I come into the dream, it’s late. The sun is setting. Perta is flying from one of the two middle perches to the other. I watch her a minute, then fly down to her.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you, Birdy. Where have you been? How is it you are here sometimes and sometimes you are not? I do not understand. Do you go outside the cage? Do you fly alone out there? Aren’t you afraid? Couldn’t you take me with you?’

  ‘No, Perta. I do not fly out there.’

  I can’t answer the rest of her questions. She looks so beautiful to me. She’s against the light so I see the lovely curve of her breast and back. Inside myself, I can feel the restlessness arising.

  I approach and Perta squats on the perch and starts peep-peep-peeping to me. Her wings are fluttering in expectation. It’s time for me to feed her. I’m the same as Alfonso; I can’t do it. I want to, but I can’t bring food up into my mouth. I’ve always hated to vomit. The boy is getting in the way of the bird.

  Perta stays there, patiently waiting to be fed. I try once more and it comes. The bird gains control and it’s as easy as flying or singing. I give her food and Perta is happy. She peep-peep-peeps some more. I give her more food. I sing and approach her. She squats down further. I’m not ready yet. I feed her again. Partly it’s wanting to make it last as long as possible. Perta doesn’t say anything and we fly together all the night long. I sing and feed her till the morning when I wake up.

  The next day, I’m tired from being out so late. My mother keeps asking questions but I don’t tell her much. I’m cleaning the cages when Al comes over. I’ve put twelve more young birds in the other flight cage. I still haven’t lost any of the young ones. The breeding cages are in full swing. With the sound of babies hollering to be fed, and the males singing, it makes quite a racket. Perta is flying back and forth alone in the flight cage.

  Al starts pumping me about how it was with Doris. I tell him I didn’t fuck her, but he won’t believe me. He says Doris is one of the hottest firecrackers in the whole school; she’d fuck a horse if she could get it to stand still. I tell him I believe it but she didn’t fuck me.

  My father testifies to my mother that I danced every dance. My mother wants to know where we went after the dance. I tell her we went to Don’s in Yeadon; that’s a milk-shake bar, the kind of place my mother would like me to go after a dance. I tell her I had a good time. My mother goes over the tux and brushes it off. I pulled all the leaves and stickers out of it before I went to bed. She’d really flip if she found jit smeared along the inside of the pants.

  Al looks the birds over but he doesn’t have much interest in canaries. What he does understand is that I’ve got a regular bird factory going. He asks me about feed costs and how many birds per nest and works out how much money I can make.

  ‘Jesus, Birdy, you’re going to be a fucking millionaire! King of the Canaries. You’ll be voted most likely to suck seed.’

  Al thinks that’s funny. He manages to get it in the year-book under my picture. There’s nothing else there; no clubs, no honor rolls, no sports, no offices. It just says ‘Nickname Birdy’. ‘Voted most likely to suck seed.’

  Al notices Perta flying all alone in the flight cage and asks about her. He wonders why I don’t put some of the young birds in there. I tell him she’s a special pet of mine. She’s a spare female.

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s like the pigeon witch we used to have.’

  I tell him, ‘Yeah, she’s something like that, only she doesn’t bring back any fancy birds.’

  ‘Does she eat out of your mouth the way the freaky witch did?’

  For a minute I have the feeling Al can see into the dream. If anybody could, it would be Al. Then I remember. I laugh and tell him that canaries are harder to train than pigeons.

  We go out and throw the discus for a while, then Al goes home. I go to the aviary and watch Perta with my binoculars. I’m trying to decide how to tell her what I am. I’m trying to decide what I am, too.

  That night, in the dream, I know I must tell Perta about myself. As boy, I’ve decided this and it’s come through to me as Birdy in the dream.

  First, Perta and I fly together in a new dance. In the dance, we fly over each other, then drop on the other side, so the first flies over the one who has dropped. It’s beautiful, but hard to do in the small space of the cage. It would be so terrific if we could fly free.

  When we’re finished, she squats and peep-peep-peeps to me and I feed her easily. It is time to mate with her and she’s waiting. I know the beginning egg is inside her waiting for my seed. I want to put my seed into her, to know it is buried warmly in her egg.

  ‘Birdy, what are you afraid of? Do you want to have a nest with me? I feel we could have such wonderful babies, that we would be together in them, that for the first time, my eggs would be filled with life; with our life. Why are you afraid?’

  I look at her. I love her so. What she is saying is what I’ve been thinking, dreaming, singing. It is more than flying.

  ‘Perta, there are things I must tell you first.’

  ‘Do you have another female, another nest, somewhere?’

  ‘No. Nothing so simple as that, Perta.’

  ‘That is not so simple.’

  ‘Listen carefully, Perta. Listen to the way I tell this as much as to what I tell. I want you to know I speak the truth. I want you to know what I am, so we can truly be together.’

  ‘Say it, Birdy. Tell me.’

  ‘Perta, all this we have together is not real.’

  Perta shifts from her left to her right eye but remains quiet.

  ‘In reality, I am the boy out there.’

  I point to myself as boy in the aviary. I’m out there filling feed dishes, changing water.

  ‘This, here, that we have together, is just a dream. I dreamed you in my dream. I wanted you to be, so I dreamed you.’

  I wait. Perta says nothing. She shifts eyes twice more; flips her wings once. Can she possibly understand?

  ‘Perta, I went out, as boy, in the real world and you were given to me. I carried you here to the cage.’

  I wait for some sign that she is with me, that she understands. If I only understood it better myself, I could explain it better. Perta looks at me closely.

  ‘Go on, Birdy. I’m listening.’

  ‘You see, Perta, we are here together because of two things, the dream I dreamed in my dream and then the bird I carried back with me, who flies alone here in the cage during the day. You are the bird in my dream-dream and you are the bird I love as a boy but cannot know. You are here in the dream between those two. I am here in my dream because I want to be here. I want to be with you and so it is so.’

  I stop. I can’t understand what I’m saying myself. I’m too much of a bird to understand. My boy brain makes up the ideas, the words, but my bird brain can’t understand them. I’m seeing Perta not as a bird but as another creature like myself with whom I’m in love. What I’m saying sounds like crazy talk. How can I expect Perta to understand, to believe, when I cannot do so myself? I stop.

  ‘Go on, Birdy. Tell me more.’

  ‘That’s the most of it, Perta. As a boy out there, in reality, when the dream is over, I own all the birds. I bought Birdie, Alfonso. I raised all of them in my bedroom in another place. I built this cage where we fly now. I go places when I am a boy that you cannot see from here. I live with other beings like myself, as a boy. I am but a young creature in that world, not capable of taking care of myself. I have a mother and father with whom I live. My house is out there, out of the cage. If I do not come here, take care, feed all the birds, this whole life would stop, it would all end. Do you understand?’

  ‘Of course not, Birdy. You know I cannot. I am a bird; those things mean nothing to me.’

  ‘But do you believe me, Perta? Do you think I lie when I tell all this?’

  ‘No, Birdy. You are telling me your truth.’

  ‘Can’t it be your truth, too, Perta? I want it to be your truth. I wa
nt you to know me truly.’

  Perta looks at me straight on, very unbirdlike.

  ‘No, Birdy. I am a bird. Your truth cannot be mine.’

  I don’t know why I want her to know. Is it because I think that if she knows, believes, then the dream will be more real. But how can a dream be more real? It is like making a zero more zero by writing zero ten thousand times in a line. It is still zero.

  ‘Perta, do you realize that what I am saying is that you do not exist at all; that you are only a part of my dream?’

  ‘What is a dream, Birdy?’

  I’m stopped. I hadn’t thought of that. If birds do not dream, there’s no way. Still, this is my dream. I can have birds dream or not in my dream, as I want. I can make it to fit my dream.

  ‘Perta, when you sleep, do you not have thoughts, images, visions, feelings that are not true, that come from inside you, that you only imagine?’

  ‘No. When I sleep I am giving myself strength. I give myself force to fly, to have babies. It is the great unbeing. It is when we build our feathers, harden our beaks, unbecome.’

  This is beyond me. I cannot make birds dream, even in my own dream. I know then that the boy does not really want Perta to know. I must live my bird life as a bird only. I must surrender myself. It is a relief, a wonderful feeling to know this.

  A great peace comes into me. I feel my strength as a bird spreading through me. The blood is circulated in warmth out to the tips of my feathers, to the ends of my toenails.

  Perta is watching me. She is telling me that I am a bird; that I am to forget all this nonsense of the boy. She wants me as her mate. These things I have been telling her are only the ravings of a maniac, a fever. It is clear to her I am a bird. If I can see myself with her eyes, then I am a bird in her world. I let go. I settle deeply into the life I’ve always wanted. I become, rebecome, a bird in this world of the dream.

  I start to sing. Perta is alive to me. There is a transfer of feeling, knowing, one to the other from us that I have never known, never dreamed of dreaming. Perta starts to fly in a complex dance. I fly after her, singing. She flies, dances to my song and I sing, dance, to her dance. It’s not a chase but mutual following. We speak in language beyond words. Our every movement magnifies the tension of our merging identity. Then, Perta stops, waits for me. I approach, in deepest passion, maximum awareness, to her. She waits, cups herself to receive me. I hover, then lower myself into her. My penetration is engulfed by her whole being. For just that moment I am not alone, not separate. I pass through the illusion of identity into a depth of shared reality.

  When I wake that morning, I’ve done it again. I’m covered with jit, my sheets, my pajamas. I wash everything so my mother won’t find out. I’ve got to do something.

  I go down to Cobb’s Creek with a long stick. They’re floating by in that creek all the time. There must be toilets flushing into the creek, there just couldn’t be that many lovers along the banks. I get one in good shape, wash it out in the creek first, then take it home and wash it again. I turn it inside out. I slip it on and when it’s on, I can hardly feel it. After that, I sleep with that condom on. I fill it almost every night during those first mad weeks when Perta and I are so deeply involved with each other, when all the dreams are devoted to passionate flight, singing, dancing, and overwhelming culminations.

  Now, I’m separating the dream from the day better. Especially in the dream, I hardly remember that I am a boy. I am almost completely bird. As boy I’ve wired a nest into the cage with Perta the daytime bird. In the night, Perta and I are building our nest. Strangely enough, Perta, alone, in the days shows interest in the nest also. I give her burlap and she starts building. This isn’t uncommon. Sometimes a female without a male will build a nest during the nesting season.

  In the dream it is such fun building the nest. Perta does most of the work and she’s a fine engineer. It’s a combination of weaving or knitting and construction work. Mostly I’m bringing up materials. Perta is meticulous and ingenious with her nest building. I admire it even more as bird than I did as a boy.

  Every day when I go out to feed and take care of the birds, I check on the nest Perta is building in the flight cage. It’s exactly like the nest Perta is building in the dream, except the dream nest seems to be slightly more advanced than the nest in the cage. Could the dream be getting ahead of real life? I’m beginning to think I don’t know what’s real anymore.

  When the nest is finished, Perta tells me she thinks she is going to lay the egg that night. For me as boy, the dream nights are the day. In the real day the thinking of the dream dominates me. I’m thinking all the time of our egg to come. It’s hard for me to realize that Perta the bird is asleep while I’m dreaming, and Perta the dream is awake while Perta sleeps. Are they dreams to each other? Is Perta right? Do birds not dream? Don’t they ever dream themselves out of the cage?

  That night the egg is laid. I sit beside Perta. She tells me she can feel the egg becoming inside her, how the shell is hardening and starting to move out into the world.

  She asks me to sing to her so the egg will come more easily. I begin to sing softly, absently, not knowing what my song will be. I sing about how we are there, together, living as one, in life just begun. Being the father of an egg is so far from what being a boy is.

  The sky is just lighting in the morning when Perta tells me the egg has come into the nest. She lifts herself carefully so I can see. It is beautiful. She leaves the nest and I lower myself slowly over it. The warmth of Perta’s body comes from the egg, from the nest, through my feathers to my breast. I hold myself still and this warmth goes through me. I try to feel what Perta has felt, is feeling. Perta leans over the nest and feeds me. Then she squats beside the nest and cups herself to receive me.

  Both Perta in the dream and Perta in the cage lay four eggs. Perta’s eggs in the cage are as lovely as ours. I leave the eggs in the nest with Perta the bird. I don’t want to take any chance that the eggs in my dream will turn into marbles and also I know that Perta the bird’s eggs must be sterile. If I know they must be sterile, there is no reason to take them out.

  I worry, as boy, that the eggs in the dream will be sterile, too. In the dream I don’t worry about this at all. I ask Perta why she has had only sterile eggs before and she tells me she was never properly fertilized. This is what I want to believe.

  Mostly, I want our eggs to be fertile. I wish it as hard as I can. With my binoculars, I watch the birds in the breeding cages as the eggs are hatched. I get it deeply printed into my mind. I want to know exactly what to do as a bird. I want to power my babies into this life.

  The other flight cage is getting filled with young birds. From the warbling going on all the time, it seems there’s a good proportion of males.

  I watch poor Perta in her cage with her sterile eggs. It doesn’t seem fair for her to do all that sitting for nothing. When she’s been sitting on them for seven days, half way through the brooding period, I take them out one at a time and hold them up to a light. They’re all sterile.

  I decide to do something about it. There are three hens who have nests due to hatch within a day or two of Perta’s. One has five eggs and the others have four each. I take two eggs from the nest of five and one from each of the others. Three birds in a nest is a good number, not too crowded, and the young have a better chance of survival.

  I give these four eggs to Perta as substitutes for the sterile ones. I feel much better. I’m sure Perta will be a good mother. Two of the eggs came from Birdie and Alfonso. I don’t think Birdie minded my taking them. Perta doesn’t seem to notice the substitution and accepts the new eggs without trouble. I check each egg before I put it in the nest with her and they’re all fertile. I use a small hand flashlight to check the eggs. A fertile egg of seven days has opacity and small red veins running through it.

  In the dream I look into the nest of our eggs but there is no change I can see. Changing Perta’s eggs in the cage has not changed our eggs. I’m
hoping it will give our eggs a better chance to be fertile. I’m feeling a strong desire to be a father. I want to be able to feed my own babies. I of ten feed Perta on the nest and sing to her. Being a father, knowing I’m there in the new babies, will be more proof that I am. I feel that I’ll be more, not only as bird but as boy. Knowing he’s a father is one of the only proofs a male has that he is.

  On the night when the babies are to hatch, when Perta tells me she can feel the babies moving in the shell, I sit on the eggs while she takes a bath to help the babies by softening the shell. I feel them moving. I can feel movement in each egg. They will all hatch in the morning. I know it. When Perta comes back to the nest, I sing her this song. I’m sure the babies are mature enough to hear me now. The shell of the egg is so thin.

  Become now,

  Tap through the shell

  Of being and taste the

  Soft air of your beginning

  This is yours, the safe

  Surrounding blanket

  Of new life.

  The day the birds are to hatch is a school day. I play hooky for the first time in my life. I know they’re bound to catch me. I usually eat lunch with my father down in the boiler room; he’ll know I’m not there. I don’t care. I can’t hang around the aviary or my mother would catch me. Instead, I go down to the woods and climb a favorite tree, not far from where we had the pigeon loft. I wedge myself into a fork near the top, high over the bank of a hill.

  I spend the day up there. I can’t keep myself from thinking about my babies trying to hatch from the eggs. I can feel their struggle. I lie back on the length of the branch and try to put myself into the dream. I can’t do it. I know also, in my deepest part, it would be dangerous to enter the dream in the daytime. I’m not sure what would happen, whether it would break the dream or I would not be able to come out and back to life as a boy, but I know it would be dangerous to do.