The Complete Collection. William Wharton

Perta back with me.

      I put her in the flight cage and watch her all the rest of the day through my binoculars. It’s exactly like the dream-dream. This is the first time something that started in the dream is happening afterward in my boy life.

      When I look into the breeding cages and clean the floors I feel part of the other birds. I’m not alone even when I’m only a boy; I have my female, too. She’s with me in my boy life and in the dream-dream, too. I’m hoping she’ll be in the real dream tonight. I’m even more excited about it than flying.

      That night in the dream I don’t sleep. I’m up on the highest perch and I see her on the bottom of the cage eating seed just as she was the first time in the dream-dream. I know enough to know I’m dreaming and to know why she’s there, but those ideas are only like dreams themselves. She’s most real here in my dream.

      I watch her for a while. The butter dish is filled with water, and she takes a bath just as she did in the dream-dream. I’d forgotten to put the dish in the cage before I went to sleep; this is how the dream can have its own life. The dream me knows what I want more than I do myself.

      I watch her bathe as I did before. Till now, she still hasn’t seen me in the top of the cage. I sing to her. I sing:

      How is it I know you, strange one?

      In what untrammeled sky did we fly?

      Perhaps I was the air and you

      the bird. Did you fly through me?

      Why are we not mated? Give me

      a sign; will you be mine?

      Do you see me, feel my desire?

      Or are you already tired of my song?

      When I’m finished, I fly down to her. She sees me. She hears me. The wall between us is gone.

      ‘Hello. I didn’t know there was another bird in this cage. I thought I was alone. Have you been here long?’

      I don’t want to lie to her but I also want her to think of me only as a bird. I answer.

      ‘Yes, I’ve been here all the time.’

      ‘I like your song. You sing very well. Do you have a female?’

      ‘No. I am alone.’

      ‘Were you serious in your song? Did you sing what you mean? Or were you only singing?’

      ‘I was serious. I sang what I mean.’

      ‘I have no male now. I have had no babies. I have had many eggs but no babies. I would like to be your female, but you should know this.’

      ‘Yes. I would like that.’

      ‘Do you understand?’

      I cannot answer her. I’ve never talked to anyone who spoke and thought so directly. Her ideas, her ways, are clear and straight as clean water. There is a natural flow between us that I’ve never known. I feel myself going out into her and she coming into me. I start to sing:

      I bring unweathered seeds of joy,

      an endless coming together. Let

      us fly. Our time grows from

      yesterday’s tomorrows; we glide

      gently to our private past.

      Let us fly.

      ‘That was lovely, even stronger than the first song. You have thoughts in your songs I’ve not heard before. It is as if you are more than a bird, have seen beyond the cage.’

      ‘Thank you. But if you are a bird, there is nothing more or beyond. Let us fly together.’

      We fly over all the cage that night. I show her things Alfonso taught me and she shows me how to do her quick turns and slow graceful hovering landings. She has a fine way of using the air as a hold and not sliding on it. It’s like treading water. She teaches me how to do it without thrashing or fighting the air.

      The next night when I dream, it is early afternoon. It is earlier in the day than it’s ever been before in the dream. The bath water is there and it’s fresh. I did remember to put it in this time.

      Perta is there. She is waiting and welcomes me by flying up before I fly down to her. She looks me in the eyes, straight on, very unbirdlike. As I remember this, she shifts her head and looks at me, bird-style. We shift our heads back and forth, looking into each other; my left to her left, right to right, my left to her right, her left to my right. I don’t remember birds doing this. Then, she flies to the perch below.

      ‘Come, Birdy, let us bathe together.’

      I didn’t tell her my name.

      I follow her down, wondering how she knows my name; it makes a big hole in the dream. I don’t understand. Is the Perta here totally separated from the Perta in the flight cage? Do I completely make her up? Does she know my name because I know it? I fly down with her to the water. She is standing on the lip of the dish waiting. I stand beside her. She dips her bill into the water and throws some onto me. I’ve never taken a bath as a bird. I don’t quite know how to go about it. I dip my bill into the water and throw some onto Perta. I’m awkward. Perta looks at me intently. She throws water on me again. I throw some water on her. I’m better the second time. I have a terrible fear Perta will discover I’m not a bird, that I’m the boy and she’ll become frightened of me. This guilt, this fear, is coming between us. Perta feels it. She looks at me, then lowers herself into the water. The sunshine is again broken into pieces of colored light. I’m bathing in the light as she throws beads of water around me. Then, I’m in the bath myself, fluttering, losing myself in the light, in the water, in Perta. It is like floating in music. I want to sing but I wait. I follow everything Perta does. We dance to our own music. I do not need to sing. I realize then that, as all male canaries sing, Perta dances, probably all female canaries dance. It is something you cannot know unless you are a bird; female canaries dance.

      When we are completely wet, when the bath is finished, we fly together over all the cage. Our feathers are wet and we are heavy. We fly in the air with the same feeling a boy knows when he swims in the water. We go slowly. We must struggle for space, for distance. We shake the water from our feathers, sprinkle each other. I’m still following Perta, watching her move. It continues as dance, a dance in slow movements, but a dance. Perta watches me watch her. From her eyes, I can see the questioning. Perhaps birds never watch each other the way I’m watching her. I’m watching her because of the pleasure it gives me, also to learn how to take a bath as a bird.

      When, at last, we are dry, we sit on a perch beside each other and preen our feathers. It is a wonderful feeling to pull the slightly wet feather through my beak, feeling the individual branchings and lining them up. It is like carefully combing wet hair, but a thousand times more satisfying. There is a right way, no other, for feathers to be. When they are that way it gives a feeling of being finished, of having things done correctly. I want very much to do a most unbirdlike thing; to preen Perta’s feathers. I’ve never seen birds do this. Except for feeding, singing, peep-peep-peeping, and fucking, birds show no other signs of affection I’ve ever seen. I want to caress Perta the way a boy would caress a girl, but I have only my beak and my feet. It would seem so natural to take one of her feathers into my mouth and straighten it with the tender edges of my beak. This is a place where the bird and the boy are different. I decide to ask her about my name.

      ‘Perta, how did you know my name?’

      She looks at me, surprised. She stops preening.

      ‘I do not know your name. You have not told me.’

      ‘But when you invited me to bathe, you called me Birdy.’

      ‘Yes. But Birdy isn’t a name.’

      ‘What is it then?’

      ‘It’s Birdy; what you call a bird when you don’t know his name. Birdy is anybird. Every bird knows that.’

      How