The Complete Collection. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ