Of Forests & Clocks & Dreams (A Literary & Art Collection)

The Boy Who Crows

The Boy Who Crows

Whenever I find myself in a pensive mood I remember my dead parakeet. In fact, last night I dreamed of it. It wasn't a particularly important bird. It was one that I had buried under the tree in the yard overlooking a river that always danced trance-like with reeds and long grass. Every now and then, you could pick out the sound of a distant motorbike on the other side of the bank. In the spring, cherry blossoms would light up the far shore like Christmas lights too early. But it was summer at the time, and there were no cherry blossoms anymore. Instead, for some reason, Bach's Italian Concerto was playing on the radio then from my mother's second floor window. She used to play a lot of piano but apparently not since I was born. I never asked why.

I couldn't remember why we had brought home the bird. Perhaps it was at my uncle's request - he ran a pet store. He tried to thrust pets on everyone and anyone, believing they accounted for everything from good luck for school grades to the catalyst in unifying a family. Maybe even winning an election or the World War. In any case, the bird I had for quite a few years, accompanying me throughout middle school to my university years. But I never had any real attachment to it. I had never given it a name. It was just there, yellow and green, ruffling its feathers and hopping about everyday. It never cared much for me nor I for it. Neither of us talked to each other much. I was content as long as it didn't bother my reading.

I would read through my Marxist texts and break a sweat with Kafka and it wouldn't raise a single wing. No response to Soseki or Kawabata, but one day, when I read Blake, it chirped at me for the first time. It liked William Blake, apparently. Maybe it was the poetry kind of bird.

After that, I spoke to it over a period of three days, before we settled back into silence.

It began when I had been almost asleep, nodding off to an exceptionally thick old tome of literary criticism - Formalists weren't quite my thing. I could vaguely recall the night being deep and dark on a new moon, like wading through a stream of viscous frothing liquid.

"Do you have some scotch," was the first thing it said.

At the time, I couldn't quite tell if I was in a dream state or some strange surrealist fantasy, but it sounded as if from a far off source, maybe a hill in the distance, but yet it was still loud and clear.

I said nothing.

"Kuroki-san, you're too poor to buy anything other than cheap canned beer from convenient stores aren't you?"

This time, I looked at it and frowned.

"Haven't you at least some beer then?"

"It's not in my usual practice to offer a bird drinks," I said.

"It's not in my usual practice to ask of a drink, but what can I say, tonight I'm really craving for one."

"Yes, but I don't believe you have much of a tolerance."

"Probably more than you." It grinned, if it could grin.

"Now, if someone were to come into the room right about now, what would they think? They would find me talking to a bird and think I am crazy."

"What's wrong with talking to birds? I've been waiting for so long for you to talk to me."

"I have a discrimination against other species."

"What if I told you I'm not a bird?"

I considered it for a moment, holding a pen between my thumb and forefinger. I rolled it back and forth. "Then I may be drunk after all." I was in the middle of a book and staring absentmindedly at its pages.

"Perception is tricky business, you know, K-san. The world is made up of a whole lot of subjectivity and not enough sense. Kind of like swimming underwater at night: which way is up, which way is down? Then there's a great convergence of currents clashing, sloshing, this way and that and you're caught in between. You could be the one who has the wrong idea." It lifted its left wing.

"Well I hope you turn out to be a beautiful college girl then."

"Or maybe a more mature woman, you might like that right? I could teach you some things, maybe."

That was when I had set down my book and put a black cloth covering over its cage.

As far as I could recall, the next two days had been similar. It was convinced it was not a bird and I was convinced my mind was deteriorating. It didn't help that it presented discourses more advanced than my undergraduate mind could comprehend. I began to lose sleep and considered visiting a psychologist. So on the third day, when it finally fell silent and never spoke a word again for the rest of its life, I was relieved. Once the bird died, I was even more relieved - I buried it and that was that. I could consider it all but a momentary lapse in sanity. I would remember it and feel nothing anymore.

But now, as the blossoms had long withered and as I was about to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts - a useless degree as my father would say - the parakeet landed in my dream and went straight for my ear. There was no warning or premeditation. It didn't skip a beat and got right to the task. Of course, it was rather painful but at the same time I had been expecting it. As if it was back to haunt me for betraying its memory. I woke up with a fresh searing sensation of blood dripping from my ear, but not surprisingly, when I reached up I found nothing there.

It was only until after I shaved, brushed my teeth, took a shower, picked my ear and threw on a faded Carpenters t-shirt when I noticed something different about my ear. At first, I thought I had hair in my eye. But on closer inspection, there was indeed a darker tinge to the colour of my left ear. I thought it looked a little green. Yet, it had to be only my imagination. Or perhaps I had slept on it funny. Maybe it was the hot water.

By the end of the day however, Goya-sensei, an old fraying professor who had a near ninety degree angle to his back finally stepped up to me and said something along the lines of:

"Are feather earrings the trend these days?"

He walked away, shaking his head, muttering about young people.