Original Language: Italian
"Plumage" translation by A Pi
When I was a little girl I really really wanted a parrot.
But in my family birds were taboo: they said "penne portassero pene", "feathers bring sorrow", and because of that they never bought me one.
When I was seventeen, in Los Angeles, I got a parrot behind my parent's back and I kept it in the house of one of my friends, Douglas. I named him Syd, like Syd Barrett. When I left, Doug promised me that he would treat him as if he were his own son. Two days later, under mysterious circumstances, Syd committed suicide by crashing against a wall.
Through the tears I remembered my parents' superstition and I realized that they were right, those feathers had just been sorrow for me.
It was the first of October, I remember this because generally on the first of October I fall under a depression that doesn't let up all winter long. I was in the bathroom putting on makeup when I heard a strange noise, like a peep, or a hen's cackling laugh.
I frightenedly raced into the kitchen, fearing that it was a thief or a rapist, and instead found a little parrot.
He was small, green and yellow, with cotton candy stripes on his wings. His beak was a fiery red and was lightly cracked.
He had hidden himself behind the refrigerator and the washing machine, and was shaking like a leaf, fluttering desperately.
I tried to catch him, but he flew away and landed on top of the bookcase. I called out to him in a shrill voice filled with emotion: "Little parrot! Little parrot, come down!" He stared at me curiously, and then turned his head the other way. I sprinkled some Rice Krispies on a plate and offered it to him.
He didn't think twice before stuffing them into his beak, accompanying every bite with his bubbly, satisfied noises. After the snack, the parrot was suddenly friendlier towards me. He got on my back and we walked around the house; he was proud and tranquil, I was as radiant as a child on Christmas morning.
After a couple of hours of cuddling and tenderness, I went out to buy him seeds and a little cage, determined to change my entire life for this exotic omen that had found its way to me.
His advent was a sign of fate that did not want to be understood, only accepted.
When I got home I called out to him, loudly:
"Little parrot?"
Naturally he didn't respond. I found him on the dining room table, immobile. I offered him some seeds and he ate them wearily. I figured he had likely faced a long voyage when he set out to find me.
He had probably escaped from some old witch with all sorts of elegant expedients and he had come to me because he sensed that there was a lonely woman, too lonely, with absurd childish ways, that desperately wanted to have his company and hear his song. I caressed his wings so very delicately and gratefully when I noticed that the little bird had become stiff.
I thought that he was tired. I put him in his new cage and he consented without fidgeting. As soon as he was in, he painfully spread out his wings, and fell to the side. Maybe he was stretching before going to sleep?
I touched him to pick him up.
He was dead. Just like that.
I pulled my hand back, terrorized.
Dead?? How? Why? Maybe he was scared of the cage? Maybe he had eaten too much? Maybe the cereal had expanded in his stomach, killing him? I placed his small, rigid body in my hands. I started to cry. His little head fell to the side, and his round eyes were covered by transparent eyelids.
I hadn't even had time to give him a name, I could only sigh:
"Little parrot! Why have you come to die on me?"
I put him in a box and decided to bury him in a park behind my house. I went out at night, with a mens black Borsalino snug on my head, who knows why.
I made sure the bird was really dead.
He was. I tossed some seeds in the box... not that he would never know. When I reached the garden, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my hand shovel to dig the hole.
I started to scrape the dirt with my fingers, like a dog.
After a few minutes I gave up. I looked around desperately.
There was a deep ditch full of bushes and weeds and mud and rusted car parts.
I threw the box in the pit, turned my heels, and got the hell out of there.
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