One day in 2008, my husband, Hiraki, was making a film for which he decided he needed some vintage birdcages. We headed to the antiques market as the sky was lightening. Get there too late and we might not find anything to buy.
After going around the market a few times and paying for several cages, we were standing under a tree, deciding whether to call it a day, when, suddenly there was a baby bird on the ground at our feet.
What happened next is a little fuzzy. I remember picking the bird up; so does Hiraki. I remember trying to see if I could spot the nest but the tree being too dense for me to get my head in. Hiraki remembers it much sparser – nothing a nest could have been built in. Whoever is right, we were now collectively charged with the welfare of a tiny, feathered, beating heart.
I remember feeling it in the palm of my hand so very well – the absolute lightness and aliveness of it. We both do.
People started saying we should just leave it. “Oh, just put the bird under the hedge – it’s going to die.” But there was no way either of us could face that. With hindsight, we should have got in touch with an animal charity, which would have given us some proper advice. And then we remembered what we’d just bought.
So I stood holding the little bird while Hiraki went to fetch the cages. We put the bird in one of them and drove home. I had plans to meet friends that evening; Hiraki didn’t leave the house for the next two weeks.
Our friend Masakatsu, who grew up on a homestead in the Nagoya countryside and has a way with animals, came over and called the bird Pi-chan. In my mind it became a he. When I ask Hiraki what he remembers, he calls it a she.
Clearly we had no idea about anything. I briefly contemplated the possibility that we might be raising a pigeon.
We thought it probably needed worms to eat. We may have spoken to someone who suggested mincemeat as a reasonable substitute. So Hiraki spent hours lying on his belly in front of the cage, sucking his teeth at Pi-chan to speak to him – he spoke back – and feeding him with a pair of tweezers. The bird got round and fat as he lost his baby fluff. When his fledgling feathers grew, we realised he was actually a goldfinch – a herbivore – and we swapped the mince for birdseed.
Then Pi-chan started using his wings. He’d fly around the flat looking for us. I’d be lying in the bath with the door open, because I don’t like closed doors, and I’d see this blur shoot past. If I was at my computer, he’d come sit on my finger and peck at my ring. When Hiraki was napping on the sofa, Pi-chan would sit on the hinge of his glasses.
Hiraki started taking him to his studio – in the bird cage. He’d close the windows and let him out. Pi-chan would sit on the edge of Hiraki’s screen looking at him, then fly around and come back. I always thought he imagined Hiraki was his mother.
One Sunday morning, I got up early. I’d had the window open before but Pi-chan had only ever sought out the two of us. This time, I didn’t realise until it was too late that he’d taken off on his own.
He stayed in the tree in our front garden for a couple of days. I remember standing in the window shaking a bowl of birdseed, a sound that would have had him flying over in no time before, but not this time. And then he was gone.
We both sobbed. He’d only been with us a couple of weeks but there was a distinct before and after to our lives. Pi-chan lives on in that film, though. You watch him perch on Hiraki’s outstretched finger and settle on a sand dune. A tree grows in his swaying birdcage. Hiraki titled the piece Out of the Blue.
