When the bird needs to shit, the old man doesn’t give him enough time to
finish and he pulls at the cage so the bird leaves a trail of little drops on
the wire. If the bird accidently pees in the room beyond his perch the old man
flies at him with a rolled up newspaper, his perch is rattled again. It`s been
on like this for years. Jalima, the
restaurant owner always says: “It`s awful but why does he open the cage”,
‘To show him what freedom looks like’ I said
‘But when all is said and done, no one really knows what freedom is.’
When I ran into them on the stairs, Srino was cursing his bird. He
called him “Bastard!” and “dirty swine!” and the bird was chattering with fear.
I said: “Good evening”, but the old man kept on shouting at his pet. I asked
him what the parrot had done but he didn’t reply. All he said was “Bastard” and
“dirty swine!” I could see he was bent over the cage, trying to untangle a pink
ribbon that become entwined with the wire bars, the same ribbon shot with grey
at the bird’s unexplained explosions. I spoke louder and asked him what he’d
done.
Without turning around, Srino
replied with a sort of repressed rage: “He`s always fucking there”. Then
he left, holding the cage up with the terrified bird inside, whimpering and
talking in a low voice, as maddened as his owner.
No comments:
Post a Comment