The Parrots Read Online Free Page B

measuring cup into the top of the bag and immediately extracting it again, as if the bag could bite. Suddenly The Master had an idea. Instead of heading for the exit, he turned on his heels. The secretary watched him anxiously, unsure whether or not to intervene. Without knocking, he walked back into the consulting room. The Urologist, who was on the phone, instinctively looked up and covered the receiver with one hand.
    “Excuse me for a moment… What is it?”
    “Could you give me the scan?”
    “What’s the matter, missing your prostate?”
     
    There was a fearful thud, and glass showered the room like dew. The Beginner felt tiny fragments of glass frost his bare legs, and a weak current of air filled the room, made the curtains billow and lifted the corners of the tablecloth. Glass everywhere, on the carpet, on the cupboards, in the kitchen sink.
    “Darling, where are you?”
    The crash had woken The Girlfriend.
    “Here.”
    He gently moved the curtain, then drew it right back.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened?”
    He walked barefoot, a fragment of glass lodged in his right foot. He brought the foot up to the height of his left knee, twisting the sole inwards, and extracted the splinter. A small amount of blood came out. He didn’t feel any pain, although he probably would later. But first of all, before anything else, there was that dark patch in the middle of the terrace. Whatever it was.
    He advanced towards the dark—or rather, black—patch—or rather, mass—in a corner—or rather, in the middle—of the terrace, two metres—or rather, one metre from him, and two from what remained of the pane of glass.
    “What was it?”
    “…”
    A huge black bird lay lifeless on the terrace, its half-open beak looking like a congealed streak of lava, its eyes a cobalt blue, its stiff legs pointing skywards, its wings outspread as if crucified.
    “That’s disgusting… What is it?”
    Standing in the doorway, her breasts pushing against her nightdress, The Girlfriend looked on in horror as The Beginner walked towards the bird. He was silent for a while.
    “A parrot.”
     
    The police helicopter flew over the ring road around Rome, bestowing its blessing from the sky on a sesquipedalian traffic jam between the Cassia Bis and Flaminia exits. From above, the tailback looked like a steel lizard sleeping in the sun. Among the vehicles caught in the bottleneck, there were two which deserve closer attention.
    Neither of the two drivers was in a position to know the reason for the tailback. It was in fact due to a rather delicate operation: the removal by the fire brigade of a nest of white storks (
Ciconia
ciconia
) from a speed camera. The presence of the winged couple had interfered with the sophisticated equipment, which explained why it had recently been malfunctioning, resulting in a large number of fines and an equally large number of appeals.
    Now although the drivers of the two cars worthy of closer attention were as unaware of each other as they were of the storks, there was a relationship between them, one that was both coincidental and elective. Not so much because the two of them were listening to the same song on the same radio station, which can happen, but because they were two of the three finalists for the same Prize.
    The Writer looked at the woman on the seat beside him. The woman was silent. The Writer raised the volume of the radio:
    …y me pintaba las manos y la cara de azul…
    …pienso che un sueño parecido no volverá mas…
    The Beginner lowered the volume of the radio and looked at the cardboard box on the seat beside him. In the mysterious darkness of the box, something was about to happen.
    All this was going in inside these two cars caught up in the traffic jam. The Writer was on his way somewhere, The Beginner was coming back from somewhere. But where?
    “To the sea?”
    “To the lake.”
    He had never liked lakes. They had always made him feel really sad, like