Encore: When Two Open Marriages Collide
The following day he would give up his room in the hotel and move back into his own place on the edge of the jungle. He began to live almost as a hermit.
It was as though his existence in the country was too much for him. It was no hardship for him to move back to his own room, but he missed the city.
He had become a hermit, a person who lived out of his house and did not go out.
One time he went to the city and sat on a bench in the park. He saw a girl on the bench and said to himself, “I’ll buy a ticket just to get her picture.”
In the city, he used to see pretty girls every day, even in the evenings.
He used to go to the park to sit on the bench and watch the girls go by. One time, an old man who passed by began to shout at him, “What’s the matter with you? You’re just like that other guy.”
“Who the hell is that?” he asked.
“He’s some kind of foreigner.” The old man pulled him away from the bench and called him an “infidel” [infidel].
One day he was sitting in his room. He had a little glass full of liquor and he began to drink.
He had not felt like drinking for a long time, but now suddenly he felt like drinking. He became very thirsty for the first time in his life.
He emptied the glass of liquor and continued to drink. He felt as if he would burst the glass.
As he drank, he felt a sense of pain in his stomach and his heart began to pound. He closed his eyes for a minute and he saw a black bird sitting on a branch of a tree and he cried out in anguish.
“Oh, mother, why did you abandon me? Why did you leave me?” He called out to the black bird.
In the next moment, the black bird opened its wings and flew away with a long, beautiful scream.
For several days he felt as if his heart had exploded and a black bird was screaming inside of him
