She is so caught off guard the first time that she jumps at the sight of him. The girl is sitting with her back against a tree, reading a magazine, when she hears the approaching steps, the crunch of the dry leaves as they break, and then he''s standing right in front of her. He''s a little taken aback perhaps, but not shocked to find her there, hidden behind the hedge. The old man apologizes--I didn''t mean to scare you! he says--and asks her what she''s reading. Between one thing and the other--between the apology and the question-- the girl has time to react. This, she replies, showing him the magazine, a woman''s magazine. Maybe, she thinks, when he sees the magazine-- obviously not for little girls--he''ll think she''s older than she is and she''ll avoid the dreaded question--what are you doing here at this time of day?--but the old man merely smiles and peers tentatively at the magazine. At first it seems he''s going to take it--his fingers hesitate, reach for it--but the gesture wilts and the hand falls, as if dead, to his side.
The old man looks at the girl, then back at the magazine, the girl, the tree, the little hideout protected by the hedges, and finally speaks, saying: what''s in the magazine? What''s it about? The girl angles away from the tree trunk, leaning over her crossed, bare legs. Her skin is marked from the dry grass, little red spots from hours of sitting on the ground. Girl stuff, she says. Stuff about music and video games, and movies and clothes, music gossip. Gossip about singers and actors, I mean, their lives and stuff like that. I don''t really know anything about that, he says, but no reproach or scorn creeps into his tone. I read magazines, too, he says. But mine are about birds! Birds? the girl murmurs, taken aback, wondering if maybe, when he says birds, the old man is referring to something else, that it''s actually an innuendo.
The thought makes her more suspicious, she even entertains the thought of running away, but the old man is speaking again and his words sound sincere, guileless. Not just about birds, he explains, they''re really about animals in general; magazines specifically about birds aren''t that easy to find, and plus, they are expensive! He used to subscribe to one that doesn''t exist anymore, it was delivered to his house every week, and that was where he learned everything he knows about birds, which is a lot! The old man talks like a kid--as self-absorbed and excited as a child--and the girl looks at him curiously. In the mornings, in that park--he continues--you can easily see a hoopoe and also, more and more often, a ring-necked parakeet or even a Eurasian collared dove, hasn''t she noticed? The girl shakes her head. She doesn''t even know what a normal dove looks like, she thinks, so how could she tell the difference between that and a Eurasian one? She also thinks: what a strange man. She cocks her head without raising it entirely, because he''s still standing and she''s sitting. She looks him up and down, taking in his elegant laced shoes, his light dress pants and matching jacket--which holds its shape in spite of the heat--the sporty little backpack that hangs from one shoulder, so at odds with the rest of his attire. She observes his chubby, freckled hands, his small, blond head, his little wire-rimmed glasses and mustache, his hair standing crazily on end. She finds him amusing, but not enough to let her guard down.
The old man keeps talking. There are exotic species that were never seen here before, he explains, species that adapted to their new environment and became a danger for the endemic ones--he gets stuck on the word endemic and has to repeat it three times before he pronounces it correctly. But that doesn''t bother him, he continues, he likes all the species, the ones from here and the ones from elsewhere, he doesn''t care where they come from, they are all truly extraordinary! He is thoughtful for a few seconds, and that''s when his expression changes. His eyes grow round and large--as if he were having a realization--his jaw trembles slightly. I''m being annoying, he says, and apologizes for the second time. No, no, says the girl out of politeness, but he insists, distressed: he always talks too much, and if no one stops him he goes on and on. Someone has to tell him, he adds disconsolately, he just doesn''t realize on his own! He looks to either side, bows his head abruptly and says goodbye to the girl, who doesn''t know what to say or do. When she sees him turn and bumble back through the hedge, she''s relieved to be alone again.
Though the man didn''t seem to be a problem, she thinks. He was nothing at all like the men she''s met on other occasions, the dangerous ones. The old man appears again at more or less the same time the next day. The girl no longer finds him amusing; it occurs to her that he could be spying on her. Nevertheless, the man''s attitude is as shy and respectful as the day before. He has on the same clothes and the same expression of meek astonishment. This time, he asks if he can sit down for a while. He sits as far away from her as the hideout''s size will allow: there can''t be more than six feet between the row of hedges and the tree.
Legs crossed, hands on his knees, he smiles at her and takes a deep breath. You''re not reading today? he asks, but he asks a way he could have asked anything, thinks the girl, any a question to break the silence. She opens her backpack and takes out a book, one she had to buy for school, and she hands it to the old man, who reaches across to take it. Do you like it? he asks, flipping through the pages. Yeah. Depends. I get distracted. He smiles again.
You get really bored, is that it? No, she says. And then she adds: just normal, I get bored the normal amount. He''s never liked reading. Only his magazines about birds, he says, or about nature in general. But he gets lost with novels. Whenever he starts to read one, his head goes somewhere else, not because he gets distracted, quite the opposite--he gets too deep into the story! He gets caught up in the protagonist, or any other character, and he imagines that they''re him, or he''s them. He can''t help but change the story, imagine what he would do in their place, choosing one path or another for himself. Sometimes, he enters into several characters at once, and then it''s all a big mess.
He is capable of reading whole pages without understanding a thing, while his thoughts wander freely. Doesn''t that happen to her? The girl shrugs her shoulders. She doesn''t like to read either, she admits. Then why do you have a book in your backpack? A blackbird slips through the bushes, sees them, and flaps away as fast as it can, making a racket. The bird distracts the old man and gives the girl time to think of a valid reply to such a silly question. Why does she have a book in her backpack? She''s not going to mention school. If she does, he''ll ask what grade she''s in and he''ll draw his conclusions from there. She can say it''s her brother''s book.
A book she borrowed from her brother''s room--it sounds plausible, since her brother has tons of books, and now that he''s gone she can borrow as many as she wants. She''s about to say just that, that the book belongs to her brother, when the man stands up, brushing blades of grass from his pants and stretching his limbs as if his whole body hurt. Uf, he complains, his body isn''t meant for sitting cross-legged on the ground anymore! The girl wonders just how old this old man is. This old man who, incomprehensibly, still has not asked her age. She''s thought about changing hideouts, but she won''t find another as good as this. Though the tree trunk is hard and rough, it has a fairly smooth depression where she can lean comfortably. The branches are covered with small, soft leaves of a silky green that extend to the sides and form a kind of shelter, dappled with light and shade. The girl just has to cross through where the hedges grow less thick, just enough to let her pass.
Once inside, between the hedge and tree, all she has to do is sit down and no one can see her, not even someone who passes very closeby--as long as they don''t peer over. She can pee right there if she ever needs to, off on one side, because it''s nearly certain no one will see her. And besides, the park is almost empty at that time of day. She arrives around eight-thirty, walking quickly with her head down, trying to move with confidence--the confidence she''s seen in older girls, in teenagers--backpack on her back, dragging her feet, headphones on. No one ever walks by her, and only occasionally does she glimpse the park and garden workers from a distance, uniformed and busy. At eleven she eats her snack, at one she gets a little lethargic--she doesn''t plan it that way: it''s just that the noontime heat puts her to sleep--and at two she''s ready to get up again and head back home. She walks past the kids coming out of the nearest school--held by the hand by parents or grandparents--but no one notices her: she''s a big girl next to those children, an older kid who no longer needs anyone to pick her up. It''s possible there are other hideouts in the park, there are rows and rows of shrubs and surely hey must hide some, but she hasn''t been able to find them, nor is it a good idea to prowl around, looking suspicious.
During the first days, in another park that was larger but more heavily populated, two different men had approached her and asked a bunch of questions. One of them had even grabbed her arm and tried to convince her to take a walk with him. There''d also been an elderly woman who wanted to know why she was there, whether she wasn''t expected somewhere else, and whether her parents knew about her little excursion--excursion, here, struck her as an exaggerated and malicious term. The girl decided to look for another park, quieter and furth.