(There’s very little that Soon knows about Old Man’s life. So far: that he was beaten at school as a child, that he spent time in a hospital, that he lives alone on the eighth floor, that he’s worn the same coat for twenty years, that he doesn’t pay taxes because he doesn’t work, that he’s afraid—though less and less!—of being annoying, that he prefers pencils to pens, that he listens to call-in confessions at night on the radio. Things like that, incidental tidbits that he tells her unexpectedly and out of order. When he talks about subjects he knows about he’s didactic, organized, and repetitive, but when he talks about his own life—or mentions it, as if in passing—he does it in a quiet voice, with sentences that trail off and things left unspoken, as if there were no need to explain further.)

By now she is a semi-expert on birds. What at first had seemed useless and boring—learn their scientific names! recognize their songs!—has now become entertaining, even a mark of distinction and superiority: she is convinced that no one—no one!—her age knows as much in this field as her. What if someday she became an ornithologist? What if she traveled to the jungle to study tropical birds, and on one of her expeditions she discovered a new species, an extraordinarily beautiful one that no human being had ever seen before? Only Old Man can listen to her delusions of grandeur without laughing. Quite the opposite: he listens with passion and pride. He’s getting on in years, but if he could, he would go to the jungle with her! They would make a great team!

He gives her a poster of songbirds: goldfinch, linnet, greenfinch, serin … Soon now recognizes them easily, knows what they look like and how they behave. I’ll hang it up in my room, she tells him, and she’s grateful but doesn’t kiss his cheek, because she feels there is something inappropriate about it: not just the kiss, but the very act of the gift, even in hanging his gift in her room—in bringing Old Man, that way, into her room. Her father, seeing her so enthusiastic about her new obsession, has started calling her featherbrain, though in an affectionate way. He also teases her by saying her new hobby is for the birds, but she doesn’t care, it’s not like that’s a bad thing. But Old Man doesn’t like those expressions at all. There’s something slippery and malicious in those sayings and refrains: figures of speech confuse him, he never catches on! For a long time people tortured him with those kinds of maxims: the early bird catches the worm or kill two birds with one stone, what a pain! (Soon understands what he means. She feels the same way when people call her marshmallow, though she will never admit it.)

They almost miss each other. When Old Man arrives, the maintenance workers are cutting the grass and trimming the shrubs with a great racket: very large tools for such a small thing, Old Man says later, when he comes back and finds her sitting in the usual spot. They’ve just left, right?, he asks, and she nods, patting the newly cut grass, see this?, she says, and also those—pointing to the hedges—before, the branches stuck out every which way, and now they’re perfect, too neat, all nice and square, she says with a grimace of distaste; it’s so clean it even smells different. Old Man sniffs. I think they fumigated, he says, and then he asks what she did while the maintenance workers worked, where she went to wait them out. She sighs and tells the truth: first she prowled around the pond, looking at the fish, but then she decided to leave the park, and she crossed the avenue to the outpatient clinic, and that’s where she waited, sitting and killing time. Not inside the clinic—where she might attract attention waiting alone—but outside, on one of the benches under a portico with a ramp for mothers with baby carriages and patients in wheelchairs.