As he drives home, he thinks of her words "death trap of the poor." He thinks of the city that has never changed over time, "where nothing had happened for four centuries except a slow aging among withered laurels and putrefying swamps." In the winter, sudden rains would flood the sewers into the streets. In summers, an invisible dust blew over the city. The winds would take the roofs off houses and carry children through the air. The poor mulattos would abandon their hovels and take over the beaches of the colonial district. A few years ago, old mulattos could still be seen with the slave brand on their chests. On the weekend, they danced, drank, and made love. During the week, they brought their stores to the city and infused it with new life.

The city had seen the independence from Spain then the abolition of slavery. Now it exists in honorable decadence. "The great old families sank into their ruined palaces in silence." The mansions were overgrown with weeds. Everything is quiet there in the afternoons except the sound of piano lessons played after siesta. "Women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection" and even in the morning at mass, they cover their faces. They have slow and difficult love affairs.

When he was young and living in Paris, he had idealized his colonial city. Now he knows it was all an illusion of memory. In the eighteenth century, the city had been a commercial center of the Caribbean because it was the largest African slave market in the Americas. It was the permanent residence of the Viceroys of the New Kingdom of Granada. Several times a year fleets of their ships carried the treasures of the world to Spain. In 1708, one ship, the San Jose, was sunk by an English squadron at the entrance of the port. Two centuries later, it still hasnÂ’t been salvaged. Historians evoke the image of the ship as an image of "the city drowned in memories."

The library has a "meticulous solemnity" to it. It is Dr. UrbinoÂ’s sanctuary. He has lined the walls and even the windows with shelves of three thousand books, all bound in the same calfskin with his initials in gold on the spines. The library is always quiet. Both Dr. Urbino and his wife were raised on the idea that one should open doors to cool the house. However they kept the doors closed, convinced by the Roman strategy against heat. The house is closed in the daytime and opened at night. Theirs is the coolest house in the neighborhood. It is also the best- protected house in the neighborhood against the winds from the north. Everyone thinks that a marriage rooted in such foundations must be happy.

Dr. Urbino is not happy when he returns home in the morning after his two visits which threatened to change his life just when his life seemed complete. He wants to take a short nap until itÂ’s time to go to his studentÂ’s luncheon, but the parrot had flown to the highest branches of the mango tree when they tried to clip its wings. "He was a deplumed, maniacal parrot" whom Dr. Urbino taught every day. He therefore gets privileges that others are denied.

The parrot has lived in the house for more than twenty years. Every afternoon after his nap, Dr. Urbino gives him lessons in French, the Latin accompaniment to the Mass, and some of the gospel of St. Matthew. He had tried to teach him mathematics without success. Dr. Urbino had brought back a phonograph from his last trip to Europe along with five popular records and some by classical composers. Every day for months, he played the songs of Yvette Guilbert and Aristide Bruant until the parrot could sing them. The parrot ends each song with the laughter of the servant women who always laugh when they hear him singing French. The news of the birdÂ’s accomplishments had spread so that often, English visitors will stop by to hear him. One day the president of the Republic, Don Marco Fidel Suarez, came by to hear him. He sat for hours waiting, but the bird wouldnÂ’t speak the whole time.

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