The parrots were scratching the feathers of each other’s necks and heads, as an invitation to love. Only the younger ones seemed aggressive, their eyes bloodshot, their wings spread like shields, their claws imperious, their cries belligerent, their beaks sharp, ready for a frantic battle, chasing, pursuing one another, stabbing—no doubt hoping to achieve the same pleasurable result.
Because of this springtime of the instincts, there was great confusion in the trees. While Senegalese youyous, cockatiels, African grays, poicephali, budgerigars, and red-rumped parrots spun around the foliage, couples of lovebirds took refuge in the branches, almost motionless so as not to attract attention. A blue-fronted Amazon parrot was building her nest, grumbling at anyone who came close. Some old macaws who, just like balding men, were losing feathers as they aged, and who flew sparingly, creaked whenever a fight between adolescents or the pursuit of a female infringed on their territory. Last but not least, a dignified sulphur-crested cockatoo with a cream-colored coat sat on his thick branch, shrugging at all this excitement, as if none of it concerned him.
It had been fifty years since the Brazilian consul had opened his cages prior to leaving the country, but the birds were still here. If any adventurer among them ever risked a visit to a garden a few streets away, he soon returned to Place d’Arezzo and these fellow creatures he couldn’t stand but couldn’t do without. How many generations had already succeeded one another in this teeming congregation? No observer had taken the trouble to study it because, at first, all the residents had expected these exotic birds, who were used to captivity, to die out. A few decades later, the fauna still flourished in this jungle. Perhaps some of them had been there from the start, since apparently they can live up to the age of eighty or a hundred.
The vitality of the parrots on Place d’Arezzo both fascinated and inconvenienced the local residents. Even though inner and outer factors—their constant fighting, the hostile environment—conspired to wipe them out, they lived on, chatty, disorganized, and noisy.
What language did they speak, anyway? Their ancestors might have used Portuguese or French, but what was left of that half a century later? What words distorted their shrill cries? Were they saying something? Did it still have a meaning? Or were their desires and urges, their violent energy, just an end in themselves?