Opening
After the inspector leaves, Marcos Tejo crosses a line he can’t uncross with Jasmine, choosing tenderness in a world that denies it. Days later, his father dies, and Marcos’s grief explodes—first in rage, then in a private farewell that rejects his society’s hollow rituals and affirms his own, fragile humanity.
What Happens
Chapter 31
Back in his room, Marcos unties Jasmine and pulls her into a tight, protective hug, his hand resting on her belly. The gesture feels both guardianship and love, dissolving the boundary between owner and companion.
Marcos breaks down in tears, wrung out by fear of exposure and the pressure of his secret. Jasmine studies him and raises her hand to his cheek—“almost like a caress.” In that small movement, she offers comfort of her own, mirroring his tenderness and confirming the human connection he increasingly dares to see.
Chapter 32
Marcos takes the day off and leads Jasmine to the tree that shades the graves of his dogs. He brings an old radio and lets wordless jazz—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk—flood the quiet, a soundscape untouched by euphemism.
He stands, helps Jasmine to her feet, and they sway together. Hesitation gives way to trust; she smiles. He kisses her forehead where the brand scars her skin. He refuses its meaning as property, reclaiming it as part of the woman in his arms. He senses his dogs with them—pure affection bridging past and present, grief and forbidden love.
Chapter 33
Nélida from the nursing home calls with measured concern—his father is “a tad out of sorts.” Marcos hears what the phrase avoids: his father is dead. Panic hardens inside him as “a stone in his chest.”
On the way, he stops at the abandoned zoo and climbs the entry arch, kicking the sign until it crashes down. Naming falls away with it. At the home, Nélida confirms the death; Marcos looks at the body as if it belongs to a stranger, relieved his father is free of this world but unable to weep—until a hummingbird flickers at the window. He imagines it as his father’s spirit, and the image pierces his numbness at last.
Chapter 34
The paperwork begins. Marcos snaps at Nélida when she explains his sister has already agreed to cremation and wants a “farewell service.” He tells her to “let her take care of something for once,” contempt boiling over at a sister absent for years now choreographing public grief.
When Nélida mentions that hearses aren’t used anymore, to keep scavengers away, the fact slices into Marcos’s old wound—his son’s death. She apologizes; the damage is done. The entire conversation exposes the emptiness of ritual in a society that eats its own.
Chapter 35
Marcos drives with the urn buckled into the passenger seat, ignoring his sister’s calls. He returns to the nameless zoo and climbs to the aviary. On the hanging bridge, he lies back and remembers his father teaching him birds, reframing Icarus not as a failure but as someone who truly flew.
He whistles “Summertime,” recalling his parents dancing, radiant with simple love. He says goodbye and scatters the ashes from the bridge. Then, in the playground, he refills the urn with sand and trash, stubs out his cigarette in the grit, seals it, and decides this is what he’ll hand over for the performance his sister demands—his private truth preserved, the spectacle defied.
Character Development
Marcos’s armor finally cracks. Love and rage flood in, and he begins to act from conviction rather than survival, repudiating both his society’s violence and its rituals.
- Marcos
- Opens himself to intimacy with Jasmine; kisses her brand and redefines it.
- Channels grief into action: demolishes the zoo sign, chooses a private farewell.
- Confronts the past (his father, his son) and rejects performative mourning.
- Jasmine
- Expresses independent tenderness by touching Marcos’s face.
- Accepts and enjoys dancing, smiling openly—an emerging self beyond imposed silence.
- Becomes the mirror that reflects Marcos’s own humanity back to him.
Themes & Symbols
Grief forces sensation back into a desensitized body. In these chapters, Grief, Trauma, and Desensitization coalesce into Marcos’s “stone in his chest,” then shatter beneath the hum of a hummingbird’s wings. Bureaucracy tries to script loss into palatable procedure, but Marcos rejects it, insisting that mourning must be lived, not performed.
Marcos’s tenderness with Jasmine subverts Dehumanization and Objectification: he doesn’t just pity her—he honors her. The forehead kiss on the brand reclaims a mark of ownership as part of a person. The abandoned zoo becomes a mutable symbol: destruction of its sign wipes out labels, while the aviary turns into a sanctum, a reclaimed site of flight and memory. The hummingbird embodies fragile grace slipping past numbness. The urn of sand condemns empty ritual, a blunt, private verdict on public hypocrisy. Beneath it all runs The Power of Language and Euphemism: “a tad out of sorts,” “farewell service”—phrases that hide reality until Marcos refuses to speak their script.
Key Quotes
“Almost like a caress.”
Jasmine’s touch is tentative but unmistakably tender. In a single gesture, she steps out of the role assigned to her and meets Marcos as a person, catalyzing his shift from secret caretaker to open lover.
“A tad out of sorts.”
Nélida’s euphemism is a verbal shield against death. The phrase epitomizes a culture that blunts reality with language, intensifying Marcos’s fury at how words are used to avoid truth.
“A stone in his chest.”
This image captures the bodily weight of unprocessed sorrow. It marks the border between numbness and feeling—the moment before the hummingbird dissolves his defenses.
“Let her take care of something for once.”
Marcos’s bitterness toward his sister detonates here. The line exposes years of neglect and frames his later act with the urn as both grief and indictment.
“Farewell service.”
The term reduces mourning to choreography. Marcos’s rejection of it—by substituting sand and trash—exposes ritual as performance when it no longer connects to love or memory.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
Chapters 31–35 form the emotional crest of the novel. Marcos doesn’t just feel; he chooses—intimacy with Jasmine, a truthful farewell to his father, and a refusal to let language, ritual, or branding dictate meaning. His small rebellions—dancing, kissing the brand, scattering the ashes, salting the urn with sand—reclaim sacredness from a world that has profaned it. This turn from passive complicity to active defiance sets the stakes for the ending and makes the coming choices both inevitable and devastating.