ENTRY 12- THE MAN UNDER THE TREE

Language 4 Entry Nª-12

THE MAN UNDER THE TREE

He is part of the park. He is always camping under the same tree. He is part of the environment with his many plastic bags full of… I don’t know what he carries in those dirty bags, five, may be six. Perhaps the bags are full of old clothes, and elements to cook. A few plastic bottles full of water to drink or cook.
He is anonymous and he is part of the landscape. He is rather stout, not very short, he has clear skin and baldness has bean to appear in his forehead. His hair is turning grey. Perhaps he is in his early fifties.
Whenever I see him he is busy making fire. He puts a kettle on it. Sometimes I see him when he is having breakfast, sometimes when he is cooking. One day I was surprised when I saw him shaving himself with a round yellow mirror on one hand and a yellow disposable razor on the other.
He looks clean and he walks with his hands in his jacket pockets, under the tree. It is his tree, his roof, his home. Whenever he wants he transforms the shadow of the immense tree in a bedroom, and he piles all his plastic bags to make a mattress and he has a snap. I saw him once or twice especially in summer, having a snap, with his hands under his neck, sometimes with a cap on his face, and careless of what the people passing by could think.
Sometimes he is engaged in a conversation with himself. He is never doing nothing. I think he talks to the tree, it is his trustful friend, his home, his family, the one who understands him and the one who will not betray or deny some kind of comfort for his pains.
I don’t know where hegoes when it rains or when it is very cold. One day I was travelling by bus from the Central Bus Station and I looked at the park through the bus window and it looked particularly beautiful that friday morning. The picture was like a postcard from England for all the farthest trees were covered with a greyish foggy veil that could reach the clouds, the sky. The nearest trees were all crowned with a dark smog of microscopic drops of water that never fell to the grass. The morning was cold and I imagined that he would not be there because of the cold weather, but he was there, as always, under the tree, trying to make some fire with wet logs and leaves, trying to prepare a late breakfast, without caring about others who look at him as an outcast, some people look at him indifferent. He seems to be living on an island, he made me remember of the island of Lord of the Flies, when the children try to make some fire after the storm with wet logs.
I don’t know whether he takes into account what date is it today, he doesn’t look as stressed people look like when living in a hurry, and trying to get money to pay the electricity or phone bills.
When I don’ t see him, I miss him, and I look for this man without a name under the trees along the avenue. I got accustomed to see the strange little figure of that man without a family, without nothing, except himself. Perhaps he is so unlucky that he has lost a part of himself, his dignity of a past prosperous life broken by a bad investment, a rupture with his family, may be the Bank has taken all his possessions and the turned a vagabound. I think he has also lost part of his mind. It seems that the few meters around the tree is the area of his island with only one tree. He has began to talk to himself like Robinson Crusoe so as he could not lose the ability to talk.
At the beginning when I first took notice of him, I felt sorry because I imagined a terrible, unlucky past that almost made him get mad. I felt that he hated humanity for his misfortune. As time passed, I discovered by looking him through the bus window, some attitudes about him that made change my mind. I think he’s there not to make us feel compassion, but he is there because he is happy, or happier than with his pas life. He feels free as the birds, which live in the park, sharing the trees, the benches, the fountain, the shadows, the rain and the cold. He is free as the geese which swim in the artificial lake, free as the falling tree leaves which can go wherever the autumn wind blows.
P.S. it was almost midday when I was coming from the city and I saw him in interaction with other people. A group of students were laughing at his bags, he immediately went there and told them something I couldn’t hear. He felt offended and he rescued his bags.
I got interested on him because I know there is a sad story in his life, I will try to ask someone from the surroundings during the winter holidays, about his life. I don’t think I could speak to him and ask :”why do you live in that way? What happened in your past that made you end like this? Or is it that you escaped from a mental hospital and nobody cares?” I ‘m afraid he could be rude to me.