Marquuez compresses the "love story" of Dr. Urbino's marriage into a dense domestic package, that some includes the world outside, the animals, the town, the politics, rather like Dickens does in Little Dorrit, where the sumptuous feast laid out on the boat has food from every corner of the earth imprisoned on the field of the white table cloth. Dr Urbino is fading in a sea of old age just as the celebration they attend is swamped by late rain and wind.
Then there is the chaos caused by the escaped parrot, where instead of the rains the high pressure hose of the fireman have ruins paintings and rugs. Decay and death are in the air, Dr Urbino, despite his appreciation of fine music, after all, must indulge his habits first, the little death of his siesta must happen before he attends the funeral, and his urine, already mentioned because of its lack of flow (in contrast to the surging floods around him) , smells of asparagus, a faintly disquieting and unpleasant image of an old man in his dotage. The text flows on, round its intricate descriptions, and carries me along, just enough to keep me reading, my attention is snagged by the overwhelming otherness of this luxury amid the hot sewage of a flooded town.
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