Emmaus by Alessandro Baricco Page B

of sowing, and we live trusting in the cyclical nature of everything, summed up by the round of the seasons. From the plow we have learned the ultimatemeaning of violence, and from the farmer the trick of patience. Blindly, we believe in the equation between hard work and harvest. It’s a sort of symbolic vocabulary—given to us in a mysterious way.
    So I thought of starting again, because we know no other instinct, faced with the storms of fate—the stubborn, foolish steps of the farmer.
    I had to start to work the land again somewhere, and in the end I decided for the larvae, at the hospital. It was the last solid thing I remembered—the four of us with the larvae. The going into and going out of that hospital. I hadn’t been for a long time. You can be sure that there you will find everything the way it was before, it doesn’t matter what happened to you while you were absent. Maybe the faces and bodies are different—but the suffering and the oblivion are the same. The sisters don’t ask questions, and they always welcome you as a gift. They pass by, busy, and at the same time a refrain sounds that is dear to us—Praise be to Jesus Christ, may he always be praised.
    At first it all seemed difficult to me—the actions, the words. They told me about those who had gone, I shook hands with the new. The work was the same, the bags of urine. One of the old men saw me, and at one point he remembered me and started bawling at me in a loud voice, wanting to know where the hell we had gone, I and the others. You stopped coming here, he said, when I went over to him. He protested.
    I dragged a chair over to the bed and sat down. The food is disgusting, he said, summing up. He asked if I had broughtsomething. Every so often we offered them something to eat—the first grapes, some chocolate. Even cigarettes, but those the Saint brought, we didn’t dare. The sisters knew.
    I told him that I didn’t have anything for him. Things have been complicated lately, I said, in explanation. They’ve gone a bit wrong.
    He looked at me in wonder. Long ago, these men stopped thinking that things can go wrong for others, too.
    What the hell do you mean? he said.
    Nothing.
    Ah, I see.
    He had been a gas station attendant when he was young and everything was going well for him. He had also been the president of a soccer team in his neighborhood, for a certain period. He remembered a three-to-two comeback victory, and a cup won on a penalty shoot-out.
    He asked me where the kid with the red hair had gone. He made me laugh, he said.
    He was talking about Bobby.
    He hasn’t been here? I asked.
    That kid? And who’s ever seen him again? He was the only one who made me laugh.
    In fact Bobby knows how to handle them. He teases them the whole time—it’s something that puts them in a good mood. For disconnecting the catheter, he’s a disaster, but no one seems to mind much. If one of them pees blood, they like it that a boy stares at their prick, admiring, and says Christ, you wanna trade?
    He didn’t even say goodbye, the old man said, he went away and damned if anyone saw him again around here. Where did you hide him? He was cross about this business of Bobby.
    He can’t come, I said.
    Oh no?
    No. He’s got problems.
    He looked at me as if it were my fault. Like?
    I was sitting there, on that metal chair, leaning toward him, elbows placed on my knees. He’s on drugs, I said.
    What the hell are you saying?
    Drugs. You know what that is?
    Of course I know.
    Bobby’s on drugs, that’s why he doesn’t come anymore.
    If I had told him that he should get up immediately and leave, taking all his stuff, including the bag of pee, he would have made the same face.
    What the hell are you saying? he repeated.
    The truth, I said. He can’t come because at this moment he’s somewhere or other dissolving a brown powder in a spoon warmed by the flame of a