Emmaus by Alessandro Baricco

Author:Alessandro Baricco
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938073304
Publisher: McSweeney's

But since they had had that fight, they went together to the mountains, Bobby and the Saint. That’s what we do. When something breaks between us, we seek exertion and solitude. That is the spiritual luxury we live in—to save ourselves we choose what in a normal life would be punishment and penalty.

We prefer to seek this exertion and solitude in nature. We favor the mountains, for obvious reasons. There the link between effort and ascent is literal, and the straining of every form toward the height obsessive. As we walk amid the peaks, the silence becomes religious, and the surrounding purity is a promise kept—water, air, earth cleared of insects. Ultimately, if you believe in God, the mountains remain the easiest place to do so. The cold compels us to hide our bodies and fatigue disfigures them: thus our daily effort to censure the body is exalted, and after hours of walking we are reduced to steps and thoughts—the bare minimum needed, they taught us, to be ourselves.

They went to the mountains and didn’t want anyone to go with them. A pup tent, a few supplies, not even a book or music. To do without is a thing that helps—there’s nothing like poverty to bring you close to the truth. They left because they intended to untangle a knot between them. Two days and they would be back.

I knew where they planned to go. There was an exasperatingly long, stony ascent before the approach to the real summit. Walking on stony ground is a penance—I saw the Saint’s hand in it; it was his kind of thing. He wanted a penance. But also the light, probably—the light on stony ground is the true light of the earth. And he also wanted the strange sensation that we know up there, as of some soft thing that’s left, unmoving, saved from a spell, the last thing, floating.

With some envy, I watched them leave. We know enough to observe the nuances. Bobby had a strange way of performing the small acts of departure—he always showed up with the wrong shoes, like one who doesn’t entirely want to go. I asked if he was sure he wanted to go and he shrugged his shoulders. It didn’t seem to matter much to him.

The first night they camped on the edge of the stony ground. They put up the tent when it was dark, and the Saint’s backpack, lying on a rock, rolled off. It was slightly open, and the few things for the journey slipped out. But, in the light of the gas lantern, there was also a metallic gleam that Bobby didn’t immediately recognize. The Saint went to put the things back in the pack, then returned to the tent.

What are you doing with a gun, Bobby asked, but smiling.

Nothing, said the Saint.

It was partly that, but probably even more the words during the night. In the morning they started to climb among the rocks, without speaking, two strangers. The Saint has an implacable way of walking, climbing steadily, silently.

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