Rebirth: A Fable of Love, Forgiveness, and Following Your Heart by Kamal Ravikant

Author:Kamal Ravikant [Ravikant, Kamal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Visionary & Metaphysical, Fiction / Family Life
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2017-01-02T22:00:00+00:00

Day Twenty-five

León is quiet in the morning. The cafés and stores are shuttered and the traffic nonexistent. Kat is outside the gates of the cathedral, a hand cupped over her eyes, peering up at the stained glass window in the façade. Circular, shaped like the rays of a sun, it is the largest I have seen.

I drop my pack next to hers. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

She lowers her hand and smiles. “Oh, helloey. How have you been?”

“Okay,” I say. “I treated myself last night, slept in a pensión and took a bath.”

“So did I,” she says. “The refuge was rather boring, the nuns who run it take your passport, the real one, not your credencial, and they lock you in by eight. I tell you what, I’m a bit too old for all that.”

She shakes a cigarette loose from a pack, lights it, and offers me one, but I decline.

“Good boy,” she says. “A rather nasty habit, but as you can tell, I’m not exactly quitting.”

Pilgrims gather in the plaza, sit on the benches, take photos of the cathedral. One of them mentions that it has over a hundred stained glass windows.

“I say,” Kat puts a hand on my shoulder. “Is your neck a bit off?”

She squeezes gently, making me wince, and withdraws her hand.

“Yes.” She nods. “Yes, you must be uncomfortable.”

“The bath helped,” I say. “How can you tell?”

She looks at me with gentle green eyes. “It’s apparent to the experienced watcher.”

As we prepare to go, Nick crosses the plaza and waves for us to wait.

“Don’t bother,” he mutters as a greeting. “Bloody nuns made me go to mass.”

We leave the plaza and walk through León. Kat walks slowly, Nick is in no mood to talk, and he’s not exactly my favorite conversation partner anyway. We find an open café, sit inside at a table facing the street, and order toasted bread and café con leche.

The TV above the counter is on but there is no sound. Four men sit on barstools and watch the bullfight. Horns lowered, breathing heavy, the bull faces the matador while he sights with the sword and steps in close.

“Ugh,” Nick says as the TV replays the kill in slow motion. “Definitely not a country for vegetarians, is it?”

It’s difficult to watch but even more difficult not to watch. In the emergency department, new employees would always sneak a look in the trauma room where the bodies lay, waiting for the trip downstairs.

“Humans have a fascination with death,” a surgeon explained to me, “we can’t help it.” Then he paused. “Except when it strikes home.”

Kat and Nick lather their toast with butter while I eat it plain, dipping it occasionally into the thick, milky coffee. I pull an apple out of my pack, slice it, and spread it out on the plate.

“You Americans,” Nick says. “Always on a diet.”

“Just being healthy,” I say.

“Healthy?” he says. “I figured by now, after walking God knows how many hundreds of miles, I’d be tanned and fit. But what’ve I got? Blisters.

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