On TV, followed by the firefighter who, after working all night on the front line, smiles from tiredness, that tiredness like jet lagA farmer comes out. And the farmer cries, cries like a child, and dries his red eyes and begs for forgiveness, because it's clear he's a man who never cries. But today, yes, today he cries, and the presenter, from the studios, so far away, is moved too. She imagines the days before the catastrophe. Going to breakfast with a fork (she makes a face, this face half-reddened by the sun, half-reddened by blood), plowing or harvesting, talking and joking, holding children by the hand and petting animals with all the truth possible.
"We understand you've lost your crops and that now you'll be entitled to insurance..." the presenter babbles, all the pain pressing down on his shoulder and sinking it into the mud. "I'm not crying for the crops," the man says. And he begs for forgiveness again. With his tongue, he unintentionally licks the salt oozing down his cheek. "I'm crying for the landscape."
How can he explain that a lettuce, a field of wheat, will be paid for, yes, but they will never be able to pay for the century-old olive tree, the recovered vine, 60 years old, twisted and surviving? How can he explain that the almond tree his grandfather planted can never be paid for with money? He can't explain that if the house, from 1800, collapses, there will never be any new houses. That the trees will grow again, yes, you know, and the grass. But the faith it takes to replant a vine is as great as a fire. He doesn't have it, he doesn't want it. He wants what was there, and that's why he cries, because it's not fair that those trees and those vines that were supposed to outlive them should die today.
