from the Book of Minutes
It could just be this. It could be God goes around pouring salt into human
beings, trying to determine their saturation point, the line above which they
can no longer tolerate any more pain and they precipitate to the bottom of the
container, suddenly heavy as a sandbag. It could be it happened just like this,
throughout human history: a miscalculation of salt and sand.
Translated from the Catalan by Sharon Dolin.