They decided to bathe me. And I resisted. For thirty years, I have walked through the streets of my town carrying my backpack full of odds and ends, sleeping in the best corner the night clears for me, my body smeared with oil—but never bothering anyone.
Since I lost my family, I chose to live on the streets and work at Robín’s workshop. Sometimes Robín would give me old screws and worn-out pliers, and little by little I stored them in an explorer’s backpack that someone once gave me. I discovered that walking with a backpack full of things lightens the burdens of the heart and fills the empty spaces left behind when there are no people to fill them.
For many years I have filled my backpack with trinkets and helped Robín fix engines at the shop. I like everything that has to do with oil: watching car spark plugs explode, taking engines apart, greasing them. And that grease on my skin feels like company.
That’s why I don’t bathe. That’s why I don’t have a house. That’s why I wander slowly through the streets of my town, my explorer’s backpack full of small treasures, talking to myself.
They tell me I’m not in my right mind. And what is reason? Is reason perhaps unreason? Is feeling embraced by dirty oil for thirty years unreasonable? Is liking to collect abandoned objects, place them in my explorer’s backpack, carry them, and talk to them unreasonable? I don’t think so. And above all, none of that is a reason to want to bathe me.
So I hide. I hide in the streets of my town, fleeing from any fire truck; if I so much as see a hose, I run. I try to sleep in places far from any hydrant, and I hug my explorer’s backpack. They want to take that away from me too, because they say it’s full of trash.
I hide. If I see the fire truck on one corner, I move to the other. Some people help cover for me, but the town has grown small. I have nowhere left to disappear. And then Wednesday came. When the clock struck ten, I stepped out of my hiding place. That night I slept in an abandoned house near the central square.
When I came out, he was waiting for me: I saw the firefighter in his red uniform and black cap. He looked at me, smiling, and turned the valve.
—Time for your bath, Jean Claude!
