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ou didn’t know him? That’s too bad. Did you know
the Priest maybe? I don’t mean an actual priest. That
was just what we called him, the Priest. He even let
me call him that, though I was a lot younger than him. A
welder, he was. We worked on a building site together.
Because I was thinking that if we found some people we
knew in common, maybe we’d find ourselves too, the two
of us, at some time or other, some place or other. I
sometimes think of somebody I used to know, and he leads
me right away to some other person I knew, then that
person leads to someone else, and so on. And I’ll be honest,
there are times I find it hard to believe I used to know one
guy or another. But I must have, since they remember
meeting me someplace, at such-and-such a time. One guy,
it even turned out we’d played in the same band years ago,
him on the trombone, me on the sax. Though he’s dead
now. But people we know can lead us all kinds of ways,
even to places we’d never want to go.
One guy abroad told me about these two brothers he used
to know who’d fought on opposite sides in a civil war.
Brothers on opposite sides, you can imagine what ruthless
enemies they must have made. But the war was ruthless
too. People killed each other like they wanted to drown
each other in blood. Civil wars are much worse than
ordinary wars, as you know. Because there’s no greater
hatred than the kind that comes from closeness. So when
the war ended they continued to be enemies. They lived in
the same village, but they wouldn’t allow their wives to talk
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