In the city the land is dead. Under the houses he lost his life. That's why plants come with their own in nurseries. That is why in supermarkets it is sold bagged.

In the city she is dead, Belén knows it. For years he fought so that no more a sprout in his garden would emerge. He did not use bagged soil or fertilizers, he trusted his garden. In that struggle, the earth got under her nails, between her eyelids, in her ears, and under her tongue. She was filling with dirt in the fight. And the land, which was dead, in Belén came back to life, it was fertile. So soon in addition to removing the earth from her garden, Belén removed what was in her body. And it was in a furrow of his that the seed that I was had shelter.

This is how I was born. Or, at least, that's how Belén told me about it as a boy while we were moving dirt. She said that I had been the first to flourish in that garden that is now full, and that is why I am Adam. For this reason, although I do not like my name, although more than once it has been the object of ridicule thanks to it, I have learned to love it, because in it she encrypted the fruit of her love for the land. Belén that no longer tells stories. She is drying off in this bed and there is nothing I can do. For not seeing her I look at my hands trying to remember her words. Slowly they appear, while I repeat them, I examine them because they were not just because, as the seeds had a secret inside, a secret that when burying itself in whoever heard them flourished and revealed itself. And that revelation occurred without those who listened to them noticing: suddenly, on any given day after having heard their words, they remembered each other and in the smile that emerged was the secret, although most of the time there were no smiles: the secret it took root and it was as if it had always been there. "What's the secret?" I ask him in his ear. His temples are shaved and there is something like a walrus that bites into them. A weight hangs from the walrus that forces it to stand still. I don't know if he listens to me: since he arrived he has not opened his eyes. But the doctors say that he will recover, and I believe them.

Here the time is different: in the windows the curtains are always closed and I don't dare to look out to know what time it is: the hours are announced to me with the movement of the nurses. It all seems like a bad dream.

And as if it were a dream, it was enough to remember his words so that little by little it was populating me. Beings and objects spring up in me that, as soon as they appear in the room, scream demanding to abandon me and anchor on the ground. In conjuring to dispel these ghosts, I take them and bind them to my voice. They seem to be content on that floor, more and more what comes back so absolutely traced on what I say that I am touching it, I get lost in those places. I think that with these magics I am conjuring the death that wants to take root in Belén, I seem to see out of the corner of my eye how a smile is drawn in sketch with very delicate and diffuse lines. And I say to myself "maybe this is the secret."

Then I go inside myself, and search for his words to repeat them.