There was the black plastic tube hanging from the branches, obvious now that Franco had seen it, like a trick in a puzzle that takes forever to find but then once found stands out like it is no trick at all. The tube, who knew who had put it there, carried water from a fountain high up on the hill, filled by a spring that rose up out of the ground, fed by a hill above it. Franco found the end and filled his bottle, afraid to drink from the end, not because he thought he would catch some germs, but that he would spread his own, fearing the censure of the locals more than the chance that he would pass out from thirst, despite the sunny coolness that surrounded him. Once his bottle was filled he raised it to his mouth and took a deep drink, relieved but sorry to be washing away the vestiges of his trance that had put him in such delicious relation with that tree, that nameless, type-less tree that had emerged for him from among all the others. This is what he needed to do at Davos. It was not trees that mattered, or whatever they wanted him to talk about, it was seeing a tree that was important. How was he supposed to say that?
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