Roberto inherited his father's business and took care of a small hardware store.
He is a silent, lonely and serious person. He turns off the lights on time every night to go to bed, gets up on time, eats the same breakfast, and puts a bunch of flowers on his parents’ grave every Saturday. Every time he receives the goods, he will carefully count the screws. The package says 350 sticks, one by one is clicked down, but there are only 323 sticks. He flew into a rage and called the manufacturer to complain. He is not good at getting along with people, and even Mary, who embraced him, was rejected by him thousands of miles away.
There is no doubt that everyone will inevitably see the world with their own eyes, and will naturally ask others to conform to their own eyes. In Roberto's eyes, most of his clients are freaks.
A demanding customer came to buy a door hinge, and Roberto didn't have the gold-plated hinge the customer wanted.
"No one will notice." Roberto said.
"No, you will see it when you open the door," the customer said, "I am a perfectionist."
When the customer entered his shop again, Roberto blasted him out of the shop.
Roberto collects old newspapers, just to cut out the strange things that happened around the world, and then paste them into the scrapbook. Because they proved his views on this world time and time again: This is an absurd world. Lovers who fell off the cliff by the shock of the car; the barber who was stabbed to death by the flying steel pipe, the customer who had their throat cut by the barber; the patient who died in a car accident on the way home from the hospital after a successful heart transplant after waiting for two years .
"Life is so meaningless and absurd, and everything that happens in the scrapbook is the best proof." He said sharply.
Whenever he found a piece of news in the newspaper that he liked, he would cut it out, put it in the scrapbook, and smile happily.
He didn't know, but he was also a perfectionist himself. There should be 350 screws in a pack, why can't there be fewer screws?
And, in an absurd world, a more real person is also absurd in itself.
But he didn't realize this until one day.
Qian Jun, a Chinese who is penniless and can't speak a word in Western, suddenly broke into Roberto's life. Qian Jun came to Argentina to join him, but he couldn't find his uncle, so he could only stay in Roberto's house temporarily.
The hardware store owner only did one good thing that a good person should do. He hoped to get rid of this Chinese as soon as possible. He sent him to the Chinese Embassy, to Chinatown, posted a missing person notice, and even kicked him out of the house. But Qian Jun stuck to him like gum.
When he read a piece of news from his newspaper clippings to Qian Jun: "A tragedy happened to a strange cow," he was surprised and unbelievable that the victim of this tragedy was sitting in front of him at this moment. Qian Jun and his fiancee were boating on the lake. When he was about to take out the engagement ring, a cow fell from the sky and killed his fiancee.
For Roberto and most people, natural disasters and man-made disasters are just a very small accident, a very small probability, and will only appear in Roberto's scrapbook. But when its victim suddenly emerged from the scrapbook and sat in front of Roberto, he couldn't laugh anymore. Because when accidental tragedies happen to a person, it is no longer accidental, but inevitable.
Roberto needs to re-examine his life and reflect on the way he sees the world.
When he saw the huge cow painted by Qian Jun on the wall of his backyard, he seemed to wake up suddenly.
He drove all the way to the country and appeared in front of Mary who was milking a cow.
Indeed, this world is ridiculous, just like Roberto's scrapbook.
Our lives are also fragile, like the glass crafts Roberto collected for his deceased mother.
When it happens to us by chance, it is inevitable, just like the cow that fell from the sky.
If that cow is a symbol of separation, misfortune, and death, it is destined to fall on us sooner or later, whether we are in Fujian, Italy, Buenos Aires, or anywhere in the world.
So, think about it, what should we do with our lives before the cows fall from the sky?
Wan Yuanyi
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