Mauro is disenchanted: people treat him like shit. They chide him, harry him. He feels as though he always has someone on his back, breathing down his neck, speaking into his ear. He realizes that in this place, words are merely a concentrate of rapid-fire instructions to which the only permissible response is a nod. They don’t teach him much, either: it’s up to him to adapt, to observe and understand; up to him to learn without slowing the tempo of the machine, without letting his inexperience and shortcomings affect the smooth running of the kitchen. You figure it out and you do your job. A situation that Mauro finds even harder to accept since he’s working for free: to his mind, this is not a fair deal.

One morning, in the middle of a shift, someone whacks Mauro in the face with a metal melon baller—he chose the wrong diameter. Shocked, Mauro cries out, staggers, his nose bleeds; he stares around him in a circle, but no one meets his gaze; they are all busy working in silence. From his post, the chef yells at him to stop being a smart-ass and to do it all again pronto the way he’s supposed to—it’s not rocket science. Mauro loosens his fingers, lets go of his utensil—a potato peeler—then wipes his nose with the back of his hand, wipes his palms on his apron, pressing it against his chest, and picks up his knives, slowly washes them, carefully dries them, puts each in its sheath, unbuttons his jacket while around him some of the others now slow down, glance up at him—but without protesting, without stopping what they’re doing—and then, still calm, he grabs his bag and crosses the kitchen toward the door, passing the chef, who turns his back on him and continues to act as if he hadn’t seen anything, as if he never sees anything, until, as he is leaving the kitchen, Mauro dangles a hand along the work surface, knocking over a large stainless-steel bowl that clatters noisily to the floor as the doors flap shut behind him. I’ve seen him leave meals like that, classes, movie theaters, even girls; it’s a manner of departure that is very Mauro: silent and determined, as if nothing could hold him back once he has decided to quit—nothing. On Christmas Eve, he will confide to me, as he prepares a chili con carne for eighteen people: I stuck it out for three weeks, which isn’t bad, really. I was too old for that kind of thing—I hadn’t followed the usual path. I’d been through other experiences and I wasn’t like the other apprentices. They were younger, all about seventeen or eighteen, more malleable, more easily intimidated.