During the Black Death, They Checked If You Were REALLY Dead

Added: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]The wheels of the cart clatter loudly.

[00:00:02]Every morning when you set out, the whole street can hear you coming. They hear you. They shut their windows. They shut their doors. It's just you and the cart on the street with a few dogs trailing behind you now and then. You don't shoe them away. This city is full of dead bodies now. And the dogs need to eat, too. You follow the same route you've been taking for 3 months. The first block, the second block. You start knocking on doors. You shout, "Bring out your dead." Some doors open. Some doors aren't answered. The doors that aren't answered, you ram open with your shoulder. You walk inside. You don't look the living in the eye. You look only for the dead. You load them onto the cart. You come out. You keep walking. Boacio didn't write your names.

[00:00:41]He just called you Beckini. The word comes from an Italian verb meaning to peck. The very action a bird makes when it pecks. The Florentines use this word for you not because you resemble birds, but because they see no difference between you and vultures, creatures that make a living among the piles of corpses. How did you become a Bashino?

[00:00:59]You weren't born to do this. You used to be a dock worker hauling cargo. You were strong enough for it. Dock work was heavy but steady. Then in the spring of 1348, that ship from the east docked. No one knew what it had brought. The people on board began to die. Then the dock workers began to die. Then all of Florence began to die. The docks closed.

[00:01:19]No ship dared to dock. You lost your job. You had a wife. You had two children. You needed money. A notice was posted around the city. The town hall needed body collectors. The pay was three to four times that of an ordinary laborer. No one came forward. You stood in front of that notice for a long time.

[00:01:36]You glanced at your front door. Then you signed up. On the first day, you didn't know what you were doing. They gave you a wooden cart and an iron hook. told you to go to the designated neighborhood, load every dead body you could find onto the cart, push it to the mass grave outside the city, toss them in, and come back to do it all over again. That was it. No protective gear, no masks, no gloves. You hauled 17 bodies that day.

[00:01:59]You remember it was 17 because you counted them. You didn't know why you were counting. You just counted. The bodies weren't what you'd imagined. You thought the dead would just be lying there quiet. But the plague dead weren't like that. They had swellings under their armpits or in their groins as big as apples, black spots on their skin.

[00:02:17]Some had blood froth in their mouths when they died. Some had been dead for days before they were found. The ones who'd been dead for days were harder to move than the fresh ones, not just because of the smell, but because of the weight. A body that had been lying there for a few days was much heavier than a fresh one. You later understood why this was so, but on the first day, you didn't know. You just felt that this person was much heavier than he looked. The first day you came home, you didn't eat. Your wife set the meal on the table. You sat there without touching your chopsticks.

[00:02:47]Your wife didn't ask you anything. She knew what you'd been doing. That night, you couldn't sleep. You smelled something. Maybe it was real. Maybe it was just your imagination. You got up, drew water from the well, and washed yourself from head to toe. Then you went back to bed. The next morning, you got up and pushed the cart out. You went to do the day's work. By the second week, you began to know which households on your route had elderly residents and which had sick people. You started to remember which door hinges were loose and from which angle they were easiest to pry open. You began to know on which streets bodies were usually left at the doorstep and on which streets the families refused to let you in, blocking you from the inside. You were required to report those who refused to cooperate. City Hall regulations stipulated that failure to assist with body collection would result in a fine, but you didn't like reporting it. Once you did, someone will come. There will be an argument and it will waste your time. You usually stand at the door and talk to them for a while, waiting for them to carry the body out themselves.

[00:03:45]You've also learned how to tell if there's a living person behind a door.

[00:03:49]You knock, you listen. Behind some doors, you hear footsteps. Behind others, only silence. There are two kinds of silence. One where a living person is hiding inside, too afraid to open the door. The other where there's no one alive inside anymore. You've gradually learned to distinguish between these two kinds of silence. Not through any special skill, but through your nose. Living people have a certain smell. Those who've been dead for a few days have a different one. You don't even need push the door open to know what's inside. This ability is a gift from the job. You're not sure if it's a good thing. The mass graves are outside the city. You make several round trips every day. It's a long way, especially when you're pushing a full cart. The smell is worst in the summer. You've learned to cover your nose with a cloth.

[00:04:34]Someone in town told you to soak the cloth in vinegar, saying it blocks the miasma. You don't know if that's true, but you did it anyway. The vinegar smell on the cloth mixes with the stench from the cart, becoming a scent you'll never forget for the rest of your life.

[00:04:47]Sometimes when you catch a whiff of vinegar elsewhere, you're reminded of that time. It's a memory you'd rather forget. You gradually came to understand that this job had its own set of rules.

[00:04:57]Not the ones the city hall told you, but the ones you figured out for yourself.

[00:05:01]First, don't look into the eyes of the living. The moment you look into their eyes, you'll wonder who else in that family is still alive. Then, you'll wonder if they'll be on your truck tomorrow, too. If you think too much, you won't be able to keep doing this.

[00:05:14]Second, don't ask who the deceased is.

[00:05:16]Don't ask for names. Don't ask for ages.

[00:05:19]You're moving a body, not a person. Once it becomes a person in your mind turns into a person, this job will drive you mad. Third, keep count. Count how many bodies you move each day. That number is proof you've done your job for the day.

[00:05:32]Once you've finished counting, the day is over. Tomorrow brings a new number.

[00:05:36]The church doesn't like you. That's nothing new. The church has never liked the bikini. The priests say this work is disrespectful to the dead. They say the way you move the bodies lacks dignity.

[00:05:46]They say you throw the dead into mass graves without giving them a final blessing. They say that by handling these bodies every day, you're putting your own souls in danger. They say that if you die of the plague, you might die without even time for a final prayer.

[00:06:00]And then your souls will never rest.

[00:06:02]You've taken some of those words to heart. Sometimes as you walk along, you wonder, "If I were to collapse today, would anyone say a final prayer for me?"

[00:06:10]Then you think of Marco. No priest was there the day Marco passed away. Later, you recited a passage for him. Not quite by the book, but you recited it. He must have known you did your best. But while the church looked down on you, their churches were still full. Those dead bodies you carried away were eventually dumped into the graves near the church.

[00:06:29]The church ran out of land. They came to city hall asking to dig more pits. They needed the beggars to dig those pits, too. They despised you while needing you. You eventually came to understand this. There are many things in this world that must be done. Yet no one is willing to admit they need to be done.

[00:06:45]What you do eyes is one of them. In March, you met a few other bikini. You set out together and returned together.

[00:06:51]You talked along the way, not about the dead, but about other things, whose shoes were worn out, where to find cheap wine, how the graves outside the city were filling up, and what the city hall planned to do. You drank, sometimes right by the carts. Someone in Florence wrote about you, saying you walked the streets laughing, that you didn't look the least bit afraid of death. They thought you were abnormal. They didn't understand. It wasn't that you weren't afraid of death. It was that you saw so much of it every day that you had no capacity left to be afraid. When your capacity is used up, it's used up. You still have to eat. You still have to sleep. Fear takes strength, and you need to save your strength for pushing the cart. In April, one of your companions died. His name was Marco. He didn't die of the plague. One day he was walking along and just collapsed. You helped him up. He said he was fine, then stood up and kept walking. The next day he didn't show up. You went to his house. His wife opened the door. You knew at a glance.

[00:07:46]You didn't say a word. You went inside.

[00:07:48]You loaded Marco onto your cart. It was the heaviest body you'd ever carried in your life. Not because his body was heavy, but because you knew him. In May, your wife came down with a fever. You went home and found her lying in bed with your two children sitting beside her. The older one looked at you. The younger one didn't know what was happening. You reached out to touch your wife's forehead. You touched it once and pulled your hand back, not because it was hot, but because you felt a lump on her neck. You didn't go to work that day. You stayed home. You took the kids to the neighbor's house. You told them the kids would need looking after for a few days. The neighbors knew what you did for a living. They didn't ask any questions. You went back home. You helped your wife drink water. You helped her change her clothes. You knew what was coming. You'd seen it too many times in this line of work. You knew what that lump meant. You knew how the next few days would play out. She had a fever.

[00:08:39]She said she was cold. You covered her with everything you could find. The next day, the lump grew larger. On the third day, she started rambling. She called out your name, your mother's name, and the name of someone from her family you'd never met. You sat by your side.

[00:08:54]You just sat there. Over the past 3 months, you've seen so many people go through this. You've always been the one pushing the stretcher to take them away.

[00:09:02]Now you're the one sitting by their side. Only now do you know what it means to be the one sitting by their side. The feeling your wife died on the fourth day. You were by her side when she died.

[00:09:12]The moment her eyes closed was no different from what you see every day. A living person and then no longer alive.

[00:09:18]Just like that, you sat there. You didn't cry. Not because you didn't love her, but because you had no tears left.

[00:09:24]Those three months of work had drained you of every tear. You sat there for a long time. Then you got up and loaded her into your car. It was the slowest drive of your life. You didn't drive as you usually did. You drove very slowly.

[00:09:37]You drove through the streets where you'd lived together, past the market where you first met. You drove very slowly all the way out of town. When you reached the grave, you stopped for a long time. Then you laid her to rest.

[00:09:49]You turned and walked away. You didn't look back. Your two children survived.

[00:09:53]You don't know why they lived, nor why you did. The plague doesn't choose its victims by any logic. It's random. It doesn't care if you're good or bad, if you have children to raise, or how old you are. The plague is just the plague.

[00:10:06]It comes, it goes. Some survive, some don't. In the fall of 1348, the death toll in Florence began to decline. It wasn't because someone had found a cure.

[00:10:16]It was because there simply weren't enough people left to keep dying. The city lost nearly half its population that year. Out of 60,000, roughly 30 to 40,000 died. How many of those 30 or 40,000 were people you knew? You counted them, but you've forgotten the number.

[00:10:31]It was too vast to make any sense.

[00:10:33]Winter came. Work was scarce. The town hall no longer needed so many bikini.

[00:10:38]You were laid off. They gave you your final pay. You walked out of the town hall with that money. You stood on the streets of Florence. People were walking by. Not many, but some. They saw you and stepped aside. They knew who you were. A bacino. the kind who picks up the dead.

[00:10:53]No one would come to thank you. No one would erect a plaque for you in the square. You walk down the street where death is most common. That street is empty now. There are some marks on the ground that you recognize. You step on those marks. You keep walking. You go find your two children. You take them home. You light a fire. You cook a pot of food. The three of you sit together to eat. The child asks where mom is. You say she's gone. The child asks where.

[00:11:17]You say to a place you'll all go someday. The child asks what that is place. You say you don't know either.

[00:11:23]You say you send so many people there every day, but you've never been there yourself, so you don't know what kind of place it is. Later, the docks reopened.

[00:11:32]The ships returned. The cargo returned.

[00:11:34]You went back to hauling goods. Your strength remained. Your body was healthy. You don't know why you were the one who survived. You've asked yourself that question many times. You've never found an answer. Your two children grew up. They don't know what you did in 1348. You never told them, not because you felt ashamed of it, but because it was too heavy a burden to explain clearly over a meal. There are some things you just have to live with. You can't put them into words, but they're always there. Bukacio wrote you into his book in just a few short lines, calling you the lowest of the low, saying you did all the work that decent people refused to do during the Black Death. He didn't use your names. He simply said there was such a group of people. And then he went on with his story. His book later became one of the most important works in the history of world literature. In it, he wrote of 10 people telling stories during the plague. Those stories have lived on for centuries.

[00:12:26]While those people you carried away, the ones you counted one by one, they have no names. In that book, they are merely the backdrop, the reason those 10 storytellers left Florence. But without you, those corpses would have piled up in the streets. Florence would have perished in decay, and Bukacio's 10 men would have had no stories to tell. You are the very condition of that book's existence. You just don't appear in it.