00.22 — César Concludes the Story of the Big Bang

00.22 — CÉSAR CONCLUDES THE STORY OF THE BIG BANG

Rome / Veracruz / Paris · Night

There are nights when the most distant things seem to happen in adjoining rooms.

After making love, Liliana lay face down, one leg outside the sheet. Casey traced the line of her back with two fingers, with no apparent intention, as though he were still drawing.

The room smelled of tobacco, sweat and rain.

—Why did he kill himself? —Liliana asked.

Casey took a while.

—Because he saw her happy.

She turned her head.

—That explains nothing.

—Perhaps it does.

His hand stopped between her shoulder blades.

—He had suffered for so long that when he finally saw her happy he could no longer bear it. It hurt him that she had come out of it without him.

Liliana remained motionless.

—How horrible.

—Yes.

Casey began stroking her again.

Liliana closed her eyes.

She did not ask who she was. Nor who had killed himself. Some stories get worse when they are forced to supply names.

In Veracruz, Isaac walked beside the sea.

The foam reached his shoes and withdrew, leaving a black film on the sand. He had gone out with no destination. In the distance someone was setting off fireworks, and for a second light appeared above the water and vanished before the sound.

He thought of a sentence that had been pursuing him for days:

Always everything is the same. Never in the same way.

A wave.

Another.

Another.

None repeated the one before it exactly.

He liked that.

Then he thought perhaps it was nonsense.

He kept walking.

Hours later he was in Santa Cecilia.

The church was almost dark. Alonso raised the Most Holy Body, and for an instant Isaac saw only the host between his fingers.

He bowed his head.

He asked for nothing.

He no longer knew what to ask for.

In a side chapel, the Virgin of Sorrows held a body she could no longer save. Her face was bowed with a patience Isaac found unbearable.

He sat down.

The organist improvised while waiting for the singer. A melody appeared, developed for a few bars and disappeared without ever becoming a piece.

Isaac listened.

A voice entered his head.

Not his own.

Or yes.

Perfect.

Too perfect to exist outside.

Always the same. Never alike.

He looked at the Virgin again.

—What does one ask of a God who has suffered so much?

Nobody answered.

Then Isaac thought:

And yet it has been given to you.

He did not know what you meant.

Nor what had been given.

The organist changed key.

Someone lit two candles.

The litany began.

—Santa Cecilia.

—Ora pro nobis.

Isaac answered with the others.

For the first time that night he felt a sentence could be repeated without wearing out.

In Paris, César was finishing the story of the universe.

He had been talking for more than an hour.

Not exactly about the Big Bang. He had begun there because every story needs the fiction of a beginning, but had wandered toward stars born from dead stars, elements made inside furnaces nobody would ever see, planets, water, molecules capable of copying themselves.

Now an almost empty glass stood before him.

—Then there was no explosion —someone said.

César gestured.

—There was something worse. There was a beginning that happened nowhere because it happened everywhere.

He laughed.

—And then we have spent thirteen billion eight hundred million years trying to find out what the hell it meant.

He added nothing else.

The conversation went on without him.

César looked out of the window.

Paris was lit up.

He thought that perhaps the universe had no need to mean anything.

For the first time, he found that a reassuring possibility.

In Santa Cecilia, Casey led Farid down a side passage.

There were no tourists at that hour.

Their footsteps produced a disproportionate echo.

He stopped before a gravestone.

—Here it is.

Farid read.

Then he looked at Casey.

—Who is here?

—Nobody.

—Very helpful.

Casey smiled.

—It’s a false tomb.

Farid turned back toward the stone.

—Whose?

—A real instrument’s.

That did manage to interest him.

Casey bent down and ran a hand over the letters.

—Tomorrow it is going to play Ángel Palermo’s work.

—The instrument?

—Supposedly.

—For whom?

Casey looked at him.

—For the Virgin of the Pilgrims.

Farid did not laugh.

That worried Casey slightly.

—Tomorrow?

—Tomorrow.

Farid rested his hand on the stone.

—I have waited five hundred years.

—Then one night should not be a problem.

—That’s what people who have not waited five hundred years say.

They stayed there for a moment.

The stone did not tell the truth.

But it existed.

That was different.

Casey remembered something Tony had once explained: Westerners looked at paintings; certain older images worked differently. You approached believing you were observing them and ended up discovering that the direction of the gaze was wrong.

Farid seemed to feel it too.

He withdrew his hand.

—What would you do? —he asked.

—What?

—If you knew you were going to die tomorrow.

Casey thought.

—Wine in Piazza Navona.

—That’s very little.

—A cigarette.

—Worse.

Casey smiled.

—I would make love to Liliana all night.

Farid waited.

—And in the morning I would do nothing.

—Nothing?

—I would touch her body while she sleeps.

Farid looked toward the dark nave.

—That, yes.

Casey shrugged.

—You?

Farid did not need to think.

—Pray.

—Why?

—Because I have had five hundred years to do everything else.

Casey gave a short laugh.

Farid did not.

From the other side of the church the organ began to sound.

A small phrase.

Three notes.

Then silence.

The same three notes returned.

Not exactly alike.

Casey looked at the false tomb.

Farid looked toward the darkness where the music was coming from.

Neither said anything.

The image of the Virgin was in a nearby chapel.

They could not see her from there.

That did not mean she could not see them.