Five Objects

2001,. Havana. 00:31 h.

Ivan Walsh’s phone rings.

The jolt is so precise that for a second he is back on Riverside Drive.

He looks at the screen.

Unknown number.

He answers.

—Yes?

—Ivan Walsh?

The voice is Bernardo’s.

He stands up.

—Where are you?

—In Havana.

—I know that already.

Silence.

Then he laughs.

—Are you all right?

—Yes.

—Where?

—I cannot tell you.

—Why?

—Because you would start asking questions.

—I am asking them already.

—Exactly.

He walks toward the window.

—Bernardo, I am not angry.

—Yes, you are.

—I am worried.

—With you it is almost the same thing.

He wants to correct him.

He does not.

—Are you with Juan Diego?

—Yes.

—Why?

He falls silent.

—He is showing me something.

—What?

Another pause.

—My father.

He says nothing.

A car passes beneath the window.

Then a second one.

—Your father is dead —he says at last.

—I know.

—Then I do not understand.

—That is why I came.

—Where?

Bernardo sighs.

—Ivan Walsh.

—All right.

He sits down.

—I will not ask.

He does not speak either.

They remain like that for a few seconds.

—I found some diaries —he says.

He does not know why he tells him.

—Yours?

—I think so.

—What do you mean, you think so?

He looks at the name written on the sheet.

BERNARDO.

—In them I go by another name.

Bernardo laughs.

—That sounds like you.

—I do not know whether that is a compliment.

—It is not.

He smiles.

—Are you coming back?

Silence.

Now he is afraid of the answer.

—Yes.

—Today?

—I do not know.

He looks at the clock.

—It is today already.

—Then yes.

Before hanging up he says:

—Ivan Walsh.

—What.

—Juan Diego says not to show the Virgin to anyone.

The smile disappears.

—What Virgin?

Silence.

The call ends.

2001, May, 22. Havana. 00:44 h.

Ivan Walsh reads that last phrase three times.

They never know the plot.

He does not remember writing it.

And perhaps he did not write it.

That is the problem.

On the table he has a photocopy, a notebook, a Virgin, the phone and a glass of water.

Five objects.

He could draw lines between them.

Casey would.

Liliana too.

A man arrives in Mexico in 1999 because someone calls him from Cuba.

A young man arrives at his house in 2025 because someone considers that he will be protected here.

A woman painter draws a guarded young man.

A photographer finds a Virgin repeated in different rooms.

A dead man has a son.

The son looks at photographs of the dead man.

He finds his own name changed in a diary.

Everything begins to seem connected.

And that is precisely the moment when he stops trusting.

Perhaps Providence is not discovering that everything is connected.

Perhaps it is resisting the urge to connect it all too soon.

He picks up a pencil.

Beneath BERNARDO he writes:

Ivan Walsh.

He looks at them together.

Then, without quite knowing why, he writes a third.

Fernando.

He stops.

He should not have written that.

He crosses out the name.

But it is still legible.