The Wrong Question

2001, May, 22. Havana. 05:21 h.

3841

He keeps staring at the number.

He does not need to open La Madonna.

He remembers it.

guest3841.

The user who plays chess like Bobby Fischer.

The fried fox.

f3.

e5.

King f2.

Now he does feel something like fear, but not because he has proved anything. On the contrary. A coincidence that is too perfect is less credible than an imperfection. If he were writing this novel, he would remove the number. It would be excessive. The reader would immediately suspect that someone was arranging the pieces. And yes, obviously, someone is doing just that.

He searches among the papers for the original print. The one he has kept in the notebook for years. In the light it no longer looks like a sacred image, but a battered object that has traveled too much. He turns it over.

There is no 3841.

Only a stain.

He brings the magnifying glass closer.

The stain has four parts.

They could be numbers.

They could also be moisture.

He refuses to decide.

The phone vibrates. Casey.

—I found something about the Columbia student —he says without a greeting.

He looks at the clock. Five twenty-one.

—Tell me.

—He was in Cuba before.

—Who.

—The man who died on September eleventh. The one from Riverside.

He sits down.

—When?

He hears keys.

—Summer of 2001.

He says nothing.

—Ivan Walsh.

—I’m here.

—He was at the San Antonio de los Baños Film School.

Now he does raise his head.

—No.

—Yes.

—A student?

—No. A workshop.

—What workshop.

—Screenwriting.

The word takes a moment to reach him.

—Name?

Casey tells him again.

This time something happens.

He does not remember the man.

He remembers a chair.

A classroom.

A young man moving his foot while the others read.

Then a question.

Can a story begin after it ends?

He does not know whether he was the one who asked it.

He does not know whether anyone asked it.

He does not even know whether the question ever came up.

—I think I knew him —he says.

—Are you sure?

—No.

Casey has learned not to press him when he says that.

—There’s something else.

—Of course.

—There’s a photograph taken in Cuba in his Columbia file.

He sends him the image.

He opens it.

Five young men in front of a building at the school. One of them must be the student who died months later in New York. He does not know which one.

He enlarges it.

At the far right is someone who does not belong to the group.

A man with a camera.

The man from the Prado, although, to tell the truth, the photo has so little resolution that it could be anyone.

—Casey.

—Yes.

—Can you identify the photographer?

—He isn’t in the school’s records.

—Juan Diego?

—No.

—Walsh?

Silence.

—Ivan Walsh.

—What.

—Walsh took the photo.

He looks again.

—How do you know?

—Because I have the digital negative.

—That doesn’t exist.

—I understand. In any case, I have the original file.

—And?

—Metadata.

—Casey.

—It’s signed.

—Walsh?

—No.

A pause.

—Bernardo.

He does not need to ask which Bernardo.

Outside, Havana is now fully lit.

On the table are the Virgin, the poem, his diaries and the photograph of some students taken months before one of them died in New York.

He thinks of the sentence he has just remembered.

Can a story begin after it ends?

And for the first time it occurs to him that perhaps that is the wrong question.

Perhaps some stories begin long before they know which criminal they are looking at.