into the resonant ink, he couldn’t help but wonder at the worlds it held, and his own longing for them. But for what good was his longing? What good was he? If he were to journey to some far-off, wondrous planet, what could the individual saint offer there? Of all of Earth’s marvels—staples in his life—he could reproduce none of them. On those distant surfaces, he could expound for days on the qualities of the automobile, and the airplane, and the firearm, and how doctors could perform surgeries with utensils that worked at a microscopic level, and when the planet’s natives asked him to duplicate any of it, he could not. And if they gave him everything he needed, how long then? Could he create a refrigerator if he gave his life to the task? A telephone? Certainly not a microwave. So what was he without the all of human achievement at his back? The best he could hope for was to create a piece of art that encompassed the empty struggling of his humanity and hope that their species could relate. They too must appreciate the unnerving size of it all. They too must carry around with them the questions that have no answers. Always carrying them, everywhere. And him, just a scared rocketeer who hauls tired human relics that process food and process words and compress air and play music and track time and capture photographs—all on the verge of extinction within his incapable hands. He’d try to tell them how many years and lives were given to the development of each product, except that he himself didn’t know, and so he would tell them nothing.
He paused in his walk and blinked hard, because even if he summoned an astronaut’s bravery, he first had to choose a point of light that they’d assure him was a planet. Out there, where there were as many stars as grains of sand in a desert, or some other incomprehensible amount that meant a vastness beyond his or any person’s grasp. And no amount of lenses could see to infinity and did he even want to know what waited beyond that weighty nothing?
He reached the entrance of the church and gave one last look at the sky before going inside and putting its high roof between him and it all. Inside, on the far side of the nave, Silvio could hear rummaging in the back room. He walked on light feet through the pews and found the old man dusting around the church’s gold tabernacle. Silvio leaned in the open doorway and cleared his throat loudly, but the old man held up a single finger to suggest that he needed a little more time. The small tabernacle’s doors were open, and the old man navigated around its interior with a white, linen rag. He said that even God’s apparatus is susceptible to dust. Next to the tabernacle were a pair of beautiful chalices with sterling cups and a matching, gold-plated dish. The old man picked up a small spray bottle from next to his feet, gave the rag two spurts, and then set about polishing each piece of the ornate silverware. Silvio grew bored watching him and wandered back into the muted nave. He patrolled up and down the pew aisles running his finger along their narrow backs and eventually took a seat in the back row. Several minutes later the old man appeared from the back room and he too moved between the pews with his large, dusty rag which he ran delicately over the smooth and lacquered wood of the pews. Silvio watched him. Then he said, You ever just look up at the stars and wonder about it?
The old man pressed the white cloth over the dark wood of the final row’s leg support and he said, I like looking at the stars as much as the next person.
Is that a lot?
I suppose not.
They were the only two in the church’s dim lighting. The old man took a seat on shaky knees next to Silvio, where the reflection of the room’s soft light made his skin look waxen and bloodless. Smoky light bulbs and ceiling fans spun slowly enough to question whether they actually moved air and thus question their very purpose. The stained glass windows lost their brilliance in the night, each pane adopting a dark purple hue that appeared so from inside and out. The dark pit of the carpet reflected the soft tremble of candle light—the white wax sticks, their brass caps, and the tiny fire that burned eternal yet never appeared to move down each slow fuse as if the church had devised the recipe for clean and perpetual energy.
The old man said, Still writing?
Yes. I’m trying, anyway.
I’ll bet that it’s hard.
You’d win that bet.
I never could write. English was always my least favorite subject. More of a numbers guy, myself.
I don’t remember having any talent for it either, said Silvio. And I could never get over the idea that so many writers went to their grave thinking that they weren’t any good at it.
Any good at going to their grave?
Any good at writing.
Oh. Yeah. That just sounds like a typical writer problem.
I just mean that it’s remarkable to spend your life feeling like you just aren’t very good at what you do. Or, if not that, then you die knowing that you were never appreciated. I couldn’t imagine being at the end of my life and thinking that maybe I’d wasted it. Writers like Melville and Dickinson and Poe and Hurston. That’s a hard way to die. And then, however many years later, to have people begin to recognize and appreciate your work? After you’re dead? That’s sick.
The old man shook his head and said, I guess that’s just not a worry that I can relate to.
Silvio stole a glance at the portrait of the old man’s wrinkled features. He said, Are you afraid of being forgotten?
The old man replied, People can’t forget what they never knew.
Does that bother you?
The old man shook his head again. No, he said. I don’t think so. I never had aspirations to get remembered by anybody. I’ve always just tried to do right for the people that I care about. Are you going to forget about me when I’m gone?
Of course not.
The old man offered a smile of great satisfaction. He said, Well there ya have it.
Silvio partially rolled his eyes and then focused his attention on the fan directly above them that, by his estimation, must be broken to be spinning so slowly.
I guess you’re right, Silvio said. Maybe you should be the one writing.
We already decided that I’m not any good at that kind of stuff. Why don’t we try to figure you out? Maybe just tell me about your approach.
I don’t have one. I just try to create good writing.
And what is good writing?
Good writing marries Truth and Beauty.
That’s lovely, the old man said.
That’s because I didn’t write it.
Well it’s a nice place to start.
Silvio shook his head in frustration and said, The problem is that I know no Truths. And if I did, I certainly don’t know how to make them beautiful.
The old man frailly leaned forward and ran the rag across the bottom of his seat and then inspected the white cloth as if its dusty sediment held secrets of great import. Look around you, Silvio. This place isn’t for people who know Truth. This place is for the people who are, at least, willing to look for it.
I guess that I’m still looking.
We all are.
Does anyone ever find it?
If they want to? All the time.
How?
