The Unthinkable

In a black coat, an elderly man with a beard not too long meets a priest as he descends into the subway tunnels.

They seemed in agreement; both had beards and the features of two old men. Does one need more than that to feel aligned with another person?

The priest wore blue… if it had been a woman, the man would’ve described the shade exactly, but here it was simply dark blue. And the man belonged to a certain faith, while the priest sang into a microphone something resembling prayer chants.

The man approached him and looked at him with astonishment and curiosity. The priest sang: “I was among a people… I am a man from that people… If one has a hundred and seven forms… none of them make up for the form added to him.”

At times the man would sing along; he had memorized a few lines. The priest seemed intent on showing him something, or astonishing him with his abilities, or perhaps testing him.

His expression looked perplexed, thinking. Behind him was a wall, and the surroundings resembled an old subway structure. There was something like a room embedded in that wall at the corner, with no door or opening. And what could be stranger than finding such a thing in a subway?

The visible face of it was thick glass in a long panel. The priest murmured incomprehensible words, and the man tried to make sense of what was happening.

The priest entered the sealed room. It had a white door. He leaned on a column in the middle, from the side where one could still see him. He watched the first glass panel.

A moment passed, and the man entered, still searching for him. He encountered a shadow of the priest.

The man said, “Stop with the silly tricks, come face me.”

The shadow disappeared. The man continued searching. The space behind the wall—where the room was—seemed confined by three walls and glass, yet from the inside it was like a palace—stranger, larger.

It held what appeared to be an elevated platform, like a small square theater hall, and a very small staircase, only three steps high, with a chair and a telescope in the center.

Hours passed. The man wandered in wonder, searching, until he no longer knew whether he was looking for an exit or for the priest.

He discovered that the place was vast, filled with chemistry books and other things. When he tried looking through a microscope, he felt he had uncovered the priest’s secret—but it wasn’t related to the microscope itself. It was more like a sudden chain of thoughts that made him feel he finally understood the secret of escape, or the secret of the priest’s hiding.

And when he returned to the first spot, the priest stepped out before him.

The man froze in terror and astonishment. The priest emerged without concern, moving slowly, never looking at him.

The man spoke no word, his face carrying the same expression of amazement he had worn the first time he met him in the subway. The priest had indeed stepped out of that same long glass window. And the event simply ended.

So the man wept.