Tempter?” The word was almost inaudible, so that he didn’t know whether
he said it or only thought it.
“Why should that bother you?” The voice remained just as gentle. “If I am
the Tempter, then we are on the same side. We have the same opponent.”
“Why...why are you here? What do you want from me?” He had a strong
urge to cross himself but at the last moment thought it somehow
inappropriate.
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“I don’t want anything from you. On the contrary, I have a gift for you. Sort
of a token of our alliance. A trip.”
“A trip?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t leave this cell, and you will get back on time,
before they come for you.”
“What kind of a trip will it be if I stay here?”
“The only one possible under the circumstances: through time.”
The prisoner blinked. This was not really happening. He was still asleep.
However, there was none of the awakening that necessarily followed such a
realization. He brought his hand to his face and pinched his cheek hard. The
pain was real. Only too real.
“I don’t want...to go...anywhere.”
“But you’ll like it there. I’m quite sure. The future has pleasant surprises for
you.”
“The future?”
“Yes. Almost three hundred years from now.”
“Why would I want to go...to the future?”
“Out of curiosity, above all. Aren’t you interested in checking whether you
really succeeded in outwitting the Church? Even though you certainly appear
self-confident, there must still be a shadow of doubt in there. What if your
sacrifice is in vain?”
“But you said it isn’t. That my students...”
“A moment ago that did not sound convincing to you. In any case, can you
believe in the word of the Tempter, even when you’re on the same side as he
is?”“What would the future corroborate? What would I see there?” As he asked
these questions, he felt completely foolish. He had let himself be drawn too
easily into a crazy, impossible conversation. Where was the common sense he
took such pride in? Had he gone out of his mind? He had heard that this
sometimes happened to people waiting to be burned at the stake. Fear twisted
their minds.
“A better question would be what you won’t see. First of all, you won’t see a
monastery on the top of this hill. Its walls will still be there, but it will no
longer contain dark, humid cells, corridors all sooty from torches, or a torture
chamber in the basement.”
“The monastery will fall into ruin?”
“No, it will be remodeled.”
“What can you remodel a monastery into?”
The answer was preceded by a brief silence that seemed to indicate a certain
hesitation, indecision. “I suppose that in the end you would recognize it
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without my help, although it will certainly look...strange. But I would do well
to prepare you. You will not have much time, and the future can have a
stunning effect. At the time of your visit, instead of a monastery this will be an
astronomical observatory.”
He knew that he should say something in return, that it was expected of
him, but he could not utter a word. His vocal cords were vibrating, forming
confused questions, but his throat had closed completely and no sound came
out. He stared blankly ahead, his mouth a void.
In the infinite silence that reigned once more, a white-gloved hand set the
cane between the knees, then disappeared in the folds of the black robe. The
hand took a moment to find something there, then emerged with a round, flat
object on its open palm. Golden reflections shone from its engraved curves.
The dark figure’s thumb moved along the edge of the object and the lid
popped open.
The hand extended toward the prisoner, but he remained stock-still. It was
not indecision; the spasm that had closed his throat had now spread to his
entire body. He wanted to move, do something, anything, he couldn’t stay
there motionless forever, but his muscles refused completely to obey.
“Yes, before you leave, there is one more thing you should know. It will
please you, I believe. The observatory will be named after you.”
The movement with which he accepted the watch had nothing to do with
his will. It seemed to him that someone else received the Tempter’s gift, that he
was just an observer who should in fact warn the incautious sinner not to do it,
that it was insane. He wouldn’t have listened, anyway, his soul was already lost,
so it made no difference; actually, nothing could help him anymore.
The watch face radiated a bright whiteness. In the dark cell it was a
lighthouse summoning sailors, the flame of a candle attracting buzzing insects,
a star luring the glass eye of the telescope. And over it were two ornate hands at
a right angle, forming a large letter L.
II
Staring at the shiny surface, he failed to notice the changes that had started to
take place. Something sparkled in the cell, apparitions passed through it more
transparent than ghosts, and the specter on the other bed instantly dissolved
into nothingness.
His attention was attracted only by sudden daylight in the high barred
window.
Isn’t it still early? he asked himself, raising his eyes in bewilderment.
But the time of miracles had just begun. His eyelids barely had time to blink
before it was dark in the window again. The astronomer in him opened his
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mouth to contend the obvious, but he was silenced by the stronger voice of the
child who cares not at all whether something is possible or not, as long as it is
fascinating.
Many short interchanges of light and darkness took place before the child
had had enough of this monotonous kaleidoscope, finally letting the scientist
think about solving the mystery. There was only one explanation, of course.
To accept it, however, one had to accept the impossible almost as an act of
faith.
Before him the days and nights were passing at accelerated speed, but he
could not ask the questions dictated by his reason. He had lost that right the
moment he took the watch. In any event, was the “how” important? If this was
the way to travel to the future, so be it.
Finally the hypnotic flashes of blue-gray and black images in the stone
window tired even the astronomer. He turned around—and at first it seemed
that the dizzy rush through time had stopped. Nothing was moving, every-
thing looked fixed, unchanging. And then he realized that it was only an
illusion. There could be no rapid changes here: the monastery walls were built
to withstand the centuries.
Nonetheless, there were a few things in the cell made of less durable
material. He stood transfixed as he watched the boards on the bed across
from him gradually swell up from the perpetual humidity and then split and
fall to the ground, where they slowly turned into a shapeless mass on the
flagstones.
He jumped up from his bed when it
struck him that the same fate had to
affect the boards on which he was sitting. Sure enough, they also ended up as a
pile of sawdust. He, however, had not felt a thing: if this possibility had not
crossed his mind, he would have continued to sit calmly on nothing, in midair.
The wooden door was considerably thicker, but in the end it, too,
succumbed to the effects of decay. First the steel bars fell off, then the hinges
gave way, cracks appeared, then gaps and holes, until finally there was nothing
to stop him from going into the corridor. The cell ceased to be a prison. But on
the other side of the threshold, freedom was an impenetrable darkness, since
no one lit torches to dispel it anymore.
Thoughts of freedom reminded him of the many prisoners who must have
sojourned here in misery after him. During this rapid movement through time
he could not see them, of course, although here and there he had the deceptive
feeling that there was someone else with him. During the instants of darkness
that were nights, a shape seemed to bulge on the bed across from him, but this
illusion was too brief to make anything of it. In the flashes of lightning that
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were days, something would flicker in front of him periodically, a certain hint
of movement, but it was as cryptic as a flash seen out of the corner of the eye.
The ceiling disappeared so suddenly that he did not have time to catch his
breath. It was there one moment and then suddenly gone without a trace, as
though a giant had taken a huge lid off the monastery. At the same time, all the
partition walls were removed, leaving only the solid outer walls that no longer
had any windows.
The rapidly changing days and nights were incomparably more exciting
with the entire firmament spread over his head than before, when he had only
had a tiny corner of sky. The entire universe seemed to be hurriedly whispering
some secret message to him...
But he was not given the time to figure it out. Just as mysteriously as the lid
was lost, it returned a few moments later, although not the old one. He found
himself inside an enormous closed space over which there rose a gigantic
dome. Only cathedrals boast such roofs, he thought, but this was certainly
not a cathedral; their domes did not have a wide slit cut through the center,
let alone a large cylinder pointing upward through that opening.
He did not realize that the voyage was over because there was no slowing
down; it happened all at once. He was looking at the empty opening in the
vault over his head, but many heartbeats had to pass before he finally noticed
that the alternating light and darkness had stopped. The night sky that settled
in his eyes was sprinkled with the clusters of stars found in the thin air of
mountain peaks.
A click in his hand jolted him out of the paralysis that had overcome him.
The watch had completely slipped his mind, although it had been in his
outstretched palm the entire time. Now it had closed, since its magic work
was finished. He originally thought to put it in his pocket but then decided he
should keep it in his hand; his first idea would have shown inadmissible
disrespect.
He slowly and timidly began to turn around in the semidarkness of the large
area. As wondrous things whose purpose he could not divine entered his field
of vision, he remembered the Tempter’s words; he had said that in the end he
would see for himself that it was an astronomical observatory. The Tempter
must have greatly overestimated him. There was nothing here he could
recognize: no telescope, sextant, map of the stars, or brass model of the
planetary system.
Instead, the circular wall was covered for the most part with unusual
windows. They shone in a variety of colors, but it could not have been the
light from outside because it was night. Some forms were moving on them,
and he cautiously went up to one part of the wall to get a better look. They
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turned out to be yellow numbers that proceeded as far as the eye could see in
horizontal rows against blue or red backgrounds, appearing at one end and
disappearing at the other, although the device that was writing them was
nowhere to be seen.
He would have stood there a long time staring at this sparkling display,
whose meaning he had not even tried to penetrate, had it not been for the
sound of quiet voices he suddenly heard behind him. He started in complete
surprise. During his first moment of confusion, all he felt was the instinctive
need to hide somewhere, but there was no time for that. When he turned
around, just a few steps from him were two tall figures—a man and a
woman—dressed in long white robes, heading his way, talking in hushed
tones.
They had to see him; it was unavoidable since he was standing right there in
front of them, paralyzed and bewildered. But they went straight past him,
paying no attention to his conspicuous presence, as though he were completely
invisible. He stood there for a long time, immobile, trying to get used to this
impossibility, as his temples pounded fiercely.
The figures in white went up to one of the windows that was considerably
larger than the others and was unlighted and started to touch some of the
bumps that protruded under it. The window suddenly lit up, but it did not
have the stream of numbers as on the others. It showed something that the
prisoner could finally make sense of. The star field seemed far denser, brighter,
and sharper, but basically did not differ from what he had seen through his
small telescope.
But how could the picture in the window and the telescope be the same?
What kind of window was that? The answer soon followed, but his readiness to
believe took considerably more time. The two people continued to touch the
bumps, and the scene slowly started to change. The change itself was clear to
him, but he could not figure out how it was done. He would have achieved the
same effect if he were slowly to raise his telescope: some stars would disappear
under the lower edge, while others would appear above. But here the window
did not move at all.
Then he heard something buzzing behind him. It was quite feeble, like the
sound of a distant bee. He probably would not have turned around if he hadn’t
been compelled by the pins and needles at the back of his head—the tension of
premonition. Something was going on behind his back, something big was
moving.
The heavy, upright cylinder in the lower part of the slit in the dome slowly
rose toward the highest point, although he could not see how it moved. It
seemed to be doing so by itself, without the help of ropes and a winch.
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He caught on to what was happening before the cylinder stopped at an angle
of about seventy degrees. So, the Tempter had not overestimated him too
much. In any case, it was only a matter of proportions here. Even though it was
gigantic, the telescope had kept its original shape. What he could not under-
stand was that the eyepiece had been moved.
Instead of being in the only place
it could be, at the bottom of the cylinder, it was on the wall like a big window
that everyone could look at.
The picture on it stabilized just for a moment, and then a new change
started. The stars began to flow over all the edges as though the telescope were
rushing through the air at an unbelievable speed, although it was resting
immobile. It penetrated more and more into the dark expanse, reaching for
unattainable infinity.
The impression was intoxicating, delightful. And then, as if this were not
enough, music echoed. The woman in white went for a moment to a smaller
window and touched something. At the same moment, the crystal sounds of
heavenly harmony reverberated from all sides. He could not see any musicians
or instruments, he could not understand a thing, but he did not care. He was
experiencing what one undergoes perhaps once in a lifetime: exaltation.
The two climaxes merged into one. One point in the middle of the picture
started to get bigger, to expand. At first it was a star like the countless ones
around it, then it was a circle, then a ring, and then finally it burst into a lacy
flower that filled the entire window. The moment it opened its rosy, vaporous
petals, the music streamed upward, greeting with an upsurge of joy the
appearance of the yellow nucleus—the hidden eye of the Creator himself.
He was not filled with frustration when everything around him suddenly
froze and became silent. He knew this would happen, that the watch cover had
to open once again. The moment of the about-face was perfect. The epiphany
had just taken place. Dared he hope for anything greater?
Return trips always seem shorter than departures. There were no more
surprises and wonders to slow down time. Even though he felt awe as he
watched the reverse sequence of what he had seen before—the disappearance
of the dome, the return of the barred windows, the formation of doors and
beds, the flickering of days and nights—his thoughts were elsewhere.
His confused thoughts that gradually formed a crucial question.
The end of the voyage came abruptly once again, just as when he had arrived
in the future. At first, while his eyes were still blinded by the flashes, he could
not make out anyone on the other side of the cell. Icy fingers of horror
tightened around his chest. What if he wasn’t there anymore? If he had only
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