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Thursday :: 28 August 2008 :: 04:47 PM
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The Box

©by David Berlinski

Traveling from Santiago to Buenos Aires, Don Pedro de Los Angeles carried with him a green parrot, a monkey with a ribbon tail, and a locked steamer trunk. His wife, the beautiful Senora Sabrina, whose green eyes were as deep as the sea, greeted the parrot and the monkey with cries of joy, but when she asked what was in the trunk, Don Pedro said nothing, shaking his head and giving orders to his servants to carry the trunk to a closet behind his study on the third floor.

Days and years passed. Don Pedro's full black beard turned white and cataracts shrouded his eyes. He walked slowly with the aid of a cane. The beautiful Senora Sabrina had long since become stout, her flesh quivering as she walked, and the low lovely voice in which she had once sung songs of love grew hoarse with age.

One day, Don Pedro fell ill with the ague and sensing that his end was near, he withdrew to his bedchamber on the third floor of the white villa with the turquoise shutters. He suffered for four days, but on the fifth, his mind was clear. After the servants had left, his wife approached his bed. "Don Pedro," she said, "I have never asked anything of you but the love to which I am entitled, but I wish to ask a favor."

Don Pedro said nothing.

"Don Pedro, for forty years I have wished to know what was in the trunk you brought from Santiago. Satisfy my curiosity now, for you know I will never look in the trunk without your permission."

"Senora Sabrina," said Don Pedro, "there is a manuscript within the trunk. It is bound in vellum. The sheets are written in parchment. It is very old, older than the dawn of time, and a copy of the manuscript escaped the great fire that lit the skies of Egypt and consumed the libraries of Alexandria."

"A manuscript?" Senora Sabrina asked in astonishment. "All these years you have clutched a manuscript to your heart?"

"Yes," said Don Pedro.

"Does it contain secrets, Don Pedro?"

"I do not know. I have not read it. It is foretold that all who read it must go blind."

Senora Sabrina looked at her husband's sightless eyes without saying anything.

"But you must know something of this manuscript," Senora Sabrina cried out in vexation, a trickle of perspiration falling between her breasts like water sliding between two mountains.

"Mere possession of the manuscript is itself a blessing," said Don Pedro. "Did it not cure Ramon Fernandez of unendurable melancholia many years ago?"

"That is all very well, but what does it say?"

"The manuscript contains a series of numbered propositions, written in a very careful hand. Each proposition is said to have the unique ability to express and to exhibit the truth, so that reading these propositions, a man would know where the jaguar goes at dawn, and what will be the date of his death, and why the whale cries in the sea at night."

"And do you know the date of your death?"

"Yes."

That night Don Pedro died peacefully in his sleep. Senora Sabrina sat for two days by his body, as is the custom, and on the third day, she withdrew the key to the steamer trunk from the mahogany box in Don Pedro's writing desk. Carrying a candle, for the closet had no windows, she bent stiffly, blew the dust of years from the trunk's lid and with trembling fingers turned the lock. A dark, rich smell emerged from the interior. Senora Sabrina brought the flickering candle close and peered inside.

There was nothing there.

From the book The Advent of the Algorithm by David Berlinski. Published by Harcourt, Inc., ©2000, page 82ff

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