Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

My mother took the book from my father’s hands and looked at the cover. “It’s a beautiful book. Thank you, Dante.” “You should thank my dad. It was his idea.” My father smiled. That was the second time in less than a minute that my father had smiled. This was not a common occurrence. Dad was not big on smiling. “Thank your father for me, will you, Dante?”

See, I didn’t get my dad. I could never guess how he would react to things. Not ever.

My dad says it’s all right if people make fun of you. You know what he said to me? He said, ‘Dante, you’re an intellectual. That’s who you are. Don’t be ashamed of that.’” I noticed his smile was a little sad. Maybe everyone was a little sad. Maybe so. “Ari, I’m trying not to be ashamed.”

I knew what it was like to be ashamed. Only, Dante knew why. And I didn’t. Dante. I really liked him. I really, really liked him.

I WATCHED MY FATHER THUMB THROUGH THE PAGES. It was obvious that he loved that book. And because of that book, I learned something new about my father. He’d studied art before he joined the Marines. That seemed not to fit with the picture I had of my father. But I liked the idea.

I stared at the reproduced mural in the book—but I was more interested in his finger as he tapped the book with approval. That finger had pulled a trigger in a war. That finger had touched my mother in tender ways I did not fully comprehend. I wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. But I couldn’t. All the words were stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.

I could have asked my father lots of questions. I could have. But there was something in his face and eyes and in his crooked smile that prevented me from asking. I guess I didn’t believe he wanted me to know who he was. So I just collected clues. Watching my father read that book was another clue in my collection. Some day all the clues would come together. And I would solve the mystery of my father.

ONE NIGHT, WHEN THERE WAS NO MOON IN THE NIGHT sky, Dante’s mom and dad took us out into the desert so we could use his new telescope. On the drive out, Dante and his dad sang along with the Beatles—not that either of them had good singing voices. Not that they cared. They touched a lot. A family of touchers and kissers. Every time Dante entered the house, he kissed his mom and dad on the cheek—or they kissed him—as if all that kissing was perfectly normal.

I wondered what my father would do if I ever went up to him and kissed him on the cheek. Not that he would yell at me. But—I don’t know.

Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.

As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.” That made me smile. “What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?” “I’ll know what to do with them,” he said. “Maybe change the world.” I believed him.

They weren’t big guys and they weren’t smart either. They were mean and stupid boys and I’d seen what mean and stupid boys could do. Maybe Dante wasn’t mean enough for a fight. But I was. And I’d never felt bad for punching out a guy who needed punching out.

One of the guys looked like he was about to point his BB gun at me. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, you little piece of dog shit.” And just like that, I reached over and took his gun away. It happened fast and he hadn’t expected it.

Dante and I looked at each other. “I didn’t know you liked to fight,” Dante said. “I don’t really. Not really,” I said. “Yeah,” Dante said. “You like to fight.”

I looked at him. “I have a theory about why moms are so strict.” Dante almost smiled. “It’s because they love us, Ari.” “That’s part of it. The other part of it is that they want us to stay boys forever.” “Yeah, I think that would make my mom happy—if I was a boy forever.” Dante looked down at the dead bird. A few minutes ago, he’d been mad as hell. Now, he looked like he was going to cry.

“I’ve never seen you that mad,” I said. “I’ve never seen you that mad, either.” We both knew that we were mad for different reasons. For a moment, we just stood there looking down at the dead bird. “It’s just a little sparrow,” he said. And then he started to cry. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there and watched him.

I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.

Dante was crying again. And I felt mean because I didn’t feel like crying. I didn’t really feel anything for the bird. It was a bird. Maybe the bird didn’t deserve to get shot by some stupid kid whose idea of fun was shooting at things. But it was still just a bird.

I was harder than Dante. I think I’d tried to hide that hardness from him because I’d wanted him to like me. But now he knew. That I was hard. And maybe that was okay. Maybe he could like the fact that I was hard just as I liked the fact that he wasn’t hard.

Dante’s answer made sense to me. If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. I think that’s what he was saying. I had a philosopher’s name. What was my answer? Why didn’t I have an answer?

And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness. Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?

When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.

And then the dreams came. Birds were falling from the sky. Sparrows. Millions and millions of sparrows. They were falling like rain and they were hitting me as they fell and I had their blood all over me and I couldn’t find a place to protect myself. Their beaks were breaking my skin like arrows.

I saw the look on my dad’s face and I knew he was worried. And I was sad that I had made him worry. I wondered if he had really held me and I wanted to tell him that I didn’t hate him, it was just that I didn’t understand him, didn’t understand who he was and I wanted to, I wanted so much to understand.

I fell asleep—and the dreams came again. It was raining outside and there was thunder and lightning all around me. And I could see myself as I ran in the rain. I was looking for Dante and I was yelling because he was lost, “Dante! Come back! Come back!” And then I wasn’t looking for Dante anymore, I was looking for my dad and I was yelling for him, “Dad! Dad! Where did you go? Where did you go?”

My mother smiled and I thought she must have been really pretty when she was a girl. She helped me sit up. “Amor, you’re soaked. Why don’t you take a nice shower?” “I had nightmares.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. I wanted the three of us to stay that way forever.

And I wondered what my dad looked like when he was my age. My mother had told me he was beautiful. I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.

My father was still there, sitting on my rocking chair. We studied each other for a moment as I lay in bed. “You were looking for me,” he said. I looked at him. “In your dream. You were looking for me.” “I’m always looking for you,” I whispered.

THE NEXT MORNING, WHEN I WOKE, I THOUGHT I HAD died. I knew it wasn’t true—but the thought was there. Maybe a part of you died when you were sick. I don’t know.

After four days in bed, I finally decided that it was time to move on. I made an announcement to my mother. “I’m well.” “You’re not,” my mother said. “I’m being held hostage.” That’s the first thing I said to my father when he came home from work. He grinned at me. “I’m fine now, Dad. I am.” “You still look a little pale.”

“Have you had any more bad dreams?” “I always have bad dreams,” I said. “Even when you’re not sick?” “Yeah.” He stood at my doorway. He turned around and faced me. “Are you always lost?” “In most of them, yeah.” “And are you always trying to find me?” “Mostly I think I’m trying to find me, Dad.” It was strange to talk to him about something real. But it scared me too.

I wanted to keep talking, but I didn’t know exactly how to say what I was holding inside me. I looked down at the floor. Then I looked up at him and shrugged like no big deal.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m so far away.” “It’s okay,” I said. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not.” I think he was going to say something else, but he changed hi...

I kept staring down at the floor. And then I heard my father’s voice in the room again. “I have bad dreams too, Ari.” I wanted to ask him if his dreams were about the war or about my brother. I wanted to ask him if he woke up as scared as me. All I did ...

“What are you thinking?” “You like teaching?” “Yes,” she said. “Even when your students don’t care?” “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m not responsible for whether my students care or don’t care. That care has to come from them—not me.”

“Where does that leave you?” “No matter what, Ari, my job is to care.” “Even when they don’t?” “Even when they don’t.” “No matter what?” “No matter what.” “Even if you teach kids like me, who think life is boring?” “That’s the way it is when you’re fifteen.”

There were days when I wished I had it in me to rebel against my mother’s rules.

“Hijo de mi vida,” she said, “I’m sorry that you think I’m too strict on you. But I have my reasons. When you’re older—” “You always say that. I’m fifteen. How old do I have to be? How old, Mom, before you think I’m smart enough to get it? I’m not a little boy.” She took my hand and kissed it. “You are to me,” she whispered. There were tears running down her cheeks.

There was something I wasn’t getting. First Dante. Then me. And now my mom. Tears all over the damned place. Maybe tears were something you caught. Like the flu.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I whispered. I smiled at her. I think I was hoping for a full explanation for her tears, but I was going to have to work to get it. “Are you okay?” I said. “Yes,” she said, “I’m okay.” “I don’t ...

“You don’t have any friends.” She started to place her hand over her mouth, then stopped herself. I wanted to hate her for that accusation. “I don’t want any.”

“You know what I think?” I didn’t want to know what she thought. I didn’t. But I was going to hear it anyway. “Sure,” I said. She ignored the attitude. “I don’t think you know how loved you are.” “I do know.” She started to say something, but she changed her mind. “Ari, I just want you to be happy.”

“When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending. I’d get up and look in the mirror and my eyes were sad.” “You mean like mine.” “Yeah.” “My eyes are always sad.” “The world isn’t ending, Ari.”

Being sick made me feel fragile, like I might break. I didn’t like feeling like that. Laughing made me feel better.

I returned to the book of poems. I read a line and tried to understand it: “from what we cannot hold the stars are made.” It was a beautiful thing to say, but I didn’t know what it meant. I fell asleep thinking what the line might mean.

He hadn’t left any of the sketches that he’d done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He’d captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object.

There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that’s the way he saw the world or if that’s the way he saw my world. I stared at the sketch for a long time. It sc...

I was suddenly jealous of him. He could swim, he could draw, he could talk to people. He read poetry and he liked himself. I wondered how that felt, to really like yourself. And I wondered why some people didn’t like t...

“I liked the sketch,” I said. “Why?” “Because it looks just like my chair.” “Is that the only reason?” “It holds something,” I said “What?” “Emotion.” “Tell me,” Dante said. “It’s sad. It’s sad and it’s lonely.” “Like you,” he said. I hated that he saw who I was. “I’m not sad all the time,” I said. “I know,” he said.

And then my dad was there. He and my brother stared at each other and I couldn’t stand the look on their faces, because it seemed like there was the hurt of all the sons and all the fathers of the world. And the hurt was so deep that it was way beyond tears and so their faces were dry.