Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

And I was so alone. And then all the light was gone and Dante disappeared into the darkness. I woke up and I felt lost. I didn’t know where I was. The fever was back. I thought that maybe nothing would ever be the same. But I knew it was just the fever. I fell asleep again. The sparrows were falling from the sky. And it was me who was killing them.

He read poems to me. I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky. As I listened to Dante’s voice, I wondered what my brother would sound like. I wondered if he’d ever read a poem. My mind was full and crowded—falling sparrows, my brother’s ghost, Dante’s voice. Dante finished reading a poem, then went looking for another.

“Aren’t you afraid of catching what I have?” I said. “No.” “You’re not afraid?” “No.” “You’re not afraid of anything.” “I’m afraid of lots of things, Ari.” I could have asked What? What are you afraid of? I don’t think he would have told me.

THE FEVER WAS GONE. But the dreams stayed. My father was in them. And my brother. And Dante. In my dreams. And sometimes my mother, too.

I lay around and thought about things. All the ordinary problems and mysteries of my life that mattered only to me. Not that thinking about things made me feel better.

I thought of my chair and how really it was a portrait of me. I was a chair. I felt sadder than I’d ever felt. I knew I wasn’t a boy anymore. But I still felt like a boy. Sort of. But there were other things I was starting to feel.

And I didn’t want to be treated like a boy anymore. I didn’t want to live in my parents’ world and I didn’t have a world of my own. In a strange way, my friendship with Dante had made me feel even more alone.

Maybe it was because Dante seemed to make himself fit everywhere he went. And me, I always felt t...

I didn’t even belong in my own body—especially in my own body. I was changing into someone I didn’t know. The change hurt but I didn’t know why it hurt. And n...

When I was younger, I’d had this idea that I wanted to keep a journal. I sort of wrote things down in this little leather book I bought, filled with blank pages. But I was never disciplined about the whole thing. The journal turn...

When I was in the sixth grade, my parents gave me a baseball glove and a typewriter for my birthday. I was on a team so the glove made sense. But a typewriter? What was it about me that made them think of getting me a typewriter? I pretended to like it. But I wasn’t a good prete...

I didn’t know why I was thinking about all these things—except that’s what I always did. I guess I had my own personal television in my brain. I could control whatever I wanted to watch. I could switch the channels anytime I wanted.

I got to thinking about my older sisters and how they were so close to each other but so far away from me. I knew it was the age thing. That seemed to matter. To them. And to me. I was born “a little late.” That’s the expression my sisters used.

So I decided to confront my sisters because I just didn’t like being thought of that way. I don’t know, I just sort of lost it. I looked at my sister, Cecilia, and said: “You were born a little too early.” I smiled at her and shook my head. “Isn’t that sad? Isn’t that just too fucking sad?” My other sister, Sylvia, lectured me. “I hate that word. Don’t talk that way. That’s so disrespectful.” Like they respected me. Yeah, sure they did.

The good thing was that my sisters never used the expression “born too late” ever again. Not in front of me, anyway.

I think I was mad because I couldn’t talk to my brother. And I was mad because I couldn’t really talk to my sisters either. It’s not that my sisters didn’t care about me. It’s just that they mostly treated me more like a son than a brother. I didn’t need three mothers.

Talking to myself in my journal qualified as talking to someone my own age.

My mom was soft. But she was also very strict. I think that’s how she survived.

So I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

It’s like my mom and dad created a whole new world for themselves. I live in their new world. But they understand the old world, the world they came from—and I don’t. I don’t belong anywhere. That’s the problem.” “You do,” I said. “You belong everywhere you go. That’s just how you are.”

“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?” I wanted to tell him that the world would never belong to us. “I don’t know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

That was the first time that I really saw my mother as a person. A person who was so much more than just my mother. It was strange to think of her that way.

I wanted to ask her about my father, but I didn’t know how. “Was he different? When he came back from the war?” “Yes.” “How was he different?” “There’s a wound somewhere inside of him, Ari.”

“Mom? Can I ask you something?” “You can ask me anything.” “Is it hard to love him?” “No.” She didn’t even hesitate. “Do you understand him?” “Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”

Someday, I would understand my father. Someday he would tell me who he was. Someday. I hated that word.

I LIKED WHEN MY MOM TOLD ME ABOUT HOW SHE FELT about things. She seemed to be able to do that. Not that we talked that much, but sometimes we did and it was good and I felt like I knew her. And I didn’t feel like I knew a lot of people.

When she talked to me, she was different than when she was being my mother. When she was being my mother, she had a lot of ideas about who I should be. And I hated that, fought her on that, didn’t want her input.

There were so many ghosts in our house—the ghost of my brother, the ghosts of my father’s war, the ghosts of my sister’s voices. And I thought that maybe there were ghosts inside of me that I hadn’t even met yet. They were there. Lying in wait.

No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want to remind myself what an asshole I was?

bitter. But the worst part was that those words were living inside me. And they were leaking out of me. Words were not things you could control. Not always.

These are the things that are happening in my life (in no particular order):

- I got the flu and I feel terrible and I also feel terrible inside.

- I have always felt terrible inside. The reasons for t...

- I told my father I always had bad dreams. And that was true. I’d never told anyone that before. Not even myself. I onl...

- I hated my mom for a minute or two because she told me I didn...

- I want to know about my brother. If I knew more about him...

- My father held me in his arms when I had a fever and I wanted him to hold ...

- The problem is not that I don’t love my mother and father. The problem is that I do...

- Dante is the first friend I’ve ever had. ...

- I think that if Dante really knew me, he wo...

“You like poetry, Ari?” “Yeah. I guess I do.” “Maybe you’ll be a writer,” she said. “A poet.” It sounded like such a beautiful thing when she said it. Too beautiful for me.

We sat, drinking our tea and watching the rain fall on his front porch. The sky was almost black and then it started hailing. It was so beautiful and scary, I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

I knew I had done that before, walked barefoot on a wet sidewalk, knew I had felt the breeze against my face. But it didn’t feel like I’d ever done that. It felt like this was happening for the first time.

I looked at Dante, the breeze alive in his long, dark hair. “We’re leaving for a year,” he said. I was suddenly sad. No, not exactly sad. It felt like someone had punched me. “Leaving?”

Dante walked into the middle of the street and tried to pick up the bird. I watched him as he picked up the frightened bird. That’s the last thing I remember before the car swerved around the corner. Dante! Dante! I knew the screams were coming from inside me. Dante!

I remember thinking that it was all a dream. All of it. It was just another bad dream. I kept thinking that the world was ending. I thought about the sparrows falling from the sky. Dante!

Do you remember the summer of the rain . . . You must let everything fall that wants to fall. —Karen Fiser

I looked at my dad. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.” I didn’t really believe what I was saying. My father was wearing a serious smile. “Ari, Ari,” he said. “You’re the bravest boy in the world.” “I’m not.” “You are.” “I’m the guy who’s afraid of his own dreams, Dad. Remember?” I loved his smile. Why couldn’t he just smile all the time?

My mother just kept staring at me. “Where did Dad go?” “He went to get Dante. He hasn’t left. He’s been here for the last thirty-six hours—waiting for you to—” “Thirty-six hours?” “You had surgery.”

“You were in pain. They gave you something. Then you were out again.” “I don’t remember.” “The doctor said you probably wouldn’t.” “Did I say anything?” “You just moaned. You asked for Dante. He wouldn’t leave. He’s a very stubborn young man.” That made me smile. “Yeah, well, he wins all our arguments. Just like the ones I have with you.”