SEARCHING FOR NADA

J. J. Haas

 

My search for legendary author Alejandro Nada began and ended in the timeless little town of Navarro on the outskirts of Buenos Aires on June 14, 1959. As the train crawled to a stop at the station, I picked up my leather satchel, heavy with the weight of the revolver, and stepped onto the rickety wooden platform. The station was unmarked.

“Navarro?” I asked a vaguely familiar young man.

“Navarro,” he said.

I descended the wooden steps and found the solitary dirt road mentioned in one of Nada's short stories. The morning was cold and bright. I followed the road for several miles, turning left at every fork, until I reached a gazebo in the middle of a garden. I thought I smelled something burning in the distance as I climbed the steps to the gazebo. Nada was waiting for me there.

“I've been expecting you,” he said.

We sat down across from one another at a small table, like two chess grandmasters meeting for the first time. I laid the leather satchel down on the ground, leaning it gently against the instep of my right foot. I rubbed my hands together several times to keep warm. I had been waiting for this moment forever.

“I want to ask you a question,” I said.

“A question?”

“Yes, a question. And I want a straight answer.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Is there a God?” I asked.

“Is there a God?” he repeated.

“Is there a God?” I confirmed.

“What makes you think I can answer that question?”

“Because you are Nada.”

“I'm afraid you're mistaken. I am myself. Nada, the one in my stories, is just a figment of your imagination. You are as much Nada as I am.”

I pulled the revolver out of the satchel and laid it on the table. “I said I wanted a straight answer. Is there or is there not a God? Yes or no.”

“That is a different question,” he said. “Which question would you like answered?”

I picked up the revolver and released the safety.

“Allow me to elaborate,” he continued. “Not only am I not Nada, but I am not even the self I was a moment ago, or the self I will be a moment from now. There are an infinite number of selves that I am, one for every moment. Therefore, your question—if it is not an unanswerable question—must be asked and answered by every Nada in every moment of his life. Likewise, you must also ask and answer that question yourself in every moment of your life. I cannot answer that question for you.”

I pulled back the hammer and pointed the revolver at his heart.

“Then answer me this,” I said. “Do you believe in God at this very moment?”

“That is yet another question,” he said.

I pulled the trigger three times, once for each unanswered question. He slumped over in his chair. I calmly returned the revolver to the table, got up from my chair, and walked over to Nada to check his pulse. As I leaned over, the legendary author whispered.

“I can see infinity.”

Then he died, the hint of a smile on his face.

I dragged Nada's body into the garden behind the gazebo, then found an old gas can hidden near the main house. I took the gas can back into the garden, poured the gasoline on the body, and struck a match.

It is perhaps a meaningless question to ask if I could have prevented this tragedy. In the endless labyrinth of time I have always killed Nada, I am always killing Nada, and I will always kill Nada. However, as I stood there warming my frozen hands over the burning corpse, I found some solace in Nada's final words. In the same moment that I had accepted my fate by pulling the trigger, perhaps Nada had found his own redemption at last. This offered me a modicum of hope for my own future. Although I could not have prevented myself from committing this horrible crime, perhaps with time I, too, could find my peace with God.

I returned to the gazebo and cleaned up the mess. Soon all of the signs of the crime had been erased. Even the smell of burning flesh had begun to subside. I sat down in Nada's chair and looked out over the dirt road. In a few minutes I saw a vaguely familiar figure walking through the garden to meet me at the gazebo. I rose to meet him as he ascended the steps.

“I've been expecting you,” I said. 

J. J. Haas is a short story writer and poet whose fiction is available on Amazon in an ebook collection titled Searching for Nada. He has published fiction and poetry in a wide variety of magazines, including Shenandoah, Rattle, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Baen's Universe, and Writer's Digest. He lives in a suburb of Atlanta.