In the brilliant September noon light, the old couple sat down to eat brunch; they were seated at a nearby table and I watched them. There was nothing remarkable about the old man and the old woman. Clearly, they were tourists: the old man's hefty camera hanging like a scarlet letter around his neck. They were dressed conservatively in long monotone shorts. The old man wore a dun shirt, the old woman a light striped blouse.
There was nothing remarkable about the old couple, I noticed, until they started eating. The old man said a word to the woman, which I could not hear. She nodded. She made a motion that seemed to complete the sentence that the old man started but did not finish. In time, I noticed - or decided - that the old couple's movements while they ate communicated whole thoughts to each other. They were married, I decided. In fact, they had been married for 40 years.
After 40 years, the old couple had probably said all that they had to say to each other. After living together for so long, words had lost their sense of urgency. It was sufficient to be present, to still breathe in each other's company. This is how wordless telepathy develops, slowly, over the long years traced by photographs . . .
In one moment, the old man lifted his camera and aimed the lens across the small table at his wife, who was aware of the powerful zoom lens but was wholly unconcerned as she turned the pages of a magazine slowly, waiting for dessert.
It was then I noticed that the camera must have been quite expensive, armed with an enormous zoom lens, the kind that professional bird watchers would have. The old man pointed the lens at his favorite bird - who had by now become accustomed to having her casual preening captured - and fidgeted with the lens, the magnifying strength of the lens being tested to its limit.
There I decided that the old man was peering ever closer into his wife's face, to see what she had not yet shown through her words or her motions. There I decided that the old man could see the cells of his wife's face, dying on her cheeks - and he snapped the photo.
Then he adjusted the lens, going deeper still, deep within the dying cells, where the molecules were in constant motion despite death. Deeper still, the atoms within were a blur of screaming motion, colliding in tremendous explosions that released sub-atomic particles, the building blocks of all reality - and deep within the particles were more particles still, awaiting discovery by scientists searching for something to say to the modern world.
Past the speeding, blinding collisions the lens penetrated to the very depths until at the end of the smallest matter, the old man's eyes emerged at the other end of the universe, where gigantic clouds of interstellar dust signaled the long-dead presence of ancient stars that had been torn apart by the gravitational pull of a black hole that sucked in all light, all gas, all matter into yet another universe. But the lens could not peer through the darkness.
The old woman put the magazine to the side and raised her head. In response, the old man let the camera hang from his neck. Dessert had arrived.
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