Blasphemy

After a long silence Kate said, “Thank you for sharing that with us.”

At this Begay leaned back and rested his hands on his jeans. “In Dine culture, we believe in exchanging information. I’ve told you something about my work. Now I’d like to hear something of yours. Mr. Ford here tells me that over there at the Isabella project, you’re investigating something called the Big Bang.”

“That’s right.”

“I been thinking about that. If the universe was created in a Big Bang, what came before?”

“Nobody knows. Many physicists believe there was nothing. In fact, there wasn’t even a ‘before.’ Existence itself began with the Big Bang.”

Begay whistled. “So what caused the Bang?”

“That’s a difficult question to explain to a nonphysicist.”

“Try me.”

“The theory of quantum mechanics says things can just happen, without a cause.”

“You mean you don’t know the cause.”

“No, I mean there is no cause. The sudden creation of the universe from nothing may not violate any laws or be unnatural or unscientific in any way. Before, there was absolutely nothing. No space, no time, no existence. And then, it just happened—and existence came into being.”

Begay stared at her, then shook his head. “You’re talking like my nephew, Lorenzo. Smart boy, full scholarship to Columbia University, studied mathematics. It screwed him up—the whole Bilagaana world messed up his head. Dropped out, went to Iraq, came back believing in nothing. And I mean nothing. Now he sweeps out a damn church for a living. Or at least he used to, till he ran off.”

“You blame science for that?” Kate said.

Begay shook his head. “No, no, I’m not blaming science. It’s just that hearing you talk about how the world came into being out of nothing, it sounded like the kind of nonsense he spouts . . . . How could the Creation just happen?”

“I’ll try to explain. Stephen Hawking proposed the idea that before the Big Bang, time didn’t exist. Without time, there can’t be any kind of definable existence. Hawking was able to show mathematically that nonexistence still has some kind of spatial potential, and that under certain weird conditions space can turn into time and vice versa. He showed that if a tiny, tiny bit of space morphed into time, the appearance of time would trigger the Big Bang—because suddenly there could be movement, there could be cause and effect, there could be real space and real energy. Time makes it all possible. To us, the Big Bang looks like an explosion of space, time, and matter from a single point. But here’s the really weird part. If you peer into that first tiny fraction of a second, you’ll see there wasn’t a beginning at all—time seems to have always existed. So here we have a theory of the Big Bang that seems to say two contradictory things: first, that time did not always exist; and second, that time has no beginning. Which means that time is eternal. Both are true. And if you really think about it, when time didn’t exist, there could be no difference between eternity and a second. So once time came into existence, it had always existed. There was never a time when it didn’t exist.”

Begay shook his head. “That’s just plain crazy.”

An awkward silence settled in the shabby living room.

“Do the Navajo have a creation story?” Kate asked.

“Yes. We call it the Dine Bahane. It’s not written down. You have to memorize it. It takes nine nights to chant it. That’s the Blessing Way I told you about—it’s a chant that tells the story of the creation of the world. You chant it in the presence of a sick person and the story heals them.”

“You memorized it?”

“Sure did, my uncle taught it to me. Took five years.”

“About the same as my Ph.D.,” said Kate.

Begay looked pleased by the comparison.

“Will you chant a few lines?”

Begay said, “The Blessing Way shouldn’t be chanted casually.”

“I’m not sure we’re having a casual conversation.”

He looked at her intently. “Yes, maybe so.”

Begay closed his eyes. When he opened his mouth, his voice quavered and was pitched high, as he chanted in a strange five-tone scale. The non-Western harmonics and the sounds of the Navajo words—a few still familiar, but most not—filled Ford with a longing for something he had no name for.

After about five minutes, Begay stopped. His eyes were damp. “That’s how it begins,” he said quietly. “It’s the most beautiful poetry ever written, at least in my opinion.”

“Can you translate it for us?” asked Kate.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that. Well, here goes.” He took a deep breath.

Of it he is thinking, he is thinking. Long ago of it, he is thinking. Of how darkness will come into being, he is thinking. Of how Earth will come into being, he is thinking. Of how blue sky will come into being, he is thinking. Of how yellow dawn will come into being, he is thinking. Of how evening twilight will come into being, he is thinking. Of dark moss dew he is thinking, of horses he is thinking. Of order he is thinking, of beauty he is thinking. Of how everything will increase without decreasing, he is thinking .

He stopped. “It doesn’t sound good in English, but that’s sort of how it goes.”

“Who is this ‘he’?” Kate asked.

“The Creator.”

Kate smiled. “Tell me, Mr. Begay: Who created the Creator?”

Begay shrugged. “The stories don’t tell us that.”

“What came before Him?”

“Who knows?”

Kate said, “It seems that both of our creation stories have origin problems.”

From the kitchen sink, a drip of water splatted into the silence, then another, and another. Finally Begay rose and limped over to turn it off. “This was an interesting conversation,” he said, returning. “But there’s a real world out there, and in it is a horse who needs new shoes.”

They stepped out into the brilliant sun. As they walked back to the corrals, Ford said, “One of the things we wanted to tell you, Mr. Begay, is that tomorrow we’re doing a run of Isabella. Everyone will be underground. When you and your riders arrive, I’ll be the only one there to meet you.”

“We aren’t doing a ‘meet and greet.’”

“I didn’t want you to think we were being disrespectful.”

Begay patted his horse and stroked his flank. “Look, Mr. Ford, we got our own plans. We’re going to set up a sweat lodge, do some ceremonies, talk to the ground. We’ll be peaceful. When the police come to arrest us, we’ll go quietly.”

“The police aren’t going to come,” said Ford.

Begay looked disappointed. “No police?”

“Should we call them?” Ford asked dryly.

Begay smiled. “I suppose I had a fantasy of being arrested for the cause.” He turned his back and plucked up the horse’s leg with one hand, the paring knife with the other. “Easy, boy,” he murmured, as he began to pare and trim.

Ford glanced at Kate. On the ride back, he would come clean.

35

BY THE TIME FORD AND KATE reached the top of the mesa, the sun was so low, it seemed to wobble at the horizon. As they rode quietly through the blooming snakeweed, Ford tried for the hundredth time to frame what he wanted to say. If he didn’t start talking, they’d be back at Isabella—and he’d have missed his chance.

“Kate?” he began, riding up alongside her.

She turned.

“I asked you on this ride for another reason besides visiting Begay.”

She gazed at him, her hair like black gold in the sunlight, her eyes already narrowing in suspicion. “Why do I have a feeling this is something I’m not going to like?”