#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai
A chef is among 100 prisoners, chained together, being
marched through town. He was caught giving aid to rebels, although all he did
was feed people who sat at his table. He was after all, a chef. Somehow he
escapes his binding, but that leaves the chain, one man short. The guards
arrest the nearest man, a professor, strip him of his briefcase, and clothes
and add him unjustly to the prison ranks.
The chef, after all the prisoners leave, picks up the professors briefcase
and creates a new life in exile. He spends his time reading the professors
papers on the nature of the universe. For months, he eats, sleeps and ruminates
philosophically on existence:
“The light of my cigarette is a fire like the sun. From
where I sit, all the universe is equidistant from my cigarette. Ergo, my
cigarette is the center of the universe. My cigarette is on earth. Ergo, the
earth is the center of the universe. If all heavenly bodies move, they must
therefore move in relation to the earth, and in relation to my cigarette.”
Of course, not having any training in physics or science,
his theories about the cosmos were all wrong, but it didn’t matter, did it? The
war had flipped the world upside-down and…“The universe has been folded inside
out.”
When you literally can no longer be yourself, who are you?
Where are you? Why are we here?
Notable Passage: “History was safer than the news, because
there was no question of how it would end.”
