She opens the window’s door and it’s Hannah, God help him, there in the room, aged twelve, in the shape of a boy. Oh hello, Daniel says. Hi, Hannah says. Where’ve you been all this time? he says. The traffic was busier than they thought it’d be, Hannah says. But so very long, Daniel says. I thought time had quite undone us. On the contrary, time and space are what lace us all up together, Hannah says. What makes us part of the larger picture. Universally speaking. The problem is, we tend to think we’re separate. But it’s a delusion. Ah, Daniel says. Of course I’m quoting Einstein, Hannah says. Well, paraphrasing. He said the only real religion humans can have is the matter of freeing ourselves from the delusion first that we’re separate from each other and second that we’re separate from the universe, and the only peace of mind we’ll ever get, he says, is when we try and overcome this delusion. He said this in a letter to a man whose son, who was eleven, had just died of polio. In exactitude you know if today was February the 12th it would be the seventieth anniversary to the day of Einstein sending this letter to the man. But the actual anniversary will happen on Wednesday this week. In exactitude. Ah, Daniel says.
