“But how is it you do not understand . . .” Holecek was giving himself a lot of trouble. “He disappeared like a shadow, as if he had passed through the wall.”
“I quite understand. Always lacked balance, in everything, always inconstant. He never enquired whether a thing was allowed, as if he had neither conscience nor limits. How many times did he not astound us!”
“But is it possible to vanish?”
“I don’t know. My brother is not learned, has no notion of science, no idea of what is possible and what is not possible. Truly, he always showed supreme contempt for all instruction.”
Holecek banged the table with his fist. “Is it then of no moment?”
“What is of moment?” asked Boura calmly, raising his eyes.
“No man can vanish . . . you see . . . there are . . .”
“Physical limits, you were going to say. Yes, I know. You had already told me so in connection with the imprint on the snow. Physical limits! Set great store by them, eh? See here: I have seen many things and read about many more, and of the lot the thing I understand best of all is the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus. I have seen a dead girl. . . . Oh, in this miserable world of machinery one single thing were truly natural: the supernatural, a miracle. That alone would answer to all man has most deeply . . .”
“Miracles, yes, that’s all right,” said Holecek. “To save some one, to cure the sick, above all to give life again to those who have died young. . .. But of what use is what I have just witnessed? Whom does it profit? If there is a miracle, why has it no purpose? Nothing comes out of it . . . nothing.”
“And even supposing nothing did come out of it . . . it remains a miracle all the same. In ourselves too, there happen things at times that serve no obvious end . . . except their own perfection. They are unexpected bursts of freedom . . . even though they last but an instant. If events were shaped as is natural within our souls, miracles would happen all the time!”
