He dreamed of a cathedral of sorts, an unfinished, perhaps unfinishable, masterpiece of towers and spires and soaring buttresses, too vast to exist in the physical world—gravity denied it—but here, in his head, an awesome reality. It was night as he walked toward it, the gravel crunching underfoot, the air smelling of honeysuckle, and from inside he could hear singing. Ecstatic voices, a boys’ choir he thought, rising and falling wordlessly. There were no people visible in the silken darkness around him: no fellow tourists to gape at this wonder. Just him, and the voices.
