Si existe un Dios, éste no sólo es un as en dejar huellas sino, sobre todo, un maestro en esconderse

The aphorism “Si existe un Dios, éste no sólo es un as en dejar huellas sino, sobre todo, un maestro en esconderse” places divine concealment alongside the universe’s silence. Recalled by the narrator as part of what Ana and José said on their first night at Maravu, it is also the only opening line José identifies as belonging to Comodín’s manifesto. The conversation that follows tests the saying against questions of history, authorship, and the human desire to understand the world.

The saying in its original recitation

The narrator begins by recalling the aphorism and the words that followed it: the world does not belong to those who talk too much, the firmament remains silent, and there is little gossip among the stars. He stops because these are the words he remembers Ana and José speaking beneath the palms on their first night at Maravu. The pause marks a boundary between remembered speech and what he can supply from memory; José completes the passage rather than letting the recollection stand unfinished.

José’s continuation turns the image of silence into a cosmic history. No one, he says, has forgotten the Big Bang; since then silence has reigned without interruption, while everything that exists moves away from everything else. A moon or a comet may still be encountered, but the sky offers no friendly cries of welcome and prints no calling cards. The aphorism’s hidden God thus belongs to a larger meditation on a universe that leaves traces of an origin yet gives no conversational answer to those looking for one.

The question of authorship

After José finishes, the narrator offers symbolic applause and asks whether the reference to the great explosion, or Big Bang, could have come from the dwarf who met El Planeta in Marseille. The question points to a chronological difficulty: the concept and theory are much more recent than the encounter invoked by the legend. The exchange does not establish that Comodín literally authored the later idea. Instead, the narrator’s objection makes the problem explicit: a phrase that seems to anticipate modern cosmology cannot straightforwardly be assigned to an earlier figure as a historical statement.

José first answers with a broader possibility. In his view, the mischievous figure can carry things back and forth across the centuries. He represents humanity’s continuing effort to understand what the world is, and José finds comfort in imagining a representative who can run in both directions through time, carrying messages and errands. The claim shifts the discussion from a question of who first formulated a theory to what Comodín signifies: a legendary courier for knowledge and human curiosity.

The manifesto’s limit and the saying’s reach

José quickly concedes that the narrator is right about the manifesto itself. It contains only the initial words of the saying: if God exists, he is not merely an ace at leaving tracks but a master at hiding. The longer passage about the Big Bang and cosmic silence belongs to the recitation recalled from Ana and José, not to the text José attributes to Comodín. That distinction preserves the manifesto’s narrower wording even as the surrounding conversation connects it to a much larger account of the universe.

The aphorism therefore works at two scales. As a compact line, it imagines divine presence as something inferred from traces and frustrated by concealment. In the conversation, it opens onto the silence of the stars, the receding universe, and the limits of historical attribution. The narrator and José do not resolve whether the saying points toward a hidden God; their exchange instead makes its uncertainty productive. The phrase holds together the possibility of evidence and the possibility that no available evidence can compel a final answer.

Recollection, legend, and the walk through Salamanca

The passage is framed as a conversation between the narrator and José, not as a detached exposition of the aphorism. The narrator’s remembered fragment prompts José to complete the recitation, while the narrator’s challenge prompts José to distinguish the manifesto from the longer words spoken at Maravu. The saying’s meaning consequently develops through acts of remembering, correcting, and interpreting rather than through a single authoritative account.

By the end of the exchange, the two have passed Plaza de Honduras and are descending Paseo de la República de Cuba. The ordinary movement through the city contrasts with the centuries-spanning figure José has just described: a messenger imagined as running through time while two people walk through Salamanca. The narrator then suggests that it may be time for a summary. The aphorism has served as both a remembered fragment and the hinge of a discussion about what can be known, what can be claimed as an origin, and why the thought of a courier between eras might offer comfort.

Significance

The saying’s central tension is contained in its image of tracks that do not disclose their maker. It does not deny that traces exist; it asks what those traces can establish when the universe itself remains silent. The conversation extends that tension from theology to cosmology and authorship: the Big Bang is remembered as the universe’s decisive event, yet the modern name and theory cannot simply be placed in an ancient manifesto. José’s imaginative answer allows legend to carry meanings across historical time without erasing the narrator’s factual correction.

In this way the aphorism belongs both to a manifesto and to an ongoing act of interpretation. Its wording presents concealment as the obstacle to certainty, while its reuse shows how a phrase can acquire further associations through recollection and debate. The passage does not turn those associations into proof. It leaves the hidden God, the silent firmament, and Comodín’s supposed journeys between centuries in productive proximity: possibilities that illuminate the human search for understanding without ending it.