The Map of Chaos

  On the afternoon of July fourth, a rowing boat manned by a clergyman, a married couple, and three small girls glided down a tributary of the Thames on the way to the village of Godstow. The sky was such a glorious blue it seemed to color the whole world, the boat slid gently over the tremulous mirror of the water, while the landscape seemed to be slumbering, so intense was the stillness, disturbed only by the splash of oars and three childish voices imploring, in ever more imperious tones, “Tell us a story, Charles, please.” And when he considered it convenient, Dodgson, who had been pretending to be asleep simply to infuriate them, stretched his limbs slowly and decided to indulge them. Accompanied by the sleepy buzzing of insects, he started to tell them the story of a girl called Alice who fell down a rabbit hole, and ended up in a wonderful world where the only rule seemed to be if you can imagine it, then it could exist. “Is that one of your made-up stories, Charles?” Wells, who was rowing at the stern, inquired with a mischievous grin. “O-Of course, George. I am m-making it up as we go along,” Dodgson replied, winking at him. And all day long, as they made their way downstream, and in the meadow where they picnicked in the shade of a golden haystack, Dodgson held both the little girls and the Wellses spellbound with his tale. The couple would grin at each other whenever they recognized one of their own adventures through the filter of Dodgson’s imagination. Wells couldn’t have been provided with a better example of a man using his imagination without the need to inhale fairy dust. Yes, Dodgson’s imagination took wing with only a golden light and three enraptured girls to help him. Later on, when they headed back to drop the children off at the deacon’s residence, Alice, the real Alice, the ten-year-old girl for whom Dodgson had invented that tale, took his hand in hers, and, gazing with unusual solemnity into his eyes, she said, as if for the last time, “I would like you to write down Alice’s adventures for me, Charles.”

  And if there was one man in the world incapable of refusing a little girl’s request, that man was Charles Dodgson. He stayed up all night consigning to the page the weird and wonderful images with which he had tried to hypnotize Alice that afternoon, as though hoping to capture her attention forever. A few days later, he went to deliver the fruits of his wakeful night to her: a bundle of folios covered in the black scrawls of his long, curvy handwriting and sprinkled with his own illustrations, but Mrs. Liddell was having none of it. She was so adamant that from then on his meetings with the girls became as fleeting as they were intense, and so tinged with guilt, that, when they were over, Dodgson invariably sank into a depression. Wells and Jane did their best to console him, assuring him that Alice would one day grow into a woman, and if they knew her as well as they thought, she wouldn’t give tuppence about her parents’ opinion. All he had to do was remain in Christ Church, close to the girl, and wait until she turned into the uncomplicated, passionate woman they knew she would become. He must wait. Wait until he could marry her.

  However, being able to see Alice for only a few fleeting moments each day tormented Dodgson, and, after grappling with his secret pain for a year, Christmas 1863 seemed to give him the perfect pretext to present her with the manuscript he had written for her, provisionally entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. At the insistence of the girls, above all Alice, who threatened to stop eating until she was a hundred if they didn’t let her accept her present, the Liddells were obliged to relent, although there was nothing to prevent them from receiving the young professor with unimaginable coldness. But Dodgson would not let himself be deterred by such an inauspicious beginning. He had gone to the Liddells’ house with a definite aim, and he was determined to carry it through. And so, at some point during the afternoon, between pitiful stammers and nervous digressions, he posed the following question to the self-righteous Mr. Liddell and the horrified Mrs. Liddell: “Might it be p-possible, s-seven or eight years from now, when Alice is a woman, and assuming she reciprocates my feelings, for you to consider, er . . . a u-union between us?” Despite Dodgson’s good intentions and the genuineness of his feelings, the effect was the same as if he had collected a barrow of cow dung and emptied it over them. And so the Liddells, who dreamed of marrying their pretty daughters into the aristocracy, if possible to someone of royal descent, replied without even conferring: “Never.” It was clear that never before had they agreed so firmly about anything.

  Everyone acknowledged that, of all the blunders Dodgson had made in his life, this was undoubtedly his greatest. After Dodgson’s outrageous proposal of marriage, Mrs. Liddell resolutely forbade any more communal boat trips, or indeed any meeting that didn’t take place under her strict surveillance. Even so, during the months that followed, Dodgson remained hopeful that things would go back to normal. With childlike naïveté, he was convinced their golden afternoons would return, that summer would survive the onset of autumn, and he clung to those ideas, continuing to impart his lectures as best he could, yet increasingly prey to resentment and apathy. And where five years before the Wellses had wondered what they would have done without their young friend, now it was Dodgson’s turn to wonder what would have become of him without his friends from the Other Side. Wells and Jane strove to watch over him and, to cheer him up, reminded him that in the world they came from his love for Alice had overcome far greater obstacles. However, Dodgson would listen with a rueful smile before saying, “My dear sprites, I fear that in this theater the play will end very differently for me.” Fortunately, his revision of the manuscript of Alice’s adventures, and his search for a publisher, kept him occupied for a time. At last, on July 4, 1865, the third anniversary of the golden afternoon on which it was invented, The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland was published by Macmillan under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. On that same day, Alice Liddell received her copy. And Dodgson waited anxiously for a thank-you letter that never came.

  However, he scarcely had time to feel sorry for himself, for he was swept away by the overnight success of his book by a tide of literary events and public receptions, which once again kept him busy. It also allowed the Wellses to reflect further about the matter that for the past few weeks had been occupying their minds, and about which they had said nothing to Dodgson for fear it would plunge him even deeper into despair. If the roles they were acting out on that stage coincided in time with the world they came from, the following year, on September 21, 1866, to be precise, a baby boy named Herbert George Wells would be born in Bromley, and six years later a baby girl called Amy Catherine Robbins, who would be Wells’s pupil and then his wife. And for some reason they were still unable to fathom, the Wellses felt duty-bound to remain as close as they could to their twins, who would soon take to the stage. They could find no logical justification for such a profound conviction, unless their gift for observation, which had so far served the sole purpose of driving them crazy, was warning them about something their conscious minds were unaware of. Taking advantage of the fact that the queen herself had sent a letter congratulating Dodgson on his wonderful book, and that this had perked him up a bit, the Wellses resolved to tell him their plans, a little nervous that he might not respond well to being abandoned. But once more their friend surprised them. He encouraged them to move to London at the first opportunity and even declared that he might go with them. “Yes, w-why not?” he said, a flash of excitement in his eyes. “I’ve had enough of all this, of teaching math to a lot of impudent young men, of being pressured by Liddell . . . Why, I’m the famous Lewis Carroll! I can devote myself to writing. And you, George, might try to find a post at the Normal School of Science, where your young twin will study, assuming he follows in your footsteps . . . Just imagine that! You his teacher, a witness to or even the architect of his intellectual coming-of-age! . . . London, the great capital, far away from the meadows and our golden afternoons . . . Yes, I b-believe that would be for the best . . .”

  The Wellses also believed it would, but their belief was genuine.

  This being the case, the three friends concurred that when Dodgson returned fr
om a trip to Europe and Russia, which he had promised to go on with his friend the Reverend Henry Liddon, they would arrange his move to London without delay.

  But Dodgson never returned.

  One windy November evening, two months after baby Wells came into the world, Professor Dodgson informed Reverend Liddon, with whom he had just had supper in the sumptuous dining room aboard the ship that was ferrying them home to England, that he needed to take a little air before retiring to his cabin. Liddon warned him that this might not be such a good idea, as the sea was quite rough. “Oh, I have very good reasons to think that my death won’t occur for another thirty-two years, my friend,” said Dodgson; he grinned at him mysteriously and began to leave the dining room. “Not that way,” Liddon told him, “the other way.” Dodgson observed both exits, and then his blue eyes settled on the reverend once more. “When you don’t know where you are going, any path will do,” he said with bitterness, before walking out of the dining room, leaving behind his notebook, which had been with him throughout the trip. Shaking his head, Liddon picked up the notebook to leaf through it while he finished his coffee. In it Dodgson had described, with a child’s enchanted gaze, all the palaces, museums, theaters, churches, and synagogues they had seen over the past months. Reading those words, Liddon felt as though he had spent the entire trip blindfolded. He slipped the notebook into his pocket, meaning to return it to his friend the following morning; only Dodgson did not show up at breakfast time. After a thorough search of the entire ship, it was concluded he must have fallen overboard. Reverend Liddon stood for a long while on deck, staring at the grey waters, imagining Dodgson on the seabed, telling stories to fish and enchanting mermaids with his syllogisms.

  When the news reached Oxford that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, had disappeared, swallowed up by the ocean, the whole university mourned his passing, as did all of England and the rest of the world: Who could begin to imagine the great works of literature humanity would lose because of that untimely tragedy! But, unquestionably, those who suffered his loss the most were the Wellses, from whom Dodgson had twice been taken. The wreath of flowers that the couple laid on his grave the day of his crowded funeral was much remarked upon by the other mourners, for no one could make sense of the words inscribed on the satin ribbon:

  CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON (1832–1898–1866)

  OUR DEAR FRIEND, WE MOURN YOU IN MORE THAN ONE WORLD. GEORGE AND CATHERINE LANSBURY

  25

  PROFESSOR LANSBURY WOKE UP IN the middle of the night, his heart pounding, drenched in sweat, clutching his wife’s arm as if it were the only thing preventing him from falling off the edge of the world, and cried out the same words his mother was yelling at that very moment in other universes with equal terror: I’m dying!

  Let me explain, dear reader, that despite their deafening howls, most of the Sarah Neal Wellses scattered throughout the many universes were hardened women, accustomed to confronting the trials and tribulations of life with heroic fortitude, and furthermore, in most cases, this child who would be named Herbert George was not their firstborn. However, they were all terrified of childbirth. Labor pains horrified them, and since, to put it mildly, they weren’t exactly paragons of self-control, each time the dreaded contractions ripped through them, their screams woke half of Bromley and the neighboring villages of the habitually quiet county of Kent. And while the supposedly moribund Mrs. Wellses lay on their beds, their backs arched and their eyes bulging, Professor Lansbury remained curled up on his, also insisting between groans that he was dying, as well as other still more terrifying nonsense, which his alarmed spouse found hard to understand.

  “For God’s sake, Bertie . . . What’s happening to you?” Jane sobbed. “Tell me what to do.”

  “Jane . . . I can’t breathe,” her husband gasped.

  “Shall I open the window?

  “No, water . . . I need water,” Wells implored, just as his infinite mothers broke their waters.

  Jane ran to the kitchen and returned with a glass full to the brim.

  “Here, my dear, drink this . . .”

  “No!” Wells cried, snatching the glass from her and pouring the contents over his face. “I need water to breathe. My lungs are dry, they hurt!”

  “Bertie . . .”

  The dousing seemed to calm her husband, but after a while he began howling again, perching on the edge of the bed and glancing about in terror.

  “The walls! They’re closing in on me, they’re crushing me!” He tried to halt their nonexistent advance, arms outstretched, only to fall back on to the bed seconds later, almost unconscious. For a few minutes he lay gasping for air, like a fish out of water. Then it all started again: “My head!” he cried, clutching his skull with both hands even as his infinite mothers pushed downward, the veins on their necks bulging, their faces distorted, gripping the heads of their infinite beds. “They’re squeezing my head! It’s going to burst!”

  “Bertie, no one is . . .”

  “Why are you shouting, woman?”

  “I’m not shouting, dear . . . ,” Jane assured him, her eyes filled with tears.

  “I can hear a woman shouting. No, lots of them . . . all shouting . . . Make them stop! Please, Jane, I beg you, make them stop. I can’t breathe . . .”

  This wailing went on for many, many hours, and at no point did Jane rush off to fetch a doctor, because, after her initial shock, she quickly realized what was happening to her husband. When, the next afternoon, Wells finally stopped shouting and burst into tears, amid cries of joy, unable to express in words the immeasurable feeling of relief that spread through his whole body, relaxing him to the point where he even thought his bones had shaken loose, Jane remained by his side, stroking his hair, sticky with sweat, until he fell asleep.

  “You weren’t dying, my dear . . . ,” she whispered gently. “You were being born.”

  In fact, had he not been overwhelmed by that tumult of sensations, Wells would also have known instantly what was happening to him. Not for nothing had he been experiencing the most peculiar, beautiful dreams during the past few months. Dreams where he was floating in a warm, pink liquid. Bobbing contentedly in this kind of magical elixir, he occasionally drank from it and could feel the fluid filling all his cavities. He was lulled by a pounding heart, which seemed to have been echoing in that chamber from the beginning of time like some primordial drum, drowning out the other mysterious, soporific noises absorbed by the silence. In this gentle, warm place, Wells felt blessed, safe from all harm. There was no such thing as cold, pain, loneliness, fear, and anger . . . He was filled with a sense of boundless peace and a foolish, inexplicable happiness, but above all a stubborn desire to remain there forever. When he told Jane of these incredibly vivid recurring dreams, they both concluded that Wells was perceiving the sensations all his twins were experiencing as they prepared to be born in their different worlds, sleeping a dreamless sleep in their mothers’ wombs. Wells and Jane realized with amazement that they were possibly the only beings in all creation who had been given the privilege of witnessing such a miracle: of going back to their mothers’ wombs and feeling afresh all those sensations, forgotten by the rest of humanity. They were the recipients of an unexpected slice of the Supreme Knowledge. And yet, inevitably, they were filled with niggling doubts: if the connection with their twins in this universe was going to be as intense as Wells’s dreams suggested, what would happen once they were born? Would the vague murmur they constantly heard at the back of their minds turn into something even worse? Perhaps a deafening clamor of sensations and images, so strong and intense that they would be cast forever into the abyss of madness?

  Their gloomy predictions came true two months sooner than expected, because several of Wells’s twins decided to bring forward their arrival in this world. It was clear that the different clocks in the different theaters, and even on the different stages, weren’t synchronized but kept different times, which meant that some performances started be
fore others. The following months were a complete torment for Wells, who experienced the same horrific seizures each time the miracle of life occurred in another universe. It seemed as if his twins lacked the most basic organizational skills, because, far from arranging to be born all at the same time, they had decided to come out each according to his whim, causing a series of staggered births that threatened to undermine Wells’s sanity. There were days when the attacks were less ferocious, probably because fewer twins were being born, and Wells managed to grin and bear them, curling up on his bed in the dark, clasping Jane’s hand in his, a vinegar compress on his forehead, as if he were suffering from a common migraine. He was reminded of the regular headaches he used to get and concluded that they must be due to random births of twins in universes where time moved at a quicker pace. He also recalled the strange visions that had assailed him, and that he had assumed were hallucinations caused by the relentless sensation of randomness. Now it dawned on him, not without some trepidation, that he must have been connecting with twins who had already been born. It felt as if he was in a stretch of universal time where the worlds were in a state of effervescence, and his twins were bursting onto the stage like a rowdy horde while all the sensations he had were multiplying infinitely. Often the rate of these births would peak so intensely that Wells could only bear the pain by taking laudanum, which Jane administered in such large doses that he almost lost consciousness. The worst day of all was September 21, 1866, his own birthday. It seemed as if most of his twins had decided to follow their elder brother’s example after all, and everything that had occurred before then had been no more than a quick rehearsal before the main event. That day, Jane was convinced that the terror would cause her husband’s mind to snap, that his body would be unable to endure the massive doses of laudanum, that he would either die or go insane, and that she would be powerless to prevent it. But Wells’s mind did not snap, and although the agony continued for several months while the stragglers were being born, it gradually became less intense, until the day finally came when everything appeared to be over. After two weeks without a single attack, Wells and Jane concluded that almost all his infinite twins had appeared on their respective stages. However, this apparent hiatus brought no respite, because when Wells managed to sweep away the lingering cobwebs in which the laudanum had shrouded his brain, he realized with horror that everything had changed inexorably, and for the worse.