The Map of Time

  That other Andrew, who after all was him, his own flesh and blood, would be able to fulfill all his dreams. He would be able to make her his wife, to love her regardless of his father’s opposition and their neighbors” malicious gossip, and he only wished the other Andrew could know what a miracle that was. How during the past eight years while he had been tormenting himself, his luckier self had never stopped loving her for a single moment, populating the world with the fruit of all that love.

  “I understand,” he murmured, smiling wanly at his friends.

  Wells was unable to suppress a cry of triumph: “That’s wonderful,” he exclaimed, while Charles and Jane resumed again patting him on the back with encouragement.

  “Do you know why during my journeys into the past I always avoided seeing myself?” Wells asked, without caring whether anyone was listening. “Because if I had, it would mean that at some point in my life I would have been obliged to walk through the door and greet myself, which thankfully for my sanity has never happened.” After embracing his cousin repeatedly in a renewed display of euphoria, Charles helped him up out of his chair, while Jane straightened his jacket with a motherly gesture.

  “Perhaps those troubling sounds we hear in the night, the creaking noises we assume are the furniture, are simply the footsteps of a future self watching over us as we sleep, without daring to disturb us,” Wells mused, oblivious to the general rejoicing.

  It was only when Charles went to shake his hand that he appeared to emerge from his reverie.

  “Thanks awfully for everything, Mr. Wells,” said Charles. “I apologize for having burst into your house like that. I hope you can forgive me.” “Don’t worry, don’t worry. All is forgotten,” replied the writer, with a vague wave of his hand, as though he had discovered something salutary, revivifying about having a gun aimed at him.

  “What will you do with the machine, will you destroy it?” Andrew ventured, timidly.

  Wells gazed at him, smiling benevolently.

  “I suppose so,” he replied, “now it has fulfilled the mission for which it was quite possibly invented.” Andrew nodded, unable to help being moved by his solemn words. He did not consider his personal tragedy the only one that warranted the use of the machine that had come into Wells’s possession. But he was grateful that the author, who scarcely knew him, had sympathized enough with his misfortune to have considered it a good enough reason to flout the laws of time, in order to change its very fabric and put the world in danger.

  “I also think it’s for the best, Mr. Wells,” said Andrew, having recovered from his emotion, “because you were right. There is a guardian of time, someone who watches over the past. I bumped into him when I came back, in the doorway to your house.” “Really,” said Wells, taken aback.

  “Yes, although luckily I managed to frighten him off,” replied Andrew.

  With this, he clasped the author in a heartfelt embrace. Beaming all over their faces, Charles and Jane contemplated the scene, which would have been frankly moving were it not for the awkward stiffness with which Wells greeted Andrew’s affectionate gesture. When Andrew finally let go of the author, Charles said his good-byes to the couple, steering his cousin out of the house lest he throw himself once more at the alarmed author.

  Andrew crossed the garden vigilantly, right hand in his pocket feeling the pistol, afraid the guardian of time might have followed him back to the present and be lying in wait for him. But there was no sign of him. Waiting for them outside the gate was the cab that had brought them there only a few hours before, a few hours which to Andrew seemed like centuries.

  “Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,” said his cousin, after Andrew had clambered into the cab. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.” Andrew nodded absentmindedly, and settled into his seat, utterly exhausted. Through the cab’s tiny window he surveyed the encircling darkness as day began to dawn. Like a coat wearing thin at the elbows, night was beginning to unravel at one of the farthest edges of the sky, its opaqueness gradually diluting into an ever paler blue, until a hazy light slowly began to reveal the contours of the world. With the exception of the driver, apparently asleep on his seat, it was as if this stunning display of golden and purple hues was being performed solely for his benefit. Many times over the past few years when Andrew had witnessed the majestic unveiling of dawn he had wondered whether that day he would die, whether that day his increasing torment would compel him to shoot himself with a pistol like the one he was now carrying in his pocket, the one he had removed from its glass cabinet the previous evening without knowing he would end up using it to kill Jack the Ripper. But now he could not watch the dawn and wonder whether he would be alive to see it again tomorrow, for he knew the answer: he would see the dawn tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because he had no way of justifying killing himself now that he had saved Marie. Should he go ahead with his plan out of sheer inertia, or simply because, as Wells had pointed out, he was in the wrong universe? This did not seem like a good enough reason. In any event, it felt less noble, not to mention that it might imply a fundamentally absurd jealousy of his time twin. After all, he was the other Andrew, and he ought to rejoice in his good fortune as he would his own, or failing that, that of his brother or his cousin Charles. Besides, if the grass in next door’s garden was always greener, how much more luxuriantly verdant must it be in the neighboring universe? He should feel pleased at being happy in another world, to have at least achieved bliss in the adjoining realm.

  Reaching this conclusion threw up another unexpected question: did knowing that you had achieved the life you wanted in another world absolve you from having to try to achieve it in this one? At first, Andrew did not know how to answer this question, but after a few moments” thought, he decided it did: he was absolved from being happy; he could be content to lead a peaceful existence, enjoying life’s small pleasures without the slightest feeling of inner frustration. For, however trite it might seem, he could always console himself with the happy thought that he was living a full life in another place that was both nearby and at the same time far away, a place that was inaccessible, uncharted, because it was on the reverse of any map.

  Suddenly, he experienced an incredible sense of relief, as though a burden he had been carrying since birth had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt unfettered, reckless, and wild. He had an overwhelming desire to reconnect with the world, to tread the common path of life again with the rest of humanity, to send a note to Victoria Keller, or to her sister Madeleine if Victoria was the one Charles had married, inviting her to dinner or to the theater or for a walk in a park where he could ambush her, brush his lips against hers—simply because he was aware that at the same time he would also not be doing that. For it seemed this was the way the universe worked: excluding nothing, allowing everything to happen that could happen. Even if he did decide to kiss her, another Andrew would refrain from doing so, and would carry on rolling down the hill of time until he came to another pair of lips and split into another twin who, after dividing a few more times, would finally plunge over a cliff into the abyss of solitude.

  Andrew leaned back in his seat, amazed that each of life’s twists and turns should give rise to a new existence vying with the old one to see which was the most authentic, instead of falling like sawdust and being swept away by the carpenter’s broom.

  It made him giddy just to think that at each crossroads, clutches of other Andrews were born, and their lives went on at the same time as his, beyond the moment when his own life ended, without him being aware of it, because ultimately it was man’s limited senses which established the boundaries of the world. But what if, like a magician’s box, the world had a false bottom and continued beyond the point where his senses told him it stopped? This was the same as asking whether roses kept their colors when there was no one to admire them. Was he right or was he losing his mind? This was obviously a rhetorical question, and yet the world took the trouble to respond. A soft breeze suddenly spra
ng up, lifting a leaf from among the many carpeting the pavement and making it dance on the surface of a puddle, like a magic trick performed for a single onlooker. Mesmerized, Andrew watched it spin until his cousin’s shoe halted its delicate movement.

  “All right, we can go now,” said Charles waving his hat triumphantly, like a hunter showing off a bloodstained duck.

  Once inside the cab, he raised an eyebrow, surprised at the dreamy smile on his cousin’s face.

  “Are you feeling all right, Andrew?” Andrew gazed at his cousin fondly. Charles had moved heaven and earth to help him save Marie Kelly, and he was going to repay him in the best way he could: by staying alive, at least until his moment arrived. He would pay Charles back threefold for all the affection he had shown him over these past years, years he now felt ashamed to have wasted out of apathy and indifference. He would embrace life, yes, embrace it as he would a wondrous gift, and devote himself to living it to the best of his ability, the way everyone else did, the way Charles did. He would transform life into a long, peaceful Sunday afternoon in which he would while away the time until nightfall. It could not be that difficult: he might even learn to enjoy the simple miracle of being alive.

  “Better than ever, Charles,” he replied, suddenly perking up. “So good, in fact, that I would gladly accept an invitation to dine at your house, provided your charming wife also invites her equally charming sister.”

  17

  This part of the story could end here, and sure enough for Andrew it does, except that this is not only Andrew’s story.

  If it were, there would be no need for my involvement: he could have told his own story, as each man recounts the tale of his own life to himself on his deathbed.

  Yet that tale is always an incomplete, partial one, for only a man shipwrecked on a desert island from birth, growing up and dying there with no more than a few monkeys for company, can claim without a shadow of a doubt that his life is exactly what he thinks it has been, provided of course that the macaques have not stashed away in some cave or other his trunk full of books, clothes, and photographs already washed up by the tide.

  However—with the exception of shipwrecked babies and other extreme cases—each man’s life forms part of a vast tapestry, woven together with those of countless other souls keen to judge his actions not only to his face but behind his back, so that only if he considers the world around him a backdrop with puppets which stop moving when he goes to sleep can he accept that his life has been exactly as he tells it. Otherwise, moments before he breathes his last, he will have to resign himself to the fact that his understanding of his own life must of necessity only be vague, fanciful, and uncertain, that there are things that affected him, for good or bad, which he will never know about: ranging from his wife’s at some point having had an affair with the pastry cook to his neighbor’s dog urinating on his azaleas every time he went out. And so, just as Charles did not witness the charming dance the leaf performed on the puddle, so Andrew did not witness what happened when Charles got his beloved hat back. He could have pictured him entering Wells’s house, apologizing for the fresh intrusion, joking about not being armed this time, and the three of them crawling about like small children on their hands and knees hunting for the elusive hat, except that we know he had no time to wonder about what his cousin was doing because he was too busy with his heart-warming deliberations about other worlds and magicians’ boxes.

  I, on the other hand, see and hear everything whether I want to or not, and it my task to separate the seed from the chaff, to decide which events I consider most important in the tale I have chosen to tell. I must therefore go back to the point at which Charles realizes he has forgotten his hat and returns to the author’s house. You may be wondering what bearing such an insignificant act as the fetching of a hat could possibly have on this story. None whatsoever, I would say, if Charles really had forgotten his hat purely by accident. But things are not always what they seem, and save me the trouble of burdening you with a list of examples which you could easily find by rummaging around a little in your own lives, regardless of whether you live near a cake shop or a have garden full of azaleas. And so let us return to Charles without further ado: “Blast, I’ve forgotten my hat,” said his cousin, after Andrew had clambered into the cab. “I’ll be back in a jiffy, cousin.” Charles strode hurriedly across the tiny front garden and entered the author’s house, looking for the tiny sitting room where they had taken Andrew. There was his hat, calmly waiting for him on a peg on the coat-stand exactly where he had left it. He seized it, smiling, and went out into the passageway, but instead of going back the way he had come, as would appear logical, he turned round and mounted the stairs to the attic. There he found the author and his wife hovering around the time machine in the dim glow of a candle placed on the floor. Charles made his presence known, clearing his throat loudly before declaring triumphantly: “I think everything turned out perfectly. My cousin was completely taken in!” Wells and Jane were collecting the Ruhmkorff coils they had hidden earlier among the shelves of knickknacks. Charles took care to avoid treading on the switch that activated them from the door, setting off the series of deafening electrical charges that had so terrified his cousin. After asking for Wells’s help and telling him about his plan, Charles had been skeptical when the author came up with the idea of using those diabolical coils. He had confessed rather sheepishly to being one of the many spectators who had fled like frightened rabbits from the museum where their inventor, a pale, lanky Croat named Nikola Tesla had introduced to the public his devilish device and the hair-raising blue flashes that caused the air in the room to quiver. However, Wells had assured him that these harmless contraptions would be the least of his worries. Besides, he ought to start getting used to the invention that would revolutionize the world, he had added, before going on to tell him with a tremor of respect in his voice how Tesla had set up a hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls that had bathed the town of Buffalo in electric light. It was the first step in a project that signaled the end of night on Earth, Wells had affirmed. Evidently, the author considered the Croat a genius, and was eager for him to invent a voice-activated typewriter that would free him from the burden of tapping the keys with his fingers while his imagination raced ahead, at impossible speed. In view of the plan’s success, Charles had to agree in hindsight that Wells had been brilliant: the journey back in time would never have been as believable without the lightning flashes, which in the end had provided the perfect buildup, before the magnesium powder concealed behind the false control panel blinded whoever pulled the lever.

  “Magnificently,” Wells rejoiced, getting rid of the coils he was holding and going to greet Charles, “I confess I had my doubts; there were too many things that could have gone wrong.” “True,” admitted Charles, “but we had nothing to lose and much to gain. I already told you that if we succeeded, my cousin might give up the idea of killing himself.” He looked at Wells with genuine admiration, before adding, “And I must say that your theory about parallel universes to explain why the Ripper’s death did not change anything in the present was so convincing even I believed it.” “I’m so glad. But I don’t deserve all the credit. You had the most difficult task of hiring the actors, replacing the bullets with blanks, and most of all getting this thing built,” said Wells, pointing to the time machine.

  The two men gazed at it fondly for a few moments.

  “Yes, and the end result is truly splendid,” Charles agreed, and then joked: “What a pity it doesn’t work.” After a brief pause, Wells hastened to chortle politely at his joke, emitting a sound from his throat like a walnut being cracked.

  “What do you intend doing with it?” Wells asked abruptly, as though wanting to smother as soon as possible the impression of that sickly laugh with which he had dared to show the world he had a sense of humor.

  “Nothing, really,” the other man replied. “I’d like you to keep it.” “Me?” “Of course, where better than at your
house? Consider it a thank-you present for your invaluable help.” “You needn’t thank me for anything,” protested Wells. “I found the whole thing hugely enjoyable.” Charles smiled to himself: how fortunate that the author had agreed to help him. Also that Gilliam Murray had been willing to join in the charade—which he even helped plan—after seeing how devastated Charles was when he informed him the company did not provide journeys into the past. And the wealthy entrepreneur agreeing to play a role had made everything that much easier. Taking Andrew straight to the author’s house without calling in at Murray’s offices first, in the hope that he would believe Charles’s suspicions about Wells having a time machine, would not have been nearly as convincing.