The Map of Time (52 page)

I assumed a false identity. I grew a bushy beard and chose the charming medieval town of Norwich as the place where I would discreetly start to build a new life for myself. Thanks to what you had learned at Mr. Cowap’s pharmacy, I found work at a chemist’s, and for a year and a half I spent my days dispensing ointments and syrups, and my nights lying in my bed listening to the news, alert to the slow buildup of a war that would redefine the world once more. Of my own free will I had decided to live one of those redundant, futile lives that I had always been terrified my mother’s stubbornness would finally condemn me to, and I could not even compensate for its simplicity by writing for fear of alerting Marcus. I was a writer condemned to live like someone who had no gift for writing. Can you imagine a worse torture? Nor can I. Yes, I was safe, but I was trapped in a dismal life, which made me wonder at times whether it was worth the trouble of living. Happily, someone came along to brighten it up: she was called Alice, and she was beautiful. She entered the chemist’s one morning to buy a bottle of aspirin—a preparation of acetylsalicylic acid marketed by a German company that was very popular at the time—and when she left, she took my heart with her.

Love blossomed between us amazingly quickly, outstripping the war, and by the time it broke out, Alice and I had much more to lose than before. Luckily, it all seemed to be taking place far away from our town, which apparently presented no threat to Germany, whose new chancellor intended to conquer the world under the dubious pretext that the blood of a superior race pulsed through his veins. We could only glimpse the terrible consequences of the conflict through the ghastly murmurings carried to us on the breeze, a foretaste of what the newspapers would later report, but I already understood this war would be different from previous ones, because science had changed the face of war by presenting men with new ways of killing one another. The battle would now take place in the skies.

But do not think of dirigibles firing at one another to see who could burst the enemy’s hydrogen balloons first. Man had conquered the skies with a flying machine that was heavier than air, similar to the one Verne had envisaged in his novel Robur the Conqueror, only these were not made of papier-mâché glued together, and they dropped bombs.

Death came from above now, announcing its arrival with a terrifying whistle. And although, because of complex alliances, seventy different countries had been drawn into the atrocious war, in no time England was the only country left standing, while the rest of the world contemplated, astonished, the birth of a new order. Intent on breaking England’s resistance, Germany subjected our country to a remorseless bombardment, which, while to begin with it was confined to airfields and harbors (in keeping with the curious code of honor that sometimes underlies acts of war) soon spread to the cities. After several nights of repeated bombing, our beloved London was reduced to smoking rubble, from which the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral emerged miraculously, the embodiment of our invincible spirit. Yes, England resisted, and even counterattacked with brief sallies over German territory. One of these left the historic town Lübeck, on the banks of the River Trave partially destroyed.

In angry retaliation, the Germans decided to increase their attacks twofold. Even so, Alice and I felt relatively safe in Norwich, a town of no strategic interest whatsoever. Except that Norwich had been blessed with three stars in the celebrated Baedeker guide, and this was the one Germany consulted when it resolved to destroy our historical heritage.

Karl Baedeker’s guide recommended visiting its Romanesque cathedral, its twelfth-century castle as well as its many churches, but the German chancellor preferred to drop bombs on them.

The intrusion of the war took us by surprise as we listened to Bishop Helmore’s sermon in the cathedral.

Sensing it would be one of the enemy’s prime targets, the bishop urged us to flee the house of God, and while some people chose to remain—whether because they were paralyzed by fear or because their faith convinced them there could be no safer refuge, I do not know—I grabbed Alice’s hand and dragged her towards the exit, fighting my way through the terrified crowd blocking the nave. We got outside just as the first wave of bombs began to fall. How can I describe such horror to you? Perhaps by saying that the wrath of God pales beside that of man. People fled in panic in all directions, even as the force of the bombs ripped into the earth, toppling buildings and shaking the air with the roar of thunder. The world fell down around us, torn to shreds. I tried to find a safe place, but all I could think of as I ran hand in hand with Alice through the mounting destruction was of how little we valued human life in the end.

Then, in the middle of all that frenzied running, I began to feel a familiar dizziness stealing over me. My head began to throb, everything around me became blurred, and I realized what was about to happen. Instantaneously, I stopped our frantic dash and asked Alice to grip my hands as tightly as she could. She looked at me, puzzled, but did as I said, and as reality dissolved and my body became weightless for a third time, I gritted my teeth and tried to take her with me. I had no idea where I was going, but I was not prepared to leave her behind the way I had left Jane, my life, and everything that was dear to me. The sensations that subsequently overtook me were the same as before: I felt myself float upwards for a split second, leaving my body then returning to it, slipping back between my bones, except that this time I could feel the warm sensation of someone else’s hands in mine. I opened my eyes, blinking sluggishly, struggling not to vomit. I beamed with joy when I saw Alice’s hands still clasping mine. Small, delicate hands I would cover with grateful kisses after we made love, hands joined to slender forearms covered in a delightful golden down. The only part of her I had managed to bring with me.

I buried Alice’s hands in the garden where I appeared in the Norwich of 1982, which did not look as if it had ever been shelled, except for the monument to the dead in the middle of one of its squares. There I discovered Alice’s name, among the many others, although I always wondered whether it was the war that killed her, or Otto Lidenbrock, the man who loved her. In any event, it was something I was condemned to live with, for I had leapt into the future to escape the bombs. Another forty years: that seemed to be as far as I could jump.

The world I now found myself was apparently wiser, intent on forging its own identity and displaying its playful, innovative spirit in every aspect of life. Yes, this was an arrogant world that celebrated its achievements with a child’s jubilant pride, and yet it was a peaceful world where war was a painful memory, a shameful recognition that human nature had a terrible side which had to be concealed, if only under a façade of politeness. The world had been forced to rebuild itself, and it had been then, while clearing the rubble and gathering up the dead, while putting up new buildings and sticking bridges back together again, patching up the holes that war had wreaked on his soul and his lineage that man had become brutally aware of what had happened, had suddenly realized that everything which had seemed rational at first had become irrational, like a ball in which the music stops. I could not help rejoicing: the zeal with which those around me condemned their grandfathers” actions convinced me there would be no more wars like the one I had lived through. And I will tell you I was also right about that. Man can learn, Bertie, even if, as with circus animals, it has to be beaten into him.

In any event, I had to start again from scratch, to build another wretched life from the very beginning. I left Norwich, where I had no ties, and went back to London, where, after being astounded by the advances of science, I tried to find a job that might be suitable for a man from the Victorian age going by the name of Harry Grant. Was I doomed, then, to wander through time, floating from one period to another like a leaf blown in the wind, alone forever? No, things would be different this time. I was alone, yes, but I knew I would not be lonely for very long. I had a future appointment to keep, one that did not require me to travel in time again. This future was close enough for me to wait until it came to me.

But apparently, before that, the mysterious hand of fate had made another appointment for me, with something very special from my past. And it happened at a cinema.

Yes, Bertie, you heard right. It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which cinema will develop from the moment the Lumière brothers first projected images of workers leaving their factory at Lyon Monplaisir. No one in your time had any inkling of the enormous potential of their invention.

However, once the novelty wears off, people will soon tire of images of men playing cards, scampering children, and trains pulling in to stations—everyday things they can see, from their windows and with sound—and they will want something more than dull social documentaries accompanied by the absent tinkle of a piano. That is why the projector now tells a story on the empty screen. To give you an idea, imagine one of them filming a play that does not have to take place on a stage raised in front of rows of seats, but can use anywhere in the world as its setting. And if in addition I tell you that the director can narrate the story using not just a handful of painted backdrops but a whole arsenal of techniques, such as making people vanish in front of our eyes by means of manipulating images, you will understand why the cinema has become the most popular form of entertainment in the future, far more so than music hall. Yes, nowadays an even more sophisticated version of the Lumière brothers” machine makes the world dream, bringing magic into their lives, and an entire industry commanding enormous sums of money has grown up around it.

However, I am not telling you all this for pure pleasure, but because sometimes these cinema stories are taken from books. And this is the surprise, Bertie: in 1960, a director named George Pal will turn your novel The Time Machine into a film. Yes, he will put images to your words. They had already done this with Verne, of course, but that in no way diminished my joy. How can I describe what I felt when I saw the story you had written take place on screen? There was your inventor, whom they had named after you, played by an actor with a determined, dreamy expression, and there, too, was sweet Weena, played by a beautiful French actress whose face radiated a hypnotic calm, and the Morlocks, more terrifying than you could ever have imagined, and the colossal sphinx, and dependable, no-nonsense Filby, and even Mrs. Watchett, with her spotless white apron and cap. And as one scene succeeded another, I trembled with emotion in my seat at the thought that none of this would have been possible if you had not imagined it, that somehow this feast of images had previously been projected inside your head. I confess that, at some point, I looked away from the screen and studied the faces of the people sitting near me. I imagine you would have done the same, Bertie. I know more than once you wished you had that freedom, for I still remember how downcast you felt when a reader told you how much they had enjoyed your novel, without you being able to see for yourself how they had responded to this or that passage, or whether they had laughed or wept in the proper places, because in order to do so you would have had to steal into their libraries like a common thief. You may rest assured: the audience responded exactly as you had hoped. But we must not take the credit away from Mr. Pal, who captured the spirit of your novel brilliantly. Although I will not try to hide the fact that he changed a few things in order to adapt it to the times, essentially because the film was made sixty-five years after the book was written and part of what for you was the future had already become the past. Remember, for example, that despite your concern over the ways man might use science, it never even occurred to you that he might become embroiled in a war that would engulf the entire planet. Well, he did, not once but twice, as I have already told you. Pal made your inventor witness not only the First and Second World Wars, he even predicted a third in 1966, although fortunately in that case his pessimism proved unfounded.

As I told you, the feelings I experienced in that cinema, hypnotized by the swirling images that owed so much to you, is beyond words. This was something you had written, yes, and yet everything that appeared on the screen was unfamiliar to me, everything that is except the time machine, your time machine, Bertie. You cannot imagine how surprised I was to see it there. For a moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. But no, it was your machine, gleaming and beautiful, with its graceful curves, like a musical instrument, betraying the hand of a skilled craftsman, exuding an elegance the machines in the period I had been cast adrift in had lost. But how had it ended up there, and where could it be now, twenty years after the actor called Rod Taylor who played you first climbed out of it? After several weeks spent scouring the newspapers at the library, I managed to trace its eventful journey. I discovered that Jane had not wanted to part with it and had taken it with her to London, to the house of Evans, the lawyer, who would contemplate with resignation the intrusion into his home of the absurd, seemingly useless piece of junk, which, to cap it all, was a symbol to his new wife of her vanished husband. I pictured him unable to sleep at nights, circling the machine, pressing the fake buttons and moving the glass lever to satisfy himself it did not work, and wondering what mystery was contained in this object his wife referred to as the time machine, and why the devil it had been built, for I was sure Jane would have explained nothing to him, considering the machine part of a private world Evans the lawyer had no business knowing about. When, many years later, George Pal began preparations for his film, he ran into a problem: he did not find any of the designs his people had come up with for the time machine convincing. They were clunky, grotesque, and overelaborate. None of the models bore any resemblance to the elegant, stately vehicle in which he envisaged the inventor traveling across the vast plains of time. That is why it seemed to him nothing short of a miracle when a woman named Selma Evans, close to bankruptcy after squandering the small fortune she had inherited from her parents, offered to sell him the strange object her mother had dusted every Sunday in a languid, ceremonious manner that made little Selma’s hair stand on end almost as much as it did that of Evans the lawyer. Pal was stunned: this was exactly what he had been looking for.