It was then that Clayton knocked on his door to inform him that a Martian cylinder had appeared on Horsell Common. And, cursing Murray for being unable to admit defeat, Wells climbed aboard the inspector’s carriage. What else could he have done? After all, if a Martian cylinder identical to the one he had described in his novel had landed on Horsell Common, it was only logical that Scotland Yard would require him to go there. What Wells found less logical was that the inspector seemed to believe this might be a genuine Martian invasion, possibly orchestrated by the author himself through his novel. Wells was obliged to show the inspector Murray’s letter to persuade him that the whole thing was a hoax cooked up by the ex–Master of Time, who was given to this sort of prank. But, to Wells’s surprise, the inspector had tucked the letter away in his jacket pocket. He confessed that whilst this opened up a whole new perspective on the matter, it was nevertheless the job of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch to leave no stone unturned, and he could not rule out the possibility that Wells himself had written the letter and was hindering the investigation by pointing the finger at a dead man. Wells had been rendered speechless by such a wild assertion, and the two men had spent the remainder of the journey in strained silence.
“It is absurd of you to think that I might be in league with Martians simply because I wrote a novel announcing their arrival!” he had protested at last, unable to contain his rage.
“As absurd as someone re-creating a Martian invasion to win a lady’s heart” had been the inspector’s disdainful reply.
You see, Wells now thought to himself, glancing away from Murray’s stupid steaming hat and grinning smugly at the inspector: apparently someone had orchestrated all this precisely to steal the love of a lady. Clayton clearly owed him an apology, and yet he seemed unwilling to do so.
“So the Master of Time is alive and kicking . . . ,” he said simply. Wells had grown weary of telling him that repeatedly on the way there.
The author rolled his eyes and raised his hands, as though expecting a pair of doves to land on them. No, Gilliam Murray hadn’t died. The brute who had stepped out of the hot-air balloon was certainly he—although Wells had to admit with all the weight he had lost, and that red beard obscuring his face, not to mention his ridiculous outfit, few would have recognized him. But those sly animal eyes capable of concealing anything, like a magician’s hat, had not changed. And Wells noticed the old animosity he felt for Murray stirring inside him. There he was, making a mockery of him again, turning his latest novel into a vulgar fairground attraction, this time to further his romantic interests. And there was Wells, dragged out of his house halfway through his cup of tea, his shoes caked in mud, forced to witness Murray’s pantomime in the midst of a deafening crowd—drawn as always by the magnetism of that man who snared everything in his path—and, furthermore, to defend himself against charges of espionage and treason on a planetary level. Would he never be rid of Murray? Would their lives be forever joined until one of them died, untangling the infuriating knot?
“Interesting, most interesting,” he heard Clayton reflect aloud, his eyes glued to the spectacle. “This resurrection is very timely, as I happen to have a few unanswered questions I’d like to put to Mr. Murray concerning his business, questions that are no doubt still pertinent. A great many questions, in fact.”
Wells looked in astonishment at Clayton, whose lips had twisted into a malevolent smile as he doubtless anticipated the moment when the Master of Time would finally be at his mercy, sitting in the interrogation room, forced to answer all his questions.
“I congratulate you on your good fortune, Inspector Clayton,” Wells remarked disdainfully. “And since the absence of any Martians clears me of all suspicion, I beg you to excuse me, but I have far more important things to do than stand around waiting for the dénouement of this ridiculous melodrama.”
Clayton nodded absentmindedly, hypnotized by the spectacle, yet Wells did not stir either. It was difficult for them to take their eyes off the sight unfolding before them. The crowd had begun to separate until a human corridor opened between Murray and the charming young lady with the parasol, doubtless the one for whom Murray had organized the whole charade. And as Wells looked at her more closely, he had to admit that, if anything, Murray’s description of her in his letter did not do her justice. The girl was astonishingly beautiful: she possessed the delicate lightness of a soap bubble, her skin seemed to be coated in gold, and her eyes, despite being wide-open with astonishment, expressed that perfect blend of charm and high-spiritedness capable of turning any man’s head. For a few seemingly eternal moments, Wells watched her remain motionless, nervously twirling her parasol, while at the other end of the corridor formed by the hushed crowd, Murray’s bow tie was also rotating. It was the only part of him that was moving, for the man appeared frozen, arms flung open, the hat he had just removed clasped in one hand, a broad grin on his face, waiting, like a suspended jellyfish, for Emma to breathe life into him with a loving eye. But that wouldn’t happen, Wells thought to himself, convinced the girl would turn on her heel and go back the way she had come, leaving Murray with his steaming hat and his rotating bow tie in the midst of the admiring crowd. What else could she do? Murray had failed to reproduce the invasion, no matter how hard he tried to make up for it with this gaudy display. And Emma Harlow seemed too intelligent to let herself be bamboozled by all that. But then, to Wells’s astonishment, a smile began to flutter on the girl’s lips, and although at first she tried to resist, she finally gave a charming giggle. A sigh of delight instantly spread through the crowd. Deflated, Wells watched the girl walk toward Murray amid the applause of the public, and he decided that he had seen enough.
He moved away from the throng, visibly annoyed, and went in search of a carriage that would take him back to Worcester Park, to the novel he was currently working on, and to that cup of tea abandoned on the kitchen table. To that ordinary, everyday life of his, so distant from the romantic nonsense Murray was accustomed to indulging in. Wells shook his head. He wished the couple all the luck in the world, he thought with disdain. The girl would certainly need it if she ended up married to that fellow. She couldn’t be very intelligent, after all, if she believed a sense of humor was a sound enough basis for a relationship, he told himself as a voice in his head asked him how long it was since he had last made Jane laugh like that.
In any event, the couple’s happiness would be short-lived, because the intrepid Inspector Clayton was intent on reopening the investigation into Murray’s Time Travel. Finally someone was going to do what he himself had so long been hoping for. He gave a weary sigh, eager to get home as soon as possible and tell Jane everything that had happened so she could work her magic, bring her commonsense irony to bear on the matter, play down its importance, and invite him to view things in perspective, enabling him finally to store it somewhere in his head where it wouldn’t importune him.
Wells looked toward the hill where the carriages were parked, trying to work out how far he had to walk, when all of a sudden a distant figure caught his attention. His crooked posture suggested an elderly gentleman, and although he was too far away for Wells to see his face, he had the impression that the stranger was observing him with equal interest. Suddenly, an intense feeling of unease overwhelmed him, and he had to stop and double over, as though he were about to be sick. His stomach was churning, and his heart felt heavy with grief. He hadn’t experienced that feeling for so long . . . why now? All at once, the sensation vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind only a vague, lingering melancholy, and no answers. When he looked up toward the hill again, he saw that the figure of the old man had also disappeared.
11
WHEN WELLS ARRIVED HOME, IRRITATED and exhausted, Jane had just returned from London, where she had been lunching with the Garfields. He immediately launched into an account of the shameful spectacle he had been forced to witness on Horsell Common, describing to Jane each of the surprises that had emerged from the
cylinder, in a tone of voice that made it obvious how farcical he had found the whole thing. And yet, as he spoke, Jane’s face began to light up more and more, until, to his astonishment, he realized that Murray’s amorous gesture thrilled his wife the way few things ever had. She opined that it was the most romantic thing a man could do for a woman, and this unreserved approval, rather than fueling his jealousy, depressed Wells, because it implied that his small acts of love were trifling in comparison. He hadn’t stepped out of a hot-air balloon in order to win her heart. No, he hadn’t. But what merit or effort did that entail, besides the logistics? Wells had won Jane’s heart on their long walks to Charing Cross station, when he had charmed her with words, simply with who he was, without the need to employ fakirs and acrobats or wear a steaming hat. He had chosen the more arduous route, using only his amusing, enveloping oratory. In other words, he hadn’t resorted to trickery. But Jane clearly didn’t see it that way. In her eyes, not only had Murray organized that whole extravaganza down to the very last detail, but he had risked public ridicule to win that woman’s heart. Would Wells have been capable of doing as much for her? Of course not, so he should start ridding himself of those old resentments, because he was building up so much hatred he scarcely had anyplace left for happiness, or even the simplest pleasures in life.
With that, she marched out of the little room and slammed the door behind her, leaving Wells by himself, high and dry. He hated it when Jane cut short their disagreements by going off in a huff to some other part of the house, not so much because it left him in mid-sentence, but because it prevented them from resolving things there and then, obliging him to argue in installments. He slumped into a chair, not yet in the mood to chase her around from room to room. Forget your old resentments, she had said, the same as when he showed her Murray’s letter. Wells hadn’t brought the subject up again since that fateful day, and as his wife hadn’t either, he assumed she had ended up forgetting about it. But perhaps Jane hadn’t forgotten about it at all, perhaps she was only pretending in order to keep the peace, and, like the corpse one thinks one has disposed of at the bottom of a lake, the matter had unexpectedly risen to the surface. Wells gave a sigh. Jane never ceased to surprise him. And yet he held no mystery for her, or so she never tired of telling him. It was as if he were transparent, his heart, digestive tract, liver, and other vital organs exposed to her scrutiny. In fact, his wife took advantage of any situation to come up with fresh theories about the workings of what she affectionately referred to as “the Wells specimen.”
Only last week, she had shared another of these revelations with him. It could happen anywhere; Wells had no way of knowing. On that occasion, they were dining at a restaurant in Holborn, and for almost ten minutes Wells had been extolling the virtues of the wine they were drinking, without being able to persuade Jane to agree with him. She had been content to smile every now and then as she listened to her husband’s rhapsody, more attentive to the ambience of the place than to his praise. And so Wells, who couldn’t bear his wife to keep her opinions to herself, much less about something he had deemed excellent, was obliged to ask her directly if she disagreed with his opinion. Jane sighed, contemplating her husband for a few moments, as though considering whether to tell him what she thought or let it pass. At last, she shrugged, and entrusted herself to fate.
“The wine isn’t bad, Bertie. But I don’t think it as excellent as you maintain. Moreover, I would venture to say nor do you.”
Jane’s last pronouncement threw Wells, who insisted even more stubbornly on how pleasurable he found the wine, on how velvety it was as it slipped down his throat, the aftertaste it left in his mouth of a forest at dawn, and so on. Jane let him talk, making an irritating clucking sound with her tongue that succeeded in gradually dampening Wells’s exalted speech. Finally, rather peevishly, he decided to listen to what his wife had to say. And Jane spoke with the authority conferred upon her by the many similar revelations she had made in the past.
“It isn’t the wine itself you find excellent,” she explained, smiling the way she always did when she began analyzing her husband, “but rather the situation.”
And, with a sweep of her hand, she invited Wells to consider their surroundings. They were in a restaurant, which, as advertised, successfully combined the charm of a Parisian bistro with the silence and orderliness essential to the English way of life. In addition, there were few customers that evening, so the background conversation, far from being a nuisance, created a pleasant murmur. They had been seated at a corner table, from which they were able to observe their fellow diners discreetly from a distance. The waiter who had brought them the menu had even recognized Wells and praised his latest novel. The wine was served at the perfect temperature, in an elegant, tall-stemmed glass that was perfectly adapted to his hand and as light as a bubble. The orchestra was playing mellow music, he had enjoyed a productive day’s work . . . need she go on?
“Any decent wine would taste excellent to you under these circumstances, Bertie. But you would have found the same wine unremarkable, and possibly downright bad, if they had given us a table beside the door and we had been forced to sit in a cold draft every time someone came in or left. Or if the waiter hadn’t been so friendly, or if the lighting was too dim or too bright, or if . . .”
“All right, all right. But isn’t that the same for everybody?” he had protested, rather halfheartedly, as though it were a formality he had to go through before yielding to Jane’s new theory.
She shook her head.
“Nobody is as impressionable as you, Bertie. Nobody.”
And Wells observed his habitual thoughtful silence following one of his wife’s revelations. Then Jane began browsing through the menu, pretending to choose between the beef and the salmon, letting Wells muse at his leisure, aware that he was doing what he always did after she pronounced one of her judgments: recalling other incidents in his life to see whether that theory applied. When, after a few minutes, Wells saw the pointlessness of the exercise, he grudgingly accepted that she was right. And as they headed for home, he wondered whether Jane wasn’t afraid that their love might be built on something as fragile as the random circumstances that had held sway the day they had met: the good humor with which he imparted his lecture, the black dress she wore because she was mourning her father’s recent death, the light filtering through the window and setting her hair aflame, the boredom of the other students, which allowed the two of them to speak without feeling they were being watched . . . Perhaps if it had been raining that day, and he had been in a bad mood, or she had been wearing a different dress that didn’t make her look so vulnerable, that dinner might never have taken place. But in the end what did it matter? he thought. The circumstances had been propitious, and, whether they liked it or not, here they were, happily together.
The sitting room door opened again, breaking off Wells’s reflections, and from his armchair he saw Jane walk in holding the pruning shears, then take her straw hat from the stand. After putting it on, she left the room, giving him a stern look, as if it vexed her to see him slumped in an armchair instead of training a troupe of chimpanzees to dance for her. Whenever they quarreled, Jane would go out into the garden and vent her fury on the defenseless rosebushes, and for days the fragrance of freshly cut roses would fill the house. It was a smell Wells couldn’t help associating with their squabbles, but also with their reconciliations, for sooner or later he would go to her with a submissive smile, the first of many steps he would have to take before Jane finally agreed to sign a peace treaty, which she always did. It was an unspoken rule that, by the time the roses wilted, Wells would need to have patched things up between them. And if out of apathy or indifference he allowed that deadline to expire, he might as well start packing his bags.
Before commencing the process, Wells couldn’t help wondering once again if it was worth all the effort for a marriage he found increasingly stifling. Recently, for example, he had noticed within him the stirrings of
desire for other women, for the newness of unknown bodies, for embarking anew on the forgotten adventure of courtship, of seducing a woman who wasn’t yet aware of all his little foibles. He had felt guilty to begin with, but he soon realized that this intense desire did not affect the love he felt for Jane. He had no doubt that she was the woman with whom he wanted to end his days. It had taken them almost three years to get to know each other, and the idea of forging a similarly deep bond with another woman was unthinkable. And so, far from betraying Jane by experimenting with his desire, Wells felt he was betraying himself by trying to suppress it, advocating by his irreproachable behavior a virtue and honesty to which he did not subscribe. Whose bright idea had it been to force man into monogamy when it was so obviously not natural to him? Wells had needs his marriage couldn’t satisfy. Perhaps he should speak to Jane about all this, he thought, explain to her that his soul craved more emotions than she alone could provide, and that if she allowed him to indulge in an occasional extramarital affair, he would promise never to fall in love and only maintain playful, fleeting dalliances that posed no threat to their marriage—something he preferred, in the end, for it would free him from the need to behave in the romantic fashion Jane was always complaining he lacked. Jane would remain the guiding light of his life, while those future lovers would only ever attain the pitiful status of stimulants, which as the years went by would become increasingly necessary if he didn’t want the slow but sure road to decrepitude to plunge him into depression. However, no matter how reasonable that explanation seemed to him, he doubted very much whether his wife would understand or agree to a new routine whereby his controlled dalliances would be allowed to act as an aid to their marriage.
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