“So we c-could say that everything is impocertain and at the s-same time pecuriating.” Dodgson smiled with a dreamy air.
The couple gaped at him while Dodgson gazed back at them, apparently lost in thought.
“I have an idea,” he said at last, with sudden excitement, or rather with sudditement. “Each time you have a d-doubt about which ch-chair I am sitting on, why don’t you shout ‘Change seats!’ and the three of us will move up one, do you agree? I imagine that this circular movement might ease your anxiety, at least long enough for us to carry on a quiet conversation . . .”
Wells and Jane exchanged looks and cried, “Change seats!”
“Oh . . . v-very well.” And all three of them stood up and moved to the chair on their right. Then, smiling politely, Dodgson said, “Good, now that we are all in our proper places . . . for the time being, George, Catherine, would you kindly tell me all those incredible things I have to believe in before breakfast tomorrow, assuming there are more to tell?”
And this was how the mad tea party that would mark the beginning of their friendship commenced. Had anyone been spying on them through the window, he would have never suspected that, although what he was seeing looked very like a game for children without any children, a miracle was taking place in that room, because amid the heated debates, theorizing, and hypothesizing, as the teacups piled up on the table, three exceptional minds had begun to stumble upon what until then no one else had ever grasped: the true nature of the universe.
24
DURING THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED, Wells and Jane were heartened to be able to count on Dodgson in what they would soon consider to be the greatest adventure of their lives. They couldn’t imagine what would have become of them had they been set adrift in that universe so similar and yet so different from their own without the help of the young mathematician, who was not only good at resolving practical problems, such as finding a way of earning a living or inventing an identity with which to be able to integrate into society, but also at other equally important things, such as staying sane. It was clear that only someone like Dodgson could have accepted their unbelievable tale almost without turning a hair, for the young professor saw the world through a child’s eyes, and, as everyone knows, children respond perfectly to nonsense: only they allow strange things to remain strange, refusing to apply to them the rules of any rational system. And it was thanks to this method that Wells, Jane, and Dodgson discovered many answers to their questions.
The most important answer of all they arrived at that first evening when, after much speculation veering inevitably between clearheadedness and nonsensicality, they succeeded in establishing the main difference between their two universes, which would be the basis for all their future deliberations. Dodgson, inspired by his keen love of the theater, stumbled on the metaphor that would be the origin of what they later referred to as the Theory of Theaters. And the main difference had to be connected to the Wellses’ obsession with randomness. After considering the matter in great depth, the three of them concluded that the only way to determine whether an event occurred one way and not another was through observation. That way, the infinite possibilities of how an event occurred condensed into a single truth: that witnessed by the observer. Thus, the Wellses’ universe resembled a theater where life’s drama was being played out before an audience, and their intense observation precluded any other possible version of the play, so that only the performance they were watching existed with absolute certainty. That would explain why randomness did not exist in that distant universe.
In contrast, the young Dodgson’s universe was a theater with no audience, where the only spectators were the actors themselves. Yet they were observing “from the inside,” while they were performing, and so their point of view was necessarily limited, partial, and yet infinite, for it depended upon the infinite decisions each actor took at any given moment. It was as if in that empty auditorium infinite versions of the same play were being performed on infinite parallel stages, superimposed upon one another, and the infinite number of different theater troupes were oblivious to their twins’ existence. All of them believed they were the only ones, because there was no spectator to determine which of them was the only one. Perhaps young Dodgson’s universe was no more than that: the sum of the infinite possibilities of what his universe could be, all somehow existing simultaneously.
The idea was too beautiful not to be true, the three of them agreed, almost with tears in their eyes. That explained the Wellses’ problem with randomness, their feeling of being assailed by a deafening clamor when confronted with the most trivial decisions . . . They had spent their entire lives within the four walls of a theater where the audience’s respectful silence allowed no possibility of randomness. And, thanks to the other Dodgson’s magic hole, they had crossed the street to the theater opposite, where the terrible cacophony coming from the other stages was a murmur only they perceived.
For all the other inhabitants of this young Dodgson’s world, accustomed as they were to it from birth, the infinite possibilities created by free will were imperceptible.
“But who is the spectator who watches the play in the theater on the Other Side, compressing the infinite possibilities into one?” remarked Wells. “Is it God sitting in the stalls?”
“Why would God choose some theaters and not others?” said Dodgson. “And if he were in all of them, or none of them, the differences we have found between them wouldn’t exist, because all the theaters would be the same. Rather than consider God as the audience, I think we should see him as the director, the playwright who follows the performance from behind the scenes or even from the prompting box . . . Someone who is too involved with the work to be able to compress the infinite stages into one.”
“And yet in the theater we come from there is only one play,” Jane added, “which means someone must be watching it. For whom are we acting out our lives?”
There was a pensive silence. And then Wells said excitedly, “What if the power to compress all the different possibilities into one came from the actors themselves?” Jane and Dodgson looked at him, baffled. “Imagine a troupe of actors with an exceptional gift for observation, an extraordinary capacity to watch the play from inside and outside simultaneously, as if part of their minds could sit in the stalls while they declaim their lines onstage. The universes whose inhabitants possessed that amazing gift would exist as a single, predetermined reality that wouldn’t disintegrate into a set of infinite possibilities the way this one does.”
“Are you saying that we possess that gift?” Jane asked, surprised. “If so, why were we never aware of it?”
“Because you had nothing to compare yourselves with,” replied Dodgson, after pausing to reflect. “Would a man who could see through walls be aware of his gift if he lived in a world where all the buildings were made of glass?”
From that moment on, Dodgson dubbed the inhabitants of the Other Side “Observers.” He referred thereafter to “Observer Dodgson” or “Observer Queen Victoria” so as to differentiate between them and their twins who lived in the theater on Dodgson’s side of the street. And in the days that followed, the Theory of Theaters came into its own, for they soon discovered they could use it to explain any doubts they had. It also fitted in well with the mathematical theories Dodgson and Wells delighted in elaborating, as a pastime more than anything else, even though this obliged Dodgson to grapple with the terribly advanced mathematics of the future and Wells to dust off his knowledge of one of the subjects he had found most boring at university. Nonetheless, with cheerful diligence they began to trace intricate mathematical maps that aimed to chart, the way ordinary maps did, the various highways and byways a traveler could take to go from one world to another, inventing formulas allowing them to work out the coordinates of any corner of the universe from its opposite end, as if the entire cosmos could be reduced to a single, formidable equation.
Alas, the first empirical proof of the Theory of Theaters ca
me about because of an incident that left Jane very distraught. It happened five months after their arrival. Wells, Jane, and Dodgson had gone on an excursion to the meadows at Godstow with the daughters of the college dean, the young Liddell sisters, as was their custom after the good weather started. That day in particular was a golden afternoon in late spring. The sun was baking hot, the flowing waters made the reeds on the riverbanks rustle, and the three little girls were playing hide-and-seek while the grown-ups laid the picnic things out on a rug on the grass, chatting about this and that. Newton meanwhile rushed about chasing butterflies and, when he had grown tired of that, sniffed around the picnic baskets, trying to filch a cold cut, until Jane half jokingly shouted, “Shoo, disappear, greedy dog!” Upon which, as if he hoped to earn the title of most obedient pet in the world, Newton literally vanished. One moment he was there, his four paws planted on a corner of the rug, and the next he was gone. All that was left of him was the imprint of his four paws in the cloth. Jane had the impression she had magicked him away. She screamed. There followed an absurd, desperate search of the surrounding area, until finally they had to accept what they had at first been reluctant to believe: Newton had indeed disappeared before their eyes. After consoling Jane as best they could and making up a convincing excuse for the little girls, they returned to Christ Church with the aim of rethinking what had happened. Aided by several pots of strongly brewed tea, they arrived at the only possible conclusion: the cronotemia virus worked. And whilst for Jane this was no great consolation, Wells felt a surge of satisfaction.
Their research had not been so misguided after all. Newton’s disappearance proved that those infected with the virus could indeed jump, but only between the stages of a single theater. Apparently, what they couldn’t do, to employ Dodgson’s metaphor, was cross the street to the theater opposite.
That was why Newton hadn’t jumped when they injected him with the serum on the Other Side, because there was no other stage to jump to in their theater. Perhaps the virus only made it possible to jump between parallel worlds that together formed a single theater, reflected Wells. Good heavens! If only he had known, he wouldn’t have regarded the lack of results on the Other Side as a failure. He would have pursued his investigations, he would have made the necessary modifications to the serum in order to obtain that movement between theaters, he would have . . . But there was no point worrying about that now. There was nothing he could do in that primitive world where they had only just discovered fire. His moment had passed. He had done what he could, and so had the other Dodgson, and now he knew they had both of them been partly right . . . His world would simply have to get by without him, he told himself. However, the discovery that both branches of research had been on the right track made him more hopeful that in the future one of their successors might be able to perfect one of them.
And so, amid astonishing discoveries and golden afternoons, the Wellses gradually adapted to their new existence. The most difficult part was undoubtedly learning to live with the cacophony caused by randomness, that constant, irritating murmur in their heads whenever they had to make a decision: in other words, at every waking moment. But they soon devised a few strategies and mental techniques to help them put up with that continuous drone, and when either of them felt they were flagging, they could always count on the other’s support, or that of Dodgson, who never stopped watching over them. Fortunately, as the days went by, they found it easier to ignore that agonizing sensation. To their surprise, one of the activities that most helped them to control it was photography. That laborious process, with its antiquated alchemy that impregnated them with mysterious odors, became an unexpected balm for their exhausted brains. It was not uncommon for students and teachers alike coming out of an afternoon lecture to bump into Professor Dodgson and his two new friends lugging the heavy apparatus from one place to another, planted opposite Christ Church Cathedral’s imposing spire or the little sweet shop nearby, operating the gleaming camera, grappling with its various joints and hinges, like hunters laying a complicated trap with which to capture a fleeting glimpse of beauty before it faded.
The Wellses took several remarkably skilled photographs of the environs, in the words of Dodgson, who would marvel over the appearance on the light-sensitive plates impregnated with silver nitrate of herds of deer, the rectilinear courtyards of the colleges, the illustrious silence of their libraries, or the beautiful tree-lined pathway along the Cherwell, perpetually overrun by groups of idling students. It was an inexhaustible source of pleasure for Dodgson to try to appreciate his ordinary everyday reality from those fresh angles that gave it a magical air. But more than the surrounding world, Dodgson liked photographing the dean’s adorable daughters: the charming Lorina, little Edith, and Alice, the prettiest and most intelligent of the three, his favorite, and the one he would end up marrying in the world the Wellses came from. The photograph sessions with the girls were always a joy. Dodgson would open his costume box and take snapshots of them dressed as Chinamen, Indians, princes, or beggar girls, sprawling on divans or acting out complicated scenes from mythology, always aware that he was capturing for eternity a brief instant, a moment in their lives never to be repeated, a memory they would always return to when they were grown women. The Wellses soon realized that, apart from them, Dodgson did not cultivate many adult friendships. He appeared to feel at ease only in the company of little girls, perhaps due to his shyness, his stammer, or his dreamy nature. Boys terrified him, for they invariably poked fun at him, and he could never get along with them, but with girls it was different. Girls were sweet natured and thoughtful, they possessed a fragility that moved him to tears, and they aroused in him feelings of affection and protectiveness. But, above all, he knew what tone to use with them. It was so obvious to him that he was amazed no one else could see it, that the other adults, whether parents or teachers, spoke to girls the same way they spoke to boys, as if they belonged to one and the same race, a race of little people, when this was so clearly not the case. Girls required different treatment, and to any adult who provided that, the girls would not hesitate to give them their affection, astonished and grateful at having won the support of an older person. Consequently, Dodgson never seemed so happy to the Wellses as when he was surrounded by the Liddell sisters. With them he could spend hours chatting about a hundred and one nonsensical things. One afternoon, for example, during a boating trip, Wells and Jane heard him explain to the girls that they couldn’t sign off a letter “millions of kisses,” because at twenty kisses a minute, and if they were generous and fixed such an imprecise quantity at two million, it would take twenty-three weeks of hard work to be true to their word. Like the Charles from their universe, Dodgson seemed allergic to exaggeration.
And whenever they could, Wells and Jane were delighted to join those outings, in which Dodgson proved the most charming playmate imaginable; he shared the girls’ innocent pleasures, was hopelessly infected by their childish woes, and above all he told them made-up stories, which drifted idly on the summer breeze like shimmering soap bubbles. He narrated them with such ease and enthusiasm that when he finished, the girls, oblivious to how tired they were, would invariably exclaim, “Tell us another!” For the Wellses, those afternoons filled with laughter and games became another perfect way of silencing the persistent clamor inside their heads.
Ah, those were happy times—who could deny it?—despite the numerous difficulties the couple came up against in their daily lives, in particular Jane, who faced a further obstacle to her adaptation to that new world: the sorry role women were relegated to in society. At first she could scarcely believe the things Dodgson told her, or what she saw with her own eyes, for she could never have imagined anything like it. For hundreds of years, the Observers on the Other Side had made no distinction between men’s and women’s minds. Naturally, the two sexes saw the world differently, but that didn’t imply superiority or inferiority. On this side, in contrast, the only thing expected of Jane was that she be t
he new biology professor’s charming wife, that she occasionally invite the other wives to tea at their rooms in Merton College, or, at the very most, that she organize a women’s reading circle. Understandably, at the outset Jane rebelled against inevitably being cast in an inferior role, convinced she would never be able to resign herself to it. She even went to speak in person to some of the deacons at the various colleges in an attempt to persuade them to let her join one of the science departments, if only as a simple assistant. However, after their initial shock at her unusual request, they fobbed her off with polite excuses. One of them, while accompanying her to the door with paternal concern, even remarked, “My dear girl, I understand that you feel lonely—it is common among women—but if you are so keen on science, perhaps you would like to draw pictures of animals?” And his words, which an indignant Jane later repeated to her husband and the young Dodgson, became their catchphrase: whenever Jane argued against one of Dodgson’s or Wells’s theories during the course of a golden afternoon, they would respond with a mocking smile: “My dear girl, perhaps you would like to go and draw pictures of animals?” But this was harmless banter, which always amused Jane, and the days they spent together seemed to be filled with their intermingled laughter. And yet, as summer wilts beneath the onset of autumn, so that radiant joy was doomed to fade.
Three years after the Wellses arrived in that world, Dodgson was ordained deacon. He had done everything in his power to delay that first step toward his inexorable future, which was none other than to become a priest a year later, given that ordination into the ranks of the Church was obligatory for any professor at Christ Church. Yet, in his heart of hearts, Dodgson considered himself a layman. Naturally, he believed in God, and even went to church twice on Sundays, but he wasn’t convinced that his God was the same silent deity who inhabited the cold, dark cathedral and whose fearful rage must be appeased by tedious, plaintive, never-ending rituals. His difference of opinion with Dean Liddell on that point fueled the reservations of Mrs. Liddell, who no longer approved of the burgeoning friendship between her three daughters and that strange professor and his eccentric friends, whose mysterious past accompanied them everywhere. Her pretexts for sabotaging their boating trips, which had become something of a tradition, grew more frequent and more blatant, and the helpless Dodgson realized how increasingly difficult it was for him to maintain his friendship with the three little girls, and in particular with Alice. Even so, he refused to believe that this could be the beginning of the end. And yet so it proved. The golden afternoons were almost over, and that summer of 1862 was to be the beautiful swan song of those happy times.
The Map of Chaos Page 42
