The Map of Time

by Félix J Palma

  He decided the poor woman had undergone more than her fair share of suffering and resolved to help her as best he could. Unfortunately, this stretched little further than stealing apples in Covent Garden or stopping to give her the time of day whenever he went in or out of the boardinghouse, and trying to cheer her up if she was having a bad day. Despite all this, he had never let her read his palm and always gave the same explanation: knowing what fate had in store for him would destroy his curiosity, which was the only thing that got him out of bed every morning.

  “I would never try to sabotage your business, Mrs. Ritter,” he replied, amused. “I’m sure things will pick up this afternoon.” “I hope you’re right, Tom, I hope you’re right.” He bade her farewell and began climbing the rickety staircase that led to his room on the top floor of the boardinghouse.

  He opened the door and carefully examined the room he had been living in for almost two years, as though seeing it for the first time. But, unlike the day the landlady had first showed him the room, he did not eye up critically the dilapidated bed, or the worm-eaten chest of drawers, or the flyblown mirror, or even the tiny window overlooking the waterlogged back alley filled with refuse. This time, Tom stood in the doorway and stared at the room as though suddenly aware that the wretched space he could scarcely pay for represented everything he had been able to make of life. And he was struck by the overwhelming certainty that nothing would ever change, that his present existence was so irreversible it would continue silently unraveling into the future without anything happening to mark the passage of time, and only in moments of remarkable lucidity like these would he realize that life was slipping away from him, like water trickling through his fingers.

  But how else could he play the hand he had been dealt? His father had been a miserable wretch who believed he had landed the best job of his life when he was hired to collect the piled-up excrement in the cesspools at the back of people’s houses. Each night he ventured forth to unburden the city of its human waste, as though Her Majesty in person would one day thank him for his labors. He was utterly convinced that this loathsome task was the cornerstone upon which the British Empire was founded: how could a country stay on top if it was drowning in its own excrement, he used to say. His greatest aspiration—to his friends” amusement—was to buy a bigger cart that would allow him to shovel more shit than anyone else. If there was one childhood memory etched in Tom’s mind it was the unbearable stench his father gave off when he climbed into bed in the early hours, and which Tom tried to fend off by nestling against his mother’s chest and breathing in her sweet smell barely perceptible beneath the sweat from her exhausting toil at the cotton mill. But the foul smell of excrement was preferable by far to the stink of cheap alcohol his father began to bring home with him when the sudden blossoming of the city’s sewage system put an end to his absurd dreams. And now Tom could no longer even fend this off with his mother’s sweet fragrance, because a sudden outbreak of cholera had torn her from his side. There was more room in the communal bed after that, but Tom slept with one eye open, for he never knew when his father might wake him up with his belt, unleashing his anger at the world on his son’s tiny back.

  When Tom turned six, his father forced him to go out begging to pay for his liquor. Arousing people’s sympathy was a thankless but ultimately undemanding task, and he did not know how much he would miss it until his father demanded he help him in the new job he had obtained thanks to his cart and his ability with a shovel. In this way Tom learned that death could cease to be something abstract and take on form and substance, leaving a chill in his fingers no fire would ever warm. But more than anything, he understood that those whose lives were worth nothing suddenly became valuable in death, for their bodies contained a hidden wealth of precious organs. He helped his father rob graves and crypts for a retired boxer named Crouch, who sold the corpses to surgeons, until during one of his frequent drunken binges his father fell into Thames and drowned. Overnight, Tom found himself alone in the world, but at least now his life was his own. He was no longer forced to disturb the sleep of the dead.

  Now he would be the one to decide which path he took.

  Stealing corpses had turned him into a strong, alert lad who had no difficulty finding more honest employment, although luck never deigned to shine on him enough to help him escape his hand-to-mouth existence. He had no trouble finding employment as a street sweeper, a pest exterminator, a doorman. He even swept chimneys, until the lad he worked with was caught stealing in one of the houses they were meant to be cleaning, and the pair of them were thrown out on their ears by the servants, not before being given a thrashing. But he put all that behind him the day he met Megan, a beautiful young girl whom he lived with for a few years in a stuffy cellar in Hague Street in Bethnal Green.

  Megan was not only a pleasant respite from his daily struggle, she taught him to read using old newspapers they fished out of the refuse. Thanks to her, Tom discovered the hidden meaning behind all those strange signs and learned that life beyond his own little world could be just as awful. Unfortunately, there are some neighborhoods where happiness is doomed to failure, and Megan soon ran off with a chair maker who did not know the meaning of hunger.

  When she returned two months later, face covered in bruises and blind in one eye, Tom accepted her back as though she had never left. Although her betrayal had dealt the final blow to a love already strained by circumstance, Tom cared for her day and night, feeding her opium syrup to keep the pain at bay and reading aloud from old newspapers as though he were reciting poetry. And he would have gone on caring for her for the rest of his life, bound to her by a feeling of pity, which in time might have changed back into affection, if the infection in her eye had not meant his bed was once more widened.

  They buried her one rainy morning in a small church near the lunatic asylum. He alone wept over her grave. Tom felt they were burying much more than Megan’s body that day. His faith in life was buried with her, his naïve belief he would be able to live honorably, his innocence. That day, in the shoddy coffin of the only woman whom he had dared give the love he had felt for his mother, they were also burying Tom Blunt, for suddenly he did not know who he was. He did not recognize himself in the young man who, that very night, crouched in the dark waiting for the chair maker to come home, in the frenzied creature who hurled himself at the man, throwing him against a wall, in the wild animal who set upon him, beating him into the ground with angry fists. The cries of this man he had never known were also the cries heralding the birth of a new Tom: a Tom who seemed capable of anything, a Tom who could perform deeds such as this without a flicker of conscience, perhaps because someone had extracted it and sold it to the surgeons. He had tried to make an honest living, and life had crushed him as if he were a loathsome insect. It was time he looked for other ways to survive, Tom told himself, gazing down at the bloody pulp to which he had reduced the chair maker.

  By the age of twenty, life had instilled a savage harshness in his eyes. Combined with his physical strength, this gave him a disconcerting, even intimidating air, especially as he loped along the streets. And so he had no difficulty in being hired by a moneylender in Bethnal Green, who paid him to bully a list of debtors by day, and who he had no qualms about stealing from at night, as though the morality that had guided his actions in the past had become no more than a useless obstacle preventing him from reaping the benefits of life, in which there was no longer room for anything but self-interest. Life became a simple routine that consisted of perpetrating violence on anyone he was told to, in exchange for enough money to pay for a filthy dank room and the services of a whore when he needed to relax. A life governed by a single emotion, hatred, which he nurtured daily with his fists, as though it were a rare bloom, a vague but intense hatred, exacerbated by a trifle and often responsible for him arriving at the boardinghouse, face black and blue, barred from yet another tavern. During this period, however, Tom was aware of his numbness, the icy indifference
with which he snapped people’s fingers and whispered threats in his victims” ears, but he justified his actions by telling himself he had no choice: it was pointless to fight against the current dragging him to where he probably belonged. Like a snake shedding its skin, he could only look away as he relinquished God’s mercy on his downward spiral to hell.

  Perhaps, in the end that was all he was fit for. Perhaps he had been born to break people’s fingers, to occupy a place of honor among thieves and wastrels. And he would have reconciled himself to being dragged deeper in to the ugly side of life, relinquishing all responsibility, knowing it was only a matter of time before he committed his first murder, had it not been for someone who believed the role of hero suited him better.

  Tom had turned up at Murray’s offices without knowing anything about the job on offer. He could still remember the look of astonishment on the big man’s face as he stood up from his desk when Tom walked in, and how he had begun walking round him, uttering ecstatic cries, pinching his arm muscles and sizing up his jawbone, arms flailing like some demented tailor.

  “I don’t believe it. You’re exactly the way I described you,” he declared to the bewildered Tom. “You are Derek Shackleton.” With this he led him down to an enormous cellar where a group of men in strange costumes seemed to be rehearsing a play.

  That was the first time he met Martin, Jeff, and the others.

  “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to your captain,” Gilliam announced, “the man for whom you must sacrifice your lives.” And that is how, overnight, Tom Blunt, hired thug, crook, and troublemaker, became the savior of mankind. The job did far more than fill his pockets: it saved his soul from the hellfire where it had been slowly roasting. Because, for some reason, it seemed inappropriate to Tom to go round breaking people’s bones now that his mission was to save the world. It sounded absurd, as the two things were perfectly compatible, and yet he felt as though the noble spirit of Derek Shackleton were now glowing inside him, filling the gap from which the original Tom Blunt’s soul had been extracted, taking him over serenely, naturally, painlessly. After the first rehearsal, Tom left Captain Shackleton’s armor behind but decided to take his character home, or perhaps this was an unconscious act beyond his control. The truth is he liked looking at the world as though he really were its savior, seeing it through the eyes a hero whose heart was as courageous as it was generous, and that same day he decided to look for honest work, as though the words of the giant named Gilliam Murray had rekindled the tiny flame of humanity that was still flickering in the depths of his soul.

  But now all his plans for redemption had been destroyed by that stupid girl. He sat on the edge of the bed and unwrapped the parasol bundled in his jacket. It was doubtless the most expensive thing in his room; selling it would pay his rent for two or three months, he reflected, rubbing the bruise on his side where the bag of tomato juice had been strapped before Martin burst it during their duel. Some good had come out of his meeting with the girl, although it was hard to ignore the tight spot she had put him in. He dreaded to think what would happen if he ever bumped into her in the street. His boss’s worst nightmare would come true, for the girl would immediately discover Murray’s Time Travel was a fraud. And while that might be the worst consequence, it was not the only one. She would also discover he was no hero from the future, just a miserable wretch who owned nothing but the clothes on his back. And then Tom would be forced with his own eyes to witness her devotion turn to disappointment, possibly even outright disgust, as though she were watching a butterfly change back into a caterpillar.

  This, of course, was nothing compared to the discovery of the fraud, but he knew he would regret it far more. Deep down, it gave him immense pleasure to remember the woman’s entranced gaze, even though he knew it was not directed at him, but at the hero he was impersonating, the brave Captain Shackleton, the savior of the human race. Yes, he wanted Claire to imagine him in the year 2000, rebuilding the world, not sitting in this gloomy hovel, wondering how much a pawnbroker would give for her parasol.

  Anyone who has been to Billingsgate fish market in the early hours knows that smells travel faster than light. For, long before the night receives the first flush of dawn, the pungent aroma of shellfish and the overpowering stench of eel filling the fishermen’s carts have already mingled with the cold night air.

  Zigzagging through the oyster stalls and squid sellers hawking their merchandise at three for a penny, Tom Blunt reached the railings at the river entrance, where a crowd of other miserable wretches were flexing their muscles and trying to look enthusiastic, in the hope some kindly skipper would pick them to unload his boat from overseas. Tom hugged his jacket to himself trying to ward off the cold and joined the group of men. He immediately spotted Patrick, a tall youth who was as strapping as he was, with whom by dint of unloading boxes together he had struck up a sort of friendship. They greeted one another with a friendly nod, and like a couple of pigeons puffing up their chests, tried to stand out from the crowd and catch the skippers” eye. Ordinarily, thanks to their glowing physiques, they were both hired straightaway, and that morning was no exception. They congratulated one another with a sly smile and walked towards the designated cargo boat together with the dozen other chosen stevedores.

  Tom liked this simple honest work that required no more than strong arms and a degree of agility; not only did it enable him to see the dawn in all its glory above the Thames, but as he began to feel the calming yet vivifying fatigue of physical effort steal over him, he could allow his thoughts to drift down unexpected pathways. Rather like when he was on Harrow-on-the-Hill, a small rise in the suburbs of London he had discovered during one of his walks. On top of the hill grew a centuries-old oak surrounded by a dozen graves, as though the dead buried there wanted nothing to do with the others in the tiny adjoining cemetery. He thought of the grassy knoll as his own private sanctuary, a sort of outdoor chapel where he could close his ears to the din of the world. Sometimes when he was up there, he found to his amazement that he was even able to string a few positive thoughts together, which gave him a measure of insight into the usually so elusive meaning of his life. As he sat wondering what sort of life John Peachey, the man buried nearest to the oak, must have led, Tom began to reflect about his own existence as though it belonged to someone else, and to judge it with the same objectivity as that of the deceased stranger.

  Once their day was done, he and Patrick sat on a pile of boxes waiting to be paid. The two men usually passed the time chatting about this or that, but Tom’s thoughts had been elsewhere all week. This was how long it had been since the unfortunate meeting with Claire Haggerty, and yet still nothing had happened. Apparently, Murray knew nothing about it and possibly never would. Even so, Tom’s life would never be the same again.

  It had already changed. Tom knew London was too big a place for him to run into the girl again, yet he walked around with his eyes wide open, afraid of bumping into her round every corner.

  Thanks to that stupid girl, he would always be uneasy, always on the alert: he had even considered growing a beard. He shook his head as he reflected how the most trivial act can change your life: why the devil had he not taken the precaution of emptying his bladder before the performance? When Patrick finally plucked up the courage to chide him gently for his morose silence, Tom stared at him in surprise. It was true he had not tried to hide his anxiety from Patrick, and now he did not know what to say to him. He merely reassured him with a mysterious, doleful smile, and his companion shrugged his shoulders, as if to say he had not meant to poke his nose into Tom’s affairs. Once they had been paid, the two men strolled away from the market with the leisurely gait of those who have nothing much else to do for the rest of the day. As they walked, Tom gazed warmly at Patrick, afraid his unwillingness to confide in him might have hurt the lad’s feelings. Patrick was only a couple of years younger than him, but his baby face made him look even younger, and Tom could not help instinctively taking him
under his wing, like the little brother he never had, even though he knew Patrick could take care of himself. And yet neither of them, whether out of apathy or shyness, had shown any interest in developing their friendship outside the port.

  “Today’s earnings bring me a little closer, Tom,” Patrick suddenly declared in a faintly wistful voice.

  “Closer to what?” asked Tom, utterly intrigued, for Patrick had never once mentioned any plans to start a business or marry a woman.

  The lad looked at him mysteriously.

  “To achieving my dream,” he replied solemnly.

  Tom was pleased the lad had a dream that would drive him on, a reason to get out of bed in the morning: something lacking in his own life of late.

  “And what dream might that be, Patrick?” he asked, knowing the lad was longing to tell him.

  Almost reverentially, Patrick pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and presented it to him.

  “To travel to the year 2000 and see the brave Captain Shackleton triumph over the evil automatons.” Tom did not even take the leaflet he knew from memory. He just stared at Patrick glumly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know about the year 2000, Tom?” said Patrick, astonished.

  Tom sighed.

  “There’s nothing for me in the future, Patrick,” he shrugged.

  “This is my present, and it’s the only thing I want to know about.” “I see,” murmured Patrick, too polite to criticize his friend’s narrow-mindedness.

  “Have you had breakfast yet?” Tom asked.

  “Of course not!” he groaned. “I told you, I’m saving up. Breakfast is a luxury I can’t afford.” “In that case allow me to treat you,” Tom offered, putting a fatherly arm round his shoulder. “I know a place near here where they serve the best sausages in town.”