by E. J. Swift
Rachel and Tournier embrace briefly. Tournier says only, “Do what they say, you’ll be safe,” then makes her way back through the vines. It’s too dark to see her leave, and I wonder where she’s going next tonight, what she has risked to bring Rachel here, what would happen to her were she caught. What will happen to her, in the years between now and 1945. The others have taken themselves a short distance away and are arguing softly. Rachel and I wait.
“You can bring it,” says the American at last. The Frenchwoman remains silent, radiating disapproval, but does not contradict him. “Time to move,” he says.
Rachel gets to her feet. I lift the cello case for her.
“Good luck,” I murmur.
The Frenchwoman moves swiftly to my side, and squeezes my arm until it hurts.
“You saw nothing tonight,” she hisses. “You did nothing tonight. And don’t ever mention that place aloud again, you understand?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be gone from Paris myself, very soon.”
When I hand over the cello case, Rachel seizes my wrist. I can feel her shaking. In the clouded night I can’t see her face except as a swirl of grey in a world of darker greys.
“Where did you come from?” she says.
“From the future,” I reply, knowing she won’t believe me. Knowing that of all the events of the last few days, nothing has substance. She’s moving through a plane of unreality, because that is the only way this can be happening, can be survivable—if it is not real, if we have shifted to another dimension entirely.
But her grasp upon my wrist tightens. She says, “It’s not like this, is it? The future?”
I think of the train taking her parents out of France and its destination. I think of what will follow: of Vietnam, of Bosnia and Rwanda and Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, of 9/11, of Syria, a litany of conflict that seems to have no beginning or conceivable end, and I feel a wash of despair that I know I cannot, under any circumstances, communicate to her.
“No,” I say. “It’s not like this.”
She releases my arm.
“Thank you, figment,” she whispers.
“Come on.” The Frenchwoman is impatient.
I wait as they file away through the vineyard, the Frenchwoman and the American and Rachel Clouatre and the cello. I can hear the rustling of the vines as they push through, but it might just be the wind, and then it is just the wind.
Chapter Thirty-Six
FOR A WEEK I hide behind the false wall in Millie’s storeroom, racked with hunger, waiting for a flare. Smoking might allay the hunger, but the smell will give me away. I tear apart the cigarettes, sniffing the tobacco, I even try chewing it, but the taste makes me retch. At night, when the last of the clientele have gone home and the bartenders and cleaners have packed up, I sneak upstairs and steal some sugar and mix it with water. With rationing in place, I don’t dare to take food for fear of discovery, although if I have to wait much longer for a flare, I will be forced to take greater risks. Some evenings the waitress and her German lover come downstairs and flirt outside the storeroom, and the old panic laps at my consciousness. Ich liebe dich, he says. Perhaps he believes it, too. She panders to him. You’re sweet, she says. Perhaps she believes it too. I become drowsy. My mind wanders. I have dreams full of violence and running, of boarded-up trains shunting through the night, of lava brimming in ovens. Day by day I feel my strength draining away. If anyone comes, will I be alert enough to hide myself? What if Madame Tournier brings another fugitive?
In any case, shouldn’t I be trying to get out of Paris, out of France and over to England, to warn people about the camps, the unspeakable horrors they contain, and more, the conflicts that await beyond this war—Iraq the first time, Iraq the second time, all the mistakes that could be averted between this century and the next? Shouldn’t I be trying to save the world? These dark, grand thoughts wash up and retreat. They leave me behind, alone and confused, certain of only one thing: the insignificance of a single body, the ridiculousness of the notion that I might be a hero. I’m no Madame Tournier. I’m hungry, carb-depleted, scared. The Western world doesn’t believe in prophets.
A part of me wonders if Rachel was right all along: perhaps I am a figment, intruding on this timezone only by virtue of her imagination, or mine. Either way, I’m at the mercy of the anomaly, and all I can work with are the scenarios I’m given. A darker part of my mind says: or the scenarios I’ve been pushed into. Best not to think about that.
On the eighth day of confinement I sense it, still a way off, but approaching. I lie still, drifting and exhausted, willing the flare closer. When it takes me I am barely conscious. On the other side, I have just enough awareness to crawl to a corner of the keg room and pull Tournier’s borrowed coat over me. The beer lines gurgle gently. I drift.
When I come to, hours have passed since the time I entered the keg room and the day shift will be en route, if they’re not here already. I look about me, disorientated. Fruit juice. I empty a bottle of it down my throat. The sugar rush makes my body scream. Crisps. I rip through five packets. Crumbs and empty packets discarded on the floor. I’m dizzy. I get to my feet and stumble upstairs. I can hear Angel singing as he goes about setting up the bar, too high and out of tune. He’s playing Edith Piaf. Edith Piaf, who sang at German gatherings during the occupation and returned to the Moulin Rouge after it. I avoid the front bar and take the back exit out to the alleyway.
Leaning against the wall, resplendent in aquamarine, is the chronometrist. Her age and appearance has altered once again: today she is long, blonde and athletic, and wears a fitted sports tracksuit and Nikes. Standing on one leg to stretch out her quads, she beams at me.
“My dear. Well done. Really. Well done. What a star—in the making you are! No! Scratch that! A star come home.”
I eye her wearily, hungrily.
“You’ve got a nerve, showing up here again. You were found dead in an ice box in there, don’t you remember?”
“Not the way—you might. Other corporealities, you understand.”
“You’re like some sick, twisted version of Transfusion. But worse.”
“Do you want to know how the final series ends?”
“No! Jesus.”
She takes a wary step backwards.
“You’re upset.”
“And you’re surprised? You manipulated me. You sent me to World War Two! You wrote it on the floor of the keg room.”
“Me? No…”
“There was a girl down there. A Jewish girl.”
“And you helped her, my dear. Go and—where are we?—Google Rachel Clouatre. I suspect you’ll find some—quite lovely sonatas, now that she’s got her cello back. She never did marry, you know.”
The chronometrist steps her left foot back and flexes her right, leaning forward over her thighs. Her nose twitches.
“It’s all right, my dear. It’s over. Well… it could be over. That is, it’s never really over. But I only came to offer my humble congratulations. I’m going on tour for a while.”
“Good for you. I hope it’s Australia.”
She gives me a wounded look. “I like you my dear, but you can be very harsh. Very harsh indeed.”
“You really are a piece of work—” I begin, but she straightens, smiles at me, says:
“Goodbye, Hallie, my dear incumbent. When the time comes, remember the way of Janus is not always the way to be true to yourself. Some of us were born to be more than human. I wish you good travelling.”
Her face twitches. I can almost picture the chronometrist evaporating out of her. Then she blinks and there’s just a woman in a sports tracksuit staring at the stranger in front of her, her mouth parted a little in her confusion.
Part Seven
Basilosaurus
THE ANOMALY IS growing.
With each flare a new tendril extends, teasing through the centuries, bursting into flower through moments, months and years. The anomaly is weaving a tapestry,
one ever more complex as the desires of its incumbent propagate. The incumbent is a rich resource, and after so long waiting, the anomaly is greedy. It needs to feast.
The incursions of the squatter have become a rarer irritation. The squatter will never be welcome, but is more easily tolerated in this era of prosperity.
Flares come. The anomaly expands. In the wake of a flare, it is sated, but this never lasts. It cannot. The flares become more frequent, and the greater their frequency, the briefer the satiation. The anomaly can never be whole. Not when it knows the incumbent is withholding. Not when the incumbent still has more to give.
And the incumbent does.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
THE BEST TIME to travel is after work, at the end of the night shift and before the day preparations begin. For a precious couple of hours, there is no one downstairs but me. I lie in the keg room and let the cold chill my body as I await the warmth of the flare. It rolls in, a well of sound in my ears. The anomaly scoops me up and whirls me away.
I have been to Paris at the height of the Terror, slinking around the city in fear of losing my head. I’ve travelled to 1661, joined the festivities in the Tuileries while Louis XIV parades on horseback, dressed as a Roman Emperor. I’ve witnessed revolutions and occupations, bombardments and plagues. I’ve drunk champagne at the height of the Belle Epoque. Seen Sarah Bernhardt perform Voltaire, Josephine Baker bring jazz to the city. I’ve juggled batons at the opening night of the Moulin Rouge.
Aide Lefort says we must do what we can, and so I do. I help where I can. When I can. Some days I endeavour to will myself to a particular time, other days I surrender to the anomaly’s desires. Acts of kindness will save the world, however small, says Aide Lefort. And this will be my code of practice.
I return to the end of the nineteenth century, and I find Millie. She is older, elaborately dressed, riding down the boulevard in the back of an open carriage. As it sweeps past, her head turns and she sees me. Her eyes widen, she stands up in the carriage. She shouts, “Gabriela!”
I chase the carriage on foot, catching up with her at Opéra. She jumps from the carriage, although she has a driver now, whose hand she rests her gloved fingers upon to descend.
“Gabriela! It’s really you? What are you doing here? Where did you go?”
“I’ll tell you,” I say. “But not here.”
“Oh, I’ve got my own place now. A proper place, that is. You won’t believe it, life has gone simply delirious. Only—I’m not sure he’ll let you ride with me, now I’m a respectable woman of business.” She indicates the driver with her parasol.
“Tell me the address, I’ll meet you there.”
Millie’s apartment is a luxurious affair. I stroll around, admiring the gilt-edged mirrors, the heavy silk drapes and Persian rugs. Millie watches me, at first perplexed, then furious, and finally succumbing to the absurdity of the situation. She demands my story. I tell her the truth—what does it matter? Who can it harm? Perhaps it can help. Millie listens, fan a-flutter, incredulous.
“You went where? Another century? What happens?”
“I can’t talk about that.”
“You disappear for ten years and then you return saying you went to the future? I think you can.”
I tell her some things. A delinquent feeling.
“Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
“I have to wait for a flare. They’re like waves. They wash up and carry you to another time.”
“Sometimes I thought I’d made you up, or it was all a dream. I thought perhaps the gin had driven me properly mad. I kept remembering what you said about not being alone. I thought perhaps you was a ghost. But I had your boots.”
“You’ve got my DMs?”
“You must have forgot them. When you rushed off that morning.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She brings me the boots, cleaned up and stored in a hat box.
“Here they are, good as new.”
“Millie, I can’t believe you kept them all this time.”
“’Course I kept them! Though I confess, I did give away the yellow decoration, only the other day in fact. An artist friend of mine was suffering what you might call a drought of inspiration—Théophile Steinlen is his name—and I thought this would do the trick.”
“You gave Pikachu to Théophile Steinlen?” I say dazedly. “The guy who does the Chat Noir?”
“Oh, I don’t know what he does. But he seemed very pleased.”
Millie has done well for herself. Valleroy, she tells me, was found guilty of fraud against the state, and has gone into exile somewhere in southern Europe. She has a new lover now, a richer and kinder one, who has bought her this apartment. She has started a small business supplying fabrics to milliners (“I borrowed your name for that one—Gabriel rather than Gabriela, that is—easier, for the books”). She is saving up to buy a tavern.
“Anywhere in mind?” I ask innocently.
When the time comes to leave, we are both crying. But Millie is hopeful.
“I’ll see you again?”
“You never know.”
I do see her. She ages, and I remain forever young. I see her in 1894, on the night a tavern in her name opens on boulevard de Clichy. I see her in 1901, twice-married and twice-divorced, a patron of the Moulin Rouge, a setter of trends—in particular, hats. She shows me her latest gift, an original artwork by Théophile Steinlen titled The Yellow Devil which bears an uncanny resemblance to Pikachu, and asks if her artist friend is famous in the future. I tell her he is, but Pokémon Go is no more. “Is that bad?” asks Millie.
The last time I see Millie is in 1913, at the end of her life, with tuberculosis drowning her lungs. The room smells of laudanum. Millie is gaunt, feverish, sometimes lucid, more often not. She whispers to herself, snatches of tangled memories and phantasms only she can see. I take her hand. I can feel the heat of it through the gloves I am instructed to wear. She is burning up, burning out. She is dying. If she has ever truly needed me it is now, but I am unable to hold back my tears, the tide of misery rising in my chest with the knowledge that I can’t stop this. I can’t save her. For the first time I feel anger at the anomaly. But how can I blame it for bringing me here when it only responds to my desires?
Millie’s hand quivers in mine. She has seen me. She reaches up, pulls my face close to hers. She murmurs, “I knew you’d come, Gabriela.”
“Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m here, Millie. I’m here.”
I NEVER TOLD Gabriela that I stole her identity. Reinvention must remain a secret; it is the only way it can succeed.
One morning I come downstairs to find Gabriela waiting outside the keg room. Her arms are folded and it comes to me that she is barring the way. The thought that anyone might try to stop me travelling fills me with rage.
“What are you doing here?”
“It’s time we tested this properly,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. I need to try and travel. Then we will know the truth about this thing.”
“That won’t work,” I say at once. I’m shocked by the rush of jealousy that takes me. I do not want to share my window to another world.
“How do you know?”
“The chronometrist said it was linked to me—”
“You cannot trust that chronometrist. She lied to you, she made you do things. Change things. We should ignore her, and we should try with me.”
“Look, if other people could travel, why hasn’t anyone already? How come it’s only me?”
Gabriela regards me calmly. “If you are certain it is only you, then it won’t hurt to do a test, will it?”
This logic is irrefutable. I grit my teeth and push aside my reluctance.
“Fine. Let’s do it. But I’m telling you now, nothing will happen.”
It’s unlikely there will be a flare. I know the anomaly’s moods, and it is quiet today. It has been quiet for a few days, although I don’t tell
Gabriela this. After Millie’s death I felt strange, uncertain about its intentions, as though it had betrayed me. I took some time away from the keg room. Now I feel its loss.
Gabriela closes the door behind us, and looks around.
“What do we do?”
“I usually lie down, or sit against a keg.”
“Okay.”
We lie back on the concrete, our heads close to one another and our feet pointing away.
“Just close your eyes,” I say. “And listen.”
“For the music?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“You have to sort of focus on it.”
Gabriela fidgets, adjusting some part of her clothing. “I can’t hear anything.”
Good, I think.
“Just... wait.”
We lie in silence. I cannot hear anything either. The anomaly is muted. I wonder if it is because Gabriela is here. Because she is not an incumbent. Then another, less pleasant thought occurs: what if Gabriela travels and I don’t? What if the anomaly will only tolerate one incumbent, and it rejects me for her?
I open my eyes quickly. She’s still there. Don’t be silly, I scold myself. You’re acting as if this is a sentient object, conscious and capricious. Which it might be, but I prefer not to think about that.
I close my eyes again, breathe more deeply. Listen to the drip, drip into the puddle. I hear Gabriela’s breath ease in and out. The keg room is dim and cold. We are deep, deep underground.
Underwater, in a bubble of air. A monster looms out of the gloom. Its head is crocodilian, the ovoid body steered by small front fins. Tapering away for a good five metres, the muscular tail undulates vertically, finishing its sweep with two almost delicate flukes. Basilosaurus. I gape. The light in the air bubble goes out. I hold my breath as the creature draws near, afraid that even a sigh might break the bubble’s fragile walls.
The monster swims overhead, its sleek body blueish-greenish-grey. This is strange. I’m flat on my back on the ocean floor, naked, spine curved into the sand. The eye of the basilosaurus is round and wary. When its mouth opens, I see the rows of teeth. Basilosaurus forges on, questing, and a shoal of tiny fish skid past in the opposite direction, safe from its snapping jaws.
