Impossible Stories

by Zoran Zivkovic

  “If it weren’t for you, the department of paleolinguistics would never have been founded.”

  “Probably, but what has been the benefit of that? Do you know the greatest number of new students I have had all these years?”

  He clearly did not understand this as a question and so did not reply. He did not even shrug his shoulders.

  “Eight. And that was long ago; it’s been almost a quarter of a century. The average has been three and a half students. And only two of them at most finish their studies. Sometimes not even one. But not because I was too strict. On the contrary, I was considered a very . . . ” she stopped for a moment, looking for the right word, “helpful examiner, which gave me a bad reputation among my colleagues. The young people simply gave up, primarily because they were disappointed, even though I did all I could to stimulate their interest not only in the technical aspects of the origin of language but also in a considerably less tedious subject: early human communities. They are inseparable, in any case. But nothing seemed to work. I never understood what they actually expected when they decided to major in paleolinguistics. No one made them choose it.”

  “You cannot blame yourself for the students’ poor response. You said yourself that we live in a time that is not particularly predisposed toward the past.”

  She squinted at him briefly, and then continued to follow her line of thinking, paying no attention to his comforting words.

  “In the last four years, no one has signed up in my department. How can you keep your position as lecturer if you have no one to lecture to? Only if the administration is sympathetic toward you. They didn’t have to do it. They probably wouldn’t have if it weren’t for my age. I stayed here just because the dean was considerate enough to support me, although it would have been natural to fire me. He knew that at my age I have nowhere to go. I knew that myself, so I swallowed my pride and let them put me in this cubbyhole. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, particularly not when the gift is given out of pity. What else could I have done, anyway?”

  She stopped talking, wondering why she was telling all this to a stranger. She was only putting them both in an awkward situation. But the matter concerned him, too. He had come there with an idealized notion of paleolinguistics, hadn’t he? Would it be fair to let him leave without seeing its other side? Certainly not. In any case, she had not had the opportunity to talk to someone for a long time, to pour out her grievances. There were no more students, and her colleagues avoided her more-or-less openly.

  “Now I’m on sabbatical. That was the last chance for me to reach retirement age in this position. I was given a leave of absence quite easily. It was actually a gift. I didn’t even have to present any sort of research plan, as is customary. No project that I would work on. No one even asked. No one expects anything from me anymore.”

  “But you have done so much already. You wrote several fundamental works on paleolinguistics. Isn’t that more than enough?”

  Her blurry eyes started to wander over the multitude of objects covering the desk in front of her. Had she known she would have a visitor, she would have tidied up the office a bit. Actually, she had been reproaching herself for some time for the clutter surrounding her, but she could never make up her mind to do anything about it. There was no incentive. What was the purpose, since she would be leaving there in a few months? But then, couldn’t that be expanded to all of life itself? Why make any effort at all when everything was transient? She used to know the answer, it had seemed obvious and irrefutable, but with the passage of time it had become hazier and darker.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  He did not answer right away. He seemed to hesitate. “No, thank you,” he said at last.

  It was only then that she realized there was just one tea cup. Had the man accepted her offer, she would have had to do without tea, something that would not have been easy for her. She had become a complete addict. Several years ago, when the doctor had advised her to stop drinking coffee because of high blood pressure, she had switched to tea, primarily to appease her habit of constantly sipping something hot. When she reached seven cups a day, she realized she had overdone it, but it was too late by then.

  “I would. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  She hobbled over to the small, cracked ceramic sink that stood next to the window, picking up the kettle on her way. Although her vision was very poor without her glasses, she did not need them to make tea. She had gone through this sequence of simple motions so many times that she could have managed in total darkness.

  “There is nothing truly fundamental in my works,” she said in a hushed voice, after plugging in the hot plate and returning to her armchair. “It is all just an educated guess, at best.”

  For a few moments all that was heard was the sound of water leaking in thin streams from several spots on the cracked exterior of the kettle, evaporating when they hit the red-hot plate.

  “What do you mean?” asked the visitor at length.

  “Do you know the first thing I told my students? So they knew right from the start what they were involved in. Paleolinguistics is not an exact science. It cannot be, since, in the strictest sense of that term, the subject of study is missing. Primeval language has been dead for a very long time. We have no direct evidence of it. And even the indirect evidence is quite scanty. All we do is make more-or-less questionable reconstructions. We try to recompose a mosaic whose original appearance is unknown, and we are not even certain that we are using the right stones.”

  “But didn’t you convincingly show that living languages and the dead ones that have been preserved both contain traces of primeval language? Which is natural, in any case. They all arose from it, didn’t they?”

  “Convincingly, yes. Perhaps. There is one person, however, whom I have never managed to convince of this completely. The only one I really care about.”

  “Who is that?”

  “Myself, of course.”

  The kettle suddenly whistled. She got up slowly, unplugged the hot plate, took a small tea bag out of a half-empty yellow box on the desk; lifted the kettle’s little lid, removing her hand quickly so the steam would not burn her, waited for the cloud rushing out to disperse, and dropped the tea bag into the boiling water.

  “They say you shouldn’t put the tea bag in right away. If the water is too hot, it kills the aroma of the tea. But I don’t have the patience to wait.”

  “You are unfair to yourself. You must not doubt your whole life’s work. Just think of the enormous effort you have made.”

  “What else can I do? Resort to self-delusion? Repeat to myself that it can’t be all in vain since I made such a tremendous effort? But effort itself is by no means a guarantee of success. There is something, however, that is even worse than doubt. The hardest thing for me is that the doubt can never be removed: there is no way to know how close I came to primeval language. But there’s no one to blame for that. I knew from the beginning that was the main shortcoming of the field I had chosen.”

  “Except if you were to go back into the past.”

  She smiled at him briefly. “Yes, except if I were to go back into the past. I know many people who would sell their soul to the devil without the slightest hesitation for such an opportunity. All kinds of historians. People like me, obsessed with long-ago times. But either the soul is not enough payment or the devil himself is not that powerful. Probably the latter. Unfortunately, there’s no going back into the past.”

  “If there were, would you accept the devil’s offer?”

  She looked at him without speaking for a time and then got up to wash out her cup and pour the tea. When she returned to the desk, the newspaper that covered the chair with the hot plate had a new fish steaming in agony.

  “I don’t think the devil would choose me. What use would he have for such a poor, worn-out soul as mine?”

  “Maybe he wouldn’t even ask for your soul.”

  “Oh, don’t be naiv
e. The devil isn’t generous. You don’t get something for nothing from him.”

  “I agree. He always collects payment for his services. But there are other rewards in addition to the soul that he might find more attractive.”

  “What else could he expect from me in return?”

  “The devil is a sadist above all. He enjoys people’s suffering. If he helped you return to the past, he would be putting you in twofold torment.”

  She greedily took a sip of tea. She knew it was still hot, that it would burn the sensitive lining of her mouth, but the addict in her had run out of patience again. Conversation with this stranger had become rather pointless, even though he amused her in some odd way.

  “Twofold?” she repeated inquiringly.

  “Yes. Imagine that you go back in time and there, on the spot, you reliably establish how things were. What would you do with that knowledge?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Publish it, probably.”

  “But you are a scientist. Wouldn’t you ruin your credibility by citing that your knowledge stems from a trip into the past arranged by the devil? They would proclaim you a charlatan at best. At worst you’d end up in an insane asylum.”

  Before she replied, she took another long sip of hot tea. The cup was already half empty.

  “Then I wouldn’t publish it. But the devil would still have no reason to rejoice. I told you that I only care about convincing one person. And for her sake it would not be necessary to publish anything. She would be convinced without it, by firsthand experience.” She stopped a moment, smiling again. “Let me hear what other trap the devil has prepared for me.”

  “What is the fundamental assumption of your field, that is, all fields that study the past?” The visitor had not acquired her facetious tone. His voice was as serious as before, and she thought it quite pleasant. Dignified. Too bad she had not found her glasses. A man with such a voice simply had to have an agreeable face.

  “The immutability of what has happened, if that is what you had in mind.”

  “That’s right, the past cannot be changed. That fact would be jeopardized, however, if someone from the future appeared in the past. The devil’s services would desecrate something that is older and must remain inviolable. What would be the use of learning firsthand about the past if it were no longer final?”

  “Why do you think that a visitor from the future would destroy the past? If he were a scientist—and we’re talking about that kind of time traveler, aren’t we?—it would not be in his interest. On the contrary, he would have every reason to remain an inconspicuous observer.”

  “Yes, he would have every reason. But would that be enough? There would be enormous temptation to influence the course of events. Take, for example, a historian who goes back to some turning point in history. If he remains simply an observer, events will take their well-known course resulting in the death of a large number of innocent people. On the other hand, it could all be avoided by his involvement. In that case, which would prevail inside him: the dispassionate scientist or the man who realizes that if he does not take any measures, his conscience will be burdened with unbearable guilt? It would not be an easy choice, and this would give the devil great satisfaction.”

  She stared for a moment at the bottom of the empty cup in front of her before answering.

  “Not every traveler to the past would necessarily come up against such a difficult choice. There are peaceful times, without turning points. For example, if I went back to the period I studied, I could be an impartial observer without any encumbrance because nothing would drive me to get involved in the course of events, to change the future. Historically speaking, it was a completely innocent age. I’m afraid the devil would not get his due.”

  “There is no innocent age.” He said it softer than before, as though it were confidential, secret. “Have you heard of the butterfly effect?”

  She had heard of it but could by no means remember what it was. Even if her memory had been in better shape, it would quite likely have slipped her mind. She had never fancied such innovations. Her science was classical, more elementary. To avoid answering, she got up to pour a new cup of tea, and he waited for her to return to the desk.

  “A butterfly suddenly starts to fly, urged by who knows what, quite unaware of the fact that this movement might start a chain of events whose far-off final link is a storm of continental proportions on the other side of the world. The flutter of tiny wings sets the chaos equation in motion, whose solution can be completely disproportionate to this infinitesimal movement. A tiny cause sometimes leads to enormous effects.”

  “Yes, I know about that,” she replied, “only I don’t see what that has to do with what we were talking about.”

  “Regardless of how firmly you are resolved not to change the past, what happens does not depend on you alone. Quite unintentionally, by your very presence, you might bring about the butterfly effect. Maybe even literally. Imagine that your sudden appearance there disturbs a butterfly that has been idly perched on a flower. Frightened, it suddenly takes flight, and several days later, far from there, someone dies in a storm who was not supposed to die at all, someone who is the starting point of an inverse pyramid of history. You might be convinced that this outcome is highly unlikely, but the devil, as an experienced gambler, would not hold back from accepting the wager. It would actually be a safe bet. Chaos is his kingdom, when it comes right down to it.”

  “But if this is how things stand, if the devil can’t lose, what’s stopping him from coming with his offer? He hasn’t visited me, or anyone else in my field as far as I know. And it’s among us he would find the most prominent victims.”

  She expected an answer from the other side of the desk, but none was forthcoming. As the silence in the gloomy basement room deepened, distant unintelligible sounds from the upper levels could be heard.

  “So, we are back to where we started,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “Going into the past is clearly not within the devil’s power.”

  “Maybe it is,” said the melodic voice in return, “but in such a way that it would not give him the reward he wants if he were to offer it to someone. That is why there is no offer.”

  Now it was her turn to remain silent. She peered in bewilderment at the foggy figure across from her.

  “If there were neither the temptation nor the opportunity to change the past, then the returnee would feel none of the torment that would suffice the devil as payment.”

  “But is that possible? Doesn’t it follow from your story about the butterfly that the very act of stepping into the past would inevitably change it?”

  “Yes, it does follow, but only if one went physically into the past. And it does not have to be that way.”

  She raised her cup to her lips, but the tea was already lukewarm. This was not the way she liked it; it was tasteless. She found a bit of empty space on the desk and put the cup there.

  “Then how would it be?”

  “What do you do when you watch a documentary film?” said the visitor, answering her question with one of his own. “You go into the past without the opportunity of changing anything. Film editors do have a few tricks at their disposal, but that doesn’t count: that would be falsifying the past and not truly changing it. The viewer of a documentary film is in the position of the ideal unbiased observer: he can in no way influence the past.”

  “Yes, but that is only true for more recent history. It really is possible to return to the past that way. At least partially. The filmed version enchants us with its images and sound, but reality is something richer. But let’s put that aside. I must remind you that, unfortunately, no documentary films have been made about the age that interests me.”

  If he noticed the irony in her voice, it was not revealed by any change of tone. “Of course not. I was not even thinking of such a return to the past. It is, as you say, quite incomplete. But the comparison with films is rather convenient. Imagine such a film about the past th
at would act upon all your senses, not just sight and hearing. A film in which you would feel exactly the same way you do in reality, except that you could not take part in it, change it. You would have the role of an infinitely empowered viewer who sees, hears, and feels everything, yet remains invisible and inaudible, unobserved.”

  She blinked. “That sounds like a ghost to me.”

  The visitor gave a brief laugh, resonant and clear. “Yes, the viewer would be like a ghost, for all practical purposes.”

  “That’s all very well, but there are no such films about the past. None have been made.”

  She thought there would be some comment from the dusty armchair, but silence greeted her once again. She closed her eyes for a moment and rubbed the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger, thinking that it was time to bring the conversation to a close. What else was there to say? They had reached the topic of ghosts, hadn’t they? Even though she was happy that someone had visited her, she was now feeling tired. A person should not be overly indulgent toward admirers.

  “I wonder what time it is. My watch is lost somewhere in this mess on the desk. I can’t wear it on my wrist all the time—it chafes—and then I can never remember where I put it.”

  She assumed that he would look at his left wrist, but he reached under his cloak and took out a pocket watch. A dull golden reflection danced about it, and she thought how strange it was. She could not remember the last time she had seen a watch like that. Had they come back into fashion? She knew nothing about fashion, but then how could she since she never went anywhere, never saw anyone, and passed the entire day between these four basement walls?

  He handed her the watch. She took it impassively, simply because he had offered it. It was only when she had it in her hand that she wondered why he had not simply told her the time instead of letting her find out for herself.

  She brought the object close to her eyes, so she could see without her glasses, but did not open the lid right away because her attention was attracted to the engraving on its bulging surface. An ornate letter E, with a series of decorative loops at its ends, just like the initial from some old-fashioned manuscript. Quite unusual, was the thought that flashed through her mind. E as in Eva. Like it was meant for me.