consequences.
“Oh, Joseph, dear, someone might come,” she said in a voice whose
reproach was only feigned. “Be patient a little longer...”
Somewhere at the top of the street, from the direction of the square, dull
thudding could be heard. It approached rapidly, mixing with the clatter of
bouncing wheels. The sound was similar to thunder heard backward—from
the dying out to the explosion. Mary tried to wriggle out and turn toward the
window, but Joseph’s embrace held her tightly.
“What was that?” she asked, turning her head to the side.
“Nothing...a carriage, probably...in a hurry...”
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If there was an end to his sentence, it was lost in the deafening stampede, in
the strike of lightning. Just like the shadow of a low cloud, the unbridled team
whizzed past the watchmaker’s shop in a whirlwind of hooves, wheels, manes,
empty driver’s seat, foaming muzzles, spinning axles, terrified eyes, reins
dragging on the ground, sweaty crupper—and afterwards the thunder resumed
its natural course again.
“Someone could get run over,” said Mary, after Joseph’s squeeze finally
relaxed. Now he was standing almost penitently next to her, not knowing what
to do with his hands that had held her like a vise a moment before.
“Carriage drivers have become so inconsiderate, even arrogant. You should
see them down in the town. They tear around like madmen. And how they
whip those poor animals. It’s terrible.”
“No one will get run over, Mary. Not anymore.”
She looked at him suspiciously, confused by the changed tone of his voice.
He had said it too seriously, as though pronouncing some kind of oath. Even
so, as he uttered them, he was aware that they were merely empty words of
comfort similar to those said to calm a child the first time he asks about death.
Of course, someone would get run over. The inscription chiseled in granite
could not be erased. On another fork of the tree of time he was now running
into the street and bending in a convulsion of pain over the unmoving body,
while tufts of yellow fluttered all around. He could pretend that this no longer
concerned him, that he was now safe on this branch where Mary was standing
next to him, the very incarnation of the vibrancy of life, sweaty, laughing,
thirsty. But although he did not understand it much, the realization that both
courses were equally real was painfully clear to him.
The clarity with which he remembered the anguish he felt as he lifted her off
the bloody pavement, heavy with lifelessness, the hopeless insensibility into
which he then plunged for a long time afterward, the slow succession of
months and years filled with the deceptive oblivion brought by tedious
work, and the lonely, nightmare-filled nights in which the past relentlessly
visited him, until that far-off November evening when the bells suddenly rang
above the dark door to announce the arrival of the mysterious visitor—that
clarity, that hard certainty of memory was the price he had to pay for this
unique privilege that he had been given for who knew what reason: to return to
a past time and undo the effects of cruel chance.
He knew that this price did not give him the right to be dissatisfied. On the
contrary, the shadow over his restored happiness was a very thin, transparent
veil. Nevertheless, in the years that followed, only Mary’s intoxicating, infec-
tious cheerfulness managed to dispel the mask of melancholy that periodically
and for no apparent reason covered Joseph’s face.
Time Gifts
127
The Artist
I
He unlocked the door and entered the room.
If it were not for the bars on the window, it would have looked just like an
artist’s studio. The half-open window with the thick drapes and pleated
curtains rose almost to the ceiling, letting in an abundance of light during
the day. Painted white, the bars were not too conspicuous, but they could not
be overlooked. They were not there to prevent anyone from escaping, for this
was not a prison, but rather to prevent the final retreat that the mind of the
room’s occupant might seek from its own darkness.
The room was sparsely furnished. To the right of the window, at a slant,
stood a rather large easel spotted with dried streaks of paint and placed on a
covering of newspapers, yellowed from long exposure to the sun. Next to the
wooden easel was a tall, thin chair with a low back and rungs for feet. Part of
the lower half of the wall nearby was covered with mounted shelves that held a
disarray of art supplies: mostly squeezed-out tubes of paint, half-empty little
bottles of paint thinner, brushes of different sizes, dirty palettes, a bunch of
used charcoal sticks and pencils, soiled flannel rags, large sketch pads, a pile of
rolled-up canvases, and several cans with bright labels and no lids.
The only light source turned on in the room was a reflector light on a short
support attached to the middle of the ceiling. The narrow beam illuminated
the canvas on the easel, reflecting brightly off the fresh layer of paint. The
edges of the beam that reached the uncovered floor glistened off the polished
parquet.
He headed toward the other side of the room and sat on the end of a narrow
bed with a brass frame, next to the door that led to the small bathroom. In
addition to the bed, there was only a little white table with drawers: on it was a
lamp with a yellow canvas shade, a vase with large-petaled purple flowers, and
an old book with a black cover, pink-edged pages, and a wide ribbon as a
bookmark.
His eyes went to the wall facing the window. He could not see well in the
semidarkness, but it made no difference. He knew what was there: three
paintings in simple gray frames, unevenly arranged. Three scenes of darkness
disrupted in the middle by a beam of light: the flickering glow of a torch in the
corridor in front of a cell, cone-shaped lamplight illuminating a jumble of old
things on an office desk, the green glow of the felt on a watchmaker’s counter.
And outside the beam, distinct from the surrounding shadows like a concen-
tration of the night, was a spectral figure without a face.
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Z. Živkovic
“Good evening, Doctor.” She said it softly, with her back turned, sitting on
the tall chair. All she had on was a short-sleeved nightgown; her fragile shape
could be discerned through its thin, semitransparent fabric. The scene was not
stable because the light material trembled and fluttered under the gusts of
warm breeze from the window. Her bare feet with their small toes were resting
on one of the rungs. The brush in her left hand was making rapid, short strokes
about the canvas.
“Good evening, Magdalena. The nurse tells me that you are painting
again?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it a bit late for that? Wouldn’t it be better for you to go to bed and
then get down to work tomorrow morning?”
“I can’t. I have to finish the painting as soon as possible.”
“You were never in a hurry before.
”
“Now I have to.”
“What for?”
“He was here.”
The doctor closed his eyes a moment and drew his fingertips across his
forehead. “He came to visit you again?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you a new story?”
“Yes. The last.”
“The last?”
“There will not be any more.”
“Oh? Why?”
She did not answer right away. In the silence that descended, distant sounds
of the summer night were suddenly audible: the soft rustle of leaves in the tops
of the tall trees surrounding the sanatorium, the idle chatter of crickets in the
grass, the sharp call of a bird.
“He’s leaving.”
“Is that why you are in a hurry?”
“Yes. I want him to see how I have painted him. He promised he would
come one more time just for that.”
“You are going to paint him? He finally showed himself to you?”
“Yes.”
“But he has always remained hidden before. You never once saw him during
an earlier visit. That is why he has no face in your paintings. Why the change
now?”
“He will still remain hidden.”
“How can that be if you paint him?”
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129
Before she replied, she dipped her brush in the paint on her palette, mixing
colors for several long moments.
“I’ll paint him, yes,” she said at last, returning the brush to the canvas. “I’ll
even tell you all about him, if you wish. But of course, you won’t believe me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you think I’m crazy.” She said it evenly, as though stating the
obvious. “My madness conceals him. Better than any darkness.”
“You know that we do not use such words here.”
“I know. You have other, milder expressions. But that does not change the
essence of the matter. There are still bars on my window, and you keep the
door locked.”
“The bars are there for your own good.”
“So I don’t lean out too far by accident and fall?”
“Accidents do happen.”
She put her head close to the canvas for a moment, engrossed in painting
some detail. “So, then, you could believe me.”
“I could listen to you and then judge.”
“That’s fair.” She moved back from the easel, taking a look at the detail.
“Tell me, what do you think—who is he?”
“How would I know that?”
“But you certainly have some idea,” she said, searching again for the proper
color on her palette. “I have told you about our meetings. You know his
stories.”
“Someone very powerful, obviously, since he can do whatever he wants with
time.”
She found the right color, and her bared left arm started to move quickly
before the canvas once again. “The devil?”
For several moments he silently watched her fluttering figure before the
painting she was working on.
“He would be a very unusual devil,” he said at last. “A devil who does good
deeds without any recompense.”
“Do you think he did the right thing?”
“Didn’t he? Three unhappy people received a unique time gift, as far as I
understood.”
“And now they are less unhappy?”
“Why, I suppose. They should be. Particularly since they were not asked for
anything in return.”
“He, too, thought he would make them happy. At first.”
“He doesn’t think so anymore?”
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Z. Živkovic
“No. That is why he is leaving. He discovered that it is truly the work of the
devil to fool around with time, even when you have the best of intentions.”
“Where did he go wrong?”
She put her palette and brush under the easel, threw back her head, and
tried to shake back her long hair. But the curly, auburn locks were too tangled
from long lack of combing.
“Do you remember the story about the astronomer?” Without turning
around she pointed her thumb to the right, to one of the three paintings on
the wall. “If it hadn’t been for his nighttime visit before the execution, Lazar
would have happily gone to the stake, convinced of how correct, even exalted
his sacrifice would be.”
“But it was a mistake. Visiting the future showed him that his sacrifice had
no meaning.”
“Do you think that people should be freed from their mistakes? Even when
it ends up destroying their happiness?”
“Happiness based on illusion, deception?”
“And what happiness isn’t?”
He did not know how to reply at first. He felt like a chess player whose
opponent has made what seems like a quiet move, but one riddled with hidden
traps.
“What is the meaning of happiness if it entails the loss of a life?” he asked at
last, in a muffled voice.
“And what is the meaning of life without happiness? That is the impossible
choice Lazar was forced to make. With the best of intentions. Everything
would have been much simpler if he had not seen the future.”
“Your visitor did not tell the story to the end. He did not tell you what the
astronomer chose.”
“He didn’t because it made no difference.” She stopped a moment. “What
would you have chosen if you were in his place?”
A somewhat stronger gust of air from the window raised the hem of the
nightgown, revealing slender calves. It brought into the room the abundant
smell of grass and certain traces of ozone—the first sign of the storm that was
on the way.
“And what about the professor of paleolinguistics?” he asked, avoiding any
reply. He raised his eyes inadvertently to the second painting on the shadowy
wall. “She has no cause for regret because chance was thwarted; on the
contrary, she went back to paradise.”
The artist did not reply at once. She leaned toward the shelf behind the
easel, started rummaging around in the tubes, selected one and squeezed out a
Time Gifts
131
bit of the contents onto her palette. Then she took the flannel rag and wiped
off the tips of her fingers.
“To a paradise she was denied, actually. Eva was only an observer in
paradise, without the chance to take part in it.”
“I didn’t have the impression that she felt it was unpleasant being...a ghost.
Many of those studying the past would be ready to give half their lives, even
more, just to be in her position.”
She began applying more paint to the canvas. Now she was working on the
middle of the painting. “She would have given it all up just for one sip of
heavenly tea.”
“Perhaps, but that was the price she had to pay. There was no other way to
find out if everything she had written was accurate.”
“But imagine if it turned out that she was wrong. That primeval language
was quite different from what she thought. It would be a twofold defeat: she
would have squandered her past life, and before her would be a paradise that
she could not enter.”
“It didn’t have to be that way. She
might have been proved right.”
“Would that be enough comfort for unattainable paradise?”
“But if she didn’t return to the past, she would have been left in doubt until
the end of her life. That way at least she found out where she stood.”
“Isn’t it actually uncertainty that makes life possible?” Another quiet move
full of hidden menace.
“Your visitor didn’t tell you the end of that story, either,” he said after a
slight hesitation.
“For the same reason as before. It makes no difference what Eva hears when
she gets to the fire. The best thing for her would be never to have left her
basement office.”
A blue flash suddenly appeared in the upper part of the window, but no
thunder was heard. The storm was still some way off. Only the choir of crickets
seemed to accelerate its chattering tune.
“The third story differs from the first two in this regard,” he said, again
turning to the paintings on the wall. “There is no uncertainty in the end.”
“No, there isn’t, but it still is not a happy ending, as it should be.”
“It isn’t?”
She turned her head toward the window and stared at the darkness.
“It’s really sultry,” she said. “I can hardly wait for the rain. It’s hard to paint
in this heat. I’m all sweaty.”
He closed his eyes again and started to make little circles on his temples with
his fingers. That was where he first felt the change in weather. The dull
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Z. Živkovic
throbbing there that was slowly spreading to the back of his head indicated
that he would spend the night wrestling with a headache.
“It isn’t,” she continued. “Perhaps it would be if he did not have the
memory of the other stream of time in which Mary died.”
“But, actually, that was not the memory of something real. It was more the
recollection of a bad dream.”
“It lasted too long to be just a dream. More than a quarter of a century. Why
was it necessary to let Joseph suffer so long? If it was possible to help him, and
someone was willing, he should have been put on the other branch of time
right after the accident. Only then could it all have looked like a bad dream.
This way the scars were too deep and real.”
“Why wasn’t that done? Did you ask your visitor?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And? What did he reply?”
Zoran Zivkovic - First Contact and Time Travel Page 21
