The Time Keeper

by Mitch Albom

“Yeah,” he said.

  They watched silently as the salesman drove the blue Ford toward the rear of the lot.

  “Let’s get going,” Mark said.

  “Wait.”

  Lorraine kept her eyes locked on the car, until it disappeared around a corner. Then she broke down, sobbing.

  “I should have been there, Mark.”

  “It’s not your fault—”

  “I’m her mother!”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Why would she do this? Why didn’t I know?”

  He tried awkwardly to hug her across the front seat, their winter coats scratching against each other.

  Sarah gripped her elbows. She felt sick inside. She had been so consumed with escaping her own misery, she hadn’t considered the misery she might inflict. She saw her mother squeeze the envelope to her chest, clinging to the receipt for a car Sarah had used to kill herself, because it was the last thing she had of her daughter.

  Dor stepped in front of Sarah. He softly repeated the question Lorraine had asked.

  “Why?”

  Why?

  Why take her own life? Why die in a garage? Why cause this pain to anyone she loved?

  Sarah wanted to explain it all, the humiliation of Ethan’s rejection, the shameful feeling caused by his friends, the shock of seeing your secrets exposed through a computer screen, your future shattering so completely in front of you that dying with a lungful of poison seems like a relief.

  She wanted to blame him, to blame her whole rotten existence. But seeing Ethan, seeing her mother, seeing the world after the world she had known, somehow took her to the very bottom, the end of self-delusion, and the truth enveloped her like a cocoon, and all she said was, “I was so lonely.”

  And Father Time said, “You were never alone.”

  With that, he put his hand over Sarah’s eyes.

  What she saw, suddenly, was a cave, and a bearded man with his face in his palms. His eyes were squeezed shut.

  “That’s you?” she whispered.

  “Away from the one I love.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as time itself.”

  She saw him rise to the cave wall and carve a symbol. Three wavy lines.

  “What’s that?”

  “Her hair.”

  “Why are you drawing it?”

  “To remember.”

  “She died?”

  “I wanted to perish, too.”

  “You really loved her?”

  “I would have given my life.”

  “Would you have taken it?”

  “No, child,” he said.

  “That is not ours to do.”

  Dor realized, in uttering those words, that he may have been kept alive all these millenniums just for this moment. Living without love was something he knew more about than any soul on Earth. The more Sarah spoke of loneliness, the clearer it became why he was there.

  “I made such a fool of myself,” she lamented.

  “Love does not make you a fool.”

  “He didn’t love me back.”

  “That does not make you a fool, either.”

  “Just tell me …” Her voice cracked. “When does it stop hurting?”

  “Sometimes never.”

  Sarah saw the bearded Dor alone in the cave.

  “How did you survive?” she asked. “All that time with your wife not with you?”

  “She was always with me,” he said.

  Dor removed his hand from Sarah’s eyes. They watched the van drive down the snowy street.

  “You had many more years,” he said.

  “I didn’t want them.”

  “But they wanted you. Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Hope.”

  The shame welled up inside her, and once again, she wept. She missed her mother more than ever.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sarah gasped, tears pouring down her cheeks. “It just felt like … the end.”

  “Ends are for yesterdays, not tomorrows.”

  Dor waved a hand, and the street dissolved into sand. The skies turned a midnight purple, filled with countless stars.

  “There is more for you to do in this life, Sarah Lemon.”

  “Really?” she whispered.

  “Do you want to see?”

  She thought for a moment, then shook her head.

  “Not yet.”

  And Dor knew she was starting to heal.

  72

  All this time, Victor was watching.

  He now understood the girl’s shaky composure, her trembling shoulders, her fragile voice. She had tried to kill herself over a boy (he looked like a punk, Victor told himself, but then, he was biased; he was coming to like this Sarah). And she had been shown, in the end, what Victor would have told her a long time ago: No love is worth that trouble. He doubted Grace would end her life over him, no matter what he had done; and much as he deep down loved her, he was looking for a way to live beyond death, even if she didn’t come with him.

  What he still could not reason was how these hallucinations were being formed and who this clock shop man really was. Victor had noticed a change in him since they’d first met. Behind the store counter, he’d seemed solid, healthy, almost indestructible, but now he looked pale, he was perspiring, and his cough was growing worse. Victor, conversely, had never felt better—which was why he was certain this whole thing was some figment of his wandering brain. One did not simply wake up healthy and start floating through time.

  He watched Dor, who was bent over in the sand, moving his fingers through it. Finally, he looked up at Victor. “There is something I must show you, too.”

  Victor recoiled. He was not interested in seeing the world he’d left behind.

  “My story’s different,” Victor said.

  “Come.”

  “You know I have a plan, right?”

  Dor rose without a word, then wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at his hand as if confused. He resumed his slow pace on the path, which tilted upward like the side of a hill. Victor turned to Sarah, who was still in the stunned throes of seeing her life revealed. Now it was Victor who wanted company.

  “Are you coming?” he asked.

  She stepped in behind him. They began to ascend.

  73

  This time, when the mist cleared, they were back in the cryonics warehouse.

  The huge fiberglass cylinders stood like monuments. One of them was slightly smaller and newer than the others.

  “What are we seeing?” Victor asked. “Is this the future?”

  Before Dor could answer, the door opened and Jed entered. He was followed by Grace, wearing a brown winter coat. She moved cautiously, looking around with every step.

  “Is that your wife?” Sarah whispered.

  Victor swallowed. He knew Grace would learn of his plan. He never imagined he’d watch her do it.

  He saw Jed point out the smaller cylinder. He saw Grace draw her hands together over her mouth. He couldn’t tell if she was praying or hiding her disgust.

  “In that thing?” she said.

  “He insisted on his own.” Jed scratched his ear. “I’m sorry. I had no idea he didn’t tell you.”

  Grace held her arms, uncertain whether she should approach the cylinder or move away from it.

  “Can you see inside?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “But his corpse is in there?”

  “Patient.”

  “What?”

  “We say ‘patient.’ Not ‘corpse.’”

  “What?”

  “Forgive me. I know this must be hard.”

  They stood together in awkward silence, amid the low humming of electrical current. Finally, Jed cleared his throat and said, “Well … I’ll leave you alone. You’re welcome to sit.”

  He pointe
d to the mustard couch. Victor shook his head as if to stop him. He felt suddenly embarrassed, not only by the manipulation of his death, but by the ratty condolence chair his wife was being offered.

  Grace did not sit down.

  She thanked Jed and watched him go. Then she slowly approached the cylinder and let her fingers skim across the fiberglass exterior.

  Her lower lip fell. She exhaled so hard, her shoulders drooped forward and she seemed to drop a couple of inches.

  “Grace, it’s OK,” Victor blurted out. “It’s—”

  She whacked the cylinder with her fist.

  She whacked it again.

  Then she kicked it so hard she nearly fell backward.

  When she straightened up, she sniffed once and walked to the exit, passing the mustard couch without so much as a glance.

  The door closed. The silence seemed directed toward Victor personally. Dor and Sarah looked at him, but he looked away, feeling exposed. In his race to cheat death, he’d trusted scientists more than his wife. He had denied her their final intimacy. He had not even left a body to bury. How would she grieve him now? He doubted she would ever come to this place again.

  He glanced at Sarah, who looked down, as if embarrassed.

  He turned to Dor.

  “Just show me,” Victor growled, “if it worked.”

  74

  Crowded. Incredibly crowded.

  That was Victor’s first impression of his future. They had followed the sand through the giant glass and descended from the void into another clearing mist, revealing massive high-rise buildings, packed thickly, block after block, in what Victor assumed to be a major metropolis centuries from now. There was almost no greenery and little color beyond steel blues and grays. The skies were dotted with unusual small aircraft, and the air itself had a different feel to it. It was thicker, dirtier, and cold as well, although the people did not dress for it. Their faces were different than those of his time, hair tints were like a paint-box assortment, heads seemed larger. It was difficult to tell men from women.

  He saw no one old.

  “Is this still Earth?” Sarah asked.

  Dor nodded.

  “Then I made it?” Victor said. “I’m alive?”

  Dor nodded again. They were standing in the middle of a huge urban square, as tens of thousands of people scurried around them, heads down in devices or speaking into dark glasses that floated in front of their eyes.

  “How far in the future is this?” Sarah said.

  Victor surveyed the surroundings. “If I had to guess, a few hundred years.”

  He almost smiled.

  Because he judged life by success and failure, Victor believed he had won.

  He had eluded death and resurfaced in the future.

  “So where am I in all this?” he asked.

  Dor pointed and the vista changed. They were now inside a huge, open hall, lit from the sides, silver and white, with massive, high ceilings and screens that floated in midair.

  Victor appeared on every one.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked. The screens were playing moments from Victor’s life. He saw himself in his thirties, shaking hands in a boardroom, and in his fifties, delivering a keynote speech in London, and in his eighties, in the doctor’s office with Grace, looking at CT scans. Clusters of people studied the screens as if this were an exhibition. Perhaps he’d become a legend in the future? Victor thought. A medical miracle? Who knows? Maybe he owned this building.

  But where would they get such images? These moments had never been filmed. He saw a scene from a few weeks ago, Victor staring out the office window at a man sitting on a skyscraper.

  “That was you, wasn’t it?” he asked Dor.

  “Yes.”

  “Why were you staring at me?”

  “I was wondering why you wished to live beyond a lifetime.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It is not a gift.”

  “And how would you know that?”

  Dor wiped his brow. “Because I have done it.”

  75

  Before Victor could respond, a commotion rose from the gallery hall, now completely filled with spectators.

  Sitting on floating chairs or crammed against the walls, they reacted loudly to what they were seeing.

  On the screens were images of Victor’s childhood in France; Victor bounced on his parents’ laps, Victor fed by his grandmother with a soup spoon, Victor crying at his father’s funeral and praying beside his mother. Make it yesterday. The crowd gave an audible gasp when he said that.

  “Why are they watching my life?” Victor asked. “Where am I during all this?”

  Dor pointed to a large glass tube in the corner of the facility.

  “What’s that?” Victor asked.

  “Look and see,” Dor said.

  Victor approached it haltingly, easing through the crowd like an apparition. He reached the front and leaned into the glass.

  A wave of horror engulfed him.

  There, inside the tube, was a pinkish, shriveled version of his body, his muscles atrophied, his skin blotched as if burned, his head wired in multiple places, the wires running to numerous machines. His eyes were open and his lips were parted in a pained expression.

  “This can’t be.” His voice rose. “I was supposed to be revived. I had papers. I paid good money!”

  Victor recalled the lawyers’ warning. Can’t protect against everything. Had he foolishly ignored that in his rush to find an answer?

  “What happened? Who’s responsible for this?”

  People kept moving through him, peering in at the naked body as if gazing into a fish tank.

  Victor spun to Dor. “I had documents! Files!”

  “Gone now,” Dor said.

  “I hired people to protect me.”

  “Gone now, too.”

  “What about my wealth?”

  “Taken.”

  “There were laws!”

  “There are new laws.”

  Victor slumped. Was this really how his grand plan turned out? Betrayal? Victimization? A futuristic freak show?

  “What are they all doing?”

  “Watching your memories.”

  “Why?”

  “To remember how to feel.”

  Victor dropped to his knees.

  He was so accustomed to being correct in his judgments. Had he been spared the smaller mistakes in life only to make the biggest one at the end?

  He studied the faces watching his history. They seemed young, often beautiful, but blank.

  “Everyone in this time can live longer than we imagined,” Dor explained. “They fill every waking minute with action, but they are empty.

  “To them, you are an artifact. And your memories are rare. You are a reminder of a simpler, more satisfying world. One they no longer know.”

  Victor never would have thought of himself that way. Simple? Satisfying? Wasn’t he always the hurried, insatiable one? But the time-hungry world had only accelerated since his freezing, and he realized that, relative to this future, Dor was right. The images on the screens all showed emotion. His boyhood tears when his sack of food was stolen. The shy smiles when meeting Grace in the company elevator. His longing gaze as she walked away on the last night of his life.

  He watched that scene now, him in the bed, her in an evening gown, heading to the gala.

  I’ll be as quick as I can.

  I’ll be …

  What, sweetheart?

  Here. I’ll be here.

  He saw her disappear down the hall, believing she would see him again. Could he really have been that cruel? He suddenly missed her in the most powerful way. For the first time in his adult life, he wanted to go backward.

  The screens showed Victor watching Grace leave. The crowd rose to its feet. The image switched to the inside of the glass tube, as a tear fell down the cheek of Victor’s imprisoned body.

  Victor felt one on his own cheek as well.

&nb
sp; Dor reached over and took it on his finger.

  “Do you understand now?” he asked. “With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have.”

  He studied the teardrop. He thought back to the cave. And he knew, finally, why he had been chosen for this journey. He had lived an eternity. Victor wanted an eternity. It had taken Dor all these centuries to comprehend the last thing the old man had told him, the thing he shared with Victor now.

  “There is a reason God limits our days.”

  “Why?”

  “To make each one precious.”

  76

  Only then did Father Time tell his story.

  As his voice grew raspy and his cough more severe, he spoke to Victor and Sarah of the world into which he was born. He spoke of the sun stick he invented, and the water clock made of bowls, of his wife, Alli, and his three children, and the old man from Heaven who visited him as a child and would imprison him as an adult.

  Most of the tale seemed implausible to his two listeners, although when Dor spoke about climbing Nim’s tower, Sarah whispered, “Babel,” and Victor mumbled, “That’s just a myth.”

  When he reached the part about his time in the cave, Dor placed his hand over Victor’s eyes and let him see the centuries of solitary confinement, the tortured loneliness of a world without the familiar—a wife, children, friends, a home. A second lifetime? A tenth? A thousandth? What did it matter? It was not his.

  “I lived,” Dor said, “but I was not alive.”

  Victor viewed Dor’s attempted escapes, his pounding on the karst walls, his efforts to crawl into the glowing pool. He heard the cacophony of requests for time.

  “What are all those voices?” he asked.

  “Unhappiness,” Dor said.

  He explained how once we began to chime the hour, we lost the ability to be satisfied.

  There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between sunrises was gone.

  “Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour?” Dor said. “It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.”

  He lowered his hand from Victor’s eyes. “When you are measuring life, you are not living it. I know.”