by Stephen Fry
Towards the end of the day Gloder had climbed the stairs to his rooms. He had inquired earlier at the trenches for Mend but been told that he was absent, assumed to be on duty up the line somewhere. Messengers, after all, were never easily accounted for. So Rudi had returned, late in the evening, shoulder blades sore from congratulatory pats on the back, and given out two bottles of schnapps to the men in the guardroom before retiring for the night.
He sat now at his desk therefore, the connecting door to the bedroom open and Mend’s stiffening body still staring upwards to the ceiling with grave concentration.
“Dear, faithful Hans,” said Rudi. “Your lamentable curiosity has deprived you of the chance of witnessing my greatest hour of glory. In a few weeks I shall be Major Gloder, darling of the Staff. My days will be spent in a princely chateau, eating chocolate and moving little tin men around on maps until this foolish war is over. For the meantime, leave me in peace. I am rewriting my diary.”
At three in the morning, Gloder rose stiffly from his labors and went downstairs and into the kitchens. All was quiet as he slipped from the backdoor and into the yard outside.
Rudi found a wheelbarrow and pushed it round to the side wall under his window. The nearest guard on watch duty would be around the other side of the fermier, almost certainly, if the kindly gift of celebratory schnapps had done its work, fast asleep in a drunken stupor.
Upstairs again, Rudi slid open his desk drawer and rummaged inside. Next he went through to the bedroom, slung the dispatcher’s satchel about Mend’s shoulders and picked up the body, carrying it easily to the open window. He let it fall just next to the wheelbarrow beneath. Bones snapped like dry twigs as the corpse, now rigid in death, thumped onto the ground.
Wheeling his stiff, jagged cargo through the night and towards the duckboards of the Kurfürstendamm, Rudi felt like some miller selling sacks of flour in an old country village. He began to whistle softly to himself the rippling melody of Schubert’s arrangement of Die Schöne Müllerin.
He arrived at Mend’s dugout, picked up the body and carried it in.
“Who’s there?” mumbled a voice in the dark.
“Just me,” said Rudi calmly. “Returning a drunken Hans to his bed.”
“Thank God, sir. I thought it was reveille.”
“Not for another two hours. Go back to sleep. I’ll just dump him in his bunk and be gone.”
One of the broken legs stuck out sideways, but after a little effort the body was made to lie naturally enough on the bed.
Rudi left the dugout and raised the heavy wooden wheelbarrow over his head onto the parados in front of him. He climbed up after it, wedging his feet in sandbags and, once at the top, turned to look down at the entrance to the dugout below.
It seemed an awful waste, he thought to himself. But then, war is an awful waste. Everyone knows that. He would write, he told himself as he took the Mills bomb from his pocket, the most beautiful and poetic letters to all the parents.
As he ran back towards the fermier he thrust the wheelbarrow from him and sent it spinning away into the darkness.
Its moment of crashing into a hedge coincided exactly with the thunderous detonation of high explosive behind him.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Implications
The sight of Double Eddie had coincided exactly with a thunderous detonation of memory inside me like the eruption of an underwater volcano, and I needed to be alone with the molten flow of ideas that were beginning to rise and harden in my mind. An overblown image perhaps, but that was how it occurred to me. It was a comfort to make metaphors, however dippy. When your life is an empty space, holding fast to any picture rooted in the real world can help keep you from floating away.
Steve had walked me through the campus towards Henry Hall, a little alarmed I guessed by the confrontation with Double Eddie and anxious to leave me and to return for a while to the sanity of his own life. He must have work to do after all, maybe a girlfriend with whom he could share his weird morning, perhaps he had even promised to report to Dr. Ballinger.
“Listen,” I said, turning to him as the Victorian Gothic ivy-clad stonework of Henry Hall came into view, a blessedly familiar sight in a strange world. “You’ve been incredibly kind. This must have been very hard for you and I really appreciate it. I’ll go up now and get some rest.”
“Got your key?”
I dug into my shorts pocket and came up with it. “All safe,” I said.
He put a hand to my shoulder in awkward affection. “One day we’re gonna laugh like crazy about this,” he said.
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “But I’ll never laugh about how kind and understanding you’ve been. Only a real friend could have been so patient.”
“Get outta here,” he said, coloring and turning away.
All very affecting really. I wondered where he was going and what he would say to those he met along the way.
Back in the room, Room 303, my room, I returned to the bed I had woken up in and lay on my back staring up at the ceiling, carefully piecing together the thoughts that had returned to me.
I knew now for certain that I was Michael Young, a history postgraduate from Cambridge. I knew too that last night, whatever “last night” might mean, I had been in a laboratory in Cambridge—New Cavendish, that was the name—a laboratory where a physicist worked—a physicist called . . . ? It would come to me.
We had been playing with a machine . . .
Tim! The machine was called Tim. T.I.M. Temporal Imaging Machine. But we had changed the meaning of the initials as Leo had worked on . . .
Leo! You see, Pup? It’s all returning now. Leo it was. Leo Zuckermann. Leo and I had changed the meaning of the initials as we worked on the machine so that now they stood for Temporal Interface Machine, because we needed to send the pills . . .
Pills! There had been a handful of little orange pills that Jane . . .
Jane! Jane’s pills. They sterilized a male. Permanently. The water supply of the house in Brunau-am-Inn, Austria. We sent the pills there. To Brunau-am-Inn . . .
Brunau!
So much came flooding back I thought I would drown.
Alois. Klara. The Meisterwerk. All completed, down to the last comma. My pigeonhole stuffed with an envelope addressed to Leo Zuckermann. The car-park. Defacing the Clio. The briefcase bursting. The thesis flying. Leo picking up the papers. Making up with Jane. Spilling the pills. Meeting Leo for coffee. A hot, sticky meeting with Fraser-Stuart who hated my thesis. Leo showing me Tim. Auschwitz.
Auschwitz. Leo’s father. Not Zuckermann at all. Bauer.
I thought of Leo’s father, tattooing Leo and Leo’s mother. I thought of Jane. The tattoo on her arm, how she smacked me on my untattooed arm as I sent the pills flying.
A tattoo on Jane’s arm? Can that be right?
If time travel were possible someone would go back and make sure the Gallagher brothers were separated at birth and that Oasis were never formed. Is that what Jane said?
Liam and Noel Gallagher were at Princeton now. Members of the Cliosophical Society, where Steve and Double Eddie punted all day to the sound of Wagner.
Steve and Double Eddie, clad in ivy, embracing by the riverbank. But my key has fallen from Steve’s pocket. It has fallen into the Cam and is tumbling to the bottom. I can see its silver turning and turning like a famous pancake tumbling through the currents of maple syrup. My key . . . my key, my key . . .
“Mikey! Mikey! Wake up. Time to go.”
I sat up suddenly, the sheen of daytime-sleep sweat sticking the polo shirt to my back.
Steve was looking down at me. “You okay, buddy?”
“Yes . . . yes. Fine. I’m fine.” I stared about me at the bedroom and then at Steve.
“Sure? You were having one hell of a dream there. Like, deep REM, you know? Your bangs are s
tuck to your forehead.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re sweating. I didn’t like to disturb you. But we gotta see this Taylor guy at three o’clock.”
“No, no, really. I’m fine. Much better.” I stood and pushed my feet into the Timberlands, trembling with a new excitement.
“Well that’s grand.”
I took Steve’s arm. “There is one thing I need you to tell me though,” I said. “However mad it sounds, will you just answer me one question?”
“Okay, try me.”
I looked into his eyes. “Tell me everything you know,” I said, “about Adolf Hitler.”
“Adolf Hitler?”
“Yes, what do you know about him?”
“Adolf Hitler,” he repeated slowly. “This is someone you know?”
“Never mind what I know,” I almost screamed, “what do you know about him?”
Steve pondered, closing his dark blue eyes for a second so that the long lashes met, then opening them again as if he had come to a firm decision. “Nope. Never heard of the guy. He on the faculty? You need to see him?”
“Oh shit,” I breathed. “Oh holy shit!”
I ran to the window and opened it.
“Leo!” I shouted to the campus, “Leo, wherever you are, we’ve done it! Jesus holy God, we’ve only fucking done it!”
I trod air through the campus. Every sight, every sound that came to me was new and perfect. This world around me glowed and shone with innocence, hope and perfection.
If only I could get to Europe now! Check out London, Berlin, Dresden, all the buildings standing there whole, firm, unblitzed and all because of me. My God, I was a greater man than Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer rolled into one.
Maybe I could track down Leo and see what he was up to.
But Leo would not be Leo. He had only ever been Leo because his father had made him so in another life, in an alternate, exploded reality. He was now . . . what was the name? Bauer! He was Axel Bauer, son of Dietrich Bauer, no doubt enjoying a guiltless, carefree German life somewhere while the real Leo Zuckermann, not cut short aged five in Auschwitz, would be out there too, in Poland perhaps, practicing as a doctor, musician, farmer, teacher or—who knows?—a wealthy industrialist providing work and security for thousands.
I wondered why I was in America. My father, instead of joining the army, must have come with my mother to the United States before I was born. Well, I would see them and find out. I must get used to this new world. I had been in it, after all, for less than a day. So much to know. I must slowly grow accustomed to its ways. The old world was now nothing more than a freak construct in my head and in my head alone, a possibility that never happened, a turning never taken. The subject for a horror novel.
Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Sobibór. What were they now? Small towns in Poland and Germany. Happy, silly little towns whose names were washed clean of sin and blame.
“Have you visited the charming village of Dachau in Germany? Well worth a stop on the tourist route. Very handy for the grand old city of Munich. I would especially recommend the Hotel Adler. For those on a tour of Saxony and the north, don’t forget, after exploring Hanover, that the little hamlet of Bergen-Belsen offers the traveler old world charm blended with modern convenience.”
I giggled and hugged myself inside.
My own fate, marooned in a new history, was incidental. No one would ever believe what I had done or from what hellish historical roots I had emerged. How could they?
Doctors would cluster about me and shake their heads at my unique style of amnesia. A strain of memory loss that took the form of an accent change, for Lord’s sake. An article or two perhaps in journals of neuropathology, maybe even an essay by Oliver Sacks in his next collection of psychological anecdotes: “The American Who Woke Up English” or “A Hampshire Limey in the Court of Connecticut Yankees.”
In time, my accent would become American and I would learn my history. What I had done would go unknown and unacknowledged.
I imagined a scenario in Cambridge, in the bad old world.
A man comes up to me and says: “Revere me. I stopped Peter Popper from being born.”
“Peter Popper,” I say. “Who the hell is he?”
“Ha!” this man replies. “Exactly! He was born in 1900 and caused death, disaster, cruelty and horror. He sent the century hurtling into an apocalypse of internecine strife and bestiality beyond imagining.”
“He did?”
“Yup, and I have just returned from stopping him from being born. Thanks to me London is still standing. Peter Popper leveled it with a bomb in 1950. I am the savior of the century.”
Well, I mean to say . . . how would anyone react to talk like that? A pat on the head, some loose change and a hasty retreat. No, I should have to hug to myself and myself alone the knowledge of what I had achieved.
Steve, leading me once more through the campus, smiled at my exuberance.
“Guess that sleep did you good, right?”
“You can say that again. My God this place is beautiful.”
We walked on in silence, winding through lawns and courts, until we reached a large stone building on the edge of campus.
Three young men were standing idly at the doorway watching our approach.
“Oh gosh,” said Steve under his breath.
“What is it?”
“It’s just the guys.”
“The guys?”
“Yeah. Scott, Todd and Ronnie. They were with us last night.”
The taller of them pushed himself off the wall against which he had been leaning and came towards me extending a hand. “Well, hel-lay!” he said, in an excruciating English accent. “How are you, old bean, old crumpet?”
“Beat it, Todd,” said Steve.
“Um, hello,” I said. “So you’re Todd?”
“That’s right, my chap. I’m T-O-dd,” he enunciated the short English “O.” “And this is Sc-O-tt and this is R-O-nnie.”
“Well,” I said, attempting American, “hi there, Tahdd, Scahtt . . . Rahnnie.”
They laughed, but with awkward uncertainty.
“I mean, like, this is a gag, Mikey, right?” said Scott.
“Well actually I’m afraid not,” I said. “I expect Steve has told you all about it. I woke up this morning thinking I was English. I’ve been unable to remember much about myself. Weird I know, but true.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm-hm.”
“No shit,” said Ronnie. “You trying to say you don’t remember no hundred bucks I lent you last week?”
“Asshole,” said Steve, as they laughed at my discomfiture. “Come on guys, you said you’d leave us alone.”
“Hey,” said Scott. “We roomed with this goofball for a whole fucking year. We got as much right as you to hang out with him now he’s nuts.”
“Only maybe we don’t have the same desire to be close to him, Burns, you know what I’m saying?”
“Look,” I said, alarmed at Steve’s embarrassment. “I know it must seem really crazy to you. It’s all probably down to a bang on the head. My parents are English, so maybe that’s got something to do with it.”
Scott thumped me on the back. “We’re with you, buddy. Just don’t expect me to ever buy you any more vodka again. Ever. You got that?”
“Give ’em hell, Mikey.”
Steve led me through them towards a door.
“Just so long as you haven’t forgotten how to pitch your slider,” said Ronnie as we went in.
Jesus, I thought to myself. Baseball! I don’t know the first thing about baseball. And philosophy! I’m supposed to be majoring in philosophy. There are embarrassments ahead.
“And don’t let them stick no electrodes
in you now, y’hear?”
I almost laughed out loud when I came face-to-face with Simon Taylor.
The sign on his door read “Professor S. R. St. C. Taylor” and the bright outer office, where his secretary sat in front of a computer, had led me to expect the kind of air-conditioned, relaxed, chino-shorts, high-tech and “hi there!” atmosphere that seemed to prevail around most of the campus.
“Professor Taylor is expecting you,” the secretary had said, indicating for me and Steve to be seated. “Would you like some water?”
“Thanks,” I said.
The secretary nodded and turned back to her computer. I looked at her in some confusion until Steve nudged me in the ribs and pointed at a large upturned flagon of water in the corner.
“Oh,” I said, getting up. “Right. Of course.”
Next to the water dispenser was a tube of conical paper cups.
“Cool!” I said. “I’ve seen these so many times in movies. Edward G. Robinson, you know? You pour yourself a cup of water, there’s a great rumbling of air bubbles in the tank and then you have to drink the water down in one, screw up the paper cone and toss it in a bin. I mean, you can’t rest one of these cups on the table can you?”
The secretary stared at me and Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Just drink the water, Mikey,” he said.
“Oh. Right. Yes. For you?”
Steve shook his head and settled back to stare at the opposite wall. I enjoyed my drink of ice-cold water, joined him on the sofa and together we inspected a framed poster of Vermeer’s Lute Player.
After about ten minutes the door to Taylor’s office opened and the man himself appeared.
That is when I almost laughed out loud.
He was at least six-foot-five, wearing a linen three-piece suit, a striped college tie and an Alastair Sim air of baffled surprise. There was a briar pipe clamped between his yellow teeth and above it a thin strip of Ronald Colman mustache. His whole demeanor stank of some gin-soaked British club in Kuala Lumpur, or an adulterous Graham Greene outpost in colonial Africa.
