“That would be you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Devi signaled to the driver to stop by Marble Arch. They paid and got out, and when they had walked a little way down Bayswater Road, the cook spoke. “Her seventh and last incarnation is as Ava’s daughter, Mia. In L.A. With you.”
Julian waited for more.
“With you, Julian.”
“I don’t understand.”
“But who are you that is hobbling next to me? Aren’t you Julian?”
“So?”
“Where are you going to go?”
“You mean it won’t come again?”
“That’s not what I mean. It might come again. What I’m saying is, you can’t be there when it does.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re already there.”
Julian stopped walking.
“Come with me,” a sighing Devi said, pulling on Julian’s arm. “Let’s go inside the park, walk through the fountains in the Italian Gardens. It’s a nice day. For the first time in weeks, it’s not raining.”
The diminutive Asian man held on to Julian as they ambled in the blinding late February sunshine, both shielding their eyes from the blinding waters of the Serpentine. Or was it Julian who was holding on to Devi? Where did he go wrong, where did he go so far off the path? They didn’t speak until they found a secluded bench under a barely budding tree near the ducks on the Long Water.
Kneading the beads in his hands, the Hmong shaman stared at the people ambling by, at the ducklings swimming after their mothers.
“There’s a fallacy in your approach to this,” Devi said. “I can see you’re shellshocked, but you don’t have to go back even once more. You’re still a relatively young man. You have a little money now. You could travel a bit. There are places other than London and Invercargill. You can run a boxing gym. I see the way the other guys listen to you, spar with you, even with your mangled claw. They like and respect you. You have a knack. You could use your skills to remake men who need your help into better fighters and every day be around what matters most to you. What a gift to yourself that would be—every day to be around what you love. You can do that here, or in L.A. Your mother, I’m sure, would prefer to have you back. You might meet someone. The long-suffering loner is a popular option with some women. So much is still possible for you, Julian. Going back is only one of your choices.”
Motionless, Julian sat.
“When you first met her,” Devi said, “you thought you had forever. And the first time you went back for her, you thought you had forever. The second time at the Silver Cross, you were afraid and didn’t know of what. The third time, you felt doom but didn’t know when. The fourth time with Mirabelle, you knew exactly when. And last time, for the first time, Shae herself knew what was coming. How did that work out? What’s next for you two, I do not know. What is left for you to show her and for her to show you? Perhaps how to live amid death, as we all must learn. But”—Devi folded his hands—”if you choose to go back, it will be for the last time.”
The ducks in the Long Water were flapping, splashing. Somewhere a baby cried. Two women walked by, wrapped around each other. A man and woman perched on a bench, licking around the same cone of ice cream.
“You said seven.”
“Did you listen to a word I said?” Devi exclaimed. “Why do you keep repeating things over and over? You had seven.”
“The first time doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was just my life. I lived it.”
“It may have been your life, but it was her last life. That counts, no?”
“No.” Julian’s legs felt numb, the nubs on his hand pulsing.
“All the other times you’ve crossed the meridian and gone back in time,” said Devi, “you entered her life, not yours.”
“So?”
“Julian, you can’t breach a life in which you yourself exist.”
“Why not?”
Devi tried to stay patient. “How can you be inside a time in which you already are?” He enunciated every word. “In that one unique, singular spacetime, she exists in your world. You do not exist in hers.”
“What’s the difference?”
Devi sighed. “What are you going to do with yourself when this old crippled body crawls out into Los Angeles and encounters the younger, spry, horny you chatting her up in Book Soup?”
“That’s the other guy’s problem.”
“Instantly it will become your problem. It can’t happen is what I’m saying. There can’t be two of you,” Devi said. “You get that part, don’t you? One body, one soul. Not two bodies, one soul. Not two souls, one body. Not two souls, two bodies. One body. One soul.”
Julian sat. “What do I do with the other me?”
“There is no other you!” Devi said. “There is only this you. Right here, where your soul is, on the bench by the Serpentine. Your soul cannot be divided. You are not—what’s the thing that’s all the rage these days—you’re not a Horcrux. You are not a clone, a body without a soul. You can’t compete with your material self in the material world, you can’t co-exist with yourself in Los Angeles. How can you be so hostile to the thing that’s obviously true? Only one of you can touch her.”
At last Julian understood.
He wasn’t prepared for it. It was like another thing had been severed.
* * *
In the middle of March, in the middle of the night, Julian banged on Quatrang’s door.
“This has to stop,” Devi said, half-asleep in a black silk robe, letting Julian push past him and inside. “I have a life. I have to function during the day. I’m not a nocturnal like you.”
“What do I do, Devi? I don’t know what to do. Help me.”
“Would you like me to give you something to help you sleep?”
“Are you saying you don’t know how to help me save her, how to help me change her fate?”
Devi spoke low. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know how to help you change her fate.”
“But seven is not enough!”
“Seven is not enough,” Devi repeated dully. “Look what you’re doing, you’re making me repeat things, infecting me with your disease. Once more is not enough for you. Six journeys through time is not enough for you. Seven weeks is not enough for you. And if you had seventy times seven, what would you say? Would that also not be enough? And if you had seventy thousand times seven?”
“It would also not be enough,” Julian whispered.
“Seven weeks to change your life and hers,” Devi said. “Seven days to make the world. Seven words on the Cross. Seven times to perfect your soul so when you finally meet God, you’re the best you can be. Don’t be selfish, Julian. Think of her. You’d rather her immortal soul spin and toil for eternity? Over and over, trying and failing?” Devi shook his head. “Now that sounds like nothing but suffering for the sake of nothing but suffering. Look at yourself—your bones are crumbling. You are turning to dust before my eyes. Your body can’t take even one more time. But long gone are the days when you swore to me you were never going back, and I pretended to believe you. You’ve really gone out of your way to answer a question I of all people didn’t need answered: how does a man live when he must live without the thing he can’t live without? Poorly, that’s how. So go—for the last time go—and do what you can.”
“Like what?”
“To have something you’ve never had,” Devi said, “you must do something you’ve never done.”
This is it, ladies and gents!
Make it real.
Make it last.
Make it beautiful.
4
The Importance of Being Julian
THE RIVER ENDS. HIS MAKESHIFT DINGHY GRINDS AGAINST A muddy decaying bed. Julian turns off the headlamp to find the light, but there is nothing to see and nowhere to climb. Dusting himself off, he turns his headlamp back on and proceeds down the dried-out riverbe
d. It’s better than walking on ice, that’s for sure.
After a long time, the tubular walls of the cave get smoother, grayer, and the rocks under his feet disappear. He bumps his ankle against something that feels like iron. He leans down. It is iron. It’s a single rail. If it was a live rail, he’d be in real trouble. He wonders why it isn’t live. He walks and walks and walks. To look for the light, he once again switches off the headlamp. Finally, in the dark tunnel ahead of him he sees a faint yellow glimmer and hears some distant noise.
The tunnel empties into a train station. He pulls himself up onto a platform in a cavernous space, all of it in near total darkness except toward the opposite end around a blind curve. Julian recognizes the station. He’s been here many times, a thousand times. In case there’s any doubt, on the wall, a red circle with a blue line through it tells him what it is.
It’s Bank.
It’s the Bank tube station in the City of London. He is on the Central Line platform, with its unmistakable sharp bend (the station was built around the vaults of the Bank of England). Julian can almost hear the shriek of the screeching wheels as the train turns the corner. Another day, that is, not today, because today there are no trains because the rail is cut.
Just past the curve, he sees a cluster of ragamuffin people spread out on the platform near the exit to the lobby that leads to the escalators that lead to the street. They’re jammed together and sunk to the ground amid a few lit lamps. From the lobby, he can hear a single voice talking, modulating up and down the octaves, as if giving a soliloquy. Intermittently, the voices on the ground laugh.
It looks as if the crowd might be using the Underground as a bomb shelter. Which would explain why there is no live rail. The rail is cut at night, because people sleep in the Underground.
Julian pats himself on his proverbial back. Finally, he has guessed his destination correctly.
It’s London, during the Second World War.
To fit in with the times, Julian bought a three-piece Armani suit, two sizes too big. No one wears fitted suits in the 1940s. On his feet are waterproof combat boots. On his head is a newsboy cap, the kind even King George liked to wear. Julian kept his hair curly and longish, slicked back, away from his forehead, and he shaved, though after time in the cave, his stubble feels an inch thick as he runs his hand over his face.
He steps into the lobby between the platforms and languishes at the rear of the crowd, trying to catch the voice echoing off the tiled tubular walls.
On the platform, some are already lying down, covered by blankets as if this is where they will sleep, but in the poorly lit lobby, people are sitting cross-legged on the floor next to their bags and sacks and coats and pillows. They’re listening to the voice in front of them. Lit by a kerosene lamp, near the stopped escalator, a singular girl stands on a makeshift stage—a wide door ripped off its hinges and laid flat over some two-by-fours. She stands on top of the door, her long strands of dark hair spilling out of a blue headscarf. She looks tall, larger than life, because she’s up on a stage. She wears rags like the rest, a skirt with a frayed hem, a falling apart sweater, and torn boots. But the beige wool fits snugly over her breasts, her neck is white, her skin translucent, and her huge eyes blaze as she gestures with her hands to amplify her words. There’s a diamond smile on her face.
Already Julian is warmer. Shae never smiled. Not in the beginning, and certainly not at the end.
The young woman is reciting a humorous ditty about romantic love. It takes Julian a few moments to recognize it as a pretty solid paraphrase of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. Her captive audience is moderately amused.
“Oh, the Ideal Man!” the woman yells cheerfully. “Let me tell you about him! The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses. He should refuse all our serious requests and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, yet discourage us to have goals. He should always say much more than he means and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he has no taste. If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer only about ourselves. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Ideal Man!”
From behind the crowd collected at the girl’s feet, Julian raises his voice, steps forward, and speaks.
“Cecily?” he calls to her, switching to his own paraphrase of The Importance of Being Earnest. “Is that you? The dog cart has been waiting, my dear. Are you ready to leave with me at last?”
With barely a pause the girl squints into the darkness, her hand at her forehead like a visor. “Algernon, is that you? Finally, you’re here. Come quick! Are you planning to stay until next week? I hope so, though my mother will be very cross to discover this is so. She doesn’t like the way you abruptly left me not long ago.”
Julian takes a few steps through the curious crowd. “I left you? You mean, you left me. And I don’t care about your mother, Cecily. I don’t care about anybody in the whole world but you. I love you. You will marry me as you promised, won’t you?”
The girl laughs like a church bell. “Algernon, you silly sausage. Now you want to marry me? Don’t you remember we were already engaged to be married, and then I broke it off with you?”
Two more strides forward. “But why would you do a thing like that, Cecily?”
“Well, it can hardly be called a serious engagement if it’s not broken off at least once. But I forgive you, Algernon.”
He crosses the concrete floor on which people sit and laugh and clap and jumps up onto the wobbling makeshift stage.
For a moment he stands, and she stands, in silence. For a moment it seems as if they both have forgotten their lines. Pulling off his cap, Julian presses it to his chest.
We, the drowned, are rising up for air.
He falls to his knees in front of her, to hide his exhaustion, to show her other things. “What a perfect thing you are, Cecily,” he says, staring up into her baffled face.
The girl looks him over, his suit, his decidedly out-of-time hair, the newsboy at his breast, the dark beard flecked with gray. “Oh, my, Algernon, I see you’ve neglected to shave.”
“Who can shave at a time like this?” Julian says, and the crowd murmurs, hear, hear. “No one is shaving. That’s how you know how shaken the men of London really are.”
Hear, hear, the crowd responds emotionally.
The young woman stares into his bottomless haunted eyes. A breath of animation passes across her face. Coyly she smiles. “You may be unshaven, but aren’t you a little overdressed for the occasion?”
“Why, yes, you’re right, I am a little overdressed,” Julian says. “But I make up for it by being immensely undereducated.”
The people laugh. Julian continues. “Josephine, do you know that this is the last time we will see each other? After this, I must leave you. I will not be staying for the rest of your performance. The dog cart is waiting, my dear. It is so painful parting.”
Confused, the girl mouths Josephine? “I agree, Algernon,” she says. “It is painful to part from people one has known for only a short while. The absence of old friends one can almost tolerate. But even a momentary separation from someone whom one has just met is unendurable.”
He is still on his knees, gazing up at her. She flushes, blushes. He doesn’t. He barely even moves. His eyes roam her face, her body. She is fair of skin and dark of hair. She is doe-eyed, pale-pink-lipped, long-necked, bosomy, beautiful. She is like she always is. Grimy in the Blitz, living underground, washed out in drab dress, her inner self is still a shining city on a hill.
Julian wanted a fairytale ending. Instead he is down on his knees. He stares at her open and unashamed as if he already knows her. He stares at her with eyes that have seen her. “Before I go, dear Cecily,” Julian says, his voice cracking, his gray eyes full, “I hope I don’t offend you when I state openly in front of all these good people that to me in every way you seem to be absolute perfection.”
The a
udience cheers.
She swallows, stammers. “I think, uh, your frankness does you credit, Algernon.”
“Ever since I first laid my eyes upon your wonderful, incomparable face,” Julian says, “all those years ago, Cecily, in another life, I have dared to love you—wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.”
The people on the platform are raucous with delight. He can barely be heard above their whistling and applause. His Cecily is frozen.
“Uh—I don’t think you should tell me you love me hopelessly, Algernon.” Her voice is croaky. “Hopelessly doesn’t make much sense, does it?”
“It’s the ideal word.” Dropping his cap to the ground, he rises to his feet.
“My dear romantic boy—”
Julian steps forward. Before she can finish, he takes her into his arms and kisses her, in a prolonged open kiss. He kisses with lips that have kissed her. There is nothing tentative about their embrace.
The crowd goes wild. Her arms rise astonished to his elbows. Her soft warm lips kiss him back.
“Oh my,” she says.
Louder! Louder! the crowd cries.
“There is no other girl for me,” Julian says. “There never was.”
And in reply she says, “Ernest, my love, I know.”
Louder! demands the crowd.
“My dear,” she says, breathless but louder, “please tell me your name is Ernest. It’s always been my dream to marry someone named Ernest. There’s something in that name that inspires absolute confidence.”
“Cecily, are you saying you could not love me if I had some other name?” Tenderly he holds her wrapped head, touching the strands of her hair, pressing her body to him.
“What—what other name?”
“Julian,” he replies.
Inexpressible Island Page 3