Was I mad, to spend so much time thinking about these fantasies – these illusions? Sometimes I was reminded of those poor deranged souls – when I was a physicist in England–who were constantly writing to us with their crazy theories of the Universe. Is a writer any better than one of those misled people? Is a writer not merely someone who has lost touch with reality, and become submerged in his own fictions?
But the process was irresistible – I realized that I was little more than a receptacle for thoughts which were moving under their own volition. I knew now what Galli meant in his last essay; the last thing he wrote before he ended his own life with the same careless ease he had applied to so many of his stories. I was a prisoner of my past, and a slave of my own fears.
And yet I wrote nothing. And while I waited, history took its incredible course. Britain at last became free again – we watched it all happen on the television. And when Eleanora passed away some months afterwards, there was no longer anything left for me here in Italy – no excuse for me not to return to the homeland I had fled.
And once more the story had changed – Duncan was supposed to have been an exile, who meets Giovanna on the way to Milan. But now the story would be set in Britain–now Duncan would be able to consult the files to find out everything. I had the final ingredient. Now all I needed was to take some blank paper onto the train with me one morning.
But it’s so easy, to get led off track. I wanted to write about two people who meet on a train, who fall in love, whose lives become forever entwined – and in the end they aren’t even talking to each other! I wanted to write about a young man in search of the truth about his father – a heroic father, prepared to die for his ideals. But it all went wrong. All because of Flood.
There was never supposed to be any Flood; it simply appeared, while I was writing – and it stole my story away from me, made everything go astray. Strange, how the smallest things can have such great consequences. Which is more terrible – to die for something you should never have done, or to die for something which ought never even to have existed?
So now I shall have to begin again – please, forget everything you have read. This is all little more than a rough draft. As for the real book, the one which has haunted me for so long – well, I realize my search will have to continue. But I know it’s still out there somewhere.
Remember Galli’s universal Library – an idea which was genuinely his, though the tales which Duncan read were all of course my own invention. I hope that Galli would not have been too offended by my act of plagiarism – after all, as he himself said, all writing is theft. The novel I am looking for sits there on a shelf somewhere – who knows where? And so do all the other versions which I shall write in the course of my search, and all those which I shall never write. And somewhere too, in that vast collection, there is the story of my life – the book which tells what is to happen to me; whether I shall ever succeed in my task, or whether I am to be a sort of Flying Dutchman, forever circling around the book I dream of without being able to come to port. And not only the story of my life, but of all the other lives I could have had – a story in which I never left England, or one in which I married that girl I met long ago. There will be all the possible stories of your life also (many, but nevertheless a finite number). And in some of those stories, you will never read my words, while in others you will not only read them, but our lives will become linked in ways more interesting than the arid relationship of author and reader. And there will be stories too, in some corner of our cosmic Library, in which it is not I who have written this book, but you – and I am merely one of your readers.
I am nearly home. Now I sit, with my work dismantled on my lap like a defective pocket watch. When I try to put it all together again, will it go any better? Tomorrow morning, I shall catch my train once more, with a fresh sheaf of paper under my arm.
Nearly two years since Eleonora left me. It’s easier now – the memories less painful. And I find myself allowing certain thoughts which not long ago seemed abhorrent. I am no longer afraid of the idea that I might meet someone and remarry.
And let me now confess to you my final dream – a dream which has lain in my heart for years, though I did not dare admit it. A dream which comes vividly to me again as it has come so many times before, but which now, at last, I need no longer resist.
I am sitting on the train, when a girl gets on and takes the seat opposite me. I look up, and I see that it is she – the one whom I lost so long ago. In my mind, I see her just as she was then, still fresh and young, while I have withered with the years. At first she doesn’t recognize me, but gradually she realizes who I am, and she tells me with joy that she too has been longing for me, waiting for me. It’s as if our two souls have been buried in ash, petrified and unable to touch each other – but now free at last to come together. Such a fond embrace, after all those years we have spent apart!
And now we are man and wife – young again with happiness, and lying together in our bed. We have just made the most joyous act of love, and she asks me what I am thinking about. When I tell her, she does not frown or look annoyed. Nor does she express any displeasure when I say that I am thinking of the beginning of a novel – a novel which one day I shall write, about two people who meet on a train. She asks me excitedly to tell her about it, and so I say that it all begins with an image; the image of a motor car crashing through a barrier, and tumbling down a hill. And she tells me that she would like to hear the rest of it.
Copyright
Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited,
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ISBN printed book 978 1 873982 11 2
ISBN e-book 978 1 909232 38 9
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Publishing History
First published by Dedalus in 1994, reprinted in 2004
First ebook edition in 2012
Copyright © Andrew Crumey 1994
The right of Andrew Crumey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Printed in Finland by Bookwell
Typeset by RefineCatch
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A C.I.P. Listing for this book is available on request.
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