by E. J. Swift
Within the last chords of the song, it is possible to imagine a time beyond my time in Paris, a time when I could look back with nostalgia on these vibrant nights, think of a sky that seems more open for being lighter, longer, think of the terrace evenings sat sipping at a sweet pastis, think of evening heart-to-hearts and muddled languages and the delights of slow intoxication. Other exes, who sometimes come by the bar, early evening or last thing at night, have told me that this is the way it goes. Everybody has their time, and everybody leaves. You feel all right about it, they say, in the end. But at seven am on a Sunday morning, watching the remaining couples circling in their last-ditch courtship rituals, I feel confused, despondent, and at a complete and utter loss.
None of those people have an anomaly. None of them are bound to this place in the way I am bound to it. Remaining faithful to the anomaly means living this life indefinitely, even if I grow sick of it, even if I come to hate it. It means an endless cycle of hellos and goodbyes. It means I might lose everything, and I’ll have to live with that too.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
AFTER STAFF DRINKS, everyone decamps to Oz. I go downstairs to get my things. I was planning to go home, feeling too unwell to face the anomaly, but a sound distracts me.
From within the keg room I hear a rattling and clattering. When I push the door, it resists. The metal is cold, lightly frosted. It has been shut from the inside.
I hear a crash which could be a keg toppling over.
I bang on the door. There is no answer.
“Who’s in there?” I call.
Nothing.
“It’s Hallie,” I try. “I left my jumper in there. Can you open up?”
Now I can hear scraping. The clank of metal on metal. Someone is moving kegs around.
I bang again.
“Hi, let me in. Hello?”
I wait. The beer lines are silent; there is no one left upstairs. I sit down, my back to the door. I have an anxious—no, worse than anxious, a really bad feeling about this. The anomaly’s song is keening again. Could something have come through from the other side?
And if so, from when?
“Who is that?” I yell. My voice sounds higher than normal. Taut.
“It’s Gabriela!”
“Gabriela.” I sag with relief. “It’s me! Open up.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. Go away, Hallie.”
“What’s going on in there? I can hear noises.”
“You do not want to know. Go away. Leave now.”
“Gabriela? If you’re trying to travel, it won’t work.”
No answer.
As the seconds tick by, my relief evaporates, to be replaced by a creeping sense of dread. I think about Gabriela’s behaviour tonight. Before tonight. Over the last few weeks she has been increasingly short with people, both friends and customers. She has left directly after staff drinks, or sometimes not taken anything, just collecting her tips and disappearing without bisous. Even behind the bar she’s been quiet and sombre.
Gabriela has been brewing for weeks. How have I failed to notice?
From the other side of the door, I hear a crash and an illegible curse.
She has chosen the time deliberately. She knows it is the time I favour. There is no one else in the building: the night staff are gone, the cleaners will not arrive for another hour. She must have been planning it for a while. Gabriela has been keeping things from me. I imagined myself as her confederate, even her sister. In a crisis, I thought that I would be the one she would turn to.
But I haven’t been around. Not for her, not for anyone.
This is my fault.
I bang again. “Gabriela, I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
“Hallie, you must go away. Go away now, please!”
“Not going,” I say firmly. “And sooner or later, someone’s going to come down here—someone that isn’t me—and then you’ll have to open up.”
“No.” Gabriela’s voice is urgent. “It is not safe for you to stay. I am doing a thing.”
Fear touches me.
“What thing?”
No answer. I hear the gas hissing gently through the pipes.
“Gabriela, what thing?”
“I cannot tell you.”
“Fine. I’ll go upstairs and get the key. I’ll come down in the lift.”
“I have the lift key.”
Of course she has the lift key. She has had enough time to consider the details.
“Then I’ll get someone to help me kick the door in.”
“No, Hallie. You will not do this. You will not speak to anyone.” Gabriela is faint but sure.
“I’m going right now.”
I stand up.
“It’s too late. By the time you get back, it will have happened.”
“Then let me in,” I beg. “Come on, Gabriela, open the door.”
“I cannot let you do this thing with me. Listen, my Hallie.”
The direction of Gabriela’s voice changes; she sounds nearer to me, closer to the ground. I guess that she has sat down next to the door.
“I have had a long time to think about this. All those times I have tried to go back home, and somehow, it never happened. I promised my sister, my niece, that I did not abandon them, and yet I know they do not believe me. Why should they? And a part of what they say is right, because I have a new life here. I love the people. This is my family. And so I begin to forget about the life that is lost, even if it was not much of a life. I forget Bogotá. My real family, waiting, wondering. I forget myself...”
Her voice trails away and there is quiet for a moment, quiet except for the gas hissing, and the pipes creaking. The longer she talks, the longer she is not doing whatever she has been doing. So I say nothing.
“And then you arrive. Hallie from England, who loves Transfusion. Hallie from England, who does not know where she truly belongs. At the beginning, you always see the things you share, is that not the way? Both of us adrift in Paris, a place that is not our city, not our home, but we have it made it a home all the same.”
Gabriela’s voice has become flatter and flatter. It’s acting on me like a narcotic. The keg room door is chill against my shoulders. I feel as though I have been here for days, listening to Gabriela talking.
“We are connected, the two of us. Only you are not the person I met last autumn. Not anymore. This thing, this malicious thing, it has made you mad.”
“No. No, it hasn’t. I’m in control.”
“You are not. I am not. We have no control, because of this thing. It keeps me here, and it sends you everywhere, and now it is affecting others too. Simone, she is in hospital because of this Moulin Vert. There is only one way to fix this.”
I feel sick. A trickle of blood dribbles from my nose.
“Gabriela,” I say frantically. “The anomaly has nothing to do with you. It’s an excuse, and you know it. If you wanted to go back home, you could do it tomorrow. That’s the truth! You just don’t want to face up to it! Now, for god’s sake, tell me what you’re doing in there.”
“You talk about the truth, Hallie. The truth is you do not know what this thing really is. But I can see, quite clearly, that it has changed you. For the worse. If I am your friend, I have no choice. This thing is evil, and I have to destroy it. I have made a rig—there will be an explosion—”
“Gabriela!” I pound on the door. “Gabriela, let me in now!”
“After it explodes, you will not travel in time any longer.”
“Don’t be an idiot! You’ll kill yourself—you’ll blow up Millie’s—”
“Only the keg room. It is this place that is responsible for everything.”
“No!” I am yelling now. “You can’t do this! I’m not going anywhere until you open that door! If you blow anything up, you’ll blow up me with it.”
I hammer, pounding the metal with both fists, ignoring the pain. Someone has to hear, the cleaners, or K
it wandering in early—
“Open up!” I scream. “Open up, open up, open—”
The door gives. I pitch forward with a shock, falling hard on my hands and knees. Behind me, the door slams.
The noise resounds around the keg room, bleak and final.
A key turns. I look up. Gabriela stands a few feet away. Her face is set and her eyes glitter.
“I told you,” she says, very calmly. “To go. Now we are both here. It is your fault. You give me no choice.”
I keep very still. I take in the kegs, stacked together, the wires, wrapped around them, over them, snaking together.
“How do you know how to make an explosive?” I ask shakily.
“You can learn anything on the internet,” says Gabriela. “It is all home ingredients.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“There is no point in joking about it.”
“I’m joking because I’m scared. I don’t want to die.”
“I will explain one more time. I cannot let this thing continue. Now it is just you and me who are affected, but there will be others. It is already starting. And it is getting worse. You know it is getting worse.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this. I can’t believe you take our lives so lightly.”
“Shush now, Hallie. Do not distract me.”
She is doing something with the wires, joining a circuit. I should be doing something, analyzing the set-up, searching for the weak spots, but I have no idea how she has put this thing together. The thought of life without the anomaly is a black hole, alien and horrifying. The chronometrist, I think. If she were here, she could take over Gabriela, prevent her from setting it off.
“Hey,” I say. “Chronometrist! If you’re in here, now would be the time!”
I watch Gabriela’s face, hoping desperately for a sign, but there’s no change, no slackening in her features. Gabriela sighs.
“That woman will not come, Hallie. She used you. She has no interest in you now you have done what she wanted.”
“Gabriela, a flare is coming.”
“All the better. We will take its heart.”
I can hear it. If I could see it, it would be like watching a wave coming in from a long way off. First the barest ripple, then a white crest, then a galloping monster turning over and over upon itself. The vortex grabs me. For a second I’m on the sea bed in the Eocene: warm water, monster fish.
I lurch back. Blood is pouring from my nose.
“Fuck!”
“I know. I saw you go. I saw you before, you know, when we were here. You didn’t realize. I watched you. Until that moment, I couldn’t be sure it was all real. Don’t worry, it will be over soon.”
The vortex reels. This is what happened under the catacombs. I’m in the cellar in 1875, then I’m in a crawl space in World War Two, then somewhere I’ve never been before, cold and empty and dank and so, so alone.
Gabriela’s face is over mine. I’m on my back on the floor of the keg room, incapable of moving.
“I’ve set it off,” she says softly. “One minute.”
She takes me in her arms, my head resting against the crook of her elbow. The blood from my nose trickles down my neck and pools above my collar bone. Gabriela wipes it away tenderly.
“Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight...”
I lose her. Is that Millie? What’s she doing down here? Her mouth drops open in surprise, then—
“Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one...”
Madame Tournier, laying out blankets, food and water.
“Twelve, eleven, ten...”
I move. I move fast enough to surprise Gabriela, twisting free. I grab her arm and haul us to the lift. Gabriela fights me.
“No, Hallie, no!”
I yank the door closed. I hang on to Gabriela. I hit the up button. We start to move, the old, rattling lift creaking its way upwards as I complete the countdown in my head.
Three. Two. One.
MILLIE STANDS LEANING against the taps. Her arms are folded across her chest and her haystacked hair sits slightly askew.
“Oh, girls,” says Millie. Her syrup voice has a thick, malty scent. “Girls, girls, girls. You’ve gone and done it this time, haven’t you?”
Her smile flickers. Is it a smile?
FROM A LONG way away, a low keening. The wave washes up on the beach and retreats.
Silence.
THEY FIND US in the lift, laid out head to head, covered in a fine, pale dust. Our limbs are stiff and brittle, as if calcified. People say neither of us were breathing when the emergency services arrived. They say it was like the dead coming back to life. They say it was the strangest thing they ever saw.
Chapter Forty
THREE DAYS LATER, I am sitting on a terrace near Lamarck, and my hands have almost stopped shaking. Lamarck is just far enough from the boulevard to avoid traffic, but not too far from my studio. I’m not yet ready to venture any further afield.
The scene around me is classically Parisian. Six-storey buildings, street level grocers, boulangeries, butchers, brasseries, boutiques, chocolateries. Between them are the gated doorways to the apartment blocks above. Pedestrians pass by. Scooters, pigeons, water draining downhill in the gutters. The sky is a Parisian blue, and the air has a Parisian summer glow. But the world has changed irrevocably.
A shadow falls across my table, and someone slips into the seat opposite me. Léon.
“What are you doing here?”
The question is automatic; it does not really matter to me why Léon is here. All that matters is the unanswerable call.
Léon takes out his tobacco and rolls two perfectly cylindrical cigarettes. He puts one in front of me, and passes the lighter.
“Thanks.”
I inhale. With a bystander’s idle curiosity, I note that my fingers are still trembling sporadically.
“You look like you need it,” says Léon.
“Everybody’s talking about it, are they?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sure it makes a good story.”
The explosion is the last thing I want to talk about. I knew straight away that Gabriela’s plan had not achieved what she wanted. Léon called as soon as he heard. Don’t say a word, he said. Keep silent. I’ll deal with it. I’ll explain. God knows what he said.
Now, as long as I keep my thoughts clear, I can continue to function. It is possible to perform day-to-day tasks like getting out of bed and taking a shower. I can even go so far as to sit on a terrace with a coffee and watch the world passing by, without remembering that three days ago I was still a part of it, without giving in to panic. But to achieve this, I need my cloud bank: a thick cumulonimbus, heavy with rain. I am on one side of that cloud, everything else is on the other.
Léon orders espressos. I am aware of his eyes resting upon me, light and cool. The thought comes to me that he is a field medic sent to patch up my wounds. I keep my gaze directed away, over his shoulder. Across the road, a woman emerges from the boulangerie with a bundle of baguettes.
We sit without speaking until the espressos arrive. I watch the woman zip up her bag, stash the baguettes under one arm, and set off down the street.
“Hallie, look at me.”
Reluctantly I meet Léon’s eyes.
“I know what you are,” he says. “I know what the anomaly is. I’ve known since I met you. It’s the reason I met you.”
I stare at Léon for a long time.
How is it that you can know a face so intimately, and a soul not at all? I have dreamed of this kind of revelation—I have dreamed of meeting another incumbent, or of taking Léon with me and showing him another world. But all I can think of is that day Léon was waiting for me in the sleet, and that this memory will never be the same. Léon has known all along.
Something crumbles inside of me.
“You’d better explain,” I say at last.
Léon, I realise, does not look well either. He looks gaunt. Troubled. Ther
e’s an odd, glassy texture to his skin.
“There are two anomalies in Paris,” he says. “Beneath boulevard de Clichy is one. The catacombs is another. I’m like you, Hallie. I’m an incumbent.”
The betrayal. I see it approach, acknowledge the fact of it almost clinically, before it slams into me and knocks my world askew. Vertigo. I grip the tabletop to steady myself. My fingers turn white.
“You’ve been travelling too,” I say.
Léon. An incumbent.
“No. Not like you. And I should have put a stop to this a long time ago.”
Tightness in my chest.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not from this time. I was born centuries from now. I discovered the anomaly—my anomaly—by accident. I was twelve.” The strain in his voice is audible. For the first time I have a glimpse of what Léon has been hiding from me, and it’s unbearable. “At first it was—it was magical. But very quickly I found I couldn’t leave it alone. I became obsessed. I couldn’t think about anything else, nothing mattered except the anomaly. By the time Janus found me, my life was a complete disaster and so was I.”
“Janus,” I repeat. A memory, as if from a long way away. When the time comes, remember the way of Janus is not always the way to be true to yourself.
“A handful of incumbents, from all over the world, passing the code of practice down the centuries. They got me out of Paris. Took me halfway around the globe. They helped me to recover.” He shudders. “The withdrawal was... a nightmare.”
“Why? What right did they have to make you stop?”
“That was my response, at first. I didn’t want to go with them. I screamed and fought. I did... horrible things. But they were right. Because it’s not benign, this process. The anomaly changes you. It had changed me. Hallie, I know it’s got you, I know what it’s like, but some part of you must feel it, even if you don’t want to believe. It starts to eat at you. It takes something. The chronometrist was the first of us, and you’ve seen what’s happened to her. I was lucky that Janus picked me up in time. I’d hardly thought about the damage I could have done to history.”