Impossible Stories

by Zoran Zivkovic

“The bars are there for your own good.”

  “So I don’t lean out too far by accident and fall?”

  “Accidents do happen.”

  She put her head close to the canvas for a moment, engrossed in painting some detail. “So, then, you could believe me.”

  “I could listen to you and then judge.”

  “That’s fair.” She moved back from the easel, taking a look at the detail. “Tell me, what do you think—who is he?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “But you certainly have some idea,” she said, searching again for the proper color on her palette. “I have told you about our meetings. You know his stories.”

  “Someone very powerful, obviously, since he can do whatever he wants with time.”

  She found the right color, and her bared left arm started to move quickly before the canvas once again. “The devil?”

  For several moments he silently watched her fluttering figure before the painting she was working on.

  “He would be a very unusual devil,” he said at last. “A devil who does good deeds without any recompense.”

  “Do you think he did the right thing?”

  “Didn’t he? Three unhappy people received a unique time gift, as far as I understood.”

  “And now they are less unhappy?”

  “Why, I suppose. They should be. Particularly since they were not asked for anything in return.”

  “He, too, thought he would make them happy. At first.”

  “He doesn’t think so anymore?”

  “No. That is why he is leaving. He discovered that it is truly the work of the devil to fool around with time, even when you have the best of intentions.”

  “Where did he go wrong?”

  She put her palette and brush under the easel, threw back her head, and tried to shake back her long hair. But the curly, auburn locks were too tangled from long lack of combing.

  “Do you remember the story about the astronomer?” Without turning around she pointed her thumb to the right, to one of the three paintings on the wall. “If it hadn’t been for his nighttime visit before the execution, Lazar would have happily gone to the stake, convinced of how correct, even exalted his sacrifice would be.”

  “But it was a mistake. Visiting the future showed him that his sacrifice had no meaning.”

  “Do you think that people should be freed from their mistakes? Even when it ends up destroying their happiness?”

  “Happiness based on illusion, deception?”

  “And what happiness isn’t?”

  He did not know how to reply at first. He felt like a chess player whose opponent has made what seems like a quiet move, but one riddled with hidden traps.

  “What is the meaning of happiness if it entails the loss of a life?” he asked at last, in a muffled voice.

  “And what is the meaning of life without happiness? That is the impossible choice Lazar was forced to make. With the best of intentions. Everything would have been much simpler if he had not seen the future.”

  “Your visitor did not tell the story to the end. He did not tell you what the astronomer chose.”

  “He didn’t because it made no difference.” She stopped a moment. “What would you have chosen if you were in his place?”

  A somewhat stronger gust of air from the window raised the hem of the nightgown, revealing slender calves. It brought into the room the abundant smell of grass and certain traces of ozone—the first sign of the storm that was on the way.

  “And what about the professor of paleolinguistics?” he asked, avoiding any reply. He raised his eyes inadvertently to the second painting on the shadowy wall. “She has no cause for regret because chance was thwarted; on the contrary, she went back to paradise.”

  The artist did not reply at once. She leaned toward the shelf behind the easel, started rummaging around in the tubes, selected one and squeezed out a bit of the contents onto her palette. Then she took the flannel rag and wiped off the tips of her fingers.

  “To a paradise she was denied, actually. Eva was only an observer in paradise, without the chance to take part in it.”

  “I didn’t have the impression that she felt it was unpleasant being . . . a ghost. Many of those studying the past would be ready to give half their lives, even more, just to be in her position.”

  She began applying more paint to the canvas. Now she was working on the middle of the painting. “She would have given it all up just for one sip of heavenly tea.”

  “Perhaps, but that was the price she had to pay. There was no other way to find out if everything she had written was accurate.”

  “But imagine if it turned out that she was wrong. That primeval language was quite different from what she thought. It would be a twofold defeat: she would have squandered her past life, and before her would be a paradise that she could not enter.”

  “It didn’t have to be that way. She might have been proved right.”

  “Would that be enough comfort for unattainable paradise?”

  “But if she didn’t return to the past, she would have been left in doubt until the end of her life. That way at least she found out where she stood.”

  “Isn’t it actually uncertainty that makes life possible?” Another quiet move full of hidden menace.

  “Your visitor didn’t tell you the end of that story, either,” he said after a slight hesitation.

  “For the same reason as before. It makes no difference what Eva hears when she gets to the fire. The best thing for her would be never to have left her basement office.”

  A blue flash suddenly appeared in the upper part of the window, but no thunder was heard. The storm was still some way off. Only the choir of crickets seemed to accelerate its chattering tune.

  “The third story differs from the first two in this regard,” he said, again turning to the paintings on the wall. “There is no uncertainty in the end.”

  “No, there isn’t, but it still is not a happy ending, as it should be.”

  “It isn’t?”

  She turned her head toward the window and stared at the darkness.

  “It’s really sultry,” she said. “I can hardly wait for the rain. It’s hard to paint in this heat. I’m all sweaty.”

  He closed his eyes again and started to make little circles on his temples with his fingers. That was where he first felt the change in weather. The dull throbbing there that was slowly spreading to the back of his head indicated that he would spend the night wrestling with a headache.

  “It isn’t,” she continued. “Perhaps it would be if he did not have the memory of the other stream of time in which Mary died.”

  “But, actually, that was not the memory of something real. It was more the recollection of a bad dream.”

  “It lasted too long to be just a dream. More than a quarter of a century. Why was it necessary to let Joseph suffer so long? If it was possible to help him, and someone was willing, he should have been put on the other branch of time right after the accident. Only then could it all have looked like a bad dream. This way the scars were too deep and real.”

  “Why wasn’t that done? Did you ask your visitor?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And? What did he reply?”

  She drew the back of her hand across her forehead. “He said he could not have done otherwise because then the story would not be as good. If he had offered his time gift earlier, the hero certainly would have had a better time of it, but then the story would be weaker. The same holds for the other two.”

  “Strange. I had no idea that the devil cared so much for literary effect.”

  She stopped with her brush in midair, not finishing the stroke. “He’s no devil, of course. If he were the devil, he wouldn’t care at all about what happens to his heroes. And he is abandoning his time stories just so he doesn’t transgress against them anymore.”

  “Well, who is he, then, if he isn’t the devil?”

  A dull roar finally broke
the tranquillity of the summer evening. The storm was about to break. As if by some inaudible command, the crickets suddenly fell silent.

  “Wasn’t it clear from the very beginning? The one who tells stories. The storyteller. The writer.”

  “The writer?” he repeated obtusely.

  “The writer, yes. The writer who accepts responsibility without which his divine omnipotence becomes just unrestrained diabolic self-will.”

  “Responsibility toward whom? The heroes of his stories? But they don’t exist, they are not real people. There is no reason to burden your conscience because of them.”

  The thin, pleated curtain on the tall window suddenly billowed out like a white sail. Leaves rustled sharply in the nearby treetops, and the edges of the old newspapers under the easel started to flutter restlessly.

  “Do you think so?” she asked briefly, turning her face toward the fresh air entering from outside.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose firmly with his thumb and forefinger. The pain from his temples had moved there, becoming more piercing, burning. This conversation had to be terminated. They had reached a dead end, and it was already quite late. They would continue the next day, when he was rested.

  “So the writer is leaving us,” he said, getting up slowly from the end of the bed. “There will be no more of his mysterious visits.” He headed for the door, and then stopped, remembering something. “By the way, did he tell you how he managed to enter your room and then leave it, in spite of the bars on the window and the locked door? Did he perhaps transfer the omnipotence he has in his stories to reality?”

  As soon as he said this, he thought that the question had not been formulated very skillfully. The fatigue and headache were clearly having an effect. She might think he was making fun of her, which would not be at all good for their relationship. It had taken him a long time to get her to leave the cocoon of silence in which she had enclosed herself, to start telling him about the pictures she painted.

  “The storyteller cannot transfer his omnipotence to reality,” she replied. There was no trace of rancour in her voice. On the contrary, it had a note of joy in it, probably from the excitement of the approaching storm. That often happened among the patients. It was as if they were permeated with the electricity that filled the air. The nurses would have their hands full tonight.

  “Then how?”

  Outside, it started to rain. The drops were still scattered, but their heavy drumming indicated that they were large, stormy.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “There is only one other possibility.”

  He stared fixedly at her back, over which the thin nightgown was now wrinkling like ripples on the surface of the water. “I don’t get it. What possibility?”

  “This is not reality. This is also one of his stories.”

  He stood immobile in the middle of the room. He knew he should say something, that it was expected of him, but he could by no means find the proper words. He was confused not by what she said but by how she said it. That flat voice again, as though it were stating the obvious.

  “I said you wouldn’t believe me.”

  He snapped out of his paralysis. “It’s not easy to believe. Would you believe it if you were in my place?”

  “Oh, I would, certainly. It’s not hard for me. I’m crazy, right? But you aren’t. In addition, you are a man of doubt and not belief. You’ll still be suspicious even after you see the proof.”

  “Proof?”

  She laid the palette and brush under the easel again, wiped her hands on the spotted flannel rag, and reached for something in her lap. A moment later she turned to face him in the tall chair and raised her hand in the air. A yellow gleam danced in the bright reflector beam.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked, squinting at the pocket watch.

  “From the writer, of course. It is his gift. There is a dedication engraved on the back. Here, take a look.”

  She held out her hand with the watch, but he did not take it right away. He stared at the golden object on her palm, feeling the hairs bristle on the back of his neck. Everything is really full of static electricity, he thought. As if in reply, everything in the room suddenly flashed a blinding blue. He knew what would follow, but the violent explosion that resounded just a fraction of a second later still made him start.

  She did not even blink, as though completely deaf.

  “It’s only thunder, don’t be afraid,” she said gently. “Go ahead and take the watch.”

  He did it hesitantly, timidly. It was heavier than he expected, convex on the top and flat on the bottom. His fingers felt the engraving on the back, and he turned it over in his hand. The inscription was tiny and curling, calligraphic. Two names above the middle of the circle. Hers, his.

  “So that is the name of the writer,” he said. It was something between a statement and a question.

  She did not reply. The silence that reigned was disturbed only by the downpour from the low clouds. Periodic flashes of lightning illuminated the curtain of water just outside the bars. The rain was falling straight down, so the parquet before the window was completely dry. The air in the room was saturated with humidity and some new, pungent smells.

  He started to turn the watch in his hand, looking for the latch that would open the lid.

  “Are you sure you want to open it?” she asked quietly.

  He found the latch but did not touch it. “Shouldn’t I?”

  “No, if you’re not ready for a time gift.”

  “What kind of time gift could I receive?”

  “One with the power to alter your entire life.”

  He smiled. “Is there something like that for me? There is no execution awaiting me at dawn, neither am I plagued by doubt in my old age as to whether everything I have done has been mistaken, and I don’t have the least dark spot in my past that should be removed.”

  “Oh, it exists for everyone. Even someone crazy like me. It is the final time gift.”

  “Final?”

  “That’s right. Tell me, what is the only thing you know for certain about your future?”

  He thought for a moment, looking at her suspiciously. “That I will die, if that is what you are thinking of.”

  “Yes. But you don’t know when it will be, tomorrow or many years from now, right? And it is this very ignorance that allows you to suppress the awareness of your own mortality which would otherwise become an unbearable burden. Not knowing when you will die—that is life’s main stronghold.”

  The third quiet move. He had the strange impression that an invisible net of checkmate was woven around him and there was no escape. “And if I raised the lid I would find out?”

  “You would find out.”

  The jets of rain were suddenly slanted by the wind. They started to soak the curtains and drapes and made puddles on the floor under the window, reaching all the way to the newspaper under the easel.

  He glanced in that direction and then turned toward her again.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I opened the watch.”

  “And you found out when you will die?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head slowly. “There’s something amiss there. Didn’t you say that your . . . writer . . . stopped giving time gifts after the bad experiences he had with them in the first three stories? That he had accepted the responsibility that goes along with omnipotence, that his conscience did not allow him to inflict harm on his protagonists? If this is his story, too, as you claim, then he has behaved very badly toward you: you have received the cruelest of all time gifts.”

  “I received it because I asked for it myself. He fought against giving it to me for a long time.”

  “But why did you ask for it? Didn’t you just say there is no sense in finding out when you will die?”

  “My case is special. If he had already imagined me crazy, then I had the right to know how much longer I will have to be like that. It was the least he could do
for me, although he did not find it easy.”

  “What about me?” he asked, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “I can raise the lid, too. What would be his justification for me if I, too, am a character in his story?”

  “You can, yes, but even so you won’t do it.”

  “Why not? What’s stopping me?”

  “The writer’s omnipotence, of course. He won’t let you do it.”

  A smile spread over her face. His thumb started slowly toward the latch of the pocket watch, but the movement was not completed. The knock that suddenly resounded was short, sharp. The tall nurse did not wait to be given permission to enter. She stopped by the door and said quickly, “Ah, you’re still here, Doctor. They need you urgently in room forty-three.”

  He stood there without moving, holding the watch in his open palm. A gust of wind filled the wet curtains again and lifted the newspaper all the way to the easel legs.

  “Why, everything is open here,” muttered the nurse, rushing toward the window. “Magdalena, you’ll catch cold; put something around your shoulders.”

  Continuing to smile, the artist slowly took the watch from the doctor’s hand.

  “Hurry, they’re waiting for you,” she said gently. “We’ll see each other tomorrow. There is plenty of time. The story ends here for you, but we will talk about it for some time to come.”

  II

  The nocturnal storm had long since passed, leaving behind dense humidity full of the smell of decay that would float over the wet soil until the sun rose in a short while. Flattened blades of grass started to straighten up slowly, throwing off the remaining drops of water, but here and there occasional dripping from the leaves bent them to the ground again.

  The wind had stopped altogether, so that the deep silence just before dawn was disturbed only by short birdcalls. They sounded inquisitive and fearful, like the calls of lost shipwreck victims on the high seas. The spectral echo of these cries remained in the motionless air long after the original sound had died out.

  In the vague light of dawn that filled the large window, the white bars no longer stood out against the curtain of darkness. The milky morning light also dulled the sharpness of the reflector beam illuminating the canvas, making it milder, paler. The contours of the few objects in the room seemed to lose their solidity in this new light.