Impossible Stories II

by Zoran Zivkovic

  “You are in just such a place.”

  “It doesn’t look like that to me. We’ve reached the last question, so you say, and there hasn’t been any progress. I don’t remember anything.”

  He closed the file and gazed at me fixedly for a moment.

  “Oh, you do remember, perfectly well. That’s the crux of the problem.”

  “What do I remember?”

  “Books.”

  Now I stared at him.

  “Which books?”

  “Great works of literature. That’s the only good thing about your case. It’s a blessing in disguise. You could have remembered dime store novels.”

  “What great works of literature? I don’t understand you.”

  He sighed and his smile faded for the first time.

  “I have to prepare you for this. It comes as a shock. There is a tremendous flash.”

  “What comes as a shock?”

  We looked at each other in silence for some time. Then he spoke. The words were almost a whisper.

  “Crime and Punishment.”

  The flash was truly terrific, forcing me to close my eyes tightly. Whiteness seemed to explode around me. If it weren’t for the strap tied across my chest, I would have bucked on the bed as though from an electric shock.

  And then the book appeared before my eyes. Every chapter, every page, every paragraph, every line. I saw it all crystal clear. Even better than that. I knew the position of every letter and every punctuation mark in the gigantic mosaic of the whole. Flawlessly. Far better than the writer himself. The gateway to absolute remembrance stood wide open before me.

  The whisper of the man I could no longer see reached my ears again.

  “Vanity Fair, Great Expectations, Sentimental Education, Dead Souls, Lost Illusions, Les Miserables, The Magic Mountain, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Fahrenheit 451 . . . ”

  Orgasms of light burst all around me, followed by a boundless clarity of vision with total perception. I knew that I could repeat by heart effortlessly each of the ten works he’d mentioned. And I would never be able to forget them, even if I wanted.

  “Please, that’s enough,” I muttered after the last flash had ebbed. “I can’t take any more . . . ”

  “That’s all there is.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the man who was smiling again.

  “What happened?” I asked weakly.

  “Virus 451.”

  “Come again . . . ?”

  “That’s what it’s known as. The medical term has five long and difficult words. Even though it’s not a virus, that’s how it behaves. It erases everything from your memory and replaces it with what you’ve read. That’s why I said you had a blessing in disguise. You’ve read great literature. It’s much more frequent for the memory to be filled with trite or worthless copy. If they read at all, people today mostly read pulp novels.”

  “Is there a… cure?”

  “For a perfect literary memory? No, there isn’t, I’m afraid. What’s been erased cannot be brought back. You paid for this ideal access to literature with your own memory. It might not be such a bad trade, though.”

  “How can I live without a past?”

  “You’ll get used to it. People with amnesia live more or less normally. But there’s another setback.”

  “What’s that?”

  He didn’t reply at once, but raised the bed sheet and started to unfasten the strap across my chest. He put the file under his arm and then stretched out his hand to help me up. My head swam a little when I sat up, so I stayed on the edge of the bed with my legs dangling.

  “Virus 451 is still inside you. We can’t remove it. You won’t be allowed to read anymore. Anything you read will be to the detriment of your new memory. You would erase everything you remember from now on.”

  “But I can’t live without reading . . . ”

  He took me by the arm and helped me to my feet. My knees bowed briefly.

  “That’s what I thought. Most people would have no trouble giving up reading. They would consider it a reward and not a punishment. But as soon as I heard the works you remembered, I knew it would be different with you.”

  “What’s in store for me?” I asked softly, like a terminally ill patient asking how much longer he has left.

  His smile broadened.

  “Reading, of course. But of a special kind.”

  “But you said…”

  “That was for those who can live without reading. For those who can’t, we have a special library.”

  “Library?”

  “A living library. With people just like you. You won’t learn anything about their past. They have no memory of it. But you will have the chance to hear the greatest works of literature from them. And they from you. And you will remember them. I told them that someone else might be joining them soon. They can hardly wait. Let’s go.”

  We headed slowly for the invisible door in the wall.

  PART 5

  FIRST PHOTOGRAPH

  First Photograph

  Appearances can be deceiving.

  You look at a picture and think you see everything. Young mother with babe in arms. Indeed, what else is there to see? You’ve seen thousands of such photographs. Even on postcards. It’s a cliché, you think.

  And yet it isn’t. Take a closer look. The two-month-old child (me, although, of course, you can’t recognize me on my first photograph) seems intent on holding its head where it’s not supposed to be, under its mother’s bosom, closer to her stomach.

  There’s something unnatural about that position. One would expect the baby to long to hear its mother’s heartbeat. That’s why mothers instinctively hold babies with their head cradled in their left arm.

  I suppose I too (although, to tell the truth, I don’t remember) loved to hear my mother’s throbbing heart. How could it be otherwise? I was a normal baby.

  Or perhaps not quite normal. I knew something that, even if I could, I wouldn’t have told anyone. Because it wasn’t normal. At least not according to the standards of the time. Today people would probably have a different take on it all. Be more indulgent. At least I hope so.

  Here, let’s check it out. I’ll tell you the secret why I, this weak little baby, was trying with might and main to listen beneath my mother’s bosom. I wanted so terribly to hear the beating of another heart that was down there a bit lower.

  No, my mother didn’t have two hearts. Not at all. Anatomically and in all other respects, everything about her was in perfect order. She certainly would have been horrified to learn about that other heart, particularly since it wasn’t hers and yet was located inside her.

  Well, all right, whose other heart could that be, you wonder with a certain understandable surprise, in the normal mother of a two-month-old baby?

  Here’s the answer. The other heart beating in my mother’s body belonged to my twin brother. I would like to call him by name, but he was never given one. Not only because he was never born. Had my parents known that he was conceived when I was, they would certainly have had a name waiting for him. As they did for me. But there was no ultrasound at the time.

  Wait, wait, I can already hear your interruptions, what do mean to say—he wasn’t born? How could he still not be born two months after your birth? All-embracing medicine has yet to record such an event. Without mentioning the fact that your mother, even after bringing you into the world would have been—and looked, which is more important—pregnant.

  It truly would have been like that, and your amazement quite fitting, had things taken their natural course. But they didn’t. Exactly two months and eleven days after my twin brother and I were conceived, he decided not to be born. It’s true we were only fetuses at the time, but you are terribly mistaken if you think such far-reaching decisions can’t be made so early on.

  All right, not all fetuses are equally mature. Take me, for example. Something like that would never have crossed my mind. I was much more ingenuous. Nothing more far-
reaching than enjoying the warm, safe surroundings of my mother’s womb interested me. But even then my brother was characterized by a seriousness and responsibility of which few can be proud, among newborns and adults alike.

  His decision astonished me, of course. How else could it be? I had counted on us being born together as befits identical twins. How could I enter the world by myself, deprived of the closest relative imaginable? It’s not certain I could even consider myself a twin in that case.

  Completely distraught, I asked for an explanation. But I didn’t get one. All I was told, in the special nonverbal way that fetuses communicate, is that that’s the way it had to be. As though Fate itself were talking. It was not until much later that I realized it actually could not have been otherwise. The explanation went far beyond my capacity to understand at that age. It’s questionable that I could even today. I sincerely doubt that I will ever reach an understanding of the world to match that of my brother when he was just a fetus.

  While I was unable to grasp his reasons for not being born, I wanted to know how he intended to pull it off. This was a technical, not metaphysical question, so I hoped that I would be able to understand it. Was he intending to keep growing and developing in Mother’s stomach until he came of age, and even afterward? I was horrified at the thought of what our mother would look like with a grown man in her stomach.

  He took me soundly to task for such a vicious thought. Of course he wouldn’t keep on growing. How could he spoil his own mother’s appearance? He wouldn’t even stay in his current tiny proportions that would certainly cause her no inconvenience. He would go to the opposite extreme. Become smaller.

  I must have given him a dumbfounded look with my large fetus eyes, because he hastened to dispel my doubts. Why was I so surprised? We live in an age of miniaturization, don’t we? Everything’s getting smaller and smaller. We’re coming closer to a quantum world in all respects. It turns out that even the cosmos itself isn’t quite as enormous as was once thought. So why should fetuses be any exception?

  What else could I do but accept this rational explanation. But this did nothing to lessen my concern. When do you intend to start shrinking, I asked him. Sensing fear in my inaudible voice at the possibility of being all alone, he firmly promised that nothing would happen before I was born. He would maintain his current size until then.

  And indeed, while I continued to grow, he didn’t change. Over time I became so large compared to him that I had to be very careful not to accidentally harm him. Moving about like every lively baby at the end of its term in the womb, I could have smothered him, pressed him or even smashed him.

  My anxiety grew as the delivery date approached. It’s a tumultuous event, something could go wrong. What if he didn’t manage to stay inside? If he came out with me, he wouldn’t even be a premature baby. The obstetrician and midwife might not even notice him.

  He just waved his bud of a hand dismissively at my anxious questions. I was not to worry, everything was taken care of. He was always to the point when important matters were involved.

  He was able to console me in that regard, but not about our parting. It was clear to me that Fate was behind the whole thing, but this didn’t make it any easier for me. Is there anything harder than taking leave of your twin brother? It’s like parting with your own self. But we’re not parting, he assured me. I won’t die, I’ll just get smaller. And I won’t go anywhere. You’ll be able to hear my heart whenever you put your ear to Mother’s stomach.

  Just as he promised, the delivery went smoothly. For both of us. And for Mother too. In spite of her exhaustion, she was cheerful, and everyone misunderstood my cries. They shouldn’t be criticized for this, though. Every baby cries at birth. How could they suppose that my tears were from parting with a brother no one knew about?

  Although quite weak, ever since Mother first drew me to her breast I made every effort to put my little head on her stomach. At first she found it unusual and brought my head back up, but she got used to it over time. Particularly since I fell asleep the fastest in that position. And what mother wants to have trouble putting her baby to sleep?

  My brother’s heartbeats, although barely audible, had a calming effect on me. We were no longer touching like before, but we were separated by the very small partition of Mother’s skin and a thin layer of fat. You could even say that we were still connected. Just like when we were happily inhabiting the same body.

  Well, no idyll is ever of long duration. This one ended when I was four and a half months old. Not all at once, but over three days. At first I thought there was something wrong with my hearing. I had to press my head harder and harder into Mother’s soft abdomen to make out the sound of the tiny heart inside.

  And then with horror I realized the truth. My brother had set out on the final minimization. At the end of the third day I could no longer hear him regardless of my efforts. And I couldn’t try any harder because Mother’s stomach had started to hurt from all my pressing, so she held me away from it.

  Inevitably I fell ill. Many adults, let alone a baby, would have been crushed by such a trauma. My illness caused the doctors great concern. No one could discover its cause. They examined me thoroughly and tried various therapies, but nothing helped improve my blood count and bring back my appetite. And pull me out of my apathy.

  I got better at the beginning of my sixth month. They thought it happened all by itself. The doctors couldn’t find the reason for this spontaneous recovery either. But it caused them no concern. Who cares why things are going fine, while they are? They didn’t miss a chance, however, to give themselves credit for this favorable turn of events.

  And the credit was all mine. I simply started to look at things rationally. At that age a lot of maturing happens in a month and a half, even when you’re sick. Or rather, particularly then.

  All right, I can’t hear my brother’s heart anymore, but that doesn’t mean, as he himself said, that he died. He’s still alive in Mother’s womb, he just got smaller. To the quantum level. Maybe even below it. Indeed, miniaturization truly knows not boundaries. And there, as we all know, it’s completely immaterial to talk about sound, so there isn’t any beating.

  This silence from the womb actually came at just the right time. I couldn’t keep my head on Mother’s stomach forever. What would that look like? Babies have to be weaned sooner or later. It’s a bit hard in the beginning, but then they get used to solid food. And start enjoying it.

  I rarely think of my brother today. You know how it is: out of sight, out of mind. I only remember him when I look at this photograph, and I don’t do that very often. You can’t see him, but I know he’s there. And I hope he’s well wherever he is now. In any case, it was his own choice.

  I don’t know whether I’ve convinced you, though. I’d say I haven’t. Congratulations on the quantum world, I can almost hear you thinking, but if a person doesn’t believe their own eyes, whom will they believe and why? Appearances can be deceiving, but not that much. The picture only shows an ordinary young mother with babe in arms. And since the baby truly doesn’t look like me now at this advanced age, how can you believe me when I say it’s me? Particularly since my penchant for wild ideas earned me a bad reputation long ago. I’m even trying to make a living out of it.

  IMPOSSIBLE STORIES II

  Copyright © 2008 by Zoran Živković

  Translated from the Serbian by

  Alice Copple-Tošić

  The rights of Zoran Živković to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in August 2009. This electronic version published in September 2011 by PS by arrangement with the authors. All rights reserved by the authors.

  FIRST EBOOK EDITION

  ISBN 978-1-848631-85-4

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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