The Realm of Imagination

by Ruskin Bond

“I’m — I’m Rosie O’Connor,” she improvised. Surely he didn’t expect her to give her real name, did he? She calculated the distance between him and the door and the speed necessary to shoot past before he could grab her.

  “O’Connor, eh? With a name like that, ye canna’ be all bad.” His voice softened. “Did ye get lost in the storm, lass?”

  “I followed a white cat,” Jamie said. “I didn’t think anyone could possibly live here. I’ll just go now.” She waited nervously for him to step aside.

  “Caesar brought ye, eh?” He sounded amused. “Well, any friend of Caesar be a friend of mine. Ye can call me Eddy. Join me for some tea and cake?”

  He seemed harmless, and she was hungry, so she followed him to the tiny kitchen. He switched on the light, and there, on the chipped Formica-topped table sat the white cat, cleaning its whiskers, waiting for them. It stared at Jamie with eyes as blue as sea foam.

  Jamie sat on a chair with a cracked vinyl seat and dropped her backpack onto the speckled pink linoleum. The refrigerator was squatty and rounded, and when the old man pulled on a fat silver bar, the door popped open. Inside, a huge light bulb blinked on.

  He took out a plate of teacakes and set it on the table. The cat mewed as if to say I told you so. Eddy pushed the fridge door shut and shuffled to the sink where he filled a kettle. He put it on the gas stove, over a blue flame.

  “Rosie, eh? A lovely name. Bein’ as you’re an O’Connor, are ye Irish, then?”

  “Me? No. I’m nothing.”

  He grunted and shuffled the four steps to the table where he lowered himself into a chair, leaning his cane against the tabletop. He picked at the plastic wrap matted around the edge of the plate.

  Impatiently, Jamie folded her arms over her cramping stomach. “What do you do?”

  He smiled, peeling back the plastic cover. “I live.” He offered her a teacake.

  She took it and stuffed it into her mouth. When she could speak again, she said, “I mean, what do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a traveler.” He picked up a cake and took a bite.

  “A salesman? My real dad sold tools for a while.”

  “I’ve nothin’ for sale.”

  “So how do you make money to buy those beautiful things?”

  “I never make money. I make friends. Those ‘things’ be gifts from many people and many places.”

  “You travel all over the world?” She felt a spark of interest. “Have you met any famous people? You know, kings or sheiks?”

  He merely smiled and stood with the help of his cane. Moving to the stove, he spooned tea leaves into a brown-glazed pot before pouring in steaming water from the kettle. He carried the pot to the table and poured the tea into two cups.

  The fragrance of mint tickled Jamie’s nostrils as she took a sip. The tea burned down her throat, but it tasted so good. The old man’s piercing green eyes examined her from under white bushy eyebrows. He rubbed the stubble on his cheek.

  “Tell me, lass, have ye ever heard of the Taj Mahal?”

  “It’s white, isn’t it? In India? A palace, or something?”

  “’Tis a tomb, in truth. A magnificent edifice. Had a tour by the shah himself. Jahan was a pleasant fellow, though a might solemn since the death of his wife, Mumtaz.” He offered her another cake. Nothing had ever felt as warm and comforting as this tea, or tasted as good as this cake, and it wasn’t even frosted.

  “Come to think of it,” he continued, “the most excitin’ travel I ever experienced was when I sailed from Spain to the New World. That was adventure at its peak. I was drinkin’ a wee glass of ale in a pub with some of the finest sailors in Spain, when a great and terrible brawl broke out. Now, that was a good time.” He chuckled at the memory. “I ducked the flyin’ mugs and was makin’ me way with God’s speed to the doors, when I saw a mate in trouble. Two big sailors were holdin’ him down, and another was about to smash him with a chair. I’m a firm believer in fair play, and it was a very nice chair, so I sprang in to help.”

  “That’s totally unreal,” Jamie mumbled through a mouthful of cake. She washed it down with tea and asked, “So what happened? Did you win?”

  Motioning with his hands, he said, “I grabbed the chair and hit the one on the right and then the one on the left. That gave the fellow on the floor time to get up, and he punched the third man square in the face, and we flew out the doors.” He chuckled again. “We didn’t stop runnin’ till we were out of town.”

  “Bet he was glad you were there.”

  “That he was. When he learned I was in need of some doubloons, he offered me a job on his ship. Turns out he was the first mate on the Santa Maria, and I sailed with him on a most historic voyage. My, I loved the smell of the sea and the first sight of land. That was fine excitement.”

  Jamie helped herself to another teacake. “Historic voyage? Was the captain famous, or something?”

  He nodded. “Cristoforo Colombo.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Ye Americans call him Christopher Columbus.”

  “Sorry?” She didn’t dare swallow the cake in her mouth for fear of choking on it.

  He continued reminiscing. “How about George Washington Carver? Now, there was an inspirin’ fellow. I gave him an idea for the fifty-ninth use of the peanut. A paste you could use for glue or crackers.”

  “You — are — not — serious.”

  “Shouldn’t I be? I thought it was ingenious meself.”

  “Look, you’re old, not ancient! How dumb do you think I am?”

  “Ye do na’ believe me?” He didn’t even crack a smile. “’Tis as true as I’m sittin’ here.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me, you also took part in the Boston Tea Party, rode inside the Trojan Horse, and, and — wait, I know—you laid the first brick on the Sphinx.”

  “Na,” he replied, “I just watched the Boston Tea Party, I didn’t have the courage to ride in the Trojan horse, and I must confess, in all me days of travelin’, I never saw the Sphinx.”

  She studied Eddy in the weak light of the bulb. Behind him raindrops oozed through a cracked windowpane and trickled onto the sill. Caesar blinked his azure eyes at her, as if waiting for a thank you. Still she watched the old man’s face. He gazed steadily back at her, unnervingly serious.

  Did he think she was dumb enough to believe all this? But even if he was crazy, she still had to ask, “So what’s the future like?”

  Now his eyes narrowed on hers. “Do na’ know. Never been. Ye wantin’ to go?”

  “You selling tickets?”

  He returned her gaze. “Possibly.”

  “Oh? What’s it gonna cost?”

  “Belief,” he said.

  “I don’t have any of that.”

  “Ah, lass, there be so much to believe in, so much goodness in the world and in people.”

  “Yeah, right. Maybe in ancient history. Not today. Certainly not tomorrow.”

  He reached for his cane and propped it between his knees. “Tell me about yourself, lass.”

  “I gotta go.” She stood. The rain was more tolerable than this.

  “The cakes were na’ free.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “But ye have an answer, now do na’ ye?”

  “I’m just a number in a high school. I’m nobody.”

  “Nobody’s nobody.”

  Jamie rolled her eyes.

  He rose slowly and took a step toward her. “Ye do have parents?”

  “One of each. And one fake one.”

  “Brother or a sister?”

  “One bratty brother who collects fish and rocks, but I’m the one with rocks in my head.”

  “Interestin’ form of brain matter. Makes ye quite a specimen.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess. It’s what my stepdad always says.”

  He leaned on his cane and gazed deep into her eyes. “What grabs ye and doesn’t let ye go? What is it ye want more than anythin’ else?”

  She shru
gged and looked down. “I don’t want anything.”

  “Ye have your whole life ahead of ye, lass. If ye do na’ want somethin’, you’ll get nothin’.”

  “And what is there to get? You can’t pretend you’ve traveled to the future, ’cause you don’t know anything about it.”

  “I know every breath brings ye closer to it.”

  “Closer to what?” Her jaw stiffened. “Every night there’s another riot or a terrorist attack or war on TV. Thousands of people are dying every day from new diseases, and grownups think we’re too young and stupid to care what’s going on. Grownups are the ones who don’t care. Just look at my parents. What does it matter to you, anyhow? You’re old and you’ve lived your life.” She grabbed her backpack. “Thanks for the cakes.”

  He pulled two coins out of his pocket and dropped them on the table. They rolled and chinked together. “Take these and call your mother and father. They be scared, too. For ye.”

  She snatched the coins. “Yeah, well, thanks. Really. I’ll pay you back.”

  Caesar meowed, and Eddy rubbed the cat’s chin. “I’d be glad if ye trespassed here again. Caesar would, too. He followed me home from Persia. That was on me very first journey. Lonely, he was.” He looked up at her and winked. “Needs a good friend.”

  Eddy gave her directions to Main Street, and she grabbed her backpack and walked down the hall to the front door.

  It wasn’t until she stood at the gas station pay phone, soaked, trying to shove the first coin into the slot, that she even looked at it. Now she gaped. In the palm of her hand lay a heavy gold piece with Roman numerals and Latin inscribed around a man’s leaf-encircled head. She turned it over; on the back was a bird. The coin felt thick, and the images were lumpy, not sharp and defined. It looked ancient.

  The next day Jamie walked up to the same rundown house. It was Saturday afternoon, and all the ghosts of the previous, eerie night had disappeared. Awkwardly, she stood on the porch. So many boards were broken or missing, she was amazed she hadn’t fallen through the night before.

  She was about to turn back, when Caesar hopped onto the porch and mewed a hello.

  “Yes, I’m here. Don’t ask why.” She knocked at the door, then waited, fingering the bulky coins nestled inside her jeans pocket. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  “Come in, lass.”

  In the daylight the front room looked both filthier and finer. Faded grape-patterned drapes wilted over the windows. Ugly, thought Jamie. Who would buy grape drapes? The ceiling light was a frosted glass globe with dead moths entombed in it. Cracks scrawled across the plaster walls, and yellow water spots stained the ceiling.

  Yet the plush rug under the massive furniture glowed a vibrant red, woven with designs of men with dog bodies. The objects in the glass display case gleamed in the sunlight and were even more beautiful than last night. The door to the coat closet stood open, revealing clothes from different eras. Maybe, she thought, Eddy was once an actor, and these were his costumes.

  She saw the old man sitting on a sofa covered with heavy, flowery fabric, the arms and legs carved like lion paws. Beside the sofa stood a table with a glossy figurine on its marble top. A shepherdess, holding a crook in her right hand and a bouquet of flowers in her left.

  “I, um, brought your coins back, Eddy,” Jamie said. “I think you made a mistake.” She held them out in her open palm. “I found a book at the library on old coins. The money you gave me, well, it’s worth a lot more than fifty cents.”

  Eddy didn’t say anything. He just sat looking at a wooden box in his hands.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” Jamie continued. “Not even about you.”

  He opened the lid, and music began to play.

  She stepped closer, taking a package of cellophane-wrapped snack cakes out of her jacket pocket. “I brought you these, to repay you for your teacakes.” Her lips formed a sarcastic smile. “Don’t think they had any of these in ancient Rome.”

  “More than kind of ye. Keep the coins. Caesar would want ye to have ’em.”

  She wasn’t sure if he meant the cat or the emperor. “Well, thanks for the stories. And the tea. It was really nice of you.” She slid the coins back into her pocket.

  He nodded heavily. He seemed different, weaker, as he slouched on the elegant cushions. There was a moment of silence. Then, both curious and testing, she asked, “Everything here is old. Antiques. Last night you said you’d never been to the future. Why?”

  “How could I, now? The future is na made yet. There be no place to go. Ye, and young ones like ye, have yet to create the future.”

  “How? All I have is a world you grownups have left for me.”

  “Na, lass. Time can be a good friend or a cruel enemy to each of us. Treat her with respect, and she’ll take ye to a grand future.” His green eyes gazed intently at her. “The future is the most promisin’ place of all. And it be waitin’ for ye.”

  She slid her hands into her back jeans pockets. “If that’s so, how come you live in the past?”

  He gave a wry smile. “My future was supposed to be there. I was too rash and fool-headed to see it.” His eyes fell on something inside the box. “And now it be too late.”

  “Tell me how you travel,” she challenged him.

  “With me trusty cane.”

  She hated grownups who lied to her. Now this old man was making a fool of her, and she wanted to trap him or embarrass him into admitting it. “What if I’m ready to pay the price for the ticket?”

  “Time, lass, is a river with thousands of currents to each place. The ones behind, they be history. The ones ahead are opportunities. It’s just a matter of openin’ the doors and steppin’ through.”

  “How do you open a door?”

  “I canna’ tell ye that.”

  “How do you step through?”

  “Very carefully.”

  She didn’t know if he was serious or joking. “What does it feel like to step through time? Get any weird sensations?”

  He parted his lips as if to speak, then closed them again. He studied her for a moment and finally confided, “I see the doorway openin’ and I either fall into it or fall back away from it and miss it. If I jump through, I do feel a ‘weird sensation’ all right as I float — colors and light and sounds fillin’ me bein’. And then I hit the ground in another time and place.”

  “Ever hurt yourself on one of your landings?”

  “I jammed me thumb, and it still is na’ quite right.” He showed her the oddly cocked joint. “And another time I scraped me whole face down the side of a gypsy wagon.”

  He took a small picture from the music box and gazed at it. “And I’ve broken me leg.” It was as if he had traveled back in time before her eyes, the way he stared at the image. With trembling fingers, he handed it to her.

  “What is this?” Astonished, she held the thin sheet of cold metal with its brown-tone images of a woman and a man. The woman wore a long, full dress with puffy sleeves. She had her hair swept up into a bun. Jamie looked at her wistfully; she was beautiful.

  “It be a tintype. ’Tis how the first photographs were made 150 years ago.”

  “Is she alive now?” Jamie raised her eyebrows, bracing herself for his answer.

  He shook his head mournfully. “She died 104 years and twenty-nine days ago.”

  “And you knew her?”

  “That be me with her.”

  Jamie looked at the tintype again, this time at the man. Though he wore baggy pants with suspenders and a shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he was young and good-looking. She peered closer at his face, then at the old man’s before her. The resemblance was spooky. Uneasily, she handed Eddy the tintype and watched as he traced the woman’s silver-and-brown image with his aged finger.

  As if still caught inside the picture, he continued, “I landed in the back alley of a dress shop in New York City. ’Twas 1863. I fell through a pile of crates and upset a nest of mice. When I opened me eyes, I was lookin’ up into the f
ace of this beautiful lass. She was gapin’ at me. She thought I was an angel the way I fell from the sky, but couldn’t understand how an angel could be lyin’ there in an alley with a broken leg.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I fell from the roof. I didn’t realize the roof was five stories high. She couldn’t believe I had survived such a fall.” With a half smile, he glanced at Jamie before returning to the ghostly image in his hand.

  “She nursed me back to health in the storage room. Said mine was the slowest-healin’ leg in history. She was right. I lived each day for her visits. What a lass! I told her about me travels, and she laughed just as you did. Then one day she kissed me. Can ye believe it, now? She kissed me! After I had been lyin’ awake nights plannin’ it, and there she went and did it.” Tears swam in his eyes. “She told me she loved me.”

  Jamie sat on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. “What happened?”

  “The doorway came soon after. Just after buyin’ her this box. I panicked. I didn’t know if the doorway would ever come again.” He sat in silence, but the music box chimed on, slowing as he stared at the picture.

  “Why don’t you go back?” asked Jamie.

  “I’ve tried many a time to go back and break me other leg.” He made a vain attempt to smile. “I have never found that doorway again. Never caught the same current.”

  “You quit trying?”

  “There’s a price to travelin’. I pay with me life. Each time I return I’m about five years older than when I left.”

  “So how old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.” He looked at his hands as if not recognizing them. Jamie was dumbfounded. Thirty-two was old, but it wasn’t that old. “You can see how diligently I’ve tried to find her again,” he said.

  She couldn’t say anything. She felt stupid for believing such a ridiculous tale, yet she felt so much pain from him, she couldn’t speak. The music box struggled to get out one last note, and then it stopped. Very slowly Eddy closed the lid.

  “Do your parents know where ye are? That ye came here?” His voice sounded hollow and labored, like the last notes of the music box. She shrugged. “Why did ye na’ tell them, eh?”