The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(129)
“Well, what do you think of my world?” he asked.
Wells glanced about him with utter indifference.
“Not bad for a glasshouse manufacturer, don’t you agree, Mr. Wells? That was my occupation before you gave me another reason to go on living.” Wells could not fail to notice the responsibility Gilliam had so happily chosen to ascribe to him in the forging of his destiny, but he preferred not to comment. Undeterred by Wells’s frostiness, Gilliam invited him with a wave of his arm to take a stroll through the future. The author paused for a moment, then reluctantly followed Murray.
“I don’t know whether you’re aware that glasshouses are a most lucrative business,” said Gilliam once Wells had drawn level with him. “Everyone nowadays sets aside part of their garden for these cozy spaces, where grown-ups like to relax and children play, and it is possible to grow plants and fruit trees out of season.
Although, my father, Sebastian Murray, had, as it were, loftier ambitions.” They had scarcely walked a few paces when they came to a small precipice. Unconcerned about taking a tumble, Murray began trotting absurdly down the incline, arms stretched out at his sides to keep his balance. The dog bounded after him. Wells let out a sigh before beginning the descent, taking care not to trip over the mangled bits of pipe and grinning skulls poking out of the ground. He did not wish to fall over again. Once was quite enough in one day.
“My father sensed the beginning of a new future in those transparent houses rich people erected in their gardens,” Gilliam shouted out to him as he went ahead down the incline, “the first step towards a world of translucent cities, glass buildings that would put an end to secrets and lies, a better world where privacy would no longer exist!” When he reached the bottom, he offered his hand to Wells, who declined, not bothering to conceal his impatience at the whole situation. Gilliam seemed not to take the hint, and resumed their stroll, this time along an apparently gentler path.
“I confess that as a child I was fascinated by the glorious vision that gave my father’s life meaning,” he went on. “For a while I even believed it would be the true face of the future. Until the age of seventeen, when I began working with him. It was then that I realized it was no more than a fantasy. This amusement for architects and horticulturalists would never be transformed into the architecture of the future, not only because man would never give up his privacy in the interests of a more harmonious world, but because architects themselves were opposed to the glass and iron constructions, claiming the new materials lacked the aesthetic values that they claimed defined architectural works. The sad truth was that, however many glass-roofed railway stations my father and I built up and down the country, we could never usurp the power of the brick. And so I resigned myself to spending the rest of my life manufacturing fancy glasshouses. But who could content themselves with such a petty, insignificant occupation, Mr. Wells? Not I, for one. Yet I had no idea what would satisfy me either. By the time I was in my early twenties I had enough money to buy anything I wanted, however whimsical, and as you might expect, life had begun to feel like a card game I had already won and was beginning to tire of. To cap it all, around that time my father died of a sudden fever, and as I was his only heir I became even richer. But his passing also made me painfully aware that most people die without ever having realized their dreams. However enviable my father’s life may have seemed from the outside, I knew it hadn’t been fulfilling, and mine would be no different. I was convinced I would die with the same look of disappointment on my face. I expect that’s why I turned to reading, so as to escape the dull, predictable life unfolding before me. We all begin reading for one reason or another, don’t you think? What was yours, Mr. Wells?” “I fractured my tibia when I was eight,” said the author, visibly uninterested.
Gilliam looked at him slightly surprised for a moment, then finally smiled and nodded.
“I suppose geniuses like you have to start young,” he reflected.
“It took me a little longer. I was twenty-five before I began exploring my father’s ample library. He had been widowed early on and had built another wing onto the house, probably in order to use up some of the money my mother would otherwise have helped him to spend. Nobody but me would ever read those books. So I devoured every one, every single one. That was how I discovered the joys of reading. It’s never too late, don’t you agree? Although I confess, I wasn’t a very discerning reader. Any book about lives that weren’t my own was of some interest to me. But your novel, Mr. Wells … your novel captivated me like no other! You didn’t speak of a world you knew, like Dickens, or of exotic places such as Africa or Malaysia, like Haggard or Salgari, or even of the moon, like Verne. No, in The Time Machine you evoked something even more unattainable: the future. Nobody before you had been audacious enough to visualize it!” Wells shrugged off Murray’s praise and carried on walking, trying not to trip over the dog, which had the irritating habit of zigzagging across his path. Verne, of course, had beaten him to it, but Gilliam Murray need not know that. Murray resumed, again heedless of the author’s lack of interest: “After that, as you know, doubtless inspired by your novel, a spate of authors hastened to publish their visions of the future.
Suddenly, the bookshop windows were crammed with science fiction novels. I bought as many as I could, and after several sleepless nights spent devouring them in quick succession, I decided this new genre of literature would be my only reading.” “I’m sorry you chose to waste your time on such nonsense,” muttered Wells, who considered these novels a regrettable blot on the fin-de-siècle literary landscape.