The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(45)
“Would you prefer me to wear my hood, Mr. Wells?” asked Merrick softly.
The strange voice, which gave his words a liquid quality as if they were floating in a muddy brook, struck renewed fear into Wells. Had the time limit Merrick usually put on his guests’ response expired? “No … that won’t be necessary,” he murmured.
His host moved his gigantic head laboriously again in what Wells assumed was a nod of agreement.
“Then let us have our tea before it goes cold,” he said, shuffling over to the table in the center of the room.
Wells did not respond immediately, horrified by the way Merrick was obliged to walk. Everything was an effort for this creature, he realized, observing the complicated maneuvers he had to make to sit down. Wells had to suppress an urge to rush over and help him, afraid this gesture usually reserved for the elderly or infirm might upset Merrick. Hoping he was doing the right thing, Wells sat down as casually as possible in the chair opposite him. Again, he had to force himself to sit still as he watched his host serve the tea. Merrick mostly tried to fulfill this role using his left hand, which was unaffected by the disease, although he still employed his right hand to carry out minor tasks. Wells could not help but silently admire the extraordinary dexterity with which Merrick was able to take the lid off the sugar bowl or offer him a biscuit from a plate with a hand as big and rough as a lump of rock.
“I’m so glad you were able to come, Mr. Wells,” said his host, after he had succeeded in the arduous task of serving the tea without spilling a single drop, “because it allows me to tell you in person how much I enjoyed your story.” “You are very kind, Mr. Merrick,” replied Wells.
Once the story had been published, curious about how little impact it had made, Wells had read and reread it at least a dozen times to try to discover why it had been so completely overlooked. Imbued with a spirit of uncompromising criticism, he had weighed up the plot’s solidity, appraised its dramatic pace, considered the order, appropriateness, and even the number of words he had used, in case this turned out to be an unlucky or magical number, only to end up regarding his first and quite possibly his last work of fiction with the unforgiving, almost contemptuous eye with which the Almighty might contemplate the tiresome antics of a capuchin monkey. It was clear to him now that the story was a worthless piece of excrement: his writing a shameless imitation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s pseudo-Germanic style, and his main character, Dr. Nebogipfel, a poor, unrealistic copy of the exaggerated depictions of mad scientists already found in Gothic novels. Nevertheless, he thanked Merrick for his words of praise, smiling with false modesty and fearing they would be the only ones his writings ever received.
“A time machine …” said Merrick, delighting in that juxtaposition of words he found so evocative. “You have a prophetic imagination, Mr. Wells.” Wells thanked him again for this new and rather embarrassing compliment. How many more eulogies would he have to endure before asking him to change the subject? “If I had a time machine like Dr. Nebogipfel’s,” Merrick went on, dreamily, “I would travel back to ancient Egypt.” Wells found the remark touching. Like any other person, this creature had a favorite period in history, as he must have a favorite fruit, season, or song.
“Why is that?” he asked with a friendly smile, providing his host with the opportunity to expound on his tastes.
“Because the Egyptians worshiped gods with animals” heads,” replied Merrick, slightly shamefaced.
Wells stared at him stupidly. He was unsure what surprised him more: the na?ve yearning in Merrick’s reply or the awkward bashfulness accompanying it, as though he were chiding himself for wanting such a thing, for preferring to be a god worshiped by men instead of the despised monster he was. If anyone had a right to feel hatred and bitterness towards the world, surely he did. And yet Merrick reproached himself for his sorrow, as though the sunlight through the windowpane warming his back or the clouds scudding across the sky ought to be reason enough for him to be happy. Lost for words, Wells took a biscuit from the plate and began nibbling on it with intense concentration, as though making sure his teeth still worked.
“Why do you think Dr. Nebogipfel didn’t use his machine to travel into the future as well?” Merrick then asked in that unguent voice, which sounded as if it was smeared in butter. “Wasn’t he curious?” I sometimes wonder what the world will be like in a hundred years.” “Indeed …” murmured Wells, at a loss to respond to this remark, too.
Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of a novel. As a child he had also been able to read in that way. But one day he had decided he would be a writer, and from that moment on he found it impossible to immerse himself in stories with the same innocent abandon: he was aware that characters” thoughts and actions were not his. They answered to the dictates of a higher being, to someone who, alone in his room, moved the pieces he himself had placed on the board, more often than not with an overwhelming feeling of indifference that bore no relation to the emotions he intended to arouse in his readers.
Novels were not slices of life, but more or less controlled creations reproducing slices of imaginary, polished lives, where boredom and the futile, useless acts that make up any existence were replaced with exciting, meaningful episodes. At times, Wells longed to be able to read in that carefree, childlike way again, but having glimpsed behind the scenes, he could only do this with an enormous leap of his imagination. Once you had written your first story, there was no turning back. You were a deceiver, and you could not help treating other deceivers with suspicion. It occurred to Wells briefly to suggest that Merrick ask Nebogipfel himself, but he changed his mind, unsure whether his host would take his riposte at the gentle mockery he intended. What if Merrick really was too na?ve to be able to tell the difference between reality and a simple work of fiction? What if this sad inability and not his sensitivity allowed him to experience the stories he read so intensely? If so, Well’s rejoinder would sound like a cruel jibe aimed at wounding his ingenuousness. Fortunately, Merrick fired another question at him, which was easier to answer: “Do you think somebody will one day invent a time machine?” “I doubt such a thing could exist,” replied Wells bluntly.