The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(62)
Reaching this conclusion threw up another unexpected question: did knowing that you had achieved the life you wanted in another world absolve you from having to try to achieve it in this one? At first, Andrew did not know how to answer this question, but after a few moments” thought, he decided it did: he was absolved from being happy; he could be content to lead a peaceful existence, enjoying life’s small pleasures without the slightest feeling of inner frustration. For, however trite it might seem, he could always console himself with the happy thought that he was living a full life in another place that was both nearby and at the same time far away, a place that was inaccessible, uncharted, because it was on the reverse of any map.
Suddenly, he experienced an incredible sense of relief, as though a burden he had been carrying since birth had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt unfettered, reckless, and wild. He had an overwhelming desire to reconnect with the world, to tread the common path of life again with the rest of humanity, to send a note to Victoria Keller, or to her sister Madeleine if Victoria was the one Charles had married, inviting her to dinner or to the theater or for a walk in a park where he could ambush her, brush his lips against hers—simply because he was aware that at the same time he would also not be doing that. For it seemed this was the way the universe worked: excluding nothing, allowing everything to happen that could happen. Even if he did decide to kiss her, another Andrew would refrain from doing so, and would carry on rolling down the hill of time until he came to another pair of lips and split into another twin who, after dividing a few more times, would finally plunge over a cliff into the abyss of solitude.
Andrew leaned back in his seat, amazed that each of life’s twists and turns should give rise to a new existence vying with the old one to see which was the most authentic, instead of falling like sawdust and being swept away by the carpenter’s broom.
It made him giddy just to think that at each crossroads, clutches of other Andrews were born, and their lives went on at the same time as his, beyond the moment when his own life ended, without him being aware of it, because ultimately it was man’s limited senses which established the boundaries of the world. But what if, like a magician’s box, the world had a false bottom and continued beyond the point where his senses told him it stopped? This was the same as asking whether roses kept their colors when there was no one to admire them. Was he right or was he losing his mind? This was obviously a rhetorical question, and yet the world took the trouble to respond. A soft breeze suddenly sprang up, lifting a leaf from among the many carpeting the pavement and making it dance on the surface of a puddle, like a magic trick performed for a single onlooker. Mesmerized, Andrew watched it spin until his cousin’s shoe halted its delicate movement.
“All right, we can go now,” said Charles waving his hat triumphantly, like a hunter showing off a bloodstained duck.
Once inside the cab, he raised an eyebrow, surprised at the dreamy smile on his cousin’s face.
“Are you feeling all right, Andrew?” Andrew gazed at his cousin fondly. Charles had moved heaven and earth to help him save Marie Kelly, and he was going to repay him in the best way he could: by staying alive, at least until his moment arrived. He would pay Charles back threefold for all the affection he had shown him over these past years, years he now felt ashamed to have wasted out of apathy and indifference. He would embrace life, yes, embrace it as he would a wondrous gift, and devote himself to living it to the best of his ability, the way everyone else did, the way Charles did. He would transform life into a long, peaceful Sunday afternoon in which he would while away the time until nightfall. It could not be that difficult: he might even learn to enjoy the simple miracle of being alive.
“Better than ever, Charles,” he replied, suddenly perking up. “So good, in fact, that I would gladly accept an invitation to dine at your house, provided your charming wife also invites her equally charming sister.”
17
This part of the story could end here, and sure enough for Andrew it does, except that this is not only Andrew’s story.
If it were, there would be no need for my involvement: he could have told his own story, as each man recounts the tale of his own life to himself on his deathbed.
Yet that tale is always an incomplete, partial one, for only a man shipwrecked on a desert island from birth, growing up and dying there with no more than a few monkeys for company, can claim without a shadow of a doubt that his life is exactly what he thinks it has been, provided of course that the macaques have not stashed away in some cave or other his trunk full of books, clothes, and photographs already washed up by the tide.
However—with the exception of shipwrecked babies and other extreme cases—each man’s life forms part of a vast tapestry, woven together with those of countless other souls keen to judge his actions not only to his face but behind his back, so that only if he considers the world around him a backdrop with puppets which stop moving when he goes to sleep can he accept that his life has been exactly as he tells it. Otherwise, moments before he breathes his last, he will have to resign himself to the fact that his understanding of his own life must of necessity only be vague, fanciful, and uncertain, that there are things that affected him, for good or bad, which he will never know about: ranging from his wife’s at some point having had an affair with the pastry cook to his neighbor’s dog urinating on his azaleas every time he went out. And so, just as Charles did not witness the charming dance the leaf performed on the puddle, so Andrew did not witness what happened when Charles got his beloved hat back. He could have pictured him entering Wells’s house, apologizing for the fresh intrusion, joking about not being armed this time, and the three of them crawling about like small children on their hands and knees hunting for the elusive hat, except that we know he had no time to wonder about what his cousin was doing because he was too busy with his heart-warming deliberations about other worlds and magicians’ boxes.