The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August(100)

“… and so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the bride to be.”

I applauded because everyone else did, on automatic, and looked up to behold the linear mortal who Vincent had decided to occupy himself with this time. Would she be a Frances, chosen to make an unseen Hugh jealous while playing tennis on the lawn? Or Leticia, perhaps, pretty but vacant; perhaps a Mei, adding that air of respectability as he went about his nefarious deeds, or a Lizzy, a companion in dark hours, a figure who was nine parts being there to only one part chemistry. She stepped to the front of the room, a woman with a hint of grey streaking the edge of her hair, dressed in a mermaid dress the colour of clotted cream, and she was Jenny.

My Jenny.

Memory, moving too fast to process.

My Jenny, who I had loved and married, a surgeon in Glasgow at a time when women simply didn’t do that, especially not there. I had loved her and told her everything, and it had been too much. My Jenny, who I never once blamed for the fate that befell me, for Franklin Phearson and my death on the floor of his house, femoral artery slashed and a smile on my face. My Jenny, to whom in another life I had whispered, “Run away with me,” and she’d smiled and looked tempted, though she could probably not explain why.

My Jenny, and I had told Vincent about her. Back in Pietrok-112, a memory, a night playing cards, a little drunk on vodka, and he’d said…

“Damn it, Harry, I may not agree with the Cronus Club, but I do believe it’s only healthy for a man to indulge himself sometimes.”

Memory, fast.

I’d been looking at Anna, the laboratory technician whose calibrations were fine unto the sixth sig fig, who smiled at me from over the top of her glasses and didn’t realise that this was a cliché which just made it all the more delightful. Vincent slapping my shoulder, muttering, “Christ, Harry, whoever said genius had to be tortured? Go for it, I say.”

I’d hemmed and hummed, worried about the politics of it, about the things people would say, and we’d played cards that night and drunk vodka as Vincent derided my concerns as being barely worthy of a seventeen-year-old boy, let alone a man well into his twelfth, long life.

“You must have had some girls in your time, hey, Harry?”

“I’ve always been a little too preoccupied for true love–I’m sure you know how it is.”

“Nonsense,” he retorted, throwing his fist onto the table hard enough to make our cards bounce across the surface. “Even though I believe with the absolute conviction of my soul that this project, that the quantum mirror, is the greatest quest man can possibly undertake, to see the universe with the eyes of the creator, to answer the greatest questions posed by man; yet I also believe that single-minded dedication to just one thing, without rest, respite or distraction, is only conducive to migraines, not productivity. I have no doubt that the bureaucrats of this place had some statistic on it–a 15 per cent increase, say, in productivity if, every eight hours, a worker is allowed another half-hour for rest. Does the 15 per cent increase outweigh the loss of time spent away from the workplace? Absolutely.”

“You suggest… therapeutic sex?”

“I suggest therapeutic companionship. I suggest, as you yourself have so often pointed out, that even the greatest minds cannot spend every second analysing the mysteries of the universe, but must, indeed must also spend some time of every day wondering why the toilet is so cold, the shampoo so poor and canteen cabbage so lumpy. I do not expect my scientists to be monks, Harry, least of all you!”

“Do you have someone?” I asked. “I haven’t noticed…”

He dismissed the enquiry with a flick of the wrist. “I didn’t say that untoward, unpleasant relationships improve productivity–quite the opposite, in fact. I will not waste my time on pursuing some futile sexual object just because I feel like a little chemical stimulation! However, when I meet someone who I regard as…”

“The half-hour rest in your eight-hour day?”

“Quite so. You will be made aware of it.”

“Have you been married?” I asked. There was no great intent to my question, merely curiosity as I threw down my cards, a polite discussion of friendly history.

“Once or twice,” he admitted, “when there seemed to be a suitable candidate available. Once, in my very first life, there was a woman who I thought… But retrospect is a marvellous thing, and upon my death I discovered I could live perfectly well without her. Occasionally I acquire someone for companionship. Old age can be tedious without a little loyalty. What about yourself?”

“Something similar,” I admitted. “Like you, I find that being alone… Its drawbacks outweigh its benefits, particularly in later life. It seems that, even when aware of the futility of the lie, the hollowness of the relationship, if hollow is what it indeed is, the urge to be together, with someone… is ingrained deeper than I had possibly imagined.”

And, without knowing why, I had told him about Jenny.


Jenny.

Na?ve to say love of my life.

Love of a life, perhaps.

Foolish to suppose affection could last so long.

A delusion, formed from so many years of lying, of deceit, of being apart from all things because there is no choice. Apart from the Cronus Club for fear of being exposed, apart from Vincent for fear he would deduce my truths, apart from those who lived and those who died and remembered nothing of the same, apart from my family, adopted and true, apart from a world whose passage I could already describe, apart from…