Ю Несбё - The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

‘In the first place these aren’t my physics theories, they’re Albert Einstein’s. And his underrated and almost equally clever friend Marcel Grossmann.’

‘Well, I’m no Grossmann, Peter, so if you want to convince me you can’t use equations and numbers.’

‘But the world is equations and numbers, Martin.’ Peter opened his blue eyes beneath his sun-bleached fringe and smiled in my direction, showing his white teeth. A girl once asked me if they were real. Not that it was either Peter’s scientific brain or his teeth that had attracted me to him in the first place and ended up as probably his best friend. I don’t know what it was. Maybe that unforced, pleasant self-confidence that sometimes accompanies natural-born talents and inherited money. Because Peter was a boy who knew that, without any particular trouble, he would meet all expectations. It was curiosity that drove him, not his family’s ambitions for him. And perhaps that brings us closer to an explanation of why he chose a poor art student from the wrong side of town as his best friend. He was the one who had been attracted to me, not the other way round. Probably because I represented something he was curious about, the only thing his family lacked: the sensitive, volatile artist mind that, despite being vastly inferior to his when it came to mathematics and physics, was able to transcend the boundaries of logic and create something else. The music of the senses. Beauty. Joy. Warmth. OK, I wasn’t quite there yet, but at least I was working on it.

And it was perhaps also curiosity rather than respect that led him to accept the condition I laid down for our taking this trip together: that he wasn’t to pay for anything for me. It meant that we travelled on a budget that was affordable for me. So it was Interrail tickets from Berlin through Europe, nights spent on the train or at cheap hotels, and meals at reasonably priced restaurants or in rooms where self-catering was available. Peter made just one exception. That when we reached San Sebastián — our penultimate stop before the goal of our trip, San Fermín and the bull running in Pamplona — we should eat at the world-famous Arzak restaurant, and he would foot the bill.

‘Will it convince you if I tell you that Stephen Hawking was doing work on parallel universes when he died?’ said Peter. ‘The physicist, you know, the guy in the wheelchair and—’

‘I know who Hawking was.’

‘Or is. If the numbers add up then he’s still alive in a parallel universe. We all are. So in fact, we do live forever.’

‘If the numbers add up!’ I groaned. ‘At least Christianity makes eternal life dependent on a belief in Christ.’

‘What will be really interesting will be to check out this Christ figure when the time comes, when we can move in a controlled manner between universes.’

‘Oh? Meaning that it’s already taking place in some uncontrolled manner?’

‘Sure. Ever heard of Steve Weinberg?’

‘No, but I’m guessing he won the Nobel Prize for something or other,’ I said. My bottle was empty and I turned my gaze from the lazily swaying sea in front of us to the bar behind.

‘Physics,’ said Peter. ‘His theory is that we, as the collection of vibrating atoms we actually are, might find ourselves vibrating at the same frequency as a parallel universe, in the same way you can be listening to a radio station on one frequency and suddenly hear another in the background. When that happens universes split and you can enter either one or the other reality. Know who Michio Kaku is?’

I tried to look as though the name rang a bell but I was struggling to place it.

‘Come on, Martin. That rather affable, Japanese-looking professor on TV who talks about string theory.’

‘The cool guy with the long hair?’

‘Him, yeah. He believes that déjà vu might be a result of the fact that we’ve had a peek into this parallel universe.’

‘Where we’ve been?’

‘Where we are , Martin. We’re living an infinity of parallel lives. This reality—’ he gestured with his hand towards the parasols, the sunloungers and bathers — ‘is neither more nor less real than the alternative. That’s why time travel is possible, because there’s no paradox involved once you have parallel universes.’

‘Temporal paradoxes, self-contradictions that make time travel impossible, that for example you could travel back in time and kill your own mother?’

‘Yes, but think of it instead in this way. If you’re travelling through time, then you have by definition split the universe in two, and in a parallel universe, or in some other universe, two of you can exist. You can be both dead and living at one and the same time.’

‘And you understand all this?’

Peter thought about it. Then he nodded. It wasn’t arrogance, just honest Coates self-assurance.

I had to laugh. ‘And now you’re going to find out how time travel can be accomplished?’

‘If I’m lucky. First I have to get on to the research team at Cern.’

‘And what are they going to say when a twenty-five-year-old says he wants to send people off time travelling?’

Peter shrugged. ‘When Apollo Eleven landed on the moon the average age in the control room at Houston was twenty-eight.’

I got to my feet. ‘Right now I’m planning a voyage to the bar and I’ll be back with more beers.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said and stood up.

Just at that moment there was a scream and Peter turned. He shaded his eyes.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Looks like someone’s in trouble. Out there,’ he said, pointing.

We’d gone to Zurriola because it was the surfing beach in San Sebastián. Not because we surfed, but because it meant young people. And that meant cooler beach bars. But also bigger waves. I saw a pink bathing cap bobbing up and down between the blue crests out there. Now I heard a woman behind us start shouting. I turned automatically towards the lifeguards’ station, an overgrown stool on stilts a little further off down the beach. The chair was empty, and I couldn’t see any lifeguard heading for the water. I can’t remember making the decision; I just started to run without waiting for Peter who, for some obscure reason, was unable to swim.

I ran, keeping my knees high through the shallow water to get as far out as possible before I began swimming. The last thing I did before diving in — while I still had a clear view — was to fix on the direction of the person in the pink bathing cap out there. When I came back up to the surface and started doing my own version of the crawl, a self-taught but efficient enough technique, I said to myself that it was further out than it looked, and I would have to pace myself and find a rhythm that would let me breathe properly between strokes. How far out was she? Fifty metres? A hundred? It’s hard to judge distances across water. At every tenth stroke I took a short break to check I was heading in the right direction. The waves weren’t big enough to break out here, which was probably why there were no surfers in the water today, but they were still big enough for the girl to disappear — because it was a girl, I could see that now — every time I sank down into a trough. It couldn’t be more than ten, maybe twenty metres now. She wasn’t screaming any more; there had only been the one scream. So either she’d seen that help was on the way and was saving her strength, or else she didn’t have the strength left to scream. Or else she wasn’t in trouble at all, she’d just screamed, maybe a fish had brushed past her foot. This last possibility I dismissed as I was raised up by the next wave and saw the pink bathing cap disappear beneath the surface of the water in the trough below me. Up it bobbed again. Disappeared again. I filled my lungs, kicked out and dived down. I would probably have spotted her at once in sunshine and clear water, but because San Sebastián is famous for its clouds I saw only bubbles and shades of green in the dim light. I kept on swimming down. The water was darker and colder. I don’t often think about death, but I did so now. It was the bathing cap that saved me. Or her. If it hadn’t been such a striking colour I would probably never have seen her, because her swimsuit was black and her skin too dark. I came closer. She looked like a sleeping angel as she swayed there, weightless and swaying in the slight echoes of the waves that reached this far down. And it was so quiet. So lonely. Just her and me. I put one arm around her ribs beneath her breasts and pulled us back up towards the light. I felt her warmth against my arm, and what I persuaded myself was the slow beating of her heart. Then something strange happened. Just before we broke the surface she turned her head towards me and looked at me with large, dark eyes. Like someone risen from the dead, someone who had crossed over into a universe where people breathed water. The next moment, as our heads made the transition from the watery region to the aerial world, her eyes closed once more and she floated unmoving in my arms.