Felix Palma - The Map of Time

FELIX PALMA

The Map of Time

Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor

Copyright

Fiction

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Felix Palma 2008

Translation copyright © Nick Caistor 2011

First published in Spanish as El Mapa Del Tiempo 2008

Felix Palma asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007344123

Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007344147

Version: 2016-02-18

‘The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, but a very persistent one.’

ALBERT EINSTEIN

‘Mankind’s most perfectly terrifying work of art is the division of time.’

ELIAS CANETTI

‘What is waiting for me in the direction I don’t take?’

JACK KEROUAC

Contents

Cover

Title Page FELIX PALMA The Map of Time Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor

Copyright

Epigraph ‘The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, but a very persistent one.’ ALBERT EINSTEIN ‘Mankind’s most perfectly terrifying work of art is the division of time.’ ELIAS CANETTI ‘What is waiting for me in the direction I don’t take?’ JACK KEROUAC

PART ONE

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

PART TWO

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

PART THREE

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLIII

About the Author

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PART ONE

Chapter I

Andrew Harrington would gladly have died several times over if that meant not having to choose just one pistol from among his father’s vast collection in the living-room cabinet. Decisions had never been Andrew’s strong point. On close examination, his life had been a series of mistaken choices, the last of which threatened to cast its lengthy shadow over the future. But that life of unedifying blunders was about to end. This time he was sure he had made the right decision, because he had decided not to decide. There would be no more mistakes in the future because there would be no future. He was going to destroy it completely by putting one of those guns to his right temple. He could see no other solution: obliterating the future was the only way for him to eradicate the past.

He scanned the contents of the cabinet, the lethal assortment his father had lovingly assembled after his return from the war. He was fanatical about those weapons, though Andrew suspected it was not so much nostalgia that drove him to collect them as his desire to contemplate the novel ways mankind kept coming up with for taking one’s own life outside the law. In stark contrast to his father, Andrew was impassive as he surveyed the apparently docile, almost humdrum implements that had brought thunder to men’s fingertips and freed war from the unpleasantness of hand-to-hand combat.

He tried to imagine what kind of death might be lurking inside each of them, lying in wait like some predator. Which would his father have recommended he use to blow his brains out? He calculated that death from one of those antiquated muzzle-loading flintlocks, which had to be refilled with gunpowder and a ball, then tamped down with a paper plug each time it was fired, would be a noble but drawn-out and tedious affair. He preferred the swift death guaranteed by one of the more modern revolvers nestling in their luxurious velvet-lined wooden cases.

He considered a Colt single-action model, which looked easy to handle and reliable – but he had seen Buffalo Bill brandishing one in his Wild West Adventures: a pitiful attempt to re-enact his transoceanic exploits with a handful of imported Red Indians and a dozen lethargic, apparently opium-sated buffalo. Death for him was not just another adventure. He also rejected a fine Smith & Wesson, the gun that had killed the outlaw Jesse James, of whom he considered himself unworthy, and a Webley specially designed to hold back the charging hordes in Britain’s colonial wars; he thought it looked too cumbersome.

His attention turned next to his father’s favourite, a fine Pepperbox with rotating barrels, but he seriously doubted whether this ridiculously ostentatious weapon would be capable of firing a bullet with enough force.

Eventually he settled on an elegant 1870 Colt with mother-of-pearl inlay that would take his life with all the delicacy of a woman’s caress. He smiled defiantly as he plucked it from the cabinet, remembering how often his father had forbidden him to meddle with his pistols. But the illustrious William Harrington was in Italy at that moment, no doubt reducing the Fontana de Trevi to dust with his critical gaze. His parents’ decision to leave for Europe on the very day he had chosen to kill himself had been a happy coincidence. He doubted that either of them would ever decipher the true message concealed in his gesture (that he had preferred to die as he had lived – alone), but for Andrew it was enough to imagine the disgust on his father’s face when he discovered his son had killed himself behind his back and without his permission.

He opened the cabinet where the ammunition was kept and loaded six bullets into the chamber. He supposed that one would be enough, but who knew what might happen? After all, he had never killed himself before. Then he tucked the gun, wrapped in a cloth, inside his coat pocket, as though it were a piece of fruit he would eat later. In a further act of defiance, he left the cabinet door open. If only he had shown this much courage before, he thought. If only he had dared confront his father when it had mattered, she would still be alive. But by the time he had, it was too late. And he had spent eight long years paying for his hesitation. Eight years, during which his pain had only worsened, spreading its tendrils through him like poison ivy, wrapping itself around his guts, gnawing at his soul. Despite the efforts of his cousin Charles and the distraction of other women’s bodies, his grief over Marie’s death refused to be laid to rest. Tonight, though, it would all be over.