Rana Dasgupta - Tokyo Cancelled

She spoke with authority:

Next!

She was broad and tall, she sat back in her seat with some abandon, hands on the back of her head, elbows wide. The kind of person who liked groups, not afraid to rally people she had only just met. There was an ease about her: she had already taken off her high heels. There were smiles all around but she did not give up.

Who will be next?

IN THE CITY of London there was once a wealthy stockbroker who had three sons. Even when they were all still young, everyone could see that while the first two sons were able and hardworking, the youngest, Thomas, had his head in the clouds.

Thomas liked nothing better than to bury himself in history books and read of how the world was before. He thrilled at the struggles of Romanovs and Socialists and put his face close to black-and-white photographs of firebrand Lenin and little haemophiliac Alexei, trying to envisage the lives that hid behind the scratched surfaces and foreign-seeming faces. He read of places that were now summer holiday destinations where millions were killed just a few decades ago, and wondered at how death had in that short time become so exotic. He could never quite become accustomed to the idea that people were growing old long ago when the world was so much younger; so he knew he had not truly understood the scale of time.

One day Thomas sat in his customary reading seat in the Islington Public Library, not two minutes from the monumental black front door of his father’s Georgian townhouse that sat in a serene row of precisely similar houses on Canonbury Square. He read of the slow rot in the Ottoman Empire, of schemes hatched in Berlin, London, and St Petersburg to divide the imperial carrion, and of Bulgarian and Romanian revolutionaries studying poetry and explosives in Paris. The library was still save for a few occasional page-turners and the strenuous silence of the librarian who wheeled a cart of books and re-shelved them under Crime and Local Interest . Thomas thought of Thrace and Thessaly.

An old woman entered the library and sat down next to him. She lowered herself slowly into her seat and began to lay out things: a raincoat (on the back of her chair), a handbag, an umbrella in a nylon sleeve, a stick, a set of keys, a Tupperware lunchbox. The ritual was so deliberate that Thomas could not shut it out of his head, and he wished she had not chosen that particular place.

He tried to concentrate on sensational insurgencies and brutal massacres but now she had unwrapped the tin foil from her egg sandwiches and the smell was banishing the past. NO EATING said the big bright sign with the green logo of the Borough of Islington: Thomas looked hopefully around for someone who might enforce the rule, but suddenly there was no one else there. The old woman began to mash her bread noisily with toothless gums and he stole at her what was calculated to be an intimidating glance. He saw that she was blind.

‘I can see’–she hesitated, as if playing with his thoughts–‘you don’t like me being here.’ She spoke loudly, oblivious to the silence of the library. Thomas felt ashamed. She was fragile and tiny.

‘No it’s not that. It’s just–’

‘You don’t think I should eat egg sandwiches in a library. Luckily there’s no one here to catch me!’ She shot him a conspiratorial grin. ‘And anyway, a blind woman is not likely to drop her mayonnaise on the pages of a book, is she?’ Her eyes were like marble.

‘You are reading about the past. Making mental notes of dates and names, fitting together all the little things you know about a place and a time. Trying to remember what happened long ago. But here’s a question. Can you remember what will happen? In the future?’

She seemed to expect an answer.

‘Clearly not,’ Thomas ventured. ‘Remembering is by definition about the past.’

‘Why so? Is to remember not simply to make present in the mind that which happens at another time? Past or future?’

‘But no one can make present that which hasn’t happened yet.’

‘How do you know the future hasn’t happened yet?’

‘That’s the definition of the future!’ Thomas’s voice betrayed frustration. ‘The past has happened. It is recorded. We all remember what happened yesterday. The future has not happened. It is not recorded anywhere and we cannot know it.’

‘Isn’t that tautology? Remembering is the recollection of the past. The past is that which can be recollected . Well let me tell you that I am unusual among people in being able to remember what has not happened yet. And the distinction between past and future seems less important than you might imagine.’

Thomas stared at her. He assumed madness.

‘For you, the present is easy to discern because it is simply where memory stops. Memories hurtle out of the past and come to a halt in the now. The present is the rockface at the end of the tunnel where you gouge away at the future.’

There was still no one else in the library. They talked naturally, loudly.

‘I, on the other hand, was born with all my memories, rather as a woman is born with all her eggs. I often forget where the present is because it is not, as it is for you, the gateway to the future. My future is already here.’

‘So tell me, if I am to believe you, what I am going to do tonight, when I leave this library.’

‘You make a common mistake. I didn’t say that I know everything that will ever happen. I said only that I already possess all my memories. (And they run out in so short a time! I have lived through nearly all of them, and now there remain just a few crumbs in the bottom of the bag.) Still, I do have more memories of you.

You will spend your life in the realm of the past You will fail entirely to keep up with the times But your wealth will make your father seem poor A mountain of jewels dug from mysterious mines.’

Thomas thought over the words.

‘What does all that mean? Can you explain?’

The old woman gave a flabby chuckle.

‘Surely you can’t expect me to tell you more than that? Isn’t it already encouraging enough?’

She put the lid on her lunch box.

‘Anyway. It is time for me to take my leave.’ Her possessions found their way back into her bag and she stood up, slowly and uncertainly. ‘But I have just remembered what will happen to you tonight. My mind is more blurred than it once was. You are going to have an encounter with Death. Don’t worry–you will survive.’ She smiled at him–almost affectionately–and departed.

Thomas could not return to his books. He sat for a long time reciting the woman’s words to himself and wondering about his future. He left the library in a daydream and wandered home. Full of his thoughts he rang at the wrong bell. A hooded figure answered the door, black robes billowing around its knees and only shadows where its face should have been. The figure carried a scythe. Made of plastic. Thomas remembered it was Halloween.

Not long afterwards, Thomas’s father received a big promotion. He worked for a small but thriving investment firm in the City that had made a name for itself in private financial services. He had joined the firm twelve years ago from Goldman Sachs and had from the outset consistently delivered better returns to his clients than any of his peers. Tall and attractive, with an entirely unselfconscious sense of humour, he also had a talent for entertaining the high net-worth individuals that were the firm’s clients. Now the board had asked him to take the place of the retiring managing director. He had agreed unhesitatingly.

In celebration of this advancement, Thomas’s father took the entire family to the Oxo Tower for dinner. They drove down from Islington in the car, crossing over Blackfriars Bridge from where the floodlights on St Paul’s Cathedral made it look like a magnificent dead effigy of itself. The restaurant was a floating cocoon of leather and stainless steel with lighting like caresses, and their table looked down over the row of corporate palaces that lined the other side of the Thames. Thomas thought his father looked somehow more imposing even than before. His mother had put on a new sequined dress and talked about the differences in the dream lives of modern and ancient Man as described in the book she was reading about Australian Aborigines. Champagne was poured. They all clinked glasses.