David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

Probably.

“HELP YOURSELF TO the shower,” she says round the door, and I call back, “Thanks,” in a neutral tone to match. Normally I admire uncommitted matter-of-factness the morning after, but with this wooden stake called “Love” whacked through my heart, I want proof of intimacy and have to ignore a strong urge to go and kiss Holly. What if it’s a no? Don’t force it. I have a skin-scalding shower, change into fresh clothes — what do fugitives do for clean laundry? — and go to the kitchenette, where I find a note:

Hugo — I’m a coward about goodbyes, so I’ve gone to Le Croc to start the cleaning. If you want to stay over tonight, bring me breakfast and I’ll find you a feather duster and a frilly apron. If you don’t show up, then such is life, and good luck with your metamorphisis (is that how you spell it?). H .

Not a love letter, but this note of Holly’s is more precious than any piece of correspondence I’ve ever owned, bar none. That Zorro-like three-stroke H is both intimate and runic. Her handwriting’s not girly, it’s a bit of train wreck, really, calligraphically speaking, but it’s legible if you squint and it’s hers. Discoveries. I fold the note into my wallet, grab my coat, clatter down the stairs, and I’m out, treading in Holly’s ten-minutes-old footsteps through knee-deep snow in the courtyard, where the morning cold is a plunging cold; but the blue sky’s blue as Earth from space, and the warmth from the sun’s a lover’s breath; and icicles drip drops of bright in steep-sloped streets from storybooks whose passersby have mountain souls; the kids are glad to be alive and snowballs fly from curb to curb; I raise my hands and say, “Je me rends!” but a snowball scores a direct hit; I turn to find the little shit and clutch my heart — pretend to die—“Il est mort! Il est mort!” the snipers cry, but when I resurrect myself they fly away like fallen leaves; around the corner here’s the square, my favorite square in Switzerland, if not the world; Hôtel Le Sud, the gabled eaves, with Legolandish civic pride, the church clock chimes nine golden times; an Alp rears up on every side; the crêpeman’s setting up his stall across from the patisserie where yesterday this all began; “I’m Not in Love,” claim 10cc but, au contraire , I know I am; the crêpeman looks as if he knows that Holly’s face is all I see on every surface, there transposed; plus nape, lips, jaw, hair, and clothes; I hear her “Sort of,” “Bull shit ,” “This is true”; recall her slightly elfish ears; her softnesses; her flattish nose; her guarded eyes of strato-blue; Body Shop tea tree oil shampoo; she’s nearer now with every step; I wonder what she’s thinking … Wondering if I’ll really show? The traffic’s moving pretty slowly, but I’ll wait until the man turns green …

A slush-spattered cream-colored Land Cruiser draws level with where I stand. Before I can feel miffed at having to walk around it, the mirrored window of the driver’s door slides down, and I assume it’ll be a tourist after directions. But, no, I’m wrong. I know this stocky, swarthy driver in a fisherman’s sweater. “G’day, Hugo. You look like a man with a song in his heart.”

His New Zealand accent gives it away. “Elijah D’Arnoq, king of the Cambridge Sharpshooters.” There’s somebody else in the back of the car, but I’m not introduced.

“Your lack of surprise,” I tell D’Arnoq, “suggests this isn’t a chance encounter.”

“Bang on. Miss Constantin sends you her regards.”

I understand. I get to choose between two metamorphoses. One is labeled “Holly Sykes” while the other is … What, exactly?

Elijah D’Arnoq slaps the side of the Land Cruiser. “Hop aboard. Find out what this is all about, or die wondering. Now or never.”

Past the patisserie, down the alley, I can see the crocodile pub sign hanging over Günter’s bar. Fifty paces away? “Get the girl!” counsels the love-drunk, reformed-Scrooge Me. “Imagine her face as you walk in!” The soberer Me folds his arms and looks at D’Arnoq and wonders, “What then?” Well, we’ll eat breakfast; I’ll help Holly clean up the bar; lie low in her place until my fellow Humberites have flown home; we’ll hump like rabbits until we can hardly walk; and while our breaths are coming hard and fast, I’ll blurt out “I love you” and mean it and she’ll blurt out “I love you too, Hugo” and mean it just as much, right then, right there. Then what? I’ll phone the registrar at Humber College to say I’ve suffered a minor breakdown and would like to put my final year on hold. I’ll tell my family — something, no idea what, but I’ll think of something — and buy Holly a telescope. Then what? I find I’m no longer thinking about her every waking moment. Her way of saying “Sort of” or “This is true” begins to grate, and the day comes when we understand that “All You Need Is Love” is rather less than the whole truth. Then what? By now Detective Sheila Young has tracked me down, and her colleagues in Switzerland interview me at the station and only allow me back to Holly’s flat if I surrender my passport. “What’s this about, Poshboy?” Then I’ll have to confess either to stealing an Alzheimer victim’s valuable stamp collection, or luring a fellow student at Humber so deeply into debt that he drove himself off a cliff. Or possibly both, it hardly matters, because Holly will give me back the telescope and get the locks changed. Then what? Agree to go back to London to be interviewed but pick up Marcus Anyder’s passport and book a cheap flight to the Far East or Central America? Such narrative arcs make good movies but shitty existences. Then what? Eke out Anyder’s money until I succumb to the inevitable, open a bar for gap-year kids and turn into Günter. I notice a silver parka on the passenger seat next to D’Arnoq. “Can I just ask for an outline—”

“Doesn’t work like that. You need a leap of faith to leave your old life behind. True metamorphosis doesn’t come with flowcharts.”

All around us life goes on, oblivious to my quandary.

“But I’ll tell you this,” says the New Zealander. “We’ve all been headhunted, except for our founder.” D’Arnoq jerks with his head to the unseen man in the compartment behind. “So I know what you’re feeling right now, Hugo. That space there, between the curb and this car, it’s a chasm. But you’ve been vetted and profiled, and if you cross that chasm, you’ll thrive here. You’ll matter. Whatever you want, now and always, you’ll get.”

I ask him, “Would you make the same choice again?”

“Knowing what I now know, I’d kill to get into this car, if I had to. I’d kill. What you’ve seen Miss Constantin do — that pause button of time at King’s College, or the puppeteering of the homeless guy — that’s just the prelude to lesson one. There’s so much more, Hugo.”

I remember holding Holly in my arms, earlier.

But it’s the feeling of love that we love, not the person.

It’s that giddy exhilaration I just experienced, just now.

The feeling of being chosen and desired and cared about.

It’s pretty pathetic when you examine it clearheadedly.

So. This is a real, live Faustian pact I’m being offered.

I almost smile. Faust tends not to have happy endings.

But a happy ending like whose? Like Brigadier Philby’s?

He passed away peacefully, surrounded by family .

If that’s a happy ending, they’re fucking welcome to it.

When push comes to shove, what’s Faust without his pact?

Nothing. No one. We’d never have heard of him. Quinn.

Dominic Fitzsimmons. Yet another clever postgrad.