David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

HALFWAY ALONG OUR JOURNEY to life’s end I found myself astray in a dark wood. This fork in the path, these slender birches, that mossy boulder tilted upwards, like a troll’s head. Finding oneself astray in any wood is a feat in Iceland, where even scraggy copses are rare. Zoë never let me navigate in our pre-satnav era; she said it was safer to drive with the road atlas on her lap. My tourist map of Ásbyrgi isn’t any help; the mile-wide, horseshoe-shaped, forested ravine sinks beneath the surrounding land to a hundred-meter rock face, where a river dawdles in pools … But where am I in it? The river’s vowels and the trees’ consonants speak a not-quite-foreign language.

Minutes pass unnoticed as I gaze, transfixed, at the comings and goings of ants on a twig. Richard Cheeseman’s sitting between a policeman and a consular official, somewhere over the Atlantic. I remember him griping at Cartagena that the festival hadn’t flown him business class, but after three years in the Penitenciaría Central, even the Group 4 van from Heathrow up to Yorkshire is going to feel like a trip in a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

A blundering wind scatters yellowed leaves …

… and I find one, dear reader, between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Look. A little birch leaf. Sodding extraordinary. The wind’s sharp fingers snatch away the evidence. Willows stand aside to reveal the towering rock slab in the center of Ásbyrgi … Perfect for snagging the anchor of a cloud-sailed longboat, or for a mothership from Epsilon Eridani to dock alongside. A torch-through-a-sheet sun. Hal sensed my China book would be a pile of crap, and he’s right. One six-day trip to Shanghai and Beijing, and I think I can rival Nick Greek’s knowledge of the place — what in buggery’s name was I thinking? Let me write about an Icelandic road trip; a running man; backflashes galore; and slowly disclose what it is he’s running from. Bring him to Ásbyrgi; mention how the ravine was formed by a slammed-down hoof of Odin’s horse. Mention how it’s the Parliament of the Hidden Folk. Have him stare at the rock faces until the rock’s faces stare back. Breathe deep the resinous tang of the spruces. Let him meet a ghost from his past. Hear the bird, luring me in, ever deeper ever tighter circles. Where are you? There. On the toadstool-frilled tree stump.

“It’s a wren,” said Mum, turning to go.

AT MY TENTH birthday party, pass-the-parcel descended into a battle royale of half nelsons and Chinese burns. My father buggered off, leaving Mum and Nina the housekeeper to conduct riot control until Mr. Chimes the Magician showed up. Mr. Chimes was an alcoholic thesp-on-the-skids, whose real name was Arthur Hoare, upon whom Dad had taken pity. His halitosis could have melted plastic. From his magic hat, at the count of three, he produced Hermes the Magic Hamster, but Hermes had been flattened seriously enough to produce death, blood, feces, and innards. My classmates shrieked with disgust and joy. Mr. Chimes laid the rodent’s mangled corpse in an ashtray and said: “ ‘For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.’ Boys.” Mr. Chimes packed up his props. “John Donne lied, the bastard.” Kells Tufton then announced he’d swallowed one of my miniature lead figurines, so Mum had to drive him to hospital. Nina was left in charge, a less-than-ideal arrangement, as she spoke little English and had suffered from bouts of depression ever since the Argentine junta’s men had thrown her siblings from a helicopter over the South Atlantic. My classmates knew nothing and cared less about juntas and played the we’ll-repeat-what-you-say game until Nina locked herself in the third-floor flat where Dad normally wrote his screenplays. Now the blood-dimmed tide was truly loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence was drowned — until a boy called Mervyn climbed a twelve-shelved bookcase and brought it down on himself. Nina dialed 999. The paramedic said Mervyn needed immediate attention, so Nina went off with the ambulance, leaving me to explain to our classmates’ parents that our Pembridge Place house was as bereft of adults as all but the last two pages of Lord of the Flies . Mum and Nina got home after eight P.M. Dad got home much later. Voices were raised. Doors were slammed. The following morning I was awoken by the snarl of Dad’s Jaguar XJS in the garage beneath my room. Off he went to Shepperton Studios — he was editing Ganymede 5 at the time. I was eating Shredded Wheat over my comic 2000 AD when I heard Mum lugging a suitcase down the stairs. She told me she still loved me and Phoebe, but that our father had broken too many promises, so she was taking a break. She said, “This one might be permanent.” As my Shredded Wheat turned to mush, she spoke of how her swinging sixties had been a blur of morning sickness, washing nappies, wringing snot from Dad’s handkerchiefs, and doing unpaid donkey work for Hershey Pictures; how she had turned a blind eye to Dad’s “entanglements” with actresses, makeup girls, and secretaries; and how, when she was pregnant with Phoebe, Dad had promised to write and shoot a film just for her. Her role would be complex, subtle, and showcase her talent as an actress. Dad and his co-writer had completed the script, Domenico and the Queen of Spain , a few weeks before. Mum was to play Princess Maria Barbara, who became the titular queen. Now, this much we all knew. What I didn’t know was that the day before, while anarchy reigned at Pembridge Place, the head of Transcontinental Pictures had phoned Dad and put Raquel Welch on the line. Miss Welch had read the script, she said, considered it a work of genius, and would play Maria Barbara. Had Dad explained that his wife, who had sacrificed her own acting career for the family, was to play the role? No. He had said, “Raquel, it’s all yours.” The doorbell rang and it was Mum’s brother, my uncle Bob, come to pick her up. Mum said I’d learn betrayals came in various shapes and sizes, but to betray someone’s dream is the unforgivable one. A bird hopped onto the foaming lilac outside. Its throat quivered; notes rose and fell out. As long as it kept singing and I kept staring, I told myself, I wouldn’t start crying.

“It’s a wren,” said Mum, turning to go.

THE SUN’S SUNK behind the high lip of Ásbyrgi, so the greens are stewing to grays and browns. Leaves and twigs are losing threedimensionality. When I remember my mother, am I remembering her, or just memories of her? The latter, I suspect. The glass of dusk is filling by the minute, and I don’t really know where I left my Mitsubishi. I feel like Wells’s time traveler separated from his time machine. Should I be getting alarmed? What’s the worst that could happen to me? Well, I may never find my way out, and die of exposure. Ewan Rice will write my obituary for The Guardian . Or would he? At the housewarming/meet-Carmen party I threw last autumn Ewan almost went out of his way to emphasize his alpha literary male status: dinner with Stephen Spielberg on his last trip to L.A.; fifty thousand dollars for a lecture at Columbia; an invitation to judge the Pulitzer—“I’ll see if I can fit it in, I’m so damn busy.” So maybe not. My sister Phoebe’ll miss me, even if the hatchets we’ve buried in the past are not buried very deep. Carmen would be distraught, I think. She might blame herself. Holly, bless her, would organize the logistics from this end. They’d both steal the show at my funeral. Hyena Hal will know about my death before I do, but will he miss me? As a client, I’m now a conspicuous underperformer. Zoë? Zoë won’t notice until the alimony account runs dry, and the girls would sob their hearts out. Anaïs might, anyway.

This is ridiculous! It’s a medium-sized wood, not a vast forest. There were some camper vans right by the car park. Why not just yell, “Help!” Because I’m a guy, I’m Crispin Hershey, the Wild Child of British Letters. I just can’t. There’s a mossy boulder that looks like the head of a troll, thrusting up through a thin ceiling of earth …