Мэтт Хейг - How to Stop Time

I paused for a moment on the threshold.

What would have happened if I had run away right then? If I had pushed Agnes away and disappeared into the park or sprinted fast along 72nd Street and somehow got away? But I was dizzy with it, I suppose, with all the novelty of the city. It was already making me feel more alive, after all those dead years of nothingness.

A statue of an American Indian – Agnes called him ‘the watching Indian’ – gazed solemnly down at us. In 1980, while on a job in São Paulo, I would watch the news of John Lennon’s assassination on a small colour television screen. The footage was of that same building, where Lennon was shot. I wondered if the building itself had a curse, affecting all who passed through its doors.

Standing outside, I was nervous. But at least it was a feeling. I wasn’t used to them recently.

‘He will be testing you, even when he isn’t testing you. It is all a test.’ We climbed the stairs. ‘He can read people – faces, movements – better than anyone I have met. Hendrich has developed, over the years, a seemingly unnatural aptitude .’

‘An aptitude for what?’

Agnes shrugged. ‘He just calls it aptitude. It’s an aptitude for people. An understanding of people. Apparently, between the ages of five hundred and six hundred, your cerebral talents become heightened to a point beyond a normal human range. He has dealt with so many people, in so many different cultures, that he can read faces and body language with an astounding accuracy. He knows if he can trust people.’

We were there, in the French flat – we didn’t use the word ‘apartment’ in America back then – on the top floor of the Dakota building, with Central Park spread beneath us.

‘I try to pretend it’s my garden,’ said the tall lean bald sharp-suited man at the window. He held a cane, which he clutched tightly. As much for show as for his arthritis, which hadn’t yet taken him over.

‘It’s a very impressive view,’ I told him.

‘Yes. And these buildings grow by the day. Please, sit down.’

Elegant was the word. There was an elegant Steinway piano and beside it an elegant, expensive-looking leather sofa. Standing lamps, a mahogany desk, a chandelier. Agnes made herself comfortable on the sofa and gestured to a chair near the desk. Hendrich was on the other side of the desk, but still standing, staring out of that window. She gave me a firm nod, to indicate that I had better sit right away.

Meanwhile Hendrich stayed staring at Central Park.

‘How have you survived, Tom?’ He turned to face me. He was old, I realised. If he had been an ordinary human – a ‘mayfly’ as Agnes called them, straight-faced – you would have guessed his age as seventy. In our days, right now, adjusting for inflation, you’d go higher. Eighty plus. He looked older then than I have ever known him to look.

‘You have lived such a long time. And from what I hear you haven’t been doing so in the best circumstances. What stopped you from jumping off a bridge? What drives you?’

I looked at him. His cheeks sagged and his eyes had so many bags under them he reminded me of a melting candle.

I didn’t want to say the real reason. If Marion was alive I didn’t want Hendrich knowing about her. I didn’t trust anyone.

‘Come on, we are here to help you. You were born in a château. You were made for fine things, Tom. We will restore you to that life. And to your daughter.’

I felt things contract around me. ‘My daughter?’

‘I read Dr Hutchinson’s report. About Marion. Don’t worry, we will search for her. We will find her, I promise you. If she’s alive we will find her. We will find all of us. And as new generations emerge we will find them too.’

I was scared, but also, I confess, a little thrilled at the idea that I could get help in my search for Marion. I felt, suddenly, less alone.

There was a decanter of whisky on his desk. And three glasses. He poured a round of whisky without asking if we wanted one. As it happened, I did, to calm my nerves.

He read the label. ‘Look at this. “Wexford Old Irish Malt Whiskey Liquor. A Taste of the Past.” A taste of the past! When I was a young man, whisky didn’t even exist.’ His accent was hard to place. Not fully American. ‘But I’m a good deal older than you.’

He sighed wistfully and sat down behind the vast mahogany desk.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it? All the things that we have lived to see. In my case it’s quite a list: spectacles, the printing press, newspapers, rifles, compasses, the telescope . . . the pendulum clock . . . the piano . . . Impressionist paintings . . . photography . . . Napoleon . . . champagne . . . semi-colons . . . billboards . . . the hot dog . . .’

He must have seen the confused look on my face.

‘Of course, Agnes. The poor man has never had a hot dog before. We must take him to Coney Island. They have the best in the whole city.’

‘They sincerely do,’ said Agnes, who seemed to have lost a little of her sharpness around him.

‘Is it food?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’ He laughed, drily. ‘It’s a sausage. A special sausage. A Dachshund sausage. A special little frankfurter. It’s heaven in a bun. It’s what all of civilisation has been heading towards . . . If I’d have known, growing up in Flanders, that one day I would get to taste a hot dog . Well!’

It seemed strange. Had I been sent across the ocean – leaving a man dead behind me – to indulge in a conversation about sausages?

‘Pleasure. That is the aim, isn’t it? To enjoy good things . . . fine things. Food. Liquor. Art. Poetry. Music. Cigars.’

He took a cigar from his desk, along with a chrome lighter.

‘Would you like a cigar?’

‘I don’t enjoy tobacco.’

He looked disappointed. Handed one to Agnes instead. ‘It’s good for the chest.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, sipping my whisky.

He lit their cigars and said, ‘The finer things. The sensual pleasures. There is no other meaning than that, I’ve discovered. There is nothing else.’

‘Love?’ I said.

‘What about that?’

Hendrich smiled at Agnes. When the smile returned to me there was a menace to it. He moved the topic on. ‘I have no idea why you took it upon yourself to visit a doctor about your condition. Maybe you thought, now superstitions like witchcraft aren’t so prevalent, that it was a safe time to do so?’

‘I thought it would help people. People like us. To have a medical explanation.’

‘I am sure Agnes has already indicated why this was naïve.’

‘A little, yes.’

‘The truth is this: there is more danger now than there has ever been. The advances being made in science and medicine are not advances to be welcomed: germ theory and microbiology and immunology. Last year they found the vaccine for typhoid. What you won’t know is that in pursuit of their research the inventors of the vaccine capitalised on the work of the Institute for Experimental Research in Berlin.’

‘Surely a typhoid vaccination is a good thing?’

‘Not when the research was conducted at the expense of us.’ He clenched his jaw slightly, trying to keep his anger out of view. Agnes’ stiff silence made me worry even more. Maybe there was a gun in his desk. Maybe this had been a kind of test and I had failed and now he was going to put a bullet in my head.

‘Scientists’ – he said the word as if it tasted of sulphur – ‘are the new witchfinders. You know about witchfinders, don’t you? I know you do.’

‘He knows about witchfinders,’ assured Agnes, blowing a thin stream of smoke towards the standing lamp.

‘But what you don’t know is that the witch trials never ended. It just goes by a different name. We are their dead frogs. The institute knows of us.’ He leaned over the desk, dropping ash onto a fresh copy of the New York Tribune , his stare burning like the butt of his cigar. ‘Do you understand? There are members of the scientific community who do know about us .’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Not many. But a few. In Berlin. They have no interest in us as human beings. Indeed, they don’t even see us as human beings. They imprisoned two of us. Tortured them in the laboratory where they kept their guinea pigs. A man and a woman. The woman escaped. She is part of the society now. She still lives in Germany, in a village in the Bavarian countryside, but we got her a new life and name. She helps us when we need her. And we help her.’