Мэтт Хейг - How to Stop Time

‘He’s just leaving the restaurant. He’s going. He’s just got in a taxi. He’ll be at the house in ten minutes.’

A large yellow-striped lizard scuttles amid palm trees.

‘I just saw the taxi. What’s he going to do?’

‘He didn’t say. He told me to wait. I couldn’t push it. He was suspicious enough.’

‘Marion, has he got a gun?’

‘I don’t know. But—’

I am already running north to Broken Head Road before she finishes her sentence.

‘Father.’

Marion was looking up at me from her pillow. Her eyes were heavy with worry. She sighed. I’d been telling her about the birds that disappeared to the moon and lived there, on the side we couldn’t see.

‘Yes, Marion?’

‘I wish we were on the moon.’

‘Why is that, Marion?’

She frowned, deeply. As deep as only she could frown. ‘Someone spat at Mother. He came up to the stall and he stood there. He was wearing nice gloves. But he made a face like a gargoyle, and said no more words than a gargoyle, and he gave Ma the most horrid look, and then he gave me the same eyes and Ma didn’t like the way he was looking at me so she said, “Do you want any flowers, mister?” And I suppose she asked it a little harshly but that was because she felt nervous.’

‘So he spat at her?’

Marion nodded. ‘Yes. He waited a moment more and then he spat in her face.’ She clenched her jaw so tight I could see the muscles shift beneath her face.

I took this in. ‘And did the man say anything more? Did he explain himself?’

Marion frowned. The anguish in her eyes made her look older. I could easily picture the woman she would become. ‘He said nothing. He left Ma wiping herself, with all the hawkers and folk from town staring at us.’

‘And did he act peculiar to anyone else?’

‘No. Only to us.’

I kissed her forehead. I pulled the blanket up.

‘Sometimes,’ I told her, ‘the world is not how we wish it to be. Sometimes people can disappoint us. Sometimes people can do terrible things to others. You must be careful in this life. You see, I am different. You know that, don’t you? The rest of the world ages forwards and I age to the side, it appears.’

Her face sharpened. She was lost in violent imaginings. ‘I hope that man gets sick. I hope he dies in agony for shaming Ma like that. I’d like to see him hanging and his legs kicking wild and have him sliced into quarters and his innards slip out. I’d like to pull out his eyes and feed them to a dog.’

I looked at her. The fury was a force that you could almost feel in the air.

‘Marion, you are still a child. You must not think this way.’

She calmed a little. ‘I was scared.’

‘But what is it that Montaigne teaches us? About fear?’

She nodded slowly, as if Montaigne himself was also in the room. ‘“He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.”’

I nod. ‘Now, hear me, Marion. If anything were to happen to you, if you were ever to become like me, if you were different, you must learn to build a shell around yourself. A shell as hard as a walnut. A shell no one else can see, but one you know is there. Do you understand what I am saying?’

‘I think I might.’

‘Be a walnut.’

‘People crack walnuts. And eat them.’

I suppressed a smile. There was nothing I could say to Marion sometimes.

A little later, after a jar of ale, I lay beside Rose, fearing for a future I already knew was against us. And I felt sick, knowing the time would arrive when I’d have to leave them. When I’d have to run away, and keep running, for however much life I had been given. Away from Canterbury. Away from Rose. Away from Marion. Away from myself. I was already feeling a kind of homesickness for a present I was still living. And I lay there, trying to find a route to a far distant future, where things might be better. Where somehow the course of my life had re-routed and headed homewards once more.

You can hear the crashing of waves quite clearly on Broken Head Road. Where they break against the side of the cliff. It is quite easy for the sound of petrol splashing against timber to be disguised. I smell it before I see what he is doing.

‘Hendrich,’ I say, ‘stop!’

In the dark he almost looks his age. Stooped and thin and withered, like a Giacometti sculpture in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. One of his arms hangs down, crooked, struggling awkwardly with the weight of the petrol can. But there is an urgent energy to his movement.

He stops for a second and looks at me with blank eyes. He isn’t smiling. I note this because I have rarely seen Hendrich without a smile.

‘You told me you couldn’t be the one to burn his house down in Tahiti. You were never really a finisher, were you, Tom? Well, history has a way of correcting its mistakes.’

‘Don’t do this. Omai isn’t a danger.’

‘As you get older you not only get a certain aptitude for people, Tom, you also get an insight into time itself. You’re probably not quite there yet but there are moments where the understanding is so profound that you see time both ways. Forwards and back. When they say “to understand the future you must understand the past”, I don’t think they know the real truth of it, Tom. You can actually see the future. Not the whole of it. Just pieces. Flashes. Like reverse memories. We forget some of our future just as we forget some of our past, it seems. But I’ve seen enough. I knew you weren’t to be trusted any more to finish a job. I’ve sensed it for some time. I knew where this was going.’

‘It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.’

‘Of course it matters. We need to protect ourselves.’

‘Fuck, Hendrich. That’s bullshit. You mean protect yourself . That’s all you’ve ever meant. The society is a society of one. Come on, Hendrich. It’s not the eighteen hundreds any more. You knew about Marion. You lied to me.’

He shakes his head. ‘I did something you find hard. I kept my promise. I told you I would find her and I found her. Something you were unable to do. I keep people safe.’

‘By setting fire to their homes?’

‘You have your nose against the canvas, Tom. Stand back and see the whole picture. We are under threat like never before. Berlin, biotech, everything. Things don’t get better. Look at the world, Tom. It’s all fucked. Mayflies don’t live long enough to learn. They are born, they grow up, they make the same mistakes, over and over. It’s all a big circle, spinning around, creating more destruction every time. Look at America. Look at Europe. Look at the internet. Civilisation never stays around for long before the Roman Empire is falling again. Superstition is back. Lies are back. Witch hunts are back. We’re dipping back into the Dark Ages, Tom. Not that we ever really left them. We need to stay a secret.’

‘But all you’ve done is replace superstition with more superstition. You lie. You found my daughter and you sent her to kill me.’

‘I’m not the only one who lies, Tom, am I now?’

He pulls a chrome lighter from his pocket. It was the same lighter he’d had the first time I met him, back in the Dakota. ‘Gave up smoking years ago. They lynch you in LA for less. But I kept this memento. You know, like you with that stupid penny. The petrol, though, the petrol I had to buy.’

He flicks a flame into life. Suddenly, I understand this is real. There is no surprise, really, that Hendrich is willing to kill Omai, or me, or that he kept Marion’s whereabouts secret. Ever since I joined the society I have known what he is capable of. The surprise is that he is willing to expose himself like this, endanger himself, be this close to the heat .