Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Outside the walls of Rijksdorp, Jasper found everything different and everything the same. The morning was muted. The sky was veiled. The woods smelt of autumn. Dead leaves drifted on the liquid wind. Pines shushed and soughed. Crows hatched plots. Faces surfaced from tree trunks. Jasper didn’t meet their stares. The path twisted upwards. The wood petered out. Dunes fell and rose. Surf pounded the shore, not far off. Grass whiplashed. Gulls cried. The sea looked dirty. A sign warned would-be swimmers: ‘GEVAARLIJKE ONDERSTROOM. VERBODEN TE ZWEMMEN’. The tide was in. Waves shunted shingle up the beach: the undertow sucked it back. Scheveningen cluttered the southern distance. Katwijk lay five miles to the north-east. Mud greys, sandy greys, pale greys. Slimy groynes sloped into the surging water. Jasper filled his rucksack with big pebbles. This was less messy than razors, he told himself, more reliable than pills, less Gothic than a rope, with no witnesses to shock and scar. Jasper strapped on his rucksack. It felt as heavy as him. Jasper went over his instructions one last time: walk into the sea; keep walking; when the water is up to your chin, fall forwards, with the weight pressing you down. Open wide. Everlasting Queludrin. Milly Wallace was buried at sea. The Only Sea. The Ceaseless Sea. The Last Sea.

Jasper asked, ‘Are you still sure?’

Jasper replied, ‘A person is a thing who leaves.’

Jasper strode into the sea. It filled his shoes.

It wrapped around his knees, his thighs, his waist …

Don’t , said a voice. All noise ceased. No sea, no wind, no gulls. You can’t undo that ending. A voice speaking Dutch with a foreign accent, inside Jasper’s head, as if heard through headphones. Get out of the water , said the voice. It wasn’t Knock Knock.

The sea swirled around Jasper. ‘Who are you?’

First, get out of the water.

Jasper deployed Formaggio’s strategy of isolating known facts. One: this voice communicated in direct language. Two: it didn’t want Jasper dead. Three …

Three , it said, would you please get out of the water?

Jasper waded back to shore and sat on a driftwood log.

Empty the stones from the bag , said the voice.

Jasper obeyed. ‘So who are you?’

A hesitation. I don’t know.

‘How is that possible?’

I don’t know that either.

‘So … what do you know?’

About myself?

‘ About yourself.’

I’m a mind without a body of my own. I’ve existed for five decades in this form. I may be from Mongolia. I transfer between human hosts by touch. When Formaggio shook your hand, I transferred to you. My Dutch is poor, as you heard, so … The voice had switched to English. Like I said, I don’t know much.

‘If you don’t know who you are, what are you?’

‘Spirit’, ‘ghost’, ‘ancestor’, ‘guardian angel’, ‘noncorpum’, ‘incorporeal’. I’m not prescriptive.

‘Why are you in my head?’

I found you in Formaggio’s memory, and hoped Knock Knock might offer clues to my own origins. I’ve been sifting.

‘So it’s only chance you’re here now?’

‘If you believe in chance, yes.’

A stranded jellyfish gleamed in the pale morning. ‘So you’ve spent the last day rummaging in my memory, uninvited?’

Do you ask a book for permission before you read it?

‘I’d ask the book’s owner.’

From ‘Goodbye, cruel world’ to ‘What about my privacy?’ in only two minutes.

A trawler slid into a patch of silver light, a mile out.

Jasper asked, ‘What do I call you?’

If I pluck a name out of thin air, I fear I’ll jinx my hopes of discovering who I really am. Mongolian feels like my mother tongue, so call me the Mongolian.

Far-off seagulls, tiny as close-up sand-fleas, hovered behind the trawler. ‘Did you find the clues you were searching for?’

No. Knock Knock’s another incorporeal, but we have little else in common. He wants you dead. I don’t know why.

‘Have you communicated?’

Certainly not. To wake him from his Queludrin stupor would be unwise. If— From nowhere, a giant black dog rocketed over the lip of the dune and Jasper fell off the log. The dog barked, barked and barked – but without a soundtrack, as if on a silent film. Jasper felt his own lips, tongue and vocal cords activated, saying, ‘ Zail! Zail! ’ The dog’s tail dipped; it crouched low; its head tilted. Jasper’s hand back-slapped the air and the dog slunk off.

Jasper’s heart pounded. ‘You can control your hosts?’

If I have no other choice.

‘You have a way with dogs.’

I told it to go away. In Mongolian.

‘Why would a Dutch dog understand Mongolian?’

Don’t underestimate dogs.

A mile out on the marbled sea, a yacht dived and rose.

‘If you can take me over – like just now, with the dog – why didn’t you force me out of the sea? Or stop me before I went in?’

I hoped you would stop yourself.

Jasper lies on the shingle. ‘I just … got tired.’

I would have fished you out, if you hadn’t listened to me. I’m in no hurry to discover what happens to me if my host dies. I’m glad of this conversation, however. I’m a solitary soul.

‘Lonely? You have hosts to talk to.’

It’s dangerous. Most hosts would mistake me for insanity.

‘I guess I’m inoculated. Or insane already.’

You’re not insane, Jasper, but you are host to a long-term lodger who does not wish you well. Knock Knock has damaged you already. Shall we walk as we talk? The young psychiatrist who let you out will be worrying, and you need dry clothes …

Over the following hours, Jasper’s disembodied confessor helped him analyse his position in ways that Dr Galavazi, who ‘knew’ Knock Knock was a psychosis, could not. The Mongolian’s perspective harvested a fresh crop of insights that, Formaggio-like, Jasper arranged in a list. One : Knock Knock must be unable to transfer between hosts, or he would have left Jasper at Ely. Two : Knock Knock’s goal appeared to be Jasper’s death. Three : Knock Knock’s powers of coercion must be weaker than the Mongolian’s, or he would have thrown Jasper arranged in a list the SS Arnhem on the crossing from Harwich. Four : Queludrin was choking Jasper’s thyroid gland and eroding the cervical nerves in his spine. ‘So if Knock Knock doesn’t get me,’ said Jasper, ‘the Queludrin will.’

The Mongolian hesitated. If you stay on this path, yes.

‘What other path is there?’

I could, so to speak, operate.

‘You can cut out Knock Knock?’

No. He’s too integrated. But if I cauterise the synapses surrounding Knock Knock in your brain, he would, effectively, be entombed. You should no longer need Queludrin. It’s not a cure. Once you’re off the medication, Knock Knock will awaken, detect his entrapment and begin to graft new synapses. But this would take him a few years. A safer drug might come along, or a stronger ally. In the meantime, you could go out into the world. Live a little, as my American hosts might say.

Jasper found a dice in his pocket. White dots on a red plastic cube. He had no memory of it. ‘What are the risks?’

I’m inducing a localised stroke. It’s not a risk-less thing to do. Compared to spinal erosion, however, or a dead thyroid, or a hostile mind-visitor or wading into the North Sea, the risks are manageable.

Dutch rain beat at Jasper’s dark window. ‘When can you carry out this operation?’