Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Jasper stands up and draws the curtains. The window is about five storeys up. Manhattan roofs rise, fall and slant. Not far off, the bevelled edges of the Chrysler building rise into low clouds. It’s raining, gently. The bookshelves house books in alphabets varied and unknown to Jasper: The Perpetuum by Jamini Marinus Choudary (ed.); Een beknopte geschiedenis van de Onderstroom in de Lage Landen by H. Damsma and N. Miedema; The Great Unveiling by L. Cantillon; On Lacunae by Xi Lo; and, propped up face outwards, Récit d’un témoin de visu de la Bataille de Paris, de la Commune et du bain de sang subséquent, par le citoyen François Arkady, fier Communard converti à l’Horlogerie by M. Berri. Sheet music of a Scarlatti sonata is on the harpsichord. Jasper lifts the lid. It’s old. Jasper’s sight-reading isn’t as good as Elf’s, so he plays the opening bars of ‘A Raft And A River’. The timbre of the notes is spindly and vitreous. There’s a small en-suite bathroom he uses. He dresses, but can’t see his shoes, so he shuffles to the door in his socks. It slides open into a panelled elevator. Jasper steps inside. The door slides shut. Five unmarked buttons sit in a row; a sixth is marked ‘*’. Jasper presses the asterisk. He waits for the elevator to move, but there are no clunking gears, no slow grinding, like its counterpart at the Chelsea Hotel. Nothing happens.

Jasper slides the elevator door open and finds an elegant ballroom with a high ceiling and chandeliers. At the end of the long table sits Yu Leon Marinus. ‘You might want to step out of there,’ says the doctor. The elevator has a mind of its own.’

Jasper enters into the ballroom. Three large windows are semi-opaque. A vast mirror doubles the space and light. Jasper averts his gaze, then averts it back. One less phobia. Pictures from many eras adorn the walls, including Agnolo Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. Jasper thought the painting was in London’s National Gallery. ‘Knock Knock’s gone,’ he tells Marinus. ‘So I guess last night was real.’

‘He is gone. It was real.’ Marinus indicates a seat near his and lifts a silver dome of the type used to keep food warm. There are poached eggs, mushrooms, brown toast, grapefruit juice and a pot of tea.

‘That’s what I like to eat at home.’

‘Fancy that. Tuck in, if you’re hungry.’

Jasper finds that he is, sits down – and realises they’ve been speaking Dutch. ‘A psychiatrist, a Horologist and a linguist.’

‘My Dutch is rusty, so’ – Marinus reverts to English – ‘I’ll spare you further earache. I was reborn in Haarlem six lifetimes ago, but Dutch evolves so rapidly. Really, I should go and live there for a few months to brush up. Perhaps Galavazi can organise a residency.’

Jasper grinds black pepper onto his egg. ‘You really do come back? Lifetime after lifetime after lifetime?’

‘Same soul, old mind, new body. Now, let’s not insult the chef by letting our breakfast cool. Bon appetit .

Under Marinus’s dome is a bowl of rice and miso soup. They eat in silence for a minute. Normals feel awkward in the absence of conversation, but Marinus is no Normal. Jasper notices Marinus’s newspaper is the Russian edition of Pravda . ‘Were you Russian in a previous life?’

‘Twice.’ Marinus dabs his mouth. ‘Any newspaper named “Truth” is bound to be stuffed with lies. Yet lies may illuminate.’

Jasper’s yolk bleeds yellow-orange. ‘So Knock Knock agreed to leave without a fight, and the psychosurgery was successful.’

Marinus tips a small dish of pickles onto his rice. ‘We made a proposal. Esther is persuasive.’

Jasper pours some tea into a Wedgwood cup. ‘A proposal?’

‘If he granted you your lifetime,’ Marinus lifts his bowl and chopsticks, ‘we would grant him one, in return.’

‘How? He doesn’t have a body.’

‘I found him a spare.’

Jasper is flummoxed.

‘Last June, a teenage male in a city on the eastern seaboard took a drug overdose. His soul left his body that night, but his body saved itself by entering a coma. The police couldn’t identify him and nobody came looking for him. In August John Doe’s coma was downgraded to a persistent vegetative state. American hospitals are businesses, and care is costly. Life support was to be withdrawn on Friday. Approximately …’ Marinus pulls out a time-piece on a chain ‘… ninety minutes ago, John Doe regained consciousness. His team are calling it a miracle. The word “miracle” is a disservice to Esther’s psychosurgery, but no matter. John Doe’s body is Enomoto’s new, and last, host body. Barring accidents, he should live to eighty.’

‘A soul-transplant.’

Marinus sips his miso soup. ‘You could say so.’

Tulips in a vase are wine-red and snow-streaked.

‘What if Enomoto starts brewing Oil of Souls again?’

‘Then he becomes an enemy of Horology.’ Marinus munches a pickle. ‘It’s a risk. The ethics of what we do are grey, I admit. But if ethics aren’t grey they aren’t really ethics.’

Jasper eats a mushroom. ‘So Horology is a kind of … psychosoteric FBI. What a job.’

There may be a smile under Marinus’s frown.

Jasper has cleared his plate. He runs his thumb over his guitarist’s calluses. ‘What do I do now?’

‘What do you want to do?’

Jasper considers. ‘Write a song. Before this fades.’

‘Then go back to the Chelsea Hotel and write a song. Everyone’s at it there, I’m told. Go forth. Multiply. Your body looks good for five or six more decades.’

Levon and the band … ‘The others! They’ll think … I’ve been kidnapped. Or … What about last night at the Ghepardo?’

Marinus dabs his mouth with his napkin. ‘Xi Lo redacted a few minutes from the mnemo-parallaxi of all the witnesses.’

‘I have no idea what that sentence means.’

‘Their memories of what happened backstage have been wiped and replaced by a cover story. You collapsed onstage. An ambulance took you to the private clinic of a colleague of your Dutch doctor for tests and observation. It’s not far from the truth. I telephoned Mr Frankland earlier with the good news that I’ve identified the cause of your collapse: an endocrinal imbalance, treatable with a course of anticoagulants.’ He takes a pill-box from inside his jacket and slides it to Jasper. ‘A stage prop. They’re only sugar, but they’re big and impressive.’

Jasper takes the box. I’ll never need Queludrin again. ‘Can I play tonight’s gig at the Ghepardo?’

‘You’d better, after all this trouble.’ A young woman has arrived. She has oil-black hair, a heather-coloured dress and a silent way of moving. ‘Your colour’s back, de Zoet.’ She’s familiar.

‘You brought in the wheelchair for me last night.’

‘I’m Unalaq. I’m driving you to your hotel.’

Time to go. Marinus is walking him to the elevator.

‘I had more questions I was hoping to ask.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ says the serial reincarnatee, ‘but further answers would be superfluous.’

Jasper steps inside the panelled elevator. ‘Thank you.’

Marinus studies him over his glasses. ‘I see your ancestor Jacob in you. A middling billiards player, but a good man.’

Unalaq says very little as she drives Jasper across a drizzly Manhattan. Horologists don’t talk much. Carlo Gesualdo’s haunted madrigals fill the silence. The anonymous black car crosses Central Park, where Jasper got lost only a night and half a day ago. The streets beyond the park become scrubbier, and soon they pull up at the Chelsea Hotel. Unalaq peers up at the brick cliff-face of windows, balconies and masonry. ‘The opening party lasted a whole week.’