John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

Waldemar sat straight-backed in his chair, his eyes nearly closed, while the waitress waddled off to place his order. She returned straightaway with the mocca and brandy, setting her tray down circumspectly, so as not to disturb the great man’s reverie.

Kaspar marveled at his brother’s aplomb, at his consummate lack of self-consciousness, at his world-weary poise; he couldn’t entirely suppress a twinge of envy. It made little difference, suddenly, whether or not the source of that remarkable self-assurance lay in madness: he himself had never been waited on half so well. To think that I’ve been pitying him all these years , Kaspar said to himself. Actually pitying him! While he’s likely been pitying me!

This notion was almost enough to bring my grandfather to his estranged brother’s table; almost, Mrs. Haven, but not quite. The habit of aloofness — of cowardice, better said — was too deeply ingrained by that time. He kept still, barely sipping his mélange , doing his best to blend in with the upholstery. For the moment it was best to watch and listen.

Waldemar, meanwhile, was scribbling on a roll of butcher’s paper that he’d pulled out of the lining of his coat. He was scribbling on this roll — which hung nearly to the floor — not with a pen or a pencil, but with a toothed wheel of brass that looked to have been pried loose from a clock. It made no marks on the paper that Kaspar could see; but his brother reviewed his writing carefully, occasionally crossing out what he had written.

He’s working on the Accidents, Kaspar thought suddenly. He’s been working on them all these many years. The thought dizzied him to the point of vertigo, and moved him to a sympathy far more potent than his pity had been; but it also made him regret the series of seemingly inconsequential decisions that now appeared, in retrospect, to have shaped the whole of his adult experience.

Over the previous decade — tacitly at first, but with growing conviction — my grandfather had come to acknowledge the importance of relativity. He had done so because the theory had compelled him to, of course, but also because he found it elegant and fashionable; and not least (he saw now, with the ruthless clarity of hindsight) because such an allegiance asked of him — demanded of him, in fact — that he break with his past and family forever. Sitting in his velvet booth at Trattner’s, confronted with his long-lost brother’s fidelity to the grail of their youth, Kaspar found himself wondering whether his commitment to reason, to objectivity, and to the scientific method — his commitment to sanity, in other words — might not, at bottom, be an act of treason.

* * *

From an article in the Science section of The New York Times that I came across on my last visit to the bathroom (why my aunts kept such prodigous amounts of newsprint next to the toilet, Mrs. Haven, I hesitate to guess), I’ve learned some interesting facts about the phenomenon of reflection, a number of which apply to my grandfather’s condition as he eavesdropped on his brother. “When people are made to be self-aware, they are likelier to stop and think about what they’re doing,” claims a psychologist with the felicitous name of G. V. Bodenhausen. “Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in non-mirrored settings.” Your reflection is a representative of your superego, in other words: an inquisitor dressed in your clothes. And Kaspar, in his sixteen-page diary entry for Thursday, November 14, 1922, likens spying on Waldemar to catching sight of his own face, grotesquely distorted, in a half-empty cup of mélange.

He also notes — in a hurried little postscript, as if the fact were of no consequence — that the Patent Clerk has won the Nobel Prize.

* * *

“Herr Toula!” came a voice from over Kaspar’s shoulder. He spun in his seat involuntarily, forcing his face into a smile — but the man in question shuffled blithely past him.

“Pardon my lateness, Herr Toula. The trams at this hour—”

“ Von Toula,” Waldemar interrupted, breaking into the same queer laughter, dry as ashes, that Kaspar had found so disquieting in the widow’s attic all those years before. “As for the trams, Herr Bleichling, suffice it to say that it’s a fallen world.”

“It certainly is, sir! Beautifully put.”

“Be seated, Herr Bleichling. Let’s proceed to the matter at hand.”

“The matter at hand?”

“Am I not being clear?”

“Not — that is to say, you are , of course,” the man stammered. “Do you mean — are you suggesting that we discuss it here in public? That is to say, within earshot—”

“My enemies know where to find me, Herr Bleichling. I make no secret of my whereabouts. Let them come and arrest me, if they care to; let them stone me in the street, or burn me alive in Saint Stephen’s Square. Let them do their worst to us! Don’t you agree?”

“Well—” said Bleichling, shifting unhappily in his chair. “Well, Herr Toula — Herr von Toula, I beg your pardon — I do have my wife to think of, and my daughter Elfriede, and little Sigismund—”

“ Sigismund , is it? An excellent name for a son!”

“Very kind of you, Herr von Toula.” Again Bleichling hesitated. “In actuality, however, Sigismund is a terrier.” He let out a titter. “A Scottish terrier, to be exact, with the whitest undercoat you’ve ever—”

“It happens this Saturday,” Waldemar snapped. “Have your men assembled by eighteen o’clock.”

“ This Saturday? The day after tomorrow? I’m afraid that I wouldn’t — I can’t — that is, I couldn’t possibly—”

Waldemar held up a hand. “I’ve been informed, Herr Bleichling, that I may not be at liberty by this time next week. A warrant for my arrest has reached this city from Budapest, where I was active for some years on the party’s behalf.”

Bleichling squirmed and gulped air. “I’ve heard about what you did in Budapest.”

“Have you, Herr Bleichling? Then tell me. When you heard of it, how did it make you feel?”

“I couldn’t — I didn’t—” The life drained from his face. “Good heavens , sir, I didn’t mean to suggest—”

Waldemar eased his heavy body forward. “I’ll tell you how it made me feel, brother. It made me feel wide awake. It made me feel the breeze of our glorious future on my skin.”

By now the back of Kaspar’s neck had gone puckered and hot, as though the hairs on his nape were being plucked, and his tongue felt like a breaded chicken cutlet. The thought that less than a minute earlier he’d been tempted to sit down at his brother’s table — to sit down and ask him, humbly, for forgiveness —was suddenly both appalling and absurd. When the waitress appeared at his shoulder, silently and without the slightest warning, it was all that he could do to keep from vaulting from his seat.

“I’m quite well,” he squawked, though the Serb hadn’t spoken. “I was on my way out, in fact. I’m late for an appointment—”

“I can’t allow you to do that, sir.”

Kaspar felt the air catch in his throat. “Why not, for God’s sake?”

“You haven’t paid.”

“Of course!” he said, nearly shouting with relief. “Forgive me. Of course. If you’d be so kind—”

“Sixteen hundred kronen.”

As he counted out the money, marveling at the steadiness of his hands, Kaspar heard — echoingly, as if across an empty ballroom — the sound of chairs being pushed back, and of his brother’s voice whispering a series of commands. He let his eyes close, then felt a hand gripping his elbow: but it was only the waitress, the inscrutable Serb, offering to help him out onto the street. Before he could respond to her his brother and Herr Bleichling were beside him.