John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

Three decades before, as a handsome young man, he’d had a gift for making the most casual gesture seem significant, as though he were an actor in a play — and while he was anything but handsome now, he retained an actor’s poise and bearing still. This particular play was a drama, that much was clear; and that it would end badly was never in doubt. But Sonja found herself wondering, as she studied his face, whether they were nearer to the beginning of the play or its finale. This seemed the only question left to ask.

Finally Waldemar opened his eyes. “I did certain things,” he said softly. “During my time away.”

“Certain things?”

He nodded. “When I think of them now, the acts to which I refer — especially when I try to describe them — appear to have been committed by a different man. But I admire that man, fräulein. I respect his fidelity to his cause — by which I mean, of course, the cause of science. It’s important to me that you understand this.”

Sonja gave the least possible nod.

“In the second decade of my exile, when I was still new to Berlin, I joined a so-called brownshirt unit known, colloquially, as the ‘Pimp’s Brigade.’ This was in the time of open fighting in the streets. We were a sad parody of the party ideal — two ex-convicts, on average, for each true man of principle — but the ranks of the Red Front were sorrier still. We more than held our own, I’m proud to say.” Waldemar heaved a sigh. “I was the old bird of the unit, too heavy to fight, so I was given the prison detail. You’ll most likely laugh when I tell you this, fräulein, but I discovered that I had a talent for it.”

Sonja said nothing. The wall above the divan brightened, then darkened, then brightened again. She wondered what on earth was keeping Kaspar.

“My first few interrogations were clumsy affairs, halting and inefficient, and served little purpose other than establishing my lack of squeamishness. With practice, however, I made a remarkable — if perhaps self-evident — discovery. The more fully I brought my own interests to bear on my work, the more fruitful the eventual result.” He glanced at her with sudden concern. “This is all a bit opaque, I’m afraid. I’ll furnish you with a definite example.”

“Brother-in-law,” she said steadily, “I beseech you, as a member of your own family, to consider—”

“For a number of years, as you know, I’ve been interested in the plasticity — for want of a better word — of time: in the shapes that it takes when it’s not flowing smoothly. What I hit on was this. I would explain my ideas to each detainee in turn — specifically, my theory of ‘rotary time’—until I felt I’d made my meaning clear.” Waldemar cracked a smile. “Sometimes this lecture alone sufficed to break them.”

“You talked physics to your prisoners?” Sonja heard herself ask. “You told them about the Lost Time—”

“I tried not to bore my subjects,” Waldemar cut in, with a trace of annoyance. “I chose not to burden them with my personal history. I simply explained how time could be made to change speed and direction, and even — under certain conditons — to stop altogether. I had proven this algebraically, and by the use of non-Euclidean geometry; now I was prepared, I informed them, to prove it again, using nothing but a chair, a length of wire, and a captive human being.” He nodded to himself. “I would pause there, generally, to let this sink in. Then I’d ask them how much time they cared to lose.”

“I don’t understand,” Sonja managed to answer. “I didn’t understand twenty years ago, that night you asked for my help, and I don’t—”

“Of course not, silly goose! I didn’t fully understand then, either. I was two hundred kilometers and ten years removed from that night when the last of the Great Doors was opened for me.” He sucked in a breath. “I was living under a railroad trestle in Budapest, eating snow and coffee grounds to stay alive, when my father came to me on a ray of pure thought. I was dying, fräulein — expiring of hunger and exposure — and for this reason a last boon was granted me.”

“I heard you went to Budapest. There were rumors—”

Waldemar silenced her with a wave of his hand. “I’d spent most of my duration searching for the key to my father’s discovery in the language of numbers — but the secret, when it finally came, was delivered in everyday words. In fact, my dear fräulein, it arrived in the form of a joke. May I share it with you?”

Half a dozen answers, Sonja later told Kaspar, revolved in her mind like horses on a carousel; but Waldemar had no need of a reply.

“Listen closely now, fräulein. The phenomenon my father discovered, and to which he gave the somewhat fanciful name the ‘Lost Time Accidents,’ is nothing enigmatic or arcane: no new star in the sky, no fifth dimension, no perpetual-motion machine. Time’s most fundamental quality, after all, is that it should be continually lost to us. Is that not so?” He leaned in close to her — so close that the smell of marzipan eclipsed all others. “That being the case, my dear Sonja, the ultimate Lost Time Accident is death.”

* * *

Kaspar’s immediate reaction upon coming home and learning what had happened was to take up his coat from the banister — the very same spot, Sonja noted, where Waldemar’s jacket had hung — and return the compliment without delay. His brother had left no card, no telephone number, no clue as to his whereabouts, but for once my grandfather was resolute. Perplexing as Waldemar’s visit had been, the malice behind it was as clear as Bohemian glass.

The SS, in those first heady days of the Anschluss, hadn’t yet commandeered the Italianate hotel on Morzinplatz that would serve as its den for the next seven years: its interim quarters, when at last Kaspar found them, turned out to be decidedly less grand. A cast-iron stair led up the rear wall of the Bundesverkehrsamt — the Viennese equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles — to a spacious but badly lit warren of rooms, already stuffed to the rafters with stacks of mildewed files and plywood crates. The disorder of the place ought to have reassured my grandfather, but somehow it had the opposite effect. Anything might happen in a system this entropic, he found himself thinking. A person — or at least that person’s dossier — might easily disappear without a trace.

Within weeks of Kaspar’s visit, the nerve center of the Gestapo would be transormed into an occult fortress, sequestered behind its bureaucratic façade like a tarantula hidden in a filing cabinet; but on that particular afternoon — March 19, 1938, day seven of the post-Austrian era — Kaspar entered magically unchallenged. Young men in squeaking boots and fastidiously creased uniforms brushed past him in the hallway, neither returning his greeting nor meeting his eye. No one asked him his business until he arrived at a broad, skylit foyer at the labyrinth’s center, empty save for a row of undersized chairs and a desk that looked pilfered from a headmaster’s office. A bald and rat-faced goblin slouched behind it, collating stacks of curling mimeographs. It wasn’t until the goblin glanced up from his paperwork, however — after what seemed a full hour — that Kaspar was able to place him. He was none other than Gustav Bleichling, proud owner of Sigismund the terrier.

“Good afternoon,” said Kaspar curtly.

“You have the wrong floor,” Bleichling answered, still shuffling his papers. “The Motor Vehicle Department—”

“We’ve met before, sir, if I’m not mistaken. The first time was at Trattner’s kaffeehaus .”

The mention of Trattner’s had a curious effect on Bleichling. He sat bolt upright, as if he’d been poked in the ribs, and raised his right arm in a cramped, defensive motion; just as quickly, however, he recalled where he was, and transformed the gesture into a salute. “You’ll have to pardon me, comrade. Those were thrilling days — superlative days! — but occasionally a face or two escapes me. I recall you now, of course. Sieg Heil .”