John Wray - The Lost Time Accidents

“Do you really come from a family of physicists?”

“Failed physicists,” I mumbled, nuzzling your armpit. The brass-colored hair there smelled faintly of nutmeg. “ Crackpots is the technical term.”

“That’s too bad,” you said, yawning. “I was hoping you could build a time machine.”

On any other day I’d have snapped to attention at that, wide-awake and suspicious; as it was, I only sat up slightly. “A time machine?”

“I wouldn’t want to go too far back. I’m not ambitious.” You ran your close-cut fingernails across my scalp. “About thirty minutes, let’s say.”

It wasn’t easy, in my fuddled condition, to reconstruct what had happened thirty minutes before. Then it came back to me.

“You’re in luck, Mrs. Haven. That can be arranged.”

“It can? How fantastic!”

“There’s nothing fantastic about it.”

“Prove it.”

“In the interest of science, I will.” I took you by the shoulders. “I’ll ask you to lie back down, if you don’t mind.”

Thirty-three minutes later I was nuzzling your armpit again. The brass-colored stubble smelled faintly of nutmeg.

“That was very nice, Walter,” you whispered.

“You see, Mrs. Haven? I hope I’ve convinced you.”

You arched your back and nodded. “I knew you were a man of many gifts.”

* * *

But by morning you were restless again, preoccupied and tense and short of breath. I opened my eyes to find you standing at the window, buttoning up your pajamas, staring anxiously down at the street. My nakedness felt wrong to me suddenly. I crawled back under the comforter, wrapping it around me like somebody saved from drowning.

“What sort of family do you come from, Walter?” you said as you pulled on your sneakers. Apparently it was time for you to go.

“A tribe of honest laborers,” I answered.

“Honest laborers?” you said, turning up the collar of your coat. “Is that true?”

“Not so much,” I admitted.

You seated yourself at the foot of the bed, demonstratively out of my reach. You wanted to talk, not to cuddle: that was only too clear. You wanted to get down to terms.

“Ask me a question, Walter. A question about myself. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

I thought hard for a moment. “What are the chances that the Husband—”

“It’s important that you tell me where you come from, Walter. I’ve spent a decade sleeping next to a cipher. Can you imagine what that’s like?”

“I’m certainly willing—”

“I need to know that I can trust you, and that you feel that you can trust me. I don’t think I can do this otherwise.”

A feeling took hold of me then that I’ve often had since: the suspicion that crucial precedents were being set, that matters of weight and consequence hung in the balance, and that I barely had a clue what was at stake. In one sense, of course, I knew what was at stake very well: you were at stake, Mrs. Haven. But this knowledge only paralyzed me further.

“You’re always laying down the law,” I heard myself stammer.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Walter. Are you trying to say—”

“I’m trying to say that from the moment we met, from our first conversation, you’ve been the one setting the terms. You’ve never asked me what my terms might be — not even once. What makes you so sure that I don’t have any?”

You sat forward, tucking a lock of sleep-creased hair behind your ear. I’d managed to make you self-conscious, if nothing else.

“What are your terms, Walter?”

I didn’t have any, of course. None. I’d have taken you under every possible set of conditions. I sank back into the pillows with a groan.

“Something shifted while we were asleep,” you said. “I don’t know what, exactly, but something’s different. Our equilibrium seems to be shot.”

If I’d known you at all, I’d have taken this pronouncement in stride, maybe even agreed; since I didn’t, I panicked.

“I don’t believe in this.”

You looked startled. “In what?”

“In anything .” I waved my arms peevishly. “I don’t believe in anything that’s happened.”

Why in God’s name, Mrs. Haven, did I say such a thing? To throw you off balance? To keep my need for you from swallowing me whole? Whatever the reason, the result was terrifying. You rose from the bed with exaggerated calm and did up the leather toggles of your coat. Your face was as white and empty as a plate.

“I’d be a fool to believe in all this, Walter, if you don’t. Wouldn’t I?”

“Please sit down, Mrs. Haven. Don’t go just yet.”

“I’ll be gone in a minute,” you said, searching the floor for your hat. “There’s something that I want to tell you first.”

“Mrs. Haven, if you’d just—”

“The day you followed me home, I showed you what the Husband had done to my little clubhouse — with the Klimts and so on. Do you remember?”

“Of course I—”

“I told you we’d been fighting, but you never asked me why.” You smiled. “You must not have believed in what was happening then, either.”

That brought me out of bed at last. “You have to understand, Mrs. Haven, nothing’s ever prepared me — what I mean is, where I come from—”

“Where exactly do you come from, Mr. Tompkins?”

“I don’t have any clothes on. If you’ll give me the chance—”

“We’d been fighting about you, Walter. I told the Husband that I was leaving him, that I’d met someone else, and he reacted in the way you might expect. He asked me — as anyone would, who’s been given that sort of news — whether I was absolutely sure.” You picked your hat up from the floor. “I wonder if you can guess how I replied.”

I opened my mouth, met your withering look, and felt my answer curdle in my throat.

“No?” you said, stepping out onto the landing. “I’m sorry to hear that, Walter. Maybe it will come to you in time.”

THERE’S A PAINTING at the Met by Giancarlo Beppino, some forgotten also-ran of the Venetian Rennaissance, that comes to mind whenever I try to picture Kaspar and Sonja’s exodus. An unassuming little oil in a badly lit niche— Joseph and Mary’s Flight into Egypt —it twitches to eager life for anyone willing to stop. An underfed Joseph leads two gaunt, walleyed mules down a gulch; a fat, insipid virgin sits sidesaddle on the second mule’s back, holding a toddler under her arm like the Sunday edition of The Wall Street Journal. In the middle distance, for no apparent reason, an angel is whacking at a rosebush with a stick.

The figures themselves bear no likeness to my star-crossed kin: Sonja was desperately ill by then, and my grandfather, in the sole surviving snapshot from that time, has the oxlike expression of a more classical Joseph, a man prepared for certain disappointment. More important than any of the figures, however — chubby Mary included — are the slick, greasy clouds Beppino packs his sky with: shadowless masses, hideously compacted, glistening in the nauseous light of that landscape like marrow smeared across a crust of bread. To me, Mrs. Haven, those diseased-looking clouds have always seemed the color of insanity, and the sky above Vienna, whenever I imagine that most ominous of summers, is practically bursting with them.

* * *

Kaspar went home from Trattner’s on foot, grateful for the reprieve, storing away the sights and sounds and smells of the city for future reference; no sooner had he arrived home, however, than he announced to his family that they’d be leaving for America that same afternoon. His daughters were too young to fully grasp the import of the news, and his in-laws were too old, perhaps, or too astonished; Sonja was overjoyed, as he’d known she would be. She emerged from her room fully dressed and expectant, as if she’d foreseen his sudden change of heart; she looked clearheaded and rested, better than she’d seemed in months. Kaspar had expected her to ask the reason for his decision — for its abruptness, if nothing else — but she confined herself to questions of logistics. Her equanimity, which had always been a comfort, now unnerved him. He wondered, not for the first time, whether his wife had the slightest idea what lay in store for them; then he reminded himself that it no longer mattered. The choice — such as it was — had been made for them.