John Wray: The Lost Time Accidents

Circumference aside, Marta Svoboda made for an unlikely butcher’s wife: she was a soft-spoken woman, always impeccably dressed, with a fondness for light opera and an aversion to the smell of uncooked meat. (It may well have been her sense of herself as somehow out of place — miscast by a world that knew her poorly — that had made her susceptible to my great-grandfather’s charms.) She was well read, and a diligent diarist: most of what I’ve learned about that time came from her journals. Her entry for June 26, for example, exactly two weeks after Ottokar’s death and seven days after his funeral, gives me the first picture I have of my grandfather as a young man, and of his soon-to-be-infamous brother.

At just before noon — the hour of their accustomed rendezvous — Marta distinctly heard Ottokar’s knock at her door, and crept downstairs into the shop; she was in the depths of her grief, sleeping painfully little, and for a moment she feared for her sanity. The silhouette she saw through the frosted glass was Ottokar’s as well, and she might easily have fled back upstairs if she hadn’t noticed another behind it, slightly taller and with less of a slump. Marta had exchanged barely a word with the Toula boys since they’d been toddlers, and the thought of talking to them now frightened her worse than any phantom could have done; but she unbolted the shop door regardless.

“Good afternoon, Frau Svoboda,” the shorter one said. He seemed at a loss as to whether to bow or to extend his hand. The younger one stared at her coldly.

“Good day ,” she said, struggling to keep her voice level, but in spite of everything it came out badly. It sounded as if she were correcting him.

“My name is Kaspar Toula,” said the boy, as if Marta had no way of knowing, which struck her as very polite. His mourning suit fit him badly and he looked miserable in it. He was the image of his father — only shorter, and stouter, and somewhat more matter-of-fact — and it almost hurt her eyes to look at him. His brother cut a more elegant figure, Marta noted in her journal: he looked, she wrote, “as if he’d been born wearing black.” She invited them in, though Waldemar still hadn’t spoken, and told them to sit at the counter while she fetched them a treat. They were little more than children, after all.

When she returned with a plate of cold sulze they were still standing exactly as she’d left them, in the middle of the shop with their hats in their hands, blinking at the cuts of meat around them like a pair of truant schoolboys at the zoo. They’re trying to understand their father, she thought. Trying to understand what brought him here. It was clear to her then that they knew everything, and to her surprise the fact of it relaxed her. She waited until they’d sat down to eat before pouring a glass of beer for each of them, then a snifter of elderberry schnapps for herself, and asking them to what she owed the pleasure.

Again it was Kaspar who spoke. “Fräulein Svoboda,” he mumbled, then immediately turned a ghastly shade of purple. “ Frau Svoboda,” he corrected himself, staring fixedly at a button of her blouse.

“Yes?”

“You were a bonne amie of our departed father?”

It was less a question, really, than a statement of the case. Marta saw no reason to deny it.

“All right,” said Kaspar, visibly relieved. “Very good.” He nodded and stuffed his mouth with bread and sulze . Marta sipped from her snifter and smiled at him comfortably, unafraid now. At one point she turned her smile on Waldemar, who’d touched neither his beer nor his food, but he shut his eyes until she looked away. He takes after his mother , she said to herself. I wonder how Resa is coping.

“Frau Svoboda,” Kaspar repeated, apparently on solid ground again, “what did you and my father talk about, when he paid you — well, when he paid you his calls?”

Marta replied that they’d talked about all and sundry, or — as she put it in her journal—“everything and nothing much at all.”

“I see,” said Kaspar, looking sideways at his brother. “Frau Svoboda,” he said a third time, gripping his beer stein like a bannister.

“Yes, Herr Toula? What is it?”

“Frau Svoboda—”

“Did he talk about his work?” Waldemar blurted out. It was the first time he’d spoken. “Did he mention the Lost Time Accidents to you?”

Marta looked back and forth between their sweet, impatient faces. “He was a great one for chitchat, your poor father was. I can’t say for certain. I lost track of him now and again.”

“I told you,” Waldemar murmured, with a bitterness that took Marta aback. “I told you so.” But Kaspar ignored him.

“Frau Svoboda — was my father in a state of excitement? The last time that he called on you, I mean.”

Marta sat back heavily and clucked, and the boy blushed even more violently than before. “I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “What I’d intended—”

“What my brother means to ask is this,” Waldemar cut in. “Was Herr Toula agitated about something in particular? Had anything of special interest happened on that day?”

Marta allowed that it had.

“Well, what was it?” said Waldemar. “Why the devil won’t you answer plainly?”

Kaspar silenced his brother with a look, then addressed his father’s mistress in a clear, unhurried voice that made him seem much older than he was.

“When our father was undressed at the hospital, Frau Svoboda, a scrap of paper was found in his pocket — a message of sorts, on which your name appears. Would you care to inspect it?”

She replied that she would, and a sheet of blue octavo paper, folded neatly in four, was spread before her on the grease-stained counter.

MARTA DARLING! DARE I DALLY? BEARS BOORS & BOHEMIANS BEDEVIL THESE LATERAL LABORS. LUCKILY, AN “ANSWER” SHALL ARISE. TIME CAN BE MEASURED ONLY IN ITS PASSING. BY *CHANCE* & *FATE* & *PROVIDENCE* EDEN’S ENEMIES EXCHEQUER & EXPIRE.

AS THE SOUL GROWS TOWARD ETERNAL LIFE, IT REMEMBERS LESS & LESS. CHRONOLOGY CRUSHES CHRISTIANS. A MISTRESS — PRAISE C*F*P! — IS MELLIFLUOUS. FOOLS FROM FUTURE’S FETID FIEFDOMS FOLLOW FREELY IN MY FOOTSTEPS. BACKWARDS TIME IS IMPOSSIBLE, FORWARDS TIME IS ABSURD. TRUTH TOLD TACTLESSLY TAKES COURAGE, LITTLE DUMPLING. TRUTH TOLD CUNNINGLY TAKES FENCHELWURST & TEA.

THE PULPIT FOR PREACHERS IN PAMĚT’ CATHEDRAL. DARLING MARTA! DO YOU FOLLOW ME? THEN SPIN ME COUNTERCLOCKWISE. PLACE YOURSELF PAST EVERY PRIMITIVE PROSCRIPTION. SILENCE, SYCOPHANTS! & LISTEN TO ME CLOSELY. JAN SKÜS IS THE NAME OF A FRIEND I ONCE MET, & SKÜS JAN IS A FRIEND I’LL MEET TWICE. SPACE & TIME AFFECT ALL, ARE AFFECTED BY ALL. EACH FOOL CARRIES HIS OWN HOURGLASS INSIDE HIM.

TODAY IT HAS HAPPENED. TWELVE JUNE NINETEEN HUNDRED & THREE ANNO DOMINI. TAKE THIS LETTER — PRECIOUS DUMPLING! — & EXHIBIT NO MERCY. I’LL BE BACK FOR IT SOON. TODAY IT HAS HAPPENED. TODAY IT HAS HAPPENED. THE LOST TIME ACCIDENTS. THE LOST TIME ACCIDENTS. THE LOST TIME ACCIDENTS. HAVE MERCY ON US ALL.

OTTOKAR GOTTFRIEDENS TOULA, TOULA & SONS SALUTARY GHERKINS, S.M.

ZNOJMO, MORAVIA.

“Note the number in the bottom left-hand corner,” said Kaspar. “Page number four, do you see? It follows that there must also exist — or have existed — additional pages, numbered one through three.”

Knowing Ottokar— having known him, Marta reminded herself — she didn’t necessarily think the rules of logic could be relied on; but she didn’t see much point in disagreeing.

“We also have reason to believe — from certain statements of our father’s, in the days before his passing — that one of those missing pages contains an algebraic proof. It is this proof —not any personal or sentimental information — that is of interest to my brother and myself.”