The Map of Time and The Turn of the Screw. Felix J. Palma

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СКАЧАТЬ for preferring to be a god worshipped by men instead of the despised monster he was. If anyone had a right to feel hatred and bitterness towards the world, surely he did. And yet Merrick reproached himself for his sorrow, as though the sunlight through the window-pane warming his back or the clouds scudding across the sky ought to supply reason enough for him to be happy. Lost for words, Wells took a biscuit from the plate and nibbled it with intense concentration, as though he were making sure his teeth still worked.

      ‘Why do you think Dr Nebogipfel didn’t use his machine to travel into the future as well?’ Merrick then asked, in that unguent voice, which sounded as if it were smeared with butter. ‘Wasn’t he curious? I sometimes wonder what the world will be like in a hundred years.’

      ‘Indeed …’ murmured Wells, at a loss to respond to this remark, too.

      Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of a novel. As a child Wells had also been able to read in that way. But one day he had decided he would be a writer, and from that moment on he had found it impossible to immerse himself in stories with the same innocent abandon: he was aware that characters’ thoughts and actions were not his. They answered to the dictates of a higher being, to someone who, alone in his room, moved the pieces he himself had placed on the board, more often than not with an overwhelming feeling of indifference that bore no relation to the emotions he intended to arouse in his readers. Novels were not slices of life but more or less controlled creations reproducing slices of imaginary, polished lives, where boredom and the futile, useless acts that make up any existence were replaced with exciting, meaningful episodes. At times, Wells longed to be able to read in that carefree, childlike way again but, having glimpsed behind the scenes, he could only do this with an enormous leap of his imagination. Once you had written your first story there was no turning back. You were a deceiver and you could not help treating other deceivers with suspicion.

      It occurred to Wells briefly to suggest that Merrick ask Nebogipfel himself, but he changed his mind, unsure whether his host would take his riposte as the gentle mockery he intended. What if Merrick really was too naïve to tell the difference between reality and a simple work of fiction? What if this sad inability and not his sensitivity allowed him to experience the stories he read so intensely? If so, Well’s rejoinder would sound like a cruel jibe, aimed at wounding his ingenuousness. Fortunately, Merrick fired another question at him, which was easier to answer: ‘Do you think somebody will one day invent a time machine?’

      ‘I doubt such a thing could exist,’ replied Wells, bluntly.

      ‘And yet you’ve written about it!’ his host exclaimed, horrified.

      ‘That’s precisely why, Mr Merrick,’ he explained, trying to think of a simple way to bring together the various ideas underlying his conception of literature. ‘I assure you that if it were possible to build a time machine I would never have written about it. I am only interested in writing about what is impossible.’

      At this, he recalled a quote from Lucian of Samosata’s True Histories, which he could not help memorising because it perfectly summed up his thoughts on literature: ‘I write about things I have neither seen nor verified nor heard about from others and, in addition, about things that have never existed and could have no possible basis for existing.’ Yes, as he had told his host, he was only interested in writing about things that were impossible. Dickens was there to take care of the rest, he thought of adding, but did not. Trêves had told him Merrick was an avid reader. He did not want to risk offending him if Dickens happened to be one of his favourite authors.

      ‘Then I’m sorry that because of me you’ll never be able to write about a man who is half human, half elephant,’ murmured Merrick.

      Once more, Wells was disarmed. After he had spoken, Merrick’s gaze wandered to the window. Wells was unsure whether the gesture was meant to express regret or to give him the opportunity to study Merrick’s appearance as freely as he wished. In any case, Wells’s eyes were unconsciously, irresistibly, almost hypnotically drawn to him, confirming what he already knew full well – that Merrick was right: if he had not seen him with his own eyes, he would never have believed such a creature could exist. Except, perhaps, in the fictional world of books.

      ‘You will be a great writer, Mr Wells,’ his host declared, continuing to stare out of the window.

      ‘I wish I could agree,’ replied Wells, who, following his first failed attempt, was entertaining serious doubts about his abilities.

      Merrick turned to face him. ‘Look at my hands, Mr Wells,’ he said, holding them out. ‘Would you believe that these hands could make a church out of cardboard?’

      Wells gazed at his host’s mismatched hands. The right was enormous and grotesque while the left looked like that of a ten-year-old girl. ‘I suppose not,’ he admitted.

      Merrick nodded slowly. ‘It is a question of will, Mr Wells,’ he said, striving for a tone of authority. ‘That’s all.’

      Coming from anyone else’s mouth these words might have struck Wells as trite, but uttered by the man in front of him they became an irrefutable truth. This creature was living proof that man’s will could move mountains and part seas. In that hospital wing, a refuge from the world, the distance between the attainable and the unattainable was more than ever a question of will. If Merrick had built that cardboard church with his deformed hands, what might not he, Wells, be capable of? He was only prevented from doing whatever he wanted by his lack of self-belief

      He could not help agreeing, which seemed to please Merrick, judging from the way he fidgeted in his seat. In an embarrassed voice, Merrick went on to confess that the model was to be a gift for a stage actress with whom he had been corresponding for several months. He referred to her as Mrs Kendall, and from what Wells could gather she was one of his most generous benefactors. He had no difficulty in picturing her as woman of good social standing, sympathetic to the suffering of the world, so long as they were not on her doorstep. She had discovered in the Elephant Man a novel way of spending the money she usually donated to charity. When Merrick explained that he was looking forward to meeting her in person when she returned from her tour in America, Wells could not help smiling, touched by the amorous note that, consciously or not, had slipped into his voice. But at the same time he felt a pang of sorrow, and hoped Mrs Kendall’s work would delay her in America so that Merrick could go on believing in the illusion of her letters and not be faced with the discovery that impossible love was only possible in books.

      After they had finished their tea, Merrick offered Wells a cigarette, which he courteously accepted. They rose from their seats and went to the window to watch the sunset. For a few moments, the two men stood staring down at the street and at the façade of the church opposite, every inch of which Merrick must have been familiar with. People came and went, a pedlar with a handcart hawked his wares, and carriages trundled over the uneven cobblestones strewn with foul-smelling dung from the hundreds of horses going by each day. Wells watched Merrick gazing at the frantic bustle with almost reverential awe. He appeared to be lost in thought.

      ‘You know something, Mr Wells?’ he said finally. ‘I can’t help feeling sometimes that life is like a play in which I’ve been given no part. If you only knew how much I envy all those people …’

      ‘I can assure you, you have no reason to envy them, Mr Merrick,’ Wells replied abruptly. ‘Those people you see are specks of dust. Nobody will remember who they were or what they did after they die. You, however, will go down in history.’

      Merrick appeared to mull over his words, as he studied his misshapen reflection in the window-pane.

      ‘Do you think that gives me any comfort?’ СКАЧАТЬ