And then I notice something.
I have a friend request on Facebook. It is her. Camille Guerin. I accept the request. Then – as Hendrich keeps talking – I find myself looking at her wall.
She updates in a mixture of French and English and emoji. She quotes Maya Angelou and Fran?oise Sagan and Michelle Obama and JFK and Michel Foucault. She has a friend in France who is raising money for Alzheimer’s and she links to his donation page. She has written a few little poems. I read one called ‘Skyscrapers’ and another called ‘Forest’. I like them. Then, hardly thinking, I click through her photos. I want to find out more about her, and how she might have known me. Maybe she was an alba. Maybe I had met her a long time ago. But no. A quick look through her pictures shows that in 2008, when she joined Facebook, she looked, well, a decade younger. She had looked in her twenties. She was also with a man. Erik Vincent. A frustratingly good-looking man. In one photo he is swimming in a river. In another he is wearing a running vest with a number on it. He is tagged in the pictures. In almost every profile pic up till 2011, and then there is nothing at all until 2014. I wonder what happened to Erik. I look back at the poem ‘Forest’ and realise it is dedicated to him. His profile page is no longer there.
I feel like I am not the only mystery to solve.
‘You can’t lay down an anchor, Tom. You remember the first rule, don’t you, Tom? You remember what I told you, in the Dakota, you remember the first rule?’
In one photo, from 2015, Camille is just staring, sadly, out at the camera. She is out on a pavement café in Paris somewhere, a glass of red wine in front of her. This is the first photo of her in glasses. She is wearing a bright red cardigan, which she is tucking in close around her. A colder evening than she imagined. Her mouth is a smile, but a forced one.
‘The first rule,’ I say wearily, ‘is that you don’t fall in love.’
‘That’s right, Tom. You don’t. It would be a very foolish thing to do.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude but why are you calling? You know it helps, to get into the role.’
‘Of a mayfly?’
‘Yeah.’
He sighs. Makes a little throat-clearing growl sound. ‘I once knew a tightrope walker. A mayfly. He was called Cedar. Like the tree. Strange name. Strange man. Used to work at the funfair on Coney Island. He was very good at tightrope walking. Do you know the way you can tell if a tightrope walker is any good?’
‘How?’
‘They’re still alive.’
He laughs at his own joke before continuing. ‘Anyway, he told me the secret to managing the tightrope. He said people were wrong when they said the secret was to relax and to forget about the drop below you. The secret was the opposite. The secret was never to relax. The secret was never to believe you are good. Never to forget about the drop. Do you understand what I am saying? You can’t be a mayfly, Tom. You can’t just relax. The drop is too big.’
I take the phone into the bathroom and piss quietly against the inside of the toilet bowl, avoiding the water. ‘The drop. Right. I still don’t understand why you are calling me, Hendrich.’
I look in the mirror and I notice something. Something wonderful and exciting, just above my left ear. A grey hair! This is my second. The first one I got in 1979. By 2100 I might have so many they could be noticeable. It gives me a thrill like no other when I notice such a change (hardly ever). I save the flush till later and leave the room, feeling happily mortal.
‘I call you when I want to call you. And you answer. Or I will get worried. And you know that you don’t want me to get anxious, because then I will have to do something. So, just remember your place. Remember how much the society has helped you. Okay, we’d have liked to have found your daughter. But remember everything else. Remember that before eighteen ninety-one you were lost. You had no freedom. You had no choice. You were just a confused grief-stricken man, who had no idea who he was. I gave you a map. I helped you find yourself.’
I still haven’t found myself, I don’t say. I’m nowhere near.
‘Remember eighteen ninety-one, Tom. Keep it in mind.’
And when the phone call ends, I do what he instructs. As I click off Camille’s photo I think back to 1891, I think of that moment when my life stopped being one thing and started being another, and I try to understand it. I try to work out if I sailed into a trap or into freedom, or if, maybe, it could have been both at once.
Skyscrapers
I
Like
The way
That when you
Tilt
Poems
On their side
They
Look like
Miniature
Cities
From
A long way
Away.
Skyscrapers
Made out
Of
Words.
Forest
I want you to
Slow down
I just want it all
To slow down;
I want to make a forest
Of a moment
And live in that forest
For ever
Before you go.
St Albans, England, 1891
Jeremiah Cartwright had read the sky and declared, with a dark seriousness, that it was going to rain later and that he must go for iron while it was still dry. He wouldn’t be back for another hour. I was alone, by the forge, watching the metal as it glowed red, then orange. Yes, as in life, strike while the iron is hot, but not just any heat. You had to wait until the orange was starting to brighten, become that raw bright pink-yellow-orange. This was forging heat. The heat of change. The yellow quickly became white and as soon as it was white hot it was all over, so you had to watch and grab the moment before it was too late.
It was only when I took the metal and placed it over the anvil to begin to strike it that I realised someone was standing there.
A woman. A peculiar-looking woman.
I can still picture her, vividly, the way I first saw her. She looked about forty years old.
She was dressed in a long skirt and blouse, both black, and her face was shaded by a broad-brimmed hat. An outfit far too hot for the late June day, let alone for the hellish temperature of the forge. It took me a second, because of the shading over her face, to realise that she was wearing a jet-black silk eye patch over her left eye.
‘Hello there. How can I help you?’
‘You will find it is the other way around.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shook her head. She was wincing a little from the heat of the place. ‘No questions. Not just yet. Your curiosity shall be satisfied, I assure you. You must come with me.’
‘What?’
‘You can’t stay here.’
‘What?’
‘I said: no questions.’
The next thing I knew she was pointing a small wooden pistol straight at my chest.
‘Blazing fuck. What are you doing?’
‘You have outed yourself to the scientific community. There is an institute . . . I haven’t got time to explain this. But, if you stay here, you will be killed.’