Hey Mortality (13 page)

The coroner’s report said that Sara had died at half past three in the morning from a heroin overdose. When I heard the news I cried. Cried tears that were so painful, tears that forced my jaw to shake and my mouth to scream. Escaping anguish that made it sound like I was laughing, but laughter was the last thing on my mind. Just a pain so strong that it crashed through me more than once, passing through my body, shaking my limbs as it made its journey. Nothing to wash it away, nothing to make it right. Lost all over again.

It was a day after the events in Paris that I decided to stop taking drugs and leave France behind. The next day I was up in the air again, bound for England.

***

In the sky, my dream of a place that was left behind some years ago finally resurfaced. As if triggered by the shock of the events in France. But this time, everything had become very different.

The fog had got thicker and seemed to have spread in every direction. Every inch of that place was now shrouded in a gloomy smoke filled sheet. I wandered into town, passing what was once a stone archway. Decaying yellow flowers lay on the floor surrounded by soil. There was no scent of bread. Only the smell of dirt, loss, and destruction.

In the middle of the town the buildings were completely reduced to rubble. The only light came from a small lamppost standing alone; as if a lone survivor of whatever cataclysm had been unleashed upon the town. The lamppost sat there, illuminating a small area close to the river.

I wandered to the light to find that the bridge was still standing, as if untouched. A gloomy shadow approached as I stared into the river. Two of the ducks were happily quacking about on the dark water below, the third duck, however, floated on its side, like a dead animal washed up on the beach. Still, lifeless, dead.

“What happened to that one?” I asked, pointing at the dead duck.

“Her? Oh, don’t worry, she’s just dreaming,” the shadow said.

I looked up and realised that the man had a face now. The same face as the man I had met in 2015 at the Monkey Park, and the same face I saw in a hospital bed in 1977. The man, of similar build to the man that was here once before, had the face of the Duck Man.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I am you.”

“And where are we?”

“At the Bridge at the Centre of the Universe,” he reminded me.

“Are we dead?”

“There is no such thing as death.”

“But people die all the time.”

“Do they?” he said, a touch of suspicion filling the air around his words, as if questioning the possibility that the notion of demise could even exist.

“They do.”

“Well, if you perceive it that way, you are, of course, free to do that. The way I see it, you might be dead in one thousand years time, but right now you are alive. At some point you were alive. Therefore you are alive now, and will be alive in one thousand years time, even after you die.”

His words were cryptic and didn’t make very much sense.

“I’m not following,” I told him.

“Look at it this way. Let’s say that you are some nameless character in a book. And that book is floating around somewhere in infinity. In the book you are born, and you die. Your whole life, or story, happens in that book. You are finite, already written.”

“I understand that much.”

“Good. Now let’s say that someone reads that book. For the reader, your life is already done, over, mapped out, finished. Nothing will change that. The events of your character in a book can’t be altered now. So for the reader, sat blissfully in infinity, all of the events in the book have already happened before they start to read it.”

“Okay,” I said, half prompting him to carry on, half pretending I understood what he was saying.

“Now, that reader, the outside observer, he could read the book from page one, and finish it on page two hundred and ninety-five, that would be the normal way to go about things. But, nothing is stopping that reader from starting on, say, page thirty. The reader is not bound by the same laws of time as you. For you, your life is written from start to finish. Everything happens as is written, and nothing can be altered. This point is true for the reader too. The events always happen the same, but they can be perceived in any order. Events don’t have to occur the same way around.”

“So I am a character in a book?”

“That’s not relevant. This is just an example of life, the reason why there is no such thing as death. If your life is finite, then for the observer watching on in blissful infinity, your life all happens at the same moment, because, at least as far as a book is concerned, they can choose for it to happen at the same moment. The life you have, life you had, for them, all events must occur simultaneously, because they are observing a finite life from infinity.”

“I think I understand,” I said, shaking my head, as if to shake away the feathers in my brain.

“So, even though you do indeed die, for the reader, you might never die. The reader may never read that part of the book. Or the book might remain in time somewhere, and be picked up again in one thousand years. So even though you are dead, you are always very much alive. Take this river, for example,” Duck Man said, pointing at the water. “This river has been flowing forever, infinitely. In this place things are finite. Everything except for the river. The water has flown through here and watched the town crumble. But because the river is infinite, it is for the river to decide at which point in time it is observing. For us, this time is right now. The river is watching us at this moment, but that isn’t to say that this is the only moment in time to exist right now. Only for the river is this moment happening right now. If the river chooses to, it can change the point in which it is observing. That wouldn’t mean this moment is gone, just not being observed any more. One day the river will watch this point again, so we are never quite gone. This moment is always preserved because the river chooses to return to it.”

“So my life exists right now at this moment, and this moment will exist when I am long gone?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then why am I here now, at this moment?”

“Because this is the moment that is being observed by the river. To go back to the analogy of being a nameless character in a book. It is this moment that is currently being read about. If the reader skips this section of the story, it won’t cease to exist, it still occurs, just not for that reader at that time.”

Silence consumed us for a short while, as I tried to comprehend the words that the Duck Man had told me. My thoughts fractured like a broken jigsaw puzzle in my head; all of the pieces were there, endlessly swirling around in my unconscious mind, but the pieces didn’t quite fit together. They never fit together. Unanswered questions, lost pieces, faces hidden from view.

“Why did you send me back in time?” I asked abruptly and to break the silence.

“That’s enough for today. I have to wake up.”

With that the Duck Man faded into darkness.

I decided to stay a while longer, further processing his words. I climbed up onto the bridge and took a seat, allowing my feet to dangle over the side. Two ducks quacked intermittently, and the third duck continued to float around, looking entirely dead; pulled this way and that by the flow of water and time. Dead, but only in that moment.

I woke up just in time for the plane to hit the runway, my least favourite part of flight.

***

I bought a small but expensive house in London. Money wasn’t an issue, and despite the size of the house, space wasn’t an issue either. I always preferred smaller spaces, that was just how I was, so the house suited me perfectly.

My biggest problem with life was filling in the days to forget about the past. I found that time was difficult to kill when I didn’t have work to go to, or anything to do. Some would think that with all the free time in the world, I would be truly happy, but that wasn’t the case. My own thoughts tortured me, and my boredom tore me apart.

I did anything I could to waste away my days. I started by studying the English language in a private school. With no distractions, my grasp of the English language improved at quite a pace. As I was learning, I recalled a conversation that I had had with Jun about learning every language in the world, with fluency. I considered that option, but even with all the free time in the world, it felt to me like a daunting task.

I took up jogging three mornings a week, even though keeping in shape didn’t seem to be much of an issue either. I started to paint on Sundays. I drank far too much alcohol most days of the week, and when I wasn’t drinking, jogging, or painting, I would use my time to do something that I had always wanted to do, but never had time. I finally decided to learn a musical instrument, the violin. It was at one of those lessons that I would meet my wife.

***

I chose to learn the violin for no other reason than always having a fondness for the instrument and its beautiful sound. I signed up for a weekly one hour lesson with a tutor. Her name was Amanda.

When I arrived at my first lesson, I was surprised to find that my tutor was so very young. She was thirty-one, brown hair down to her neck, a smaller than usual nose, soft brown eyes, and a perfect set of clear white teeth. She wore a pair of glasses that made her look intelligent; not that she needed them, she was a very intelligent woman already. For some reason, I was expecting her to be in her sixties.

Amanda started learning to play the violin at three years old, and had played in orchestras from the age of nine. She graduated from the Royal College of Music, and following that, had pursued a career as a solo violinist, playing in concert halls around Europe until two years ago. When I met her, she was making her living as a full time tutor, twelve students a week.

I found that from the first moment I picked up the violin, that it seemed to be a very complex instrument. Far more complex than I had anticipated.

To begin with, I had suffered with just holding the bow the correct way.

“Thumb round,” Amanda had told me for the twentieth time in five minutes. Maybe this wasn’t for me after all, I had thought, during that first lesson.

After three weeks of practicing open strings, I had got the bowing down. Amanda would still find faults though. Pointing with my index finger on up-strokes, not maintaining the correct posture, raising my elbow, not leading with my wrist. It was fair to say that she was a strict teacher, and I was a terrible student.

“I’m just not cut out for this,” I once found myself saying.

Amanda just laughed, “You’re no worse than some of my other students. And you’re making progress.”

I found myself apologising throughout lessons, though I realised that her other students would have suffered the same slow process of learning, and she would have too when she learnt for the first time. Everyone starts somewhere, and with the violin, everyone starts somewhat slower. I decided that all violinists start off by suffering through that steep learning curve, and it was those thoughts that put me at ease.

“It could be worse,” Amanda told me once. “At least you’re starting from absolute beginner. Often, I teach students who have been playing for years, and were taught badly. It is harder for me to correct their mistakes as they are ingrained into the way that they play. At least with you we can iron them out now, so you’ll play better later.”

Amanda always had an optimism about her that I liked.             

***

After about nine lessons I was holding the violin correctly with the left hand, playing well with the right hand; no more open strings. I was learning the notes and playing something that could at least resemble some kind of music. I enjoyed it. I liked Amanda’s company, and we would always make small talk during the lessons and laugh whenever I made a mistake.

That one hour a week was my escape from the world. During those lessons I could be anywhere. That soundproof room could be Tokyo, Paris, or London. My mind forgot about all of the problems I had had. The people I had lost. The people I had left behind. The things I had suffered, and the sacrifices that I had made. Just me, Amanda, and a chunk of spruce and maple.

The time came when I stopped using the cheap violin that she brought with her to each lesson, and to buy a violin of my own. Amanda offered to come with me and take me to a few shops, after all, she was a professional player, so she would know what would sound good, and what extras I might have needed.

We went to a small, family run shop, and tried a few of the violins, before settling on the one that we both agreed sounded the best. Shoulder rest, case, bow, rosin, and a mute. A full set with everything I needed to advance. After the violin was bought, I had asked Amanda what she was doing for the rest of the day. Nothing it turned out.

“Can I buy you some lunch, as a thank you for helping me?”

“Sure, lunch sounds great,” she had said.

We talked over pasta about her favourite composers, techniques I could follow in my own time, and how long it would take for me to master the instrument. We went on to more personal questions. About her social life, about my hobbies. Whether or not she was single, she was. We had a good time, made each other laugh, and everything felt perfectly natural. Like we had known each other for a long time. Just one year older than me, and incredibly intelligent, creative, and attractive, I felt something with Amanda, something warm. Like a bright light inside her was drawing me closer. Maybe she felt the same way. After lunch, I asked her if I could see her again.