Q: A Novel (16 page)

Manalapan is off the beaten path, and none of my friends attend, except for Minnie Zuckerman who lives in Oceanside, Long Island, more than fifty miles away, but “happens to be in the area.” Minnie sits through the entire event, including a seventy-five-minute performance by the Jamaican Butterfly, a putative poet from the Caribbean who free-associates while playing the accordion. At one point he concatenates the words “flippant,” “Chevrolet,” and “legume” to the tune of Peter Gunn, which sounds a bit off on the squeezebox.

We sell and sign books following the event. The Butterfly outsells me. Nine people buy signed copies of his self-published collection,
He Who Goes to the Corner Store and Forgets His Wallet
. Only Minnie asks me to sign
Time’s Broken Arrow
. What my fan base lacks in numbers, though, it makes up for in enthusiasm. Minnie is effusive in her praise, tells me how much she loves the book, even identifies and quotes from her favorite section. William Henry Harrison, having served two terms as president, has returned to his farm and distillery in North Bend, Ohio, and is visited by his great friend Daniel Webster, who has just finished his own term as president. Together they toast the accomplishments of the Whigs, including Webster’s famous agreement with John Calhoun, the so-called Comprehensive Compromise, whereby slavery in the South is protected “for twenty years” in exchange for permanent abolition in the North and certain mineral rights in Utah.

Minnie says, “It’s just so overwhelming to think that, but for a twist of history, the abolition of slavery might have been slightly delayed. And the scene where Harrison and Webster are on the farm together is so moving. They are so pleased with themselves, though, of course, from our perspective they’re on the wrong side of the issue.” Minnie recites the relevant text from memory:

“This is fine whiskey, Mr. Harrison.”

“Fine whiskey, indeed, Mr. Webster.”

Thinking back, Minnie also sent me a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day four years ago. In retrospect, this should also have been a tip-off, if only I had chosen to pay closer attention to the significance of the chocolates and to her.

The entrées arrive,
the sashimi for me, the squid kushiyaki for I-55. The kushiyaki are long skewers, which pierce the fish and onions and various other vegetables. It all looks fine, except the squid. A waiter sets it down on the table together with a ponzu dipping sauce. It is a different waiter than the one who took our order.

“What happened to our old waiter?” I ask.

“Funny thing,” says the new one, “the other guy just disappeared into thin air.”

I-55 says, “I guess he couldn’t handle the pressure.”

The new waiter shrugs and walks away.

None of this appears to bother I-55, and as soon as the waiter is gone, he digs into the kushiyaki.

“I’m surprised you like squid,” I say. “When did that start?”

“Just now,” he says. “It’s delicious. You should really try some.”

“You mean you ordered a sixty-dollar entrée without ever having tried it before?”

“You know the old saying,” he starts.

“Right,” I mutter. “There’s no time like the present.”

The whole time
travel thing frames that old saw in a different light. I am no expert in theoretical physics, possessing only the most rudimentary understanding of quarks and muons and tachyons. But isn’t it obvious that if one can travel from one point in time to another, that every time is like the present?

A British physicist named Julian Barbour says that time itself is an illusion. He says the things we experience are real, but only exist for an instant, during which time literally stands still. The perception of the passage of time, similar to the sense of movement created by the succession of still frames that comprise a motion picture, is an illusion created by the human mind. It follows, therefore, that familiar constructs such as continuity, direction, and progress are also contrivances. All presumably arose by chance and persisted because they conferred a competitive advantage on those who accepted them. It is not difficult to imagine what this advantage might be. One needs to buy into the concept of time, and the interrelatedness of individual moments, to be motivated to plan for the future (by logical extension, also an artificial construct) and do important forward-looking things such as putting money in the bank and bread in the toaster.

There’s not much money in this sort of theoretical physics, so Barbour spent most of his life translating English novels into Russian. This is a bit of an ironic choice since there isn’t much money in English-to-Russian translation either. American books aren’t very popular there. The truth is, Barbour just didn’t want to get caught up in the publish-or-perish world of academia, with its endless committees and conferences and bad sandwiches. This is in its own right ironic because translators have to publish or perish, or if not perish then not make any money from their translating work. But it’s true that there are fewer committees, and one can get whatever one chooses for lunch.

Anyway, Barbour was a translator who thought about theoretical physics in his spare time. He spent thirty-seven years translating the complete works of Charles Dickens into Russian, beginning in 1966 with
A Tale of Two Cities
, proceeding thereafter alphabetically, and concluding finally, in 2003, with
The Pickwick Papers
. Barbour gave few interviews, though at the end of his life he spoke by telephone with a reporter from Southern Illinois University’s newspaper,
The Daily Egyptian
. The colloquy was printed in question-and-answer format between a report on the previous day’s women’s lacrosse game (a victory for the Salukis) and an ad for one dollar off the grilled cheese lunch special at the Carbondale Canteen. The text is set forth below:

Q. Dr. Barbour, you are both the preeminent theoretical physicist of our time and the leading translator of Dickens from English to Russian. (negative response; lacuna)

Q. Do you have a reply to this?

A. I did not detect a question.

Q. I believe a question was implied.

A. I do not believe a question can be implied. It can either be asked or not asked.

Q. All the same. It seems a matter of basic decency to respond to an interrogative statement, particularly during an interview.

A. What is an interrogative statement?

Q. This is a statement that calls for an answer.

A. You mean a question?

Q. No, the concept is distinct.

A. So if I understand, then, by your statement, you are asking me whether it is true that I am the preeminent physicist of our time and the leading translator of Dickens?

Q. Essentially, yes.

A. The answer is no.

Q. Is it true that you do not believe in the past as a concept?

A. I believe that other moments existed and will exist. However, the notion that they are serially ordered is a myth.

Q. What is your favorite Dickens novel?

A.
Our Mutual Friend.

Q. Why is that?

A. I believe the themes and lessons of the book are universal. It is pervasively influential. Nicodemus Boffin, the misanthropic miser who made his fortune from London’s rubbish, is the inspiration for both Citizen Kane and Eugene Krabs, the penurious owner of the Krusty Krab on
SpongeBob SquarePants.

Q. Indeed.

A. I will interpret that as an interrogative statement asking me to offer further evidence of the significance of the book. To wit, John Irving has said it will be the last book he reads before he dies, though of course he cannot know this for sure.

Q. How long did it take you to translate the Dickens
oeuvre?

A. Thirty-seven years start to finish.

Q. Did you ever feel daunted?

A. No. The time flew by.

“Are you sure about Minnie?”
I ask. “You know that she has an uncorrected overbite?”

“I am sure. She is the one who got away.”

“Not Q?”

“Of course Q is without peer. I’m not considering her. I am limiting myself to the realistic alternatives.”

“And Minnie is the best of these?”

“Far and away. I know this is difficult for you to accept, but she is sweet and smart and devoted to you. I know also that no one else better will come along. No more Qs lie on the path before you. Q is unique. You will not fall in love in that way again. But you could love Minnie, and soon you will. In time you will appreciate her finer qualities—her gentle earnestness, her basic decency. I am here to make sure this awakening occurs before it is too late.”

I-55 takes a sip of his Diet Coke and then another bite of the kushiyaki, which he savors. To me, it looks repugnant.

“Doesn’t Minnie have a boyfriend?”

“She does, which is why I am here now. I have ample reason to believe he is not an obstacle here. The desired outcome is achievable if you act quickly.” This strikes me as an odd choice of words.

“Are you sure about this? Breaking up a relationship is a big step.”

I-55 puts down the food and looks up from his plate. This is the most serious he has been to this point. “I know this all seems foreign to you,” he says. “You’re thirty-one. You’re young. You can’t even imagine what it’s like to be old. But time passes in an instant.” He snaps his fingers. “In the blink of an eye you will be me. And then you will look back upon your life with the full measure of regret it deserves. Because what could be sadder than an old man living his life in isolation? A man with no wife, no children, no one to mourn his death. He has no legacy, nothing to show for his life. He—I—will not even leave behind a footprint in the sand.”

“Does leaving a legacy matter?” It is a question I have considered before. “In the scheme of things what does that legacy amount to? In another blink of an eye the legacy will itself be forgotten.”

I-55 shakes his head. “I do not know whether a legacy matters in any meaningful sense. But you cannot imagine the oppressive heaviness of my loneliness. It is as palpable as a weight upon my chest, as relentless as the tides, and unless you act soon, this weight will be yours to bear. You will have nothing to show for your life. The advent of time travel will make it all the worse. You will carry the additional weight of knowing that other yous exist, making the same destructive choices over and over again.”

“Do you cause these other selves to make these choices?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how this could be. But I know they make the choices, and it makes my heart heavy.”

“Is the alternative better? If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”

“The consolations of Kundera will not spare you sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling of your studio apartment in Morningside Heights.” He stares at me directly, purposefully. “Do you understand this?”

“Yes,” I say solemnly, and I believe I genuinely do. “Why is it so important that I do this now?”

“In two months, Minnie Zuckerman’s boyfriend is going to propose to her. You need to prevent that from happening. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

Here, the bill arrives. I give him a moment, but I-55 makes no gesture in its direction. I set my credit card in the check sleeve and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that this whole time travel thing is objectionably expensive.

Chapter Fifteen

F
reud woke gently, the rising sun streaming in off the Gulf of Trieste. Nastasia de Vuona stroked his thick black mane. It had been a long and restless night. Still Freud’s heart soared when he opened his eyes. He loved this apartment. Just a simple one-room flat on the Via Giuseppe Mazzini above the Sopressa Gastronomia, yet it represented everything he loved about Trieste. This was where they spent their nights together.

Freud dreaded the approaching end of his time with Nastasia. He had concluded his research; all that remained was to write up the results. In a few days, he would return to Vienna. Somehow she made him forget all this. Though they had made love twice before going to sleep, Nastasia’s touch aroused him, and soon Freud was again filled with lust. He wrapped a sheet around himself and turned to face her. She was a miracle. The morning sunshine bathed her in a warm aura. With her smooth olive skin and long braided hair, she looked, to Freud, like Mary Magdalene herself, whom, not coincidentally, Freud had always regarded as the most erotic of the disciples.

Nastasia’s was the sensual, robust complexion of virility, nothing like the pasty pallor of the Viennese fräulein Gisela Fluss, the ichthyosaur, who had been Freud’s first love and, only months earlier, his obsession. Now Fluss had been banished to the deepest recess of his memory. On the one occasion he had thought of her since meeting Nastasia, when Eduard Silberstein mentioned her in a post, it was only to wonder, “How did I ever?”

Then again, Trieste was nothing like Vienna. It was late March. In Vienna it would still be winter. But here, near the Slovenian border, at the head of the Adriatic Sea, spring had already arrived. And not just any spring, but a refulgent, glorious spring, beckoning of rebirth. It was too good to be true, like Nastasia herself.

Even how they met did not seem possible. Pure luck, really. Each day after work at the Marine Zoological Station, Freud took a long walk. His hands stained from the white and red blood of the sea animals he bought from the morning catch, his mind dulled by dissection and tedious pencil sketches, Freud craved human contact. On more than one occasion, he lamented to Silberstein that while he saw a great deal of the entrails of eels, he saw very little of the physiology of the Triestians.

Some days Freud walked to the Civico Orto Botanico, where he would admire the extensive collection of simple lotus flowers. Other days he walked around Miramare Castle and sat by one of its twin serene ponds. That day, a pleasant Friday, the winter receding into memory, Freud walked down to the shore, to the Piazza Unità d’Italia. He liked the piazza. He particularly enjoyed the Fontana dei Quattro Continenti, the Fountain of the Four Continents, built in 1751 to represent Trieste as a city of prosperity, following its establishment as a free port by the Habsburg emperor Charles VI and its florescence under his successor, Maria Theresa of Austria. The fountain was composed of four allegorical statues recalling the features of the people populating the continents known at that time—Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. He was admiring Asia when Nastasia approached him from behind.

“It is the grandest of the continents,” she said.

“Truly so,” he said, turning. Sigmund Freud was no fool, particularly when it came to recognizing beauty. He immediately recognized the gift that had been bestowed upon him. Instinct seized control, and he sought to impress.

“I believe that is Jules Verne over there,” he said, pointing across the piazza.

“I think you may be right,” she said. “What is he doing here?”

“I believe he is writing a novel. He lives here sometimes, you know.”

“I had no idea.”

“Do you like Verne?”

“Yes. Very much.”

Things took off from there. They went for espresso at a café adjacent to the piazza. He told her about his mission to identify eel testes. She told him about the University of Trieste, where she studied poetry, and her dreams of someday being a poet herself. She spoke in broken German, he in poor Italian, but they understood one another well enough, particularly when they did not speak.

For his part, Freud could not believe this woman’s fascination with him. He did not think of himself as handsome. Gisela Fluss was the only woman to have ever shown even a remote interest in him. This was the real basis of Freud’s own interest in Fluss. Truth was, the ichthyosaur was not much to look at. Freud’s nickname for her referred superficially to the German meaning of her last name, “river,” but the irony was not unintentional.

Whatever Freud may have thought of himself, Nastasia’s interest in him was sincere and, more importantly, base. His self-doubts notwithstanding, Freud was striking. Young and effete, he had the good looks of his mother Amalia, whom he adored above all others. He had dense black hair, brushed back, and the wisp of a mustache. Nastasia thought he looked like a young Enrico Caruso. Had she lived in an another era, she might have said he looked like Johnny Depp. To her, he seemed exotic.

That evening, after espresso and conversation, Nastasia de Vuona introduced Sigmund Freud to sex. The smell of sausage wafting through the apartment, they made quiet love, bathed in the warm light of the Trieste moon. Then, to Freud’s delight, they conjoined a second time, in a position Freud had to that point not considered, and then, spectacularly, a third, Nastasia contorting her lithe body into a pose Freud had previously thought impossible for a human to achieve. Without doubt, the ichthyosaur could not have coiled herself so.

When they finished, Nastasia held Freud’s head in her lap, stroked his hair, and read Leopardi to him—
“A Silvia
,
”
perhaps his greatest work. First Nastasia read the poem; then she expounded upon its meaning. Giacomo Leopardi, despite all his philosophizing and angst—his nihilism, if you will—could not suppress his effervescent spirit and love of life. Freud listened breathlessly to the extraordinary verse and the profound explanation, and then, wonderfully, they made love yet again.

This was only the beginning. Nastasia was Freud’s entrée to a sensual world of which he had only dreamed. Several weeks later, when Nastasia, of her own accord, brought her supple friend Angelica into the bedroom, Freud thought he would burst open in ecstasy. And two weeks after that, when she brought home Robertino, the nineteen-year-old grinder from the Sopressa Gastronomia, with his bulging biceps and sinewy forearms, Freud was neither jealous nor self-conscious. Rather, to his great surprise, he was titillated. It was a journey of great self-discovery. Could it have begun only eight weeks ago?

“You didn’t sleep last night,” Nastasia said softly, stroking Freud’s head. “What is wrong?”

“I am supposed to report my findings to Claus today.”

“This should be good, no? He will be so proud when you tell him that you have found the testes.”

“It is not that simple.”

Nastasia could see that he was deeply troubled, and so, stroked his head more fervently. This soothed Freud, but aroused him at the same time. It took all of Freud’s self-control not to ravage her. The mere knowledge that he could do so without being refused, that he could have instant relief, was an almost irresistible temptation. Yet, for the moment at least, resist he did.

“You need to understand about Claus.”

“You have never been comfortable with him, no?”

This had never been explicitly discussed between them, but it was true all the same. Something about Claus did not sit right with Freud. In self-reflective moments, Freud wondered at first whether it might be an authority thing. But Carl Bernhard Brühl, the zootonomy professor, had the same status at the university as Claus, and he did not offend Freud. To the contrary, Brühl’s gripping lecture about Darwin’s time on the
Beagle
had thrilled Freud and sent his mind racing with possibility.

The truth was, Freud disliked Claus because he was similar in age to and looked a bit like Freud’s half-brother, Emmanuel, who was older than Freud’s mother Amalia, and whom Freud disliked for complex reasons, some rational, some not. Brühl, on the other hand, looked much more like Freud’s father, whom Freud found more palatable.

That Nastasia could discern his unease without verbal communication impressed Freud, though Nastasia, of course, hardly needed to prove herself to him. For many reasons, he was eternally and irrevocably in her debt. Still, Freud did not validate Nastasia’s intuition. Indeed, he could barely admit the truth to himself. He regarded his feelings about Claus (and Emmanuel) as exceedingly petty, the sort of childish behavior he believed—or hoped—to be beneath him. So Freud ignored Nastasia’s question and instead said, simply, “Claus will be displeased with what I have found.”

“And what have you found?”

“In my dissections, I have found a lobed organ in the intestines of the eel, the lappenorgan. The lappenorgan contains cells which, by their shape, their arrangement, and their proliferation demonstrate the possibility of forming spermatozoa. It is not conclusive evidence, but it is highly suggestive of the testes.”

“Why will this displease Claus?”

“This is complicated.”

“Try,” she said, stroking.

“I owe a debt to Claus. You first need to understand that. Claus was charged with modernizing the zoology department at the university. The outpost in Trieste was part of this effort. He could have seconded anyone to the marine outpost, but he chose me. This is a great honor.”

“And you have honored him with your tireless efforts on his behalf.”

“Be that as it is may, much is riding on my research. A Pole named Syrski claims to have found the gonads in eels. He has failed only to identify the spermatozoa.”

“As you have done.”

“Yes, my findings will confirm Syrski.”

“And this will anger Claus?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Freud sighed. He would so much rather enjoy Nastasia than think about work. But the day was approaching relentlessly.

“Do you know of Darwin?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “Who has not heard of the great Darwin. He is, how do you say it, all the rage.”

“So he is. And Claus, you see, is an avowed Darwinist. He has staked his professional reputation on Syrski’s findings being in error. Claus believes this must be so because man ‘descended’ from androgynous or hermaphroditic origins.”

“Yet you have found the testes.”

“I have.”

“So you believe Darwin to be in error.”

“No, I think Darwin is the single genius of our lifetime.”

“Then how do you explain?”

“I believe Claus is misinterpreting Darwin. After all, it is Claus’s proposition that Syrski must be in error, not Darwin’s. There is no reason to believe that we descended from hermaphrodites. People believe Darwin to suggest that adaptations are consistent and directional, that we ‘evolve’ from less complex to more complex organizational structures. I believe if one reads Darwin for his true meaning, it is just as possible to move from more complex to less complex. Sometimes circumstances will require sophistication. At other times simplicity may be needed. Creatures will adapt to whatever situation confronts them. This is Darwin’s
true
meaning.”

She thought about what he had said for a while, and after she absorbed it said, “The testes are not the end point of evolution. They are simply
a
point in evolution.”

Nastasia de Vuona was truly a remarkable woman. “Yes,” Freud said, awed.

“And they exist?”

“Yes.”

“So say so.” She said this simply and matter-of-factly. It was a naïve sentiment, but incisive at the same time.

“You must understand,” Freud explained, “If Claus’s own underling, working in the laboratory Claus himself established, were to contradict him, this would be most embarrassing to Claus indeed.”

“Yet the truth would be on your side.”

“This will be small consolation for the ruination of my career.”

“And this is why you could not sleep?”

“Not entirely,” he said. “I believe that I could manage the consequences of publishing my true results, no matter how dire. What I cannot manage is leaving you. After I publish, my work here will be over. If I undermine Claus, he will certainly not go out of his way to assist me. I will lose you.”

Nastasia de Vuona took his head in her hands and looked directly into his eyes. “Sigmund, you will not lose me if you do not want
to. I love you, and I have utter faith in you, to do what is just, and to do what is right. If you will have me at your side, I will be there to support you and give you succor. I believe that you can do
anything
.”

Her words, like she herself, were magical. As she caressed him, Freud felt his power grow and believed too, that with Nastasia at his side, he could do anything.

Claus be damned. He would publish the testes.