The Map of Chaos (56 page)

“Here, my dear, drink this . . .”

“No!” Wells cried, snatching the glass from her and pouring the contents over his face. “I need water to breathe. My lungs are dry, they hurt!”

“Bertie . . .”

The dousing seemed to calm her husband, but after a while he began howling again, perching on the edge of the bed and glancing about in terror.

“The walls! They're closing in on me, they're crushing me!” He tried to halt their nonexistent advance, arms outstretched, only to fall back on to the bed seconds later, almost unconscious. For a few minutes he lay gasping for air, like a fish out of water. Then it all started again: “My head!” he cried, clutching his skull with both hands even as his infinite mothers pushed downward, the veins on their necks bulging, their faces distorted, gripping the heads of their infinite beds. “They're squeezing my head! It's going to burst!”

“Bertie, no one is . . .”

“Why are you shouting, woman?”

“I'm not shouting, dear . . . ,” Jane assured him, her eyes filled with tears.

“I can hear a woman shouting. No, lots of them . . . all shouting . . . Make them stop! Please, Jane, I beg you, make them stop. I can't breathe . . .”

This wailing went on for many, many hours, and at no point did Jane rush off to fetch a doctor, because, after her initial shock, she quickly realized what was happening to her husband. When, the next afternoon, Wells finally stopped shouting and burst into tears, amid cries of joy, unable to express in words the immeasurable feeling of relief that spread through his whole body, relaxing him to the point where he even thought his bones had shaken loose, Jane remained by his side, stroking his hair, sticky with sweat, until he fell asleep.

“You weren't dying, my dear . . . ,” she whispered gently. “You were being born.”

In fact, had he not been overwhelmed by that tumult of sensations, Wells would also have known instantly what was happening to him. Not for nothing had he been experiencing the most peculiar, beautiful dreams during the past few months. Dreams where he was floating in a warm, pink liquid. Bobbing contentedly in this kind of magical elixir, he occasionally drank from it and could feel the fluid filling all his cavities. He was lulled by a pounding heart, which seemed to have been echoing in that chamber from the beginning of time like some primordial drum, drowning out the other mysterious, soporific noises absorbed by the silence. In this gentle, warm place, Wells felt blessed, safe from all harm. There was no such thing as cold, pain, loneliness, fear, and anger . . . He was filled with a sense of boundless peace and a foolish, inexplicable happiness, but above all a stubborn desire to remain there forever. When he told Jane of these incredibly vivid recurring dreams, they both concluded that Wells was perceiving the sensations all his twins were experiencing as they prepared to be born in their different worlds, sleeping a dreamless sleep in their mothers' wombs. Wells and Jane realized with amazement that they were possibly the only beings in all creation who had been given the privilege of witnessing such a miracle: of going back to their mothers' wombs and feeling afresh all those sensations, forgotten by the rest of humanity. They were the recipients of an unexpected slice of the Supreme Knowledge. And yet, inevitably, they were filled with niggling doubts: if the connection with their twins in this universe was going to be as intense as Wells's dreams suggested, what would happen once they were born? Would the vague murmur they constantly heard at the back of their minds turn into something even worse? Perhaps a deafening clamor of sensations and images, so strong and intense that they would be cast forever into the abyss of madness?

Their gloomy predictions came true two months sooner than expected, because several of Wells's twins decided to bring forward their arrival in this world. It was clear that the different clocks in the different theaters, and even on the different stages, weren't synchronized but kept different times, which meant that some performances started before others. The following months were a complete torment for Wells, who experienced the same horrific seizures each time the miracle of life occurred in another universe. It seemed as if his twins lacked the most basic organizational skills, because, far from arranging to be born all at the same time, they had decided to come out each according to his whim, causing a series of staggered births that threatened to undermine Wells's sanity. There were days when the attacks were less ferocious, probably because fewer twins were being born, and Wells managed to grin and bear them, curling up on his bed in the dark, clasping Jane's hand in his, a vinegar compress on his forehead, as if he were suffering from a common migraine. He was reminded of the regular headaches he used to get and concluded that they must be due to random births of twins in universes where time moved at a quicker pace. He also recalled the strange visions that had assailed him, and that he had assumed were hallucinations caused by the relentless sensation of randomness. Now it dawned on him, not without some trepidation, that he must have been connecting with twins who had already been born. It felt as if he was in a stretch of universal time where the worlds were in a state of effervescence, and his twins were bursting onto the stage like a rowdy horde while all the sensations he had were multiplying infinitely. Often the rate of these births would peak so intensely that Wells could only bear the pain by taking laudanum, which Jane administered in such large doses that he almost lost consciousness. The worst day of all was September 21, 1866, his own birthday. It seemed as if most of his twins had decided to follow their elder brother's example after all, and everything that had occurred before then had been no more than a quick rehearsal before the main event. That day, Jane was convinced that the terror would cause her husband's mind to snap, that his body would be unable to endure the massive doses of laudanum, that he would either die or go insane, and that she would be powerless to prevent it. But Wells's mind did not snap, and although the agony continued for several months while the stragglers were being born, it gradually became less intense, until the day finally came when everything appeared to be over. After two weeks without a single attack, Wells and Jane concluded that almost all his infinite twins had appeared on their respective stages. However, this apparent hiatus brought no respite, because when Wells managed to sweep away the lingering cobwebs in which the laudanum had shrouded his brain, he realized with horror that everything had changed inexorably, and for the worse.

The familiar harmless background noise no longer echoed in his head. Instead, he was plagued by a constant stream of painfully clear images, of violent sensations he could no longer regard as occasional hallucinations. He would suddenly be invaded by a voracious hunger, an insatiable thirst, or the opposite: a fullness that would make him drowsy, or in the worst case he would vomit uncontrollably. For no reason, an animal fear would grip his insides, or he would be crushed by a terrible, savage loneliness. Faces would sometimes appear out of nowhere and lean over him, smiling grotesquely, or he would feel a humiliating wetness between his buttocks, or be overwhelmed by deep sleep, inconsolable crying, or paroxysms of laughter, which would end up infecting Jane . . . Wells was powerless to stop himself, at any moment, from feeling and seeing everything a baby felt and saw from his cradle, or from his mother's arms, magnified and repeated ad infinitum. It was as if he had suddenly been locked in a room filled with bats wheeling round and screeching as they tried to escape. This was nothing like the unsettling sense of fragmentation the two of them had experienced when they first landed in this world, or the pleasant, pink dreams of the previous months . . . This was the insanity of looking at oneself in a hall of a thousand mirrors, if you will forgive the oblique reference, dear reader.

Fortunately, their late lamented friend Dodgson, as a timely precaution they only discovered a month after his death, had named them sole heirs to the copyright of all his works “as a just reward for the inspired ideas they gave me during all those unforgettable golden afternoons.” Charles's reasons for doing this just before he set sail for Europe gave them much food for thought, but regardless of his intentions, the money allowed the Wellses to endure their terrible ordeal safe in the knowledge that they were relatively financially secure. Reduced to a gibbering, incapable, whining wreck, Wells had to give up the teaching post he had secured at an academy in Bromley, the town of his birth, and place himself in the hands of his wife, and it was Dodgson's bequest that enabled them to keep paying the rent on the cottage they had taken in the nearby village of Sevenoaks. During this period, Jane was everything to Wells: mother, friend, and wife to her husband, and the hand he clung to desperately as he dangled by a thread over the abyss. And they both realized how lucky they were that Jane was six years younger than he and so would not have to suffer that torment until sometime in the future. And thanks to this fortunate circumstance, when it did happen, it was Wells's hand that held tightly to hers, preventing her from plummeting into the abyss he knew so well. Neither liked to think what would have become of them if they had been forced to go through that hell at the same time.

But even though they knew they had their economic needs covered, and could count on each other, to begin with they thought they would not be able to bear it, that this really was the end, a fitting punishment for having broken the rules of the game. Did they really believe they could challenge the established order without suffering the consequences? They had fled the square the Creator had placed them on before he rolled the dice. And now they were paying the price. That gift for observation, which had made the universe they came from into a unique, indivisible, unambiguous place, a temple of knowledge, was now their Achilles' heel. Their observational skills didn't seem to work in the same way in their new theater, and instead of condensing all the possible realities into one, it enabled them to see each and every one of the infinite stages through the eyes of all their twins, with whom they appeared to be closely connected. All of a sudden, whether they wanted to or not, they were all-knowing and all-seeing. And that seemed to them like a fate worse than the one suffered by their own dying universe. A fate from which there was no escape this time.

At first, the brutal onslaught of images and sensations that plagued them daily left them in pain and bewildered, with no time to reflect on what was happening to them or to elaborate any kind of response. Once again, they had to resort to laudanum in order to sleep, and the days turned into a long succession of indescribable torments. It was like living inside an iron maiden, feeling the sharp spikes piercing their bodies without touching any vital organs. I can't bear it any longer! Chop off my head! they would cry out to each other. And yet, gradually, as they had done with the sensation of randomness, they managed to contain the deluge of multiple perceptions that threatened to overwhelm them. How? You may ask, dear reader. Well, that is not easy to explain without resorting to metaphors: Imagine that an immense cosmos lives inside every skull, a cosmos largely uncharted, and that Wells and Jane were able to create a magic hole in their consciousness, a kind of conduit through which they transmitted that vast amount of information to the farthest reaches of their minds. Naturally, that information bubbled ceaselessly inside their brains, like an infinite cluster of meteorites hurtling toward a vortex of darkness; but, depending on the day, they were more or less able to habituate themselves to it. And so, ten years later, both were able to state categorically that they had at last managed to control this gift, which they would never have known they possessed had they not left their own world.

Not only did they become accustomed to it, they also succeeded in perfecting their technique. If they concentrated hard enough, they could momentarily close the magic hole pulsating at the center of their mind and capture one of the infinite worlds careering toward it. For a brief moment that world rescued at the last moment floated gently in their consciousness, blotting out all other perceptions. The Observer couple were thus able to spy on the lives of the twins in that world, as if through their own eyes, before the image dissolved. They realized immediately that, ironically, this curious game brought them relief from the intense concentration they had to maintain at all times, because while the hazy world they had ensnared bobbed placidly inside their heads, the deafening roar created by the other worlds subsided.

Once they had discovered this, the couple started to spend the end of their almost invariably exhausting day sitting beside the fire, trying to connect with the mind of one of their twins. They would pour themselves a liqueur and, sipping it slowly, close their eyes. After a few moments' concentration, voilà, they found themselves inside the head of another Wells or Jane, seeing his or her world through his or her eyes and ensconced in his or her most intimate thoughts. It was like setting anchor in someone else's soul, except that this someone was him or her, or a
possible
version of him or her. After the spell had worn off, when the image of that world dissipated and they opened their eyes again, each would tell the other about the lives he or she had glimpsed, like making up stories round the fire, beautiful bedtime stories. And as each tried to captivate the other with the astonishing twists and turns in the story of their lives, they also revealed the secret universes their twins had hidden inside them, that private realm no one else can ever fully penetrate. And so, besides bringing them precious moments of calm, those stories allowed Wells and Jane to get to know each other in a way no couple ever had in any of the possible worlds.

As you will doubtless appreciate, dear reader, for the first few years, when the majority of their twins were still very young, the stories they told each other were little more than amusing, childish anecdotes, like when Wells told Jane that one of his twins would steal his father's cricket bat and use it to have swordfights with his brothers, or that most of them had decided to practice their handwriting by scrawling the word “butter” on the kitchen window. However, the timepieces on some of the stages were running slightly faster, and as many of Wells's twins grew up, fell in love with one of their students (invariably the same frail young girl called Amy Catherine Robbins), and married her, their thoughts and innermost desires gave rise to absurd arguments between the Wellses. Observer Jane wasn't pleased to discover that several of her husband's twins had decided to win her over simply because they thought her liberal ideas and lack of inhibitions would make her a passionate bedfellow. Indeed, she was so upset by it that Wells had to remind her that he wasn't responsible for his twins' actions. Notwithstanding, Jane had stopped talking to him for nearly two whole days, and she was aware of a delicious burning sensation in her guts, something every angry lover invariably felt, but which she was experiencing for the first time.