The Time Traveler's Almanac (88 page)

“He.”

“Whatever.”

Baldassare stood; Satyavati tensed, but rather than closer, he moved away. He stood for a moment looking up at the rows of portraits around the top margin of the room – more precisely, at the white space where the picture of Marlowe had been. A moment of consideration, and Satyavati as much as
saw
him choose another tack. “What about Master Marlowe?”

“If I publish—”

“Yes?”

“I tell the world Christopher Marlowe’s deepest secret.”

“Which Professor Keats has sworn the entire Poet Emeritus project to secrecy about. And if you don’t publish?”

She shrugged to hide the knot in her belly. “I’m not going to find a third tenure-track offer. You’ve got your place with John and Dr. Haverson, at least. All I’ve got is” – a hopeless gesture to the empty place on the wall— “her.”

Baldassare turned to face her. His expressive hands pinwheeled slowly in the air for a moment before he spoke, as if he sifted his thoughts between them. “You keep doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“Calling Kit
her.
”

“She
is
a her. Hell, Mr. Baldassare, you were the one who was insisting she was a woman, before we brought her back.”

“And he insists he’s not.” Baldassare shrugged. “If he went for gender reassignment, what would you call him?”

Satyavati bit her lip. “Him,” she admitted unwillingly. “I guess. I don’t know—”

Baldassare spread his hands wide. “Dr. Brahmaputra—”

“Hell. Tony. Call me Satya already. If you’re going to put up that much of a fight, you already know that you’re moving out of student and into friend.”

“Satya, then.” A shy smile that startled her. “Why don’t you just ask Kit? He understands how patronage works. He knows he owes you his life. Go tomorrow.”

“You think she’d say yes?”

“Maybe.” His self-conscious grin turned teasing. “If you remember not to call him
she.
”

*   *   *

The strange spellings and punctuation slowed Kit a little, but he realized that they must have been altered for the strange, quickspoken people among whom, apparently, he was meant to make his life. Once he mastered the cadences of the modern speech – the commentaries proving invaluable – his reading proceeded faster despite frequent pauses to reread, to savor.

He read the night through, crosslegged on the bed, bewitched by the brightness of the strange greenish light and the book held open on his lap. The biographical note told him that “Christopher Marlowe’s” innovations in the technique of blank verse provided Shakespeare with the foundations of his powerful voice. Kit corrected the spelling of his name in the margin with the pen that John Keats had loaned him. The nib was so sharp it was all but invisible, and Kit amused himself with the precision it leant his looping secretary’s hand. He read without passion of Will’s death in 1616, smiled that the other poet at last went home to his wife. And did not begin to weep in earnest until halfway through the third act of
As You Like It,
when he curled over the sorcerously wonderful book, careful to let no tear fall upon the pages, and cried silently, shuddering, fist pressed bloody against his teeth, face-down in the rough-textured coverlet.

He did not sleep. When the spasm of grief and rapture passed, he read again, scarcely raising his head to acknowledge the white-garbed servant who brought a tray that was more like dinner than a break-fast. The food cooled and was retrieved uneaten; he finished the Shakespeare and began the history, saving his benefactor’s poetry for last.

“I want for nothing,” he said when the door opened again, glancing up. Then he pushed the book from his lap and jumped to his feet in haste, exquisitely aware of his reddened eyes and crumpled clothing. The silver-haired woman from yesterday stood framed in the doorway. “Mistress,” Kit said, unwilling to assay her name. “Again I must plead your forbearance.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Mmm – master Marlowe. It is I who must beg a favor of you.” Her lips pressed tight; he
saw
her willing him to understand.

“Madam, as I owe you the very breath in my body – Mayhap there is a way I can repay that same?”

She frowned and shut the door behind herself. The latch clicked; his heart raced; she was not young, but he was not certain he understood what
young
meant to these people. And she was lovely. And unmarried, by her hair—

What sort of a maiden would bar herself into a strange man’s bedchamber without so much as a chaperone? Has she no care at all for her reputation?

And then he sighed and stepped away, to lean against the windowledge.
One who knows the man in question is not capable as a man. Or
– a stranger thought, one supported by his long night’s reading
– or the world has changed more than I could dream.

“I need your help,” she said, and leaned back against the door. “I need to tell the world what you are.”

He shivered at the urgency in her tone, her cool reserve, the tight squint of her eyes.
She’ll do what she’ll do and thou hast no power over her.
“Why speak to me of this at all? Publish your pamphlet, then, and have done—”

She shook her head, lips working on some emotion. “It is not a pamphlet. It’s—” She shook her head again. “Master Marlowe, when I say
the world
I mean the world.”

Wonder filled him.
If I said no, she would abide it.
“You ask for no less a gift than the life I have made, madam.”

She came forward. He watched: bird stalked by a strange silver cat. “People won’t judge. You can live as you choose—”

“As you judged me not?”

Oh, a touch. She flinched. He wasn’t proud of that, either. “—and not have to lie, to dissemble, to hide. You can even become a man. Truly, in the flesh—”

Wonder. “
Become
one?”

“Yes.” Her moving hands fell to her sides. “If it is what you want.” Something in her voice, a sort of breathless yearning he didn’t dare believe.

“What means this to you? To tell your
world
that what lies between my legs is quaint and not crowing, that is – what benefits it you? Who can have an interest, if your society is so broad of spirit as you import?”

He saw her thinking for a true answer and not a facile one. She came closer. “It is my scholarship.” Her voice rose on the last word, clung to it. Kit bit his lip, turning away.

No.
His lips shaped the word: his breath wouldn’t voice it. Scholarship.

Damn her to hell.
Scholarship.

She said the word the way Keats said
poetry.

“Do—” He saw her flinch; his voice died in his throat. He swallowed. “Do what you must, then.” He gestured to the beautiful book on his bed, his breath catching in his throat at the mere memory of those glorious words. “It seems gentle William knew well enough what I was, and he forgave me of it better than I could have expected. How can I extend less to a lady who has offered me such kindness, and been so fair in asking leave?”

*   *   *

Satyavati rested her chin on her hand, cupping the other one around a steaming cup of tea. Tony, at her right hand, poked idly at the bones of his tandoori chicken. Further down the table, Sienna Haverson and Bernard Ling were bent in intense conversation, and Keats seemed absorbed in tea and mango ice cream. Marlowe, still clumsy with a fork, proved extremely adept at navigating the intricacies of curry and naan as fingerfood and was still chasing stray tidbits of lamb vindaloo around his plate. She enjoyed watching her –
him,
she corrected herself, annoyed – eat; the weight he’d gained in the past months made him look less like a strong wind might blow him away.

Most of the English Department was still on a quiet manhunt for whomever might have introduced the man to the
limerick.

She lifted her tea; before she had it to her mouth, Tony caught her elbow, and Marlowe, looking up before she could flinch away, hastily wiped his hand and picked up a butterknife. He tapped his glass as Keats grinned across the table. Marlowe cleared his throat, and Haverson and Ling looked up, reaching for their cups when it became evident that a toast was in the offing.

“To Professor Brahmaputra,” Marlowe said, smiling, in his still-strong accent. “Congratulations—”

She set her teacup down, a flush warming her cheeks as glasses clicked and he continued.

“— on her appointment to tenure. In whose honor I have composed a little poem—”

Which was, predictably, sly, imagistic, and
inventively
dirty. Satyavati imagined even her complexion blazed quite red by the time he was done with her. Keats’ laughter alone would have been enough to send her under the table, if it hadn’t been for Tony’s unsettling deathgrip on her right knee. “Kit!”

He paused. “Have I scandalized my lady?”

“Master Marlowe, you have scandalized the very walls. I trust that one won’t see print just yet!” Too much time with Marlowe and Keats: she was noticing a tendency in herself to slip into an archaic idiom that owed something to both.

“Not until next year at the earliest,” he answered with a grin, but she saw the flash of discomfort that followed.

After dinner, he came up beside her as she was shrugging on her cooling-coat and gallantly assisted.

“Kit,” she said softly, bending close so no one else would overhear. He smelled of patchouli and curry. “You are unhappy.”

“Madam.” A low voice as level as her own. “Not unhappy.”

“Then what?”

“Lonely.” Marlowe sighed, turning away.

“Several of the Emeritus Poets have married,” she said carefully. Keats eyed her over Marlowe’s shoulder, but the red-haired poet didn’t intervene.

“I imagine it’s unlikely at best that I will find anyone willing to marry something neither fish nor fowl—” A shrug.

She swallowed, her throat uncomfortably dry. “There’s surgery now, as we discussed—”

“Aye. ’Tis—” She read the word he wouldn’t say.
Repulsive.

Keats had turned away and drawn Tony and Sienna into a quiet conversation with Professor Ling at the other end of the table. Satyavati looked after them longingly for a moment and chewed her lower lip. She laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder and drew him toward the rest. “You are what you are,” she offered hopelessly, and on some fabulous impulse ducked her head and kissed him on the cheek, startled when her dry lips tingled at the contact. “Someone will have to appreciate that.”

*   *   *

The door slides aside. He steps through the opening, following the strange glorious lady with the silver-fairy hair. The dusty scent of curry surrounds him as he walks into the broad spread of a balmy evening roofed with broken clouds.

Christopher Marlowe leans back on his heels and raises his eyes to the sky, the desert scorching his face in a benediction.
Hotter than Hell.
He draws a single deep breath and smiles at the mountains crouched at the edge of the world, tawny behind a veil of summer haze, gold and orange sunset pale behind them. Low trees crouch, hunched under the potent heat. He can see forever across this hot, flat, tempestuous place.

The horizon seems a thousand miles away.

*   *   *

Author’s Note:
In the years since I wrote this story, it’s been brought to my attention that there’s a gender-essentialist reading that is so entirely contrary to my intentions that I honestly never realized it existed until someone pointed it out to me. While I’m all for literary ambiguity, a transphobic reading is pretty definitely a flaw in a story that was intended to make the point (among others) that, no matter
what
outside criteria you employ – chromosomal, computational, or otherwise – a person’s identity is what they say it is. Sorry about that; I have tried to do better since.

THE GULF OF THE YEARS

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
TRANSLATED BY EDWARD GAUVIN

Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is a French novelist and short-story writer, with over one hundred short stories and nine novels to his credit. He has been described as one of the most original contemporary French authors. His work has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, and Julio Cortázar. This story was translated from the French by Edward Gauvin and published for the first time in English in the collection
A Life on Paper
in 2011.

In the train, the passengers spoke in hushed voices about the hard times. A young woman with a yellow star sewn to her breast briefly lifted her gaze from the dressmaker’s pattern she was studying. The boy across from her pulled the latest issue of
Signal
from a worn satchel and unfolded it right in front of her face. She lowered her eyes.

Through the window, Manoir watched the few cars, quaint and yet almost new, on the road beside the tracks. He started at the sight of a military convoy. He checked his watch, then settled back. It was still early. The bombing wouldn’t start till later that morning. Far away, young men were waking in their barracks … or were they on their feet already, assembled in flight suits before a blackboard with their wing commander? Early rising schoolboys of fire and death. They were twenty, in fur-lined boots and leather helmets, blue wool and sheepskin. They drank tea and smoked
gauloises blondes.
Manoir’s best wishes went with them. And yet, in a few hours, one of them would kill his mother.

*   *   *

Manoir got off at S. He walked up the Avenue de la Gare, turned left at the town hall, and passed the post office, then the elementary school. He hesitated, but not over which way to go. As a child, he’d pretended he was blind in these streets. He’d try and make his way to school from home with his eyes closed. Sometimes he walked right into a lamppost, or someone’s legs. He cheated, of course: from time to time he opened his eyelids just a bit, long enough to see where he was. But one night he’d managed to make it only cheating three times.

He checked his watch again. In five minutes, a little boy would emerge from his house a few streets away. On the front steps, his maman would kiss him as she did every morning. Satchel in hand, he would cross the small yard. With one last wave, he’d head through the gate and be on his unhurried way to school.