The Map of Time

Majesty, it became a fad to carry a monkey around on your shoulder, and a walk through the streets of London turned into a rather amusing spectacle. Unfortunately, reality was far less exciting and had to be re- established.’

Wells looked out of the corner of his eye at James, who appeared to heave a sigh, relieved at not having to live in a world where he was forced to go around with a monkey on his shoulder.

‘The blue strings, on the other hand, represent the time lines I have not yet corrected,’ Rhys went on. ‘This one represents the world we are in now, gentlemen, a world identical to the original, but where Jack the Ripper did not mysteriously disappear after murdering his fifth victim, thus becoming a legend, but where he was caught by the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee after perpetrating his crime.’

The writers gazed curiously at the string to which he was referring. The first cutting related the event that had caused this bifurcation: Jack the Ripper’s capture. The next cutting described the subsequent execution of the sailor Bryan Reese, the man who had murdered the prostitutes.

‘But, as you can see, this is not the only blue string,’ said the traveller, fixing his attention on another cord. ‘This second string represents a bifurcation that has not yet taken place, but will happen in the next few days. It concerns you, gentlemen. It is why you are here.’

Rhys tore the first cutting from the string and kept it momentarily concealed from his guests, like a poker player pausing before he reveals the card that will change the outcome of the game. ‘Next year, a writer named Melvyn Frost will publish three novels that will bring him overnight fame and secure him a place in literary history’ he announced.

He paused, observing his guests one by one, until his eye rested on the Irishman. ‘One of them will be Dracula, the novel you have just finished, Mr Stoker.’

The Irishman looked at him with astonishment. Wells watched him curiously. Dracula? he said to himself. What was the meaning of that strange word? He did not know, of course. Neither did he know much about Stoker, save the three or four already mentioned facts. He could never have imagined, for instance, that this unassuming, methodical man, who observed society’s norms and by day adapted with tragic subservience to the frenetic social life of his conceited employer, indulged at night in drinking sessions run by whores of every condition, whose admirable aim was to alleviate the bitterness of a marriage that, following the birth of his son, Irving Noel, had turned into a sham.

‘Although you do not know it yet, Mr Stoker, although you would never dare even dream of it, your novel will become the third most popular book in the English language, after the Bible and Shakespeare’s Hamlet,’ the traveller informed him. ‘And your Count Dracula will enter by right into the pantheon of literary legends, where he will become a truly immortal creature.’

Stoker swelled with pride at the discovery that, in the future the traveller came from, his work would be regarded as a classic. His novel would elevate him to a prominent position in the first rank of present-day authors, exactly as his mother had predicted after reading his manuscript, in a note he had carried in his pocket ever since. And did he not deserve it? He had spent six long years working on the novel, ever since Dr Arminius Vambery, lecturer in Eastern languages at the University of Bucharest and an expert on the occult, had loaned him a manuscript in which the Turks spoke of the cruel practices of the Prince of Wallachia, Vlad Tepes. He had been better known as Vlad the Impaler, owing to his custom of impaling prisoners on pointed stakes and imbibing a cup of their blood as he watched them die.

‘Another of Frost’s novels is entitled The Turn of the Screw,’ Rhys went on, turning to the American. ‘Does the name ring a bell, Mr James?’

The American looked at him in mute surprise.

‘Of course it does,’ said Rhys. ‘As you can tell from his response, this is the novel Mr James has just finished, a charming ghost story that will also become a classic’

Despite his consummate skill at dissimulating his feelings, James was unable to hide his pleasure at discovering the happy fate of his novel, the first he had chosen not to hammer out with his fingers, preferring to hire the services of a stenographer. And perhaps for that very reason, because of the symbolic distance created between him and the paper, he had ventured to speak of something as intimate and painful as his childhood fears – although he suspected it might also have had something to do with his decision to give up residing in hotels and guesthouses and settle in the beautiful Georgian house he had acquired in Rye. It was only then, when he found himself in his study, the autumn sunlight shimmering around the room, a delicate butterfly fluttering at the window-pane, and a stranger hanging on his every word, that James had found the courage to write a novel inspired by a story the Archbishop of Canterbury had told him long before. It was about two children who lived in an isolated country house where they were haunted by the evil spirits of departed servants.

Watching James smile discreetly, Wells wondered what kind of ghost story it was where the ghosts were not really ghosts, and yet perhaps they were, although in all probability they were not because you were meant to think that they were.

‘And Frost’s third novel,’ said Rhys, turning to Wells, ‘could be none other than The Invisible Man, the work you have just finished, Mr Wells, the hero of which will also find his place in the annals of modern legend, beside Mr Stoker’s Dracula.’

Was it his turn now to swell with pride? Wells wondered. Perhaps, but he could find no reason to do so. All he wanted to do was to sit in a corner and weep, and to carry on weeping until not a drop of water was left in his body: he was only able to see the future success of his novel as a failure, just as he considered The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau to have failed. Rattled off at the same speed, alas, as he felt obliged to write all his works, The Invisible Man was yet another novel that conformed to the guidelines set down for him by Lewis Hind; a science-fiction novel intended as a cautionary tale about the dangers of misusing scientific knowledge. This was something Jules Verne had never ventured to do, always portraying science as a sort of transparent alchemy at man’s disposal. Wells, on the other hand, could not share the Frenchman’s unquestioning optimism, and had therefore produced another dark tale about the abuses of technology, in which a scientist, after managing to make himself invisible, ends up losing his mind. But it was clear no one would perceive the real message in his work: as Rhys had hinted, and as he had seen for himself in the horrific news items hanging from the master rope, man had ended up harnessing science for the most destructive purpose imaginable.

Rhys handed the cutting to Wells to read and pass on to the others. The author felt too dejected to wade through the handful of tributes that appeared to make up the bulk of the article. Instead, he confined himself to glancing at the accompanying photograph, in which the fellow Frost, a small, neat man, was leaning absurdly over his typewriter, the source from which his supposed novels had emanated. Then he passed the cutting to James, who cast a scornful eye over it before handing it to Stoker, who read it from beginning to end.

The Irishman was the first to break the deathly silence that had descended on the room. ‘How could this fellow have had the same ideas for his novels as we did?’ he asked, baffled.