A Touch of Infinity (16 page)

I had gotten hold of myself now and wanted nothing else than to get on with it. Greenberg helped me into the tweed jacket.

“Beautiful. We have not traduced the tradition of Heffner and Kline. You are a well-dressed, upper-class gentleman, Scott. Now try this hat.”

He handed me a soft felt hat, which fitted quite well.

“My grandfather's,” he said with pleasure. “By golly, they made things to last, didn't they? Now listen carefully, Scott—we have only ten minutes remaining to us. Here's your wallet.” He handed me an oversized, bulging wallet of alligator hide. “Papers, identity, everything you need. Knife, money—change your shoes. These are hand made. Every detail. In the wallet you will find a complete and detailed itinerary, just in case you should forget some detail. This watch”—giving me a magnificent pocket watch with a cover of embossed gold—“belonged to my grandfather. Comes with the hat. Completely overhauled, it keeps perfect time.”

I finished buckling on the excellent handmade Victorian boots. Soft as butter, there would be no problem of breaking them in. Greenberg went on with his instructions, precisely, rapidly.

“You have exactly twenty-nine days, four hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-one seconds. At that time after your arrival, you must be back here in this warehouse and in the same spot. It will then have been abandoned three years, and it should be as empty as when my grandfather bought the property half a century ago. Now in a few minutes I am going to mark your boots with a red pigment that will come off when you step away. No matter how nervous or startled you are upon arrival, a red outline of your boots will remain on the floor. When you return, you step into the same position. Is that clear?”

“Clear.”

“You will walk to the railroad station, take the first train to New York, and buy your round-trip steamship passage immediately. From the time you arrive until the SS
Victoria
sails, you have eighteen hours. Spend them on board ship in your cabin. On the voyage, talk to as few people as possible. Plead seasickness, if you will.”

“I won't have to plead it.”

“Good enough. The ship docks at Hamburg, where you buy a first-class through ticket to Vienna. But of course you know all that, and of course you have detailed written instructions in your wallet. You've brushed up on your German?”

“My German is adequate. You know that. What happens if I don't get back to the warehouse in time?”

Greenberg shrugged. “We don't know.”

“I live on in a world where my father is a child?”

“You keep invoking the paradox,” said Zvi. “Don't do that. It's hurtful to you, hurtful to your mind.”

“My mind's all right,” I assured him. “A man with one foot in hell doesn't trouble about his mind. It's my body that worries me.”

“Only four minutes,” Greenberg said gently. “Would you step over here, Scott. Stand precisely between the electrodes and hold the valise as close to your body as you can.”

“Cigars!” I remembered. “Good God, I don't have a cigar on me.”

“They were better in those days. Pure Havana. Buy some. Now take your place!”

I grabbed the valise, fixed Greenberg's grandfather's hat firmly on my head, and stood where I was instructed to stand.

“One foot at a time,” said Greenberg, kneeling in front, of me. He marked each sole and heel with a dab of heavy red pigment. “Now don't move.”

“Three minutes,” Goldman said.

“You look damned impressive in that hat and suit,” Zvi admitted.

“How long will I be away?” I wanted to know. “I mean in your time. Here. How long do you wait until I return?”

“We don't wait. If you return, you are still here.”

“That's insane.”

“That's the paradox,” said Zvi. “I warned you not to think about it.”

“Two minutes,” Goldman said.

Zvi put his hand on the switch. Goldman's lips were moving silently. Either he was praying or counting the seconds.

“Suppose something's in the way,” I said desperately, “Bales, boxes. How can two objects occupy the same space? What happens to me then?”

“It won't happen. That's also part of the paradox.”

“If it's such a goddamn paradox, how can you be so sure? How do you know?”

I was high-strung, frightened, despairing, and losing my nerve. In a few seconds, I would be hurtled back seventy-five years through time—riding on a set of coordinates that had come out of someone's strained logic, on an equation that had never been proved or tested—into hell or the mind of God or nothingness or the Mesozoic age, armed with a pearl-handled pocketknife and an ancient valise.

“One minute,” Goldman said.

“Do you want to step out?” Greenberg asked, his voice half a plea. He too was frightened. They all were.

I shook my head angrily.

“Thirty Seconds,” said Goldman, “twenty, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero—”

I saw Zvi pulling the switch. When I returned, twenty-nine days, four hours, sixteen minutes, and thirty-one seconds later, his hand was still on the switch and I heard the soft vowel sound as Goldman finished saying zero. I stood there and they stood there, in a frozen tableau that appeared to go on and on.

Zvi spoke first. “Where is the valise?”

“For heaven's sake, let him sit down and rest,” said Greenberg, helping me to a chair. I was shaking like a leaf. Goldman poured a glass of brandy and held it to my lips, but I shook my head.

“Are you cold?” Goldman asked.

“I'm not in shock. Just frightened. Breathless. I had to run the last hundred yards to the warehouse, and I made it by seconds. I threw the valise away.”

“That doesn't matter.”

“He failed,” Zvi said bleakly. “God almighty, he failed. I knew it.”

“Did you fail?” Goldman asked.

“I'll have the brandy now,” I said, my hand still shaking as I took the glass.

“Let him tell it all,” Greenberg said. “There will be no recriminations, no accusations. Let that be plain, Zvi. Do you understand me?”

“Seven years.” There were tears in Zvi's eyes.

“And six million dollars of my money. We both learned something. Tell us, Scott—did you go back?”

I looked at Goldman, the doomed man, the man with the malignancy—and there was the slightest, thinnest smile on his lips, as if he had known all the time.

“Did you go back?”

I drank the brandy, and then I reached into my breast pocket and took out two large black cigars, handing one to Greenberg, the only cigar smoker among them. I bit off the end and lit it, while Greenberg stared at the cigar in his hand. I puffed deeply and told him it was better than anything he'd find today.

“Did you go back?” Greenberg repeated.

“Yes—yes, I went back. I'll tell you. But let me rest a moment, let me think. Let me remember. Jesus Christ, let me remember!”

“Of course,” said Goldman, “you must remember. Relax, Scott. It will come back.” He knew already, this withered man who was visited nightly by the Jewish angel of death. He needed no coordinates or equations; he had touched God briefly, as I had, and he knew all the terror and wonder of it. “You see,” he explained to Zvi and Greenberg, “he has to remember. You will understand that in a few minutes. But he must have the time to remember.”

Greenberg poured me another brandy. He didn't light his cigar. He kept looking at it and handling it. “Fresh,” he muttered, sniffing at it. “Very dark. They must have cured the leaves differently.”

“I went back,” I said finally. “Seventy-five years. It all worked, your machine, your equations, your bloody coordinates. It all worked. It was like being sick for a few minutes—a terrible sense of being sick. I thought I was going to die. And then I was alone in the warehouse, holding my valise, standing right there. Only—” I paused and looked at Goldman.

“Only you could not remember,” Goldman said.

“How do you know?”

“What the devil do you mean?” Zvi demanded. “What do you mean, he couldn't remember?”

“Let him tell it.”

“I had no memory,” I said. “I did not know who I was or where I was.”

“Go on.”

“It's not that simple. Do you know what it is to have no memory, absolutely none, to be standing in a place and not know who you are or how you got there? It's the most terrifying experience I have ever known—even worse than the fear I felt when I stepped into that damn machine.”

“Could you read, write, speak?” Greenberg asked.

“Yes, I could read and write. I could speak.”

“Different centers of the brain,” said Goldman.

“What did you do?”

“I put down the valise and paced back and forth. I was shaking—the way I am shaking now. It took a while. I had a rotten headache, but after a few minutes the pain eased. Then I took out my wallet.”

“You knew what it was? You knew it was a wallet?”

“I knew that. I knew I was a man. I knew I was wearing shoes. I knew those things. As a matter of fact, I knew a great deal. I hadn't become an imbecile. I was simply without a memory. I was alive and aware of today, but there was no yesterday. So I took out the wallet and went through it. I learned my name. Not my own name, but the name you gave me for the journey. I read the instructions, the timetable, the minute directions you wrote out for my journey, the warning that I must return to the exact spot in the warehouse at a specific time. And the strange thing was that never for a moment did I doubt the instructions. Somehow I accepted the necessity, and I knew that I must do the things that were written down for me to do.”

“And you did them?” Greenberg asked.

“Yes.”

“With no troubles—no interferences?”

“No. You see, I knew no other time than eighteen ninety-seven. There I was. Everything was perfectly natural. I could remember no other time, no other place. I walked to the railroad station, and believe me, Norwalk Station was an elegant place in those times. The station-master sold me a ticket on the parlor car. Can you imagine a parlor car on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad? And for less than two dollars.”

“How did you know where to walk?” Zvi demanded.

“He asked directions,” said Goldman.

“Yes, I asked directions. I had no memory, but I was all right, I was at home there. I booked first-class passage on the ship to Hamburg—I spent a few hours wandering around New York.” I closed my eyes and remembered it. “Wonderful, wonderful place.”

“And you could function like that?” Greenberg asked. “It did not upset you that you had no memory?”

“After a while—no. I simply took it for granted. You see, I didn't know what memory was. A color-blind man doesn't know what color is. A deaf man doesn't know what sound is. I didn't know what memory was. Yes, people spoke about it and that was somewhat bothersome—where did I go to school, where was I born, questions like that I avoided because my instructions were to be private. There were some questions—well, I ignored them. It was a good-sized ship, very well appointed. I could be by myself.”

“Hamburg,” Greenberg reminded me.

“Yes. There were no incidents that are important now. If you want me to tell you how it was then, how places were, how people were?”

“Later. There will be time for that later. You took the train for Vienna?”

“Within hours. I followed my instructions and left the train at Linz, but there was an error there. It was midnight, and I had to wait until nine the following morning to catch the train to Braunau. I was at Braunau four hours later.”

“And then?”

I looked from face to face, three tired, aging Jews whose memories were filled with the pain and suffering of the ages, who had spent seven years and six million dollars to enter the mind of God and change it.

“And then my instructions ended. You know what I suffered and what my wife suffered at the hands of the Nazis. But you had not written down that I was to seek out an eight-year-old boy whose name was Adolf Hitler and that I was to cut his throat with the razor-sharp blade of my pearl-handled knife. You trusted me to remember what was the purpose of our whole task—and I had no memory of what you had suffered or what I had suffered, no memory of why I was there in Braunau. I spent a day there, and then I returned.”

There was a long silence after that. Even Zvi was silent, standing with his eyes closed, his fists clenched. Then Goldman said gently:

“We have not thanked Scott. I thank you for all of us.”

Still silence.

“Because we should have known,” Goldman said. “Do you remember God's promise—that no man should look into the future and know the time of his own death? When we sent Scott back, the future closed to him, and all his memories were in the future. How could he remember what had not yet been?”

“We could try again,” Zvi whispered.

“And we would fail again.” Goldman nodded. “We are children pecking at the unknown. Because whatever has been has been. I will show you. Scott,” he asked me, “do you remember where you dropped the valise?”

“Yes—yes. It was only a moment ago.”

“It was seventy-five years ago. How far from here?”

“At the edge of the road at the bottom of the hill.”

Goldman picked up a coal shovel that stood by an old coal stove in the corner of the warehouse and he led the way outside. We knew what he was about and we followed him, through the door and down the hill. It was late afternoon now, the spring sun setting across the Connecticut hills, the air cool and clean.

“Where, Scott?”

I found the spot easily enough, took the coal shovel from the frail man, and began to dig. Six or seven inches of dead leaves, then the soft loam, then the dirt, and finally the rotting edge of the valise. It came out in pieces, disintegrating leather, a few shreds of shirts and underwear, rotten and crumbling under my fingers.