He stopped chewing long enough to heave a measured sigh. “History belongs to the victors, Waldy, as the saying goes. You’re the historian in this family — not me. I won’t argue the point.” A hard laugh escaped him. “Just think if I were to write the story of my life! Do you imagine that the critics would be kind?”
“I don’t imagine they’d be kind at all.”
He shrugged his hunched shoulders. “You ought to know best.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Aren’t you my personal biographer?” He snuffled. “My Boswell? My number one fan?”
“I’m not your goddamn Boswell, you lunatic. I’d like nothing better than to erase you — every last trace of you, everything you’ve ever said, or done, or thought — out of existence.”
“I see!” he said, barely containing his mirth. “But if that’s the case, Nefflein, why am I still here?”
The violence I’d felt when I first discovered him — how many sleep cycles ago was it? — returned with a roar. I took a step toward him.
“Get down off that counter.”
“Time passes more swiftly at this elevation,” my great-uncle answered, stuffing a fistful of sprouts into his mouth. “The nearer to the surface of the earth one is, the lower the frequency of the light waves; and the lower the frequency of the light waves—”
“The longer it takes time to pass.”
“Well put, Waldy Junior! You sound like a Toula at last.”
“I’m a Tolliver,” I said. “Not the same thing at all.”
Waldemar shrugged again. Something he’d said had gotten under my skin, Mrs. Haven, though it took me a moment to see what it was.
“Time isn’t passing,” I told him. “Not here.”
“That’s your game, is it?” He let out a snuffle. “Not to worry! I won’t spoil your fun.”
I took another step forward. He was just out of reach.
“Get down from there, Uncle. Tell me where you’ve been since I last saw you.”
“That would take some telling. After all, ten years have passed since then.”
I saw now that he looked a decade older, perhaps even more: his straw-colored hair had gone gray at the temples, his hands were liver-spotted, and his face was blotched and scored with tiny rifts. The cause seemed to be more than mere aging — his body looked distorted in ways that the passage of time alone could not account for. My head began to spin.
“Are you saying I’ve been trapped here for a decade?”
“Time doesn’t pass for you!” he crowed, laughing openly now. “That was my understanding.”
I covered my ears and shut my eyes and wished him gone with all my strength of will. When I looked again he was right there on the counter.
“Enough of this childishness! We have work to do together, you and I. The future is knocking, Nefflein, whether you choose to notice it or not.”
“We don’t have any future,” I gasped. “You’re diseased, Waldemar, and I’m well. Do you hear me? We’re not the same person.”
The smile left his face. “You’re repeating yourself.”
“Does that bother you, Uncle? I’ll say it again. We’re not the same.” To my own surprise I broke into a grin. “God, that feels good to say. Four simple little words. We’re not the same.”
He studied me a moment. “May I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Who on earth suggested that we were?”
I brought my face close to his, unafraid and triumphant. Then I felt my mind go hot and blank.
“But it’s obvious,” I stammered. “Anyone could see — I mean, our family — your name—”
“I’m curious, that’s all,” he said, lowering his feet to the floor. “I’ve certainly never implied that we were fellow travelers — far from it! — and you’ve gone to great pains to assure me our kinship means nothing. Your father and mother, to judge by your memoirs, kept my existence a secret; and those matzo-chewing aunts of yours — may Jehovah preserve them! — seem to have viewed you as a guinea pig for their sad little experiments, which most assuredly is not how they saw me. All of which raises the question”—here he smiled and draped an arm around me—“who was it, Waldy Junior, who planted the half-baked notion of our spiritual and moral equivalence in your antsy little brain?” He brought his body weightlessly against my own. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think it came from no one but yourself. You sense our connection with the sureness of instinct. You feel it in your muscles and your bones.”
“You’re here to drive me insane,” I said, hiding my face in my hands. “I understand that now.”
“There’s something else you’d like to ask. Why don’t you ask it?”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“I disagree, Nefflein. I think that you do.”
I steeled myself, expecting some new jeer — but his expression was solemn.
“Can you get me out of here?” I heard myself whisper.
“I thought you’d never ask!” he said. “I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Because I’m not the person who did this to you, Waldy.” He regarded me sadly. “I’m not the reason you’re here.”
“You’re lying. Who else could possibly have done this?”
He shook his head. “It’s no use. You’re not listening.”
“Go away,” I said, starting to weep.
I sank to the floor and pressed my forehead to my knees. I should have felt shame for breaking down in front of him — for allowing him to see me at my weakest — but I felt none at all. Why was that?
I heard him curse under his breath as he arranged himself beside me.
“I want to get out of this place,” I said.
“I don’t believe you.”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head a second time, regretfully and slowly.
That jarred something loose inside me, Mrs. Haven. I spun around and caught him by the shoulder. There was no electric charge now, no tingling, no phantom chill. He felt almost as real to me as my own body.
“You come and go,” I said. “Tell me how.”
“I got here the same way you did, Waldy. There’s no difference between us.”
I wanted to strangle him by his antiquated collar, to shake him until the truth came tumbling out; instead I asked him again, as calmly as I could, to explain how I’d been exiled to this place.
“Waldy!” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Can it be you really don’t recall?”
My mind gave a twitch as I tried to reply. It was there, Mrs. Haven, at the edge of the light: the memory of my final instants in the timestream. It was there but it refused to show itself. I shut my eyes and held my breath and waited.
“It’s no use,” I said finally. “I can’t remember.”
“Let me ask you this,” he said softly. “Have you tried simply getting up and walking out the door?”
His face began to blur as he said this, to lose definition — but his expression was sincere, almost beseeching. He was right, Mrs. Haven. I’d never once attempted to escape. I pictured my aunts’ massive door, long since dropped from its hinges, cobbled together out of trash-can lids and drywall studs and casement frames from gutted Harlem brownstones. What need could they have had for such a barrier? What forces had it been constructed to withstand? Was the chronoverse in suspension on the landing outside, sucking against the door like space against an air lock, waiting silently to readmit me?
I pushed past Waldemar into the Archive. Its length seemed greater than I remembered — immeasurably greater — but I was used to the apartment’s tricks by then. I noticed in passing a ream of UCS stationery, a book of Czech folktales, and a balsa-and-playing-card model of the General Lee. When I came to the door I drew myself up, pulled in a steadying breath, and reached for the first bolt.