I shrugged and said exactly the right thing. "The point, my dear, is to spend time with you. It doesn"t particularly matter what we"re doing."
Our embarra.s.sment increased when we saw that we hadn"t brought the oars either. We got into the raft and pushed ourselves into the current, kicking with our feet, paddling with our hands, using our rubber thongs to move us toward the center of the river.
We spent hours that day, floating under the sun, talking to each other. We ate bread and cheese from the cool-pack nestled between us; we drank cans of cheap beer. When we got too hot, we would roll over the flexible side of the raft into the river, splash around until we were cooled, and then crawl back in again.
Once I swam up to Erica and, on impulse, slid my hand against the b.u.mps of her spine and pulled her close for a stolen kiss. She let it last a full second longer than I had expected, and time seemed to stop as we hung there in the warm current, buoyant, as if in a place without gravity.
Neither of us worried about how sunburned we were getting. I paid altogether too much attention to how beautiful the diamonds of drying water were as they shone on her skin...
Of all the scenes I relived for the recorders, that is my favorite memory of her.
I had already seen the explosion of the lunar pa.s.senger shuttle on the news before the authorities tracked me down. I watched the rough picture on-screen as the craft took off from the crater floor and headed back on its two-day journey to Earth orbit. At the extreme range of the lunar base cameras, the liquid fuel tanks erupted, turning the shuttle into a cloud of dissipating wreckage and scintillating chunks of ice and frozen air. The image was streaked with pops of video static because the news crews had enlarged it so much.
Erica had been on that shuttle. The irony was, she had gone to the moon base for its bimonthly safety check. Erica had gone to inspect the underground tunnels, the above-surface domes, making sure the wall plates and life-support systems would keep the base inhabitants safe for another couple of months.
No doubt Erica had been perfectly relaxed, thinking her job done, as she departed the gravity sphere of the moon. Someone else had seen to the safety of the transport shuttle...
I got rid of the Transport officials and their preprogrammed sympathy is quickly as their protocol would allow. I stared at the wall, at the home Erica and I had made for ourselves over the years. The lights turned into garish flares through the distorted lens of my tears.
I went into our bathroom and picked up a hairbrush Erica had forgotten to pack. I held it in my hand and stared at it, at the few strands of golden hair trapped by the bristles. She was gone. They would never bring back any sort of remains. A few strands of hair, like golden threads, were all I had left of her.
The first time I went to her apartment, Erica didn"t think I was watching as she primped in front of the mirror, using her brush with a snap of her wrist, before she came back out to meet me. I had dressed in my finest clothes.
Erica had the music turned low, candles lit. She normally didn"t cook, but had studied food-preparation tapes to get everything just right. That she would do that for me impressed me more than the food ever would.
She made me sit down and accept her attentions as she served salad in a transparent bowl, as she ladled steamed broccoli (which I don"t even like) onto the plate, and then bronze-colored chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She poured us each a gla.s.s of frigid burgundy in a chilled goblet, and we proposed a silent toast, smiling.
"Everything perfect?" Erica asked.
I made an "umming" satisfied sound and said, without thinking, "Well, burgundy isn"t really supposed to be chilled. You serve it at room temperature."
Her reaction shocked me. She seemed devastated. My one thoughtless comment had destroyed all of her preparations. I hadn"t realized how fragile she was.
"It doesn"t matter-" I tried to say, but Erica stood up from the table so quickly that her chair wobbled, and she- No. I rewound and edited that from the memory recorder. A trivial detail, not worth condemning to permanent archive. A simple thing. Fingering the controls, I deleted my tactless comment, ran back to a few moments earlier.
I closed my eyes, focusing on my imagination. This would be better for Erica.
Yes. She had kept the burgundy at room temperature after all; we ate artichokes instead (which I do like). The meal went perfectly. We ended up smiling and holding hands across the table, in the light from the candle flame.
The man from the clone-bank sealed Erica"s golden hairs in a sterile, transparent envelope. "No need to worry, sir. This is quite sufficient. I expect no problems at all." He tucked the envelope away. "I am indeed sorry about what happened to your wife, but we can fix that now."
I sat back in their self-adjusting chair and tried to feign a relaxed appearance. I felt so empty, so desperate. Part of this seemed completely wrong, but it also seemed the only thing to do.
The man from the clone-bank-I can"t recall his name now-sensed my hesitation. He was a professional, accustomed to nervous people like me. His words were thin, clipped, not identifiable as any particular foreign accent, but the inflections sounded too processed, as if he had learned to speak through language implants.
"You have been through our counseling sessions, have you not?" he said. His eyes did not waver as they looked at mine; they appeared too small for his face. "You understand that we will use information from these hairs to fertilize a donor egg. The resulting child will be the genetic equivalent of your wife."
He held up one finger; the nails were neatly manicured. "However, she will be a newborn baby. The body will be the same, but the age difference, some thirty years now-"
"I"m taking the star-freighter option," I interrupted.
This caused the man"s eyebrows to raise. "Most people do not. While they can bring themselves to do the actual cloning, they are not willing to abandon their friends, their lives."
"Erica counts more than any of that," I said.
The man from the clone-bank smiled again. "We can help you choose an appropriate star-route with the relativistic difference you desire. When you return, your wife will look exactly as you remember her, the same appearance and the same age. But the memories, ah, the memories..."
I looked the other way. I didn"t want to hear about this part. I had been avoiding it. Those memories were lost, and I would never truly have the same Erica with the same past.
But the man from the clone-bank waited and then said, as if sharing a secret, "For that, we have a way."
Reliving these memories, focusing my mind to resurrect every last detail and bring it into the recorders, is the kindest form of pain imaginable.
Of course, I deleted all memory of my affair entirely. It"s gone. It never happened, as far as the new Erica is concerned. I saw no need to put her through that kind of pain twice.
I realized, even while I was doing it, that I didn"t want her to be unaware of my dissatisfaction, the reasons that drove me to seek companionship and understanding other than her own. Though the affair tore apart many of those precious threads that bound us together, if Erica had been able to learn from it, she could have understood more of the things that I needed, the things I found missing between the two of us.
And so when I rewrote my memories, I retained some of the quarrels and minor resentments we had toward each other. But instead, I rationalized a way for her to recognize her inadequacies before it became too late. Erica saw what she was doing, how her work shut me out, how she paid too little attention to me-and now, in my imagination, I rebuilt some of the events.
This time, she fixed things between us in the ways I wished she had done. This time, as I recall it for permanent record, instead of her red-faced and tear-stained expression, instead of her anguished screaming at me for what I had done to her... this time, still with tears in her eyes, she bowed her head a little, apologized, and said she did indeed love me.
The man from the clone-bank made sure I understood the apparatus before he left me alone in the room with my thoughts and memories. The mesh-net of contact electrodes, the soothing subliminal music in the background, the warm lights and gentle air currents were all designed to lull me into a semihypnotic trance so I could recall everything for Erica.
"The memories we record are extraordinarily vivid," the man said "We take everything. Our lives are more than just grand events, but a sum of little details as well.
"We have a frame-of-reference processor that can shift the viewpoint of everything it records. When you recall something that happened between you and your wife, you naturally remember it through your own eyes, through your own filters of perception. With the frame-of-reference parallax, we can change that, adapt it, so that when we implant those memories into the clone, she will recall them as if she had experienced them herself. In such a way, you can indeed share everything you remember together. She will be your wife once more."
The man"s voice tightened as he looked at me. His mouth curled into a b.u.t.ton of fleshy lips. "Please attempt to remember as many details as possible, even the most trivial things. Summon them up and record them. The more input we have, the more exact will be the re-creation of your wife."
They scheduled me for eleven sessions, and I began the task with relish, because I wanted to relive every single one of my precious moments with Erica.
Our largest fight, the one I regret the most, came when-after months of subtle hints that I carefully ignored-Erica finally approached me and asked me if I wanted to have children. The tone of her voice and the way she acted made it obvious how badly she wanted them herself.
I had heard about the "biological clock," how many of my acquaintances had suddenly and irrationally decided to toss away their careers and have families instead. Erica and I had just moved into a large home of our own. We were moving up in the world. We had everything we wanted. Erica"s sudden request took me by surprise.
She routinely accepted more inspection jobs than she could handle; her job already took us apart more than I wanted. She was always off on the lunar shuttle, or checking the trans-Channel tunnel, or the Bering Straits bridge. Adding a child to the equation (or more than one, from the way she presented the question) would swallow up the little private time that remained to us.
I didn"t feel either of us had the time or the energy to be good parents, and I knew how children could be ruined by parents who had come to resent their existence. I told Erica that we were not in a position to be good parents and therefore, for the sake of our potential child, we should not become parents at all.
This devastated her. She refused to make love with me for weeks. She moped around, saying little to me. The whole thing soured our relationship. It seemed almost a relief when job duties called her to the moon for a routine inspection tour, her last.
Now the most important thing was just to have Erica back.
So, as I recalled our discussions and my persuasive arguments, instead of Erica acting childishly and refusing to see reason, I altered the memories again, making her think for a long while about what I had said. Then finally, with dejection but genuine understanding, she nodded and agreed.
"You"re right," she told me. "It was just a nice thought. I don"t want to have children after all."
I was happy with the new memory. It would make things stronger between us.
I sit at the helm of my ship and think of Erica as the stars rush by. The chronometer continues to reel off two sets of numbers: my subjective time inside the captain"s cabin, and Earth-normal time, which flies by as the ship streams toward its destination. Before long, I can turn the ship around and begin my swift journey back to Earth.
Three decades will have pa.s.sed by the time I return. I have put all our income into trust, and the star-freight company has deferred my salary into interest-bearing accounts with a regular stipend paid to the clone-bank to prepare Erica"s clone.
When I arrive home, she will be the same age, the same appearance... the same person who was lost to me. I lean back and smile again. I picture Erica coming to greet me at the starport. I can"t wait to see her again.
She will be just the way I remember her.
Loitering at Death"s Door.
WOLFGANG JESCHKE.
Translated from the German by Sally Schiller and Anne Calveley Him living thou didst not neglect Whom thou neglectest dead. Give me a tomb Instant, that I may pa.s.s the infernal gates.
For now, the shades and spirits of the dead Drive me afar denying me my wish To mingle with them on the furthest sh.o.r.e, And in wide-portal"d Hades sole I roam.
Give me thine hand, I pray thee, for the earth I visit never more, once burnt with fire.
-Homer, Iliad, XXIII, 70-76 A.
N OCTOPUS has eight lives," Spiros said and thrashed it again and again onto the hollow that death had formed over the years in the marble of the breakwater, "and every life has to be beaten out of it." He grabbed the moist, mother-of-pearl colored body with his strong brown hand and plunged it into the yellow plastic bucket full of water. Its tentacles twitched and wrapped themselves around his wrist. It was impossible to tell whether this was caused by the movement of the water or by the last convulsive spark of life. Then the octopus was slapped again onto the hollow stone and it stiffened on the rebound in numbed agony. The two children watched, fascinated. Spiros" eyes wandered up the girl"s slim, tanned thighs as she squatted in front of him, but found nothing more exciting than a clean pair of white Sunday panties. He noticed that the boy crouching on the breakwater to his left had followed his l.u.s.tful glance and he quickly pretended to wipe the salt water out of the corner of one eye.
"Only a cat has more lives," he said and grabbed the octopus to thrash it once again, "and those rich people buried up there in Nekyomanteion. They"ve as many lives as they can afford." He got up with a groan. Black tufts of hair were visible beneath his torn shirt-bleached from repeated dryings in the sun on dusty cactus plants. The dark skin on his shoulders was spotted with dried-out drops of salt water. His toes, curled in his worn-out plastic sandals, looked like brown gnarled roots.
"What about those rich people?" Eurydice asked, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked up at the fisherman standing in front of her.
"Dead bodies are warmed up in Nekyomanteion," he said.
"They"re not warmed up, they"re brought back to life," the boy corrected pedantically.
Spiros eyed him thoughtfully. "All right, they"re brought back to life," he said. "They have special machines for that purpose. If you have a lot of money, you can go and register. And when you"re dead, your family gathers and each member contributes to the special fund. And then you"re brought back to life for a day or two and you can celebrate with them. It just costs a h.e.l.l of a lot of money!" He shrugged his shoulders. "But it has always cost a lot of money to revisit those long since dead. Why, even more than two thousand years ago, it was a flourishing business in this region."
"That"s not true," Alexandros said. "The MIDAS machines hadn"t been invented then."
"The ancients didn"t need any machines." Spiros spat into the murky waters of the small harbor basin, full of plastic bags that look like faded jellyfish. "But they had machines even then. Several were found in the ruins."
Alexandros shook his head.
"Wanna bet?" Spiros asked and grinned defiantly. Through the gap in his front teeth, where he had been hit by an oar in a storm, his moist reddish-pink gums glistened. Eurydice turned away in disgust.
"Ask your uncle!" He nodded in my direction. "He can tell you a true story about it."
You old fool, I thought. Of course, he knew all about it, everyone knew: "Apostoles, the young son of the hotel owner, actually slept with the Germinada, the Frau Doktor, who directed the excavations at Nekyomanteion..." I hated the toothless smile of the old man. His l.u.s.tfulness and pride in Greek manhood were accompanied by the excited clicking and snapping of his worry beads. "He showed her." Oh G.o.d, I showed Irini... But should I have refused her? Could I have?
"Maybe they did find machines," Alexandros said. "But certainly not American machines-some kind of primitive junk!"
At the pier, the motor of a cutter started up. I sniffed with pleasure, inhaling the smell of burnt diesel oil. You didn"t often smell it anymore. Someone called something, but I couldn"t make out what he was trying to say... The noise of the motor increased. The boat stopped at the entrance to the harbor where the concrete breakwater stuck out into the glistening ocean like a large rusty ruler. The waves left in the boat"s wake swept along the quay, setting the plastic jellyfish into motion.
Eurydice grabbed the tentacles of the octopus and let one slide over her small hand. "Can it be brought back to life, too?"
Spiros picked up the creature and looked at it. "My G.o.d, Eurydice, I"m glad the beast is dead." He laughed. "But who knows, perhaps they could also bring it back to life."
"Only if they"d made a recording first," Alexandros said. "Only then can a copy be made."
Lost in thought, Spiros looked at the boy. "It would be a good thing to have such a recording. Then I could bring an octopus back to life every day. There are hardly any left out there." He pointed with a nod of his head in the direction of the sea. "I used to be able to catch a dozen or more in one night." He emptied the plastic bucket and threw the octopus into it.
Alexandros strolled up to my table. "What does he mean by that?" he asked, wrinkling his brow. "Bringing dead people back to life in Nekyomanteion is really something new, isn"t it? How could they have brought people back to life more than two thousand years ago?" He had the somewhat plump figure and round face of Leandros, his father, but the relentless curiosity of my brother Nikos. Be thankful, I thought, that you don"t have his eyes, that pitiless glance of an inquisitorial schoolmaster.
"How is Uncle Nikos getting here?" I asked.
"He"s coming by car with Uncle Dimitrios." The wrinkles on his brow deepened. "What does Spiros mean when he says that the dead were brought back to life two thousand years ago?"
"That was all just a big fake."
As a youth, I had helped with the excavations of the old Nekyomanteion. A German woman supervised the work, and occasionally a Professor came from Athens. He always stayed at my parents" hotel. And the Germinada, the Frau Doktor, sometimes came for a meal and told us stories of ancient times.
Irini, do you remember how bright it was all around us? My G.o.d, where has time flown? Life? She was then perhaps in her mid-forties. She must be over seventy now. An old woman? No, I remember you much younger than you really were then, Irini.
Time is so cruel!
"How could they fake something like that? Either the dead can be brought back to life or they can"t," Alexandros said.
"I"ll tell you about it some other time."
"But I want to know about it now!"
I looked up at the ugly, modern, concrete hotel at the other end of the bay, covered with large scarlet spots from some kind of highly poisonous pesticide they had used to try and control the lichens growing in the concrete walls. In those days of my youth, there used to be an old windmill on that site. In summer, guests could buy tickets for the excursion boats to Paxos and Kerkira. When the windmill was freshly painted, it had seemed so white and light, so weightless in spite of its bulky form-as if it just needed a slight wind to send it flying away with the clouds.
"It was a clever, lucrative swindle that flourished for years on end. They promised to lead people to the entrance of Hades where they could then meet their dead relatives and friends."