The Apex Book of World SF 2 Page 10

I trembled. His study felt cramped.

  Then I was standing on the doorstep, looking back. He was sitting in the same hunched pose, clasping his hands in his lap and regarding me with the same insufferable pity. I slammed the door and, in the next moment, was running down the stairs; another blink and I sat in my car, my hand on the ignition key. The time I had left behind caught up with me, swept through me, bringing the flotsam of rage and helpless frustration. I hit the steering wheel, and I couldn't understand why I hadn't hit my father instead, when he told me what he shouldn't have.

  For even if I told myself repeatedly, even so, even so, hoping the undulation of words would loosen the knot in my belly, I knew he told me the truth.

  Iván will die in one year.

  My father was no Cassandra. You had to believe him because he told the truth. We knew that.

  Others thought this a gift, but they never knew the man beyond his reputation and they never got their prophecy. I wasn't even three when my mother left him. As his other women left him later. Not because he wasn't a good person or a suitable partner; he brought in a good income, he was nice and polite, never even raised his voice. But when his eyes turned to inhuman holes, showing the future, all the women fled. They tried to cope with it but it's impossible. You cannot live with someone who is sometimes older than the solar system.

  I had visited him every two weeks but, as I grew up, it became less and less. After I divorced Gábor, I had taken up talking to my father, first on the phone, bouncing accusations back and forth, then more gently and in person, but once that faraway mist appeared in his gaze, I shied away for months. I didn't want to let him chip at my life.

  You can never really get used to having an oracle for a father. You may forget it for a while, but then something happens to bring forth the strangeness. Often, he didn't even realise it. I remember once, when I was still in primary school, he stepped onto the crosswalk while the lights were still red. The horns blared crazily but when I held him back, he pulled me with him and said, "Not yet." He hurried like those who, unlike him, didn't know the exact time of their death. But his steps were surer. He knew that, until his appointed time, he was invincible. I looked up at him as I would upon a wonder. That passed, too. No big deal in being brave if you know you are invulnerable.

  Now I know exactly what Mum must have felt when she took me and left him, finding that my father had ironed and folded her clothes beforehand. She knew she had to break away, but she also wanted to be held back. We all want that deep down inside.

  So Mum entered the flat with the prepared words of goodbye on her tongue. The clothes were folded in neat piles on the sofa.

  "I saw that he wanted to call me back," said Mum after my divorce, when we talked about the end of relationships. That time she was more like a friend. Not so much since. "I saw that his heart was breaking; he wanted to hold me back so much, but he knew what would happen and he didn't even try to change it. I couldn't forgive him for that for a long time. That he didn't even try."

  At first, I didn't understand why my father never attempted to change fate. I tried to pry into it but he always dodged the answer by saying that he didn't see the future in order to change it, the same as I didn't control the lives of people I saw on television. After many years, I realised this was the only answer I would get. He cannot change the future just tell it. He wanted me to know that. That was why his girlfriends had left him. That was why I said goodbye to him when, as we were talking, I saw the planets relay to him a sliver of the future. When you cannot fight fate, it is better not to know.

  No, this is not entirely true. I asked him many times what he saw. I just stopped asking about Gábor.

  As a teenager, I nagged him to tell me if I would pass my exam; would I be a doctor, a pharmacist, a nurse? No, no, yes. It had been a kind of vocational guidance. What could he tell me about Márton? Béla? Attila? When he told me whether the love affair ended in a nice or ugly manner, I realised I didn't need to know. I shouldn't know beforehand, never, because it is poison, a permanent ache, a constant search for faults and defects. Why wouldn't it work? Because of him? Or because of me? Which of us wasn't enough for the other?

  I told my father to keep the messages of the planets to himself. For a while he complied, but I knew from the shadows crossing his face that he saw my future. I pressed my lips together and didn't ask. Perhaps it was defiance rather than the good sense not to let myself be controlled by my father's prophecies. I managed to refrain from asking. For a while.

  When I married Gábor, I asked my father what I should expect. It was stupid but I wanted to be sure I'd done the right thing. I wanted affirmation. When he said, "Three years," I felt betrayed. I didn't invite him to the wedding. He still came; he stood in the back row and didn't come to congratulate us.

  It really was three years. Whether there couldn't have been more time, or whether it was because I'd known from the beginning that I would have only three years with that man and had therefore allowed my marriage to slip through my fingers, I don't know. Perhaps my marriage had been dead even at the moment I said my vows.

  After that I didn't ask him anymore. Not even now. He had decided to tell me because he had no other leverage to hold me back. To protect me?

  Will Iván really die in one year?

  Iván was a doctor, two years younger than me. We both worked in Rókus Hospital, saw each other every day, and even if there was no time for intimate talking, we were never short of a quick touch, a hurried kiss on a flight of stairs where our colleagues couldn't see us. The day after I'd visited my father, I saw Iván briefly several times. Once he stopped for a moment to stroke me between my shoulder blades, then he continued walking. Words burnt my tongue: "I went to see my father and…" How could I end the sentence?

  How could I tell him? I should. He should know in order to be prepared, even if he didn't believe me, even if he laughed at me. Maybe, if he took the warning as a joke, I would be able to see it more light-heartedly. "Ha-ha, what a strange bird my father is," I could say, and pretend.

  As if I didn't know the future. Just like my father does.

  At the end of my shift, I was close to snapping like a cord. I craved a cigarette so badly that when I finally got down to the garden and lit one, I realised only during my third that I couldn't remember smoking the first two. Anna from Surgery came after me, and asked me between two puffs:

  "Why are you so nervous? You two had a fight?"

  I don't think she was really interested. She had her own quiet lake-world; she never let anything from the outside disturb its water. Therefore it was easy to answer.

  "Just my father… Now that I am over thirty, he's started to discipline me and he began with prohibition."

  She nodded, finished her cigarette and pressed out the stub.

  "And you are really going to India?"

  "Of course."

  "Well, good luck! It must be more difficult for a nurse. To talk those weird languages. It's easy for Iván. Patients rarely chit-chat on the operating table.

  She went in.

  Sometimes I think Anna's calmness comes from taking it from others. Her remark hit me. Iván and I had planned everything perfectly. There was a hospital in New Delhi where we would work. It would be good experience for him, but for me…? Patients were patients everywhere, but Anna was right: I would have to talk to them; simply turning the sheets was not enough. Every doctor spoke English well, but my patients…? And the native nurses, my colleagues…?

  Will I feel unwanted? Still, Iván will be there.

  For how long?

  The thought knotted my stomach. When Iván sneaked behind me and touched the nape of my neck, I jumped as if licked by fire.

  "Let's go home!" I beseeched him, looking into his surprised eyes. "The sooner the better."

  "Let's go then," he said. I liked his way of knowing the difference between the important and the unimportant, when fuss was annoying. He didn't expect an immediate explanation. He knew I woul
d come around to that.

  "Well?" he asked later, at home after ten minutes of silence and my nostrils had filled with his cinnamon scent. "What's the matter?"

  "I am afraid of losing you."

  He laughed—not with irony but with relief, as if my fear were a mere silliness not worth even a little consideration.

  "What makes you think you will?"

  "I went to see my father and…" I couldn't bring myself to tell the whole truth. "He forbade me to go with you."

  "Aren't you adult enough not to let him dictate your life?"

  "Of course I am but…"

  Because it was easier, I talked about my father: what it was like to see him only every two weeks, how much he helped or didn't help as I grew up, how I wasn't sure I loved him at all. Iván listened devotedly like a child would, and at the end he generously said he understood. This annoyed me because I knew he knew nothing. I didn't tell him what my father said about his future.

  Unspoken words have weight. First you barely feel it, then, as they proliferate you realise you cannot carry them anymore. You either release them or keep them in, in which case they start to press and pinch your heart. You feel the grip even if you are happy. Especially then.

  I didn't tell Iván, partly because I wasn't sure, partly because I didn't want him to lose the light. He was happy. In a sense, so was I—but while I was laughing, caressing, loving, part of me peeled away from me and, watching us, said, "Not much longer."

  It drove me wild. If you close yourself off to the future, the present seems richer. I felt every moment was perfect because there would be no more like it.

  It's sweeter if you know it will end.

  For two months we carried on like this, until we had only two weeks before the journey. It was the best two months of the five and also the worst. Then, one night as I was straddling Iván, looking down into his face, the knowledge became too heavy. He was calm and young after making love, and more beautiful than any other. He caressed my hip slowly and without thought.

  I'd been saying goodbye for two months and knowing that I'd been doing it, and I had no desire for another ten months of leave-taking.

  He watched me peacefully, vulnerable in front of the future. The dimness of the bedroom made it feel like a nest, but the words gathering inside me kept me from feeling comfortable.

  "I won't go with you to Delhi."

  His hand stopped on my hip.

  "Why?"

  I shook my head. I still didn't want to tell him.

  "I won't go with you."

  "But…" His hand fell down as if broken. After a few long moments, he blinked. "Oh. And when I come back? We continue?"

  I turned away, stared at his books on the shelves. The ones I had read and the ones I wanted to borrow. Maybe from the library.

  "We won't continue," I whispered.

  We held each other, me crying, Iván caressing my back. We made love again, madly, passionately, and at the end, I packed my things and left. Three times I turned back from the door to kiss him and every time it was harder to go. But I had to. I closed the downstairs door feeling ten years older. Nothing inside me, only the weight of emptiness.

  The following week I locked myself in the toilet several times to cry. In the end, I took some leave because if I saw Iván every day, I would turn back, go with him to the little apartment with the naked light bulbs that we had seen on the Internet, and to hell with what will happen in ten months time. I sat in my flat and waited until it was too late to do the paperwork needed for the journey.

  Of course he called. Many times. He was sweet, his voice calm, but I knew that this meant nothing. The phone calls were full of awkward silences when only two wounds were bleeding at the end of the line. I knew more about how he felt than I did about my own feelings.

  He didn't speak of his thoughts, but he spent long, strained minutes remembering our trip to the conference in Debrecen. What it felt like when I fell asleep on his shoulder while he was driving. I told him in turn about waking up when he touched my face—softer than anyone before had been. We recalled the morning stuck on that godforsaken train station because we got off a stop too early, how we sat on the grass-spotted concrete and watched the sun rise above the Hungarian Plain. It was then that we began spinning plans for the Indian trip, and the red light of the dawn had seemed to spill over tropical soil. On the phone, he asked about my mother's varicose leg and I sent word to his sister that there was a sale on skirts in her favourite shop.

  We made everyday chit-chat because it seemed absurd that we were no longer a couple and soon he would leave my life for good, for there is no leaving as definitive as death. We laughed into the phone and sometimes I felt he was sitting very close to me, whispering in my ear—still we didn't meet. We didn't say our relationship had ended because it was different from breaking up.

  He left for India and I went back to work. After a few months, I had to admit that breaking up was meaningless. I was still thinking about him, counting the days, and I was just as scared. The fear wouldn't lift until the year had passed, and maybe not even then. Sometimes you recognise things that are meant to be forever.

  Then I saw my father on the tram.

  I hadn't talked to him since I'd been burdened with his prophecy. My first thought was to get off the tram before he noticed me; in the end I shoved my way to him through the crowd of passengers and, skipping the hello, I said:

  "You shouldn't have told me."

  He started. He hadn't noticed me, and his face showed embarrassment—and maybe a little guilt.

  "How can I keep it from happening?" I grabbed his arm.

  "Put it off, you mean?"

  "Don't play with me. You know very well what I mean! Turn it back, pre-empt it… I know what will happen. I can slow it down, right?" The passengers froze. They turned away with so much care that their attention filled us with tension.

  "You can't slow it down; it is the future," he said and nervously glanced around. "Listen, can we get off?"

  I laughed even though I didn't want to. The laughter choked me.

  "You still want to control what and when you tell me?" I flicked my wrist. "Whatever. Let's get off!"

  The tension followed us to the tram stop. I didn't wait for the people to leave the platform.

  "I don't believe it is futile," I said. "Your prophecies…they cannot be gratuitous. They must be changeable!"

  His eyes were tired.

  "You want an answer from me? I only tell what I see. I don't make up the future. I don't control it."

  I pushed him hard, surprising myself as much as him.

  "I don't believe you haven't ever tried!"

  "I have," he said bitterly. His eyes showed some passion at last. "I have tried but in vain! The only way is acceptance or you go mad. That is my advice to you, as well."

  I shook my head.

  "I wish you hadn't told me at all."

  "I'm sorry." He extended his hand, perhaps to draw me close, but we never felt easy enough around each other for an embrace. I stepped away.

  "Or you told me to make me try…" I looked up, realising this was it. This had to be the reason. "I have to try, maybe…"

  "Don't!"

  "Then why?"

  "Because I, too, can make mistakes!"

  I shook my head.

  "Then tell me what will happen to me! What will I do?"

  A familiar face, yet confusing. Do I love him? Hate him? Despise him?

  "It doesn't work like that. I cannot control what I see and what I don't. Don't you think I would have done it? Judit, listen to me…" He reached for me and this time touched me before I could pull away.

  "Then tell me something, anything that will happen to me before the year passes!"

  The next tram arrived. People shoved past us as they rushed towards the crosswalk. I saw his gaze darken.

  He rubbed his face.

  "One of your patients will die within six months while you are on your shift. I don't know e
xactly when. You won't hear her calling."

  "Would I be able to save her?"

  "I don't know. I'm not a doctor and I see only what I am allowed to see. Judit! There is no point."

  "There is."

  I left him there, without even a goodbye. I didn't care if he was right or wrong, but I knew my only chance was to reject his advice, to believe that fate can, indeed, be changed.

  My plan was quite simple: if I could change my own future, I could change Iván's. Somehow. Because I couldn't believe that fate was already written.

  It was a test. On my shift I did rounds every fifteen minutes to catch anything serious that might happen. We usually didn't have critical-surgery patients; I was sure that if one of them crashed, there would be enough time to notice.

  A few of them indeed had serious conditions, an old woman crashed in the corridor, but I was close by. A month passed, then another, and I became doubtful. What if the danger has already passed? What if the old woman who crashed was the one I had to save? Had I changed the future or not?

  Sometimes I thought I could relax, but then came distress again; I didn't dare break my new habit for fear it would be the hour of the augured death. I began to understand what it was like to be my father: knowing and yet not knowing, waiting for something unclear with the certainty of the threat breathing down his neck.

  I knew nothing about Iván's death, only the approximate time. I imagined him run over by a car, shot by a madman, having a heart attack despite his age, or getting sick from the Indian tap water. Oh my God, he commits suicide because…

  Because I left him.

  No, I told myself, and again: no, no, no, but the thought had already stabbed its hooks into me.

  One evening was especially depressing. The sickly yellowish light of the nurses' room painted the walls, and the clock ticked. I was alone, and suddenly fear seized me because, in that moment, I was sure Iván would die because of me.

  "It's late," said my father when he picked up the phone.

  "How will he die?"

  "Who?"

  "You know who! Iván."