Dennis Danvers - Watch

VIP免费

2024-12-23 0 0 548.41KB 193 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The WATCH

Dennis Danvers

Being the unauthorized sequel to Peter A. Kropotkin’s MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST — as

imparted to by Anchee Mahur,

traveler from a distant future,

A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

In Memoriam: Peter A. Kropotkin 1842–1921

Men passionately desire to live after death, but they often pass away without noticing the fact

that the memory of a really good person always lives. It is impressed upon the next generation,

and is transmitted again to the children. Is not that an immortality worth striving for? — PETER

KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist When we got home, we laid the foundation of two large

cities: one at Shacco’s, to be called Richmond, and the other at the point of Appomattox River,

to be named Petersburg…Thus we did not build castles only, but also cities in the air. —

WILLIAM BYRD II, founder of Richmond, 1733

I Am Reborn

I was suddenly struck by an extraordinary spectacle; on the dark vault of the sky I saw an immense

meteor with a long tail and dazzling green light which lit up the sky and the earth. It fell slowly and

disappeared on the horizon. I had never seen anything like it in my life. We stood as if fixed to the spot. It

seemed to us that there was a mysterious relationship between the falling star and the dying

revolutionary. BORIS LEBEDEV, Kropotkin’s son-in-law, in his account of Kropotkin’s death

February 8, 1921

[In prison] I asked, of course, to have paper, pen, and ink, but was absolutely refused…. I suffered very

much from this forced inactivity, and began to compose in my imagination a series of novels for popular

reading…. I made up the plot, the descriptions, the dialogues, and tried to commit the whole to memory

from the beginning to the end. PETER KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Since my death, I’ve thought a good deal of my childhood in Russia, when I was “Prince” Peter

Kropotkin, a title I renounced at twelve. These recollections serve to remind me that I have always been

— from my earliest memories to this moment (some hours into my new life) — very much the same. It’s

remarkable when I think on it: seventy-eight years, and the same earnest fellow all along. It makes me

wonder if I’ll change this time round, or whether I’ll keep working for my heart’s desire — that the world

should change instead.

My mother died when I was not yet four. I must confess, being so young, I did not really know her. I

have of her a mere handful of memories — each one too grand and charged with emotions to be entirely

trusted even if I could manage to disentangle reality from legend. But there was nothing illusory about the

effect of my mother’s memory on those servants entrusted with raising my brother and me. Even if they

had not repeated it on every occasion, I would have known from the care and concern lavished on her

sons that they thought my mother a fine woman indeed. Their kindness to me can never be exaggerated,

nor their wisdom rivaled by later, more sophisticated teachers. As for inherited traits, I attribute to my

mother whatever characteristics I possess of a worthwhile nature.

My father incarnated the man I did not wish to be. With such a father’s shadow over me, I could never

subscribe to any form of genetic determinism. As for his living presence — the parent’s guiding and

shaping hand — he little influenced my elder brother Sasha and me, for he largely ignored us.

He was a gentleman soldier, an officer naturally, like most of the lesser nobles of his generation who

could imagine no greater contribution to the world than fine uniforms and close-order drills, a ballet

without music or joy. He was as stingy as my mother was open-hearted; as dull as she was lively; as

vindictive as she was loving. He was rich, however, master of twelve hundred serfs, human beings he

presumed to own, tending to land he presumed to own. There was no end to his ownership and

presumption.

I remember one night at dinner — I was eight or so — he told Sasha and me that he had been awarded

a medal for gallantry because Frol, his man, had rushed into a burning house at great risk to himself and

rescued a doomed child. My father’s commander, witnessing these events, gave my father the Cross of

St. Anne straightaway.

“But Father,” my brother and I objected, “it was Frol who saved the child!” Through my childish mind

flitted the fantasy of a just ceremony — complete with military band and a goodly number of horses —

Frol on a platform bearing up bravely beneath the burden of an armload of valorous trinkets.

But Father soon chased that illusion from my brain. “What of that?” he replied. “Was he not my man? It

is all the same.” He believed it, you see — that a man such as himself could possess a man like Frol,

when the truth is my father did not possess the tenth part of Frol’s virtues.

As always, Frol was present that evening, standing in his usual place like a pillar, and just as likely to

move from his post at our father’s elbow. Every evening, with near-invisible signals and gestures, Frol

directed the throng of fifty or so men and women who labored to serve us dinner, who would see us into

bed and tuck us in like tiny infants. It was a form of suicide, such wealth — the complete abdication of all

responsibility for one’s own life.

My father paused in his tale to make some complaint about the meat, and I attempted to catch Frol’s

eyes, but he avoided my gaze and looked darkly out the window into the night. I looked at my father and

thought, without quite knowing what I meant, Someday Frol will toss you out that window into the

snow. Someday it will be your house ablaze with no one to rescue you.

I hated my father. I have never publicly confessed that fact before. In an effort of fairness I can allow that

my father was far from the worst of the serf owners — that even though he forced dozens of young

women to marry young so that they might breed him new “souls,” he never personally raped a woman to

my knowledge; — that even though, on a whim or for some imagined slight, he was in the habit of

condemning young men to a quarter-century stint in the army (a death and torture sentence rolled into

one), he never murdered a man outright. Even on the battlefield.

There were worse men than my father, certainly.

I can further allow that he was a product of his time, an ordinary man who by all the standards of his

class and kin was a good enough fellow. In the terribly conventional neighborhood into which I was born

there were hundreds of fine houses, nearly as many princes decorated for gallantry, but scarcely two or

three opinions to go round. Those who thought otherwise could live somewhere else, preferably in

another country. Be that as it may, he was my father, and I wished that he were better than the times,

better than his peers — wished it in vain with all my heart — and I never forgave him for being what he

was.

In a sense, I suppose, I dedicated my life to not being my father. In that much, at least, I succeeded.

But what does that matter now? That life is over. My father died in 1871. I died in 1921. This is 1999,

almost the end of the millennium. Surely, I can forgive him now.

I have been raised from my deathbed and given a new life by a strange benefactor from the future named

Anchee Mahur. I’m resurrected full-grown like a character in a novel. I’ve kept my name, Peter

Alexeivich Kropotkin, no reason to take another. As Anchee explained, no one is likely to mistake me

for a man who’s been dead for seventy-eight years. According to the papers Anchee gave me, I’m from

Dmitrov, a sly irony since that’s where I died. But instead of my old birth date of 1842, I have a new

one, 1967, even though it seems to me I’ve only been in this new time a matter of hours. In this life, I

start at thirty-two and have no childhood to recollect. At that age in 1874, I was in jail for the first time,

and anything is preferable to that, even if this future, or rather, this present in which I find myself, is thus

far a terrifying place indeed.

I sit inside an enormous airplane. It’s the size of a country house. A nervous glance out the window

confirms that this behemoth is miles above the surface of the earth. Rationally, I should not be alarmed: I

am a man of science. I understand the principles of flight. But still, even though I’ve been here now for

some hours, a terror lingers like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and it won’t listen to reason, as if I were

some wretch out of the Stone Age, cowering before the magic of my betters. The image annoys me, and

I grow impatient with my fear.

When I asked Anchee what future age he came from, he said it was so far hence — thousands and

thousands of years, that a date would be meaningless, and his science would seem like magic to me if he

attempted to explain it. He quoted some fellow named Clarke to back him up on this, which meant little

to me. And I objected that perhaps I was not as dim as he supposed. But even now, in this time, a mere

lifetime into the future, I must face my humbling ignorance. The sentence Anchee gave me to answer all

inquiries — “I am flying to America” — is like some incantation out of 1001 Arabian Nights or else the

ravings of a madman.

But it is not magic quite yet. I understand the airfoil well enough to know that it is physics and not magic

that holds this huge airplane aloft. I hypothesize that the propellerless engines roaring outside the window

work by propulsion, like a rocket. Perhaps most important in quieting my fears, however, is the

demeanor of my fellow passengers — who look no more alarmed than if they were aboard a slow

steamer floating down the Mississippi. This airship, however, is a good deal less sociable than any vessel

of my acquaintance, much to its detriment. I attempt to entertain myself with the fantasy of someday

plying the Mississippi. I have a great fondness for rivers. But the image will not hold, as if borne away on

a current. There is more to my fear than this airplane.

I am an immigrant, my papers say. They make no reference to the fact that I have visited America twice

before; nor should I, Anchee advised. Soon, in a few hours I gather, I will arrive in Washington, where I

will get inside another airplane and proceed to my ultimate destination. RIC, the papers say. An official of

the airplane company, Alicia — a striking young woman with a warm smile, dressed in a military-style

jacket and dark trousers — explained that RIC is a code for Richmond, Virginia.

What an odd choice, I thought immediately.

The Capital of the Confederacy.

When I was last in America in 1901, by a coincidence I met Varina Howell Davis — widow of Jefferson

Davis, the late president of the rebellion — in New York City. Booker Washington joined us, and they

spoke briefly of Richmond. Neither had the fondest memories of the place. For the former slave, it had

been a leading center of the slave trade, for the former first lady, it was a test of her self-proclaimed

abundance of patience. “I could please no one,” she declared. “I have never been anywhere quite so

concerned with questions of etiquette and breeding when there seemed, to an outsider such as myself, so

little of either to be found within the city limits.” I gathered that an anarchist, even a well-mannered one

such as myself, would not have been welcome there.

But that was almost a century ago. Whatever I might find in Richmond, I doubt its choice is random; it,

too, is part of Anchee’s design, whatever that may be.

“Tell no one you are an anarchist,” he advised. “They will not understand what you mean.”

“That will be easy,” I joked. “That’s the state of affairs now.”

I close my eyes to the frantic images of a color motion picture flickering everywhere I turn, but I can still

see it on my retina like bursts of flame. When it began, I forced myself to watch for a while, to see if I

could sort out its constantly shifting perspectives — by my calculations, the product of no fewer than half

a dozen cameras going all at once and spliced together in a furious montage. But I could make no sense

of it, and my head throbbed with the effort. Everyone else stares at it transfixed, tubing snaking out of

their ears. I can hear a faint sound coming from the tubing of the man seated beside me. Voices? I can’t

be sure. He showed little enough interest in my voice when I attempted to engage him in conversation.

Earlier it was his “laptop” which gripped his attention. I was curious about the device, but his tone when

identifying it was such to discourage further questions.

What have I done? What am I doing here? I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m alive, but everyone and

everything I’ve ever known are gone. Why didn’t I just die and be done with it?

But as I draw in an apprehensive breath — a strong, clear breath, free of the bronchitis that has plagued

me since my years in prison — it doesn’t feel like a mistake to be alive. I squeeze the arms of my seat,

made of a curious pliable substance like a stiff clay, and there’s no pain in my hands or my joints. It is

good to live. Life is good. I have always believed this, regardless of the circumstances.

When Anchee came to my deathbed, I already knew I was about to die, even if he had not told me. He

knew the time by heart, it occurs to me, the day and the hour. Three o’clock in the morning, February

8, 1921.

Sophie, my dear wife, was with me. Sasha, my daughter, and her husband, Boris. Earlier there had been

another voice, Atabekian, I thought, but couldn’t be sure. My consciousness came and went, I daresay,

at least as often as my caretakers.

Boris and Sasha were talking excitedly about the most remarkable meteor they had just seen blazing

across the sky. Boris babbled some superstitious hokum trying to implicate me and my ill health in the

business of the cosmos. I wanted to inquire further concerning the shade of green light the meteor

emanated, but it was too much effort to speak, had been for days. And with speech came the coughing,

and life itself had come down to not coughing if one could help it, knowing that soon, very soon, I

couldn’t help it, and I would die coughing. I couldn’t imagine any other death.

They thought I slept, but I was awake, listening. It was my last connection with life — their voices.

Certain profound moments of complete solitude have touched me in the way, I imagine, that mystics

claim to be touched by God. But for me the voices of those I love, or even the memories of them, are a

sufficient reason to live. I listened. Even when my inner eye could no longer mount a reliable image of the

speaker, I listened to their words.

So when there was silence, an absolute silence, I forced my eyes open to see what death looked like.

To my surprise, even without my eyeglasses, I saw perfectly, something I hadn’t done in years. There

were a trio of lights by my bed — the flames of the candles — but they didn’t move, didn’t flicker. Their

light was unnaturally steady. With surprisingly little effort, I rolled over onto my back, and there was

Boris standing over me, frozen in mid-sentence, his hand poised in a passionate gesture. The tears on the

cheeks of Sasha and Sophie didn’t flow. Atabekian stood motionless, the poker in his hand thrust into

the fire. A cloud of sparks hovered above the grate.

The only movement of any kind other than myself was a man, a black man in a white robe or gown,

watching me intently, his eyes blinking. When I caught sight of him, he stepped forward and sat on the

edge of the bed, Boris looming over him like a statue in a park. “Peter Kropotkin,” the black man said.

“Do not be afraid. I am a friend. I have come a long way to see you. I am from the future. My time owes

you a great deal. I have stopped time so that we may speak. You are about to die…”

I stopped listening to his precise words — for they scarcely made any sense to me — and attempted to

fathom what was going on. It was quite the speech, rehearsed I would say, but well delivered. Everything

about him bespoke a sense of purpose. Is he an angel? I asked myself. Does his presence mean there is

a God after all? The thought so distressed me that I felt a wave of revulsion and anger — to have been so

wrong about such a fundamental question right up to death’s door. Worse to imagine a God who would

willingly preside over such widespread suffering and inequity as fill the world. No. No God. I refused to

believe it. No angels either.

“Who are you?” I interrupted in English, for he was speaking English, though in an accent strange to me.

“I am Anchee Mahur,” he said, then summarized his recitation in slow and precise syllables: “I’ve come

from the future to offer you a second life. By scientific means, I’ll restore your body to what it was in

younger and healthier days, then transport you to a different time and place, where you may live out the

balance of a new life. If you so wish it, that is. We force no one.”

I was vainly trying to comprehend what on earth he could be talking about when he laid his hands on my

head, and said, “Allow me,” and all came clear like a sudden burst of inspiration when the most

incredible things seem as if they have been obvious all along. Of course: my body restored to youth and

fitness, transplanted into some future time like a cutting from an old tree.

But I am not a tree, and there was still much I wanted to know. “A time machine?” I asked, and it was

then he claimed his science would seem magic to me, magic he could not explain in anything less than

hours. “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he said. “You don’t have a grasp on the most basic

principles involved.” How odd, I thought. He can stop time, but still be in a hurry. Eager to get on with

things, I would say.

But did it matter, I asked myself, whether I understood the science or not? More important (presuming

this wasn’t just some deathbed delirium) was whether he was telling the truth and whether he could be

trusted — reminding myself they weren’t always the same thing.

He was very handsome and very dark. Also quite young, maybe twenty, with a bit of that cocky

brashness about him, but so old in his bearing — a great dignity that was no mere haughtiness — that I

had no idea what to make of him. I’d never met anyone even vaguely like him before, and I have met a

good number of people from all over the world. It was easy to believe he came from the far future. Much

easier than believing him an angel.

“But what of them?” I asked of the frozen mourners, for it was as mourners that I thought of them even

before Anchee showed up. “Mightn’t they be alarmed when I vanish altogether? That sort of thing could

arouse the most ridiculous rumors. I don’t wish to be the cause of any new religions sprouting up. There

are quite enough already.”

He laughed heartily, and I was glad the future, even his magical future, still possessed a sense of humor. It

was that discovery more than anything else that decided me. (That and the likelihood the entire

experience was hallucinatory). There was no way to know if he was trustworthy. Whether he spoke truth

or delusion would be clear soon enough. “No one here will know,” he reassured me. “When time

resumes you’ll still be here just so, but you’ll go on to live another life unknown to them, in the future.”

“When in the future? In your time?”

He found this amusing, with a little laugh and a big smile. “No, not nearly so far. You couldn’t possibly

adapt. You would say the year 1999. April 8. A lifetime from now.”

“My lifetime, to be exact.”

“Yes.”

“Is there some scientific reason for that?”

“Hmm. More aesthetic I would say.”

“Why do you do this? What possible reason could there be for making an old man young again and

inflicting him on future generations?”

“I don’t know if you can understand.”

He was beginning to annoy me. “Try me,” I snapped. “I’ll concede the science, even the aesthetics, but

not the ethics.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to condescend.”

“Comes naturally, does it? Take your time. I gather that as long as you stay, I don’t cough, I don’t die.” I

tested this theory by sitting up, planting my feet on the floor, standing up effortlessly.

“You don’t want to die?”

“Most definitely not.”

This apparently encouraged him and gave him renewed patience to answer an old man’s questions.

“Time isn’t a single stream,” he said, “but an infinite number coexisting. We’ve learned to…weave them

together by transplanting lives from one time to another. In this way we make new times, new realities.

We move among them, experience them, learn from them.”

“An experiment?”

He made a face. Tact did not come easily for him. “In a sense. Zola, I believe, spoke of his novels that

way. You love the opera, I believe. It’s more like that. An experience. A work of art.”

“With real people. You are tampering with reality itself.” I gestured at our frozen witnesses as evidence of

my accusation.

“No. We’re making new realities. ‘Reality itself’ doesn’t exist.” He held out one hand and then the other:

“There’s the time when Peter Kropotkin is reborn in America, and there’s the time he isn’t. Each is as

real as the other. Each is its own time.” He weighed the imaginary times in his hands and held them out as

if I should choose.

“Once upon a time,” I said.

He laughed again. “Yes! Exactly! You’re just as I imagined you.”

I gathered I was to take this as a compliment. He had the unsettling look of a disciple about him. “How

do you know so much about me?”

“In my time you’re a famous man, Peter Alexeivich Kropotkin. I have studied your life and your works.

That’s why I’ve chosen you. Once we’re under way, I’ll answer any questions you ask. But before we

go any further, I need to know: Do you want another life in America on the eve of the twenty-first century

or not?”

He spoke as if offering me a pastry or a chop, while for me there were still questions within questions, so

many I couldn’t begin to fathom them all, but at the heart of them stood one question, alone: Life or

death? The answer was simple.

“Yes,” I said.

The next thing I knew I stood fully clothed in a cavernous building he called the Moscow Airport. It, too,

was frozen in time, but it was packed with hundreds of people. Their unmoving aspect was too terrifying

to behold en masse. I looked high up into the rafters to avoid their dead gaze. A finch, trapped inside the

building, caught in a moment of terrified flight, hung over my head like some parody of the soul. Anchee

stood at my shoulder reciting instructions, counsel, warnings, strictures — like a priest reciting a

catechism. I only half listened.

Any questions?

Is that what Mephistopheles asked Faust? I thought, almost giddy. At least if he were an angel or a devil

I would know what he was up to. Of course, he could have told me he was an angel, and I would have

had little choice but to believe him. It wasn’t real to me. How could it be? Dead one minute, alive the

next. Not the next minute, almost the next century. This, all around me, was the future. Everything — the

colors, the surfaces, the smells — all were different.

I heard the crinkle of paper and realized I held some documents in my hands. I was in a queue of people

with documents in their hands. My hands — I couldn’t quit staring at them — were young and strong. I

made and unmade a fist, touched the smooth, taut skin of my face. I looked around for a mirror, but

there was none to be seen.

Any questions?

“No,” I said impatiently, and the life and the noise and time started up again, and Anchee had vanished.

In the wake of his departure, I had my first realization of a question I wished I had asked: Am I the only

one here in this place like me — a transplant from a different time? Am I the only variable in this

experiment? The only role in this play?

Overhead the panicked finch scrambled desperately for a purchase on a steel girder, screeching…

“Mr. Kropotkin! Are you all right, Mr. Kropotkin?”

I must have let out an involuntary cry and alarmed Alicia. She stands over me with a look of such

heartfelt concern that I momentarily feel as if I am back in my deathbed. I look around and see that a few

of my fellow passengers are regarding me with alarm as well, though most are still transfixed by the

motion picture. The man who was sitting beside me has gone. I spot him loitering in the aisle. He looks

away, embarrassed for me.

“I’m fine,” I reassure Alicia. “Just a nightmare, an undigested bit of beef. Thank you for asking.”

“Is this your first time flying, Mr. Kropotkin?”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

This seems to please her immensely. “Somehow I thought so. Would you care for something to drink,

Mr. Kropotkin? We have Russian vodka.”

I start to tell her I no longer drink because of my age and my health, but realize my error. “That would be

lovely,” I say. “And please, call me Peter.”

I Learn the Alphabet

Is there a higher aesthetic delight than to read poetry in a language which one does not yet quite

thoroughly understand? PETER KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist

Over and over again in my life I have heard complaints among the advanced parties about the want of

money; but the longer I live, the more I am persuaded that our chief difficulty is not so much a lack of

money as of men who will march firmly and steadily towards a given aim in the right direction, and inspire

others. PETER KROPOTKIN, Memoirs of a Revolutionist

“And what is your job with the airplane company? What are your duties?” I ask Alicia, who will not join

me in a drink because she is “on duty.” The vodka is really quite good and comes in tiny thumb-sized

bottles. I’m drinking the contents of two such bottles over ice in a vessel made of some sort of flexible

glass. Alicia is young and pretty, and I try to calculate the last time I sat and chatted with a pretty young

woman, not counting the pilgrims who came to see the anarchist prince in his dotage, rather like motoring

out of Cairo to see the tombs. I have studied your life and your works…

“I’m a flight attendant, Mr. Kropotkin.”

“Is that like a porter on a train?”

She smiles at this, amused. “Yes, like a porter. It’s my job to see that every passenger on board is safe

and happy.”

I’m quaint, old-fashioned — the silly old man. Then I remember — I’m not old to Alicia, only to

myself. She sees a boyish-looking man in his early thirties. Earlier in the lavatory of the airplane, a

devilishly confusing place if there ever was one, I finally found a mirror. There I was, only younger, my

hair red again, my beard trimmed to an absurd neatness, suiting Anchee’s tastes, no doubt. But that

wasn’t the only way I wasn’t simply a replica of the man I was: There wasn’t a scar on my body, even

those I’d gotten as a boy. I notice a tiny crescent-shaped scar beside Alicia’s left eye and realize I’ve

been staring.

“That’s a good job to have,” I say. “And you are quite good at it. When you saw that I was not only

unhappy, but sharing my unhappiness with everyone inside the airplane and for miles around, you

distracted me from my distress with vodka and conversation. A most effective strategy I would say. I

must inquire, however: If I were to reassure you that I am completely cured of my unhappiness, may we

still continue our conversation?”

She laughs. “Of course. At least until the movie’s over.” She settles more comfortably into her seat. She

has installed us in the back of the airplane, beside what she calls the galley, as on a ship. An airship. The

other flight attendants hurry about attending to the other passengers. I am Alicia’s responsibility

apparently — keeping the anarchist quiet. The others smile at me as they pass, glad to see I’m not

bellowing anymore. I feel light-headed and smile back. “Try to look a little unhappy,” Alicia suggests. “I

don’t want the others to think I’m having a good time.”

I laugh along. “Will frightened do? I’m really quite terrified.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. The airplane is perfectly safe —”

“No. It’s not the airplane that frightens me. I understand the airplane. The airplane is simple physics. It’s

everything else. I’ma…a stranger. There’s so much I don’t know. I don’t know anything about…” I

don’t even know where to start. I raise my hands in frustration, and my vodka lists dangerously close to

the lip of its vessel. The ice clatters dully like pebbles on wood, but flatter in tone, and I can feel the

impact in my fingertips. I set the vodka down on the tray, and the surfaces click together. I rub my fingers

on the tray. I must start somewhere.

“What’s this?”

“You mean the tray?”

“The material, the substance of which it is made. What do you call that?”

She is perhaps a little scared of me at this moment. My ignorance is frightening. “Plastic?”

“Plastic.” I tap it with my fingernail. I tap my nail against the side of my vodka. “Plastic?” She nods. “I

have heard of plastic. Baekland’s Bakelite. But nothing like this.”

She’s fascinated by someone so unfamiliar with plastic. “Most of the plane is plastic,” she says, pointing

here and there. I can see she’s right. “It’s just simple physics, too,” she says reassuringly, “or chemistry, I

guess. Most of America is plastic, as you’ll soon see.”

I try to imagine this. I want to pursue her remark about chemistry. My guess is that this plastic — and

there seem to be several different varieties — is a synthetic substance conceived in the laboratory. But

my scientific curiosity will have to wait. Clearly I’ll have much catching up to do before I can call myself a

scientist again. Other matters are more important now. “Would you be so kind as to tell me about

America?” I ask.

The question seems to surprise her. She positively beams at me — no mere duty any longer, if ever I

was. She likes to help, as most people do in my experience. She takes a moment considering her answer,

clowning with a pantomime of concentration and tortured thought only to mask how seriously she takes

my question.

“You know the America you see in American TV and movies?” — she begins — “it’s almost like that

— not as good in some ways, not as bad in others. You know what I mean?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know these things.”

Her question was rhetorical. My ignorance stops her in her tracks. “American TV and movies? You

don’t know American TV and movies?”

I shake my head no.

“Where are you from? I’ve been all over the planet, and I’ve never been anywhere they didn’t have

American TV and movies.”

“Dmitrov,” I lie. “Outside Moscow.” Seventy-eight years ago.

“So they must have TV there. I’ve watched TV in Moscow. You’re pulling my leg, right?”

Fortunately I know this expression. But not this word she keeps using. I hesitate to admit to further

ignorance, but see no way around it. “What is TV?” I ask.

She claps a hand to her chest, genuinely alarmed. “You don’t know what TV is? Television?”

“I have heard the word ‘television.’ I am familiar with the concept.”

“But you’ve never watched television?”

“I have been out of touch lately…. Working. I write books.” I hope that’s something people still do. I

shrug and smile. “I’ve never seen a television.”

“Movies?”

“Yes. I have seen movies. I like Charlie Chaplin very much. I like…old movies.”

“Is someone meeting you in Richmond, Mr. Kropotkin?”

“Peter, please. No. I know no one there. But I’ll be fine. I’m quite resourceful. I lived a number of years

in Siberia, traveling thousands of miles, with little more than the bare necessities.” I hope to distract her

from my present ignorance and my uncertain future with tales of my exploring past. Now that I’m young

again, they seem more appropriate. They had grown too wistful in my old age.

But she is wide-eyed. “Siberia? You lived in…Siberia?”

“When I was young, yes. Five years, beginning when I was twenty.”

“You poor, poor man.”

“Oh no! It was beautiful, breathtaking. I learned so much there — the land, the people. They were, in a

way, the best years of my life. It was good to be young in the wilderness.”

Something in what I’ve said touches her in some way I can’t imagine. Her eyes fill with tears, and panic

overtakes me. “America,” I blurt out, “tell me about America!” And that seems to steady her, to bring

her back to her duty.

“It’s busy,” she says. “Go, go, go.”

I think of Wordsworth — The world is too much with us late and soon…. “Industrious?”

“No. It’s not work or play. It’s everything. Everything’s in a rush.” My confusion must show on my face,

and she bites her lip in frustration, reminding me of my daughter Sasha when she was wrought up about

something. “It’s like…like…a train — you know trains — it’s like a runaway train.” She laughs.

“There’s a song I like called that, as a matter of fact.”

I imagine American culture as a train rushing out of control, jumping the tracks. Perhaps this is why

Anchee has put me here. “Might there be a revolution?”

She laughs out loud. “In America? No way. People have it too good.”

“They like everything in a rush?”

“Not exactly.”

“But all the people have their needs met?”

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheWATCHDennisDanversBeingtheunauthorizedsequeltoPeterA.Kropotkin’sMEMOIRSOFAREVOLUTIONIST—asimpartedtobyAncheeMahur,travelerfromadistantfuture,orASCIENCEFICTIONNOVELInMemoriam:PeterA.Kropotkin1842–1921Menpassionatelydesiretoliveafterdeath,buttheyoftenpassawaywithoutnoticingthefactthatthememoryofare...

展开>> 收起<<

Dennis Danvers - Watch.pdf

共193页,预览39页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Dennis Danvers - Watch

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: