Making history

'You're sweating. I didn't want to disturb you. But we gotta see this Taylor guy three o'clock.'

'No, no, really. I'm fine. Much better.' I stood and pushed my feet into the Timberlands, trembling with a new excitement.

'Well that's grand.'

I took Steve's arm. 'There is one thing I need you to tell me though,' I said. 'However mad it sounds, will you just answer me one question?'

'Okay, try me.'

I looked into his eyes. 'Tell me everything you know,' I said, 'about Adolf Hitler.'

'Adolf Hitler?'

'Yes, what do you know about him?'

'Adolf Hitler,' he repeated slowly. 'This is someone you know?'

'Never mind what I know,' I almost screamed, 'what do you know about him?'

Steve pondered, closing his dark blue eyes for a second so that the long lashes met, then opening them again as if he had come to a firm decision. 'Nope. Never heard of the guy. He on the faculty? You need to see him?'

'Oh shit,' I breathed. 'Oh holy shit!' I ran to the window and opened it.

'Leo!' I shouted to the campus, 'Leo, wherever you are, we've done it! Jesus holy God, we've only fucking done it!' I trod air through the campus. Every sight, every sound that came to me was new and perfect. This world around me glowed and shone with innocence, hope and perfection.

If only I could get to Europe now! Check out London, Berlin, Dresden, all the buildings standing there whole, firm, unblitzed and all because of me. My God, I was a greater man than Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Albert Schweitzer rolled into one.

Maybe I could track down Leo and see what he was up to. But Leo would not be Leo. He had only ever been Leo because his father had made him so in another life, in an

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alternate, exploded reality. He was now ... what was the name? Bauer! He was Axel Bauer, son of Dietrich Bauer, no doubt enjoying a guiltless, carefree German life somewhere while the real Leo Zuckermann, not cut short aged five in Auschwitz would be out there

too, in Poland perhaps, practising as a doctor, musician, farmer, teacher or - who knows? - a wealthy industrialist providing work and security for thousands.

I wondered why I was in America. My father, instead of joining the army, must have come with my mother to the United States before I was born. Well, I would see them and find out. I must get used to this new world. I had been in it, after all, for less than a day. So much to know. I must slowly grow accustomed to its ways. The old world was now nothing more than a freak construct in my head and in my head alone, a possibility that never happened, a turning never taken. The subject for a horror novel.

Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbriick, Buchenwald, Sobibor. What were they now? Small towns in Poland and Germany. Happy, silly little towns whose names were washed clean of sin and blame.

'Have you visited the charming village of Dachau in Germany? Well worth a stop on the tourist route. Very handy for the grand old city of Munich. I would especially recommend the Hotel Adler. For those on a tour of Saxony and the north, don't forget, after exploring Hanover, that the little hamlet of Bergen-Belsen offers the traveller old world charm blended with modern convenience.'

I giggled and hugged myself inside.

My own fate, marooned in a new history was incidental. No one would ever believe what I had done or from what hellish historical roots I had emerged. How could they?

Doctors would cluster about me and shake their heads at my unique style of amnesia. A strain of memory

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loss that took the form of an accent change, for the Lord's sake. An article or two perhaps in journals of neuropathology, maybe even an essay by Oliver Sacks in his next collection of psychological anecdotes: 'The American Who Woke Up English' or 'A Hampshire Limey in the Court of Connecticut Yankees'.

In time, my accent would become American and I would learn my history. What I had done would go unknown and unacknowledged.

I imagined a scenario in Cambridge, in the bad old world. A man comes up to me and says: 'Revere me. I stopped Peter Popper from being born.'

'Peter Popper,' I say. 'Who the hell is he?'

'Ha!' this man replies. 'Exactly! He was born in 1900 and caused death, disaster, cruelty and horror. He sent the century hurtling into an apocalypse of internecine strife and bestiality beyond imagining.'

'He did?'

'Yup, and I have just returned from stopping him from being born. Thanks to me London is still standing. Peter Popper levelled it with a bomb in 1950. I am the saviour of the century.'

Well, I mean to say ... how would anyone react to talk like that? A pat on the head, some loose change and a hasty retreat. No, I should have to hug to myself and myself alone the knowledge of what I had achieved.

Steve, leading me once more through the campus, smiled at my exuberance.

'Guess that sleep did you good, right?'

'You can say that again. My God this place beautiful.' is

We walked on in silence, winding through lawns and courts, until we reached a large stone building on the edge of campus.

Three young men were standing idly at the doorway watching our approach.

'Oh gosh,' said Steve under his breath. 'What is it?'

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'It's just the guys.' 'The guys?'

'Yeah. Scott, Todd and Ronnie. They were with us last night.'

The taller of them pushed himself off the wall against which he had been leaning and came towards me extending a hand. 'Well, hellayl' he said, in an excruciating English accent. 'How are you, old bean, old crumpet?' 'Beat it, Todd,' said Steve.

'Urn, hello,' I said. 'So you're Todd?'

'That's right, my chap. I'm T-O-dd,' he enunciated the short English 'O'. 'And this is Sc-O-tt and this is R-O-nnie.' 'Well,' I said, attempting American, 'hi there, Tahdd, Scahtt ... Rahnnie.'

They laughed, but with awkward uncertainty.

'I mean, like, this is a gag, Mikey, right?' said Scott.

'Well actually I'm afraid not,' I said. 'I expect Steve has told you all about it. I woke up this morning thinking I was English. I've been unable to remember much about myself. Weird I know, but true.'

'Yeah?' 'Mm-hm.'

'No shit,' said Ronnie. 'You trying to say you don't remember no hundred bucks I lent you last week?' 'Asshole,' said Steve, as they laughed at my discomfiture. 'Come on guys, you said you'd leave us alone.'

'Hey,' said Scott. 'We roomed with this goofball for a whole fucking year. We got as much right as you to hang out with him now he's nuts.'

'Only maybe we don't have the same desire to be close to him, Burns, you know what I'm saying?'

'Look,' I said, alarmed at Steve's embarrassment. 'I know it must seem really crazy to you. It's all probably down to a bang on the head. My parents are English, so maybe that's got something to do with it.'

Scott thumped me on the back. 'We're with you buddy. Just don't expect me to ever buy you any more vodka again. Ever. You got that?'

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'Give 'em hell, Mikey.'

Steve led me through them towards a door.

'Just so long as you haven't forgotten how to pitch your slider,' said Ronnie as we went in.

Jesus, I thought to myself. Baseball.' I don't know the first thing about baseball. And philosophy! I'm supposed to be majoring in philosophy. There are embarrassments ahead.

'And don't let them stick no electrodes in you now, y'hear?'

I almost laughed out loud when I came face to face with Simon Taylor.

The sign on his door read 'Professor S R St C Taylor' and the bright outer-office, where his secretary

sat in front of a computer, had led me to expect the kind of air-conditioned, relaxed, chino-shorts, hi-tec and 'hi there!' atmosphere that seemed to prevail around most of the campus.

'Professor Taylor is expecting you,' the secretary had said, indicating for me and Steve to be seated. 'Would you like some water?'

'Thanks,' I said.

The secretary nodded and turned back to her computer. I looked at her in some confusion until Steve nudged me in the ribs and pointed at a large upturned flagon of water in the corner.

'Oh,' I said, getting up. 'Right. Of course.'

Next to the water dispenser was a tube of conical paper cups.

'Cool!' I said. 'I've seen these so many times in movies. Edward G Robinson, you know? You pour yourself a cup of water, there's a great rumbling of air bubbles in the tank and then you have to drink the water down in one, screw up the paper cone and toss it in a bin. I mean, you can't rest one of these cups on the table can you?'

The secretary stared at me and Steve shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

'Just drink the water, Mikey,' he said.

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'Oh. Right. Yes. For you?'

Steve shook his head and settled back to stare at the opposite wall. I enjoyed my drink of ice cold water, joined him on the sofa and together we inspected a framed poster of Vermeer's Lute Player.

After about ten minutes the door to Taylor's office opened and the man himself appeared.

That is when I almost laughed out loud.

He was at least six-foot-five, wearing a linen three-piece suit, a striped college tie and an Alastair Sim air of baffled surprise. There was a briar pipe clamped between his yellow teeth and above it a thin strip of Ronald Colman moustache. His whole demeanour stank of some ginsoaked British club in Kuala Lumpur, or an adulterous Graham Greene outpost in colonial Africa.

'Ah, gentlemen! And which one of you is Michael Young?' Suppressing a grin, I raised a tentative hand and rose. He looked at me and nodded briskly.

'And you must be Steven Burns, young man?' 'Yes, sir,' said Steve.

'Very good, very good. I wonder if you would be kind enough to hang on here for a while? I may ask you to come and join us later.'

'No problem, sir.'

'Perhaps Virginia might be good enough to hunt up a cup of coffee or a soda for you? Do help yourself to magazines and so forth. Good, good. So, if you'd like to come in, Mr Young, we can have a bit of an old chat.' Taylor held open the door from the top, so I stepped under his arm and into the office, casting a rueful look at Steve over my shoulder.

'Why don't you sit over there, old man?'

The office walls were panelled in dark wood, with a desk in front of the main window. A dimpled leather chesterfield ran along one wall, and it was at this that Taylor pointed.

'Do feel free to smoke. You won't mind my old pipe, I hope?'

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I shook my head and felt for the pack in my shorts. As he leaned forward to light a squashed Lucky I couldn't help gasping out in surprise-

'St Matthew's!' 'I'm sorry?'

'That tie. You're a St Matthew's man.'

He nodded gently and shook out his match. 'I have that honour.' He pulled a chair from in front of his desk and set it in front of the sofa, settling into it slowly. 'That's not a tie many here recognise. Tell me what you know about the place.'

While I prepared an answer, he reached out a long hand and picked up a buff file from the desk and opened it.

I was presented with a problem. There was no point that I could see, in my revealing all that I knew about Cambridge and England. So far as my record would show him, I was born and brought up in the United States. Any knowledge of the strange details of a collegiate university would be most unusual in an untravelled American. The natural show-off in me, however, wanted desperately to baffle him with my intimate understanding of all things English. It would be so hard for him to explain. Perhaps it would force him to believe in astral projection and out of body experiences. I was beginning to understand that I could have fun and power in this new world.

'Well,' I said. 'It's a Cambridge college, isn't it?' 'You ever visited Cambridge, Michael?'

'Er, not exactly, but you know ... I'm interested in English things. My parents and all ... so I've read quite a lot.'

'Mm. You told Doctor Ballinger that you actually lived in Cambridge, I understand? Cambridge, England. And St Matthew's was the college you mentioned.'

'Ah ...'I screwed up my face. 'You see, I woke up really confused this morning. I couldn't remember anything. Anything at all.'

'You could remember how to speak.' 'Well, yes ... obviously.'

'Obviously?'

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'Well, I mean, isn't that usual with amnesia?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'You tell me, young fellow.' We allowed a pause to develop. It seemed to me that it was a battle of wills. Taylor lost. 'Tell me then,' he said, 'what you know about Cambridge generally. Everything that comes to mind.'

'Well, it's the second oldest university in England. After Oxford, of course. It's made up of colleges. Names like Trinity, King's, St John's, St Catharine's, St Matthew's, Christ's, Queens', Magdalene, Caius, Jesus, that kind of thing.'

'Spell "Magdalene" for me.' I cursed myself and did so. 'Good. Now spell "Caius".'

Oh well, I thought. In for a penny ...

Taylor made a note on a pad. 'And yet you knew they were pronounced "maudlin" and "keys", didn't

you?

'Well, as I say, I've read a lot about them.' 'I wonder which books? Do you remember?' 'Er, not really, no. Just books.' 'I see. And what about Princeton? What do you know about Princeton?'

I ransacked my mind feverishly for every nugget Steve had disgorged that morning when we had walked through the campus. 'Nassau Hall,' I said. 'Named after Prince William of Orange-Nassau, though it could have been named after someone called Belcher, but he was too modest. Washington came there and signed the treaty of independence. No, that was Philadelphia, wasn't it? Well, Washington did come here and it was the capital of the union for a time. We are allowed to fly the flag at night, something like that. There's a gate you shouldn't go through until you've graduated. The west end of campus is known as the Slums. Oh, you know, lots of stuff. Wawa Minimart. Sophomores. You know ...'I gestured airily.

'Where's Rockefeller College?' Er ...

'Dickinson Hall? The Tower?'

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I gulped. 'Excuse me?'

'And why, I wonder, did you say that Nassau Hall was named after Prince William of Orange-Nassau and might have been named after Jonathan Belcher?'

'Well, isn't it true?'

'Yes, but you're American, aren't you?'

'That's right,' I said. 'Sure. I've just gotten this silly accent in my head at the moment. But it's going all the time, I can feel it.'

'But you see, an American would never say that something was named after someone, would they? They would say it was named for them.'

'They would?'

'It's one of those slight little differences. Everyone knows about sidewalks and pavements, flashlights and torches, drapes and curtains. But "named after" and "named for" ...

it's very extraordinary that your change of accent should also include so precise a change of idiom. Don't you think?'

I spread my hands. 'I guess it's on account of my parents,' I said. 'I mean, they're English after all. I probably picked it up from them, right?'

'Ye-e-s,' he said doubtfully. 'They've been here a long time, however and you were at High School and prep school in America, weren't you?'

I sat dumbly, wondering where all this might lead. 'So let's talk about your parents then, shall we?'

I looked at the carpet. 'Sure,' I said. 'What do you want to know?'

Taylor stood up and started to pace the room, fruitlessly lighting and relighting his pipe as he talked. 'You know, this is all very peculiar, old chap. You've started littering the conversation with Americanisms like "I guess" and "gotten" and now you come up with "sure", complete with a hard American "r". You went to great lengths to persuade Doctor Ballinger that you were one hundred per cent British, as English as the white cliffs of Dover, raised in Hampshire and now you seem to be trying to convince

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me that you're as American as apple pie and that your proper accent is returning as mysteriously as it disappeared.'

'Are you saying you don't believe me?'

'I'm just trying to understand, old fellow. It all seems just a trifle inconsistent, doesn't it? Much better we have the truth don't you think?'

'What is this, a police interrogation? I mean, damn it, I've met people here who know me. I've seen my driving licence ... fuck it, my driver's license, my rooms m Henry Hall, credit cards, the works. I woke up with a bump on my head and a weird accent. That's all there is to it. I thought the idea was that you and everyone else told me the truth. I'm the one with the fucked memory. All I want is to be able to get on with my life.'

'That's all you want? To forget this ever happened, get on with your life and finish your tripos?'

'Yes! Exactly. I mean, that's what I'm here for, isn't it?' 'And what are you reading?'

'Philosophy.'

'Well now you see I'm really, puzzled. No university in the world except Cambridge uses the word "tripos" to describe a degree course. And we at Princeton certainly do not use the word "read" to mean "study". It's all very difficult to understand.'

'Well bully for you, you've got a case study that can make your reputation. What's the problem?'

'The problem, old chap, is that none of this makes sense.' 'So you think I'm lying? You think I'm trying it on? If so, great. Yes, you're absolutely right. It's all a con. A gag. A jape. A rag. Whatever the right word is. I've done it for a bet. I'm all better now. I'm as American as apple paah. You're darn tooting, pardner, I'm a mean mothuh-fuckah 'merican, and aah thiyunk, if it's all the same to you, aah'll be a-moseying along now apiece, thankee kahndly for your taahm, good suh.'

'Dear me!' said Taylor, eyebrows raised once more in full Alastair Sim astonishment.

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