Slade House (22 page)

She's speaking English, but what's she talking about? “Who
are
you?”

The woman stares at me. Which is very rude. Don't Africans teach their children manners? “I am Mercy, Miss Grayer.”

“Well then, Mercy—get me…Get me…” I know his name, I know I know his name, but his name doesn't know me. “My brother. This instant. He'll sort it all out.”

“I'm sorry,” says Mercy. “Your mind's decaying.” She rises to her feet and picks up our…what's it called? The thing the candle sits in? She's going to steal it! “Put that back!” I try to stop her, but my feet just twitch uselessly in a pile of dirt. This place is filthy. Where's the housekeeper? Why is this African holding up our candlestick? That's the word: candlestick! We've had it in the family for generations. It's three thousand years old. It's older than Jesus. It's from Nineveh. I call out, “Bring me Jonah this instant!”

The African lifts it up, like a, like a, you know, like a thing…and swings its heavy base into the mirror.

Daylight floods and snowflakes swarm through the splintered plane of the aperture, covering the floorboards, scurrying around the darkest recesses of the attic, like inquisitive schoolchildren. My body has shriveled up around me like a punctured and bony balloon. Untied, unzipped, unstrapped from its senility-riddled brain, my soul floats free. Marinus, without a backwards glance, steps through the aperture even as the attic fades away into a wintry sky, above an anonymous town. It's over. Without its birth-body anchoring it to the world, the soul of Norah Grayer is dissolving; momentarily it hovers in the midair space once occupied by the attic of Slade House. Was that my life? Was that all? There was supposed to be more. Many, many decades more. My cunning had earned it. Look below: roofs, cars, other lives, and a woman putting on a green beret, leaving the scene via an alley, with a stolen candlestick still in her hand. There is no farewell in the busy air, no hymn, no message. Only snow, snow, snow and the inexorable pull of the Dusk.

Not yet. Not
yet.
Dusk pulls, but damn the Dusk, damn Marinus, I'll pull harder.
She killed my brother and now she's walking free.
Let Grief pull with me; let hatred strengthen my sinews. My stock of seconds may be meager but if there's a way to avenge hot-headed Jonah, my precious twin, my truest other half, I'll find that way, however faint the traces. Brick chimneys; slate roofs; thin, narrow gardens with sheds, kennels and compost heaps. Where might a vengeful soul find refuge? A new birth-body? Who can I see? A brother and sister, at play in the snow…They're old, they're already too interwoven with their own souls. Another boy jumps on a trampoline…he's even older, of no use. A magpie lands on a garden shed with a crawk and a tinny thump but a human soul cannot inhabit an animal's brain; a garden away, a back door opens, and a woman in a woolen hat steps out holding a bowl of peelings. “No snowballing your sister, Adib! Build a snowman! Something gentle!” She's pregnant—it shows, even from thirty feet up, and now I see it all. I see the beauty of the pattern. The woman is not here by chance: her appearance is caused by the Script. Dusk hauls me to itself, but now I perceive an alternate fate. I resist. My newborn mission makes me strong, and my mission is this: one day, however distant, I will whisper into Marinus's ear, “You killed my brother, Jonah Grayer—and I kill you now and for all time
.
” I transverse down with the ponderous snow, the living snow, the eternal snow; undetected, I pass through the mother's coat, her underclothes, her skin, her uterus wall; and I'm home again, my new, warm home, my anchorage; immune to the Dusk and safe in the brain of a fetal boy, this miniature, drowsing, curled-up, dreaming, thumb-sucking astronaut.

Maximillian Arambulo, Nikki Barrow, Manuel Berri, Kate Brunt, Amber Burlinson, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Kate Childs, Catherine Cho, Madeleine Clark, Louise Dennys, Walter Donohue, Deborah Dwyer, David Ebershoff, Richard Elman, Lottie Fyfe, Jonny Geller, Lucy Hale, Sophie Harris, Kate Icely, Kazuo Ishiguro, Susan Kamil, Trish Kerr, Jessica Killingley, Martin Kingston, Jacqui Lewis, Alice Lutyens, Sally Marvin, Katie McGowan, Caitlin McKenna, Peter Mendelsund, Janet Montefiore, Nicole Morano, Neal Murren, Jeff Nishinaka, Lawrence Norfolk, Alisdair Oliver, Laura Oliver, Lidewijde Paris, Doug Stewart, Simon M. Sullivan, Carole Welch. Sincere apologies to anyone I've overlooked.

Thanks as ever to my family.

Slade House

The Bone Clocks

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Black Swan Green

Cloud Atlas

Number9Dream

Ghostwritten

The Reason I Jump
(translator, with KA Yoshida)

D
AVID
M
ITCHELL
is the award-winning and bestselling author of
Slade House,
The Bone Clocks,
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream,
and
Ghostwritten
. Twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Mitchell was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by
Time
magazine in 2007. With KA Yoshida, Mitchell co-translated from the Japanese the international bestselling memoir
The Reason I Jump
. He lives in Ireland with his wife and two children.

davidmitchellbooks.com

Facebook.com/​davidmitchellbooks

@david_mitchell