The young scholar sighed with pleasure as he opened another text on the Carthaginian Wars. Stacked around him were groaning piles of historical works, covering topics ranging from Etruscan social mores, through Spanish Atrocities in the West Indies (c. 1520) to the Solar Eclipse of 1724. There was Rising and Falling of every imaginable civilization; comparisons of criminal codes across the globe; and even studies of meteorological falsehoods down the Ages.
He lived history; he breathed history. His thirst for knowledge was inexhaustible. Comparative colonial influences in Ceylon; the Blessed Oliver Plunkett; the English Pope; Saracen sword technology; the Sack Of Antwerp (1576) whence a Spanish army did massacre the Walloons; Crimean ornithology…
Lovingly, he caressed the bound volumes. Fertility Rites in Formosa (c. 1730); the Suppression of the Paris Commune; the Edelweiss Conspiracy; Cheese-making in the Ardennes… Sniffing the edges, he was transfixed: all leather, paper, and glue. Ashanti Gourd Wars; the Aleppo Heresy; the Nancy Uprising… Turning them over and over, his mind was wandering. Effects of Elizabethan Policy in Ireland (1602); Ch’in Music; the Impalement of St Boniface…
Shaken from his reverie, two blood-shot eyes noticed that the mail had arrived. “Aha”, he thought, “I wonder whether there is news of the reissue of The Deification of the Emperor Septimius Severus (AD 211)?” Sifting through the bundle of envelopes, his mind was racing: Sherman’s March; the Long March; the Ides of March…
Then he came upon an unprepossessing envelope which pricked his curiosity. The Siege of Mafeking; the Rape of Nanking; Baptism of the Sun King… Inside was a card, which he opened cautiously. The Potsdam Imbroglio; the Green Line in Beirut; the Crossing of the Czechs…
It read: “Happy birthday, son. 28 today - my, how time flies! Your mother and I look forward to seeing you again one day soon. When your studies permit, of course. Love, Dad.” “Hm”, he thought, “28 years of age… how odd.” He consulted the calendar; then examined the spine of the nearest book: The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). With furrowed brow he inspected another: The Indian Mutiny 1857. And another: Cruelty of the Great Mogul 1618. On and on he went, feverishly flipping through books and noting the dates: 1714, 170BC, 1066…
He sat back, stroking his chin, and then exclaimed: “I wasn’t even born… Nowhere… None of them… Histories, of a world without me… History, without me... A world without me! How could there be a world without me!?!”
Gob-smacked, he stared at his hands, and then into the mirror. “A world without me… A world without me… How can there be a world without me?!? It’s ridiculous! It doesn’t make any sense!”
He stared down the corridor, lined on both sides with shelving stuffed with weighty tomes. Dunkirk, Stalingrad, Pearl Harbor… “No, it’s bullshit!” he cried, flinging a hefty volume across the room. “It’s bullshit! All bullshit! It’s not possible!”, he yelled, hurling books in every direction.
The 38th Parallel; the Damascus Follies; Human Sacrifice among the Aztecs (c. 1520)… Distressed, he flung open the door, and ran into the night.
The young scholar gave all his books away, and took a job laying carpet tiles for a living. Meanwhile, across town a couple of tramps argue the ramifications of the Diet of Worms (1521).
Dr Johnson (Editor)
 |
 |