The Love Machine & Other Contraptions (3 page)

But Uncle Haim said...

But wait... the schmuck
knew
that I was going to go back in time. He knew! So he made sure to tell me the
wrong story!
I don’t know why he did this to me, but somehow he knew! Son of a bitch!

I’m going to kill him!

Sorry, Grandma.

~

May 25, 1964, 18:20

This is
really
impossible.

I killed him, too. I killed both of them. And I’m still here.

How did he do that? How? If there’s no Uncle Haim, there’s no record. If there’s no record, there’s no time travel. How the hell am I still here?

Maybe it’s a dream?

In any case, I have to hide the bodies. And find some excuse. Real quick. If Grandpa catches me, it’s the end of the story, and this time not only for my poor ear. He’s absolutely deranged. No chance he’ll understand.

~

May 26, 1964, 12:32

There’s a big mess. Grandpa and Grandma came home yesterday evening and found me unconscious on the floor, with a bruise the size of an egg on my head. I did that myself, with Grandpa’s hoe. It hurt like hell, but not as much as it did when the doctor stitched me later. I told them that someone hit me on the head and that I couldn’t remember anything. Everyone feels sorry for me now, and Grandpa and Grandma are crazy with worry for the babies. I feel kind of sorry for them, but Uncle Haim had it coming.

Wait a minute.

If I killed Dad, how come I’m still here?

Something’s really wrong here.

Really.

I’ve got a terrible headache.

~

June 12, 1964, 19:40

They took out the stitches today. It hurt almost as much as when the doctor put them in. I yelled like crazy. Hanna, the neighbor’s kid, came to visit me today. Nice girl. Definitely not a
Nudnik
. I have to get home somehow. If there’s no other way, I’ll just spin that record until my finger is gone.

~

August 14, 1968, 13:01

All my fingers are gone, and today—the phonograph too. I don’t know how long I’ve been doing this. Years. It just doesn’t go fast enough. It’s horrible. Whenever Grandpa and Grandma are gone I spin the record, over and over and over again, until they come home. When they come home I have to stop, otherwise Grandpa grabs my ear and throws me out of the house. There’s no going through him, that man. Why are there no home computers in sixties? Why?

~

February 15, 1972, 17:34

I have a great idea! I’m a genius!

A tape recorder!

I’ll buy me one of those old reel-to-reel tape recorders, record the damned song—which I really can’t stand listening to anymore—on a tape, put the tape back in it in reverse, play it in fast-forward! I’m a genius! That’s how you break the rules! I’m going home!

~

February 28, 1972, 11:20

It took me almost a week to convince Grandma to help me buy the tape recorder, and several more days to find out where I could buy one, and then a few more days to locate some tapes. Where did all those stories about the coolness of the seventies come from? Phooey!

But now I have everything I need, and I’m going to fly home like a rocket and never use a turntable or a phonograph in my whole life. I’m a genius!

~

February 28, 1972, 11:28

So much for being a genius. It seems that after each playing you have to run the tape backwards, and every time you do that, it tangles up in the machine, and the fast forward isn’t really fast. It’s even slower than spinning the record with my finger.

Hanna suggested that I record the song several times on the tape, to save time. That’s a good idea. She’s kinda smart, that Hanna.

~

June 7, 1976, 13:08

She doesn’t look that bad, either.

But after one test run, which brought me to this time, the tape recorder blew up.

Grandma won’t buy me another one, and Grandpa is still strong enough to grab my ear and throw me out. At least they bought a new phonograph, and I keep turning the record, underground, as before.

~

March 3, 1980, 15:55

Smart, eh? Doesn’t look bad, eh? My God, Hanna is
Mom!

How could I miss that?

An Oedipus complex. Damn it. I’m really disgusted with myself. Maybe I’ll kill her too?

But on the other hand, I already killed Dad, so how come I’m still around anyway?

Oh, no. No no no.

No.

Shit.

~

June 6, 1981, 16:66

We just got married.

Yes, it’s horrible, but it’s also survival. My survival. I don’t want to die. Or to cease to exist. I want to live. And Hanna, really—I don’t want to call her “Mom,” I’ve had enough of that—Hanna isn’t such a bad choice. She’s ok. She’s even
really
ok.

And she loves me.

But it’s still all pretty weird.

I don’t know how long I can stand this.

At least until I’m born, that’s all I can say.

We live at Grandpa and Grandma’s place, and there we’ll stay. We don’t have the money to move. I wanted to buy a computer, but there’s no money for that either. They’re expensive, those things! From time to time, I still run the damned record backwards, just to pass the time.

~

August 29, 1984, 04:32

I was just born.

I had a really hard time making that happen. Hanna wasn’t ready at first, she wanted to have a career. She drove me crazy. She didn’t understand why it was so urgent for me to have a child.
You
try to explain it.

Truth be told, I got used to her. I don’t think of her as my “mother” at all anymore. She’s really okay usually, and I kind of love her.

But still, it’s difficult.

The baby is screaming like crazy. You would think that he already understands what’s in store for him, but I don’t remember knowing anything like that, when I was him.

~

August 29, 1989, 20:44

Today I caught Grandpa telling the kid all kinds of lies about how he was a pioneer and worked in drying the swamps. When I came in the room, he didn’t even blink. There’s no one in this family who isn’t a liar. It’s really unbelievable. At least Grandma wasn’t there to see it.

~

May 14, 1990, 09:54

I feel old. My childhood memories seem to be dimming. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and the house doesn’t look the way I remember it from my own childhood, but rather like a strange place, an alien place. Maybe I should go and see a shrink.

~

May 15, 1990, 10:60

Or maybe the kid should go see a shrink. In my whole life I’ve never seen such a crybaby. I just refuse to believe that I was really that way. I mean, of course I was, the evidence is right in front of me, but... I don’t know.

Perspective, even more than being complicated, is embarrassing.

~

August 29, 1991, 19:20

That’s it. I ran away. Couldn’t stand it anymore. I’m going to America. I left Hanna a note, wrote that I love her, but that my mental condition...
blah di blah.
She’s going to hate me. She thinks that she’ll never see me again until the day she dies, but I know what’s really going to happen. I figured it out already. In order to continue living, to continue existing, I must someday return.

~

April 1, 1999, 03:12

I have returned. At last. Old, bitter, and with a silly moustache and sillier glasses, hoping that she wouldn’t notice. Here comes Uncle Haim. Damn it.

~

April 2, 1999, 17:33

And here’s Hanna. She still looks young. I still love her. Maybe. But I’m the uncle—the father has gone. I don’t know whether or not she recognized me through the disguise and the additional years. I just have no idea. The kid recognized me, for sure. He grew up quite a lot while I was gone. On the other hand, he doesn’t look anything like me. I’m sure that as a teenager I wasn’t so fat and flaccid. And, alas, stupid. And a
Nudnik
.

He started asking me some very uncomfortable questions. Foreseeing this, I gave him a chemistry set that I bought for him in America, just to shut him up. Or so he’ll blow himself up, or something. It worked, at least temporarily. I need to keep giving him gifts like that. Meanwhile, I’m trying to get him interested in computers.

~

December 7, 1999, 18:30

I looked for that album and for the band that recorded it in every record shop in town, and in several other towns. Nobody has ever heard of it. Where did Uncle Haim... where did I find that damned album? I mean, I still have my own copy, but...

Ah.

~

August 29, 2000, 21:45

I bought him a snake for his birthday, which was a bit of a death wish on my part. It almost worked—Hanna almost killed me. The more presents I give this horrible child, the more pissed off she gets. The child separates us, stands between us, and keeps asking terrible questions. He suspects me. I can feel that. I have to get rid of him. Not to mention the fact that he must get back in order to make sure that I’m born.
Nudnik
. I told him the stupid lie about my artificial tan. Who came up with that piece of crap? Hanna had to buy him a computer, and if she knew who put that idea into his head, she’d probably kill me for real.

I just can’t believe that this kid is myself. On the other hand, I really don’t give a damn anymore.

~

October 11, 2000, 20:00

Today, as I was walking down the street, a stranger asked me how I was doing. Reflexively I said that I was okay, and then I looked at him and I saw that he was some kind of a beggar, with really old and shabby and weird clothes. And glasses. And a moustache, which looked fake. I turned away and started walking, but then he asked me whether I was interested in something. Interested in a record. He made a you-know-exactly-what-I’m-talking-about face, and then added, “You probably understand that you’re not the only time traveler around here, and that someone has to keep an eye on you people.”

I wanted to strangle him, but didn’t dare. What he said pissed me off, but not as much as his irritating, arrogant smile, and definitely not as much as the record that he pulled out of thin air. I had been looking for it for so many years. It was by a band called “Fatta Morgana,” and track number five was called “A Time Machine Bought Me an Uncle.”

I told him that at least he could bring the real record and not some cheap fake, and he started blabbering out all sorts of technobabble and tried a silly story on me about how for this place and this time this record is the right one.

I sent him to sell it to someone else. I can’t be fooled anymore, and I’ve already got the right record, thank you very much.

~

January 1, 2001, 00:10

The last year has arrived, the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t have to restrain myself much longer. The damned kid drives me crazy, but if I’ve been able to restrain myself till now...

Sometimes I ask myself just how I’ve managed to do that, but that’s a dangerous line of thought. Very dangerous. I’ve killed enough people already.

~

August 29, 2001, 22:30

This is it. Today is the day. I took the record out of the attic, cleaned it, put a nice wrapping on it and added a silly greeting card. That’s it. The waiting is over. The little parasite will go, and Hanna and I will be left alone, to spend the rest of our lives together. Hanna complained that she has no money for a reasonable present, after the bloodsucker made her buy him that expensive computer last year. I wonder who gave him that idea. I gave her an idea of my own—this electronic journal. I won’t need it anyway, after the
Nudnik
is gone.

That’s it. We’re going to give him the presents. Goodbye, dear journal, and we shall never meet again.

~

— ??, ??:??

I refuse to try to understand this universe, whichever one it may be. I want to die. Or maybe I’m already dead without knowing it. Or maybe it’s the universe that’s dead without knowing it.

We gave the
Nudnik
his presents. He tried to hide his satisfaction but couldn’t. We both know him too well. He took them back to his room without a word of thanks. For several minutes there was silence, and then he listened to some songs, at a disturbingly high volume. Hanna shouted at him to turn it down and he didn’t answer, though he did turn it down a bit, and I tried distracting her by talking about other things. Or maybe she was also was waiting for something, I don’t know what. Anyway, the brat reached track number five, that horrible, abominable, endlessly repeating song, and then after that it got quiet. Total silence.

“That’s it,” I said. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?” Hanna said. “What are you talking about, Haim?”

“I’m not Haim,” I said, and removed, for the first time in two years, the silly glasses. “Don’t you know me?”

“Of course I know you,” she said. “For two years I’ve been trying to figure out what you’re trying to achieve by playing this silly game. Not to mention the moustache.”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” she said. “The kid’s asleep.”

“Yeah,” I said, “we’ve got time. And he’s gone at last. He won’t bother us anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Here, look for yourself,” I said, and led her to the parasite’s room. I opened the door—the key has been in my pocket for all these years—and entered.

The room was empty—except for the little fool, who was right there, sound asleep in his bed.

I looked at him for a long time.

And I understood.

All that time, all those years, I was organizing the history of the wrong fool. Of two fools, more alike than I feel comfortable admitting, but still different. I looked at Hanna who wasn’t my mother and at my son who wasn’t myself, and started to break the rules for the last and final time.

“I beg your pardon,” I told Hanna. “I guess I’ve reached the wrong universe.”

I got up, took the journal and the record, and went out.