Felix J. Palma

The Map of Time


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      FELIX PALMA

       The Map of Time

      Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor

      Copyright

      Fiction

       An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Copyright © Felix Palma 2008

       Translation copyright © Nick Caistor 2011 First published in Spanish as El Mapa Del Tiempo 2008

      Felix Palma asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780007344123

      Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007344147 Version: 2016-02-18

       ‘The distinction between past, present and future is an illusion, but a very persistent one.’

      ALBERT EINSTEIN

       ‘Mankind’s most perfectly terrifying work of art is the division of time.’

      ELIAS CANETTI

       ‘What is waiting for me in the direction I don’t take?’

      JACK KEROUAC

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

       Epigraph

      PART ONE

      Chapter I

      Chapter II

      Chapter III

      Chapter IV

      Chapter V

      Chapter VI

      Chapter VII

      Chapter VIII

      Chapter IX

      Chapter X

      Chapter XI

      Chapter XII

      Chapter XIII

      Chapter XIV

      Chapter XV

      Chapter XVI

      Chapter XVII

      PART TWO

      Chapter XVIII

      Chapter XIX

      Chapter XX

      Chapter XXI

      Chapter XXII

      Chapter XXIII

      Chapter XXIV

      Chapter XXV

      Chapter XXVI

      Chapter XXVII

      Chapter XXVIII

      Chapter XXIX

      Chapter XXX

      Chapter XXXI

      Chapter XXXII

      Chapter XXXIII

      PART THREE

      Chapter XXXIV

      Chapter XXXV

      Chapter XXXVI

      Chapter XXXVII

      Chapter XXXVIII

      Chapter XXXIX

      Chapter XL

      Chapter XLI

      Chapter XLII

      Chapter XLIII

      About the Author

       About the Publisher

      PART ONE

part

      Chapter I

      Andrew Harrington would gladly have died several times over if that meant not having to choose just one pistol from among his father’s vast collection in the living-room cabinet. Decisions had never been Andrew’s strong point. On close examination, his life had been a series of mistaken choices, the last of which threatened to cast its lengthy shadow over the future. But that life of unedifying blunders was about to end. This time he was sure he had made the right decision, because he had decided not to decide. There would be no more mistakes in the future because there would be no future. He was going to destroy it completely by putting one of those guns to his right temple. He could see no other solution: obliterating the future was the only way for him to eradicate the past.

      He scanned the contents of the cabinet, the lethal assortment his father had lovingly assembled after his return from the war. He was fanatical about those weapons, though Andrew suspected it was not so much nostalgia that drove him to collect them as his desire to contemplate the novel ways mankind kept coming up with for taking one’s own life outside the law. In stark contrast to his father, Andrew was impassive as he surveyed the apparently docile, almost humdrum implements that had brought thunder to men’s fingertips and freed war from the unpleasantness of hand-to-hand combat.

      He tried to imagine what kind of death might be lurking inside each of them, lying in wait like some predator. Which would his father have recommended he use to blow his brains out? He calculated that death from one of those antiquated muzzle-loading flintlocks, which had to be refilled with gunpowder and a ball, then tamped down with a paper plug each time it was fired, would be a noble but drawn-out and tedious affair. He preferred the swift death guaranteed by one of the more modern revolvers nestling in their luxurious velvet-lined wooden cases.

      He considered a Colt single-action model, which looked easy to handle and reliable – but he had seen Buffalo Bill brandishing one in his Wild West Adventures: a pitiful attempt to re-enact his transoceanic exploits with a handful of imported Red Indians and a dozen lethargic, apparently opium-sated buffalo. Death for him was not just another adventure. He also rejected a fine Smith & Wesson, the gun that had killed the outlaw Jesse James, of whom he considered himself unworthy, and a Webley specially designed to hold back the charging hordes in Britain’s colonial wars; he thought it looked too cumbersome.

      His attention turned next to his father’s favourite, a fine Pepperbox with rotating barrels, but he seriously doubted whether this ridiculously ostentatious weapon