Katherine Carlyle Read online

  PRAISE FOR KATHERINE CARLYLE

  “Katherine Carlyle left me stunned and amazed. Thomson’s ability to create a world that feels entirely original and untouched by any other mind is at full strength in this strange and haunting book. The story proceeds with perfect logic from mystery to mystery, and takes the reader with it, unable to stop reading or guess where it will go next. The title character is utterly convincing, and her quest expresses with great clarity and power the strangeness of her origins. It’s a masterpiece.”

  —PHILIP PULLMAN,

  AUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLING HIS DARK MATERIALS TRILOGY

  “Written with the verve and detail of a spy novel, sleek and oddly honest, this is the fascinating story of Katherine Carlyle, who mysteriously decides that instead of university and a privileged life she will erase her identity and much of her emotions and go untraceably to the most remote settlement of the Russian north. She is not seeking love. She is determined to have abandoned it.”

  —JAMES SALTER,

  AUTHOR OF ALL THAT IS

  “Smart, stylish, inventive, and always entertaining, Rupert Thomson displays enormous range as a novelist. His prose is consistently sharp, his ideas consistently intriguing. I would read any book that Thomson wrote.”

  —LIONEL SHRIVER,

  BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF BIG BROTHER AND WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

  “Rupert Thomson’s twilight worlds have long enchanted many readers, and this road trip through a snow dome of mesmeric hallucinations is Thomson at his best.”

  —RICHARD FLANAGAN,

  AUTHOR OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE–WINNING THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH

  “If the mind best comprehends the heart through metaphor, what new ways of imagining ourselves and our loves are offered by technologies earlier undreamt of? This is the question Rupert Thomson seeks to answer in this stealthy, intelligent, surreptitiously affective novel. With a narrative that moves from the sophisticated milieux of Rome and Berlin to the startling lower reaches of the Arctic Circle, delivered in prose that is spare, cinematic, and masterfully controlled, Katherine Carlyle is at once seductively contemporary and suggestively fable-like: Frozen for grown-ups.”

  —REBECCA MEAD,

  AUTHOR OF MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH

  “This riveting and visionary story haunted me long after I finished the last page. Katherine Carlyle is an extraordinary novel.”

  —DEBORAH MOGGACH,

  BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

  ALSO BY RUPERT THOMSON

  FICTION

  Secrecy

  Death of a Murderer

  Divided Kingdom

  The Book of Revelation

  Soft

  The Insult

  Air and Fire

  The Five Gates of Hell

  Dreams of Leaving

  NONFICTION

  This Party’s Got to Stop

  Copyright © 2014 by Rupert Thomson

  Wallace Stevens poetry excerpt on this page from “The Auroras of Autumn,” in The Auroras of Autumn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950).

  André Gide excerpt on this page from Fruits of the Earth (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books Ltd, 1970). First published by Secker & Warburg, 1949.

  “Me and Bobby McGee” lyric on this page by Kris Kristofferson and Fred L. Foster, copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.

  Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Thomson, Rupert.

  Katherine Carlyle / Rupert Thomson.

  pages; cm

  ISBN 978-1-59051-738-3 — ISBN 978-1-59051-739-0 (ebook)

  1. Cryonics—Fiction. 2. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 3. Self-actualization

  (Psychology) in women—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6070.H685K38 2015

  823’.914—dc23

  2014047900

  Publisher’s note:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  For Judith Gurewich

  How slowly the time passes here,

  encompassed as I am by frost and snow!

  — MARY SHELLEY

  Everything is torment, everything is song

  I would love to be loved

  And belong to someone

  Belong to someone

  —ENDRE ADY

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  I was made in a small square dish. The temperature was 37 degrees Celsius, like the inside of a human body. Like a womb. The dish had four shallow wells or indentations, and the word NUNC was stamped along one edge. My mother’s eggs were placed in the wells, no more than three in each, and then my father’s sperm was introduced, the sperm allowed to seek the eggs in a simulacrum of the reproductive process. The ingredients were all scrupulously harvested, meticulously screened. Something of hers, something of his — a precious pinch of each. Pale-blue figures drifted high above, like clouds.

  Within a matter of hours I was transferred to a solution or “culture medium,” where I was supposed to “cleave.” Medium, cleave — these are the technical terms. During the next five days I divided into a blastocyst, consisting of approximately sixty cells. My progress was monitored by the figures dressed in blue. Sometimes they reached down and removed embryos that were judged to be nonviable. Not me, though. I remained untouched. This happened on the fourth floor of a West London hospital, in the Assisted Conception Unit.

  Though I was one of several “Grade 1” embryos — clear cells, tight junctions, no evidence of fragmentation or “blebbing” — the technicians did not select me for immediate implantation. I was preserved instead.

  Freezing me took an hour and a half.

  Afterwards, I was stored in a squat steel barrel, vacuum-lined like a thermos flask and filled with liquid nitrogen. They put me in a microscopic transparent straw with air gaps on either side of me. The straw was slotted into a cane. Both the straw and the cane were labeled with the name and date of birth of the patient — my mother. I was suspended in a bath of cryoprotectant and assorted nutrients, and exposed to a temperature that was constant and extreme — minus 196 Centigrade.

  At that time, in the 1980s, there was some dispute as to how long a frozen embryo was good for. Different governments held different views. In the UK frozen embryos were routinely disposed of when they were ten years old. The belief was that our cells deteriorated, forfeiting the resilience necessary to survive the thawing process. But no one really knew. The science was still in its infancy, and research had yet to produce definitive results. Such a curious notion, to be the defunct or superannuated version of something that hadn’t even existed. Like being a ghost, only the wrong way r
ound. A ghost is somebody who has died but will not disappear. Can a ghost also be somebody who has never lived? Are there ghosts at either end of life?

  The years went by.

  Every now and then, and just for a few seconds, the lid was lifted off the storage tank and a torrent of white light poured down through the swirling mist. A number of embryos would be removed, but I remained where I was, in my see-through straw. The lid was replaced. Darkness descended once again.

  ONE

  Another beautiful September. The sun richer, more tender, the color of old wedding rings. Rome filling up again, people back at work after the holidays. I ride through the city, over potholes and cobbles, the sky arranged in hard blue blocks above the rooftops. The swallows have returned as well, flashing between the buildings in straight lines as if fired from a gun. I park my Vespa outside the station and walk in through the entrance.

  It was spring when I first started noticing the messages. Back then, they were cryptic, teasing. While crossing Piazza Farnese, I found a fifty-euro note that had been folded into a triangle. A few days later, at the foot of the Spanish Steps, I found a small gray plastic elephant with a piece of frayed string round its neck. I found any number of coins, keys, and playing cards. None of these objects had anything specific to communicate. They were just testing my alertness. They were nudges. Pokes. Nonetheless, I felt a thrill each time, a rocket-fizzle through the darkness of my body, and I took photos of them all and stored them on my laptop, in a file marked INTELLIGENCE. The weeks passed, and the world began to address me with more precision. In May I stopped for a macchiato near the Pantheon. On my table was a scrap of paper with a phone number on it. I recognized the prefix — Bologna — and called the number. A woman answered, her voice hectic, a baby crying in the background. I hung up. The scrap of paper was a message, but not one I needed to pay attention to. In June I entered a changing cubicle in a shop on Via del Corso. Lying on the floor was a brochure for a French hotel. “Conveniently located for the A8,” the Hôtel Allure offered a “high standard of accommodation.” I borrowed my friend Daniela’s car on a Friday afternoon and drove for seven hours straight, past Florence and Genoa, and on around the coast to Nice. At midnight the hotel’s neon sign floated into view, the black air rich with jasmine and exhaust. I spent most of the next day by the pool. The hot white sky. The rush of traffic on La Provençale. In the early evening a man pulled into the car park in a silver BMW. He stood at the water’s edge, his shirtsleeves rolled back to the elbow. His name was Pascal, and he worked in telecommunications. When he asked me out to dinner — when he put that question — I somehow realized he wasn’t relevant. If the Hôtel Allure was a mistake, though, it was a useful one. I’ve been imagining a journey ever since.

  The station concourse smells of ground coffee beans and scalded milk. I stare up at the Departures board. Firenze, Milano. Parigi. None of the names stand out, none of them speak to me. Voices swarm beneath the high sweep of the roof, footsteps echo on the polished marble, and then a feeling, sudden yet familiar — the feeling that I’m not there. It’s not that I’m dead. I’m simply gone. I never was. Panic opens inside me, slow and stealthy, like a flower that only blooms at night. The eight years are still with me, eight years in the dark, the cold. Waiting. Not knowing.

  I deliberately collide with someone who happens to be passing. He’s in his early thirties. Black hair, brown leather jacket. He drops his bag. An apple rolls away across the floor.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say.

  “No, no,” he says. “My fault.”

  The moment he looks at me, my existence comes flooding back. It’s as if I’m a pencil sketch, and he’s coloring me in. I go and fetch the apple. When I pick it up it fits my palm perfectly. The shape of it, the weight, makes everything that follows feel natural.

  I hold it out to him. “I think it might be bruised.”

  He looks at the apple, then smiles. “This is like a fairy tale. Are you a witch?”

  “I just didn’t see you,” I say. “I should be more careful.” I’m breathless with exhilaration. I’m alive.

  “Are you waiting for someone? Or perhaps you’re going somewhere —” He glances at the Departures board.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “Not yet.”

  Something in him seems to align itself with what I’m feeling. We’re like two people running side by side and he has fallen into step with me. Nothing needs to be explained, or even said. It’s understood. His eyes are dark and calm.

  “Come with me,” he says. “Do you have time?”

  “Yes.”

  His fingers curl round mine.

  We walk to a small hotel on Via Palermo. They have a room on the second floor, at the front of the building. I hear the muted roar of a vacuum cleaner. There’s a coolness about the place, a feeling of suspension. A hush. It’s that hidden moment in the day, the gap between checking out and checking in.

  On the stairs he’s behind me, watching me. My hips, my calves. The small of my back. I can feel my edges, the space I occupy. We reach the door. He steps past me with the key. He smells of wood and pepper. As soon as we’re inside he kisses me.

  The room has a high ceiling and surprising lilac walls. From the window I can look down into the street. He pushes me back onto the bed. I tell him to wait. Lifting my hips, I pull the apple from my pocket. He smiles again.

  We take each other’s clothes off carefully. We’re not in any hurry. One button, then another. A catch. A zip. The TV watches us from the top corner of the room. The curtains shift.

  When he’s about to enter me I hand him a condom from my bag.

  “You’ve done this before,” he says.

  “No, never,” I say.

  He looks down at me. He thinks I’m lying but it doesn’t bother him.

  “I carry them to stop it happening,” I say. “It’s the opposite of tempting fate.”

  “You’re superstitious?”

  I don’t answer.

  The noise of the traffic shrinks until it’s no louder than the buzz of a fly trapped in a jar. There is only the rustle of the sheets and the sound of our breathing, his and mine, and I think of that place in Brazil where the rivers join, two different kinds of water meeting, two different colors. I think of white clouds colliding in a sky of blue.

  I cry out when I come. He comes moments later, quietly. When I turn over, onto my side, he adjusts his body to mine. He lies behind me, fitting himself against me as closely as he can, like a shadow. I feel him soften and then slip out of me. This too is part of the coloring-in.

  Afterwards, I follow him downstairs. Out on the street I’m worried he will tell me his name and ask if he can see me again but all he does is put one hand against my cheek and look at me.

  “Mia piccola strega.” My little witch.

  He kisses me and walks away.

  Later, I think of the apple we left in the hotel room. Lying among the crumpled bedclothes, its red skin glowing.

  /

  The next day I go to an outdoor screening of The Passenger, which is one of my father’s favorite movies. I’ve seen it before, at least twice, and it has become a favorite of mine as well. A warm evening, not a breath of wind. Stars glinting weakly in a dull black sky. I’m slumped low in my seat waiting for the movie to begin when I become aware of an English couple sitting in the row in front of me. I can’t see their faces, only the backs of their heads. The man is wearing a raspberry-colored shirt, and his bald spot gleams. The woman has nondescript brown hair. They’re talking about a friend of theirs who lives in Berlin. His name is Klaus Frinks. Klaus is upset, the woman says in a high-pitched voice. Terribly, terribly upset.

  “Upset?” the man says. “Why?”

  “That girl he was in love with. She left him.”

  “I never liked that girl.”

  “Didn’t you?” The woman turns to look at her companion. Long nose, receding chin.

  “I didn’t trust her,” the man says.


  “She was beautiful.”

  The man shrugs but says nothing.

  “Poor Klaus.” The woman sounds oddly gratified. “He really thought she was the one.”

  I sit up straighter in my seat.

  Klaus, I think, and then I think, Berlin.

  If Klaus is German, and his surname is pronounced “Frinks,” it’s probably spelled with a g, as in “Frings.” If I hadn’t studied the language at school I wouldn’t have known that. My brain cracks open, floods with light.

  Klaus Frings.

  The man with the bald spot looks round, curious to see if anyone is listening. He’s one of those people who talks loudly in public places because he thinks he’s interesting. Well, for once in his life he’s right: he is interesting — to me, at least. When he notices me, he tugs at his shirt collar as if to loosen it, then looks beyond me, pretending to be checking on the whereabouts of the projectionist. Tell me more, I whisper inside my head.

  Facing the screen again, the man is silent for a few seconds, then he says, “Is Klaus still living in the same apartment?”

  The woman nods. “Walter-Benjamin-Platz.”

  “Penthouse, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. Amazing place. You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

  “Once. There was that party —”

  The lights dim.

  The Passenger intrigues me, as always, but I find that I can’t concentrate. I keep thinking about Klaus Frings and his apartment in Berlin. The inexplicable shock of recognition when I heard his name. The sense of being summoned, singled out. The sudden disappearance of my heart, as if it had been sucked into a black hole at the center of my body. There have been so many dry runs and dress rehearsals, but I always knew that sooner or later one of the messages would feel right. And now, finally, it does.

  When the film is over, I linger in the courtyard outside the cinema. The English couple are standing by the gate. In the same loud self-important voices they are discussing the famous scene in which the director, Antonioni, moves the camera out through the bars on Jack Nicholson’s hotel window — how Nicholson is alive when the camera leaves, and dead by the time it returns. The woman is taller than the man. Older too, despite her girlish voice.