The voices in my head lead me down to the cellars of that night again, whispering, in their curious lilts, what would have happened that day had I not thrown caution to the wind and sat down in front of the man who looked my great grandfather, not looking a day above 30, like the oft told ancestral spirit come to life. I had known that face not personally but spied it in my grandmother’s prayer room when I had been a child, fascinated by the odd asymmetry of him and my great-grandmother in a photograph aged yellow-grey.
I could have dismissed my instinct that day and gone about my day. I could have chalked it up to the reports on doppelgängers that popped up now and then and spent my life considering myself an unusual witness. Perhaps, if I hadn’t been alone that day, I would have giggled about it with a friend and told my mother about it later, and we would have shared a dismissive gesture. Back then, I didn’t, or rather, couldn’t consult the voices.
The man didn’t look surprised or offended when I stepped into his booth. He looked at me with a knowing, slightly awed expression. I can say now that it wasn’t for me. He began the dialogue, surprisingly, offering me a glass of wine and telling me that they had told him to come here today to this run-down place in the evening. I meant to ask him who “they” were but he reached across and held my hand gingerly, like he was scared I might run away. To others, it could seem like two lovers resolving their issues, but the reality was that it was my shivering hand being held by a man who resembled the man who had run away to war after impregnating my great-grandmother.
He questioned how I possibly knew whom to approach, and, bemused, I accused him of looking like my great-grandfather. I felt like a child, eager to slip in any words where I could amongst the adults talking over me. He seemed to consider it seriously for a few seconds before howling with laughter. He said that they hadn’t intentionally meant for it to be a generational thing, but miracles happen once in a century, and that it had been at least a century. Time was up for him.
I meant to leave then, unable to pretend that he wasn’t a madman raving to any bystander who might listen. Neither could I pretend I wasn’t becoming delirious listening to him talk like there were more than just the two of us in this bizarre conversation. He sensed my intention to leave and spoke out loud a name, as if it was supposed to mean something to me. After a considerable pause, he huffed that I was an ignoramus for not even knowing my ancestor’s name. He informed me that he had been a poet, a patriotic fellow who wrote his verse with no foreknowledge of the futility of war, but anyway, famous enough to warrant an internet search. I made no move to retrieve my phone from my bag.
A veil seemed to spread over him as if he had reached a decision. He declared he wished to be free from the legacy, and he repeated that the time was up for him. Then, he laid out a proposal: for me to spend the night with him. I repeated that he was my great-grandfather. Like I had made a bad joke, he scoffed, and I found him more and more ludicrous. And yet, I found myself saying, “Yes.”
He jostled me out of my seat, and then we were in the great outdoors, and he was leading me to a graveyard. He spent a considerable amount of time inspecting the graves and their epitaphs. I stood there, surprisingly not considering bolting. Beneath the apprehension, I was curious and morbidly voracious to know which theory of mine was the most accurate. I wasn’t particularly pragmatic or dogmatic, but I possessed a suppressed belief in star-crossed predestinations, in willed manifestations, in the supernatural walking among us. Perhaps that’s why I hopped on the chance of fate to confront him. Feeling a little safer that spending the night with him meant something much different, I ventured a hypothesis for him. He laughed and said that he was as much a vampire as Lord Byron was, which didn’t mean much to me, but I got the idea that he was denying it.
A doppelganger? He commended that. He said he believed at first Anne Hathaway’s husband was someone like him, too, but he came to believe over the years that that was the regular case of a true coincidence. There weren’t many like him, and none would draw attention to themselves like that. He seemed to imply himself as something more mystical. I supposed plastic surgery to resemble a so-called famous face was too commonplace.
The wine he had given me thrummed in my veins, and before I could ask anything else, a spade landed at my feet. He pointed to the ground beneath his feet, where he stood, like it was obvious what he wanted. I looked down at the spade he had given me. My resolve wavered, but I picked it up. We got to work, and soon enough it was deep enough for a man to lie down in. I looked at him with curiosity and a little fear.
A canopy of stars had spread out over us, and a gentle, cold wind stirred the leaves and our overcoats. He was lightly panting, suddenly seeming haggard and pensive. I could sense a change overcoming him. He sat down on a grave mound and looked out distantly. He said it was necessary that he took over from my war veteran ancestor, an unfortunate perspective on an inevitable facet of life like war, a foolhardiness that needed to witness the times that came later. A litany of diverse voices makes it…interesting, easier to live up to this unknowable responsibility. A singular task completed by many. My great-grandfather wasn’t one originally, but as he lay dying, they had taken his life force into theirs. The man said in a reassuring tone that, as a healthy, hale mind, I would likely retain my awareness, though it would wane as the decades went by. I would be expected to go into countries, to museums, to universities, to places where the voices wanted to go. I would imbibe, inculcate, and pass it all over eventually.
Back then, I thought the farce would end if I joined in, which was why I did. If I think about it now, maybe that wasn’t quite how I rationalized it. It was a mix of fascination, the lull of the conversation, an answer to my queries, and a rest to this weird night with my great-grandfather. Perhaps I had wanted that task, or I had wanted to be chosen, to be rewarded for my curiosity.
The man settled in more comfortably in the graveyard, touching his hands with mine once before I was shooed away. My last glimpse of him was of him staring up into the sky, and I wonder now if it finally went silent in his head and whether it felt like an ache of loneliness or a relief from a burden. I wonder what happened to that man, if he sank into the grave gratefully.
I can’t say if they have done well in choosing me, and certainly sometimes I resent them for making me feel so isolated from everybody and so crowded up there, but the decades have made me unable to differentiate between them and myself. I often tried to distinguish the voices in my head, trying to pick apart my great-grandfather’s, wondering if he and that amalgamation of man were similar at all in intonation or thought process, but it proved fruitless. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to face me; possibly his presence within the voices was already very faint.
I ended up going to many places, learning different things, and sharing personal anecdotes from eras I haven’t witnessed with a group of scholars or just the elderly sitting around for a cuppa. I have been called wise beyond my years and younger than I sound. Now and then, as the night unwinds before us, I let them take the reins and lead me to a history that seems mundane but speaks genuinely to all of us. Very rarely do we come to that last night I was me and encountered them for the first time.
React
