A lot of the things had to be ruled out instantly. There was no way, for instance, I was going to go scuba diving. I was pretty sure it wasn’t advisable to start at the age of seventy-two. And even with my new legs I very much doubted I would ever dance again. After all, I hadn’t danced since 1992.
Never mind the seagrass. I felt like I was the oldest living organism on Earth.
The one part that really stood out was the bit about keep your mind open.
I suppose it was a normal thing to say. Especially after the mention of scuba diving. But that, and the reference to some of the strange tales being true, and the cosmic books around the place, made me wonder if Christina had come here and taken too many drugs and got into some mystical mumbo jumbo. She had, I distinctly remember, been into star signs.
I was being judgemental. It was a bad habit I’d got into, after festering in my bungalow for too long on my own.
I calmed myself down and went to the bedroom and unpacked my suitcase. The wardrobe, like the rest of the house, was a bit tatty. It had scratches all over the wood.
The first item I unpacked was a dressing gown. I would say it took up about 28 per cent of the entire case. It had been Karl’s dressing gown. I couldn’t leave it or get rid of it. I needed it, even in the heat of the Mediterranean. After he’d died I often pressed my face into it. And wearing it was the closest thing to a hug from him. Ridiculous, I know, but everything is ridiculous after a certain point in life. I’d also brought with me Daniel’s drawing of a bluebird. The one he drew me for Mother’s Day. We’d had it in a frame for years and I’d wanted to take one thing of his with me.
There is a comfort in unpacking, Maurice. I recommend that whenever you arrive at a new place to unpack with great care. It gives a sense of order and ritual to the new. And so I sorted my clothes as carefully as if leading a tea ceremony for a Ming emperor. I don’t know why I was surprised to see Christina’s clothes in the wardrobe. Maybe I felt someone would have been in to sort them out.
They were colourful and bright and the kind of things that flew off the rails at the charity shop when the students came in. It was sad, to see these kaleidoscopic outfits pressed together, a concertina of colourful ghosts. A spectrum of personalities I never knew. And then, after I placed all my clothes in there, I realised how drab they looked. All muted creams and corals and lilacs next to her indigos and yellows. It looked wrong, our clothes side by side. Like I had just put mashed potato on a fruit salad.
I then lay on the bed and tried to have a nap but couldn’t. Well, actually, I think I did doze off for a couple of seconds but I soon woke up, achey, my back ill-attuned to the mattress and with my mind contemplating what she might have meant when she wrote keep your mind open.
Cars sped by on the main road, a kind of white noise I found soothing. And I needed soothing, as I wondered what the hell had happened to Christina and why she had chosen me.
It is hard to explain what I was feeling.
Vulnerable, I suppose. And alone.
The nightclubs and beach clubs and luxury villas and sunset bars and yoga retreats and mega hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants the island was now famous for may as well have existed in another universe.
Necessity
I needed to get out of the house. I needed to know what happened to Christina.
A Third Full
I felt uncertain. And this uncertainty was to intensify until I had to hear my own breath just to know I was real.
A part of me wondered if I was now taking part in some elaborate prank. After all, if she had thought so highly of me, why hadn’t she made contact with me while she was still living?
The possibilities fanned out like vectors. I felt dizzy. And my stomach reminded me that the last food I had eaten was a bowl of Grape Nuts in Lincoln. I needed to find a meal, or at least get some groceries.
I noticed the olive jar by the door again. It was precisely where I had left it. Same jar, same position, the lid screwed on. But it still had water inside. I could have sworn I had tipped it all out. But no. There it was. A third full.
A not entirely new thought: I was losing my mind.
Old age, I sighed inwardly as I stepped outside into the afternoon sun. And I tried my hardest to think there could be no other explanation.
Mathematics
I am not great at believing in the mystical.
I think it is because I was raised a Catholic and have had a life full of unanswered prayers. I wouldn’t say I am totally unreligious. But even when I was younger, years before Karl and Daniel, I grew tired of looking for answers where none could be found.
Maybe that is why I loved mathematics.
To properly know mathematics is to know the only thing that can be assuredly known. Politics and sociology and history and psychology have facts you have to interpret. But in mathematics facts are just facts. There is no arguing. There is no left-wing or right-wing algebra. There is no sin in geometry and no guilt in trigonometry.
Mathematics is the purity of peace. Except, of course, it is also as mysterious and enigmatic as the whole of life, and expecting it – or anything – to conform to what I wanted it to be was a mistake. And that is the most devastating thing of all. When the logical world we have sought out crumbles to dust in front of our eyes.
A New Theory of Infinity
I am telling you this for what will follow, so that you really know where I am coming from. I am not prone to far-fetched nonsense. I think the moon landings were real and that the Earth is, roughly speaking, a sphere. I am not a crystal person and nor do I have a desire to attribute every mood to one of Jupiter’s moons or Mercury being in retrograde. I don’t even own a candle.
And yet, I am also a person who now realises that our human understanding of the world is incredibly limited, and that there is a bias not to believe things that don’t fit our worldview. What I am saying is that sometimes we can’t accept the truth that is right in front of our eyes. And that sometimes the mad people of one era become the sages of the next.
I tell you all this because, over the course of the following pages, you may end up thinking I have lost my mind. So please consider the case of Georg Cantor.
As you are studying mathematics at university, I am sure you have heard of him.
I think I even used to talk about him in class. The guy who came up with Set Theory at the end of the nineteenth century. Anyway, when he proved that there were, technically, different sizes of infinity he was branded a heretic. He was criticised and ostracised and made a laughing stock. He couldn’t take it. He fell apart because of what he had discovered. He had his own belief system questioned. To stop believing in a single infinity was to believe the impossible. He had nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown and ended his days in an asylum. But he was right. Mathematically, at least. There are different sizes of infinity. But it took a long time for everyone else to see what he was seeing.
Now, I am no Georg Cantor. But I too have had my worldview flipped on its head recently, and have felt a need to tell someone about it. I too have seen things that challenge me to my core. You emailed at just the right moment, because I think my need to tell this story has coincided with your need for answers.
So, the question is, are you ready for a new theory of infinity?
Santa Gertrudis
Christina’s car was a reluctant old thing. I sat in it a while, breathed in the stale upholstery, looking for clues about her life. There was nothing in there except an empty bottle of diet lemonade and a half-eaten packet of biscuits in the glove compartment. I switched the radio on. Fast Spanish voices interspersed with jingles and then a rap song. I wondered if it was 21 Savage, the one the boy on the plane had talked about. I switched it off again, sighed and turned on the engine.
I hadn’t driven abroad in my life. It was a little daunting. At first, I was all over the place. I had typed ‘Santa Gertrudis supermarket’ into my phone before setting off. My phone lost signal and I quickly forgot what I had seen on the map. Now I was just following signs for Santa Gertrudis, travelling over the grey tarmac, trying to remember which side of the fading white lines I was meant to be driving on.
