Other Earths Read online

  Someone, I told myself, was playing a practical joke, someone who knew me well enough to predict my reactions. When I opened the book, something would pop out or a bad smell would be released . . . or perhaps it would be a good-natured joke. Kim, my girlfriend, had the wherewithal to doctor an old photograph and dummy up a fake book, but I would not have thought she possessed the requisite whimsy. I dipped into the first chapter, expecting the punchline would be revealed in the text; but after five chapters I recognized that the book could not be the instrument of a prank, and my feeling of unease returned.

  The novel documented a trip down the Mekong River taken by four chance acquaintances, beginning in Stung Treng on the Cambodian-Lao border, where the four had purchased a used fishing boat, to Dong Thap Province in the extreme south of Vietnam. It was an unfinished journey fraught with misadventure and illness, infused with a noirish atmosphere of low-level criminality, and culminated with a meditation on suicide that may well have foreshadowed the author’s fate.

  Judging by the wealth and authenticity of the background detail and by the precisely nuanced record of the first-person narrator’s emotional and mental life, the novel was thinly disguised autobiography; and the configuration of the narrator’s thoughts and perceptions seemed familiar, as did the style in which the novel was written: It was my style. Not the style in which I currently wrote, but the style I had demonstrated at the start of my career, prior to being told by an editor that long, elliptical sentences and dense prose would be an impediment to sales (she counseled the use of “short sentences, less navel-gazing, more plot,” advice I took to heart). Cradle Two’s novel was no mere pastiche; it was that old style perfected, carried off with greater expertise than I had ever displayed. It was as if he had become the writer I had chosen not to be.

  I went to Amazon again, intending to have another look at the webpage devoted to The Tea Forest and perhaps find the author’s contact information; but I could not locate the page, and there was no evidence anywhere on the Internet of a second Thomas Cradle or his novel. I tried dozens of searches, all to no avail. I emailed the seller, Overdog Books, asking for any information they might have on the author; they denied having sold me the book. I sent them a scan of the packing slip, along with a note that accused them of being in collusion with one of my enemies, most likely another writer who, envious of my success, was mocking me. They did not respond. I riffled through the pages of the novel, half-expecting it to dematerialize along with the proof of its existence. I had often made the comment that if ever I were presented with incontrovertible evidence of the fantastic, I would quit writing and become a priest. Though I was not yet prepared to don the cassock, the book in my hands seemed evidence of the kind I had demanded.

  The narrative of the The Tea Forest was episodic, heavy on the descriptive passages, many of them violent or explicitly sexual; and these episodes were strung together on a flimsy plotline that essentially consisted of a series of revelations, all leading the narrator (TC by name, thereby firmly establishing that Cradle Two had not overstrained his imagination during this portion of the creative process) to conclude that our universe and those adjoining it were interpenetrating. He likened this circumstance to countless strips of wet rice paper hung side by side in a circle and blown together by breezes that issued from every quarter of the compass, allowing even strips on opposite points of the circle to stick to each other for a moment and, in some instances, for much longer; thus, he concluded, we commonly spent portions of each day in places far stranger than we were aware (although the universes appeared virtually identical). This, he declared, explained why people in rural circumstances experienced paranormal events more often than urban dwellers: They were likely to notice unusual events, whereas city folk might mistake a ghost for a new form of advertising, or attribute the sighting of an enormous shadow in the Hudson River to chemicals in the air, or pay no attention to the fact that household objects were disappearing around them. It also might explain, I realized, why I was no longer able to unearth any record of the novel.

  I had the book copied and bound and FedExed the copy to my agent. The cover letter explained how I had obtained it and asked him to find out whatever he could. He called two mornings later to congratulate me on a stroke of marketing genius, saying that The Tea Forest could be another Blair Witch and that this hoax concerning a second Thomas Cradle was a brilliant way of preparing the market for the debut of my “new” style. When I told him it wasn’t a hoax, as far as I knew, he said not to worry, he’d never tell, and declared that if Random House wouldn’t go for the book, he’d take me over to Knopf. At this juncture, I began to acknowledge that the universe might be as Cradle Two described, and, since there would be no one around to charge me with plagiarism, I saw no reason not to profit from the book; but I told him to hold off on doing anything, that I needed to think it through and, before all else, I might be traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam.

  The idea for the trip was little more than a whim, inspired by my envy of Cradle Two and the lush deviance of his life, as evidenced by The Tea Forest; but over the ensuing two months, as I reread sections of the novel, committing many of them to memory, the richness of the prose infected me with Cradle Two’s obsessiveness (which, after all, was a cousin to my own), and I came to speculate that if I retraced his steps (even if they were steps taken in another universe), I might derive some vital benefit. There was a mystery here that wanted unraveling, and there was no one more qualified than I to investigate it. While I hadn’t entirely accepted his rice paper model of the universe, I believed that if his analogy held water, I might be able to perceive its operations more clearly through the simple lens of a river culture. However, one portion of the novel gave me reason for concern. The narrator, TC, had learned during the course of his journey that in one alternate universe he was a secretive figure of immense power, evil in nature, and that his innumerable analogs were, to some degree or another, men of debased character. The final section of the book suggested that he had undergone a radical transformation, and that idea was supported by a transformation in the prose. Under other circumstances, I would have perceived this to be a typical genre resolution, but Cradle Two’s sentences uncoiled like vipers waking under the reader’s eye, spitting out a black stream of venom from which the next serpent would slither, dark and supple, sleekly malformed, governed by an insidious sonority that got into my head and stained my dreams and my work for days thereafter. Eventually I convinced myself that Cradle Two’s gift alone was responsible for this dubious magic and that it had been done for dramatic effect and was in no way a reflection of reality.

  The book, the actual object, became an article of my obsession. I liked touching it. The slickness of the cover; the tacky spot on the back where a clerk or prior owner had spilled something sticky or parked a wad of chewing gum; the neat yet uninspired marginalia; the handwritten inscription, “To Tracy,” and the anonymity of the dedication, “For you”; the faintly yellowed paper; the tear on page 19. All its mundane imperfections seemed proofs of its otherworldliness, that another world existed beyond the enclosure of my own, and I began carrying the book with me wherever I went, treating it as though it were a lover, fondling it, riffling its pages, fingering it while I drove, thinking about it to the point of distraction, until the idea of the trip evolved from a whim into a project I seriously considered, and then into something more. Though was ordinarily a cynical type, dismissive of any opinion arguing the thesis that life was anything other than a cruel and random process, my affair with the book persuaded me that destiny had taken a hand in my life, and I would be a fool not to heed it (I think every cynic’s brassbound principles can be as easily overthrown). And so, tentatively to begin with, yet with growing enthusiasm, I started to make plans. As a writer, I delighted in planning, in charting the course of a story, in assembling the elements of a fiction into a schematic, and I plotted the trip as though it were a novel that hewed to (but was not limited by) the picaresque flow
of Cradle Two’s voyage along the Mekong. There would be a woman, of course—perhaps two or three women—and here a dash of adventure, here a time for rest and reflection, here the opportunity for misadventure, here a chance for love, and here a chance for disappointment. I laid in detail with the care of a master craftsman attempting a delicate mosaic, leaving only one portion undone: the ending. That would be produced by the alchemy of the writing or, in this instance, the traveling.

  I intended to hew closely in spirit to the debauched tenor of Cradle Two/TC’s journey, and I hoped that by setting up similar conditions, I might have illuminations similar to his; but I saw no purpose in duplicating its every detail—I expected my journey to be a conflation of his experience. The lion’s share of his troubles on the trip had stemmed from his choice of boats, so rather than buying a leaky fishing craft with an unreliable engine for cheap, I arranged to have a houseboat built in Stung Treng. The cost was negligible, four thousand dollars, half up front, for a shallow-draft boat capable of sleeping four with a fully equipped galley and a new engine. Once I completed the trip, I intended to donate it to charity, a Christian act that, given the boat’s value in U.S. dollars, would allow me to take a tax write-off of several times that amount. I informed Kim that I’d be going away for six to eight weeks, roughing it (she considered any activity that occurred partially outdoors to be roughing it) on the Mekong, far from five-star hotels and haute cuisine, and that she was welcome to hook up with me in Saigon, where suitable amenities were available. However, I cautioned her that I would be attempting to recreate the mood described in The Tea Forest, and this meant I would be seeing other women. Perhaps, I suggested, she should seize the opportunity to spread her wings.

  Kim, a tall, striking brunette, had an excellent mind, a background in microbiology, and a scientist’s dispassionate view of human interactions. We had discussed marriage and discussed rather more the possibility of having children, but until we reached that pass, she was comfortable with maintaining an open relationship. She told me to be careful, a reference both to safe sex and to the problems I’d had in compartmentalizing my emotional life, and gave me her blessing. I then contacted my agent and instructed him to sell The Tea Forest while I was gone. These formalities out of the way, I had little left to do except lose some weight for the trip and cultivate a beard—I thought this would help get me into character—and wait for the end of the fall monsoon.

  I flew to Bangkok and there took passage on the Ubon Ratchatani Express toward the Lao border, berthed in an old-fashioned sleeping car with curtained fold-down beds on both sides of the aisle. I spent a goodly portion of the evening in the bar car, which reeked of garlic and chilis and frying basil, drinking bad Thai beer, trying to acclimate myself to the heat that poured through the lowered windows. From Ubon, I traveled by bus to Stung Treng, a dismal town of about twenty-five thousand at the confluence of the Mekong, the Sesan, and the Sekong Rivers. It was a transit point for backpackers, a steady trickle of them, the majority remaining in town no more than a couple of hours, the length of time it took for the next river taxi to arrive. I had thought to pick up a companion in one of the larger Cambodian towns downriver, but as I would be trapped in Stung Treng for three days while the boat was being fitted and provisioned, I posted signs at the border, in the open-air market, and around town, advertising a cruise aboard the Undine (the name of my houseboat) in exchange for personal services. Women only. See the bartender at the Sekong Hotel.

  I was heading back to the hotel, passing through the market when a mural painted on a noodle stall caught my eye. Abstract in form, a yellowish white mass of cells or chambers, spreading over the front and both sides of the stall—though crudely rendered, I had the idea that it was the depiction of microscopic life, one of those multicelled monstrosities that you become overly familiar with in Biology 101. It was such an oddity (most of the stalls were unadorned, a handful decorated with religious iconography), I stopped to look and immediately drew a gathering of young men, curious to see what had made me curious and taking the opportunity to offer themselves as guides, procurers, and so forth. The stallkeeper, an elderly Laotian man, grew annoyed with these loiterers, but I gave him a handful of Cambodian riels, enough to purchase noodles for my new pals, and asked (through the agency of an interpreter—one of the men spoke English) what the mural represented.

  “He don’t know,” said the interpreter. “He say it make peaceful to look at. It make him think of Nirvana. You know Nirvana?”

  “Just their first couple of albums,” I said. “Ask him who painted it.”

  This question stimulated a brief exchange, and the interpreter reported that the artist had been an American. Big like me. More hair. A bad man. I asked him to inquire in what way the man had been bad, but the stallkeeper would only say (or the interpreter could only manage to interpret) that the man was “very bad.” I had only skimmed the last half of The Tea Forest, but I seemed to recall a mention of a creature like that depicted by the mural, and I suspected that the mural and the bad man who had created it might be evidence supporting Cradle Two’s theories.

  That afternoon I staked out a table in the Sekong’s bar and was amazed by how many women volunteered for my inspection. Two balked at the sexual aspects of the position, and others were merely curious; but eleven were serious applicants, willing and, in some cases, eager to trade their favors for a boat ride and whatever experiences it might afford them. I rejected all but four out of hand for being too young or insufficiently attractive. The first day’s interviews yielded one maybe, a thirty-four-year-old Swedish school-teacher who was making her way around the world and had been traveling for almost five years; but she seemed to be looking for a place to rest, and rest was the last thing on my mind.

  The bar was a pleasant enough space—walls of split, lacquered bamboo decorated with travel posters, Cambodian pop flowing from hidden speakers, and a river view through screen windows. A standing floor fan buzzed and whirred in one corner, yet it was so humid that the chair stuck to my back, and the smells drifting up from the water grew less enticing as the hours wore on. Late on the second day, I was almost ready to give up, when a slender, long-legged woman with dyed black hair (self-barbered, apparently, into a ragged pageboy cut), camo parachute pants, and an oft-laundered Olivia Tremor Control T-shirt approached the bar. She unshouldered her backpack and spoke to the bartender. I signaled to him that she passed muster. He pointed me out, and she came toward my table but pulled up short a couple of feet away.

  “Oh, gosh!” she said. “You’re Thomas Cradle, aren’t you?”

  Flattered at being recognized, I said that I was.

  “This is fantastic!” She came forward again, dragging the backpack. “I shall have to tell my old boyfriend. He’s a devoted fan of yours, and he’ll be terribly impressed. Of course, that would make it necessary to speak with him again, wouldn’t it?”

  She was more interesting-looking than pretty, yet pretty enough, with lively topaz eyes and one of those superprecise British accents that linger over each and every syllable, delicately tonguing the consonants, as if giving the language a blowjob.

  “It’s hellish outside,” she said. “I must have a cold drink. Would you care for something?”

  Her face, which I’d initially thought too young, mistaking her for a gangly teenager, had a waiflike quality; a white scar over one eyebrow and small indentations along her jaw, perhaps resulting from adolescent acne, added a decade to my estimate.

  “I’ll take a Green Star, thanks,” I said. “No ice.”

  “Gin for me. Tons of ice.” Her mouth, bracketed when she smiled by finely etched lines, was extraordinarily wide and expressive, appearing to have an extra hinge that enabled her crooked grin. “I’ll just fetch them, shall I?”

  She brought the drinks, had a sip, closed her eyes, and sighed. Then she extended a hand, shook mine, and said, “I’m Lucy McQuillen, and I loved your last book. At least I think it’s your last.” She frowned. �
�Didn’t I hear that you’d stopped writing . . . or were giving it up or something? Not that your presence in Cambodia would refute that in any way.”

  “I have got a new novel coming out next spring,” I said.

  “Well, if it’s as good as the last, you’ll have my ten quid.”

  “The critics will probably say it’s exactly the same as the last.”

  We teetered on the brink of an awkward silence, and then she said, “Shall I tell you about myself? Would that be helpful?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Okay. I’m thirty-one . . . thirty-two next month, actually. I’ve lived in London all my life. I graduated from the Chelsea School of Design and worked at a firm in the city for a while. Five years ago I started my own firm, specializing in urban landscape design. We were doing spectacularly well for a new business . . .”

  A foursome of prosperous-looking Cambodian men entered the bar, laughing and talking; they acknowledged us, inclining their heads and pressing their hands together in a prayerful gesture, a gesture that Lucy returned, and they took seats at a table against the back wall.

  “To put it succinctly,” Lucy went on, “I’m a victim of multiculturalism. My East Indian accountant stole from me, quite a large sum, and fled to India. I couldn’t recover. It was an absolute disaster. I’m afraid I was a mess for some time thereafter. I had a little money left in personal accounts, and I started out for India, planning some pitiful revenge. I’m not certain what I had in mind. Some sort of Kaliesque scenario, I suppose. Gobbets of blood. His wife screaming in horror. Of course, I didn’t go through with it. I bypassed India completely, and I’ve been bumming around Southeast Asia for a couple of years. My money’s running low, and, to be frank, this voyage would extend my trip and give me the time and leisure to write a new business plan.”