Emily St. John Mandel - Station Eleven

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2014 by Emily St. John Mandel

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
St. John Mandel, Emily, 1979
Station eleven : a novel / Emily St. John Mandel. First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-35330-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-385-35331-1 (eBook)
1. ActorsFiction. 2. Time travelFiction. I. Title.
PR 9199.4. S S 83 2014 813.6dc23 2014003560

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

Front-of-jacket photograph by Michael Turek/Gallery Stock
Jacket design by Abby Weintraub

v3.1

Contents

THE KING STOOD in a pool of blue light, unmoored. This was act 4 of King Lear , a winter night at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto. Earlier in the evening, three little girls had played a clapping game onstage as the audience entered, childhood versions of Lears daughters, and now theyd returned as hallucinations in the mad scene. The king stumbled and reached for them as they flitted here and there in the shadows. His name was Arthur Leander. He was fifty-one years old and there were flowers in his hair.

Dost thou know me? the actor playing Gloucester asked.

I remember thine eyes well enough, Arthur said, distracted by the child version of Cordelia, and this was when it happened. There was a change in his face, he stumbled, he reached for a column but misjudged the distance and struck it hard with the side of his hand.

Down from the waist they are Centaurs, he said, and not only was this the wrong line but the delivery was wheezy, his voice barely audible. He cradled his hand to his chest like a broken bird. The actor portraying Edgar was watching him closely. It was still possible at that moment that Arthur was acting, but in the first row of the orchestra section a man was rising from his seat. Hed been training to be a paramedic. The mans girlfriend tugged at his sleeve, hissed, Jeevan! What are you doing ? And Jeevan himself wasnt sure at first, the rows behind him murmuring for him to sit. An usher was moving toward him. Snow began to fall over the stage.

The wren goes tot, Arthur whispered, and Jeevan, who knew the play very well, realized that the actor had skipped back twelve lines. The wren

Sir, the usher said, would you please

But Arthur Leander was running out of time. He swayed, his eyes unfocused, and it was obvious to Jeevan that he wasnt Lear anymore. Jeevan pushed the usher aside and made a dash for the steps leading up to the stage, but a second usher was jogging down the aisle, which forced Jeevan to throw himself at the stage without the benefit of stairs. It was higher than hed thought and he had to kick the first usher, whod grasped hold of his sleeve. The snow was plastic, Jeevan noted peripherally, little bits of translucent plastic, clinging to his jacket and brushing against his skin. Edgar and Gloucester were distracted by the commotion, neither of them looking at Arthur, who was leaning on a plywood column, staring vacantly. There were shouts from backstage, two shadows approaching quickly, but Jeevan had reached Arthur by now and he caught the actor as he lost consciousness, eased him gently to the floor. The snow was falling fast around them, shimmering in blue-white light. Arthur wasnt breathing. The two shadowssecurity menhad stopped a few paces away, presumably catching on by now that Jeevan wasnt a deranged fan. The audience was a clamor of voices, flashes from cell-phone cameras, indistinct exclamations in the dark.

Jesus Christ, Edgar said. Oh Jesus. Hed dropped the British accent hed been using earlier and now sounded as if he were from Alabama, which in fact he was. Gloucester had pulled away the gauze bandage that had covered half his faceby this point in the play his characters eyes had been put outand seemed frozen in place, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.

Arthurs heart wasnt beating. Jeevan began CPR. Someone shouted an order and the curtain dropped, a whoosh of fabric and shadow that removed the audience from the equation and reduced the brilliance of the stage by half. The plastic snow was still falling. The security men had receded. The lights changed, the blues and whites of the snowstorm replaced by a fluorescent glare that seemed yellow by comparison. Jeevan worked silently in the margarine light, glancing sometimes at Arthurs face. Please, he thought, please. Arthurs eyes were closed. There was movement in the curtain, someone batting at the fabric and fumbling for an opening from the other side, and then an older man in a gray suit was kneeling on the other side of Arthurs chest.

Im a cardiologist, he said. Walter Jacobi. His eyes were magnified by his glasses, and his hair had gone wispy on the top of his head.

Jeevan Chaudhary, Jeevan said. He wasnt sure how long hed been here. People were moving around him, but everyone seemed distant and indistinct except Arthur, and now this other man whod joined them. It was like being in the eye of a storm, Jeevan thought, he and Walter and Arthur here together in the calm. Walter touched the actors forehead once, gently, like a parent soothing a fevered child.

Theyve called an ambulance, Walter said.

The fallen curtain lent an unexpected intimacy to the stage. Jeevan was thinking of the time hed interviewed Arthur in Los Angeles, years ago now, during his brief career as an entertainment journalist. He was thinking of his girlfriend, Laura, wondering if she was waiting in her front-row seat or if she mightve gone out to the lobby. He was thinking, Please start breathing again, please. He was thinking about the way the dropped curtain closed off the fourth wall and turned the stage into a room, albeit a room with cavernous space instead of a ceiling, fathoms of catwalks and lights between which a soul might slip undetected. Thats a ridiculous thought, Jeevan told himself. Dont be stupid. But now there was a prickling at the back of his neck, a sense of being watched from above.

Do you want me to take a turn? Walter asked. Jeevan understood that the cardiologist felt useless, so he nodded and raised his hands from Arthurs chest and Walter picked up the rhythm.

Not quite a room, Jeevan thought now, looking around the stage. It was too transitory, all those doorways and dark spaces between wings, the missing ceiling. It was more like a terminal, he thought, a train station or an airport, everyone passing quickly through. The ambulance had arrived, a pair of medics approaching through the absurdly still-falling snow, and then they were upon the fallen actor like crows, a man and a woman in dark uniforms crowding Jeevan aside, the woman so young she couldve passed as a teenager. Jeevan rose and stepped back. The column against which Arthur had collapsed was smooth and polished under his fingertips, wood painted to look like stone.