Mett Hejg - How to Stop Time

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by

Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

www.canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

Copyright Matt Haig, 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted

While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any further editions.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on

request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78211 863 3

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh

For Andrea

I often think of what Hendrich said to me, over a century ago, in his New York apartment.

The first rule is that you dont fall in love, he said. There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. If you stick to this you will just about be okay.

I stared through the curving smoke of his cigar, out over Central Park where trees lay uprooted from the hurricane.

I doubt I will ever love again, I said.

Hendrich smiled, like the devil he could be. Good. You are, of course, allowed to love food and music and champagne and rare sunny afternoons in October. You can love the sight of waterfalls and the smell of old books, but the love of people is off limits. Do you hear me? Dont attach yourself to people, and try to feel as little as you possibly can for those you do meet. Because otherwise you will slowly lose your mind . . .

I am old.

That is the main thing to tell you. The thing you are least likely to believe. If you saw me you would probably think I was about forty, but you would be very wrong.

I am old old in the way that a tree, or a quahog clam, or a Renaissance painting is old.

To give you an idea: I was born well over four hundred years ago on the third of March 1581, in my parents room, on the third floor of a small French chteau that used to be my home. It was a warm day, apparently, for the time of year, and my mother had asked her nurse to open all the windows.

God smiled on you, my mother said. Though I think she might have added that should He exist the smile had been a frown ever since.

My mother died a very long time ago. I, on the other hand, did not.

You see, I have a condition.

I thought of it as an illness for quite a while, but illness isnt really the right word. Illness suggests sickness, and wasting away. Better to say I have a condition. A rare one, but not unique. One that no one knows about until they have it.

It is not in any official medical journals. Nor does it go by an official name. The first respected doctor to give it one, back in the 1890s, called it anageria with a soft g, but, for reasons that will become clear, that never became public knowledge.

The condition develops around puberty. What happens after that is, well, not much. Initially the sufferer of the condition wont notice they have it. After all, every day people wake up and see the same face they saw in the mirror yesterday. Day by day, week by week, even month by month, people dont change in very perceptible ways.

But as time goes by, at birthdays or other annual markers, people begin to notice you arent getting any older.

The truth is, though, that the individual hasnt stopped ageing. They age exactly the same way. Just much slower. The speed of ageing among those with anageria fluctuates a little, but generally it is a 1:15 ratio. Sometimes it is a year every thirteen or fourteen years but with me it is closer to fifteen.

So, we are not immortal. Our minds and bodies arent in stasis. Its just that, according to the latest, ever-changing science, various aspects of our ageing process the molecular degeneration, the cross-linking between cells in a tissue, the cellular and molecular mutations (including, most significantly, to the nuclear DNA) happen on another timeframe.

My hair will go grey. I may go bald. Osteoarthritis and hearing loss are probable. My eyes are just as likely to suffer with age-related presbyopia. I will eventually lose muscle mass and mobility.

A quirk of anageria is that it does tend to give you a heightened immune system, protecting you from many (not all) viral and bacterial infections, but ultimately even this begins to fade. Not to bore you with the science, but it seems our bone marrow produces more hematopoietic stem cells the ones that lead to white blood cells during our peak years, though it is important to note that this doesnt protect us from injury or malnutrition, and it doesnt last.

So, dont think of me as a sexy vampire, stuck for ever at peak virility. Though I have to say it can feel like you are stuck for ever when, according to your appearance, only a decade passes between the death of Napoleon and the first man on the moon.

One of the reasons people dont know about us is that most people arent prepared to believe it.

Human beings, as a rule, simply dont accept things that dont fit their worldview. So you could say I am four hundred and thirty-nine years old easily enough, but the response would generally be are you mad?. Or, alternatively, death.

Another reason people dont know about us is that were protected. By a kind of organisation. Anyone who does discover our secret, and believes it, tends to find their short lives are cut even shorter. So the danger isnt just from ordinary humans.

Its also from within.

Chandrika Seneviratne was lying under a tree, in the shade, a hundred metres or so behind the temple. Ants crawled over her wrinkled face. Her eyes were closed. I heard a rustling in the leaves above and looked up to see a monkey staring down at me with judging eyes.

I had asked the tuk-tuk driver to take me monkey spotting at the temple. Hed told me this red-brown type with the near bald face was a rilewa monkey.

Very endangered, the driver had said. There arent many left. This is their place.

The monkey darted away. Disappeared among leaves.

I felt the womans hand. It was cold. I imagined she had been lying here, unfound, for about a day. I kept hold of her hand and found myself weeping. The emotions were hard to pin down. A rising wave of regret, relief, sorrow and fear. I was sad that Chandrika wasnt here to answer my questions. But I was also relieved I didnt have to kill her. I knew shed have had to die.

This relief became something else. It might have been the stress or the sun or it might have been the egg hoppas Id had for breakfast, but I was now vomiting. It was in that moment that it became clear to me. I cant do this any more.

There was no phone reception at the temple, so I waited till I was back in my hotel room in the old fort town of Galle tucked inside my mosquito net sticky with heat, staring up at the pointlessly slow ceiling fan, before I phoned Hendrich.

You did what you were supposed to do? he said.

Yes, I said, which was halfway to being true. After all, the outcome had been the one hed asked for. She is dead. Then I asked what I always asked. Have you found her?

No, he said, as always. We havent. Not yet.

Yet. That word could trap you for decades. But this time, I had a new confidence.

Now, Hendrich, please. I want an ordinary life. I dont want to do this.

He sighed wearily. I need to see you. Its been too long.