Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

- Delmore Schwartz

"Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"

„Yuuto was very different from Philip“, Mr Tuniak told me today. „Throughout his whole life, Philip has always tried to stay in the background and not be noticed. Yuuto didn't care about that. He was completely indifferent to the fact that people might notice that he didn't age or die.“

„Do you know how old he is?“, I asked.

„Not exactly“, Mr Tuniak replied. „But he has made remarks from time to time that suggest he is about two thousand years old.“

„He never mentioned the mammoths of his youth?“

Mr Tuniak laughed. „Even if he was born during the Stone Age, I'm not sure there were any mammoths in Japan.“ He became more serious. „There is another difference between Philip and Yuuto. Philip has always looked for other immortals and thus built his own kind of family. People, who wouldn't die within eighty or ninety years. Yuuto has never made any close friends. At least that's what he is claiming. And apart from his room in the Hoshi Ryokan he never had a place he could his home. He travelled the world and did this, whenever possible, by walking. He has learned to ride and probably also how to drive a car, but he seldom does it.“

„Even if he is going to another country?“

„Even then“, Mr Tuniak emphasised. „He says that he has all the time in world, so why should he hurry? He has hurried a lot in his youth, but when he turned three hundred he realised that he would never have to again. Even he couldn't visit some place in one year, he would go there the next.“

„What about the Oceans? Did he swim from Japan to the mainland?“

„Of course not, he travelled on ships and, rarely, planes.“

„I was wondering about another thing last week“, I said. „The way Yuuto talked to you in the mountains... Did he know you before that? I know that you didn't, but was the same true for him?“

„You are starting to think like a time traveller“, Mr Tuniak said. „But yes, he had seen me before.“

„In the eight century when you were visiting his hotel?“

„No, I only saw him there, I didn't talk to him or anyone. He didn't see me“, Mr Tuniak said. „No, we had... a little adventure in the 80s together.“

„How did that happen?“

„By... a slip of the tongue“, Mr Tuniak explained. „Although I think Yuuto did it on purpose. As we were climbing through the National Park in Madagascar, Mowgli and I were talking about how dangerous it all was and he interrupted us and said that at least this time the air was breathable. I asked him what he had meant when he had said this time. He said that it wasn't like in Centralia, but I told him that I didn't know any city with that name. I could see in his face that he wasn't believing me.“

„All right, so you knew where you would meet him. But not when. Did you ask him?“

Alexander took Mowgli back to India with his time machine and then returned to Madagascar. For Yuuto, who had stayed behind, five minutes had passed.

“You were quick”, he said with a smile.

“And I'm pretty sure that you know why”, Alexander replied. “We have met before, haven't we?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Honestly? I got suspicious the first time you talked to me in the mountains”, Alexander told him. “And now this remark about the better air quality. Where have we met before? During the Great Fire of London?”

Yuuto looked at him for some time without answering. Then: “So you really are a time traveller? No, don't answer, I know everything I want to know. Centralia in Pennsylvania, on October the 22^nd, 1988. That's where I saw you for the first time.”

“I've never heard of that city.”

“It's the gate to Hell.”

“Do you have to be that cryptic?”

“Why? Do you want me to speak plain and take away all surprise? I am immortal and I have seen so very many things, nothing can really surprise me any more. You are a time traveller, you know what is going to happen tomorrow, so I think it's the same for you. But at the same time you look old enough to value a good surprise.”

Alexander looked at him critically.

“I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll go to San Francisco in 1987, the exact date doesn't matter. You will write a letter to this address here, the contents of which I will dictate to you in a moment. Then you will go to the access road to Centralia on the morning of October 22^nd, 1988. To find out where the city is located, only use a map, nothing else. Do not look it up in books, because... well, that would spoil the surprise.”

“Did you do it?”, I asked. “Did you follow his instructions?”

“After some deliberation, yes, I did”, Mr Tuniak answered. “Because he was right with one thing: It was difficult to surprise me.”

It was the morning of October 22^nd and Alexander was standing at the side of the road that led to Centralia. He had waited for over an hour already, when finally he saw a car approaching in the distance. He looked over his shoulder. The time machine was hidden a few hundred metres away and although he knew where to look, it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could make out its shape. So far, so good. He went to the middle of the road and waited.

The car stopped several metres in front of him and Yuuto exited. He was holding a letter in his hand and looked at Alexander, as if he was an extinct animal.

“Did you send me this letter?”, Yuuto asked.

“Yes”, Alexander confirmed. “I'm Alexander.”

“Yuuto, but you already know that”, Yuuto said and they shook hands. “How did you know about the graffiti?”

“You will find out in five years”, Alexander said.

A smile spread across Yuuto's face. “I like surprises.” The he pointed down the road. “Do you know what we will find over there?”

Alexander looked where he was pointing at. He had spent the whole morning wondering what made Centralia so special. From this distance he couldn't tell much, other than the fact that the town was mostly hidden by fog. “The gate to Hell?”, he said.

“You could call it that. Get in.”

They drove a few more kilometres, before stopping and parking the car at the side of the road. Alexander saw immediately why that was necessary. In front of him, the street had been torn apart, as if two giants had each taken hold of one side and pulled with all their might.

Yuuto opened the trunk of his car. “I hope you didn't lie about your height and weight”, he said.

Alexander went to him to see what he had brought. In the trunk there were two safety glasses, two oxygen masks and two oxygen tanks. He also took a backpack.

“They are not yet necessary”, Yuuto said, as he saw that Alexander had put on the safety glasses. “I'll tell you, when you should put them on.”

Even now, when they had nearly entered Centralia, Alexander couldn't tell what made it so interesting to Yuuto. Maybe it was the fact, that there seemed to be no inhabitants. But maybe they were all in their homes and didn't want to go out into the thick fog.

And then he smelled it. He wasn't surrounded just by fog. It was smoke Something really big had to be burning close by.

“Do you now know what makes this town different?”, Yuuto asked as he saw the look on Alexander's face. “Put your hand on the street.”

Alexander carefully knelt down and laid his hand on the ground. The street was warm, far warmer than it had any right to be.

“I think we should put on our masks now”, Yuuto suggested.

“It was in the 1960s that an accident happened in the mines of Centralia”, Mr Tuniak explained. “A fire was started, a fire that couldn't be extinguished. At first the people and authorities tried to play the accident down. They continued to live there. But when Yuuto and I visited there, it had practically become a ghost town.”

“And the fire is burning right under the city?”

“More or less. You can watch smoke rising up out of several manhole covers. You don't have to wear a mask if you are there, but in the long term it isn't healthy.”

“What did Yuuto want with this town?”

They had walked through the whole town and out the other side. They were closing in on the old entrance to the mine shaft. Yuuto had long branch with which he tested the ground in front of him before he put down a foot. Alexander was walking closely behind him.

They found a whole in the ground. The heat streaming out of it was so intense that neither of them could get close and look down.

“Did you know that scientist estimate that the fire will continue to burn for the next thousand years?”, Yuuto asked.

“No”, Alexander admitted. “What are we doing here?”

“I don't know what you are doing here, but as for me...” Yuuto put down his backpack, opened it and took a white box out of it. The box was not big, he could hold it in one hand, and Alexander was unable to tell what kind of material she was made out of. “Do you know what a time capsule is?”, Yuuto asked.

Alexander nodded. Time capsules were storage boxes where people put in photos, texts and other small things. The boxes were safely closed and buried in the ground. Only after a long time – usually at least fifty years or more – those capsules were dug out again and offered the people of the future a unique look into their past.

“I'm sure that in a thousand years, when the fire has gone out, people will be send down there”, Yuuto told Alexander. “And if they go down there, I want them to find my time capsule. Can you imagine what that will mean? It would be as if we found a time capsule form the Medieval Ages!”

“You'll probably be there too, then”, Alexander said.

“If I don't forget about it again”, Yuuto said. Then he dropped the box into the hole where it quickly disappeared.

“Again? Have you done this before?”

“Several times. Knowledge is so easily lost. I am very old, but I can't remember everything I have done and see in my life. I have forgotten a lot. And I think the same is true for humanity as a whole. My time capsules, if they are found, are supposed to be... cheat sheet. A memory of things, we once have known.” Yuuto turned around and started to go back the way they had come. “On the other hand: Maybe this is just one last foolery of an old man who has lived so very long and has so very little to show for it. There is nothing I can point to and say: I caused this.”

“I know what you mean”, Alexander added privately.

NEXT WEEK

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