The Brilliant Epoch

I

ORDINARY EVENTS are arranged in time, strung along its course like beads on a thread. There they have their antecedents and their consequences, which crowd tightly, treading on one another’s heels, without stopping or leaving gaps. This is also significant for a narrative, whose very soul is continuity and sequence.
    But what is to be done with events that have no place in time, events that came too late, when all of time was already allocated, distributed and shared out, and which now find themselves all-at-sea, as it were, unclassified, suspended in the air, homeless and errant?
    Could it be that time has been too narrow for all the events? Is it possible for all the seats in time to have sold out? Anxious, we run along that whole train of events, now being made ready for its journey.
    For the love of God, can there really be no street trade at all here in the tickets for time...? Mister conductor!
    But remain calm! I will settle the matter quietly, without unnecessary panic, within the proper scope of matters.
    Has my reader ever heard about the parallel strands of time, in double-track time? Yes, such branch turnings of time do exist, a little illegal, to be sure, and problematic, but when one carries such contraband as I, such supernumerary, unclassifiable events, one cannot be too particular. And so, at some point in my story I shall attempt to take such a branch turning — a siding — and shunt this illegal history into it. Don’t worry. It will all happen imperceptibly. The reader will experience no shock. Who knows, perhaps that tainted manœuvre is already behind us, even as we speak of it, and we are already trundling down the siding.

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