Changing the Past by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online

this year.”
    â€œI don’t need that much,” said Hunsicker. “But I’m going to retire in a few years, and I don’t have a lot put away. Sending Elliot to good schools, even with help from scholarships, pretty well kept me hand-to-mouth for a long time, and Martha hasn’t always worked.” He put his hand to his jaw. “Can’t I just be well-to-do? Not so wealthy or powerful that I bully people, but just have enough to be secure?”
    The little man grimaced. He was so nondescript-looking that one would have had great difficulty in describing him to—well, the police, if it came to that. But what kind of con man provided money to his victim? “Walter, I don’t think you’ve yet got the right idea. Everything in existence is consequential. You should have learned that from briefly serving in the role which you so quickly discarded. What you must do is get a past of the kind to put you in the sort of situation you’d like today, but then you must accept what goes along with it.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s worth the risks. As I told you, I have had, and am still having, a good life, a happy life. Sure, you can maliciously point out some slight irregularities in its texture.” He colored slightly. “I don’t regret having risen above my wife’s foibles—which is what they really were—so long ago that until you unkindly reminded me I had forgotten them. I’m sure she would have done as much for me. And Elliot, so he’s homosexual, so what? At first I admit I was only ritualistically tolerant—barely that, but I’m proud to say I have never been a bigot. I lived to accept the situation genuinely. All right, so I won’t be a grandfather. After him, Martha couldn’t have more children. But to have such a regret would be awfully selfish.”
    The little man threw up his hands. “Okay, you’ve made your decision.” He spun around and plucked from a cubbyhole what probably was that piece of notepaper on which he had made his earlier entries. He made a new notation on it.
    â€œI’m sorry it didn’t work out,” said Hunsicker, leaving the rickety chair. “But then, I guess I still don’t really believe it’s possible to change the past. Or if it is, then it would be done at a university laboratory, beginning with frog embryos or whatnot, and take forever to get to human life.”
    M ARTHA WAS waiting for him at the station as always except on the rare occasions when she made other arrangements by telephone. They lived only a mile from the railroad, and he could easily have walked it if not every day then twice or thrice a week in good weather, and no doubt should have done so for cardiovascular reasons, but Martha liked to provide the service. While she waited she read, and what she read was more often than not a book published by his firm, for he brought home many of the latest titles in advance of their appearance in the shops, which gave him a certain prestige amongst his neighbors if the book was one which got a lot of attention in the news media prior to its official publication date—say that former statesman’s memoir from which he and the lawyers had worked so hard to eradicate pretexts for libel actions.
    Today, as he approached the car, he could identify at quité a distance the volume she held against the steering wheel, for as she read a righthand page the front cover was at an angle to display the bold type thereupon. The book was the autobiography of a motion-picture actor who, though a has-been in the current professional context, was not only remembered by an over-fifty public but recognized by younger persons through film festivals, TV showings, and video cassettes, as being one sort of classic, the embodiment of a style no longer to be found even on celluloid: the felt hat, four-button double-breasted jacket, perhaps even white trousers, certainly