The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

by Claire North

“Dr August, there is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd. He may nod, and smile, and say the right thing, but even by this pretence his soul is pushed further away from the kinship of men.”

‘Today is a good day for jihad.’

as Mother Nature decrees that her works of wonder can only occur so frequently across such a vast and cultivated space.

“the past is the past. You are alive today. That is all that matters. You must remember, because it is who you are, but as it is who you are, you must never, ever regret. To regret your past is to regret your soul.”

“That’s a really nice thought –” I sighed “– and I’m grateful for it, but there comes a point when one realises that gratification of the flesh is only so fulfilling. It’s fantastic while it lasts, but comes with so many questions of emotional baggage and doubt that frankly I begin to question whether the grief involved outweighs the satisfaction gained.”

‘Mein Gott! Ich habe es gesehen!’

The infant kept waving for the fifteen minutes we were in the station, and, wearily, I felt obliged to return the gesture. By the time we left, my arm ached, as did my smile,

As so often is the case with men who refuse to cry, the awareness of his own tears seemed to cause them to rise even faster,

Are you God, Dr August? Are you the only living creature that matters? Do you think, because you remember it, that your pain is bigger and more important? Do you think, because you experience it, that your life is the only life that gets counted?

of drink and fuck and get high across the globe, because that’s all there is to do and all there ever will be.

who I mentally dubbed Boris One, Boris Two, Skinny, Fat, Breathless and Dave.

as the headlights from a passing car defined the arc of a sundial across the ceiling, blooming, travelling and gone.

“Don’t fight against inevitability,” I translated loosely. “Life is until it is not, so why get fussed? Don’t hurt anyone, try not to give your dinner guests food poisoning, be clean in word and deed – what else is there? Just be a decent person in a decent world.”

“People don’t have the answer,” I concluded softly. “People… just want to be left alone and not bothered. But I am bothered. We ask ourselves ‘Why me?’ and ‘What’s the point?’ and sooner or later people turn round and say ‘It’s a coincidence’ and ‘My purpose is the woman I love’ or ‘My purpose is my children’ or ‘To see this idea through,’

“Go with it. You talk about decent people living decent lives as if that doesn’t mean anything, like it’s not a big deal. But you listen – this ‘decent’, it is the only thing that matters. I don’t care if you theorise, Mr Scientist, a machine that makes all men kind and all women beautiful if, while making your machine, you don’t stop to help the old mother cross the street, you know? I don’t care if you cure ageing, or stop starvation or end nuclear wars, if you forget this –” she rapped her knuckles against my forehead “– or this –”

pressed her palm against my chest “– because even then if you save everyone else, you’ll be dead inside. Men must be decent first and brilliant later, otherwise you’re not helping people, just servicing the machine.”

Beneath this tombstone was a much longer inscription in, of all things, Sanskrit.

I hadn’t ever seen her without any hair before, but now I realised how egg-shaped her skull truly was.

the car’s suspension had been welded in by a stonemason resentful of his change in career.

Even good men, it seemed, could be swayed once you had them used to the notion that it was acceptable to give them a gift of a bottle of wine, then a gift of a new toy for their kid, then a gift of a day out for the family, then a weekend away, then membership of a golf club, then a new car… by which point the great mass of gifts already accepted made the rejection of this latest present hard even for the best of men and their status as morally compromised assets complete in both the eyes of criminals and the view of the law.

Whatever unkind genetic pixie had gifted me with my face, it hadn’t spawned on her side of the family.

as blithe and oblivious as a whale to the writhing of plankton in the sea.

perhaps to remove the detritus of perished flying adversaries,

The first is that a dull listener is, nine times out of ten, a vastly more effective spy than a charming conversationalist. The second is that the best way to approach a contact blind is not for you to directly engage with them, but to convince them that they want to engage with you.

I had eaten vast amounts of cheese in preparation for this moment, and drunk copious quantities of water.

The immortal words of the extremely wealthy, whose natural financial saturation point is so high they have been buoyed above the realms of ordinary mortals, and can perceive vast riches beyond the dreams of lesser fishes.

suggest, as you yourself have so often pointed out, that even the greatest minds cannot spend every second analysing the mysteries of the universe, but must, indeed must also spend some time of every day wondering why the toilet is so cold, the shampoo so poor and canteen cabbage so lumpy. I do not expect my scientists to be monks, Harry, least of all you!”

“Mankind has learned to carve with the tools of nature, but can’t yet see the sculpture it will create,”

As I lay in a white hospital gown designed to institutionalise any free-spirited individual as quickly as possible,

“Chemotherapy is a prison sentence. It is six months of house arrest, of nausea without being able to vomit, of a heady heat without being able to find a deep enough cold, of pain with no remedy, of isolation and discomfort, and at the end of it I will still be here, and I will still be dying.”