The Time Traveler’s Wife

THE MAN OUT OF TIME



Oh not because happiness exists, that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss. But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.



... Ah, but what can we take along into that other realm? Not the art of looking, which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing. The sufferings, then. And, above all, the heaviness, and the long experience of love,-just what is wholly unsayable. - from The Ninth Duino Elegy, RAINER MARIA RILKE, translated by STEPHEN MITCHELL



FIRST DATE, ONE



Saturday, October 26, 1991 (Henry is 28, Clare is 20)



CLARE: The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. I sign the Visitors Log: Clare Abshire, 11:15 10-26-91 Special Collections. I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that Ive gotten past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books. The elevator is dimly lit, almost silent. I stop on the third floor and fill out an application for a Readers Card, then I go upstairs to Special Collections. My boot heels rap the wooden floor. The room is quiet and crowded, full of solid, heavy tables piled with books and surrounded by readers. Chicago autumn morning light shines through the tall windows. I approach the desk and collect a stack of call slips. Im writing a paper for an art history class. My research topic is the Kelmscott Press Chaucer. I look up the book itself and fill out a call slip for it. But I also want to read about papermaking at Kelmscott. The catalog is confusing. I go back to the desk to ask for help. As I explain to the woman what I am trying to find, she glances over my shoulder at someone passing behind me. ＂Perhaps Mr. DeTamble can help you,＂ she says. I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry.