Looking back on a life half-remembered...
My true name. Would it be a crime to say that I do not remember? Perhaps that is why I live on, and when I one day remember my name I will fade into the uninterrupted chatter of history like all my contemporaries have done before me. Of course, a man like me really has no contemporaries. I belong to too many ages.
It is perhaps unimportant. My childhood was an era into which it was all too easy to disappear. I remember at age five being introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, whose face was as white and terrible as the turbulent sea. My father told me that though he did not fear Sir Isaac that I would be a fool not to. I took his words to heart, but I hadn’t needed his instruction. To this day, in my sleep I see his face, his august hands.
We used to take long walks by the Thames, my father and I. My small hand fit neatly into his, and he would lead me along. I felt a leper then, almost, in my black puritan’s garb as the foppish aristocrats passed by in their finery. I never understood that those dark clothes labeled us Calvinists, and that meant we were best avoided. If someone had asked me who John Calvin was, I would not have been able to tell them. I’m still not entirely sure.
Sometimes, I would accompany him on errands. I met, at age seven, the Bandit King; a dark-skinned Italian with a wicked smile and a penchant for the dramatic. A week later, I saw him hanged. I watched stoically, mimicking the face of my father. My father had employed him, but had stood gracefully to the side as the man was tried and sentenced. It made me wonder if he would speak up for me, if given the choice.
But all this is digression, indulgence even. Looking back on a life half-remembered, trying to place where in that there is the seed of who I’ve become. Even now, I do not see it.