A Map of Our Failures

A Map of Our Failures

For May 10^th, 1933

"A language is the map of our failures."

I.

"The burning of a book," he says, "arouses terrible sensations in me, memories of Hitler; there are few things that upset me so much as the idea of burning a book."

1.

Tom's read about all of this in history books.

Muggle ones, printed on cheap paper for public school children, because such an event doesn't hold enough significance for wizards to study it. The only burnings discussed in Binns's history class are the Witch Burnings, and of course, that's very different from burning books. Very different.

There are grainy black and white photographs printed underneath blocks of close-type text. He knows the details of each of them intimately, and enjoys the sensation of trying to fit reality to their frozen grey blurs. Every now and then, it happens: real life and photograph intersect. There's a wet click, like the cocking of a revolver, and a flash. In that moment, it's almost like time doesn't mean anything, because he can see the future spread out before him, multiplying infinities, finally pouring onto the page of a Muggle textbook.

The snap of the photograph divides the moment into 'before' and 'after.' A precise, sterile incision through time; reality almost seems to hitch when the flashbulb stalls the hand of the unnamed SA officer, midway through hurling The Old Man and the Sea into the flames.

He doesn't realise it, though, and continues his action blindly. Tom, quick-eyed, quick-tongued, does, and smiles. He wants to hold the camera, dangled so casually from the photographer's hands, to see if the history captured in silver ions and light inside it makes it any heavier.

2.

It's the noise he can't get used to. There's little sense of it in the photographs, even in the one where Goebbels is standing on a podium surrounded by bright-eyed students, and has his Aryan mouth wide open.

There's a continuous din: the low crackle of burning, rhythmic cheering, the angelic sound of young boys singing like a church choir, the white static of megaphones, and the distorted voices that filter through them.

"Bücherverbrennung."

German is a language that sounds godly. The alphabets are hard and efficient on the tongue, reaching back, calling for bile and spit. It sheds the vestiges of false modern culture and grasps at something altogether different, pure. It has an effect like sandpaper in the mouth.

Receding into flat, rounded English, Tom feels muted and small.

Yet the world does not speak German now.

II.

"relieved in a book

relived in a book"

1.

A hand slides onto his waist, hooking the cool black leather belt with one white finger. "Wie heist du?"

Tom looks just young enough to be vulnerable, even in the uniform with highly polished buttons. Half an hour later, behind one of the buildings, the boy with white hands and pink nails is peeling off those buttons, the khaki, the white vest underneath. Tom feels sure his quick fingers will be pulling off his skin next, and in a way, they are.

The gold chain that's fastened to the Time Turner digs into his neck. The boy-- Adolf, he says, blue eyes shadowed and glittering, a cat, like the Führer-- twists it tighter, watches as the blood is pulled up and coagulates just under the skin. He lets go when the edges of the indentation turn blue, knocking Tom's head back against the damp brick wall with a kiss. Tom pushes back, but not too hard, because he doesn't want to break the blue eyes and delicate bones and brittle white hands of this boy. It's a mistake, because white is cruel.

He asks his second name before he leaves, buckling his belt in a silver flash like a photograph that temporarily blinds Adolf. He twists the Time Turner, and the world contorts for the briefest of moments, before he's in the same place only sixteen years later.

He reaches out for the third brick from the right, feeling the nostalgic tug of the Portkey at his hips before he's back in the cold cellar of Honeydukes.

2.

He shrugs on his soft wool robes over the uniform. It's dangerous-- one upward swish of robes and a flash of grey-green would give away his secret-- but he does it anyway.

Tom presses the oak wand to his bruised eye and then his split lip, muttering healing spells as he goes back up and pays for a bag of Toothflossing Stringmints and Acid Pops.

When he gets back to the Slytherin dormitories that night and looks hungrily through his history books for the name Adolf Heitz, his breath smells of peppermint, but his mouth is filled with the taste of black blood and oak.

III.

"we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger. The burning of a book arouses no sensation in me. I know it hurts to burn."

1.

"Bücherverbrennung."

It's not so special the second time over, Tom realises, even with the strange prickling discomfort of watching himself smile at Adolf Heitz and be led way by his brittle white hands. This time it is not history; it is present tense: here and now and is.

2.

Tom knows the witches burned and knows he should feel angry, but he doesn't, really. They are nameless and written out of history, blood and fire replaced with stories of bumbling Muggles and Wendelin the Weird. Fairy tales for wizard children, like the ones Goebbels spun. The Burning Times never existed, according to the Hogwarts texts, the politically correct books at Flourish and Blotts.

They are only real within the pages of backalley novels, unverifiable personal accounts, traded on level with Peruvian dragon eggs. Tom couldn't care less about people who are written out of history.

Tom can see many differences between the witches and the books burning. But mainly, what strikes him is that nobody ever tried to replace the witches.

3.

Tom watches the scene replay, mouthing words and predicting the action like a boy watching his favourite movie for the tenth time. But he hasn't seen all angles. An old man comes forward, and his eyes glint with reflected fire. He turns to Tom, who is swinging timelessness from a gold chain.

"You're only burning paper," he says, and laughs.

IV.

"there are books that describe all this

and they are useless"

1.

The bullet speeds through Adolf Hitler's brain. The swastika in the back of his throat stops spinning, but the words endure.

2.

Tom Riddle stops speaking German.

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