The Year is Almost Over

Par Avion

"I have never asked for power over people's lives. Every time I see these things I feel ill and haunted for days."

In May 1932, just before leaving on a flight to Zurich, I made the acquaintance of Samuel Permezel, a man who made a rather startling claim. It was a tale which I found hard to believe at first, but one which subsequent events made hard to dismiss. Permezel was a taxi driver, and our journey from my hotel to Lyon-Bron Airport was long enough for him to tell me his story. He was a tall, thin, ugly man, and as he hauled my luggage into the taxi I noticed a wide scar stretching down from beneath his cap to his right eye.

"So you are English, ah? Ha, to think you English were our enemies for hundreds of years... but then we became friends because of the war. C'est la vie! So you are my friend. But of course you were too old to fight in the war. You are lucky. I was in the French 6th Army - at the battle of the Somme I was hit in the face by a splinter of shrapnel. They thought I was dead for two days. It was only when they stopped fighting to take away the bodies that they saw I was still alive. The metal was stuck behind my eye, but the doctors said it would be best to leave it there - so I was pensioned off, and now I am a taxi driver. But sir, you know this lump of metal, it has given me the ability to see the future."

"Oh, really? Goodness me!"

"I know it sounds, er... how would you say, jolly rum what? But just listen! Sometimes I wake up with a terrible headache, on the right side, where the metal is. I find that my left ankle has become jammed underneath my right thigh while I was asleep. Then, throughout the day, everything that I eat or drink tastes like absinthe! And, perhaps two or three times, I have these strange daydreams, ideas coming as if from nowhere or for no reason. It is only in the days afterward that I will learn of some event, never far away from where I live, that I had already seen before... You see? For instance, in 1921 I woke in such a way, and whenever I was not driving my taxi I would suddenly find myself thinking of a large building on fire, with the firemen struggling to put out the flames. It was three weeks later that a fire destroyed the south wing of the Lyon Museum of Roman Archaeology. But I am rarely given enough knowledge to change the course of tragic events."

"But couldn't those things just be a coincidence?"

"HA! That is what my wife keeps telling me!! She says I am so stupid. No, no, no, I assure you that it happens too often to be so. No, it is real."

He turned briefly from the steering wheel to look me in the eye...

"If only it were not. Let me tell you about a time when I was given enough knowledge to change things. In the winter of 1929, I woke to one of my days of premonition, and all morning, with feelings of an intensity I had not had before, I saw a truck falling down a snow covered hill, injuring and killing people as it went, then smashing through the ice covering a river. I did not recognize the place, but from the slope of the bank I guessed it to be a place near the Saone. I told them I was ill and could not work my roster, and I went there. It did not take me too long before I found the river bank that I believed I had seen in my vision. High on the bank was a part of the road that curved in a way that might be risky to a passing vehicle, and between the road and the river there were people moving about their daily business. Despite the cold and snow beginning to fall, I decided I had to stand there all day, to see how I might stop the tragedy. The snow continued to fall, and the road surface became more slippery - I suspected that this would be the cause of the accident. I walked further along the road and waved to vehicles to try to make them take more care.

"The first few vehicles turned safely. But then, a truck coming toward me seemed to panic from my waving, and braked too hard. Its rear wheels locked, and its tail swung out, causing it to slide sideways along the road, out of control. It slammed into a roadside café with an explosion of shattered glass, wicker furniture and the bodies of the bystanders.