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Jon IngoldLocation: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
Date of Birth: 5/16/81
Email: jon@ingold.fsnet.co.uk
Website: http://www.ingold.fsnet.co.uk/
Awards: Regional Short-Story Competition
HOW TO BUILD AN IMPOSSIBLE STAIRCASE Welcome to my front yard. The weather’s good, the sky is pretty blue with clouds which cycle lazily over the tops of the trees. Me and Dr. Kryincov sit side by side on my doorstep, watching bemused as the postman makes his way up to my door. He’s a pleasant man, the postman, with a pleasant face and a jolly demeanour. His short flock of black hair resides under the uniform postal cap; and he looks very happy with his role.
"That’s the parcel for you, Mr. Griffiths. From the bank." Which he hands to me.
"Thanks," I reply.
The postman sets off down the stairs in my front yard again; that lead from my door to the gate out onto the street. He turns back after a couple and says – "I wish you’d put a mailbox at the bottom of all these stairs, Mr. Griffiths, I’m quite worn out!"
Me and Dr. Kryincov watch in silence as the postman walks down the left side of the staircase. That’s where it bends sideways, like a roller-coaster track, and so he walks along the vertical face, sticking out like a long postal nail. He reaches the front gate and straightens out again, and carries on going down the stairs. He walks past us, sat on my front step, without a second glance in my direction, and then reaches the gate once more. This time he walks straight through it and out into the street.
"I don’t think everybody gets it, Dr. Kryincov."
"No, dear boy, I don’t suppose they do." His voice is heavy, because he’s pining for the Nobel Prize or Fields medal he won’t be winning for his achievement. The panel of judges did arrive and have a look, but they walked around in a circle three times, stood outside my door, tutted and looked serious, then walked in a circle twice and left.
I only get it because I watched them build it; even then it was a while before it clicked. But click it did – and that’s what makes me special, Dr. Kryincov very kindly says. I suppose that’s true – the postman’s been delivering every morning for nearly a year now, and he still goes round three times to console himself before he’ll deliver to me.
He’ll walk straight past my doorstep, where I’ll be sat with Dr. Kryincov, and I’ll say, "Oh, has that parcel arrived from the bank yet?"
The postman pointedly ignores me, as though I were a drunk or a beggar or a madman paying with a pot plant on the bus.
Voosh!
He reaches the gate and climbs the stairs to my door again, and he stops.
"Any word on that parcel the bank are supposed to be sending me?"
Turns out he’s only tying up his shoelace. He props his foot up on my doorstep between me and my friend, and neatly fastens his laces. I can see the parcel in his post office satchel as he leans forward, and so very quietly I reach out and pluck it from the bag. It’s the parcel I was expecting from the bank. Dr. Kryincov stares at me in horror, and giggles slightly with excitement.
"My dear chap, that’s thievery!" he whispers.
I nod slightly, and begin carefully opening the tape that holds down the flap on the end of the parcel. Oblivious to all this, the postman starts off again, and continues climbing the stairs, more slowly now as he begins to tire. You can hear him panting as he makes it back to the gate where he started, and his face is bright red by the time he returns to my front door. This time he waves on the last stretch and cries:
"Good morning, Mr Griffiths! I’ve got that parcel from the bank you wanted!"
He’s finally reached my door, and is standing straight upwards, same as me, not sideways. "I’ve got it somewhere here in my bag," he says, as he fumbles around for an embarrassed moment. I don’t really know what to say.
"I don’t believe it!" curses the postman under his breath. "I’m sorry, Mr. Griffiths, I had it a moment ago, I’m sure I did. I’ve probably dropped it – I’ll just go and look. I’m dreadfully sorry."
"That’s okay," I reply.
"No really, I’ll just nip down and have a look for it. It’s no trouble."
"Bring it to me tomorrow," I offer, hands loosely resting around the very parcel, which is half-opened. "You needn’t come all the way back up now."
Dr. Kryincov makes a slight internal squealing noise, suppressing a giggle and releasing it in a controlled explosion through his nose.
"No," the postman replies bravely, "Professionalism, Mr. Griffiths – I’ll just go and find it."
He turns round and starts off down the stairs, Dr. Kryincov is biting his lip fiercely, and I wait patiently as the postman walks his way around the staircase once more and approaches us again. He sees the parcel this time, and snatches it roughly from me, saying only:
"Pesky kids. Disgraceful – I could get the sack, and from that useless lot of lazy layabouts."
Actually, I think he says more, but by the gate he’s out of hearing, and he stops and starts smiling again as he comes within sight of us – or rather, we come within sight of him.
"That parcel for you, Mr. Griffiths. From the bank." Which he puts back into my hands again, frowning at the sight of the half-opened tape around one end.
"Thanks", I reply.
The postman sets off down again. He turns back after a couple of steps and says – "I wish you’d put a mailbox at the bottom of these stairs, Mr. Griffiths, I’m quite worn out!"
And he goes back downstairs. Somehow his cap doesn’t fall off when he’s on the part of the staircase which bends so it’s vertical, and I don’t quite understand that. It’s because his down becomes different than my down; but, no – I can’t really see it. Which is a shame, because I understand everything else about the impossible stairs in my front yard, which go up but don’t have a top or bottom, just one looped middle.
I know the man who built it; he comes and sits on my front doorstep to admire his creation. It gave me rather a shock the first time I saw him there; but these days he’s a regular; so I come downstairs and offer him a cup of tea.
Apparently the reason it works is because it’s logical like that. Dr. Kryincov tells me that everything in the whole Universe is based on logic; and since the staircase is logically sound; it doesn’t matter that it’s impossible. It’s allowed.
"My dear boy," he says, reeking of an academic air which died out years ago, "Everything’s so much easier since they found the Theory of Everything."
Yeah, that’s right, the Theory of Everything. That’s what does it all – absolutely everything in the entire universe. This is the theory that can compute the time until the Sun goes supernova, and what you ate for breakfast yesterday morning. It’s all calculable – it just requires rather a large number of calculations. So rest assured, the cereal companies won’t be using it to target their adverts at you quite yet. And apparently the Theory also explains why a tennis ball has been rolling down the steps outside my house for the past week now without ever reaching the bottom. Dr. Kryincov tells me not to worry; as it’ll soon achieve escape velocity.
"Don’t worry, dear boy, It’ll soon.." – voosh! goes the ball streaking past him as he sits on my front doorstep, and I walk up to my house having just returned from the newsagent – "Don’t worry. That ball will achieve escape velocity in the next week, I should imagine; or it’ll burrow through the track in the wall. Don’t fret, my dear chap. It wouldn’t do, it simple would not do."
That’s another thing. This tennis ball is running around a track set into the inner wall of the ring staircase, the edge which borders the attractive fountain in the middle of my front lawn. It’s a very pleasant fountain to have, and I like it. On windy days little droplets of water get blown on the stairs which then run around and around the staircase constantly, casting maniacal rainbows in all directions, until it develops into a torrent along the far edge wall of the staircase – Dr. Kryincov tells me that’s because of centripetal force throwing it outwards. Strangely enough, the water in the fountain bowl is level with the rim of this bowl, and this bowl is flush with the inner wall of the staircase – even though the staircase walls are all inclined in different direction. Dr. Kryincov tells me that’s okay, because actually the fountain is on all angles at once but down is always the same, so the water in the bowl doesn’t pour out.
This track is set just into the wall and below the level of the steps, and seems perfect size to fit a tennis ball so it can run down the stairs without risking it bouncing away.
"Why is that track there, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
"Why? My dear chap; it is aesthetically pleasing, is it not? What more reason does it need to be anywhere?"
"Who set the ball rolling, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
"So to speak?" he quips.
"Yes, Dr. Kryincov."
"Who? My dear chap; it is aesthetically pleasing, is it not? So what does it matter who? We should thank who for giving us this incredible phenomenon."
I’m not going to thank whoever gave me this incredible phenomenon, because it’s quite noisy now.
Voosh! runs the tennis ball, extremely noisily.
"It’s quite noisy now, Dr. Kryincov, isn’t it?"
"Well, my dear fellow, whatever do you expect? It’s pushing air molecules out of its way with tremendous force and at high speed. If it didn’t it wouldn’t use up any of it’s energy and it would already have achieved escape velocity."
"But I live next to it, Dr. Kryincov. It’s rather hard to sleep sometimes."
"Ah dear boy, I do see what you mean." And with a sombre contemplative expression he turns to gaze at the marvel once more.
It can be quite bemusing; when you stand here and try and follow how the thing works. You can feel your mind bend as you follow it around. It’s exactly like you’re putting a corkscrew into a bottle, but the cork is so firm that the screw isn’t going in but your arm is twisting up in the opposite direction instead.
You sit on the front doorstep outside my house, and have a good look. The staircase square, with four flights of steps each one of which seems normal, but when they all fit together it goes wrong. At this side you can see it going firmly upwards to the right, and down to the left. You try to take the whole thing in, but it’s just not possible to follow them both at once – I’ve tried. It’s like trying to eat with only one side of your mouth or holding your breath; your brain always pushes it over or makes you breathe because it knows it’s better for you like that. And if you follow the right hand side upwards, it turns sideways like that; and if you follow the left side downwards it turns sideways like this, when suddenly the stairs bend in this other direction which is new. But the left and right sides face different directions, and yet when they meet over by the gate, they hit square on; only going up-down in the other direction than outside my front door.
I’ve tried looking at all four sides at once, but you can’t, so you start to wonder if it isn’t just that you’ve remembered each side wrong. To start with your brain starts rotating everything to make it all fit properly somehow, though it never succeeds. But this does mean that if you look at the left side and then very quickly switch to looking at the right side, resisting a natural urge to follow the stairs around in a sea-sickening circle, then you can spend the next two hours with everything appearing at ninety degrees to the right. That’s weird, because you can just see your nose and it seems to be on one side of your forehead.
Dr. Kryincov is quietly counting as he sits by me on the front step, his leathery face wrinkled up in concentration and his eyes slitted as though he had a migraine. His mouth is moving emptily, but I know that he’s counting, because he’s always counting.
"What number are you up to, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
His mouth opens and shuts a few times, and eventually he turns to me, eyes still slitted. "I don’t know now; you’ve disrupted me. Dear chap, I wish you wouldn’t."
"Oh – sorry, Dr. Kryincov." I’m not really sorry.
Dr. Kryincov, even though he’s my friend, just snorts, and begins counting again in furrowed concentration. Which, incidentally, is also calculable by the Theory of Everything.
"The Theory of Everything, my good man, is very simple."
But perhaps not simple enough. He goes on:
"We have got the Universe, the whole of reality and creation," and he waves his arms outwards to demonstrate, and a fold of his too baggy lab-coat slaps me in the face, but I don’t mind. "Everything in the entire of everything – including this cup of tea; I thank you for it – we’ve pinned it down to two equations."
The two equations that constitute the Theory of Everything, that express every quantity in the universe or every quantity from which every other quantity is easily derivable by methods contained within the Theory of Everything:
"There are two equations: the short one, and the long one."
"Are they the same – like long and short versions of the same story, Dr. Kryincov? Is that it?"
With a quirky gleam in his eye: "You mean, is one the ‘complete and unabridged’ version of the other ‘abridged’ version?"
"Yes, that’s what I mean, Dr. Kryincov."
No. No, they’re completely different.
"The short one describes energy, force and matter, and consists of a single line."
"A single line for all the universe, Dr. Kryincov? That’s incredible!"
"Well," he says with a slightly consoling voice, "it does need quite a wide piece of paper."
"Very wide, Dr. Kryincov?"
"No, only quite wide. Say this big," and with his hands he demonstrates perhaps the length of a sheet of typing paper, and a fold of his stained white coat tickles my nose.
"And that describes the universe! Fantastic!"
"Well, it would be, dear boy, it would be. If it weren’t for equation two."
Equation two: the long one. "Of course, nobody’s actually written it down, but we can be pretty certain what’s in it – no surprises."
"Why has nobody written it down?"
"Dear boy, because it’s long!"
"Long?"
"Well, very long then, old chap. Very, very long."
"How long is that?"
"Quite damned long, I must say. Damned long."
He sips his tea crossly. It’s a wonder he doesn’t get too hot sat there on my front doorstep in lab coat over woolly jumper. We are silent for a bit, watching bemused as the postman comes up to my door.
"That parcel for you, Mr. Griffiths. From the bank."
Cathy comes up the path too, smiling politely and demurely to the postman when she passes him first time, though he ignores her. Then she does a loop around the stairs a couple more times, just for good measure. On her second lap of the staircase, the postman pleasantly doffs his cap to her, but she ignores him.
"They’re out of synch with each other, aren’t they, Dr. Kryincov!"
He doesn’t speak, expect to make a slight squealing noise through his nose, and chew his lip even harder.
Finally, she ‘sees’ me, and waves animatedly. "Hi!" she cries, waving, grinning, hopping up the last three or four steps to where I’m stood. Sometimes, when she’s tired or strained, she gets confused and carries on hopping, so that by the time she reaches me she’s hopped up at least thirty steps and is completely worn out and breathless.
"Hi! How are you?" she breezes into my house, stepping elegantly over Dr. Kryincov who tends to still be sat on my front doorstep, counting quietly to himself.
"I’m good," I’ll say, nodding. "How was your day?"
"But Richard, it’s only nine in the morning!" she exclaims, still grinning that lovely vacant grin.
"Yes, but how was your day?"
"But Richard, it only nine in the morning!"
There’s something wrong here. I speak more slowly, like an Englishman in a French café. "How was your day… yesterday?"
"My day was great yesterday," she replies airily. "Oh!" she’ll then add, to make up for the confusion. "You’ve got new curtains! They’re lovely!"
Or:
"Oh! You’ve got the new.. gardening catalogue! Lovely..!"
And there’s a slight frown on her face as she smiles vacantly and then goes to read the gardening catalogue. That’s her mind trying to understand what it’s doing.
My house is full of noise whenever Cathy’s around. There’s her light-headed delicious burbling; which floats merrily over the drone of the cars in the street outside. I always leave my front door open these days, so that Dr. Kryincov can come in and go to the toilet, or get another cup of tea ("Positive and negative, dear boy; couldn’t have one without the other") whenever he wants to. I never seem to get any of the smog from the road coming in though; that, like the postman, seems to end up going round and round the staircase in confusion.
Dr. Kryincov stands up suddenly and walks past me into my hall. "Seventeen," he says as he walks past, looking a little surprised, and I nod "Seventeen?" He goes up the stairs in my house, sighing a slight sigh of relief when he finds there is a top to them, and goes into the bathroom. Eventually, there’s the flush of the water pipes and the sound of the bolt being drawn back again, and he comes back down to the hall; I’ve stayed there, waiting by the old wooden table on which are my car keys. He passes me gracefully, his lab coat streaming out behind him in the wind, and he walks into the kitchen. I pop my head around the door to see him stealing brazenly from the biscuit tin and say:
"Thirty-two – but I was looking through the door."
Dr. Kryincov looks up at me and stares in horror, dumbfounded for a second before he says: "Thirty-two! Really!"
I nod.
"Thirty-two?"
I nod.
"Really!" His hair frizzes around his head, flustered like his hands. "I was looking from the bathroom and got thirty-four."
"Really?" I ask.
"Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. Tut tut tut. This will never do!"
He walks past me into my hall, and with a slight jump he lands himself on the doorstep. That is clearly a practised move. From outside I hear: Voosh! and "One.. two.. three…"
Cathy has been listening to us from where she is perched on the corner of the kitchen table reading a copy of the free magazine supplement with the television listings. She stands and comes over to me, leans on my shoulder gracefully and says:
"Oh, you boys. Your heads are full of such nonsense!" and she gives me a slight peck on the cheek.
I like Cathy, even if she does always ignore me when she comes round – and round – before something in here decides it’s my floor. Occasionally I press the subject.
"Cathy – do you ever count the stairs outside my door?"
"You silly man," she cuffs me lightly on the head with long stroking fingers and bobs her dyed-brown Sixties bob. "Why would I?"
"Why don’t you try it? Just for me?"
"I don’t know, Richard, you’re so silly. Sometimes I wonder why we go out."
"Don’t say that, Cathy," I reply, slightly alarmed because she’s still grinning.
"Oh, I don’t mean it, love. You know that." Her voice takes on that rich, lovely quality which it always has when she’s being charmingly rude. "You silly man," and she cuffs me lightly on the head again, and pecks me on the cheek.
With fast, serious steps Dr. Kryincov strides into the room, wheels on his back heel and strides out again.
She pecks me on the cheek again and pats the back of my hand, smiling.
"Hang on, Cathy," and I stand up.
"Where are you off to now, you silly boy," she smiles at me, her eyes bobbing up and down in their sockets loosely. She puts a hand briefly on my leg as I stand. I leave the room, and she busies herself in lining out the creases in the sofa cover, and then her dress, and then the sofa cover again. I notice that every time she moves one she makes sure to rumple the other so she can keep going.
"What is it, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
He’s sat, staring at the ground, on the doorstep. "Didn’t mean to interrupt anything, old man. I tend to forget you’ve got other things in your life as well. I’m sorry."
"That’s okay, Dr. Kryincov."
"Really?" He brightens up, and his silly voice returns. "Dear chap, that’s frightfully good of you." He smiles broadly.
I stand for a little while longer, and then realise that Dr. Kryincov is staring at me so earnestly because he’s forgotten where in the conversation he was, so I help him out.
"What was it, Dr. Kryincov?"
"Oh, yes; I though you might be interested – forty-nine."
"I had forty-three."
He peers at me. "You weren’t even looking."
"I was!" I retort.
This seems to worry him. He stares at me again. He stands up. He sits down. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. On an impulse he reaches into his breast pocket of his lab coat, takes out a small box of powder and spills a little on my doorstep. Then he puts the box carefully away again, and says:
"Oh, dreadfully sorry, old man – I’ve spilled something on your doorstep. Let me brush it away."
He brushes it away with a wrinkled palm and sits.
"One.. two.. three.." Voosh!
That tennis ball is streaking around now; still running downwards and accelerating, and I think it’s beginning to wear down the stone of the track by friction. That track is filled with the splattered remains of little insects and the like of who got in the way. I go back to Cathy, and when she sees me she straightens down the sofa cover with her right hand and her ankle-length tie-dye skirt with her left hand.
"There you are, my love." She takes my hand and guides me to sit down. "What was your friend after now?"
"He wanted to tell me ‘forty-nine’."
She stares at me blankly.
"But I told him ‘forty-three’."
Her eyes have this sort of glazed-yet-interested look, like your mother has when you’re five, or like the glass porthole in the door of an open washing machine.
"But actually," I conclude triumphantly, "actually, I hadn’t been counting at all; I just made it up to irritate him."
This she understands, and she brightens up because of it, that wonderful kind smile radiating from her soft face once more. "How – my - you silly boys!" she scolds happily. "Always playing your silly little tricks and pranks! I don’t know why you just can’t get on nicely like us women! I don’t know!" and she sounds tremendously pleased that she doesn’t.
I don’t think the staircase in my front yard has done much good for her, like it has for me. She used to be very normal and level-headed. I still love her, and she’s still lovely, but she always seems a bit, well a little bit - I don’t know. Dim. I think it’s because she can’t see in the same way as Dr. Kryincov and I can, in that direction which the staircase runs in which isn’t up or down or left or right, and it’s confusing her. Something inside her can’t accept that she can see but not understand – and so doesn’t see – the staircase looping sideways whilst staying the same way up. It’s playing with her mind.
"Oh, it’s all in the formula, if you’re worried, old man," says Dr. Kryincov. "Go and look it up."
"Is it in the long or the short formula, Dr. Kryincov?"
"The long formula, I’m afraid."
"That’s the one nobody’s ever written down?"
"That’s the one, my old rooster. That’s the brick."
"So I can’t find out, can I Dr. Kryincov? Because no one’s ever written it down."
"You could always write it down lad." He sees my face looking nonplussed and adds: "Oh go on - please! You’ll be famous! You’ll be the toast of the whole scientific community!" His eyes are wistful as he adds: "We could share a Nobel Prize, or an Oscar, or something!"
"How long is it, Dr. Kryincov? If no-one’s ever written it down. How long would it be?"
"What, the long equation in the Theory of Everything, old chap?"
He’s stalling: "Yes, Dr. Kryincov."
"It’s very long."
"How long?"
"I don’t know," he grins, and his eyes sparkle. "No one’s ever written it down."
"But," he adds mischievously, "if you really wanted to know.."
"Well, I’d quite like to know."
"In that case, old man, there’s one way you could find out."
"What’s that, Dr. Kryincov?"
"You could always write it down!" He pleads again. "Oh go on, please! You’ll be recognised in every lab all over the world! You’ll be on television! You’ll be the toast of the whole scientific community!"
I find myself pulling that expression that Cathy always pulls, when she’s despairingly happy. A sort of ‘I would be irritated with you, but you’re just too loveable to be irritated with.’ It’s a bit odd that I think Dr. Kryincov is loveable, because I don’t know very much about him; apart from he likes to sit on my doorstep and he longs for the respect of the academic world.
"Dr. Kryincov?" I ask one morning, as Cathy loops her way around the stairs for the second time. "Why do Cathy and the postman always go around three times on the way up, and only twice on the way down?"
"That’ll be in it, too," he remarks. He’s in a slightly sullen mood today, though I don’t know why. I think it’s because the weather is getting cooler; though it’s quite a nice morning with the sun shimmering behind a thin cloud and the birds singing. The doorstep has a dying feeling to it, like it was the end of the summer. Dr. Kryincov picks up a small stone from the side of the path and scrutinises it carefully. Then he throws it at the yellow blur in the track, which is crashing past with a tremendous, shattering Vooshing! sound. But the tennis ball is going so quickly that the stone doesn’t have a chance to land before it is struck out again and goes flying through my window. But that’s okay because it’s already been broken by the other stones and is now just an empty frame.
"No, Dr. Kryincov. Why do you think it is? You know most about this sort of thing."
"You and me, dear boy. You’re a wonder at it yourself."
"Thank you, Dr. Kryincov."
"That’s quite all right. Credit where credit’s due." With that he finishes the conversation, and picks up another pebble from the gravel just under the black painted doorstep, and throws it at the track. This time it misses completely, flies over the rim of the fountain and emerges slightly higher up on the other side. It doesn’t hit the ground quite yet, but loops around downwards twice before hitting Dr. Kryincov on the shoe.
"It’s like a boomerang, isn’t it, Dr. Kryincov," I remark.
"No," he replies simply. He is in a bad mood. "Boomerangs work by air pressure variations, not space-curve distortions."
"I see," I reply, which is a lie.
"Sorry," he adds.
"That’s okay, Dr. Kryincov."
Cathy comes up the path. I’m very glad to see her this morning, because Dr. Kryincov is being recalcitrant, so I show her how much I love her by giving her a big hug as soon as I’m sure she’s reached me. Last time I hugged her when she had only climbed round the stairs twice, she slapped me hard across the cheek, drawing blood with a ring. Then after one more futile loop she said: "Eugh! I don’t know why they don’t lock people like that up; it’s horrible. Sometimes I think it’d be nicer to live somewhere with no other people at – oh! What happened to your cheek, love?" And she ruffles my hair, and guides me through the doorway with one hand.
Perhaps your friend would like to go home now. That’s what she’s going to say. Somehow I can see it from her face, it’s written all over her, clear as tears. I used not to be able to guess what she was thinking but now I can sort of see it easily; I think it comes from staring at the stares, because they go up and down and up-down and sideways in a sort of straight-line circle, and I think it’s doing funny things to me on the inside – which is also the outside, that’s what Dr. Kryincov says. He also says:
"Time is a kind of dimension, too, my good man."
And on top of that he says:
"Imagine, you’re an ant, dear boy."
So I’ve learnt to look at people in this other way I couldn’t do before. I think I could win the lottery now first time, if I tried. The whole thing seems paper thin.
"Imagine you’re an ant, dear boy."
"Okay, Dr. Kryincov." Not far wrong.
"Imagine you’re an ant, and you live on this big sheet of paper. You’ve never been beyond it, and it doesn’t move."
I frowned. "The ant doesn’t move?"
"No, no, no, my good fellow, the paper doesn’t move. You are the ant, remember that; it’s not it, it’s you."
"Okay, Dr. Kryincov. I suppose so."
"Right then. You’ve never been off this piece of paper. So what does the world look like?"
I hesitated. "White?"
"Flat," he corrected. "And because you’re so small, it would seem pretty much perfectly flat. You wouldn’t understand if it weren’t flat. You’d be living – cruelly, dear boy, but perfectly happily – between two planes, being ‘paper’ and ‘sky’."
"So the paper’s under the sky?"
"Why, of course it is! Though that’s not the important bit."
"Sorry, Dr. Kryincov."
"Quite all right, dear boy."
You may think it’s odd that I have a ring staircase in my front yard anyway. You see, I live in a block of three flats which had the front hallway removed by a demented landlady. They were going to build a series of fire-escape steps to zig-zag up to the various flats, but then along came Dr. Kryincov with his more efficient solution. At a third of the cost – one third of the steps needed to be build – we can reach all the three flats easily. It looks just a bit odd in the middle of a lawn; even without the bizarre whip-lash shape.
"Dr. Kryincov," I prompt.
"Ah yes!"
"Well?"
"You’re an ant, and you don’t understand up or down, because you’ve never seen them. Right?"
The ant again - I sat down. "Right."
"And on your paper there’s a drawing of a capital S. And you walk along the line from the bottom to the top, and suddenly at the top; you’ve reached the bottom again!"
"Impossible."
"..for the ant. Not for you."
"But I am the ant, Dr. Kryincov."
"Oh, forget that, dear boy! Concentrate, please!"
"Not impossible?"
"No – I would say the S is a circle and the paper is rolled into a tube, so top touches bottom."
"Ah," I replied, seeing what he meant. "But the ant thought it was flat paper."
"Because it didn’t know any different. Precisely."
"How come it didn’t fall off when it was on the top?"
Dr. Kryincov looked briefly at me, earnestly, and with his long bony fingers he scraped around the base of his nose. "Small hairs on its feet, I believe."
I nodded. "That makes sense, Dr. Kryincov."
He smiled. "Now, for ‘ant’, read ‘postman’."
"Very clever, Dr. Kryincov. Did you think of that."
"No," he replied despondently. "It’s part of the Theory of Everything. I couldn’t help thinking of it. It was calculable."
I frowned and walked inside.
I can hear him now, just the faintest whisper of him counting. He’s trying to count exactly how many steps there are in the staircase, but can’t do it because it blurs when you follow it around; not to mention all the steps look identical. He’s also been trying to measure the speed of the tennis ball.
"Cathy, he’s trying to measure the speed of the tennis ball, which is always going down and down and getting faster and faster without going down at all."
She looks at me strangely, a little alert, a little surprisingly opaque.
"Whatever do you mean?"
I look at her, trying to think of the right words, which will make it snap to inside her, but it’s too late already. Once again her face has slunk down into vacant grin and sweet eyes. "Fair enough, Cathy," I say, a little dispirited.
I asked Dr. Kryincov why he didn’t get some fancy piece of equipment to measure the speed of the ball with.
"Dr. Kryincov? Why don’t you get some fancy piece of equipment to measure the speed of the ball with?"
"How would I do that?" he asked with some amusement.
"By going back to your lab and getting one," I replied.
"I don’t have a lab," he said, "Dear chap."
"Well, where do you do your science then, Dr. Kryincov?"
"Here, on your doorstep, every morning."
I remember watching them building it. It was fascinating. The only way it can be done, Dr. Kryincov said to me when he was wearing a yellow hard hat and watching the three workmen hoisting up the wooden girders, is by building the whole thing in one piece in one go.
You see, it works because it’s logical. The reason it goes all around sideways is that every step is identical to all the others – perhaps they’re just being looked at from a slightly different angle. With a very small staircase, Dr. Kryincov says, very, very small, you can step up from one step to itself, or down to itself, because it’s so small it doesn’t notice. Then you add another step in between, but since you could go up and down in a circle before – you still can. Once you’ve rolled the piece of paper with the ant on, then of course you can make it longer.
"So we can build that!" and he points dramatically with an outflung finger to the piece of stone cladding the workmen are hoisting onto the wooden supports which seem quite odd. They all look very confused suddenly, and go off to make some tea. Eventually they came back and covered it in newels and the occasional filed etching; and then it was finished. Dr. Kryincov took off his hard hat and wiped his forehead, though he never sweats, even in his woolly jumper and his lab coat.
"So it is logical, yes?"
"Why is that, Dr. Kryincov?"
Dr. Kryincov stands on the first step and says:
"The comical man’s brain cannot understand the staircase and cannot accept that it is here. But he is standing on a step, and he sees that he can step from one to the next –" and to demonstrate he hops from one step to the next, "so it does not matter whether his brain can understand it or not. It is here. It is too late to argue. We can climb all the way up without going up or down at all because the same applies to each, identical step." His eyes are staring maniacally, each pointing in different directions and his white coat tickling in a breeze as he stands at angle which looks to me nearer the horizontal than the vertical.
"Why are you building it in my front lawn?" I ask after the pause.
"Well, if you made it, where would you build it?" he asks.
"My front lawn," I reply obligingly, and he nods courteously, smiling a mischievous smile.
"Dr. Kryincov?" I begin.
"It’s a circle because that looks nice with the fountain," he answers, as he hunts for somewhere to perch and decides upon my doorstep, seeming to find it rather comfortable.
"I wasn’t going to ask that," I reply.
"Oh," and then he ignores me, and begins scouring the sky, tutting and shaking his head. Curious, I look up too and see nothing but a few meshed aeroplane trails. There is a slight noise, and I look down again, and don’t immediately notice the tennis ball which is quietly gathering speed in the track carved just below the level of the steps in the inner wall. Dr. Kryincov is sat on my front step, looking innocent.
"Why is there a tennis ball there, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
"The Theory could tell you, you know."
"Really? What Theory?"
"Well, it’s a Theory of Everything, and Everything’s become a lot simpler since we found it."
"Is it complicated?"
"No, it’s very simple. But it’s quite long."
That was quite a while ago now. The tennis ball has been rolling ever since. Dr. Kryincov said he lined the track with sandpaper because it gave the thing a nice rustic feel, but I think he wanted to prolong his experiment.
"I think it’s about time your friend went home," Cathy says, her bob bobbing.
I frown slightly. I don’t like to hear that sort of thing from Cathy, because she’s so lovely and so nice, and it’s odd to have a really nice person say something which just isn’t that nice, even if it’s about someone else.
I go and tell him. He’s sat like a hunched gargoyle, faced furrowing and waning periodically as he peers into the confusing gloom on the far side of the fountain’s spray.
"Dr. Kryincov?"
"Thirty-nine. I’ve got thirty-nine now."
I have a serious expression, because I’m not very happy about having to do this. Cathy tells me we all have to do things we don’t like doing from time to time because otherwise other people would always have to do something they don’t like doing, and that wouldn’t be fair on them or me.
"Dr. Kryincov?" I repeat.
"I’ve got thirty-nine. What have you got?"
I really, really, really want to send a spasm of shock of his crusty white face and make the little white hairs of his moustache bounce around by telling him I have forty-two; but I know he’s got to go now.
"Yes, Dr. Kryincov. I’ve got thirty-nine too."
"Really?" he exclaims, staring. "It’s so difficult to count it, you know, because all the steps are the same so you have no point of reference. You really got thirty-nine?"
"Yes," I nod unhappily, because I’m lying and I really had seven because I gave up rather quickly.
"That’s wonderful!" he shouts, jumping up and down on the spot. "That’s absolutely wonderful! Fantastic! They’ll have to give me a Pulitzer over this!"
"What does it mean, Dr. Kryincov?" I ask.
He closes his eyes to slits and scratches his elbow, saying in a dark voice: "I don’t know. I’ll have to take it back to the lab and think about what it means."
"But Dr. Kryincov, I thought you didn’t have a lab."
"I don’t. I just got this coat in a jumble sale, and then stained it with ink myself."
"So you’re not a scientist then, Dr. Kryincov."
"No, I’m not. Sorry." He looks embarrassed, and hangs his head.
"But how come you know all about the Theory of Everything if you’re not a scientist person?" I persist.
"I don’t know everything about it!" he exclaims, surprised.
"You do – you told me everything."
"I didn’t know how long it was, did I? Any real scientist, dear boy, would have know that."
"Oh, right," I reply, nodding slowly. He’s right. He didn’t know anything about everything because he didn’t know how big it was, and so what he did know didn’t mean anything in everything terms because everything is so big in comparison. I think.
He starts on his was down the stairs, and grinning maniacally he walks straight past the gate and carries on going down to come back around to where I stand. Seeming not to notice me, he looks upwards and waves, and I worry that I’ve lost him too when he was the only other person who could see it properly. He carries on walking down.
"Dr. Kryincov!" I shout after him.
He turns on his heel, hops up two steps to me and asks directly to me: "Yes?" He’s grinning even wider now, squealing through his nostrils with laughter like a pig.
"If you’re not a scientist person, how did you build this staircase?"
"You should know as clearly as me," he replies. "It’s only a matter of seeing it properly."
I walk him to the front gate, or rather I walk down and out onto the street and he stands just on the rim of the stairs, looking downwards and shouting: "Richard! Richard! Are you all right?"
"Of course, Dr. Kryincov, I’m fine!" I reply casually to him, as he stands next to me.
He runs away, back to my door and then to me again. Looking like a crazed chicken with his crest-like mop of hair and his stick-legs, he runs around in a circle once more and reaches me.
"It’s amazing how you landed on your feet there!"
"When?"
"When you jumped off the staircase," replies Dr. Kryincov, grinning fiercely and chewing his entire bottom lip and half his chin so as not to howl with laughter. I smile too. "Bye, Dr. Kryincov."
"Bye bye, laddie. I’ll see you again sometime, and then I’ll see you." His accent and voice has changed again – he’s a very odd man.
I walk back up the stairs, lost in thought, trying to work out what’s gone wrong with me. It’s because I can see sideways through things, that’s what it is. I’m thinking so hard I get lost and walk around the stairwell three times before climbing into my house through the empty window frame.
Cathy walks into the room. "Has he gone then, love?"
"Yes," I say, nodding to emphasise the point.
"I’m sorry love, I know you two were having fun, but I thought… maybe we could spend a bit of time together. You were always rushing off."
"I’m sorry too, Cathy. You were right."
"Thank you," she replies, smiling her happy smile once more, and her eyes floating around merrily in their sockets.
There is a sudden Voosh! noise next to me, and a yellow blur rockets through the empty window frame and lands on the old wooden table next to Cathy’s car keys – they’re not mine really – with a tremendous, thunderous, tumultuous bang.
"How did that happen!" she exclaims in shock, picking up the threadbare and slightly blackened tennis ball.
"Well," I reply, slightly desperately, "it started going down; and because it had already gone down and it was the same down as before, it had to be able to go down again. So it did and it kept on going down and couldn’t stop. It worked because it did, so it did. Then it achieved escape velocity, and came through the window. Dr. Kryincov told me."
"Really?" Cathy asked, and then her eyes glazed over again, the spark of something lost once more. She put the tennis ball back on the table.
"Well, it looks lovely there," she said vacantly, grinning and giggling slightly, meaninglessly.
"Thanks Cathy," I said, smiling too. "That means a lot to me."
In a way, my life is now back to exactly how it was. Me and Cathy, happily doing what it is we do in the way that we do it. I’ve got a job, so has she. I wonder if I’ll ever see Dr. Kryincov again – but I have a feeling it doesn’t work quite like that.
"By the way," she says as we walk together into the living room and sit down together, on the sofa so that we’re together, "It’s a bit silly, but.. I counted the stairs on each flight on the way up, like you said?"
"How many did you count to, Cathy?" I ask.
"Forty-eight. But it was weird. It was hard."
We sit in silence for a little while, just touching. Then Cathy says:
"What did the bank want?"
…and everything is around to normal again.