Jon Ingold
V1:E1 Sept. 1999
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.