by David Miller
‘Gentlemen,’ said Hunter, ‘I must ask you to forgive this improper form of address, but I have something to tell you of the utmost importance. I have discovered the plane without a surface.’ Amid derisive smiles and gentle bemused laughter, Hunter picked up from the table a large white sheet of paper. With a pocket-knife he made an incision along its surface about three inches long and slightly to one side of its centre. Then he made some rapid, complicated folds and, holding the paper aloft so all could see, he appeared to draw one corner of it through the incision, and as he did so it disappeared.
‘Behold, gentlemen,’ said Hunter, holding out his empty hands towards the company, ‘the plane without a surface.’
Maisie came into my room, washed now and smelling faintly of perfumed soap. She came and stood behind my chair and placed her hands on my shoulders.
‘What are you reading?’ she said.
‘Just bits of the diary which I haven’t looked at before.’
She began to massage me gently at the base of my neck. I would have found it soothing if it had still been the first year of our marriage. But it was the sixth year and it generated a kind of tension which communicated itself the length of my spine. Maisie wanted something. To restrain her I placed my right hand on her left, and, mistaking this for affection, she leaned forward and kissed under my ear. Her breath smelled of toothpaste and toast. She tugged at my shoulder.
‘Let’s go in the bedroom,’ she whispered. ‘We haven’t made love for nearly two weeks now.’
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘You know how it is… with my work.’ I felt no desire for Maisie or any other woman. All I wanted to do was turn the next page of my great-grandfather’s diary. Maisie took her hands off my shoulders and stood by my side. There was such a sudden ferocity in her silence that I found myself tensing like a sprinter on the starting line. She stretched forward and picked up the sealed jar containing Capt. Nicholls. As she lifted it his penis drifted dreamily from one end of the glass to the other.
‘You’re so COMPLACENT,’ Maisie shrieked, just before she hurled the glass bottle at the wall in front of my table. Instinctively I covered my face with my hand to shield off the shattering glass. As I opened my eyes I heard myself saying,
‘Why did you do that? That belonged to my great-grandfather.’ Amid the broken glass and the rising stench of formaldehyde lay Capt. Nicholls, slouched across the leather cover of a volume of the diary, grey, limp and menacing, transformed from a treasured curiosity into a horrible obscenity.
‘That was terrible thing to do. Why did you do that?’ I said again.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ Maisie replied, and slammed the door this time as she left the room.
I did not move from my chair for a long time. Maisie had destroyed an object of great value to me. It had stood in his study while he lived, and then it had stood in mine, linking my life with his. I picked a few splinters of glass from my lap and stared at the 160-year-old piece of another human on my table. I looked at it and thought of all the homunculi which had swarmed down its length. I thought of all the places it had been, Cape Town, Boston, Jerusalem, travelling in the dark, fetid inside of Capt. Nicholls’s leather breeches, emerging occasionally into the dazzling sunlight to discharge urine in some jostling public place. I thought also of all the things it had touched, all the molecules, of Capt. Nicholls’s exploring hands on lonely unrequited nights at sea, the sweating walls of cunts of young girls and old whores, their molecules must still exist today, a fine dust blowing from Cheapside to Leicestershire. Who knows how long it might have lasted in its glass jar. I began to clear up the mess. I brought the rubbish bucket in from the kitchen. I swept and picked up all the glass I could find and swabbed up the formaldehyde. Then, holding him by just one end, I tried to ease Capt. Nicholls on to a sheet of newspaper. My stomach heaved as the foreskin began to come away in my fingers. Finally, with my eyes closed, I succeeded, and wrapping him carefully in the newspaper, I carried him into the garden and buried him under the geraniums. All this time I tried to prevent my resentment towards Maisie filling my mind. I wanted to continue with M’s story. Back in my chair I dabbed at a few spots of formaldehyde which had blotted the ink, and read on.
For as long a minute the room was frozen, and with each successive second it appeared to freeze harder. The first to speak was Dr Stanley Rose of Cambridge University, who had much to lose by Hunter’s plane without a surface. His reputation, which was very considerable indeed, rested upon his ‘Principles of Solid Geometry’.
‘How dare you, sir. How dare you insult the dignity of this assembly with a worthless conjuror’s trick.’ And bolstered by the rising murmur of concurrence behind him, he added, ‘You should be ashamed, young man, thoroughly ashamed.’ With that, the room erupted like a volcano. With the exception of young Goodman, and of the servants who still stood by with the refreshments, the whole room turned on Hunter and directed at him a senseless babble of denunciation, invective and threat. Some thumped on the table in their fury, others waved their clenched fists. One very frail German gentleman fell to the floor in an apoplexy and had to be helped to a chair. And there stood Hunter, firm and outwardly unmoved, his head inclined slightly to one side, his fingers resting lightly on the surface of the long polished table. That such an uproar should follow a worthless conjuror’s trick clearly demonstrated the extent of the underlying unease, and Hunter surely appreciated this. Raising his hand, and the company falling suddenly silent once more, he said,
‘Gentlemen, your concern is understandable and I will effect another proof, the ultimate proof.’ This said, he sat down and removed his shoes, stood up and removed his jacket, and then called for a volunteer to assist him, at which Goodman came forward. Hunter strode through the crowd to a couch which stood along one of the walls, and while he settled himself upon it he told the mystified Goodman that when he returned to England he should take with him Hunter’s papers and keep them there until he came to collect them. When the mathematicians had gathered round the couch Hunter rolled on to his stomach and clasped his hands behind his back in a strange posture to fashion a hoop with his arms. He asked Goodman to hold his arms in that position for him, and rolled on his side where he began a number of strenuous jerking movements which enabled him to pass one of his feet through the hoop. He asked his assistant to turn him on his other side, where he performed the same movements again and succeeded in passing his other foot between his arms, and at the same time bent his trunk in such a way that his head was able to pass through the hoop in the opposite direction to his feet. With the help of his assistant he began to pass his legs and head past each other through the hoop made by his arms. It was then that the distinguished assembly vented, as one man, a single yelp of utter incredulity. Hunter was beginning to disappear, and now, as his legs and head passed through his arms with greater facility, seemed even to be drawn through by some invisible power, he was almost gone. And now… he was gone, quite gone, and nothing remained…
M’s story put my great-grandfather in a frenzy of excitement. In his diary that night he recorded how he tried ‘to prevail upon my guest to send for the papers upon the instant’ even though it was by now two o’clock in the morning. M, however, was more skeptical about the whole thing. ‘Americans,’ he told my great-grandfather, ‘often indulge in fantastic tales.’ But he agreed to bring along the papers the following day. As it turned out M did not dine with my great-grandfather that night because of another engagement, but he called round in the late afternoon with the papers. Before he left he told my great-grandfather he had been through them a number of times and ‘there was no sense to be had out of them’. He did not realize then how much he was underestimating my great-grandfather as an amateur mathematician. Over a glass of sherry in front of the drawing-room fire the two men arranged to dine again at the end of the week, on Saturday. For the next three days my great-grandfather hardly paused from his reading of Hunter’s theorems to eat or sleep. The diary is full of no
thing else. The pages are covered with scribbles, diagrams and symbols. It seems that Hunter had to devise a new set of symbols, virtually a whole new language, to express his ideas. By the end of the second day my great-grandfather had made his first breakthrough. At the bottom of a page of mathematical scribble he wrote, ‘Dimensionality is a function of consciousness’. Turning to the entry for the next day I read the words, ‘It disappeared in my hands’. He had re-established the plane without a surface. And there, spread out in front of me, were step by step instructions on how to fold the piece of paper. Turning the next page I suddenly understood the mystery of M’s disappearance. Undoubtedly encouraged by my great-grandfather, he had taken part in a scientific experiment, probably in a spirit of great skepticism. For here my great-grandfather had drawn a series of small sketches illustrating what at first glance looked like yoga poses. Clearly they were the secret of Hunter’s disappearing act.
My hands were trembling as I cleared a space on my desk. I selected a clean sheet of typing paper and laid it in front of me. I fetched a razor blade from the bathroom. I rummaged in a drawer and found an old pair of compasses, sharpened a pencil and fitted it in. I searched through the house till I found an accurate steel ruler I had once used for fitting window panes, and then I was ready. First I had to cut the paper to size. The piece that Hunter had so casually picked up from the table had obviously been carefully prepared beforehand. The length of the sides had to express a specific ratio. Using the compasses I found the centre of the paper and through this point I drew a line parallel to one of the sides and continued it right to the edge. Then I had to construct a rectangle whose measurements bore a particular relation to those of the sides of the paper. The centre of this rectangle occurred on the line in such a way as to dissect it by the Golden Mean. From the top of this rectangle I drew intersecting arcs, again of specified proportionate radii. This operation was repeated at the lower end of the rectangle, and when the two points of intersection were joined I had the line of incision. Then I started work on the folding lines. Each line seemed to express, in its length, angle of incline and point of intersection with other lines, some mysterious inner harmony of numbers. As I intersected arcs, drew lines and made folds, I felt I was blindly operating a system of the highest, most terrifying form of knowledge, the mathematics of the Absolute. By the time I had made the final fold the piece of paper was the shape of a geometric flower with three concentric rings arranged around the incision at the centre. There was something so tranquil and perfect about this design, something so remote and compelling, that as I stared into it I found myself going into a light trance and my mind becoming clear and inactive. I shook my head and glanced away. It was now time to turn the flower in on itself and pull it through the incision. This was a delicate operation and now my hands were trembling again. Only by staring into the centre of the design could I calm myself. With my thumbs I began to push the sides of the paper flower towards the centre, and as I did so I felt a numbness settle over the back of my skull. I pushed a little further, the paper glowed whiter for an instant and then it seemed to disappear. I say ‘seemed’ because at first I could not be sure whether I could feel it still in my hands and not see it, or see it but not feel it, or whether I could sense it had disappeared while its external properties remained. The numbness had spread right across my head and shoulders. My senses seemed inadequate to grasp what was happening. ‘Dimensionality is a function of consciousness,’ I thought. I brought my hands together and there was nothing between them, but even when I opened them again and saw nothing I could not be sure the paper flower had completely gone. An impression remained, an after-image not on the retina but on the mind itself. Just then the door opened behind me, and Maisie said,
‘What are you doing?’
I returned as if from a dream to the room and to the faint smell of formaldehyde. It was a long, long time ago now, the destruction of Capt. Nicholls, but the smell revived my resentment, which spread through me like the numbness. Maisie slouched in the doorway, muffled in a thick coat and woolen scarf. She seemed a long way off, and as I looked at her my resentment merged into a familiar weariness of our marriage. I thought, why did she break the glass? Because she wanted to make love? Because she wanted a penis? Because she was jealous of my work, and wanted to smash the connection it had with my great-grandfather’s life?
‘Why did you do it?’ I said out loud, involuntarily. Maisie snorted. She had opened the door and found me hunched over the table staring at my hands.
‘Have you been sitting there all afternoon,’ she asked, ‘thinking about that?’ She giggled. ‘What happened to it anyway? Did you suck it off?’
‘I buried it,’ I said, ‘under the geraniums.’
She came into the room a little way and said in a serious tone, ‘I’m sorry about that, I really am. I just did it before I knew what was happening. Do you forgive me?’ I hesitated, and then, because my weariness had blossomed into a sudden resolution, I said,
‘Yes, of course I forgive you. It was only a prick in pickle,’ and we both laughed. Maisie came over to me and kissed me, and I returned the kiss, prising open her lips with my tongue.
‘Are you hungry?’ she said, when we were done with kissing. ‘Shall I make you some supper?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I would love that.’ Maisie kissed me on the top of my head and left the room, while I turned back to my studies, resolving to be as kind as I could possibly could to Maisie that evening.
Later we sat in the kitchen eating the meal Maisie had cooked and getting mildly drunk on a bottle of wine. We smoked a joint, the first one we had had together in a very long time. Maisie told me how she was going to get a job with the Forestry Commission planting trees in Scotland next summer. And I told Maisie about a conversation M and my great-grandfather had had about a posteriori, and about my great-grandfather’s theory that there could not be more than the prime number seventeen positions for making love. We both laughed, and Maisie squeezed my hand, and lovemaking hung in the air between us, in the warm fug of the kitchen. Then we put our coats on and went for a walk. It was almost a full moon. We walked along the main road which runs outside our house and then turned down a narrow street of tightly packed houses with immaculate and minute front gardens. We did not talk much, but our arms were linked and Maisie told me how very stoned and happy she was. We came to a small park which was locked and we stood outside the gates looking up at the moon through the almost leafless braches. When we came home Maisie took a leisurely hot bath while I browsed in my study, checking on a few details. Our bedroom is a warm, comfortable room, luxurious in its way. The bed is seven foot by eight, and I made it myself in the first year of our marriage. Maisie made the sheets, dyed them a deep, rich blue and embroidered the pillow cases. The only light in the room shone through a rough old goatskin lampshade Maisie bought from a man who came to the door. It was a long time since I had taken an interest in the bedroom. We lay side by side in the tangle of sheets and rugs, Maisie voluptuous and drowsy after her bath and stretched full out, and I propped up on my elbow. Maisie said sleepily,
‘I was walking along the river this afternoon. The trees are beautiful now, the oaks, the elms… there are two copper beeches about a mile past the footbridge, you should see them now… ahh, that feels good.’ I had eased her onto her belly and was caressing her back as she spoke. ‘There are blackberries, the biggest ones I’ve ever seen, growing all along the path, and elderberries, too. I’m going to make some wine this autumn…’ I leaned over her and kissed the nape of her neck and brought her arms behind her back. She liked to be manipulated in this way and she submitted warmly. ‘And the river is really still,’ she was saying. ‘You know, reflecting the trees, and the leaves are dropping into the river. Before the winter comes we should go there together, by the river, in the leaves. I found this little place. No one goes there…’ Holding Maisie’s arms in position with one hand, I worked her legs towards the ‘hoop’ with the other. ‘…
I sat in this place for half an hour without moving, like a tree. I saw a water-rat running along the opposite bank, and different kinds of ducks landing on the river and taking off. I heard these plopping noises in the river but I didn’t know what they were and I saw two orange butterflies, they almost came on my hand.’ When I had her legs in place Maisie said, ‘Position number eighteen,’ and we both laughed softly. ‘Let’s go there tomorrow, to the river,’ said Maisie as I carefully eased her head towards her arms. ‘Careful, careful, that hurts,’ she suddenly shouted, and tried to struggle. But it was too late now, her head and legs were in place in the hoop of her arms, and I was beginning to push them through, past each other. ‘What’s happening?’ cried Maisie. Now the positioning of her limbs expressed the breathtaking beauty, the nobility of the human form, and, as in the paper flower, there was the fascinating power in its symmetry. I felt the trance coming on again and the numbness settling over the back of my head. As I drew her arms and legs through, Maisie appeared to turn in on herself like a sock. ‘Oh God,’ she sighed, ‘what’s happening?’ and her voice sounded very far away. Then she was gone… and not gone. Her voice was quite tiny, ‘What’s happening?’ and all that remained was the echo of her question above the deep-blue sheets.
EMERGENCY
Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson (b.1949) was born in Munich, in West Germany, and later lived in the Philippines and Japan. A student at Iowa, he was taught by Raymond Carver and is the author of Angels, a collection of stories, Jesus’ Son, Tree of Smoke, Train Dreams – the latter two books were shortlisted for a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the former won the National Book Award – and several volumes of poetry. Of his collection he once said, “What’s funny about Jesus’ Son is that I never wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, You should write these things down.”