by Simon Okotie
39
With the next step that he took – that of his right foot leaving the first step down to land safely on the third step down, his left foot and right hand providing the safety measures that had, a moment earlier, been provided by his right foot and his right hand – his ability to look through the rear window of the top deck of the bus was removed. That is to say that his viewing apparatus, in the specific sense of his eyes, was, or were, below a level, having descended with the rest of his body, whereby he could use it, or them, to look through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus upon which he was travelling. The position that he now found himself in had both positive and negative implications for his investigation, which he would come onto. But what, firstly, did he really mean when he said that, in moving to the third step down, he could no longer view the scene through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus? Would the withdrawal of the aforementioned vista have been so sudden, he now wondered? Surely if he craned his neck, as it is known, he would still be able to look through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus, which continued steadily to accelerate away from the bus stop that it had previously stopped at. He conceded that what he had meant to say was that he could no longer see a useful scene through that window. In other words he thought that, in moving to the third step down, in the sense defined, the view through the rear window of the top deck of the bus upon which he was travelling – the view afforded to him by craning his neck, as it is known – was not one that would provide useful information to him in his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor. He craned his neck in the way described to check whether his assertions in this area were well grounded. He confirmed that they were: all he could see through that window were the mid- and higher-level storeys of the buildings and the tops of trees lining the avenue along which they were travelling, collectively, on that bus. Now this was not to say that those mid- and higher level storeys and tops of trees would not, under different circumstances, be of interest to Marguerite in the course of his inquiries. If, for instance, he suspected that there was a chance that a sniper might be involved in trying to thwart permanently, as it were, his attempts to unearth the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Harold Absalon and, further, that there was a possibility that the sniper in question, knowing that Marguerite would be travelling on this or another bus along that avenue at around that time and on the day that he was travelling along that avenue and, even further, that the sniper had decided that a good spot to choose for his sniping activities was in the mid- (etc) storeys of a building in the vicinity of the bus stop that the bus upon which Marguerite was travelling had so recently stopped at, given that the bus would most probably be stationary or near-stationary in this vicinity such that, at the sniping moment, to express it in those terms, the sniper would, potentially, have a clear sight of Marguerite, enabling him to take a pot shot at him, as it was known, thereby permanently thwarting, the sniper hoped, Marguerite’s investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor – then, in that situation, Marguerite would be very interested, of course, in the mid- (etc) storeys. But he had no reason to suspect that a sniper was involved in the disappearance of Harold Absalon; nor did he suspect that a sniper might be involved in trying to thwart permanently him; it was for this reason, amongst others that he would not go into, that he had contended that the view afforded by craning his neck to look through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus upon which he and others were travelling was not useful in relation to his investigation into the disappearance of the Mayor’s transport advisor, which was not to say that the constantly changing view afforded by craning his neck in the way described might not be useful for other reasons, such as bird-watching, to bring in the tree tops which were referred to earlier but had not been considered as even potentially useful by Marguerite in relation to his investigation into Harold Absalon’s disappearance. In short, then, it was this combination of having to crane his neck (increasingly uncomfortably as the actual craning continued) to secure a view through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus, and the fact that the view afforded was of no use to him in his investigation, that he had used the shorthand ‘he could no longer see through the window at the rear of the top deck of the bus’ – and on reflection, it would have been more accurate to have referred to this window as the window right at the rear of the top deck of the bus upon which he was travelling, given that there were other windows at the rear of that bus, windows on the sides of the bus, that is, and he wouldn’t want to confuse the presence of those windows with the window to which he had been referring in his mind throughout this disquisition, namely, the rearmost window on the top deck of the bus upon which he continued to travel.
Nor would he want to confuse different uses of the term ‘craning’. The craning involved in craning one’s neck was quite different to the craning involved, say, on a construction site, leaving aside any craning of necks on the part of the construction workforce on that site. Marguerite wished, in particular, to make a distinction, in the latter case, between the function of height provision by mechanical crane and the acquisition of height through the craning of one’s neck; and the distinction that he wished to make between these two forms was that when one cranes one’s neck, as it is known, this was not to say that one’s neck became extended in any significant way. A mechanical crane may lift a weight many metres into the air, and this was the paradigm use of the crane, as it were, to Marguerite’s mind; similarly, in craning one’s neck, one lifted one’s head, which can be taken to be the lifted weight in this instance, but the vertical distance traversed by the head through this action of craning one’s neck was much, much smaller; this was the only point that Marguerite really wanted to make with regard to craning one’s neck. Thus, to illustrate the point further, in craning his neck to look out of the rearmost window on the top deck of the bus, as he continued to do whilst continuing to move downstairs, this did not mean that his neck had somehow extended such that his head was now at the level of that window. Sure, in craning one’s neck, that neck would extend slightly, having perhaps until the moment of craning been sunken somewhat between one’s shoulders. But the extent of the extension of an actual crane, proportionally speaking, would be far in excess of this neck extension however measured, and it is these two senses that Marguerite was wishing to distinguish between, to ensure that they were not confused.
As he continued to descend, he moved his head from an upward- to a downward-looking pose; that is to say that he stopped craning his neck to look out of the rearmost window on the top deck of the bus upon which he was travelling in his pursuit of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Harold Absalon knowing, as before, that this craning to look through that window was of absolutely no use to his investigation, for the reasons previously alluded to.
It was only then that he set out the long-promised positive and negative implications for his investigation of the situation he now found himself in: in not being able to look through either of the rearmost windows of the bus – that is the rearmost windows on both the upper and lower decks – he was at a disadvantage in not being able to see his pursuers on the bus behind, which was a concern to him; equally he speculated that they would not be able to see him. This situation would not last for long, he realised: his pursuers would very shortly be able to see his legs as they appeared ahead of the top half of his body in the rearmost window on the lower deck of the bus. How was he to ensure the safety of that half of the body given that any damage to that half would affect his body as a whole? It was to this that he would now, perhaps, turn his attention.
40
Having thought, following his intervention with the button at the top of the stairs, that the bus that he was travelling upon would continue to accelerate such that it would carry him sufficiently far from his pursuers on the trailing bus to enable him to shake them off, as it wa
s known, Marguerite was pained to notice that the bus that he was travelling upon had, in fact, already started to decelerate. How could his fine investigative mind have been duped so swiftly, he wondered, as he continued his still unobserved descent at the rear of the bus? Of course, he was in no position to apprehend the cause(s) of the deceleration: just as he could not now see through either of the rearmost windows of the bus that he was travelling upon, nor, by extension, could he see through the foremost windows, that is, the windows right at the front of the top and bottom decks of the bus upon which he was travelling. Given that it was through these foremost windows that he was most likely to apprehend the cause(s) of the deceleration, he was in no real position, literally or metaphorically, to apprehend that cause or those causes. There was a chance, however, that the cause of the deceleration was internal rather than external to the bus. The conductress or one of the passengers on that bus may have found a way of communicating with the driver, indicating, somehow, that the double-press of the button had occurred illegitimately, as it were, and that he should slow down as a precursor to stopping the bus. Still other, more plausible, internal causes could be conceived of, including the commonplace one of the momentary deceleration of the bus as the driver changed gear, as it was known. Marguerite felt reasonably sure, if this latter case pertained, that the bus would start to accelerate again following the gear change – that had been his experience on numerous occasions whilst travelling in motorised and other road vehicles in broadly similar circumstances in the past. But he could not be sure, until that re-acceleration took place, that this was the situation as it pertained to him at that moment – that is, a situation in which he was travelling in a vehicle that was in the process of ascending, numerically speaking, through the gears, or at least ascending, numerically speaking, from one gear to the next, the former, in this case, likely to be the first and the latter being the second gear – and it was for this reason that he could not rule out the other cause(s), whether internal or external to the bus, for the unexpected deceleration of the bus.
He found himself trying to find firm expositional ground just as his foot (unspecified) was travelling towards the fourth step down, a manoeuvre, moreover, that had become more precarious given that the bus had suddenly started decelerating following a period of acceleration that Marguerite had asserted would continue if not indefinitely then at least until he had shaken off his pursuers on the trailing bus. The reason he sought firmer ground for his rhetorical flourishes, rhetorical, note, only in a sotto voce sense, was that he had seen the ground beneath his assertion of continued and sufficient acceleration fall away so quickly and so easily. This had shaken his confidence, in short. He expressed this new unsteadiness externally by taking hold, now, of both handrails, that is, by gripping, on both sides of the stairwell, the rails that had been provided by the bus company for the purpose of steadying one’s body (and, by extension, one’s mind, Marguerite contended) at moments when the speed of the bus or the rate of its acceleration or deceleration changed abruptly or when the bus abruptly moved from a state of acceleration to one of deceleration, as in the current instance, or vice versa, or even to a state of abrupt braking. How could he trust his own assertions now, he wondered, when they so swiftly fell apart in the face of the evidence?
Just at that moment the driver moved into what Marguerite was sure was second gear and the bus started to accelerate again. With this, Marguerite regained his investigative composure. He explained now, that what he had meant to assert, previously, was that the bus would follow a broadly accelerative trend for the duration of his descent to its lower deck and that the sweep of this accelerative trend, as it were, would be sufficient to carry him far enough away from his pursuers on the trailing bus to enable him to shake them off, as it is known. The broadly accelerative trend did not, of course, rule out moments of deceleration such as the one that he had so recently experienced, provided that such moments were a small proportion of that trend. Having regained his mental footing in this way he regained his actual, that is to say his physical footing by placing his foot – the left, note – on the fourth step down. He further exhibited his regained composure, confidence – flamboyance, even – by removing one hand – the left – from the handrail running down the left hand side of the stairwell, meaning that he was now only holding onto one handrail – the one to his right – and by offering the following additional assertions: that the transition from second to third gear was still some moments away; that, despite the remaining four steps, the bus would still be travelling slowly enough for him to disembark, when the time came, without causing undue injury to himself; and, finally, that he was firmly back on the trail of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who, remember, was still missing22.
22. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the number of night-shifts I was putting in analysing tapes of Isobel Absalon’s movements, my performance in my day job declined. This saddened me – I’d been given such an opportunity following his disappearance, but it was as if the investigative task he’d left me was designed such that, ultimately, I would never step into his shoes, as it were. This, then, was his bequest to me: a precious opportunity that was continually just beyond my grasp.
41
Immediately he spotted an anomaly: most of the fingers of his right hand were located to the right of the right-hand handrail, as that right hand slid down that right-hand handrail in steadying his descent. In what sense, then, was that handrail to his right, as he had so recently asserted? Would it have been better, he now wondered, to have asserted that the right-hand handrail was mostly to his right whilst noting that most of his right hand was, in fact to the right of that right-hand handrail? He would leave that for others to decide, he decided. But before leaving this point entirely, he felt the need to clarify the term ‘most’.
Marguerite wished to clarify that he was using the term ‘most’ in an analogue rather than a digital sense, with the term digital relating, he thought, in the situation under consideration, to whole fingers or persons, whereas analogue related, in the same situation, to parts of fingers or persons. Thus when Marguerite had asserted that most of the fingers of his right hand were to the right of the right-hand handrail, and that he meant this in an analogue rather than a digital sense, he was holding that, proportionately rather than numerically, most of the fingers of his right hand were to the right of the right-hand handrail whilst most of his person was to the left of the right-hand handrail. It was not, then, that, say, the middle, ring and little finger of his right hand, in their entirety, were to the right of the handrail previously referred to whilst his right forefinger, to use that shorthand, was to the left of that handrail, leaving aside, for the time being, the question of whether the thumb counted as a finger or necessitated its own category. If he had been using the term ‘most’ in the digital sense partially explained above coupled, so to speak, with the position that thumbs should occupy their own category separate from that which fingers occupy, as it were, then, in asserting that most of his fingers were to the right of the right-hand handrail, what he would have been saying, given that he had a full complement of fingers on his right hand, which is to say that his right hand incorporated a total of four fingers and a thumb (not that he was deficient in that department in relation to his left hand), was that his right forefinger (etc), in its entirety, was to the left of the handrail (as before) alongside his thumb (which was an innocent party in this inquiry for what he hoped were now obvious reasons) whilst his right middle-, ring- and little fingers, in their entirety, were to the right of that handrail. Such was an example of the sums, if one took the thumb to fall outside the category of ‘finger’. Anatomically speaking this was a perfectly acceptable position for the hand to adopt in the case of the majority of subjects, and if it were to adopt such a position it would be accurate to say that most of the fingers of Marguerite’s right hand were to the right of the right-hand handrail in the digital sense expounded earlier. Anot
her example in which, arguably, most of the fingers of Marguerite’s right hand would be to the right of the right-hand handrail in the digital sense was the situation in which all of the fingers of Marguerite’s right hand were to the right of the right-hand hand rail, an example that more closely approximated to the situation on the ground, as it were. But for Marguerite to assert that either of these examples was the case in the current situation would be for him to fabricate evidence, or, in the latter case, to not tell the whole truth, something that, given his professionalism and integrity, he would not countenance. His hand was not strictly speaking in either of the digital positions described; that is, digitally speaking, the majority of the fingers of his right hand were not to the right of the right-hand handrail, given that they re-emerged underneath and then to the left of that handrail; nor, then, could it be asserted that all of his fingers were in that position, unless one considered that the parts of those fingers that were to the left of the right-hand handrail were just so much irrelevant ‘noise’ from a digital viewpoint, and Marguerite was not willing to do this, for some reason. That was why, as he placed his right foot onto the fifth step down, noticing, for the first time, that there was someone with blonde hair to the right of that handrail, seemingly waiting for him in what could be called the conductor’s position beside the stairway as it extended part-way across the open platform on the lower deck, he had explicitly noted that it was in an analogue rather than a digital sense that most of the fingers of his right hand were (or should that be ‘was’?) to the right of the right-hand handrail whilst most of his person was to the left of that handrail. He completed his dissertation on the digital and analogue in relation to one’s digits, whilst trying to ascertain the gender of the person waiting for him by seeing if he could look, from his vantage point, down the front of their top, with the succinct note that whilst the same applies to one’s toes, the specific situation in relation to hand- (or in that case foot-) rails was unlikely to arise unless, as in the case of cliff-hangers, one is a chimpanzee or other of the so-called lower apes.