Russell Hoban - Kleinzeit

It wasn’t Milton wrote the Bible, said Kleinzeit.

Don’t come the heavy pedant with me, said Word. Don’t make a fetish of knowing who said what, it doesn’t matter all that much. I have seen minds topple like tall trees. I have heard the winds of ages sighing in the silence. What was I going to say? Yes. Get Hospital to tell you about what’s-hisname.

Who? said Kleinzeit.

It’ll come to me, said Word. Or you. Barrow full of rocks and all that.

What about barrow full of rocks? said Kleinzeit.

Quite, said Word.

Morning, very early. Redbeard, bowler-hatted, bedrolled, carrier-bagged, slanting through the corridors of the Underground on the breath of the chill, on the silence of the speaking walls and posters. Very few people about as yet. The lights looking plucky but doomed, the trains looking puffy-eyed, sleep-ridden. With a howling in his head he went from station to station sowing his yellow paper, came back harvesting it, feeling faint and dizzy.

Write it, said the yellow paper.

No, said Redbeard. Nothing. Not a single word.

Write it, said the yellow paper. You think I’m playing games?

I don’t care what you’re doing, said Redbeard.

Write it or I’ll kill you, said the yellow paper. And the story of you will come to an end this morning.

I don’t care, said Redbeard.

I’ll kill you, said the yellow paper. I mean it.

Go ahead, said Redbeard. I don’t care.

All right, said the yellow paper. To the river.

Redbeard took a train to the river.

Out, said the yellow paper. Up to the embankment.

Redbeard got out, went up to the embankment, looked over the parapet. Low tide. Mud. The river withdrawn to its middle channel.

Over the side, said the yellow paper.

Low tide, said Redbeard.

Over the side anyhow, said the yellow paper.

Redbeard took all the yellow paper out of the carrier-bag, flung it out scattering wide, fluttering down to the low-tide mud.

You, not me, yelled the paper. Gulls wheeled over it, rejected it.

Redbeard shook his head, took a bottle of wine out of the other carrier-bag, retired to a bench, assumed a bearded-tramp-with-bottle pose.

This was your last chance, said the paper lying on the mud. No more yellow paper for you.

Redbeard nodded.

What we might have done together! said the paper, its voice growing fainter.

Redbeard shook his head, sighed, leaned back, drank wine.

‘You’re doing marvellously well on the 2-Nup,’ said Dr Pink. Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna seemed as pleased as he was. ‘Diapason’s just about normal.’

Here they were together, the curtains drawn around Kleinzeit’s bed, the rest of the world shut out. They’re all on my side really, thought Kleinzeit in his adventurous pyjama bottoms. They’re like a father and three brothers to me. He smiled gratefully, overcome with affection for Drs Pink, Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna. ‘What about the Shackleton-Planck results?’ he said.

‘Hypotenuse not being very cooperative, I’m afraid,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Hypotenuse obstinate, more skewed than ever.’ Fleshky and Potluck shook their heads at the futility of trying to reason with hypotenuse. Krishna shrugged as if he thought hypotenuse might be more skewed against than skewing.

But you’ll talk to hypotenuse, won’t you, said Kleinzeit with his eyes. You’ll make him be nice.

Snap, said Memory. You win another one: the bully with the ugly face who shook his fist at you every day and waited for you after school. Once you fought him but you gave up quickly. Here he is, not lost any more: Folger Bashan, yours again from now on. Folger grimaced, showed his yellow teeth, shook his fist, mouthed silently, I’ll get you after school.

Thank you, said Kleinzeit. I am indeed rich in memories: my father’s funeral, the tomcat I killed, Folger Bashan. There was more, wasn’t there? Something, when was it? The day the fat man, the day M. T. Butts died.

Don’t be greedy, said Memory. You weren’t meant to have that yet.

‘And of course,’ said Dr Pink, ‘with a hyperbolic asymptotic intersection your loss of pitch and the 12 per cent polarity are now accounted for.’ The faces of Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna showed that they were not surprised.

‘And the quanta,’ said Dr Pink. Kleinzeit now saw the quanta as a marching army of soldier ants consuming everything in their path. ‘Where you have asymptotic intersection you can be sure that quanta won’t be far off,’ said Dr Pink. More like those awful hunting dogs that ate wildebeeste alive, thought Kleinzeit. Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna took notes.

‘Yes,’ said Dr Pink. ‘Everything falls into place now, and the stretto blockage is to be expected. If it weren’t blocked at this stage I’d be surprised.’

I may be a coward, thought Kleinzeit, but I’m a man after all and I can’t take this stretto business lying down. He made a feeble stand. ‘Nobody said anything about stretto before this,’ he said. What’s the use, he thought. I myself predicted stretto and I don’t even know where it is or what it does.

No one bothered to answer. Out of common decency they turned away as one man from Kleinzeit’s funk.

‘Right, then,’ said Dr Pink. ‘If you were, say, twenty years older … How old are you?’

‘Forty-five.’ The tomcat came into his mind again. Dead for twenty years.

‘Right,’ said Dr Pink. ‘If you were twenty years older I’d say live with it, you know. Diet and all that. Why get rough with your insides at that age. But as it is I don’t mind coming to grips with the thing sooner if it means we’re in a better position to avoid infinite regress later.’

Sooner, later, thought Kleinzeit. I can feel myself infinitely regressing right now. ‘What thing?’ he said.

‘That’s what I’m coming to,’ said Dr Pink. ‘I’m for making a clean sweep: hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto out before they do any more acting up. They want to play rough, very well, we’ll play rough.’ Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna showed by the light in their eyes that Dr Pink had the kind of boldness that commanded their respect.

‘Out,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘What do they do? I mean, weren’t they put there for something?’ They’ve been with the organization for forty-five years, he thought. Now all of a sudden it’s Thank you very much and all the best. On the other hand there’s very little doubt they’re out to get me.

‘We don’t know an awful lot about hypotenuse, asymptotes and stretto,’ said Dr Pink. The three younger doctors expressed with one collective look that Dr Pink was a deep one. ‘The hypotenuse of course is the AB connection that keeps your angle right. Subtention. Well and good I say, for as long as you can keep it up. With hypotenuse going twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, you oughtn’t to be surprised if there’s some strain as time goes on. You may experience flashes from A to B as hypotenuse, while maintaining right angle, begins to skew. That’s when I say, you know, Time, gentlemen. Time for hypotenuse to go. Some of my colleagues have pointed out that obtuseness or acuteness invariably follows its removal. My answer is So what. You can jolly well keep your angle right while everything else collapses around it and then where are you.’

Nowhere, said the faces of Fleshky, Potluck and Krishna.

‘Asymptotes,’ said Dr Pink, ‘seem purely vestigial, having no function other than not meeting the curve they continually approach. I don’t hold with that sort of thing. What I say is If you’re not going to meet the curve why bother to approach it. Naturally there’s going to be tension, and some of us tolerate it better than others. If we try to lean away from the tension there’ll be changes in axis and pitch until eventually there’s a double divergence and there you are with asymptotic intersection. That’s when people come to me and say, “My goodness, Doctor, that doesn’t feel good at all, I can’t get any sleep at night.” You can guess what my answer is: no asymptotes, no intersection.’