The Salsa Raft (2015)

I started salsa dancing in the spring of the year 2014. Having left it rather late to life to indulge such an activity, I am never going to be truly proficient. However I am slowly getting better and it's certainly one of the most enjoyable forms of exercise I have ever attempted.

Hector was a teacher of the dance style known as salsa. Four times a week he would give a class to beginners and always he would call out the timings of the steps, “One, two, three... five, six, seven...” and he did this to stress the fact that there was a pause on the fourth beat in which the dancers weren’t really expected to do anything.

For so many years did he call out the numbers in this way that he finally forgot four existed at all. And so he went through life unable to cope with anything related to that particular integer. Thus he had to increase the frequency of his lessons to five nights a week. This made him richer and more popular but worsened his problem with fours.

His four-blindness or fourophobia intensified and deepened to the extent that even the words ‘for’ and ‘fore’ were affected. Hector never did anything for any reason now, but only because he felt like it. He refused to acknowledge his forebears and gave up the art of foreplay, much to the dismay of his wife. He no longer had any fortitude.

Aware that he had changed in a way that put him at a disadvantage when compared with other men, Hector decided to do something remarkable in order to regain his feelings of self-worth. Dance instructors were nothing unusual and even those who put on big parties and spectacular events weren’t uncommon. His approach had to be devastatingly original.

It occurred to him that maybe he could find a way to harness the energy expended by salseros and salseras. All those movements were an outpouring of physical force and it was a pity this force couldn’t be captured and used to do positive work rather than be wasted through dispersal. His first thought was to modify the dancefloor in order to generate electricity.

This might be accomplished by connecting the sprung wooden floor to levers and gears below that turned a dynamo. The electricity produced could power the sound system, so the dancing would enable the music that accompanied the dancing, a perfect loop. But after giving the matter a little more thought, Hector realised that this arrangement wasn’t really so unique.

Something more ambitious was required. One night the idea came to him as he lay awake in bed. Because the time 4am was one he was unable to accept as real, the night was always one hour shorter for him than for a normal person. To compensate for these missing sixty minutes, he went to bed an hour early, before he was properly ready for sleep.

Thus he often tossed and turned not only his wakeful body but ideas in his lucid mind. And now he constructed in his imagination a curious vessel, a huge raft that was actually a floating dancefloor, with a rudder and a propeller that could move it along on still waters and without obtrusive sails that would flap in the faces of the crew and passengers, who would all be dancers.

The more he pondered this peculiar marvel of maritime engineering, the more excited Hector became, to the point that he leaped out of bed and ran about the house on a quest for a pen that worked and paper that hadn’t already been written on. When he found what he was seeking, he sketched the design with a few bold and deft strokes. The salsa raft!

A vessel powered by the vibrations of the feet of those who danced on its deck, these vibrations being converted into electricity that powered a motor driving the propeller. And he, Hector, would be the captain and navigator with his hand on the tiller, steering a course to their destination, for a destination was another essential component in his glorious vision.

What more appropriate destination than Havana? That steamy tropical hive of vibrancy that forms the ultimate pilgrimage for all serious salsa dancers was the only viable option. The end result of such an amazing voyage wouldn’t merely be to bolster Hector’s somewhat battered confidence but to also provide a solution to a riddle that had long bothered him.

This riddle concerned the haunt of the best salsa dancers in the world. A fine teacher, Hector had nonetheless on his travels to clubs in other cities often been awestruck and intimidated by the quality of the dancers who thronged the dancefloor. Some of them were truly astounding. The spins they did were more complicated and elegant, the styling more stylish.

Yet these dancers, when he went to praise them after the music ended, always insisted they weren’t as good as the dancers in some other club. So Hector had gone seeking and had found and entered those other clubs, but the dancers who frequented them also insisted the best could be found elsewhere. Always there was a better club with better dancers.

But the process had to end eventually. Somewhere in this wide world of ours there must be the best club of all and in that club must logically cavort the most stupefying dancers that had ever moved or could move to salsa rhythms. And he, Hector, naturally nurtured a dream of locating that club one day. His best guess was that it was probably in Havana.

It might not be there, of course, but it was worth finding out. The raft would take him together with his regular class of learners and once they reached Havana he could begin his explorations and investigations. Even if he was unsuccessful in finding the ultimate salsa club, the remarkable and unusual journey itself would make him famous.

He shared his scheme with his pupils at the earliest opportunity and they were enthusiastic. They even contributed donations to the building of the raft, which he had expected to fund entirely from his own savings. The vessel was constructed in a couple of months and its launching was attended by television reporters and journalists from many newspapers.

The raft set off from England one morning in summer and Hector pointed the rudder towards Cuba. For the first few days everything went well. The dancers danced and their dancing made electricity that kept the music playing and also turned the propeller. It was going to be a long voyage but that was part of its appeal. “One, two, three... five, six, seven...”

Unfortunately, the island of Cuba lies just south of the Tropic of Cancer and to get there the raft had to cross the latitude line 44ºN. The two fours in that number were like the double barrels of a shotgun to Hector and his frenzied attempts to avoid them led to him capsizing the raft. It is not easy to capsize a vessel as stable as a raft but he managed it.

Or maybe huge waves were responsible and no effort was made to avoid the storm because he was unable to check the weather forecast. It was an insane mission from the start and the authorities should have prevented it, but how could anyone forbid anything to Hector? All the same, he lacked tremendous foresight and it is time now to forget all about him.

333⅓ (2004)

This story was my 334th story. As I plan to write exactly 1000 stories that will form a gargantuan story cycle, this tale marks the stage where the project was one-third of the way towards completion, or rather one third of the way through the story is the precise point where this happens. Hence the title. The number 334 also suggested Thomas Disch's brilliant novel by that name, so the main character in this tale is called Boz, the name of one of Disch's characters. Numbers are inexplicably important to me. Incidentally, my story cycle is now more than three-quarters done.

“There are no spare rooms left.”

It was a familiar reply and Boz turned on his heels but the landlord reached out and clasped his shoulder with an enormous hand.

“You can have the cupboard under the stairs.”

Boz hesitated a moment and then followed the landlord over the threshold of the door into the lobby of the building. It was the best offer of the past month, a month of walking the streets and ringing doorbells. Space was at a premium in this city right now and available rooms were scarcer than unicorns. The landlord turned on the lights in the stairwell and pointed upwards.

“It’s near the top. I shouldn’t really rent it out, but I feel sorry for young men in your position. There are three hundred and thirty three apartments in this block, so I guess we can just call yours number 333⅓.”

“I’m not expecting visitors or mail,” said Boz.

The landlord shrugged and they ascended the flights of steps together, puffing hard by the time they reached their destination. Boz peered at the door of the cupboard. It was low and small and he would be required to crouch to pass through it, but he was grateful for any form of accommodation, however cramped. Everything in his life had worked out fine apart from not having a home. He had money in his wallet and a full belly but no place to stay. This one problem soured all the good things.

“I’ll draw up a contract and you can sign it tomorrow. Here’s the key.”

Boz accepted the tiny metal object and inserted it into the lock. The landlord had already wheezed off down the stairs and was gone before he opened the door. The cupboard contained a few blankets and a pillow. At the rear were an old vacuum cleaner, a dozen plastic bags and two large cardboard boxes. With a heavy sigh he squeezed into this space and fell asleep. The deep exhaustion of more than four weeks living rough, cold and damp and an easy target for violent drunkards, had caught up with him.

He woke slowly. It was pitch dark and his muscles were aching. He thought about the city and the new building regulations which made it impossible to construct new housing. The authorities were determined to stop the metropolis sprawling outwards any further, nor did they want the skyline encroached upon more than it already was, so building higher was no solution. Boz understood this desire to preserve the city the way it was. It was a beautiful city, as cities go, with courtyards and patios and balconies and roof gardens.

Not having enough space in the cupboard to stretch out at full length, he had curled up in a foetal position, legs hugged to his chest. Now he had terrible cramps. He decided to move the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes out into the corridor for the remainder of the night. He could always replace them in the morning before his landlord returned. As he moved these objects, he was astonished to discover that they concealed an opening to a tunnel. A faint glow came from its depths and he felt a light breeze on his face.

“How far back does it go?” he wondered.

There was only one way to find out. Crawling on his hands and knees he proceeded down the tunnel. The glow broke apart into a number of individual specks of light like stars and the tunnel itself grew wider and taller. Soon he was able to stand and walk. Wherever he was headed, it was not into the building. This was not a service duct that wove between clusters of water and gas pipes, bundles of insulating fibre and electrical fuse boxes. He savoured the distant scents of honeysuckle, cooking and wine.

The sides of the tunnel were no longer bricks but mossy stones and worn railings. The ceiling had vanished. Somehow he was in a street, the street of a city not his own, a city equally as beautiful, with a castle on a crag and tall houses clustered below it. The stars were lamps on poles. He passed under an archway and impulsively resolved to remain here, not to go back, not that he could ever retrace his steps because he had already forgotten the way he had come. This city was no worse than the one he had left and his wallet was bulging. First he would find a proper place to live.

“There are no spare rooms left.”

Although he expected this reply, Boz did not turn away immediately. He asked the same question he had asked all the other landlords.

“Don’t you have a cupboard under the stairs?”

The landlord licked his lips and hesitated before nodding and leading the way up the flights of steps to the designated space. Boz heaved a sigh of relief. He had found his escape route after another month of rough living. This city was as pleasurable as the one before it, but its charms and opportunities could not be fully appreciated by one who had no place to rest his head at night. Once again homelessness was the fly in the ointment, or something larger than a fly, a crow or vulture.

“I shouldn’t really rent this out, it’s against regulations, but I know how hard it is for young people these days. I sympathise, really I do.”

Boz accepted the key and opened the door. Now his search was over, he was able to relax and enjoy his memories of his brief stay in this unknown metropolis. The first thing to delight him was the discovery that the inhabitants spoke the same language as he did, though with an alluring accent. In return he appeared exotic to them. This city was identical in size to the one he had known but the layout was changed, as if the buildings and streets had been shuffled and replaced on the landscape in a different order.

Boz had a special fondness for the districts nearest the river, the stone bridges and restaurants festooned with coloured bulbs, the steep cobbled lanes and little squares full of musicians and dancers. And that girl on the scooter. But always the fact he lived nowhere spoiled everything. He had even tried to get a job where he might be allowed to sleep safely on the premises, in a kitchen or warehouse, but that was not acceptable behaviour here. Without a place to return to, he was nowhere. His life was on hold, romances had to be abandoned, all his future was suspended until he found a room.

No rooms were to be had. Now he had been given a cupboard instead, but he could hardly be expected to bring a girl back to a cupboard. It was not a home at all, but it represented another chance elsewhere. His wallet was still mostly full, he had spent only a fraction of his savings, and he still had hope. As soon as the landlord was out of sight, he moved the vacuum cleaner, bags and boxes into the corridor.

The opening was there, complete with the faint glow, the glow of the merged streetlights of a third city. He crawled into the tunnel, stood when the ceiling was high enough and began running. Soon he was running down a street, biting scented air. A song emerged from an open window above him, a girl brushing her hair in the moonlight. He slowed his pace, sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, whistling her melody.

A man clutching a newspaper came the other way. Boz stopped him and asked, “Where might I find a place to live in this city?”

“You’ll be lucky,” replied the man. “There’s nothing much here.”

To confirm this assertion he showed the newspaper to Boz, opening it to the section where landlords advertised properties. The page was blank. Boz sighed and the man tried to cheer him up by saying, “You have an interesting accent. The girls will love that.”

“Not if I have no place to go.”

The man shrugged and moved on and Boz went the other way, appreciating the sights and magic of the city, even while another part of him was downcast. Could he meet a girl and move in with her? That option seemed dishonourable and was probably impractical. Better for him simply to start searching now, ringing the doorbells of apartment blocks. If he did not find a room he might still find a cupboard under the stairs, an escape route to the next city. And this process could continue until he ran out of money and cast his empty wallet into the gutter.

The night passed uneasily. The days that followed it passed in the same manner. He grew to know and love this new city but he was never established here. There was wine and food, music also, and a girl. But nothing stable. During daylight hours he enjoyed living, being in the city, but in the evenings he searched for a room. He was always on the move, tense, without a base, aimless, unable to relax.

“No spare rooms? What about a cupboard under the stairs?”

At last he found one and he said goodbye to this city, another month of his life, as he tramped up the steps. The vacuum cleaner was there and the other items too and he moved them out of the way and plunged into the tunnel. The tunnel became a street, the street of a city with yet another reshuffling of buildings and squares. Already he knew it was as full as the previous two. He could hear the city breathe, a breathing composed of the flexing of the floorboards in every room, all occupied. He knew that another month of searching lay in wait, the growing of more stubble in shadows while he waited for morning and the warming rays of the rising sun.

He called to a girl on a street corner, “Excuse me, Miss, but do you know...”

Of course she did not. Suddenly he was overwhelmed by a vision of his destiny. He saw himself passing through city after city without settling in any of them, searching for and finding cupboard after cupboard under a sequence of nearly identical stairways. A future of crawling into tunnels, hurrying down them until they became streets, and then a snatched form of life, taking pleasure between slabs of anxiety, closed doors and rejection. He checked his wallet.

“I have enough money to last another forty or fifty cities. I won’t stop yet, I’ll keep going as long as I can. If I don’t find a place to live, I’ll just keep looking for the tunnel to the next city. When I have only enough money left to pay for my funeral, I’ll climb the highest tower of the city I’m in, wherever that tower might be located, and I’ll throw myself off. That way I’ll have rest and respectability in death if not in life!”

He struggled to open his eyes. Where was he? A gloomy chamber with a pungent odour, some sort of cleaning fluid. Had he found a room at last, a real room, a home? He was naked and stretched out on something hard, not a bed. As his eyes opened fully, the memories settled back slowly in his juddered brain. Many cities, many streets and restaurants and girls. He had been searching for somewhere to live for years. He had explored dozens of cities that were variations of just one city, so many that he had lost count.

There were other people in the chamber with him. An ache throbbed through his bones, fading and then suddenly flaring up, the pain concentrated at a point on his chest. He remembered what he had done, the final moment of despair, the sensation of falling. And yet clearly he had survived. Was he in a hospital? All those wonderful things, his experiences, degraded by the fact he had no roots, and now this? Was he going to be stuck in a hospital for weeks or months? He blinked and waited for his eyes to adjust properly.

The men standing over him did not look like doctors. They wore heavy cloaks and very tall black hats that almost scraped the ceiling. One held his wallet, another was clutching two electrodes in gloved hands, electrodes connected to a machine that hummed and spat in the corner. Boz felt there was an association between this machine and the burning sensation in his chest. The man holding the wallet nodded down at him and said:

“Pleased to meet you, we are your undertakers. You have just enough money to pay for a funeral, we’ve counted it, a single note and a few coins, it comes to 333⅓ crowns altogether, which is exactly our fee. But there’s a slight problem, a minor hitch, and we couldn’t just get on with the burial. So we brought you back to life to discuss something with you, to make a proposal. We all think it’s a neat solution to our difficulty.”

“Tell me,” gasped Boz. His words emerged thin and dry and his efforts to sit up came to nothing. He knew he would never feel more alert than this ever again, but it did not seem to matter. The reply to his question was a murmur but he heard it and managed to roll his eyes in exasperation.

“There are no spare coffins left. But there’s an old tea chest in the attic...”

The Mirror in the Looking Glass (2007)

This story idea just came to me out of the blue in one quick burst when I was living with my friend Hannah in Waunarlwydd, a village near Swansea, just before I left to travel through Spain for a year. It is a product of pure inspiration and that inspiration needed no prompting from me. This is an unusual thing.

  

Mad inventors are plentiful in this world of ours but only one sits on a genuine throne and rules his own city like an ancient king. Frabjal Troose of Moonville has many dubious talents, including the ability to flap his ears. They squeak. But his cybernetics expertise is considerable and his contributions to the design and manufacture of artificial nervous systems are almost unparalleled. Only his perversity prevents him from becoming the saviour of the human race.

Perhaps I am overstating the case, but his monumental achievements are singularly unhelpful to his own subjects and the citizens of every other realm. What amuses Frabjal Troose is to install human intelligence in inanimate objects. With the aid of extremely small but excessively clever devices, part electronic and part mechanical, he can bestow the gift of consciousness with all its attendant emotions on chairs, crockery, table lamps, shoes, clocks, flutes.

He can and he does. Frequently.

His other hobby is to worship the moon…

One morning Frabjal Troose awoke with the urge to give thoughts and feelings to a mirror. He foresaw all manner of comic and tragic potential in the reality of a self-aware looking glass. To make the joke even more piquant he decided to equip his victim with prosthetic legs and allow it to roam freely around the city. He left his enormous bed and went to the bathroom and there he saw an appropriate mirror hanging on the wall above the moon shaped sink.

The operation took several days. Frabjal Troose is a perfectionist and he wanted the circuits and cogs to be tastefully integrated into the frame of the mirror. In the end the workings ran over the surface of the wooden frame like complex ornamentation. By this time, the mirror could already think for itself and was slowly coming to terms with its sudden awareness and the need to develop an identity. It was no longer a mere object but a precious sentient being.

It even had a name. Guildo Glimmer.

Guildo learned to walk within his first hour. Wandering the palace of Frabjal Troose, little more than a large house stuffed with components for new gadgets, he came into contact with the occasional servant. At each encounter the same thing happened: the servant bent down and made a face at Guildo. Sometimes the servant picked him up and held him at arm’s length while plucking a nose hair or squeezing a pimple. What did this mean? Guildo was bewildered.

He continued his explorations and discovered that the front door of the palace was open and unguarded. Through it he hurried, into the lunar themed spaces of the city. Moon buggies rolled past on the roads and the public squares were craters filled with people dressed in silver and yellow clothes. I know that Frabjal Troose once issued an edict forbidding any grins that were not perfect crescents. He also forbade any cakes that were not perfect croissants.

Guildo proceeded down the street. He desperately needed time for reflection, but citizens just would not leave him in peace and they treated him in precisely the same way as the palace servants had, making blatant faces at him, grimacing and yawning and even frowning in disgust. Guildo began to experience the state of mind known as ‘paranoia’. What was wrong with his appearance? What was it about him that provoked such reactions in strangers?

He must be ugly, a horrible freak, a grotesque mutant: there was no other explanation. He was overwhelmed with a desire to view his own face, to confront his visage, to learn the foul truth for himself. But he could think of no way to accomplish this. Are you stupid, Guildo Glimmer? he asked himself. There must be a method of seeing one’s own face, but what? Because he was so new to the conventions of society, he always spoke his thoughts aloud.

“I know a reliable way,” declared a passerby.

This passerby was a droll fellow, a practical joker. He told Guildo that when men and women wanted to look at their own faces they made use of a ‘reflection’. What was one of those? Well, reflections existed in a variety of natural settings, in quiet lakes and slow rivers and the lids of clean saucepans, but only in the depths of mirrors did they realise their full potential. That is where the highest quality reflections dwelled, untroubled by ripples or cooking stains.

“You must look into a mirror!” he announced.

Guildo was astonished but grateful and he decided to follow this advice. The passerby chuckled and passed on. He was later arrested for not chuckling in the shape of a crescent, but that is another story. No, it is this story! No matter, I will ignore it in favour of what happened to poor Guildo. His little metallic legs carried him to the market, a bustling place where anything one desired might be bought, provided one’s desires were modest or at least plausible.

Guildo’s were. He approached a stall selling mirrors.

The man who owned the stall was talking to another customer and so Guildo was free to hop onto a table and examine the mirrors on display. He chose a circular mirror that was nearly the same circumference as his own head and he stepped in front of it. What he saw was totally unexpected and utterly profound. He saw an immensely long tunnel, a tunnel that stretched perhaps as far as the moon or infinity.

It must be pointed out once again that Guildo Glimmer was a living mirror. A mirror is simply unable to view its own reflection. The moment a mirror gazes into another mirror, its image will be endlessly bounced back and forth between the two reflecting surfaces. Hence the illusion of a tunnel. This is a law of geometry and a rule of physics, but Guildo knew nothing of such disciplines. His education had not covered the sciences.

As far as he was concerned, the illusory tunnel was an accurate representation of his form. This meant that he really was a tunnel! Now he understood why people kept frowning at him and why he was so dissatisfied. It was because he was not fulfilling his correct role. He was a tunnel and ought to do what tunnels do, act like tunnels act, think what tunnels think. He rushed out of the market to embrace his true destiny.

Later that afternoon, the splinters of a smashed mirror were picked up from the tracks of the main railway line leading into Moonville. When pieced together they could be identified as the remains of Guildo Glimmer. There was no way of resurrecting him. Frabjal Troose came to pay his hypocritical respects but he quickly lost interest and returned to his palace in a land-boat powered by moonbeams. By this time the sun had gone down and the moon was up.

People said that Guildo committed suicide, that he was too full of despair to continue his existence. Why else would he stand in the path of a moving train? But as I watched the billowing sails of the receding land-boat, I realised that I knew better. Guildo was simply serving a mistaken function. Tunnels are there for trains to pass through, after all. I was the driver of that train: in fact I am the train itself, an earlier example of the unnatural quest to give intelligence to inanimate objects.

Fighting Back (2005)

This time travel story was inspired by something said during an online conversation, namely that "a nuclear war could set civilisation back five thousand years". Although the comment was meant metaphorically, I rather enjoy deliberately taking things literally and seeing what can be made of them. Conversely I also enjoy pretending that things meant literally are metaphors. Both are valid comic techniques when it comes to writing absurdist fiction.

There was a tangible air of anticipation and worry in the Star Chamber of the Universal Bank as the Twelve Supreme Presidents took their seats and waited for the proceedings to begin. This special council had been summoned by President #5, Ramon Asquith, whose speciality was financial history. Every time Ramon called a meeting something curious happened. The others were acutely aware of this.

The Star Chamber was not star shaped, nor was the table at which the Presidents sat, but the ceiling was adorned with silver stars, many of them peeling and tarnished. The ceiling was too high to make regular maintenance of these objects worthwhile. Nobody ever looked up anyway. There were more important things to consider. The Presidents were about to be forcefully reminded of this fact.

Ramon Asquith wasted little time. He stood and greeted his comrades with a curt nod. Then he said:

“To outside observers the Universal Bank might appear to be one of the greatest success stories in the history of business. All banks have merged into one gigantic financial house. We are the controllers of that house. And yet we are suffering from a deep malaise. We have expanded as far as possible, covering the entire earth, absorbing all economies. All the money in existence belongs to us.”

The other Presidents began to applaud, but Ramon silenced them with a scowl. “This is not a good thing,” he snapped. “It means there are no more profits to be made anywhere.”

He slammed his fist down on the table. “There is no space left for us to grow. Gentlemen, we are stuck.”

There was an uneasy muttering at these words.

After a suitable pause, Ramon continued with a smile: “My latest research into financial history leads me to conclude there was only one person who might have had a solution to this problem — Jakob Fugger, the greatest banker of all time.”

Livia Turandot, President #2, rubbed her long chin angrily. “That’s all very well, but it’s not much use to us. Fugger died in 1526. We can hardly dig him up for a consultation.”

Ramon did not alter his expression. “Time travel.”

“It hasn’t been developed yet,” objected Vikram Brown, President #9, glancing at his watch for confirmation.

“Exactly!” cried Ramon. “But within a few centuries it will be. Our successors can travel back to the 16th Century and ask Fugger for his advice. Then they can return to their own time and start implementing his suggestions. All we are required to do here is hold tight until time travel is invented.”

“Can we last that long? There are already groups of rebels in every city attempting to sabotage the Universal Bank’s transactions and intimidate or confuse our staff.”

“They are becoming bolder,” agreed President #7, Anzolo Galen.

“Technological progress is inevitable,” said Ramon calmly. “It may even happen that time travel is invented much sooner than we anticipate, perhaps in the next few decades.”

Boris Ageyev, President #11, shook his head. “Nothing is inevitable, I’m afraid. Some of those rebel groups are even trying to build nuclear weapons in private laboratories.”

“The irresponsible little fools!” snorted Livia.

Vikram licked his lips. “A major nuclear war could set civilisation back five thousand years.”

Ramon frowned thoughtfully. “Five thousand years? That’s too far.” His frown remained but his eyes sparkled until they resembled two stars that had fallen from the ceiling and settled onto his face. “A major nuclear war, you said?”

Alice the maid wiped sweat from her brow with a cloth as she waited for the kettle to boil on the fire. Not all her sweat was produced by the heat of the burning logs. Some of it was due to anxiety. The future had suddenly become more uncertain.

She was distracted by a sudden noise from the courtyard. She tried to peer through the kitchen window but it was too grimy with grease and soot to afford any clear view. Somebody was stamping about on the frosty cobbles outside. Then the door was thrown open and a man staggered into the kitchen. Alice stifled a gasp.

He was a leper or the carrier of some other awful disease. His body was almost shapeless and his clothes hung in rags. How had he managed to get into the courtyard past the guards? She recoiled but he clutched her arms and started babbling at her.

“Don’t be afraid, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m from the future. I don’t expect you to believe that but I don’t have the energy to invent a plausible lie. I’m here on urgent business.”

Alice frowned. He spoke very bad German in a very strange accent. She pulled away from him but he followed her towards the stove, trapping her in a corner. Then he added:

“I’m here to see Jakob Fugger. I don’t have an appointment but when he hears what I have to say I think he’ll forgive the intrusion. You are one of his servants? My name is Ramon Asquith and I have travelled from the year 2110. I know what you’re thinking, nobody can move backwards in time, and in fact we weren’t able to until very recently, recently in my time that is. I had a great idea, you see. It was inspired by something a colleague said, an offhand remark.”

Alice fought to keep calm. “What did he say?”

“It won’t mean much to you, but he said that ‘a major nuclear war could set civilisation back five thousand years’. I realised that I only had to travel back 584 years, so it occurred to me that perhaps a minor nuclear war would do the trick. My organisation arranged a small nuclear conflict with Luxembourg. It set civilisation back exactly five hundred and fifty years. Then I used ordinary explosives, a great deal of the stuff, to travel back another thirty years. But I still had four years to cross. I managed that with a machine gun.”

“I think you are a madman,” said Alice defiantly.

“To set civilisation back smaller and smaller lengths of time, such as months, weeks and days, I had to employ smaller and smaller weapons, for instance pistols, knives and knuckledusters. After making these adjustments I finally arrived at the right moment, the day of Jakob Fugger’s death. I need to ask him a question before he expires. Please take me to him as quickly as possible. I don’t have much time left myself. The radiation poisoning is starting to kill me.”

Alice glared at him triumphantly. “You are too late. My master died exactly one hour ago. I am making tea for the physician who attended him during his last moments.”

Ramon sighed deeply. “In that case I still need to make one final adjustment. My open palm should be enough to set civilisation back one more hour. I’m sorry about this Alice, but I’m going to have to slap you to complete my journey properly.”

While he was speaking, Alice reached for the kettle on the stove and swung it at his head with all her strength. The hot metal cracked against his skull. He collapsed to his knees, boiling water streaming down his bruised, shredded face.

“Just like that,” he gasped as he keeled over. Alice had set him back forever. She wasn’t dismayed in the slightest. Madmen had no right entering the houses of their superiors.

There was a tangible air of depression and weariness in the Star Chamber of the Universal Bank as the other Supreme Presidents squatted on the dirt floor and fanned away the flies. The ceiling was open to the sky and the walls were made of papyrus reeds but it was more pleasant here than outside in the baking sun.

“How were we to know that a minor nuclear war with Luxembourg would escalate into a major nuclear war with all the other countries?” asked Livia Turandot somewhat rhetorically.

“Now civilisation really has been set back five thousand years!” muttered Vikram Brown ruefully.

“4720 years to be precise,” corrected Boris Ageyev.

“We have to start our business again from the beginning!” grumbled Livia. “It hardly seems fair.”

“At least it gives us a sense of purpose,” pointed out Vikram.

“Well I have a really good idea,” said Boris. “Instead of buying goods with other goods, such as exchanging a cow for a sack of corn, why don’t we have a system whereby the goods can be represented by a small token? We could call this system ‘money’ and use pieces of metal called ‘coins’ as the medium of exchange.”

“It’s certainly worth thinking about,” the others agreed.

A man entered the Star Chamber. It was Ollie Natty, President #1, Supreme President of the Supreme Presidents. He was very old and very withered and he squinted in the relative gloom of the building.

“I’ve been sent to fetch you back to work,” he announced gloomily. “Break time is over.”

They followed him out into the bright day. Ahead loomed the rising profile of the pyramid they were building.

The Undeniable Grin (2000)

I wrote this brief tale in one session while lying in bed just after completing my first novel. I felt a great deal of relief when my novel was finished, as it had taken an intense six or seven months of constant work, and I wanted to write many short simple pieces as a counterbalance. I rarely write in bed, and these days I hardly ever read in bed either, I don't know why; but possibly The Undeniable Grin is responsible...

It was the first and last time I visited a theatre. I’ve never been a cultured man, because I’m still a boy at heart. If I went to see a play now, it’s certain I would be ejected from the premises for disruptive behaviour. The temptation to cause mischief is too strong, and that’s entirely due to what happened to me in that original audience, when I sat near the back with my girlfriend.

Natasha was seventeen, a year younger than me. She didn’t care for the amusement arcades and rickety rides of the funfair, so I was forced to think of a more sophisticated venue for our introductory date. Uncle Max suggested the local playhouse. A roving company had established itself there for a single evening with a new romantic drama. I hadn’t read any reviews, but it seemed ideal. I was at the age when I believed poetry could soften up any woman.

A big mistake, for the production in question was an experimental piece. I don’t remember the name of the author, but he wasn’t famous. I reckon he was that tall fellow who was flapping around the lobby when we entered. Natasha had her arm linked in mine and I felt very much like a genuine grown-up lover. We were the youngest there, but I don’t think we looked out of place. Uncle Max had lent me his smartest suit in exchange for several of my best comic books.

I bought the tickets with money earned from my Saturday job in the newsagents, and we passed into the auditorium. The usher showed us our seats and luckily our row was as distant from the stage as possible. I didn’t want too many people sitting behind me when I chanced a kiss. We sat down on the squeaky seats and waited for the theatre to fill. The interior was grand but faded, with chipped plaster cherubim clinging to the ceiling and frayed velvet drapes.

The cheap sculptures which occupied every nook and recess in the sidewalls reminded me of the background characters in my comics. They were poor representations of people and animals, hidden by potted plants but obtrusive enough to trouble the eye. When I directed my gaze at the stage, they poked themselves into the corners of my vision. Strange to say, it actually hurt. Tears hatched like eggs under my lids. I decided to save all my sly glances for Natasha.

But something new caught my attention. If you’ve ever wondered who pays for a private box in a crumbling regional theatre, then you’re on your own. I already know. It’s no mystery to me because I saw him enter with his wife. It was Mr Lucas, the newsagent who employed me. He stood for a full minute before taking his seat, which was a real chair rather than a folding contraption like ours, fiddling with the creases on his trousers. Either he was embarrassed or else he hoped to give everyone a reasonable chance to notice him.

An unfortunate incident, as it turned out. It reminded me again of comics. Apart from Natasha, they were my main passion. I liked the ones full of superheroes best. Mr Lucas allowed me to read them fresh off the shelves while I waited to serve customers in his shop. I wasn’t ashamed to be still under their spell. Uncle Max was also an enthusiast and had convinced me they were good fun at any age. Not that I planned to reveal my hobby to Natasha. She was too perfect, with her long tumbling hair, to tolerate such a simple pleasure.

Anyway, I pushed these thoughts to the back of my mind and prepared for the beginning of the play. The audience wasn’t vast but adequate for this place at that time. We settled as the lights dimmed. Somewhere, in the bowels of the building, there must have been a man whose task was to dim. I took that responsibility later, in respect of Natasha’s view of me. But her love, if there was any, went out abruptly, and this swelling gloom was gradual and less alarming.

The ragged curtains parted to mild applause. No scenery, no props. A man on a bare stage. Frankly I felt let down. Just a single character, muttering. This was supposed to be daring theatre, a minimalist romance, but it came over as mean. I was constantly expecting other actors to run on, to liven up the drudge. But they didn’t. A monotone speech and jerky postures. A glut of meaningful pauses.

I began to sweat. Was I really going to have to sit through another three hours of this? The very concept was appalling. Then the spotlights died, one at a time. I assume the author wanted to manipulate atmosphere directly, as well as through the words of his character. But the process didn’t work for me. Soon the entire stage was black except for the man, wrapped in his unearned halo. Then his feet disappeared and the darkness crawled up his legs to his knees.

The beam of the remaining spotlight was being narrowed to achieve an unspecified psychological effect. The man was talking about love, but in an unbearably cryptic fashion. I’m sure he made important points, but I don’t know what. Ask the author yourself, if you can find him. Now all that was left of the character was his mouth. Two pink lips and a set of bright teeth, hovering in the void.

This seemed to be an echo of many of my favourite superheroes. They tended to wear sealed costumes and masks that covered their faces apart from the mouth. They had names like Antman, The Phantom Joker, Dr Squid, Captain Superb, The Green Clown, The Red Herring, The Excessive Clump, Buttertalons, The Dull Gleam, Nadir the Octaroon. They were all loners, individualists, mavericks. Generally, but not always, they fought on the side of good. They never recommended their tailors.

I was falling into a trap set by boredom. I willed myself to ponder on something, anything else. I had recourse to a last desperate measure. I turned in my seat without warning and kissed Natasha on the lips. She slapped me. A loud slap. In the almost total darkness it wasn’t obvious to our neighbours what she had done. They would have worked it out, of course, but I couldn’t bear the dishonour. Call it reflex or immaturity, but I smothered the truth with a shout:

“The Undeniable Grin has struck his enemy!”

There was a selection of giggles, then someone added: “He must have very long arms to reach you from there!”

I nodded, although the gesture was lost in the murk. “They are made of elastic and can stretch halfway around the world!”

To my astonishment, nobody objected to this absurdity. Not a single complaint reached my ears. Instead, the audience supported me. There was a squeal and a sudden cry of rage:

“The Undeniable Grin has pinched my thigh!”

A voice asked: “Why? What did you do to him?”

The actor on stage fell silent. Maybe he had forgotten his lines in the excitement, or perhaps he was simply waiting for us to finish before returning to his monologue. He fell silent, yes, but he kept grinning, a wide floating smile in the dusk, and this was his fatal error. It seemed an admission of guilt. In our minds now, he was this farcical superhero, this implausible mutant, and for an unknown reason he was opposed to us, radiating harm from his hub of power.

The pause was brief. Invisible and nonexistent arms snaked out from the stage and violated us. We screamed.

“The Undeniable Grin has poked me in the eye!”

“The rascal has stolen my wallet!”

“He groped my wife without permission!”

“The bugger has filled my mouth with obscenities!”

“He’s forcing me to have unnatural thoughts!”

“About me, probably! And stop tickling me there!”

“It’s not me. It’s The Undeniable Grin!”

“He persuaded me yesterday to declare myself bankrupt!”

“He made me gamble away my salary on the horses!”

“Everything I’ve ever done wrong in my life was really the fault of The Undeniable Grin!”

“That’s true for all of us!”

And so on and so forth. I can’t imagine where all this nonsense was leading to. Perhaps it would have ended in a party. But it went beyond a joke before the management could react properly. There was a loud thud, the tipping of a heavy object out of a soft one and over a low edge into a vertical distance that ended on a hard tiled floor. One of the tiles cracked. When the house lights came on all at once, we were no wiser. It took long minutes for our eyes to adjust to the glare, but when they did we saw how simple the answers were.

The low edge was the wall of the private box, the soft object was a chair and the heavy one was Mr Lucas. His wife was standing and looking down at his broken body. Her hand was held to her mouth and she tried to appear shocked as she groaned:

“The Undeniable Grin has murdered my boring husband!”

All eyes turned to the stage, blinking guiltily as they accused. The poor actor was a man after all. He must have changed back. Having had so many amazing feats attributed to him, it seemed unlikely he was capable of trumping any of them. But he did. As his body came back into sharp focus, his grin utterly vanished.

The Blue Dwarf (1995)

This tale appeared in my collection, The Smell of Telescopes, together with its three sequels, all of which combine to form a story sequence called 'The Monmouth Wheel'. It was one of those stories I began writing without having any clue as to what would happen until I got to the end. When I compose fiction I usually have at least a vague idea of a potential conclusion, but not always; and on those occasions when I don't I feel I am reading the story at the same time I am writing it.

“All I require” the blue dwarf cried, as he placed his hand on my knee, “are your trousers and your soul.”

“Oh, little man,” said I, “this is a foolish request! They are both too large for you. They would flap in the wind and set up a commotion. Who would want to be your friend then? You would have to shout above the noise: ‘Blueberry pie at my house.’ Even so, no-one would come to visit. You would have to sit alone, absurdly attired.

“But let me tell you of the time I bartered both. The world was a younger place then; we did not value so highly such things as trousers and souls. The former were objects merely to be worn; the latter were baubles brought out over dinner to amuse guests. Neither had pride of place in the wardrobe, as they do now.”

“I do not wish to hear this,” replied the blue dwarf, and he turned to go. But I soon had him by the scruff and he was forced to amend his statement: “Perhaps I will listen after all.”

“Very good,” I agreed. “It is possible you will learn a truth here, though I doubt it. The amoral fable suits my tongue rather better than the moral kind. Attend then, unclouded fellow.

“The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Gwent, by the borders of the river Severn. And there is no quiet there, nor silence. The waters have a saffron and sickly hue; and they do a fair bit of palpitating beneath the red eye of the sun...”

The blue dwarf sighed: “Bugger!”

Actually, I exchanged my trousers for a clock and a carrot, and lost my soul as I was doing so. Do you know Monmouth?

The market there is notorious for pickpockets; I knew this before I set out, yet took no precautions. I was intent on driving a hard bargain for my trousers. The imps who run the stalls are good at offering low prices for items that come their way. They can talk the meanest miser into parting with his silver for a length of old rope. It is essential to be on your guard at all times.

Nor are they too particular about where their goods come from. I suspect the clock I received fell off the back of a steeple, and the carrot had been uprooted from an allotment. But I was desperate; and the imps and their customers are protected by the market-overt law. This states that goods sold at such markets, whether stolen or not, cannot be returned to the original owner (with the clock came an irate pastor).

Anyway, after I had spent an hour or so talking one stall-owner into giving me the clock and carrot, and had divested myself of my baggy britches, I made my way back to my house. Halfway home, I realised my soul was missing. Nimble fingers had filched it. Doubtless it could now be found on a soul stall. But I had nothing on me with which to barter it back. I decided it would keep until the following morning, when I would return with an umbrella and a parrot.

In my kitchen, I made a thin soup with the carrot and set the clock above my hearth (the pastor grumbled about the fire and claimed it was singeing his heels.) At last there was a knock on the door and Myfanwy stood on the threshold. I invited her in, showed her the clock, poured the soup and gazed into her large brown eyes. The combination of broth and timepiece so impressed her she consented to marry me at once — the effect I had been aiming for. “Hurrah!” cried I.

We finished the meal and listened to the clock striking the hour. She suggested we go out for a walk. I declined, of course — I had no trousers. I made some excuse about wishing to stay at the table to hear the clock strike another hour. She thought this an excellent idea and suggested we pass the time by playing dice with our souls. Again I made my excuses; I told her my soul had caught a cold and had to be kept inside. She saw through this deception at once.

“And to think I nearly kissed a man without a soul!” she growled. She stood up to leave and I rushed to restrain her. She glanced down at my bare legs. “What’s more, without trousers too!” she added. It was all I could do not to fall on the floor and burst into tears. I fell into an easy chair and burst into tears instead.

Myfanwy had left me, and my efforts at seducing her with pendulum and root vegetable had come to nothing. She was the greatest baker of blueberry pie in the region and men of all kinds came flocking to her oven; she could afford to be choosy. She had picked off the crust of my amorous overtures to expose the lack of filling beneath. I had lost her for good. Let this be a lesson to all young lovers, especially in these days, when inflation and curry has pushed up the price of both trousers and souls. Wear the former and ‘ware the latter.

The following morning, I took my umbrella and parrot to the market in an effort to retrieve my soul. But it had been sold. I was much put out by this. The imp who owned the stall offered to do me a very nice soul in maroon-and-black, but there is nothing quite like having your own soul; it fits you like a favourite overcoat, or like an idea in a single word. The imp would not reveal to whom he had sold it. I decided to cut my losses and buy back my trousers.

Incredibly, my trousers had also been purchased. I was so stupefied that I relaxed my guard and ended up exchanging my umbrella and parrot for a pair of tinted spectacles. I wore the spectacles — they turned everything as blue as my funk — as a reminder to myself never to be so foolish again. Indeed, I have never taken them off.

I sat on the side of Monnow bridge (if you do not know Monmouth, this is quite close to Agincourt Square, behind the giant waterwheel) and dangled my legs above the fetid river. As I was grumbling there to myself, Owain ap Iorwerth came up to me. “What’s the matter, Gruffydd?” he chortled, pleased to find me in a state of despair. I told him. “Oh well!” he grinned and slapped me on the back. I think he meant for me to fall into the ravine, but I merely coughed loose a tooth.

Owain ap Iorwerth, you see, was my greatest rival for the hand of fair Myfanwy. I made my way home and, too depressed even to finish off the soup I had so lovingly prepared the day before, took to my bed. I was startled by a knock on the door. When I opened it, I was overjoyed to find Myfanwy there, holding my trousers and soul.

It seemed I had misjudged her. She loved me, to be sure, and after storming out of my house had made her way to the market. There she had searched for the items and bought them for me. My clock and carrot, she quickly confessed, were so utterly remarkable, both as singular objects and also as a sum greater than the parts, that she had seen the error of her ways. She begged my forgiveness.

Naturally, I told her it was I who needed to apologise. After some thought she agreed; I did so and we fell into each other’s arms. But, unfortunately, this is the real world; life is a sour cream poured on stones. It soon became apparent she had sold her own trousers and soul to purchase mine. A hatstand and three harpoons had been thrown in.

I was in a quandary. How could I marry a woman without trousers or soul? Neighbours would gossip; I should be ashamed to show myself in public. I did not mention this to her, of course; I am a sensitive sort of man. The sort of man who does not despise pink socks because of their colour, but because of their hue.

In the days that followed, I did my best to act as if nothing was amiss. But her blueberry pie lost its flavour, and her lithe limbs lost their ability to slide against mine without friction. More to the point, when we went out with each other, people stared at us. They suspected she was lacking trousers and a soul; you could see it in their eyebrows, which jumped alarmingly whenever we approached. Some even made jokes in our presence. “That’s the spirit!” they would cry, or, “What a turn up for the books!” Pedestrians can be very cruel.

Owain ap Iorwerth noticed as well, because one day she left me for him. He had done the noble thing, buying back her trousers and soul and returning them to her. This showed me up as a thoughtless lover. The irony was that he bartered his own soul and trousers to obtain hers. I gritted my teeth and, in order to impress Myfanwy with my sacrifice, re-exchanged my trousers and soul for Owain’s. This had the desired effect, but only for a while.

The long and the inside leg of it is that all three of us ended up exchanging and re-exchanging our trousers and souls a great many times. It was a ludicrous and vain episode of my life. Eventually, after a year of this fabric-and-phantom farce, the trousers and souls were jumbled up and we did not know which was which. It is an unbearable sensation, not knowing if your trousers and your soul are the ones you were born with, and we all rushed off in opposite directions, taking up residence in the three corners of the scalene world.

Before I left Monmouth, I made sure I took a blueberry pie with me, to remember Myfanwy by. And it still remains uneaten in my pocket. The day I meet her again will be the day I take a bite; the day I encounter Owain ap Iorwerth will be the day I beat him to death with it. It is tasty and solid enough for either eventuality.

“And that tale is absolutely true,” I told the blue dwarf, “which is why you shall never succeed in removing my trousers or my soul. I suggest you run along and torment someone your own size. I spy a woodlouse down there; it has a waist more your size.”

“You fool!” The blue dwarf wriggled out of my grasp. I saw now he was not really a dwarf; he was standing on his knees. When he arose, he was almost my own height. He pulled off his wig and his coat and stood there before me with a wide blue grin.

“Myfanwy!” cried I.

“Yes, you fool!” she returned. She reached into her pocket and took out a blueberry pie. “At last we meet again! I have been searching for so many years. Our trousers and souls were indeed jumbled; you have mine and I have yours. That is why I asked you to remove them. Now we can be married and live in near bliss for months!”

I shook my head. “A disguise, eh? I suspected this all along.” I pulled off my own wig and removed my own coat. “I am not Gruffydd after all; I am Owain ap Iorwerth. And I have come to take you away with me, to claim your love and your baking talents!”

Myfanwy threw back her head and laughed. “Exactly as I planned! You have fallen into my trap!” She removed her new wig and took off her new coat and it was Gruffydd himself who now glared at me. He shifted the blueberry pie in his hand and prepared to lunge. “At last I shall be avenged! I have waited long ages for this.”

“Ha!” I screamed. I followed his example; I pulled off my new wig and discarded my new coat. And then I jumped off my stilts and snatched the blueberry pie from his trembling fingers. “A blue dwarf!” he cried. “What is the meaning of this?”

I reached forward and pulled the tinted spectacles from his nose. At once he understood. He bellowed: “You are not a blue dwarf at all. You are a yellow imp!” I nodded and raced back to the market.

The bottom has dropped out of the trouser market; there is no longer life in souls. Blueberry pie is the new thing. Sometimes we resort to devious tactics to get it.

Travels with my Antinomy (2014)

I adore paradoxes. I collect them, think about them, try to invent new ones. I have loved paradoxes ever since I saw a reproduction of M.C. Escher's 'Waterfall' in a children's book when I was young. Discovering Zeno was, for me, a major revelation. The following story is based on my third favourite paradox, often attributed to Betrand Russell though probably it was not devised by him. For many years I confused the spelling of antimony the element with the spelling of antinomy the mutual incompatibility of two laws.

There is no absolute truth. Or is there? I went travelling with my knapsack and curiosity over a range of mountains far from home. I was looking for a village I had once been told about, a village where I might find something I had lost that was neither my senses nor my virginity. It was a long way, but ways are longer often than this one, so complain I did not.

At last, when the sun was setting beautifully in the west, where always it sets, at least to my knowledge, I saw the village spread below me. It was tinted rose and purple at that hour and I hurried down the slope towards it. There was a solitary tavern with an oaken door that yielded to my knocking. I asked for a room for the night and was given the attic.

After resting for a short time, I went down to where there was a blaze and mugs of cider available for me to slake my thirst. And while engaged in the arts of stretching my legs afore the flames and sharpening my innards on the brew, I asked the barman, who seemed an agreeable fellow, if there were any other men hereabouts who had a beard just like mine.

“Not only not like yours, but not like anyone else’s.”

“There are no beards here?”

“Every man in this village, Señor, is clean shaven.”

“You have a very busy barber.”

“Ah, the barber shaves only the men who do not shave themselves. That is the law among us who dwell here.”

“And no man ever neglects to shave or be shaved?”

“That is correct, Señor.”

Then I knew I was in the village I was seeking, the village where all men are smooth cheeked and either shave themselves or are shaved by the barber. So I tugged at my beard, the beard of a wanderer, and I sipped my cider and felt the warmth radiate outward from my body toward the fire, as if two different kinds of heat were about to meet and mingle.

“In that case,” I said lightly, “who shaves the barber?”

“Shaves the barber, Señor!”

“Yes indeed. Who?”

The barman sighed and tapped his nose; but it was mercifully clear he did not yet regard me as a troublemaker, merely as a stranger, an ordinary man who had finally asked the awkward but inevitable question he had been expecting for years, if not decades. He poured a mug of cider for himself and he shrugged and then he came over and sat next to me.

“The barber has two choices, Señor. He can shave himself or he can go to the barber to be shaved. There is only one barber in the village, so if he decides to visit the barber he will visit himself. In other words, he really has one choice and it is not even a choice. He must shave himself. But by tradition he shaves only the men who do not shave themselves.”

“So he cannot shave himself?”

“As you say, Señor. But he cannot grow a beard because there are only clean shaven men dwelling in this village.”

“That is the paradox,” I replied. “I had it once upon a time but I lost it in my youth. Now I have found it again.”

“What will you do with it, now you have it?”

“Take it with me when I leave.”

“But we need it, Señor; it is the only one we have. This is the village with only one barber, who is male, and who shaves all those, and only those, who do not shave themselves. If you take the paradox with you, what will we have left? And he is a very heavy man, too heavy for you to lift. I also believe he will fight back and perhaps slash open your throat.”

“My presence here spoils the paradox anyway.”

He gazed at my beard a long time.

“Yes, Señor, I suppose it does. But if you are gone in the morning, it will be repaired. The paradox will thus only be suspended for one night. And in fact you cannot take the paradox away with you, because while you are here there is no paradox. The paradox only works if every man in the village is clean shaven and you most definitely are not that.”

This was true. I realised that I had been questing for a rainbow or horizon, something that would move further away and out of reach the nearer I got to it. I understood that this was a logical consequence of my situation and that only one of two courses of action would help. I would either have to shave myself or else go to the barber to be shaved. So I said:

“May I borrow a razor from you tonight?”

“You may not, Señor.”

“Then I will have to visit the barber tomorrow morning.”

The barman lowered his head.

I finished my cider and went up to my room. There was a desk in a corner of the attic and a chair. I did not feel sleepy and so I decided to update my travel journal. I opened my knapsack and took it out, together with my quill and bottle of ink, which I arranged neatly on the desk. I heard footsteps outside and I went to the little window and peered cautiously out.

The barman was hurrying down the street in the moonlight. I guessed that he was going to rouse the barber and tell him to hide when I called round to see him in the morning. I would not easily get a shave here; but if I did manage to, I would certainly not be permitted to take the barber back with me. I would have to remain here, a prisoner, imbibing cider.

Shaking my head ruefully, because that is my favourite way of shaking it among the several methods I am aware of, I sat down and opened my journal to a new page. Then I dipped my quill into the ink and began writing. I told of my trek over the mountains and how I... but no, those were not the words that now lay on the page before me. I blinked at them.

My blinking was so rapid and my eyelashes are so long that the ink dried more quickly than it would have done had another man penned those words. It appeared that I had written an account of how to tend horses in a stable. Had the rigours and stresses of my journey muddled my brains? I began again on a clean page but once again the words tricked me.

Now I had written about gathering windfall apples in the orchards on the edge of the village. I tried a third time. Now my account told of milking goats on the slopes where the wild flowers grew.

A fourth and fifth time, a sixth time, seventh, eighth...

It was peculiar and unnerving.

At last, in agitation, I got up and paced the room, creaking warped boards with muddy boots. I paused only at the window and looked out again. The moon was still shining brightly and I could see the whole village. In every house just one window was illuminated and it always belonged to the highest room of that house. They were lit by lamps like mine.

And men were behind each one of those windows; and some of these men were sitting at desks of their own, writing in journals identical to mine; but most of them simply stood there, faces pressed to the glass, and gazed in my direction and grinned when they saw me looking back. And then I realised that I was part of another paradox, one related to the first.

There is a village with just one professional scribe, who is bearded, and in this village every man keeps a careful account of the day’s events, and does this by doing one of two things. Either he writes his own journal or the scribe writes it on his behalf. The scribe writes only the journals of the men who do not write their own. Who writes the scribe’s journal?

I knew that if I took my journal with me when I left, as I was planning to do, I would free the paradox from this prison. It would be my companion on all my future travels, like a woman but easier to read, to flick through, to replace or forget; not at all like a woman really. I blew out the lamp and went to bed and I dreamed only once of a looming shiny blade.