Report on Probability A by Brian W. Aldiss

Author:Brian W. Aldiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

4

When S regained the room above the coach house, he let down the trapdoor and advanced into the middle of the room. The newspaper parcel which he had been clutching he placed on one of the shelves that ran along the south-east side of the room, next to a small brass crocodile.

Hanging on a level with his chest was a hammock made of canvas, its two ends threaded with ropes that ran out to two of the low cross-beams, looping through two thick metal rings that hung over two nails knocked into the first and second of the three cross-beams. Drooping over the two sides of this hammock were the corners of two grey blankets, their edges bound up with red wool, and an arrangement of sacks strung or stitched together with garden twine. Placing his two arms inside the hammock, S bent his knees and sprang upwards, hauling himself into the hammock.

When he was in the hammock, and it had ceased to swing, he sat up and untied the laces of his shoes. Removing first the left shoe and then the right, he dropped them down onto the floor, where the indentations on the planking formed an arrangement of shades, some almost straw-coloured, some more of a dark sienna shade where dirt had rubbed into the wood; the effect to an unfocused eye was reminiscent of a woman’s hair. The two shoes rolled and lay together, their toecaps touching, at an angle of ninety degrees; the left shoe lay with its sole exposed. The sole was worn in the middle and frayed round the sides. The toecap of the right shoe was battered. The two shoes lay together. They formed a chance arrangement on the floor. Underneath them ran the tawny planks of the floor. They touched the floor at a number of points; they touched each other at the toes. The shoes lay directly below the downward-directed eye of the man, until he turned away and lay down.

Beneath his head, S arranged more comfortably a small body that served him as pillow. This body, which was beige in colour, had attached to it a head made to represent a species of bear. The representation was less exact than it had been when the animal was newly fashioned, since it lacked both ears and an eye. The body also had undergone a change with age; not only had its contours been flattened and softened; its arms and legs were lost, their former positions being indicated by four holes in the beige material through which woody and fibrous stuffing protruded. The man arranged this object to serve as a pillow, pressing his head back against the flaccid stomach of the bear, so that its head nodded above his own, and appeared to stare into the room with its one remaining brown glass eye.

The man’s gaze rested upon the roofing above him, where many parallel rough hewn beams ran down from the thick centre beam to the side walls, supporting curling orange tiles.

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