The Genius in my Basement. Alexander Masters
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Название: The Genius in my Basement
Автор: Alexander Masters
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007445264
isbn:
That’s the sound of a once-in-a-generation genius.
Simon Phillips Norton: Phillips, with an ‘s’, as if one Phillip were not enough to contain his brilliance. He lives under my floorboards.
Dhuunk, dhuunk …
When I first moved here, I had no idea what the noises were. Underground rivers? The next-door neighbours dragging a new pot through to their Tuscan garden? Dhuunk, dhuunk … But after eight years of interpretation I know that it’s the great man’s feet, stomping from one end of his room to the other. Every second stomp is heavier.
‘Sssschlissh’: that’s the swipe of his puffa ski-jacket against the stalagmites of paperbacks he keeps piled on the furniture.
‘Zwaap’: the sound of his holdall, as he rotates at the end of the room. He sometimes flings it wide, hitting papers. Simon carries this bag about with him everywhere he goes, clutched in the crook of his arm, even if it’s just to his front door to let in the gas man.
… dhuunk, dhuunk, dhuunk, zwaap, dhuunk, dhuunk …
Simon’s bed is ten feet directly beneath mine. My study is on top of his living room. His stomping space extends the full depth of the building, under my floor. My balcony is the roof of his basement extension, which has herded all the pretty garden plants into a six-foot square at the back of our house and stamped them under concrete slabs.
The phone rings. A charge from Simon: Dhuunk! Dhuunk! Dhuunk!
Snorting. The receiver – … rrinng, clank, clumpump, ping, ping … – wrenched from its holster. Attempts at speech, grunts, bangs of talk-noise; a strangulated word.
Clunk. Phone back in its holster.
Silence.
Dhuunk, dhuunk, dhuunk …
There’s another very important sound, which is too difficult to represent typographically: an intermittent, twisted crackle, sharp but thick, with a strong sense of command, resting on a base of plosive disorder. In an exercise book from when he was five there’s a squiggle that comes close:
It’s the sound of plastic-bag-being-opened-in-a-hurry-andthe-gratification-of-discovering-important-papers-inside. Without understanding this noise, you cannot understand the man.
… ssschliissh, dhuunk, zwaap, zwaap, dhuunk, dhuunk … Simon has been pacing down there for twenty-seven years, three months, five days, thirteen hours and eight minutes.
Ssssh!
Stop breathing!
Did you catch that?
Still another sort of noise?
A sort of sigh?
That was a thought.
Minus N
Your representation of me as interesting is
inaccurate. I feel ashamed by it.
Simon
Damn! He’s gone!
Simon’s refused to enter the book!
He is a Minus Norton. ‘Why now?’ I demanded, jumping up from the carpet when he stomped into my study from the basement. ‘The reader has started the story. He’s spent the money. He feels conned.’
‘How do you know it’s a he who’s reading it? It might be a she, hnnn.’
‘He or she! Who cares?’
‘I presume they do,’ he said cunningly.
Behind him, a bubble of air floated up the stairs and expanded into my rooms of the house, whiffing of damp and sardines.
Then he barged out of the front door, and, the scuff of his sandals becoming rapidly soft and seaside-ish, disappeared towards the Mathematics Faculty.
A book about Simon that doesn’t have Simon in it?
I had thought a life of Simon would be tiptoeing on the edge of the shadow of God. Instead, he crashes about my study as though heel-joints had never been invented; makes women shriek when they turn on the light in the corridor and find him standing there like an Easter Island statue; his holdall twists him into animal shapes; he hides behind envelopes.
He shocks me awake with his snores.
Writing biographies of living people, the subject is an irritant. Why is he needed? All he does is insist that whatever you’ve written is wrong.
In fact, when Simon was part of the book, I had to run away from him.
Wouldn’t all biographies be better if they gave up trying to fix the person they’re writing about, and confined themselves to his glints and reflections – not a biography of Simon, but of the perception of Simon? What is a biography, anyway? A platter of gossip and titbits. It’s up to the readers to mix these components together in whatever way they find most entertaining and instructive. The subject’s out of it. Once word hits page, he’s irrelevant.
I’m glad Simon’s gone. Good riddance!
In mathematics, you jump onto the subject of numbers through your experience of reality – two flies multiplied by four sudden pulls gives eight wings; three toads, two frogs and one bathtub equals six screams of fury from your father; four bags of crisps and five of your mum’s fags make nine orders of stomach ache – that’s how the newcomer gets introduced to the subject, via the positive, whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 …
But mathematicians insist that negative numbers are equally real. It’s just a matter of which way you happen to look: going ahead is positive, and going behind is negative.
I’ll go behind Simon. Allow me to introduce Biographical Minus N:
Simon Phillips MINUS Norton.
Now, let’s break into his basement.
4
26th November 1922: Carter pierced a small hole in the wall through which he could look into the Pharaoh’s chamber with a sliver of torch light. Asked if he could see anything he replied, ‘yes, wonderful things!’
Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb
But I can’t find the light switch.
Which is important when you’re standing at the top of Simon’s stairs with nothing СКАЧАТЬ