Читать книгу The Genius in my Basement - Alexander Masters, Alexander Masters - Страница 7

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.