Report on Probability A

by Brian W Aldiss

  He was now viewing the world through five thicknesses of glass, four consisting of the lenses in his telescope and one of the small square panels of glass that formed the centre of the nine glass segments together comprising the round window. These layers of glass lent their slight coloration to the view.

  The little circle of his vision was surrounded by black. He could not examine much of the view at one time.

  He extended the telescope further. A red mist swam before his staring eye. He closed the telescope slightly. The red mist acquired texture and horizontal and vertical markings. S’s circle of vision slid over the rear wall of the house; it descended; it hovered for a moment on the back door and discerned the pane of green bottle glass that served the back door as a small window; and then it moved to the left, seeing brickwork again before it alighted on the kitchen window.

  This window was different from the others of the house. The other windows were wooden framed; this was a window with metal frames. The metal frame was longer than it was high and supported three sub-sections, each of which carried six panes of glass; of these three sub-sections, the middle one was a fixture, but the two on either side of it opened, and had perforated metal bars to secure them when they were open. The window on the right was open at the present, and secured on the third perforation of its metal bar.

  The circle of S’s vision slid over the window, came back, and settled on its target. The blackness now eclipsed everything but a tiny portion of brickwork, a sliver of metal frame, part of the open window viewed obliquely because it projected towards the watcher, and the small section of the kitchen framed within this opening.

  Within the small section of the kitchen framed in the opening, a proportion of the figure of Mr. Mary’s wife was visible. Tinted slightly by the layer of glass interposed between her and the watcher’s eye, she exposed to view, covered by a blue cardigan, something more than half her body from a line drawn by the window sill about ten centimetres above her waist: of her trunk, her left breast and shoulder were clearly visible, covered by the blue cardigan, which in turn was partially covered by an apron, two strings of which ran over the shoulders; possibly because this apron had faded, or because its pattern was small and confused, its colour registered only as a blur through the telescope.

  The woman’s left arm was visible; it moved to and fro, and could be seen lifting articles out of a sink. Sometimes the right arm became visible during this process, and then frequently more of her body would become visible, her right breast and right shoulder, sometimes including her right elbow. The sleeves of the blue cardigan were rolled up to a point above the elbows, so that the flesh of her arms below the elbow was visible. Viewed through the layers of glass interposed between it and the watcher’s eye, the arms were of a greyish pink.

  The face of the woman could not be examined very satisfactorily through the telescope because she stood with her gaze bent downwards, directed at the objects with which she dealt in the sink. But since she occasionally glanced upwards, quizzing to her left and right, and on three occasions looked behind her to ascertain if anyone was standing there, and once stared vacantly into the garden, allowing her hands to be idle at the same time, it was possible to obtain a sort of symposium view of her whole head and all the features on it. Although her hair was not tidily arranged, it had a parting in the centre of the skull; how far back this parting went could not be distinguished, since the hair that grew at the back of the skull had been brushed upwards and secured by small metal clips to the hair on the crown of the skull. Some locks of hair had escaped this confinement; over the right shoulder hung a strand that trailed down until it touched the string of the apron, while on the left side of the woman’s face, several wisps of hair bobbed over the temple or, curling behind the ear, rose up from underneath the lobe and touched the left cheek. On the crown of the skull, the hair seemed a middle brown in tone, but the ends of it, and in particular the lock that trailed on the right shoulder, were more golden, so that the whole effect was of a tawniness. The eyebrows were darker, and straight rather than curved. They were long and ample. Below the eyebrows were set two eyes with heavy lids. Viewed from a distance, even under twenty-two orders of magnification, the colour of the iris was difficult to distinguish; they appeared sometimes to have the same shade of tawniness as the hair; at other moments they seemed more hazel. These pupils were slow in movement, and often seemed scarcely visible under the eyelids. Between the eyes, the bridge of the nose was hardly distinguishable at this distance, because it was not high; the nose only rose to any prominence at its lower extremity, where it swelled out into a small bulb set with wide nostril flanges on either side, giving a total effect of a nose of some degree of good nature, weakness, and impertinence. Below this again was the upper lip and then the mouth, pale and unpainted, with an ample lower lip that protruded slightly; the corners of the mouth were tucked firmly into the cheeks. The chin was rounded and firm, youthful, and with resolution in its lines when it was tucked into the neck, as it was when the face was directed downwards. The cheekbones were fairly high and set wide apart. The skin covering them was fresh and a more delicate shade of pink than the arms, as far as could be determined through the telescope.

  Although the effect of this face might have been interpreted by an onlooker as generally indolent, it was continually in movement, so much so as sometimes to elude the small circle of telescopic vision which sought to keep it always in the centre of its focus. The eyes under their heavy lids sometimes looked this way and sometimes that at the objects being given attention in the sink or being brought out of the sink and placed on a shelf or ledge next to it; also the head moved, not only from one side to the other, but—on one occasion—tilted upwards as the woman gazed vaguely into the garden beyond the window, her attention possibly being distracted (without being definitely attracted) by a brief flight made by a pigeon from the peak of the roof of the old brick building into an apple tree; and on three occasions the woman turned her body slightly and head entirely to see if someone was behind her in the kitchen. The woman’s hands were more continuously in motion, being involved with the objects in the sink, which they repetitively brought out of the sink, placing them on a shelf or ledge next to it. On one occasion, one of the hands, the left one, rose up to the left cheek, which lowered itself slightly to meet the hand, in order to brush back a curl of the hair that had escaped from the confinement of metal clips on the crown of the skull.

  When all the objects had been removed from the sink, the woman stepped away from it, turning and moving towards the rear of the kitchen, where an impoverishment of light made her difficult to see through the telescope.

  When S removed the telescope from his eye, she became only a vague movement in the lower left-hand window of the house set on a slight rise in the ground beyond the asparagus beds. He blinked, rubbed his closed eye on his sleeve, and then reapplied the instrument to the pupil of his right eye.

  Now the circle of his vision moved restlessly to and fro across the kitchen window with its metal frame, the left third of which opened outwards and was secured by a perforated metal bar, as it sought to follow the movements of the woman in the kitchen.

  The woman was far enough into the room to be encompassed by its shadows; what she was doing could not be distinguished. But she moved slowly behind a table, thus coming to be viewed through the middle and unopening portion of the kitchen window that was divided into six panes. S was now gazing at her through six thicknesses of glass, four of them being in the telescope, one being the square central pane of the nine small panes that together comprised the round window in the old brick building, which had last housed a coach forty-eight years before Mr. Mary had purchased the property, and the final one being the unopening middle portion of the kitchen window. The woman moved to the near side of the kitchen table, coming close enough to the window for her to be revealed using a white towel. This white towel was held at breast level; it was in constant motion as the woman’s two hands ru
bbed themselves dry in it. The woman, continuing her progress, moved over to the section of the window which remained closed, and leant her elbows on a ledge or shelf that stretched to this side of the sink as it did to the other; although her hands were still engaged in drying themselves on the towel, this new posture enabled the woman to lean forwards from the waist up; the weight of her breasts could vaguely be seen, indicated by the swell of the apron which she wore over her blue cardigan, and which she had not removed. In thus leaning forward, the woman brought her face within a few centimetres of the closed window, so that it was clearly revealed in the light.

  As the face was tilted slightly upwards, so the nose became somewhat the predominant feature; it was a button nose with nostril flanges that spread slightly in the direction of either cheek. It could be seen to have a slight pinkness that almost exactly matched the colour in the cheeks; the cheek bones were relatively high, and set wide apart, giving the whole face width. The face tapered towards a smoothly rounded chin that at present seemed to protrude because of the stance the woman adopted.

  The woman rested her elbows on a ledge or shelf that extended to the side of the sink. She clasped in her hands a white towel that partially concealed her face, in particular her right cheek; the irregular shape of the towel contrasted with the smooth sweep of her visible left cheek. The high bones of this cheek, concealed but evident, gave to her eyes the effect of being set rather deeply in her face; this effect was emphasized by the heaviness of the eyelids that covered the eyes. These features might be regarded as belonging to a fleshy face; yet the effect was not heavy when the face was in movement.

  At present the face was in movement; it lay within the circle of vision of the telescope with its mouth at the centre of this circle.

  The mouth moved. The lips moved; the lower lip seemed to be plump, yet as it moved it extended itself slightly so as to seem less plump. These lips were viewed through six thicknesses of glass, four consisting of the little lenses in the telescope, one consisting of the square of glass that formed the central panel of the nine glass panels together comprising the round window in the front of the old brick building, and one consisting of the openable but closed portion of the kitchen window. So near was this closed portion of the kitchen window to the moving lips that the breath issuing between them had fogged the pane, obscuring still further both the right cheek already obscured by the towel and a part of the towel itself. The straining right eye that watched through the telescope could just discern a tongue in movement, and the tips of white teeth revealed by the lower lip when the mouth opened widely.

  Accompanying this activity of the mouth, the head also moved, chiefly with a sort of nodding that kept time with the lip movements. The hair untidily nodded. In the front, this hair had been neatly parted in the middle, and then swept back; evidently it was gathered together by some device at the rear of the skull; the loose ends had then been bunched carelessly (or hastily) forward and secured against the crown of the skull on top of the neat hair by small metal clips; this hair nodded now like a wave breaking. It was tawny hair, rather dark over the crown, more of a golden tone at the ends. Against the right side of the woman’s neck was a thick tawny lock; this was swinging with the movement of the head. The eyes were wider open than formerly, so that less of the heavy lids was on display; the irises appeared to be perhaps of a thick golden colour.

  Domoladossa pencilled a note in the margin of the report: “She was singing.”

  He wanted to add, “She was happy,” but that would be carrying the job of interpretation too far.

  He was almost breathless with the thought of the happiness of this alien woman, a happiness that the impartiality of the report seemed to heighten. He considered the passage he had just read extremely erotic, and wondered how the Governor would take it.

  Eagerly, he read on.

  The woman turned from the window with a quick movement. She moved across the kitchen, keeping parallel with the sink. She held her head high, so that its details were lost in the poor light, but it appeared that her mouth was still opening and closing by the movement of the muscles in her neck and the bobbing of her chin, though these details too were uncertain since the woman was progressing erratically, taking certain rhythmic steps that made her shoulders rise and sink. At the same time, she spread her arms to shoulder height and waved them while keeping them level; in her right hand she still retained the white towel. She rotated once through three hundred and sixty degrees in a clockwise direction, waving her hands as she did this. When she was again proceeding across the kitchen in her previously determined direction parallel with the sink, she crossed behind the third of the window that was open and disappeared from sight.

  S lowered the telescope. He looked through the dusty window that was divided into nine sections, several of them draped with small webs from which spiders had gone, and stared at the house some thirty-five metres away. He could see the lower left-hand window that belonged to the kitchen with its right-hand section open. He blinked his eyes and nipped the bridge of his nose with the thumb and index finger of the left hand. He saw a movement in the kitchen.

  Lifting the telescope to his right eye, S closed his left eye. He held the instrument near to the eyepiece with his right hand, gripping it with his left hand at the other extremity, where the barrel was bound in leather; doing this necessitated bending both elbows; he rested the left elbow on the lower extremity of the brick ledge that surrounded the round window. Even with this support, the circle of vision trembled slightly as it moved with its encompassing darkness over the asparagus bed, not focusing on the earth, and up across a confused patch of lavender and shrub and path and grass, and swam up the brickwork with its pattern of horizontal and vertical lines, until it settled on the open third of the kitchen window.

  The woman was dimly visible, standing away from the window with her back to it. She had rid herself of the white towel. Her hands were behind her back, and consequently visible to the spectator. They appeared more pink at the extremities than were the arms. The hands were busy with the strings of the apron; they undid them, dropped the strings, and moved up to the woman’s shoulders; there they took hold of the apron string that ran behind the woman’s neck, lifted it over the woman’s head, and carried the apron by it out of sight.

  The circle of vision lingered over the open portion of window. All that could clearly be seen through the open window was a corner of a table; shadows lay behind the table. The circle trembled. Once it moved away from the window, travelled towards the right, inspected the back door with its square pane of green bottle glass, moved right again, looked into the window of the room on the right of the back door, which was the dining-room, slid upwards over the pattern of the brickwork with its horizontal and vertical lines, and then worked left again, peering over the sills of the three windows on the first floor as it went: the window of the bathroom, the central window, belonging to a spare bedroom, and another window belonging to a second spare bedroom; in all of these windows, no movement could be sighted. The circle of vision slanted away across the house as S removed the telescope from his eye.

  He blinked and pinched his nose at the bridge with the index finger and thumb of his left hand. Using both hands, he pressed both ends of the telescope so that the three brass sections slid one into the other and all slid into the outer barrel, which measured some fifteen centimetres; it was bound in worn leather.

  6

  S stood upright, put his hands into his pockets, removed them almost at once, brushed the knees of his trousers, and returned his hands to the pockets. He yawned and blinked his eyes.

  The floor of the room was built of thick wooden planks running from side to side in which two colours predominated, a darker brown tone in the hollows, where the timber was rough and splintery, and yellow on the raised parts, which had been smoothed by tread; the effect was approximately of tawny hair. S crossed the length of this flooring in ten paces until he stood by the top of the rough hewn structu
re of wooden steps that led up from the floor below.

  A square trapdoor also made of wood leant against the back wall of the room. S grasped it with his right hand and brought it over, first pulling and then lowering it, until the trapdoor fitted into a groove and the structure of wooden steps was concealed from view.

  Near to the spot where the trapdoor had rested when it was open was a small square window, hardly bigger than a man’s hand and situated only half a metre above the floor. This small window occupied the centre of the back wall of the room. Although its glass was cracked and dirty, a view could be seen through it if one stooped down. It looked out across a small patch of ground filled by straggling elder bush and nettles to the privet hedge dividing the garden from a garden beyond it. Of the four sides of the square plot of land belonging to Mr. Mary, this boundary behind the old brick building was the only one not marked by a brick wall. The privet hedge was a metre and a quarter high. On the other side of it lay the property of a single man whose maternal grandfather had constructed a lighthouse in the southern hemisphere; it was said that this architectural achievement had been acknowledged by a knighthood. S glanced out of the small square window and then straightened his back. He began to walk up and down the room.

  It was only possible to walk upright near the central axis of the room. Overhead sloped the bare beams that supported the roof of the old brick building; the curling orange tiles were visible between the beams, with chinks of light among them where they had become dislodged. Along the two long sides of the room, the roof sloped down to within a metre and a half of the floor. These side walls and the front and rear walls had at some date been whitewashed; at a later date, they had been papered with wallpaper of a light orange colour covered with bunches of flowers as big as dinner plates, each bunch divided from the next by a representation of brown trellis. Much of this paper had peeled away or had been pulled off. In the blank spaces where it had hung, the bricks showed through the old whitewash. When the whitewash was touched, it came off in a cloud of powder.