In the Absence of Absalon

by Simon Okotie

  17

  The question now was whether he would be able to make it to the front door of the house before Isobel Absalon did. They would, of course, be approaching the door from different sides. That much was obvious even to the lowliest investigative recruit, he suspected. Nevertheless he spelt out, as it were, the reasons more fully, some of them at least, why he and Isobel Absalon would be approaching the front door of the house in question from different sides, as he closed the book of matches with the thumb of his right hand, before setting out why making it to his side of it first, that is, before Isobel Absalon made it to her side, was so crucial to his investigation into the disappearance of Marguerite, last seen on the trail of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, and colleague, or former colleague, of Richard Knox,10 whom Harold Absalon had fallen out with prior to his own disappearance.

  Firstly Isobel Absalon was inside the house whilst he was outside it. That was how things stood at that moment although, note, neither of the actual subjects of the inquiry into why those subjects would approach opposite, to express it in that way, sides of the front door to the house in question were themselves stationary. At least he suspected that Isobel Absalon was not stationary at that moment given that she had abruptly disappeared from the window, as it were, on the upper floors of the house in question very shortly after he had spotted her there, which he had taken as a sign that Isobel Absalon was on the move and more specifically was on the move towards the front door, opposite side to him, of the house in question; it could be that she had paused, momentarily, on seeing him, perhaps sitting on the king-sized bed11 behind her as a means of what is known as collecting her thoughts – specifically, in that case, her thoughts with regard to the presence of a detective of his calibre in the area in front of the townhouse, and what she was going to do in that regard knowing, as she must, the key part that she had no doubt played in the disappearance of his investigative colleague who, remember, was last seen, as it were, on the trail of her husband, Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor who had himself been missing – not that Isobel Absalon would necessarily know that he was a detective and, if she did, what calibre of detective he was; but he suspected that Isobel Absalon would, before long, sense that his presence in the area in front of the townhouse related somehow to an investigation into her role in the disappearances of both his colleague and her husband and would, for reasons that he would come onto, swiftly make for the front door of the house in question, that is, the house that she currently occupied, which was not to say, necessarily, that this was the house that she currently resided in – that was a different point that he did not go into, as it is known, at that moment, so intent was he on illustrating why he and Isobel Absalon, who were both approaching the same front door, were, nevertheless, approaching different sides of that door and were, more specifically, approaching opposite sides of that door.

  Now it could be said, if the door were open and at right angles, say, to the plane of the door frame, that, in that instance, he and Isobel Absalon would both be approaching the same side of the front door in question. The front door was not open in the actual situation but he hoped that by imaginatively opening it, as it were, that this might shed light on why in the actual situation he and Isobel Absalon were almost inevitably approaching opposite sides of that door. In the case, then, where the door was open in the way described, which is to say in the way imagined by him, and assuming that the trajectory of both subjects, to call them that, was towards the doorway, that is the area that the door frame framed, then the front of the front door to the house in question, assuming that that door opened inwards, as it is known and as is traditional, would be to his left, assuming that he approached the doorway in a forward direction as, again, it is known and as is traditional, whereas the front of the front door to the house in question would be to the right of Isobel Absalon, assuming that the same parameters applied, that is the door opening inwards, which, given it is the same example as that relating to him, could reliably be taken as read, as it is known, and that she, like him, approached the doorway in a forward direction, as it is known and as is traditional, as before. He realised, as he continued to move closer to the front door in question whilst tucking the flap of the book of matches under the lip, so called, of same, that the fact that the open door would be to his left and to Isobel Absalon’s right as they approached it was simply to say, albeit in a somewhat different way, that he and Isobel Absalon were approaching opposite sides of the front door to the house in question without explaining why that was the case; in other words what he had hoped would help him expedite this branch of his inquiry had ended up simply begging the question which, again, was why he and Isobel Absalon would approach, in all likelihood, given the parameters outlined, different, which is to say opposite, sides of the front door to the house in question.

  One key reason why he and Isobel Absalon were approaching opposite sides of the front door to the house in question was, he now contended, that nobody could be in two or more places at the same time. He used ‘nobody’ instead of ‘no body’ advisedly since, in the latter case it was, he thought, patently obvious that it was possible for a body, as it would then be referred to, to be in two or more places at the same time. Leaving that aside for the moment, and possibly in perpetuity, he returned to his contention that nobody, which is to say no living person, nor, in fact, any dead person whose body remained intact and of a piece, as it were, could be in two or more places at once. Given the fact that he and Isobel Absalon were on opposite sides of a façade whose primary, if not its only, aperture, so to speak, was the front door, and that both subjects were alive – he was sure of this in his own case – as sure as he could be about anything – and based on having just seen Harold Absalon’s wife Isobel Absalon at the window, as it is known, extrapolated to the latter’s continuing existence as a living person – then to the extent that both parties, to call them that now, were converging on the same point, without either of them having crossed the façade by any other means, such as through one of the windows, whether open or closed, although, note, that in the case of crossing the threshold via a closed window a possibility opened up, so to speak, of somebody and not just some body actually being in two places at the same time, in the scenario of the body being sliced cleanly in half by the broken glass, assuming that is the substance out of which the window is made, and both halves of that body, however briefly, managing to stay alive, one on the inside and one on the outside of the house in question, then they – he and Isobel Absalon in this case – would approach that point from opposite sides. Looking at it in plan view, which is to say two-dimensionally, yields the following: Subject A on one side of a line and Subject B on the other; neither subject can be subdivided without losing their integrity, as it were; both subjects taking the shortest route to the same point on the line in question and having to navigate other objects along that route; one subject arriving at the line before the other or both arriving at the same time; assuming that neither subject, or both, have gone around either end of the line, or extending the line to infinity in both directions to prevent this from occurring; then, in converging on the same point in the line they will arrive at that point at the same or different times but on opposite sides of the line. To do it in three dimensions now, as he placed the book of matches in the upper reaches of his right-hand trouser pocket, but taking the façade and the door therein as a two-dimensional, that is, as a very flat plane, and one infinitely large, then it is simply not possible for two subjects starting on either (which is to say, one on each) side of that infinitely flat, infinitely extensive plane to arrive at the infinitely flat but finite front door in that plane – and leaving aside how one decides, now, which is the front and which is the back – it is just not possible for the subjects to arrive at the same side of that flat (in the geometrical rather than residential sense) front door and, given that there are only two sides to it given that it is infinitely flat, they must arrive, as would
be the case with him and Isobel Absalon, on opposite sides of it, assuming that neither of them had found a way of crossing the façade by another means, and leaving aside any notion that there was a back door or even lower front door (which there is, or was) out of the basement of the building through which Isobel Absalon could emerge, thereby potentially meeting our investigator on the same side of the door in question at the same or at a somewhat different time.

  Unsatisfying though he found the foregoing, he still asserted that it was at least highly likely that he and Isobel Absalon would arrive on opposite sides of the front door to the house in question and further asserted that it was imperative that he arrived at ‘his’ side of the door, as it were, before Isobel Absalon arrived at ‘her’ side of same and the reason for this was that if he didn’t then Isobel Absalon would find some means of further securing the door from within such that he would find it very difficult or even impossible to open the door in question, that is the front door to the house in question, and this would make it correspondingly very difficult or impossible for him to enter the house and continue his investigations into the disappearance of his colleague, Marguerite, last seen in pursuit of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor and husband of Isobel Absalon, an investigation, remember, that he felt sure would find a solution if not a resolution within the house in question.

  Given that Isobel Absalon was inside the house, she had more means of securing the door to prevent intruders from entering, which is to say that Isobel Absalon had more means at her disposal than he had, from the outside, of securing the door to prevent extruders from exiting, not that he was interested in securing the door for this or any other reason of course. The means at Isobel Absalon’s disposal included: shooting the bolts, as it is known; propping a chair under the handle, assuming that there was one (that is, a chair and a handle); putting the chain on (assuming, again, etc); dropping the latch on those locks that were not dead; and/or inserting the key in any dead lock that existed in the door and leaving it inserted, thereby preventing a copy of the key, or the original in the case where Isobel Absalon’s key was not the original, from being inserted into the keyhole from the outside. Such were the options, potentially, at Isobel Absalon’s disposal, assuming that the door could not be barred in any other way, either literally or metaphorically.

  Leaving aside the means available for securing the door from the outside for the simple reason, to reiterate, that, rather than being interested in securing it he was interested in opening it, and opening it in such a way that it remained open, keys or no keys, to Harold Absalon on his, he felt, imminent arrival, it is perhaps clearer now why he took it to be imperative that he arrive at his side of the front door in question before Isobel Absalon arrived at her side of same and, indeed, that he arrived sufficiently in advance of Isobel Absalon for him to have time to both retrieve the keys from his left-hand trouser pocket and to unlock that door using those keys, and even for him to have had time to set foot, as it is known, over the threshold demarcated by that front door or by its doorframe and welcome mat. Were he not to secure this foothold, which is to say that were he not to have literally placed at least one of his feet over the threshold and onto the welcome mat or, in the case where no such mat existed, simply on the far side of the doorframe in question (and he knew that, mat or no mat, he would not be welcome in this establishment) in the place on the far side of that doorframe where such mats were, in a typical domestic setting, placed, then it would leave open a possibility for Isobel Absalon still to lock the door from the inside in the multifarious ways described, since there would be nothing standing in the way of the door, such as his leg, to prevent Isobel Absalon from closing it and locking it in the ways described. Such were some of the reasons for his urgency and strong desire to arrive at his (etc) side of the front door before Isobel Absalon arrived at her (as before) side of the same door, which is to say at the opposite side of the door.

  18

  What, though, if Isobel Absalon actually wanted him to unlock the door, he wondered, as he continued to move towards it? What if she had been incarcerated therein, with no means of escape, and had been waiting a long time for a rescuer, such as himself, to appear?

  In most places it was simply a case of upping and leaving when one had had enough. One could up and leave, for instance, at any point during a dinner party, or during a party, which is to say, in the latter case, a party where a formal sit down dinner was not being served, which is not to say that there would be no food at all – the hosts may have made some slices of pizza, for instance, in the sense of having made them from the raw ingredients (flour, water, buffalo mozzarella etc), or having simply taken the pizzas fully prepared but uncooked from their packaging, and placed them in a suitably hot oven for a suitable duration, as specified in the recipe book, say, in the former case, or on the packet in the latter.

  There was, of course, another position which had, until that point, been overlooked but which now emerged into his mind: the scenario of the pizza delivery. Quite simply, the pizza delivery was a case where raw materials are used, as with the ‘home-made’ category, although the pizza house cannot be said to be a ‘home’; the origin of the vast majority of pizza deliveries was not a home but a restaurant or, in the case of the pizza house, a restaurant that does not have any seats and tables for customers’ use, or, to put it succinctly, a pizza restaurant that was ‘take out’ or ‘delivery’ only. Thus the delivered pizza and the home made variety had that similarity – of being made from raw materials. That was not to say, of course, that the shop-bought variety was not made from the raw ingredients. It was to do, he thought, with who was responsible for preparation and who for cooking of the pizza in question. The home-made and the delivered variety shared the following attributes: that the person or people who had prepared the pizza also cooked it whereas in the case of the shop-bought pizza the person or people who had prepared the pizza did not cook it, except in the case of the person or people in the factory or other production facility who took one home with them, from the production line, so to speak, as it was known, for their lunch, supper or, in much more unusual cases, breakfast. In this latter (and to his mind, somewhat exceptional) case it could (and no doubt would, by some) be asserted that there his sharp delineation between preparation and cooking in the case of the ‘shop-bought’ pizza was undermined. That was true enough. One means of strengthening his position somewhat, he thought, as he reached further into his left-hand trouser pocket with his left hand, was to rely on the term ‘cook’ or ‘cooks’ (a reliance that implies, in the ‘home-made’ and ‘delivered’ varieties, both the task of preparation and of cooking the pizza in question); this was, perhaps, the solution to the conundrum. Was it enough, now, to assert that in the case of the home-made pizza and the delivered pizza, the ‘cook’ (or ‘cooks’) is (or are) responsible for the preparation of the pizza along with the other job that the title (singular or plural) implies, whereas in the case of the shop-bought pizza the cook is not responsible for the preparation? He thought it was enough, at least for now.

  Then his mind went back to that troubling exception – the woman (as he imagined her to be) in the mid-lands (of whichever country she resided in), with her hair covered (regardless, he hoped, of which country she resided in), working in pizza-preparation all day and then taking one or more of her products home for lunch, supper or, exceptionally, breakfast. Ah yes, but during the process of preparing the pizza she could not be termed a cook, even if, at a later time or date she took one of the products of her labour home to cook it (and perhaps her company allowed their employees to do this with faulty products, or gave them a discount on non-faulty products, one of the perks of working at that facility – quite possibly the only perk). Therein lay the difference he thought: we could not call her a cook during the process of production, whereas in the case of the preparer of the home-made pizza, or the pizza to be delivered, the preparer, in the act of preparation itself, coul
d be termed a cook. What a relief he felt at that moment!

  And it was with gratitude that he turned his attention to something which so far has only been alluded to in passing: that is the scenario in which pizza (of whatever variety) is eaten for breakfast. He had, rather rashly he now thought, asserted that it was highly exceptional or just exceptional for pizza to be eaten for breakfast. Now an image came to mind which undermined this: that of the cold half-eaten pizza sitting on a plate or delivery box, which, in turn, was placed on the floor, or on a table or chair, in the bedsit or student house on the morning after, and he wouldn’t specify after what but leave that to other (unspecified) imaginations.

  Leaving aside the prevalence of this scenario given his previous rash pronouncements in this area, what could be said about the categorisation of this example? Firstly, the evidence at hand (that is, to mind) did not allow him to decide between whether the cold pizza would be shop-bought, delivered or home-made. However, he felt that it was unlikely to fall into the last category. Why did he think that? He would have to bring in another concept to explain himself: that concept was ‘house-pride’. The term was introduced in an unusual formulation here for reasons of syntax. One cannot edit one’s thoughts for the convenience of transmission, he thought. The presence of the cold pizza still on the plate or in the delivery box implied, to his mind, that the inhabitants of that house were not house-proud (to use the more conventional expression); the further implication in his mind of this lack of house-pride was that the inhabitants of that house would not be proud enough (in the sense defined) to use raw ingredients under their own hands and initiative to make the pizza that was now sitting cold on the plate or in the box (and note that the presence of the box implies, in itself, that the now cold pizza was not homemade or even shop-bought but delivered, unless, of course, the coldness of the pizza was due to it never having been cooked rather than it having been cooked and having been left to cool on that plate or in that box. In the case where it had never been cooked but was still in the box (opened or unopened) on the chair or table or on the floor of the non-proud (etc) inhabitants’ house then it followed naturally to his mind that the pizza was of the shop-bought variety, which again rules out the possibility of home-making of the pizza in question). He focused, narrowing down the possibilities with his fine mind, notice, on the case of the cold pizza on the plate rather than in a box, a pizza that had been cooked. What could he say (to himself, silently, as he sped across the area in front of the townhouse) about this specimen. He would start with what he couldn’t say: he couldn’t say it was shop-bought as opposed to home-made or delivered; or home-made as opposed to shop-bought or delivered; or delivered as opposed to the other two options; in other words he couldn’t say whether it had been prepared by a cook (in the sense defined above) as opposed to a mid-land ‘producer’. Nor could he say, at least with as much certainty, that the inhabitants of that house were not house-proud – they had used a plate or plates for the purpose of dining. Granted they had left the remains of their pizza on the plate and, in turn, on a chair, table or on the floor. But this did not imply a lack of house-pride in the way that a pizza (whether previously cooked or not) would imply if it were left in the same (or similar) position but in a box. It could simply have been that the diners had been called away by a pressing engagement or activity of some sort (such as sex) or by an emergency (such as a road traffic accident directly outside their front door, or by an upstairs fire) and that they had left the pizza in its place for that reason.