A Morning Walk
Posted by Alistair Bright | May 18, 2010 | Comments Off
The man is walking to his local greengrocers stall. But this isn’t just any type of man: this man is a very intelligent type of man, and a very serious one. With each step he places one foot exactly 35cm ahead of the last just like he always does. This is his standard pace for walking on paved level ground. He had long ago perfected this optimally efficient gait and he didn’t even need to look down at his feet to check himself anymore. Just a quick re-calibration every January the 1st is all it takes to maintain the stride.
“Maybe if everyone in the world walked correctly like I do then there would be no war” he thinks to himself.
The man has to stop abruptly as he realises he’s drawn level with the stall already! He curses the lapse of concentration that had almost led to his overshooting slightly and wonders whether he should increase the calories in his breakfast tomorrow by 50kcal to sharpen his mind, or to dock himself 50kcal as a punishment.
“Good morning Rich!” beams the pretty young woman running the stall.
He gives her a quick nod; “Anna”.
“It’s just me holding the fort today, Kath’s been up north all week sorting out some family stuff.”
“Oh,” he says in his calm reasonable tone. He doesn’t care who sells him the fruit. It’s still the exact same fruit.
“What can I get you today then?”
“Tomatoes. 750 grams.”
Anna fills a recycled brown paper bag with beef tomatoes, carefully placing – as the man notices approvingly – the largest in first then continuing in descending order.
“And can I get you any fruit as well?” The man sighs. “Can I get you some fruit, Rich?” she presses.
“Tomatoes are fruit” he reminds her.
She rolls her eyes; “Well some more fruit then.”
“Apples. 750 grams”
“Righty-o; these Braeburn are nice and ripe, fancy some of these?”
“I buy by weight not ripeness,” he states reasonably.
“Well, if you buy the weight you want am I permitted to pick out the ripest to put in your bag for you?” she coaxes in an almost motherly tone, her good mood only slightly dented.
“Everything is permitted,” he mumbles, allowing himself a wry smile.
Not getting the reference Anna starts to place some apples into a second brown bag. She stops when she notices someone crossing the road towards the stall “Kath!” she calls out, in a way that sounds more like an unconscious ejaculation of delight than a greeting.
“Hey, you.” Kath replies with a more mature reserve but no less affection. She leans in for a kiss. Katherine, with an elegant long build and high cheekbones is taller than Anna, so Anna has to tilt her head back quite a bit. What started as a quick peck on the lips lingers unexpectedly, telling of some point in the last week when one or both women had had the urge to kiss but remembered a cruel split second later of the other’s absence. The man stands there. The bag of apples haven’t been fully loaded yet so he can’t pay for them. The bag is sitting there on the scales with the weight clearly visible to him. He could easily calculate (for he is highly intelligent) how much money he could leave next to the till to walk off with the mere 527g of apples the bag still contains. But he doesn’t want to do that. He bought exactly the right amount of cash for 750g of apples. He wanted 750g of apples. The kiss continues.
“Maybe Anna’s neck will start to hurt and they’ll stop,” he thinks. But then he remembers her passion for yoga. She could probably stand with her neck like that all morning. One day when he came for a pair of grapefruit she bleated on about prana for eight whole minutes and when he got home he’d missed the start of The World at One. She can be so gullible sometimes. He doesn’t understand how someone so stupid can be so happy all the time. Still kissing. Maybe he should just turn and walk away, but he doesn’t want to seem like a homophobe.
“Perhaps if I made a noise it would get their attention,” he thinks. A little cough? No, that would imply that he is ill. He isn’t ill and nothing good ever came of lying. “I’ll just jolt the stall a bit then,” he decides. He gives the stall a little shove with the heel of his hand. No reaction. He pushes a second, harder time. A couple of Kiwi fruit shift in their basket but that’s all. He’s getting a bit flustered now and butts the stall with his pelvis, bruising the skin near the anterior corner of his iliac crest. Nothing from them. He takes the rim of the stall with both hands and bangs it up and down and up and down up and down and snarls “Apples! Seven hundred and fifty grams! Seven hundred and fifty grams of fucking apples!”
His nose starts tingling and his face feels hot like he’s about to cry but he won’t cry, not in front of these fucking people he won’t give them the satisfaction. This gets their attention: Anna steps back scared and Katherine glares. Then he remembers. He is very intelligent. His mind works fast, much faster than the minds of other people. While he had stood there for an age in his own perception maybe as little as five seconds had passed in their world. The girls’ reactions, the reactions of the other people at the stall support this hypothesis. Not taking her eyes off him Katherine briskly fills the rest of the bag – with Jazz apples and not Braeburns he can’t help noticing, but tactfully lets pass. She doesn’t take as much care not to bruise them as usual as she roughly plonks his two bags in front of him. He pays with the exact change he had already counted out at home, mumbles some vague explanation about perceptual time dilation as a sort of apology and heads home.
With each step he places one foot exactly 35cm ahead of the last just like he always does.
Our People correspondent Alistair Bright spent the day with Richard Dawkins. In next week’s Guardian Weekend, Alistair spends the day with author Iain Banks.