Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (69 page)

A
strange
new
world
of
possibilities
opened
before
me.
I
did
not close
my
mind
against
them,
but
merely
wondered,
dreamed,
and speculated.
Did
I
actually
make
practical
attempts,
following
the guarded
hints
and
clues,
attempts
to
practise
in
my
own
being
the amazing
rules
laid
down?
I
had
these
awful,
bitter
hours
to
fill
as
best I
could.
Physical
efforts
were
not
available,
I
must
fill
my
life
mentally,
imaginatively,
or
else,
as
we
described
it
among
ourselves,
and as
I
saw
happening
daily,
hourly,
among
my
fellow-prisoners,
"go potty."
My
long
sleepless
nights,
my
days
of
endless
anguish,
sought what
alleviation
they
could
find.
.
.
.

Another
dimension
in
space
was
easier
to
conceive,
I
found,
than another
dimension
in
time.
Moreover,
among
my
fellow-prisoners,
was a
Professor
of
sorts,
a
Russian,
to
whom
I
talked
a
good
deal,
and
he
tried
to
explain
the
space
business
to
me
with
at
least
a
glimmering of
success.
He
showed
me
how
a
fellow
could
be
in
two
places
at
once, in
London,
say,
and
Calcutta.
Taking
a
sheet
of
paper
from
some
old letter,
he
marked
Calcutta
at
one
end
and
London
at
the
other.
He told
me
to
imagine
people
living
on
the
surface
of
this
sheet,
people who
knew
only
length
and
breadth—a
world
of
two
dimensions.
"Of height,
remember,"
he
warned
me
in
his
broken
English,
"they
know nothing.
They
have
no
perception
of
height—cannot
even
think
of
it. They
are
two-dimensional
beings
in
a
two-dimensional
world." Well,
I
understood
that
all
right.

"A
fellow
in
their
world,"
he
explained,
"can
be
in
London
or
in Calcutta,
but
he
cannot
be
in
both."
It
was
obvious
enough.

Then
he
bent
the
sheet
of
paper.
He
doubled
it
together,
so
that the
spot
of
London
and
the
spot
of
Calcutta
lay
cheek
by
jowl.
They coincided.

"In
bending
the
sheet,"
he
added,
"I
have
made
it
pass
through height,
of
course." I
agreed.

"Yet,
in
the
result,
Calcutta
and
London
lie
together.
The
man
in Calcutta
is
in
London
too.
He
is
in
two
places
at
once."

We
glared
at
one
another.
"It
is
only
an
analogy,
of
course,"
he reminded
me,
"and
it
has
the
fallacy
that
all
analogies
must
hold."

I
got
an
inkling
of
what
he
meant,
but
when
he
talked
in
similar fashion
about
time,
I
could
not
follow
him.
It
gave
me
a
sick
headache merely.

From
the
books
I
read
and
the
thoughts
I
thought,
I
gathered
anyhow
that
brains,
tongues
and
pens
have
speculated
freely
enough about
these
very
rare
"total
disappearances."
I
gathered
likewise
that such
speculations
were
somewhat
negligible,
and
that
only
a
mere handful
who
had
made
practical
experiments—among
them
undoubtedly
Vronski
and
my
cousin—could
offer
anything
of
tangible value.
Among
the
sparse
elect,
none
the
less,
I
caught
strange
whispers. A
notion
grew
in
the
deepest
part
of
me
that
another
dimension
in space
could
explain
this
wiping
out
of
a
physical
body,
and
that
such a
one,
dropping
away
into
a
direction
at
right
angles
to
the
three
we know
so
Well,
drops
obviously
and
naturally
clean
out
of
sight.
He passes
into
a
region
no
sense
of
ours
can
ever
plumb.
Out
of
our
known, familiar space he has dropped
elsewhere—and otherwise as well, since a new direction in space involves
necessarily a new dimension in time.