Sinister: Painting the Land Rover green and other stories

[Kieran Devaney]

The earliest thing Clive could remember, the first thing, was pressing his 
face right up against the TV screen so he could see the picture as a neat 
grid of tiny pixels. Clive started to count them.
“Did you like the bright colours?” his mother had asked him as she lifted 
him gently away. Clive had to go back a second time to see what she meant.

Clive was gifted. All his teachers said so. He was years ahead of his 
classmates, they said, when it came to anything mathematical, which was 
true; Clive could do long division before he learned to read properly. At 
primary school they had worried about his temperament, he whizzed through 
his maths work, was bright, questioning and always careful and accurate, 
even with problems usually considered far too advanced for his age, but when 
it came to other subjects his manner changed completely, he became lethargic 
and disinterested, doodled numbers in the margins of his stories.

Clive saw the world in series of graphs and charts, numbers, tessellating 
shapes. To him a tree was area of shade at various times of day, number of 
branches and leaves and equally, number of rings on the stump, the sky was 
percentage of cloud cover, the speed of the wind calculated from the 
movement of the clouds. He hated cloudless days. Clive liked computers, but 
rarely ever used one; he loved the idea of computers converting everything, 
pictures, words and sounds into binary, loved the idea that things could be 
quantified so purely like that. He had the idea of writing a whole book in 
binary, practised translating sentences from his schoolbooks until he was 
fluent, but he couldn’t think of anything to write about.

At secondary school, times grew worse for Clive. He was on the concrete 
curled up; he counted the kicks, counted the time between each one. They 
were shouting things at him now but he didn’t hear them, he counted their 
syllables, and in front of his eyes flashed a ratio for each assailant, 
number of kicks against number of syllables, he tabulated the results 
mentally before black dots with thin silver rims like spots of ink on a pane 
of glass gathered and joined in his field of vision. He estimated correctly 
that it would be three seconds before he passed out. He didn’t have many 
friends at school. Most of Clive’s teachers hated him; his attitude to 
non-mathematical subjects hadn’t changed since primary school, but luckily 
Clive didn’t care what they thought, or perhaps that’s putting it too 
strongly, it didn’t occur to him that they thought at all – they were 
outside the moment, outside his mathematics.

Clive’s exams went surprisingly well. Of course, he passed the maths exam 
with embarrassing ease, tackling each question with an unmatched relish and 
speed. In the English exam he shocked everyone by writing an eerily moving 
story about a girl who took a summer job as a gardener, and went blind 
because she was violently allergic to the most beautiful tropical flower in 
the garden. Clive just managed to pass enough subjects to stay on at school, 
owing to the good grade in English. The subjects he chose to carry on 
though, were maths and further maths. He could’ve done more subjects, but he 
simply wasn’t interested, and the teachers at school didn’t try to change 
his mind; Clive was disconcerting to talk to, he had a polite, distracted 
air, and only ever seemed to be half concentrating on the conversation. When 
you left him alone, he didn’t seem to notice, didn’t change his posture, but 
carried on staring into the middle distance. Clive never looked at anyone 
when they were talking to him. It was as if he’d never learned how to 
converse properly – some people aren’t very good at talking to people 
because they’re shy, or because they feel intimidated, but conversation 
didn’t scare Clive, he just seemed mildly annoyed by it, talking to him made 
you feel like you’d walked in on something, interrupted his private circle 
of thought. Clive didn’t have many friends.

It was autumn, and school was starting again. Clive was feeling excited to 
be learning maths again. Over the summer he had read Pascal and Betrand 
Russell, mathematical philosophers, but they hadn’t meant much to him 
really. He had also spent many joyous hours puzzling over Andrew Wiles’ 
solution to Fermat’s last theorem; the proof was so beautiful, so flawless 
that tears welled up in Clive’s eyes, he was crying at the purity of Wiles’ 
work, but also because he didn’t think there was anything left. He felt as 
though he had plumbed the depths of maths to its very core, that he had 
exhausted all known sources. He still loved what he knew about maths, but it 
was the discovery, learning new thing tht gave him the most pleasure. And 
now he felt there was nothing new out there. In fits of desperation he spent 
the last few week of the holidays ploughing through books and magazines at 
the library in the vain hope of finding something he had missed. But as you 
might imagine, Clive’s keen, logical mind had already devoured everything. 
If there was hope, it lay back at school.

Clive learned that of everyone, he had achieved the best score on the maths 
exam. It didn’t surprise him, but the school decided to give him an award 
anyway, and he and his parents went there one evening, when lots of awards 
were being given out. Because it had been such an important exam, Clive’s 
award was one of the very last to be presented, and protocol demanded that 
he say a few words of thanks when he received it. On stage in front of the 
microphone Clive looked out at the columns of heads, instinctively he 
started to count them, number of people present, percentage of women, 
percentage of children, average estimated age – these figures, and graphical 
representations of them, pie charts and tables floated through his mind. He 
shut his eyes, but the bright stage lights burned a bright orangey-red 
through his eyelids. He blurted: “Thankyou” into the microphone and bolted 
from the stage.

The first maths lesson of term was a great source of excitement for Clive, 
his new teacher, Miss Lecksi only taught maths at this advanced level, and 
was reputed to be among the finest mathematical minds in education. Her 
repuatation at the school was somewhat enigmatic, since so few people ever 
found out what went on behind the doors of her maths lessons, and those that 
did were generally reluctant to tell. Miss Lecksi was a greying, almost bald 
woman with a stuffy, Victorian style of dress. Clive, who was normally very 
good at that sort of thing, estimated her age at anywhere between thirty and 
seventy. Now she addressed the class, there was an atmosphere of nervous 
expectation, of poorly concealed fears, Clive could barely sit still. Miss 
Lecksi spoke of the course they were about to undertake, of exams and 
homework, the tension began to fade. Perhaps the rumours weren’t true. But 
then Miss Lecksi stopped and surveyed the class, a blunt, affected look in 
her eyes. She spoke slowly and deliberately, as if there were some part of 
her story that she couldn’t quite reach, but which was the most important 
part:
“The day after I finished my finals at university, my elderly proffessor, 
for whose teaching I am eternally grateful, called me to his office. Once 
there,  he showed me this…” now she went over to a small shelf at the front 
of the room, and pointed to a small box there in the middle on its own. It 
looked old, but perfectly preserved, with a fine, rich green baize covering 
offset with an ornate gold trim, and a tiny, delicate jewel-studded lock. 
The classroom was silent.
“In this box,” her hand quavered above it, “lies the secret to all 
mathematics, the key to its understanding, the essence of number. Nobody 
knows for sure when it was made, but it has been passed down for aeons from 
great mathematical mind to great mathematical mind,” she stared straight at 
Clive “my proffessor gave it to me that day, it’s the reason I went into 
teaching. It has never been opened since it’s creation, we can only guess 
what’s inside.” So the rumours were true! The class immediately burst into a 
flurry of questions, Clive’s hand was one of the first in the air, but Miss 
Lecksi batted them all away. “It remains here for inspirational purposes 
only,” again her gaze turned to Clive, “and I have the only key.” She pulled 
a thin metal key on a fine gold chain hanging from her neck and showed it to 
the class. “Now.” she said, her voice returning to its more usual matronly 
tones as she handed out a stack of battered textbooks, “Page one.”

A few weeks later, at home, Clive was once again poring over Fermat, but his 
attention kept returning to that box in Miss Lecksi’s classroom. He went to 
bed early and immediately began to dream. He was in a windowless room, full 
almost to the ceiling with tiny stainless steel ball bearings. Clive wasn’t 
sure how he had got there, but he knew that his task was to count the ball 
bearings, he looked around him, it was an impossible task, he wasn’t sure 
how far down it was to the floor and where was he to put the balls he had 
counted? They were all identical. He also had to lie flat on top of the 
pile, if his weight wasn’t evenly distributed then he would sink and surely 
suffocate. He lay there for a few minutes, puzzling over the problem before 
a solution came to him, as he counted each ball bearing he would swallow it. 
Pleased at this idea Clive began methodically eating and counting the tiny 
metal spheres, each one trickling cold and hard down his throat. This went 
on for some time, until Clive began to feel quite ill, whenever he moved he 
could hear and feel the balls rolling and clattering around in his stomach, 
they wouldn’t stay still. He didn’t seem to have made any impact on the 
amount of ball bearings in the room either, and he had counted more than 
five thousand. Reasoning with himself, he knew there was no way out other 
than to finish counting, so he wearily commenced the torture once more. 
After twenty or so more ball bearings Clive suddenly began to feel a violent 
pain in his stomach, a hundred times worse than his earlier discomfort, 
horrified he felt the tiny balls stretching at his skin, almost breaking 
through, he squirmed to try and somehow rid himself of this awful pain, but 
as he did so the now paper thin skin of his stomach burst open, and hundreds 
of ball bearings began to spill out. Clive reared up onto his knees with the 
pain, and as he did so he began to rapidly sink into the balls, knowing 
there was no way out Clive tried in vain to take one last gasp of air before 
his head went under. He awoke gasping and sweating. It was just after eight 
o’clock, and the light was just beginning to fade outside. Clive gathered 
his things and snuck downstairs and out of the front door. Now he could 
breathe. He looked up at the cloudless sky, knowing it was fruitless to try 
and count the stars. The moon was a sickly sliver of yellow light, waning, 
waning. Sometime later he arrived at her house, checking the address was 
right on a bit of paper. Finding it had been easier than he’d imagined. He 
correctly guessed that she would already be in bed, her front door had been 
left open and he had padded up the stairs, his footsteps muffled by thick 
carpet. Her room was deathly calm, there was a strange emptiness to it, the 
walls stark and unpainted, and the only item of furniture was the small, 
even child sized bed upon which she now lay. Clive crept up, so close that 
he could hear her heavy breath, feel her movements, gently he pulled back 
the bedsheet, the clasp glinted orange in the streetlight below, his hands 
cringed from the sallow, pock marked skin of her neck and shoulders as he 
carefully undid it and removed the chain. Pocketing it, he hastily left the 
house, remembering not to shut the front door, so he could return the key as 
easily as he had attained it.

Brimming with excitement, Clive near sprinted to the school. But he must be 
calm, he knew that, and he paused in front of the black, wrought iron school 
gates to catch his breath. He crouched and forced his way through a small 
gap in the fence used by savvy latecomers after the school decided to shut 
its gates on the stroke of nine o’clock. Clive made his way round to the 
maths block, his heart doing a mile a minute in his chest. He knew the 
caretaker lived on site, but there was no light from his window so Clive 
figured he must be sleeping too. With that in mind, he snuck up to Miss 
Lecksi’s door, and with a great deal of relief, he thought of the doddering 
caretaker ambling through the coridoors, admonishing people for running in 
the halls, though they were barely even at medium pace. Clive grinned. Even 
if he did make enough noise to wake the caretaker, he would be long gone 
before the old man had made it out of bed. Miss Lecksi’s classroom door was 
mysteriously unlocked and as Clive pushed it open he couldn’t help feeling 
slightly uneasy. Miss Lecksi locked her classroom whenever she left it 
during the day, and it was rumoured that even the cleaners weren’t allowed 
in at night, so it seemed odd that it would be left unguarded on this 
particular evening, but Clive was not about to question his good luck, so he 
soldiered on. Inside, the classroom was very different to Clive’s daytime 
experience of it, there’s something lost and sad about an empty classroom 
and even in the dark Clive noticed scuff marks on the threadbare carpet that 
he hadn’t seen before. His head reeling, Clive made his way toward the box, 
sizing it up. Not wanting to arouse suspicion he hadn’t had a proper look at 
it up close, even tried to ignore its presence where others deliberately 
walked past it, near brushing against it on the way in and out of lessons. 
Clive kept to the other side of the room and was never seen staring at the 
box, though it permeated his every thought. And now, now he could see its 
rococo gilding, the gleam of the gems around the lock, the work of a master 
craftsman. Clive pulled the key from his pocket and sized it up against the 
lock before pushing it in. It was a perfect fit, of course it was. He shut 
his eyes as he turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid, his fingers 
brushing the exquisite baize, even he who knew nothing of fabric could tell 
that this was of the highest quality. When he opened his eyes he was taken 
aback for a moment, and had to steady himself on the desk behind, he rubbed 
his eyes violently with the heels of his hands until they watered, and 
looked again. There was nothing in the box! His mind flooded with a million 
questions, a million images, Fermat, Wiles, Pascal, Pythagoras! He reeled 
back, clutching his head in trembling hands. And then he stopped with a slow 
realisation that made his eyes burn and stood up straight. He strode 
deliberately back to the box, the wood inside was rough and grainy, he ran 
his fingers over it’s untreated surface. “Of course!” he muttered to 
himself, and only the worry of waking the caretaker stopped him from 
shouting it out loud, he barely stifled a joyous burst of laughter. Of 
course! He quickly closed the box, locking it tight and almost ran from the 
room, from the school until he was back outside, panting and ecstatic. He 
took his shoes off and felt the grass and the ground, hard and moist, 
tickling under his feet. As he approached Miss Lecksi’s house, the first 
light of dawn was beginning to rise and he heard the birds trilling and 
chirping, saw the greenish glow of dawn just behind the horizon. He felt 
tired and elated as he once again mounted the carpeted stairs. Inside her 
bedroom, the light had changed everything and Clive saw there was a fine 
balance to the décor, saw the subtle shades on the walls that he had not 
picked up on before. He stopped a second. Now Clive once more approached the 
bed, once more pulled back the bedclothes and began to replace the chain. 
This time the skin felt soft and inviting, he let his hands linger there a 
second. As he turned away a calm voice called out to him from behind,
“Wait.”
He looked back, and saw the new dawn light shining in her eyes, looking 
straight at him. He moved towards her. She understood.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take care
- Kieran


_________________________________________________________________
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: 
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+