From Jester To King CIX

To the top floor of the bookshop runs a narrow staircase. The staircase is more like a ladder on hinge, like a ship’s ladder, like one of those ladders you get in big libraries that enable the librarian to reach the very highest of shelves; it is also very steep this staircase, so steep you have to pay attention when going up and down it. But the most significant thing about the staircase is its width; the staircase is so narrow that only two customers can fit astride at one time, so that if you see someone just stepping on the first rung proceeding to come down, then you will have to wait out the time that he is on this ladder; you will have to bide your time till he reaches the ground.

Here’s my experience with this ladder in the bookshop. Like everyone I make my way straight up to the top because the top floor is by far the most interesting. And I manage to step on the foot of the ladder before there’s anyone to come down -- that’s not the issue -- but at some point in my climb, quite astonishingly, someone steps onto the top of the ladder and starts making their way down. Have they not seen me? Do they believe they have right of way? Do they imagine I’ll just move back to the bottom before commencing my climb? Do they think that I’m happy to do this? Or do they think I can somehow hang off the edge and let them pass freely? That I have this versatility and flexibility that makes me the perfect stooge to do acrobatics just to make their life easy?

And I’m saddened to say that quite a number of these men are fundamentalists. Religious Jews and rabbis, with the full beard and clothing, and they are totally oblivious to me, and this time I was just three rungs from the top when this guy gets on and starts coming down. I mean he was pretty chunky and when I see him I cannot believe he is doing it, notwithstanding the number of times it’s gone on before, and I just look at him without anger but with just a sense of disbelief and I just ask him straight out and without intending any irony, and it comes out straight and forthright as I’d intended, I just ask him where he expects me to go, because this is genuinely what I want to know, and of course he doesn’t apologise and just starts making up the biggest load of codswallop to justify his descent, like the down people have right of way, or there are more people on the top floor that need to come down than people wanting to come up, that people will need to come down before people need to come up, and as true as any of these contentions are, I know it’s just pure selfishness because I can see in his bearing that he makes use of his bulk, that he thinks he’s above the law, so it doesn’t half surprise me to hear these semi-justifications, yet there’s this tiny bit of me that starts to wonder whether he is actually right, and then as if picking up on my self-doubt, another guy appears at the top of the ladder and he wants to come down too, and now there’s this jam, and it looks like I’m just here on the ladder to hold everyone up, even though I’m only two rungs from the top, and these two new guys just look at me so disapprovingly with their fundamentalist glares -- I don’t know what attracts all these fundamentalists to the top floor -- and so I start to figure there’s no way I can win this and I move over to my right, stretch my arm out to reach the right-hand side pillar of the ladder, grip it hard, and sort of push down on it to propel myself upwards and over onto the top floor of the bookshop.

There are no words of thanks but the ease with which I catapult myself to the top makes me think that I was being the difficult one, and then I start to reflect on all the time that was wasted when I could have just jumped up and over, and I could have made it so much easier for myself and all the others even if I was in the right, does it hardly matter who’s right in the end, and why do I get sucked into confrontation I wonder, it’s so easy to get sucked in isn’t it?