Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [33]
He turned so abruptly that he dropped his sandwich, which turned downward through the air and was rather small by the time it was stopped by the ground.
About thirty feet behind Arthur was another pole, and, alone among the sparse forest of about three dozen poles, the top of it was occupied. It was occupied by an old man who, in turn, seemed to be occupied by profound thoughts that were making him scowl.
“Excuse me,” said Arthur. The man ignored him. Perhaps he couldn’t hear him. The breeze was moving about a bit. It was only by chance that Arthur had heard the slight cough.
“Hello?” called Arthur. “Hello!”
The man at last glanced around at him. He seemed surprised to see him. Arthur couldn’t tell if he was surprised and pleased to see him or just surprised.
“Are you open?” called Arthur.
The man frowned in incomprehension. Arthur couldn’t tell if he couldn’t understand or couldn’t hear.
“I’ll pop over,” called Arthur. “Don’t go away.”
He clambered off the small platform and climbed quickly down the spiraling pegs, arriving at the bottom quite dizzy.
He started to make his way over to the pole on which the old man was sitting, and then suddenly realized that he had disoriented himself on the way down and didn’t know for certain which one it was.
He looked around for landmarks and worked out which was the right one.
He climbed it. It wasn’t.
“Damn,” he said. “Excuse me!” he called out to the old man again, who was now straight in front of him and forty feet away. “Got lost. Be with you in a minute.” Down he went again, getting very hot and bothered.
When he arrived, panting and sweating, at the top of the pole that he knew for certain was the right one, he realized that the man was, somehow or other, mucking him about.
“What do you want?” shouted the old man crossly at him. He was now sitting on top of the pole that Arthur recognized was the one that he had been on himself when eating his sandwich.
“How did you get over there?” called Arthur in bewilderment.
“You think I’m going to tell you just like that what it took me forty springs, summers and autumns of sitting on top of a pole to work out?”
“What about winter?”
“What about winter?”
“Don’t you sit on the pole in the winter?”
“Just because I sit up a pole for most of my life,” said the man, “doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. I go south in the winter. Got a beach house. Sit on the chimney stack.”
“Do you have any advice for a traveler?”
“Yes. Get a beach house.”
“I see.”
The man stared out over the hot, dry, scrubby landscape. From here Arthur could just see the old woman, a tiny speck in the distance, dancing up and down swatting flies.
“You see her?” called the old man, suddenly.
“Yes,” said Arthur. “I consulted her in fact.”
“Fat lot she knows. I got the beach house because she turned it down. What advice did she give you?”
“Do exactly the opposite of everything she’s done.”
“In other words, get a beach house.”
“I suppose so,” said Arthur. “Well, maybe I’ll get one.”
“Hmmm.”
The horizon was swimming in a fetid heat haze.
“Any other advice?” asked Arthur. “Other than to do with real estate?”
“A beach house isn’t just real estate. It’s a state of mind,” said the man. He turned and looked at Arthur.
Oddly, the man’s face was now only a couple of feet away. He seemed in one way to be a perfectly normal shape, but his body was sitting cross-legged on a pole forty feet away while his face was only