The third part of the night (andrzej zulawski, 1971)
"People move on orbits that are so distant from each other."
I'm on a train. Not a big train. Not the kind of train that takes you from one city to another. No. It's a small train. The kind that takes you from one place in a city to another place in the same city. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. So I'm on a train, and the man who has just sat down next to me is thumbing, with what appears to be great interest, through a hospitality guidebook. Not a book for people who will be experiencing hospitality at their leisure, but rather a guidebook for someone who is about to embark on a career or role within the hospitality industry.
The book is full of handy tips like: 'smile,' and 'make eye contact with people,' and 'ensure that they feel they are listened to,' and other such things. But what's really interesting me about this whole situation, about this man reading a book about how he can pretend to be caring, is that he's taking up both of the arm rests. Thoughtlessly. Selfishly.
Perhaps you've never been on a train before, so let me explain.
Each seat on a train usually has two armrests for you to rest your arms on. Perhaps you're holding a particularly heavy book or smart device and would appreciate sharing the weight of the item by resting your arms on them. I don't know. But here's a question for you: when you put one seat next to another, how many arm rests do you get? You might have done some simple maths and said 'four,' because that's presumably how many arms might need resting, but that would be the incorrect answer. As we all know two seats on a train do not get four arm rests, they get three. I guess the idea is that you share the armrest with your neighbour? Perhaps. But what usually happens is that the arm rest is claimed by whoever pushes harder.
So Mr Hospitality pushed my arm off the rest. Not enormously aggressively. But assuredly. With quiet confidence. So he can now rest his weary arms as he peruses a book about how to make people believe you give a hoot.
And I know what you're thinking, because the whole thing took me there too, it's all a bit reminiscent of this story:
It's 1532 and a man is wrestling with his conscience. He's been asked by the Catholic Church to perform a study of the heavens because their calendars are a bit hit and miss. Things like Easter are all over the place, and they basically want to put together a better understanding of the movement of celestial objects. But this man has encountered a problem, and it goes like this:
Heavenly objects are created by God and move in circles. The Earth is at the centre of these movements and that's why circular motion doesn't affect Earth. People could test this for themselves by looking. They looked up at the sky during either the day or night and they could watch celestial objects moving in circles. The Moon. The Sun. The stars. To show how circular, or curved movements, were not something that happened on Earth all you had to do was drop a stone. It travelled in a straight line. Straight down to the ground. Because the Earth was the centre of everything. Who needs any more proof than something you can see with your eyes?
But this man who has been tasked with studying the heavens has hit a snag. Mars. Mars keeps moving backwards in its rotation around the Earth, and for the life of him he can't work out why. Oh sure. Other people have noticed this over the years. But all they did was make up exceptional reasons, special circumstances, for this anomaly that allowed the theory of the circular movements of everything (an idea 'first' put forward by Aristotle) to continue. The most popular was that Mars was spinning around and around and around, a mini rotation within its celestial circular motion, like a badly weighted spinning top, or a weeble, if that means anything to you.
This man has found that the 'double rotation' idea isn't working for him. And he's put together a little model to test out another theory that he's playing with, and which seems pretty watertight to him. Heliocentrism. In the Aristotilean model of the universe you have the Earth at the centre, and all the other celestial objects on rods moving around the Earth in circles, and it looks pretty, it's neat, organisised, but our man just isn't happy. However, if you take that model and put the Sun at the centre, then all of a sudden everything makes a lot more sense.
And this is the root of our man's problem. What he's proposing is revolutionary, incendiary, world changing. And oh me oh my, he'd better be right about this.
Our man might have felt generally better about his lot in life if he'd known about Tartaglia. Tartaglia was an award-winning, arrogant mathematician who had also been hired to do a job. But Tartaglia's job wasn't about the heavens, it was very Earth-centred. Tartaglia had been asked to perform a study on cannon fire so that the weapons could be better used. More deaths, less wastage. And Tartaglia didn't like the results on movement that he was finding either.
As we all know - as Earth is at the centre of everything there are no curved movements here, everything is all about straight lines. You drop a stone and it falls in a straight line. And when you fire a cannon ball it moves in a straight line.
But that's not what Tartaglia was finding. Instead it looked like the cannon balls were moving in... curves...? They went up a bit, and then down. Not straight lines at all. Curved movements on Earth was as revolutionary at that time as the idea that the Sun was at the centre of everything (obviously I know the Sun isn't at the centre of everything *really* - you get me).
And let's go back to that man on the train, or, more specifically, to the Hospitality Industry.
You walk into a hotel, the man behind the desk smiles at you and greets you warmly. Your bags are carried to your room by a young person, very smiley, positive. Later on that night you go to the hotel bar and the waitresses refresh your drink, ever so thoughtfully, every time you need it, and the bar staff make you feel welcome, at home. In fact, every interaction that you have with the hotel staff is spent in the company of deferential, polite, positive, charming people who make you appreciate being alive.
Does it matter that it's all a lie? That these people don't care? That they've been trained to trick you into thinking they do? That we're not at the centre of it all? Would all of us being public with the truth satisfy you in any way? Or should we all just keep pretending? You tell me.
I'm on a train. Not a big train. Not the kind of train that takes you from one city to another. No. It's a small train. The kind that takes you from one place in a city to another place in the same city. Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah. So I'm on a train, and the man who has just sat down next to me is thumbing, with what appears to be great interest, through a hospitality guidebook. Not a book for people who will be experiencing hospitality at their leisure, but rather a guidebook for someone who is about to embark on a career or role within the hospitality industry.
The book is full of handy tips like: 'smile,' and 'make eye contact with people,' and 'ensure that they feel they are listened to,' and other such things. But what's really interesting me about this whole situation, about this man reading a book about how he can pretend to be caring, is that he's taking up both of the arm rests. Thoughtlessly. Selfishly.
Perhaps you've never been on a train before, so let me explain.
Each seat on a train usually has two armrests for you to rest your arms on. Perhaps you're holding a particularly heavy book or smart device and would appreciate sharing the weight of the item by resting your arms on them. I don't know. But here's a question for you: when you put one seat next to another, how many arm rests do you get? You might have done some simple maths and said 'four,' because that's presumably how many arms might need resting, but that would be the incorrect answer. As we all know two seats on a train do not get four arm rests, they get three. I guess the idea is that you share the armrest with your neighbour? Perhaps. But what usually happens is that the arm rest is claimed by whoever pushes harder.
So Mr Hospitality pushed my arm off the rest. Not enormously aggressively. But assuredly. With quiet confidence. So he can now rest his weary arms as he peruses a book about how to make people believe you give a hoot.
And I know what you're thinking, because the whole thing took me there too, it's all a bit reminiscent of this story:
It's 1532 and a man is wrestling with his conscience. He's been asked by the Catholic Church to perform a study of the heavens because their calendars are a bit hit and miss. Things like Easter are all over the place, and they basically want to put together a better understanding of the movement of celestial objects. But this man has encountered a problem, and it goes like this:
Heavenly objects are created by God and move in circles. The Earth is at the centre of these movements and that's why circular motion doesn't affect Earth. People could test this for themselves by looking. They looked up at the sky during either the day or night and they could watch celestial objects moving in circles. The Moon. The Sun. The stars. To show how circular, or curved movements, were not something that happened on Earth all you had to do was drop a stone. It travelled in a straight line. Straight down to the ground. Because the Earth was the centre of everything. Who needs any more proof than something you can see with your eyes?
But this man who has been tasked with studying the heavens has hit a snag. Mars. Mars keeps moving backwards in its rotation around the Earth, and for the life of him he can't work out why. Oh sure. Other people have noticed this over the years. But all they did was make up exceptional reasons, special circumstances, for this anomaly that allowed the theory of the circular movements of everything (an idea 'first' put forward by Aristotle) to continue. The most popular was that Mars was spinning around and around and around, a mini rotation within its celestial circular motion, like a badly weighted spinning top, or a weeble, if that means anything to you.
This man has found that the 'double rotation' idea isn't working for him. And he's put together a little model to test out another theory that he's playing with, and which seems pretty watertight to him. Heliocentrism. In the Aristotilean model of the universe you have the Earth at the centre, and all the other celestial objects on rods moving around the Earth in circles, and it looks pretty, it's neat, organisised, but our man just isn't happy. However, if you take that model and put the Sun at the centre, then all of a sudden everything makes a lot more sense.
And this is the root of our man's problem. What he's proposing is revolutionary, incendiary, world changing. And oh me oh my, he'd better be right about this.
Our man might have felt generally better about his lot in life if he'd known about Tartaglia. Tartaglia was an award-winning, arrogant mathematician who had also been hired to do a job. But Tartaglia's job wasn't about the heavens, it was very Earth-centred. Tartaglia had been asked to perform a study on cannon fire so that the weapons could be better used. More deaths, less wastage. And Tartaglia didn't like the results on movement that he was finding either.
As we all know - as Earth is at the centre of everything there are no curved movements here, everything is all about straight lines. You drop a stone and it falls in a straight line. And when you fire a cannon ball it moves in a straight line.
But that's not what Tartaglia was finding. Instead it looked like the cannon balls were moving in... curves...? They went up a bit, and then down. Not straight lines at all. Curved movements on Earth was as revolutionary at that time as the idea that the Sun was at the centre of everything (obviously I know the Sun isn't at the centre of everything *really* - you get me).
And let's go back to that man on the train, or, more specifically, to the Hospitality Industry.
You walk into a hotel, the man behind the desk smiles at you and greets you warmly. Your bags are carried to your room by a young person, very smiley, positive. Later on that night you go to the hotel bar and the waitresses refresh your drink, ever so thoughtfully, every time you need it, and the bar staff make you feel welcome, at home. In fact, every interaction that you have with the hotel staff is spent in the company of deferential, polite, positive, charming people who make you appreciate being alive.
Does it matter that it's all a lie? That these people don't care? That they've been trained to trick you into thinking they do? That we're not at the centre of it all? Would all of us being public with the truth satisfy you in any way? Or should we all just keep pretending? You tell me.