The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball

plank becomes steeper and steeper, and harder to climb. Miles pass in this way. Finally, there begin to be handholds, and footholds, ladder rungs in the plank. For one has come so far that one must climb. At the top, one finds that one has reached another needle, this sunk into an island so far offshore from the first needle that it was not visible, though from the top of the second needle the first needle is plain in the far distance, as the path’s terminus.
    —It is so lovely, said Kolya, how then there is another ladder, down along the side of the needle. One proceeds to the island of the anchored needle, where a small cabin sits, and someone is waiting with a bit of lunch and a pot of tea. Someone kind whom you have known a very long while. She comes to the door and plain upon her face is her joy at your arrival.
    —You have come along the needle? said the count, in the voice of the someone-who-waits-in-the cabin. How long and tiring the route of needles, for it passes through the core of things.
    —To this you say nothing, said Kolya, but only smile, admitting to the general truth of her words. And she brings you into the house and sets before you a fine meal. And afterwards, there is dancing and laughter, and it is the dancing one does when one is not observed, which is the best dancing of all.
    —And all the while, said the count, someone murmuring, Who can say therefore where a certain person is, for what is it that anchors a person? Is it their place in the story to which you are a part? Many stories hereabouts run side by side, and you cannot be at pains to unpin them, for they are sharp, and you will only sting the tips of your fingers.
    Their voices grew quiet, and they lay, staring up at the icy ceiling. The count ran his fingertips along the back of her neck, and a look of helplessness came over her face.
    —The empress was right about you, she said.
    —No one has ever been right about you, said the count.
    —Not yet, said Kolya. Not yet. But this is my debut.
    The count began to say something about the events of the day, but Kolya put her hand over his mouth and stopped him.
    —Today we will speak only of absurd and improbable things, things far from us.
    The count nodded.
    —Of absurd things, and of the World’s Fair 7 June 1978. An impossible date, said the count. The world will have ended long before that.
    —And a good thing too, said Kolya. There is nothing so awful as a world that continues after it ought to have failed.
    —I had a dream once, said the count, and as he drew in his breath to speak, it seemed the very air around him grew insubstantial, a dream in which I was visiting friends at a country estate. They were people I had never met in my true life; however, in this dream we were the best and oldest of friends. I arrived in some kind of mechanical apparatus, and was left by the gate, holding a sort of leather rucksack with my clothes and things. My friend’s wife ran down to meet me from the house. She was wearing a thin cotton dress with a flowery print. I dropped the bag and caught her up in my arms. In the dream I remembered then a past in which she and I had been lovers, long ago, when we were young, and how all that was behind us, and there would be no more of it, but that it had been a glorious thing for us both, and still was, and that she was glad that I had come, and I was glad to have come, and it felt good to lift her up and feel her body against my own. We walked up to the house, talking of nothing, of small things, really, of cats and the distance of the sun. My friend came out into the doorway, tall, strong, a man of whom one says afterwards, I wish that he were here, for our troubles could be dealt with so easily. He embraced me too, and with him there was a sudden and long past, brought up like a bucket the size of a well out of a well the size of the sea. And how we had missed each other. How so many times I had resorted to remembering things he had said or done