“I believe I have solved the door.”
Professor Quillibrace looked up from his newspaper.
“You have solved a door?”
“The door in the story.”
Miss Stray looked across the room.
“The one that was open?”
“Precisely.”
Quillibrace folded the newspaper.
“I had hoped it would remain unsolved.”
“The door is clearly a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“Possibility.”
Stray smiled.
“Of course.”
“The door is normally closed. Then it is found open. People hesitate. Someone goes in. Others follow. Eventually the room becomes occupied, and the door remains open.”
“Yes,” said Stray.
“Therefore the door represents the emergence of possibility from constraint.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“A respectable beginning.”
Blottisham looked pleased.
“Thank you.”
“I wasn't complimenting you.”
“I shall take it as one.”
Stray picked up her tea.
“But why was the door closed?”
“Because it was closed.”
“Yes, but why?”
Blottisham hesitated.
“That is irrelevant.”
“Is it?”
“Obviously. The important thing is that it becomes open.”
“But if the story never tells us why it was closed, how do we know that the opening represents possibility rather than, say, ventilation?”
Blottisham looked at her.
“Ventilation?”
“Yes.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“An underappreciated philosophical force.”
Blottisham ignored him.
“The inhabitants of the story respond to the open door.”
“Do they?” said Stray.
“Yes.”
“They respond to the room.”
“Because the door is open.”
“Perhaps.”
“Not ‘perhaps’.”
“Why?”
“Because the story says so.”
“No,” said Stray. “It says the door is open. It doesn't tell us why the people enter.”
Blottisham frowned.
“They discover the room.”
“Yes.”
“And then they use it.”
“Yes.”
“So?”
“So perhaps the important event isn't that the door opens.”
Blottisham waited.
“It is that people begin to use what becomes available.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“That sounds suspiciously like an interpretation.”
Stray looked at him.
“It is.”
“Good.”
Blottisham leaned forward.
“Then I was right.”
“No.”
“But you just—”
“I said it was an interpretation.”
“Which means it is the meaning.”
Quillibrace sighed.
“Blottisham, if interpretation were identical with meaning, we could close the university.”
Blottisham looked genuinely puzzled.
“But then what are we doing here?”
Quillibrace looked around the room.
“I have often wondered.”
There was a pause.
Blottisham glanced towards the door.
It was open.
He stared at it.
Stray noticed.
“You've never noticed that before?”
“Of course I have.”
“You just looked surprised.”
“I was considering its semiotic significance.”
Quillibrace followed his gaze.
“It's been open all morning.”
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“Who opened it?”
“I don't know.”
“Why hasn't anyone closed it?”
“No one has needed to.”
Blottisham stood up.
He walked towards the door.
He touched the handle.
Then he looked back.
“You realise this is exactly like the story.”
Quillibrace returned to his newspaper.
“No.”
“No?”
“This is the Senior Common Room.”
Blottisham looked at Stray.
“What's the difference?”
She thought for a moment.
“In the story, people discovered a room.”
“And here?”
“We're already in one.”
Blottisham considered this.
Then he looked at the open doorway again.
“But perhaps,” he said slowly, “the story has been happening here all along.”
Quillibrace looked over his newspaper.
“That would be unfortunate.”
“Why?”
“Because then we'd have to interpret ourselves.”
Stray smiled.
“Perhaps we already have.”
The three of them looked at the open door.
Nobody closed it.
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