Ten. Pain awoke with the morning. In the knees, in the ankles, in the muscles, under the nails. Everywhere. He groaned.
‘Eeeeevan, are you ok?’
Her breath reeked. He turned onto his side, away from her. Nine.
‘Are you sleeping?’
It didn’t help that her breath had found a pathway around his head, enveloped him, suffocated him. He was totally slimy, sweaty, sex-soaked, with wrinkled skin, unshaven everywhere, beard stubble prickling his neck. Eight. He could feel the pimples on his back, on his arse. Muggy moistness. His lungs had collapsed, his breath was wheezy. Everything hurt so bloody much. He rested his hand against his chest. Silence. He groaned. Seven.
‘What is it?’
Something vile had collected in his mouth overnight. His teeth had grown fur. He could feel a half-dried splatter of saliva in the right corner of his lips. One eye was blind, glued together by the nocturnal discharge of tear canals. Six. His nose was totally stuffed up. Shit. His left arm had fallen asleep and was hanging numbly by his side. Would they have to amputate it? His back ached, his neck was sprained. He groaned. Five.
‘Eeeeevan…’
‘Just leave me alone, please.’ Four.
‘I had a dream about opening night, a really beautiful dream. Everything was going fine and you were smiling. A week to go, oh my, you know my stomach feels funny every time I think about it.’
A stomach ulcer, acid reflux, intolerable heartburn hell for Evan. Cirrhosis, thrombosis, an aneurysm. Death is just a step away. Let it slide. Three. He was counting down silently, he often did, counting from ten to zero, swearing that once he got to zero he would get up and go to the bathroom. Two.
One.
‘Can you please get me a cup of coffee?’
She so loved to please. She didn’t even leave a sigh behind. His neck cracked as he turned over. She rolled out of bed and the sheet slid down from her lower back, her buttocks, her ample thighs. She wasn’t shy. She walked naked to the console and pressed. As she waited she stretched, raised herself up on her toes, lifted her hands high in the air. He rubbed his eyes and stared right through the gap between her thighs. He saw the dark slit. He filled it with his imagination, but reality leapt before his eyes and shattered the illusion. Under her right cheek there was a desiccated white smudge. His member had shrunk back into the skin. The blood had flown elsewhere.
Her legs spread slowly, too deliberately. She covered his eyes, not herself, with her hand.
‘Don’t peek.’
He closed his eyes and pushed her hand away.
‘My eyes are closed.’
He put her together through scent, in the dark. Microscopically, bit by bit. Each crinkle separately, incipient stubble, a waxy veneer of passion. He reinvented her form from the powder of existence. A slit. A perineum. Lips. A mound.
The coffee scalded his tongue. He didn’t say thank you. She was constantly trying to touch him, nudging in closer, forcing her breath into his nostrils. He grabbed her by the side, his fingers sank into white flesh, and he held her at a distance. His eyes automatically sought out her nipples, the dark premonition underneath. He had to shut his eyes. He blew into the cup. His fingers were burning. He was seated. He felt revolting. Watery mucus in his gullet. He didn’t know where to spit it out, so he was swallowing it with long constrictions of the throat.
‘Eeeeevan…’
She ran her fingers over his chest.
‘What time is rehearsal today?’
‘I don’t know,’ he murmured.
Along the spine, downwards.
‘In the afternoon, no? What do we have today? The third act? The fourth? The final?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not the second, my back still hurts from the last time. And we already know it.’
‘Mmm.’
Over his lower back, around, against…he pulled away.
‘May I drink my coffee in peace?’
Her hand was numb. He tipped his cup and drained it. A cloud of steam escaped his mouth. ‘Take it away.’
With a sour expression, she got up again. When she went towards the table, she turned sideways.
Which characteristic of time draws lust from people’s mouths?
Evan and Mojca had been going around in circles. Once the initial enthusiasm had disappeared (literally, in his case), they nurtured apathy for a time, and perhaps this would have continued indefinitely if complete strangers hadn’t suddenly started to smell like sex. Because they were grown up, not just in years but also in consciousness, they knew how to confide these new scents to each other. And they didn’t make the amateur mistake of saying: just follow your instincts, there won’t be any problem, we love each other. That doesn’t work. An ancient chemical process that, with physical contact, binds hormones into what people call emotions, stands in the way. And then emotions battle with declarations, and people end up in limbo.
And so they invented a complex game of not being together, of renouncing, of teasing, which, when the degree of abstinence was complete, released itself in the transgression of a new sexual practice. For years they’d endured in the grips of such passion. Until one day Mojca
‘Hey, while you’re there, can you bring me another one?’
She pressed a button. With a hand over her chest, she moved to the chair over which her dress was draped. She tossed it on in a single move and made herself look, at once, attractive because she hid herself, and somewhat ugly, because everything that remained to the eyes bespoke morning. In the morning everyone is…
‘None for you?’
‘I don’t drink coffee.’
‘You want something else?’
‘I ate while you were sleeping.’
Sour yoghurt breath. Evan’s head was spinning. The caffeine was kicking in. His stomach was awhirl.
She brought him a second cup. As she leant down to him, he saw the outline of her breasts and filled in the rest on his own. He was covered by the sheet. It rustled slightly. He blew across the surface of the coffee and observed the resulting ridge. For a moment he forgot about his own body and immediately felt better.
Sometimes we get so angry with the people we love. We are never as passionate when it comes to other people. When we attach ourselves, when we really attach ourselves, these bonds create little bubbles in which there is space for the rawest of things.
The pancakes looked much less appetizing here at their final destination. Evan flushed the toilet and stepped into the shower. He kept one ear out of the stream so he could hear the door. Oksana didn’t come in. That wouldn’t bother him now. He dried himself off and wrapped the towel around his waist. He tied it loosely. He opened the bathroom door—
the windows were transparent and the sun had sharpened the edges of all the objects, the tables, the bed, bulbs in lamps, frames, chairs, all the bristles of the carpet, cabinet knobs and drawers, empty cups and plates, forks, knives, and her skin, which stuck out from her clothes, exploded with every pore, every hair into an impossible sharpness, and Evan could feel his pupils dilating, as if scissor blades were about to gouge out his eyes
—and slammed it shut. Panic grabbed him, he was out of mAk and he couldn’t get any more, anywhere, Gordon was in jail, he didn’t know anyone else, and all the doors, all the doors were closed, he didn’t dare ask anyone, since they’d toss him out, and he didn’t want to go back, he’d left a desert behind him, so he headed to the cabinet above the sink, opened it and grabbed, without looking, a plastic box of pills he’d been prescribed once, somewhere, for something or other, opened it, took two, swallowed, and grabbed another packet of pills, two more, swallowed, and a third, swallowed, and he would have taken a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth…had he not been afraid of committing suicide by accident. That would not be smart. Suicides are to be committed on purpose.
‘Eeeeevan…Are you ok?’
She knocked. Carefully, she opened the door. He was lying on the floor, a smile on his face, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘I’m ok.’
She stepped forwards, but he put his hand up to stop her.
‘No need.’
He turned onto his side, naked, got to his knees, wriggled his arse and got up. He walked slowly past her. She followed him.
‘Rehearsal’s at five. See you there.’
He didn’t look at her. He picked up the newspaper from the floor and threw it against the wall. He went to the console and pressed a button. Then he opened the closet and got dressed. He ran a hand through the pocket of the trousers he’d worn the day before. When he saw her he shuddered, as if frightened.
‘Rehearsal’s at five. See you there,’ he repeated.
Oksana was offended. She turned to leave. She’d left her necklace on the bedside table. She had her knees on the bed so she could reach over for it, when she felt a caress on the inside of her thighs. She pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes. He was only joking. The fingers crept up her dress and entered her almost violently. She let her head drop. The other fingers were gliding over her tummy, to her breasts, pinching a nipple. She directed the moan into the pillow. She arched. The lips descended on her tailbone, then the teeth, then the tongue, broad and wet, going, slowly, lower.
Evan observed the goings-on from a safe distance.
When she walked in, Oksana screamed and threw a sheet over herself. Evan stared at her in jutting amazement. Her voice was cold.
‘Evan Z—, get dressed. Oksana Ivanovna Bobrova, go home. Rehearsal is at five.’
Her face was not quite human. A heart-shaped oval with a straight-bridged nose, thin lips that barely parted when she spoke and a pair of oval buttons instead of eyes, without whites, entirely covered in jade. A Mesopotamian sculpture. Modigliani. She had straight black hair that emitted a dead shine, like the fur of a stuffed animal.
‘Who are you?’
‘Koito XXV. Your new sponsor. Get dressed. Oksana Ivanovna Bobrova, go home.’
Oksana scrambled out of bed, grabbed her necklace and straightened her crumpled dress. She looked at Evan, who was staring at Koito.
‘Bye.’
‘Goodbye, Oksana Ivanovna Bobrova.’
She picked up her shoes and ran barefoot into the hallway.
‘Evan Z—, say goodbye to Oksana Ivanovna Bobrova.’
‘Oksana!’ he called out. She was already in the hall. ‘See you at rehearsal.’
No response.
‘Get dressed.’
Evan bent down to the pile of clothes on the floor.
‘No.’
She opened the closet and mechanically, in a regular rhythm, began flinging underwear, socks, trousers, a shirt (‘Outside it’s twenty-three degrees Celsius, a slight wind, thirty-three percent chance of precipitation’) and a jacket. Evan got dressed. He tossed the jacket onto a chair.
‘Have you already consumed breakfast?’
She was dressed in a one-piece, skin-tight plastic outfit that showed no curves. Underneath, she was obviously a skeleton.
‘What happened to Gordon?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘Eat.’
Evan sat down before a platter of food.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Eat.’
‘Tell me, where is Gordon?’
‘Gordon Shaw Falstaff is in custody awaiting trial. Eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘The recommended daily intake of food is two thousand five hundred calories, breakfast is eight hundred. Eat.’
‘What the fuck is this, if you—’
‘Do not curse. Eat your breakfast, brush your teeth. The time is eleven forty-three and fifteen seconds, the photo shoot is at one, the meeting with the director is at two, at three, lunch with the Mishima family, at four, free time under supervision, at five, rehearsal, at eight, free time under supervision, dinner, asleep by midnight at the latest.’
The pills were sizzling in Evan’s stomach acid. Their chemical properties were spreading through the barriers and into his bloodstream. This thrust him into catatonia. Koito took his hand and pricked a finger with a pin. He did not respond. A drop of blood swelled out. She wiped it away with a napkin.
‘It’s only for one year!’
He knew that look. He’d seen it on the faces of countless girls who were dragging themselves through audition after audition. The rehearsed look of despair, disappointment and helplessness. Which, after they found out that they didn’t get the role, obtained just one additional, negligible, almost imperceptible yet crucial aspect which turned the expression into a sincere one. That aspect was staring at him as he told her.
‘Evan, a year is a really long time… Why can’t I go with you?’
‘Because they want the pure and authentic me. If I take you with me I’ll be taking a lifetime’s worth of baggage, and that’s not what they want.’
‘But what is this, Evan, who’s this they?’
‘Edo! Mojca, you know how much this means to me, it’ll be the pinnacle of my entire career.’
‘I know, I know, but I always thought that I could be there with you, never that you’d leave me all alone.’
‘One year. One lousy year.’
‘For you I…’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. Evan, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to go.’
‘Mojca, please, you know I’m going.’
‘Yes…’
Again he found himself in the toilet, this time not with his arse but his mouth perched over the bowl, a long finger jabbing into his throat, prodding his trachea and forcing him to vomit. The coffee sludge and chalky stomach remnants clanked into the bowl.
‘Drink.’
He drank from a glass that contained a greenish fluid, tea-like but cold.
‘Was that mAk?’ he asked her.
Koito turned her head, first right, then left.
‘No.’
‘What is it then?’
‘stAbIIno.57. Your blood is not optimal. It’s now in the seventy-seventh percentile. Any more than that is prohibited for foreigners.’
She wiped off her finger. Evan got back to his feet.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because you are a foreigner.’
He felt somewhat normal. That wasn’t good. The rift had lost its edges and turned into a mere void.
‘Can you please explain to me what’s going on?’
‘That is too broad a question.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Koito XXV. Your new sponsor.’
‘Who are you in relation to yourself?’
‘Koito XXV. The sponsor at disposal.’
‘At whose disposal?’
‘Daimyō’s.’
‘What were you up to yesterday?’
‘I was at disposal.’
‘Date of birth?’
‘That information is confidential.’
‘Parents?’
‘That information is confidential.’
‘Who did you sponsor before me?’
‘That information is confidential.’
‘Do you feel things?’
‘That is too broad a question.’
‘Can I touch you?’
‘Non-aggressively.’
He placed a hand over her chest, just below the slight bulge that was supposed to indicate a left breast.
Silence.
‘I think we will get along well.’
‘Yes.’
The air was airy, the light light and the room roomy as Evan ate breakfast. The taste tasty. He spoke with his mouth full and slowly wiped away the moist bits of food that flitted onto the table.
‘Is it possible to visit Gordon?’
‘When the schedule allows for it, it is possible.’
‘Should I visit him?’
‘He was my sponsor for almost the entire year.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why is he in custody?’
‘That information is confidential.’
‘Because of mAk?’
‘That information is confidential.’
‘Perhaps it would be right to visit him.’
‘That is a decision.’
‘Mmm, yes.’
Three mouthfuls of water, interrupted by breaths through the nose. He squeezed his toes together.
‘Should I shave for the photo shoot?’
‘It is not necessary.’
‘Good.’
Koito was standing motionless by the table. She was staring at him, though not intrusively, and he could eat in peace.
‘Is it forbidden to sleep with an actress?’
‘That is too broad a question.’
‘Is it forbidden for me to sleep with Oksana?’
‘It is not forbidden.’
‘Is it, how should I put this, unseemly?’
‘I do not understand the question.’
‘Would it be better if I did not sleep with her?’
‘That is a decision.’
‘Mmm, yes.’
One last bite.
‘Once I was very much in love.’
‘…’
‘Now I can’t even remember what that meant. I remember the gestures and words, but not the motives behind them. Is that the same with everyone else?’
‘I do not have sufficient information to provide an answer.’
‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘…’
‘I don’t know if it’s even a matter of memory. Maybe it’s supposed to be felt. Mnemotion. Is that a word?’
‘No.’
‘With mAk I can, in a good way, feel mnemotion. Without it, things would be rougher, more aggressive, almost unbearable. But in any case, at least it’s something, right? Now, I can’t even understand, I mean, it’s difficult, without the right words, from such a cold place…’
‘Get dressed.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I do not understand.’
He stood up.
‘Photo shoot.’
‘Yes.’
The photographer seemed entirely human-like. When they entered his ‘atelier’ (that’s how he greeted them – Welcome to my atelier – although his atelier was nothing but a space bordered by sheets in the middle of an abandoned warehouse), he parted his lips and kept them spread in variations of vowels and consonants until Evan was seated on the bar stool. Then he shut them, closed them into a blue line, took up his camera and said, ‘Now you speak.’
Evan turned to Koito with a look of astonishment. What should I talk about? Koito was unable to read anything from his miming, so she just stared calmly on.
‘What, then?’
The photographer’s mouth was closed. Both of them looked at Koito.
‘Tell Mundo’ (that was the photographer’s name: Mundo, just Mundo) ‘about mnemotion.’
Evan rubbed his eyes. Mundo took photos.
‘Once I was very much in love.’
Mundo nodded.
‘And I can prove it.’
Evan stuck his right index finger into his mouth and drew back his cheek. A hole gaped where there should have been an incisor. Mundo took photos.
‘My tooth is now resting against her chest, perhaps, though I’m not totally sure if that’s true, but anyway… Has anyone ever stolen a tooth from you?’
Mundo shook his head, Koito did not.
‘That’s very unusual, wouldn’t you say? But that’s what it means to be in love. Or even what love means. Now I don’t know any more, I couldn’t say, since there’s no more mnemotion, what it was all about. Now it just seems a little odd.’
He stroked his gums.
‘But the hole bears witness. The body does not lie. There should be a tooth there, now it’s no longer there and therefore…’
He shook his head.
‘I woke up, it was a little bit before I left, before I came here. Someone had inflated a balloon in my cheeks. A very strange feeling. I said, I remember it well, I must have felt horrible, and I swore. What the mufferfuck…I said. And then I cried. Where are my ff’s?’
Mundo took photos of him.
‘Where are my ff’s, who took my ff’s, do you understand? I couldn’t say “th”. My tongue was swollen. And the saliva was running down my chin. I had shaved that day and Mojca was livid at me for that, well, actually I don’t know what she was feeling, but she looked angry, she said she knew what that meant, my shaving, that it was just a matter of time… I couldn’t quite understand what she meant by that. But, ok, I was freshly shaven, with spittle all over the place.’
Mundo took photos. The camera shutter released a salvo of five, six rapid clicks.
‘Mojca was a dentist. A really good one, a really successful one, with her own private practice, money to burn. Soon she became independent, as far as money goes, and in a way that was a healthy thing for our relationship. Now that I think about it, on the surface, each of us functioned independently, yet we had an inner connection, though I can’t really understand that any more. I can’t mnemote it. Yes?’
Mundo took photos. Click-click-click-click.
‘She was a dentist, though she herself never went to the dentist. Isn’t that suspect? Her teeth were perfect, absolutely healthy enamel, no cavities, no bad breath, no plaque, just whiteness, just purity. She didn’t even need a prosthesis – is that what you call it? A prosthesis? – those metal things you stick in your mouth to make your teeth line up straight, I had them when I was a kid, well, her jaw was perfect from birth, she didn’t even have wisdom teeth. Mine had to be torn out. I was still a kid. Braces! Of course, that’s what you call them. And a person like that goes on to become a dentist. A person who has no idea what it means to sit in a chair with a drill aimed at your skull. That’s problematic.’
Mundo approached him, piercing the bubble of his personal space, but Evan wasn’t bothered. He took photos of Evan’s unshaven chin, which swivelled as he spoke.
‘But so be it, if men can be gynaecologists… That’s even more problematic, I guess. Or…artists. They don’t have a clue either.’
Evan stopped talking. The camera was left hanging in the air, silent. Koito made a mill gesture with her hands, keep going.
‘Well, and…what was I saying? Oh yeah, I’m lying there hollering where are my ff’s? Mute in the head. You could have slapped me and I wouldn’t have minded. She filled me up with narcotics, my skin was numb. I wiped off the saliva which was running down all the time, I couldn’t keep it in, so I was wiping it off. And I yelled. Mufferfucker and so on. I still didn’t know I was missing a tooth. And then she appeared, smiling wickedly, and at that moment I already hated her, well, I don’t know, I can remember now that I told her I hated her because she’d made an utter fool of me, just so that I wouldn’t go, and she almost succeeded, if it weren’t for my friends, but I don’t know, now I can’t remember how I felt at the time. She came over, dressed in a red jacket that I’d bought for her in Vienna, lipsticked and powdered, beautiful and sleek and alluring, and she walked right over to me, with a smile on her wicked face, I can see it now, beautiful and tasteful and attractive and wicked…’
Evan waved his hands as he spoke, sitting on the stool, surrounded by spotlights and white tarpaulins that dispersed the sharp light into a gentle pallor. Mundo moved in a circle, catching the rhythm of his diction and taking photos of the vowels whenever Evan opened his mouth wide.
‘She leant over me, I was lying there, paralysed, wasted from everything that she’d done to me, and though I can’t remember exactly how I felt I know that somehow I didn’t manage to move much, and she pushed her cleavage into my face, I mean, she came really close to me and her ample breasts were right in my eyes, and between them was a necklace I’d bought her, not long after we’d met, back when she was still stupid and naive, at least that’s how I remember seeing her in my thoughts – get it? – and she shoved her fingers, with those filed and flawless nails painted pink, into her cleavage and extracted the necklace, so the pendant was now dangling right in front of my nose, dangling as if it had been created to dangle there and not to veg out peacefully its whole life, devoid of all commotion, in my damn mouth.’
Evan was getting worked up, which clearly delighted the photographer. He danced around him, hunting down angles, light, the gaping of the mouth.
‘But I pushed her away, weakly, I was so weak, completely powerless, but I pushed her away and ran a finger under my gums, counted my teeth, saw one was missing and said muffer, Mojffa, you’ll pay for ffat!’
His head had grown heavy. He put his elbows on his knees and his hands over his ears. That straightened out his face. Mundo positioned himself right in front of him.
‘And she did.’
Click-click-click-click-click.
The city cityish as they drove. The pavements pavementy, the lines liney, the clouds cloudy. Koito’s vehicle was self-driving, fully automatic, no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Seaty seats and windowy windows. She pressed a button and with a quiet electric hum they were in the street, streety, hovering.
‘Where to now?’
‘The director of the theatre wants to talk to you.’
‘Something serious?’
‘Something serious.’
‘How serious?’
‘Very serious. We’re going there and the two of you will have a real discussion.’
‘What about?’
‘I do not know.’
The conversation was amorphously conversational. The producing director had some bureaucratic problems that Evan didn’t understand and he didn’t know what to say, so he did a lot of smiling and nodding and grimacing concern at the right places, allowing his looks to dissolve into a benevolent Ah, it’ll work out, it’ll all be fine. Strangely, this put the director at ease. Koito remained outside the room; their conversation took place among a great deal of leather furniture. What is it you want from me? thought Evan. The director was opening the notebooks that were on the table, showed numbers and graphs and arrows, and chased them around with his finger on the paper, which made Evan wince. They parted with a dry handshake and Evan left with the unpleasant feeling of having been robbed. The time was slowly timing away.
A long drive out of the city. The skyscrapers sank out of sight, chased out by forlorn shacks that sprouted up and ate into the swamp for a few minutes before disappearing into the mud. After that, uninterrupted patches of wild growth. Then, for a long time, nothing, just bare earth, split in two by the road, before fences, tall, concrete, impermeable, appeared. The car brought them up to a metal gate. A movable camera gawked at them. Hologram light filled the space in the car.
‘Open your eyes,’ said Koito.
Evan held them open. Soon the door opened. The car hovered its way inside, got swallowed up by the walls.
‘What now?’
‘Lunch, the Mishima family.’
‘I’ve read him.’
‘Who?’
‘Yukio.’
‘I do not know who that is.’
He’d never seen such a manor. A totally sui generis form that was inspired neither by Europe’s colonial past nor by any indigenous culture. The architect must have been cut off from the world, perhaps a feral child who’d never been taught to read or write but only to draw inhuman lines. Evan found it very manorish.
They were obviously late because the servant ran up to the car and almost gruffly ushered them towards the door where another servant was standing and they were even more gruffly ushered into the dining room. The family was already seated. There was less and less steam rising from the plates in front of them.
Koito apologized for the lateness (if you can call her cold address to the assembled an apology: We should have arrived thirteen minutes ago), bowed, and sat down. Evan managed a sort of bow before he, with a slight loss of balance, collapsed into the chair. All eyes were fixed on him. He felt awkward.
‘I must tell you that the achievements of your – what? Great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather? – have always been a great inspiration for my art, if I may say so, let me tell you that just a few years ago I put on a show, a satire, but not a silly one, I was aiming more at a modern intervention into the membrane of luxuriant greed, whose final act very much reflected the tragically unsuccessful attempted putsch attempt by your – what? Great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather? – I mean, when I read about it I was struck dumb, what a majestic affair. He wanted to restore the divine nature of the emperor, clothe him anew, so to speak, after the office had lost its shine, eroded by the spiritual vulgarity of the post-war reality, through action, with devotion to the goal, through the complete sovereignty of the human soul, but they all laughed at him, that was in the ’70s when people had already been robbed of the transcendent, robbed utterly, they even booed him, you see how the existence among the masses is crass, they booed him and made him commit suicide. Sepukku. That must make you very proud.’
Their faces were far away, barely visible in the dark. They looked at one another, someone cleared his throat.
‘Excuse me, Mr Z—, but I fear you are mistaken.’ It was a woman’s voice, old, raspy and quiet. ‘Yukio Mishima was a pseudonym for Kimitake Hiraoka, a family with whom we have no relation. Because I feel no need for tact, I will add another thing. Our great grandfather was the commander of Camp Ichigaya, the very camp that the writer,’ this was clearly a curse word, ‘occupied in his blasted performance, the one you found so inspiring. Your error was a grave one. I believe it would be better for all of us if we finished our meal in silence.’
Only now did Evan look at his plate, loaded with – what else? – pancakey pancakes, dripping with chocolate.
Funny, what a couple of words can do. In a single minute Evan had exchanged eleven lives. He was an offended deity, triumphant father, a wounded lover, an innocent child, a lying woman and an indifferent teenager, he’d been life and death, a lizard, a dog and a hoopoe. She took him to a pet shop, and soon it became clear why. She was testing whether there was any space left in their life, or whether all the cracks were already filled. She knelt down to a golden retriever puppy. The saleswoman smiled at them. This was a common scene for her. She knew what was going on.
‘Will you buy it for me?’
‘Will you take care of him?’
‘But we’ll be together.’
‘Mojca.’
‘What?’
‘If you need some body to warm your bed when I’m gone, I’ll happily buy it, but, please, stop pretending that I’m not leaving because that’s bloody childish. By the time I’m back that thing will be a real dog.’
The little puppy pushed its snout between her legs.
‘See,’ said Evan, ‘you won’t even know that I’m gone,’ and smiled to himself. The saleswoman hid her indignant face behind the cans of cat food. Mojca got up and stuck her face into his. There was fire in her eyes. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she whispered harshly and blew him off into the caravan of strangers’ heads.
‘That did not go well.’
‘In terms of the schedule,’ said Koito, ‘it went perfectly well.’
‘But I offended them. They almost kicked us out.’
‘In terms of the schedule.’
‘You don’t understand, Koito.’
‘It is not necessary.’
‘Will they come to the show?’
‘It is probable.’
‘I shouldn’t have lied to them.’
Evan closed his eyes. Darkling darkness.
She was hovering high in the air, in the sky, among the clouds, and he was so far down below. Her hair was braided into long, golden plaits. He opened his mouth. Bubbles were streaming out of it and popping right by it, so he couldn’t hear what he was saying to her. She laughed. You’re not going anywhere, she called out. Because you can’t, you can’t go now. Now you have to go upwards. He looked down. His belly was inflated. His heels had peeled themselves from the ground and the wind was pushing him towards her. They were way up high and laughing at each other. They pointed at the world. They hugged and pushed each other away. And again. And again. Laughing. Their bellies inflated, they flew about like balls. Every contact sounded like the muted striking of rubber on rubber. A game. Everything was a game. His hands grasped for her. He grabbed hold of a braid and pulled her towards him, pressing her to his balloon body. He whispered in her ear. That was the only way he could hear himself.
‘It’s beautiful up here, but how are we going to land?’
He couldn’t believe what he’d said: beautiful. She stuck out her tongue, which split into scissors. She put a plait between the split of her tongue. She cut it off and used it to tie him to a cloud.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave you here and you’ll never have to go down. Never.’
With her scissored tongue she pierced her belly and fell. That angered him. He took a deep breath and, as if from a gun barrel, shot bullets of teeth at her.
‘Evan Z—!’
‘What?’
‘Don’t do that with your lips.’
‘What?’
‘Blow raspberries.’
‘I was dreaming.’
‘We’re late. You have half an hour of free time under supervision. Where do you want to go?’
‘You know what? I don’t care.’
The car was standing still. Shadows were flitting by. It had become cloudy, and the light brought rain to mind. A cloud of flies was buzzing above the ground.
‘Mao once had all the birds killed off,’ said Evan.
‘Mao?’
‘Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator.’
‘I know nothing about China.’
‘He ordered that all sparrows be killed because they got on his nerves.’
‘Sparrow?’
‘A wretched little bird, like a smaller pigeon.’
‘Pigeon?’
‘A flying rat.’
‘A rat with wings?’
‘Yes.’
‘It is good that he killed them.’
‘You don’t like rats?’
‘I do not understand the question.’
‘Why do you think it’s good to kill them?’
‘Rats are dangerous to people. Even more so if they can fly.’
‘Koito, just take me to the theatre, please.’
‘Ok.’
The KaBoom-ki theatre is the work of the Japanese architect Kiyonori Yamaguchi, heir to the luckiest unlucky man in the world, Tsutomo Yamaguchi, who survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, then fled to Nagasaki just in time to have the opportunity to survive another one. He died at the age of 93, long after the end of the war.
The building is in the shape of an atomic cloud, that is, of the deadliest of mushrooms, although the wicked tongues of the local architects like to insinuate that the visuals of the emerald steel and cement of which the building was constructed made it look, from a distance, more like a stalk of broccoli, an assessment with which Evan agreed, since the first time he’d seen it he’d come to a similar judgement entirely independently of those wicked tongues.
At the base of the stalk, or the stem of the mushroom, or the pillar of smoke, stands a shopping centre hawking antiques and other useless expensive merchandise that Edo’s elite turn their noses up at as they walk, dressed primly and properly, into the theatre. During the day everything is closed, but at the side entrance for stagehands and for other hired hands there’s always someone smoking a cigarette and moving his lips, staring into the air and dreaming he was someone else, somewhere else.
That’s where Evan and Koito saw Oksana. When she saw them, she flushed.
‘Hi, Oksana.’
‘Eeeeevan. Hi. And, sorry, this morning was all…fast and I don’t remember…your name…’
Her voice trailed off, expecting a response, but Koito said nothing.
‘Hello.’
Koito gave a slight bow.
‘Are there a lot of people here already?’ asked Evan.
‘I don’t know. I just got here.’
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t smoke a lot. But today, sorry, a strange day,’ she turned even redder, ‘and cloudy. I just…wanted to.’
‘Take care of your voice.’
Oksana nodded humbly, as if he were an accusing father.
‘You two going up?’ she asked.
‘Finish your cigarette. We’ll go together.’
An extraordinary-looking man approached them. Such people are to be found only in the imagination of addicts trying to kick the habit, in the dreams of bizarre children, and, most frequently, in the streets of Edo. His hairstyle was a horse-hairy mane, painted orange, curled into strands, like a ripped-up mattress, which made his face look a bit like a lion’s, which was strange, since his thickly white-powdered face looked nothing like an animal’s. His left eyelid, left nostril and the left side of his mouth were sewn together with a thick black thread. His right eye was an almost transparent blue, a wart the size of a hazelnut stared out of his right nostril, looking like a tumour in the making, and the right half of his jaw was unshaven. The half-beard was, of course, bright red. He was wearing a black dinner jacket that must have been salvaged from some ancient cupboard, a moth kingdom, and protruding from his sleeves were what appeared to be stalks of straw. It was impossible to say how old he was. He offered Evan his hand, which Evan shook out of habit, although a chill ran down his spine the instant before contact. The hand was humanly warm, entirely ordinary.
‘Junichiro.’
‘Evan.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘I came to see how my text is coming along.’
Evan tilted his head.
‘Junichiro, Junichiro, Junichiro…Marukama? Your text? Moody Dick is yours?’
Junichiro smiled a half-smile and nodded. Evan grabbed hold of his hand again and shook it more fervently.
‘I am honoured, Mr Marukama. Your play was absolutely explosive for me, as far as inspiration goes.’
‘I am pleased.’
‘So am I, so am I.’
Evan held the door and gestured for Junichiro to enter. He forgot all about Koito and Oksana, so they had to open the door themselves. As Oksana crossed the threshold the first drops of rain fell, bursting inaudibly.
The troupe was on stage, arranged in a tight semicircle and ready for motivational training led by a tiny, energetic lady named Miiko. Evan sent Oksana into their midst before taking a front-row seat with Junichiro and Koito.
Miiko raised a hand and bellowed, ‘Everyone here?’, and dropped it before anyone could answer. Then they ran, and jumped, and hugged each other, and danced, and imitated animals, and inhaled and exhaled, and put their legs around their necks, and hollered, and forced out laughter, under constraint, which triggered salvos of real laughter, and then sobbed, and teased their throats with vowels, and rolling r’s, and ran again and jumped and hugged, and so forth.
Half of Junichiro’s face manifested approval. Evan waved a hand.
‘This is harmless time-frittering in my opinion, nothing very useful, but, ok, I allow it as long as they then listen to me.’
‘Oh, it seems fine to me. Before writing, I too doodle, scribble and spew out words at random so I can calibrate the language. Its varying levels of existence. You have to be in accord with the vibe. Me, language, them, the body. But I understand that you don’t value it, because you are again somewhere else, where it’s not so simple. What does a director have, where he can carelessly examine, before embarking on a structured vision?’
‘Ah, nothing special.’ He paused. ‘Life.’
‘Bravo.’
Their faces turned cold. They stared at the stage, where Miiko was standing on tiptoe and stretching skywards, ‘Like a palm, like a cypress, like a ficus!’
‘Evan Z—, will you get up?’
‘Koito, I don’t need you now. This is my home.’
He stood up, filled his lungs with air, closed his eyes, counted
three
two
one
and ran on stage, like a man reborn, ‘Dear friends, tonight will be, with your help, a complete run-through, a smooth and productive rehearsal! We have a guest, Mr Marukama, the author of the source material for our text and I expect you to treat his eyes, his eye, as if they, as if it, were a whole hall, filled to the rafters. I demand flow and sweat and devotion, I demand absorption! Beyond the edges of these boards, there’s nothing. Your whole world lies within them!’ He went to his spot, behind the console that had been set up in front of the stage, a yard below. From there he had the director’s control over his orchestra of people, lights and sound. ‘Today we’re going to do the fifth because we’ve still got a few weak spots.’ Some exasperated groans. ‘Don’t turn up your noses, today is the last time we’re doing it without animals, be thankful. Then it’s really going to get hellish!’ He jumped and shook his body. ‘Let’s go, mourners, into a circle, please, please, people, you know where you’re supposed to be, Oksana, you’re in the middle, people, as if for real, legs apart, as much as you can, as if for real, and where’s Pasha? Where the hell is Pasha? What? A holiday? He’s got a fucking religious holiday? Are you shitting me? What the hell does he believe in? Somebody go call him. I’m serious. Tell him to be here in ten. What? For the fucking love of God, this isn’t a playschool, we’re making theatre here, let him come on stage and do his ritual magic, it’s the right place for it. What? No, wait, are we talking about the same Pasha? My lead actor? That same Pasha that can only be torn away from his pack of whores by a bottle of whisky? One week before opening and he’s got a holiday? Aw, fuck it. He’s not here? You can’t get him? Where’s his sponsor? In jail, hahaha. Nothing. Ok, nothing. Kobo, can you come to the console? Yes, the fifth, I’ll tell you what to do. What? I will. Yes. Me. Give me the tunic.’ He went onto the stage, put on the black gown and spun around. Everyone was in their place. He lifted his chin, looked at Kobo and nodded. The purple strobe light began pounding the stage, the violins filled the air with the sound of anthills. Oksana was lying on the floor with legs spread and her head turned away from the audience. On both sides of her the mourners twisted and turned. ‘Kobo, can you tone down the violins? No, leave the setting as it is, just a little less. They’re getting on my nerves.’ In the front row, Junichiro grimaced. ‘What’s up with the tornado? What? Costs too much? He told me? I agreed? Just for the rehearsal, or in general? Good, good. Then for now we’ll just turn on the ventilators, just for the feel of it.’ The wind blew across the stage, lifting the skirts and revealing the tights stretching over the dancers’ sinewy legs. ‘A double code, opposites, we’re celebrating birth and death at the same time, let me see on your faces, twisted with misfortune, a sliver of hope, how you grasp for it, the short-lived, the transitory, because that’s all you’re left with.’ With firm steps he walked around Oksana. ‘Where are my saints? Put the light on them, Kobo, it’s ready, just press. Yes.’ Enormous paper effigies of a fool and of a clown were raised into the air on ropes, their arms splayed. ‘Ok, this is the opening scene. Everything in its place. Now, movement.’ His face morphed into one of concentration. Clumps of paper descended from the ceiling, the mourners chased after them, and read random scatterings of poetry, in dirge-diction. Evan stood over Oksana; her head was between his spread legs. ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘How will we avoid the wrath of words?’ ‘Whose words?’ ‘The words that have already been written, into the books, into the bodies, printed on tongues.’ ‘They threaten us?’ ‘They’re getting closer and closer.’ The mourners took a step towards them, their mouths full of lines of verse. ‘The old words that have sharpened so many mouths that they have themselves become blunt. What can they do to us?’ ‘Sister, fear repetition, duplication, fear clones, reflections, mirrors.’ ‘I do not understand. Why?’ ‘Basilisks for the soul, you turn to stone when you look at them, avenues of statues, marble, ancient reefs.’ Verses, a step closer. ‘How should I drive them out?’ ‘Through birth.’ ‘But I can’t give birth to anything new. Only to our echo. Will he be able to drive them away?’ ‘We will plug his ears and open his mouth, close his eyes and nose, and his fingers won’t be allowed to feel.’ ‘But jellyfish can also slip in through the mouth.’ ‘Then he will have to scream constantly.’ Verses, even closer. ‘Brother, I do not want it.’ ‘What?’ ‘The new.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because it will be old for someone else.’ ‘For whom?’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ ‘For whom?’ Oksana cried in the throes of giving birth, the mourners pressed the two of them into a circle. ‘For whom?’ A scream. ‘For whom?’ A scream, a step. Evan winced. ‘Where are the dog-heads? Yes! At the fourth for whom, the full moon is uncovered, the saints bow their heads, the dog-heads begin to howl, up front. Let’s go, one more time, the fourth for whom?’ A scream, a step, the backdrop behind the stage exploded in a blaze of halogen lights, dogs’ masks, larger than the bodies and made of styrofoam, turned snout-first into the air above and howled in a chorus, ‘The dog moon breath of the world, breath of the world, the dog moon breathes the world, breathes the world…’ ‘Now the parents come and the light on the saints goes out.’ Two shapes ran from the behind the scenes. ‘Children! What have you done!’ The mourners didn’t let them join in. ‘Father, mother, aunt, uncle. We are always the same. The incest of words, the mating of poetry. Look what emerges from the sameness, from the eternal sameness, from the cycles, from the seasons, from the orbiting of comets, from galactic spirals and double, duplicate helices!’ The mourners lifted the father onto his back, he cried ‘Oh, that you may see no more of what evil I have committed, what I have done!’ and histrionically hit himself in the face, with his own hand. Evan repeated in a mocking tone, ‘Oh, that you may see no more, that you may see no more of what evil I have committed, what I have done,’ and pathetically ran a hand over his eyes. Oksana screamed, loudly wheezed, rose to her elbows and stretched her legs into perfect splits. ‘Oh, no more, no more, no more, no more, no more,’ in a rhythm, and the dog-heads took up the mantra, no more, no more, the mourners tore the sheets of paper into tiny pieces and threw them in the air, and joined in the chanting, no more, no more, Evan, now out of character, jumped and clapped, the whole stage shook with the rhythm of a march, and he pointed a finger at Kobo, held it for a while, then made a fist. The strobe light was extinguished, the music stopped, and the actors froze. ‘This will be the end of the tornado, and they’ll release the birds. Did they get the birds? Problems? What problems? Ok, we can do this without the birds, but still, they could at least have got a few parrots. Parrots, yes, what? Nobody knows what a parrot is? A parroting parrot? Ha ha. Good. That was good. Now comes the difficult part, now you’re all to be perfectly still, like you’re made of stone. Yes? I’ll allow some sweat to trickle off you, but everything else stays frozen. The wheels of time are jammed. When worlds are born, the universe is still.’ He sat down in front of Oksana, his back to the audience, and crossed his legs. ‘Kobo, an E chord, cello, hit it. That’s all. No, an octave lower, please. That’s it.’ ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘I see the head.’ ‘Is it beautiful?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ugly?’ ‘No.’ ‘What’s it like?’ ‘I don’t know, like a head.’ ‘Would you like to save it?’ ‘I don’t have a keyboard.’ ‘Would you like to upload it?’ ‘I don’t have a mouse.’ ‘Monitor.’ ‘Resolution.’ ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘We’re cooked.’ ‘Cooked?’ ‘Probably.’ ‘Sing me a song.’ ‘I don’t know any. You sing one to me.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘A completely new one.’ Evan couldn’t see what was going on behind his back, but he did hear the coughing. He waited for it to subside. Oksana raised her voice into a melody. ‘Sister.’ A melody. ‘Sister.’ A melody. ‘Sister, our child will be a pop-art freak, like a can of soup.’ The melody stopped. ‘Like Marilyn?’ ‘It’s a boy.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because he won’t be allowed to give birth.’ ‘Maybe he will be a black square on a black background.’ ‘Rothko?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Did you know the CIA actively propagated expressionism, constructivism and the radical avant-garde, and deliberately smeared social realism?’ ‘Really? Why?’ ‘Fear.’ ‘Of?’ ‘Change.’ ‘Nothing changes.’ ‘Tell that to the CIA.’ The coughing suddenly sounded rather forced, like it had lost its primary function of throat-clearing and took on an independent purpose as an instrument of disturbance. Evan wrinkled his nose. ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘I expect you to give birth.’ ‘I don’t want to.’ ‘You have to.’ ‘I’m afraid.’ ‘Of what?’ ‘Change.’ ‘Nothing changes.’ ‘Tell that to my skin.’ ‘Surface.’ ‘And inside?’ ‘The world.’ The coughing was replaced by an indistinct murmuring. ‘Kobo, now in G sharp. Thank you. Now if the audience could, please, be a little…’ The murmuring lost its r’s and was now just a mumming. Evan shrugged. ‘Ok. In G, the parents.’ ‘Father, mother, aunt, uncle. Now it’s Pasha’s monologue, I won’t do the whole thing, I’ll show you guys some mercy, everything is peaceful, the G sharp is sustained, the monologue is, let’s say, a few minutes, and at the end there’s, what is it again? Right…’ he hugged the parents, who were all standing by Oksana’s side, ‘…and that’s why we’re here, in the world, to keep right on rolling down, since the path leads only into the depths, and we roll, and on the second we roll the riff on “Whole Lotta Love” once, ok, again, second roll and we roll,’ ta-na na-na-na, ‘down the hill, full of bumps and bruises, and we never reach the ground, that view is saved for our children, who will also roll,’ he nods, ta-na na-na-na, ‘and the view is saved for their children, and they roll,’ ta-na na-na-na, ‘into eternity, downhill, always, eternally, because, as we all know, the earth is round.’ By now he could clearly hear curses coming from the audience. Evan disregarded them and motioned to Kobo, ‘Ok, now play the whole song, good, when Plant revs up that chainsaw voice, gradually get off the stage. The platform will rise, with Oksana, and the rocks will roll, what about the rocks? Aha, good, they’re there. Painted yet? No. All right. And the spotlight, again, back on the saint. The platform will reach the top, right when the solo starts. Yes, I’ve had the technician fiddle with it a bit, now it’s better… Ok, what about the rocks? Like that. Good, Kobo, let me come there, no more Pasha until the end of the scene, no? Ok.’ He walked proudly to the console and saw Junichiro’s threatening face glaring at him. ‘And birth.’ The violin bow struck the strings. Oksana added her voice to Plant’s squeals and they wailed together. The enormous rocks of foam rolled from both sides and disappeared behind the curtains at the edges. A camera descended from the ceiling on a steel wire, peeked between Oksana’s legs and projected onto the surface of the mass of white fabric behind her. Screams, shrieking, wailing strings. Evan pressed a button. A transparent screen with a human heart sketched on it descended in front of the stage. If you looked through it, you could see an opening in the fabric behind Oksana spreading in rhythmic, ever quicker, throbs. A dark crevice. Nothing in it. Evan grinned. As the solo reached a peak, an uninterrupted, animalistic scream came cascading out of Oksana’s throat. The whiteness of the fabric was banished to the edges, the outline of a black hole. A stream of red sand came surging from the top of the platform on which Oksana was lying. The canvas rose, the camera rose, the lights went out and all that remained was a spotlight beam aimed straight at Oksana, the guitar solo was cut off, her screaming died out and the air was disturbed by a quiet, drawn out beating of the heart, the pecking of birds and the sounds of sand seeping into a crimson pile on the floor. ‘… insulting to every aspect of our culture.’ Evan turned around. Junichiro’s hands were trembling as he spoke with Koito. She was peacefully staring ahead, with her arms folded in front of her. ‘What?’ The platform had begun to descend. Junichiro turned to Evan and placed his hands on the edge of the chair to get up when the fanfare rang out. Oksana sat up and was waiting for the platform to join the floor. Then she got up, knelt down, buried her hands in the sand, raised them and spread her fingers so that the sand slipped through. ‘There’s nothing. Praised be, praised be. I was so afraid. But there’s nothing that could be. It can’t go on like this, it dispersed into the cloud of a sunrise. It was a lie, and a lie does not sprout. Praised be, praised be. Toto was right when he first got a whiff of the truth.’ Barefoot, she stepped onto the pile and stretched her hands high in the air. ‘Love can’t lie and a mere word doesn’t become flesh.’ The mourners changed into monks’ tunics and, with rosaries in their hands, went to the edges of the stage and hummed the opening bars of the New World Symphony. ‘A liar will escape, another liar will hang. And both will sprout wings. And beaks. Their home will be the heavens, and they will not be allowed to land. Never again. May it never be repeated. I ask for just this one thing, from the heights, just one thing, may it never, never, be repeated. May everyone live anew, and not again. Red wings. Never again ground.’ The light fell. Darkness. Evan clapped. Alone.
‘…no sense, no heart, nothing human, nothing kindly, nothing warm, and above all no story…’
‘But!’
‘…entire generations of our artists are rolling over in their graves, regretting having died before they could prevent such a mess…’
‘But!’
‘…such an insult to the universals, the foundations of our culture, you think I’m stupid, that I don’t understand the criticism of reproduction, extraction of the essence, the carving out of the superfluous and seeking the essential, you vulgar Westerner…’
‘But!’
‘…what you’ve done to my text? You’ve misread it on purpose, you miscreant, I wanted to show that from the atom of a family you can create, ultimately, something beautiful, and you abused that to serve your perverse fantasies, filled up a relationship with utter buffoonery, you’ve stolen my dialogue just to mock…’
‘That wasn’t the whole thing. You don’t even know how it ends!’
‘Well, how does it end?’
Evan was indignantly silent. Junichiro was standing close to him, too close, staring at him with clenched fists at his sides.
‘How does it end?’ he yelled.
‘She plans a military putsch in the name of love, he makes a mockery out of it and drives her to suicide.’
Koito reacted immediately, but she was too late. Junichiro’s fist was headed straight for Evan’s jaw, making tiny vibrations in the air as it travelled through space; Evan’s eyes managed to perceive this movement just before he was blinded by pain, by a sudden, all-consuming, pure pain that was simple in its nature, unambiguous, clear, understandable to all living things, and as his consciousness collapsed into the forceful contact foreign knuckles made with his skin-covered bones, there was but a single note, a single canvas, jittery cheeks, a wobbling chin, a head that snapped back, dragging Evan’s body behind it as his soles quietly took leave of the floor, thus propelling his entire body into a horizontal levitation, a magic trick of sorts, with a solitary thought residing in the pain, a singularly selfish thought, ow, ow, ow my