SVETLANA EFREMOVA

I would breathe against the window and watch the thin white cloud my breath made on the glass and I would take a finger and write an X in the mist. Then I would move ever-so-slightly left or right and I would exhale again and make another small cloud on the glass and again I would make an X. I did this until I had covered the entire window in that room with the white anxious smoke of my lungs. Then I would go to the next window and start over and make small Xs, row upon row, small exact Xs, engraved in the temporary surface my breath made on the cold window panes.

 

I wouldn’t even look outside. I never took my eyes off the small X, then the next virgin spot on which there wasn’t an X. And even if I had wanted to look outside, it would have been pointless to look, as the other side of the window was inches thick with dirt and car exhaust and pigeon shit. The light that penetrated that window was a urine-colored little spit of light, a little piss of light fighting the compacted air and finally leaking into the room, yellow and anxious, like a diabetic’s piss.

 

There were nine windows in the room and nine is the number of redemption.

 

I don’t know why I made so many Xs. I was amazed by this activity. I couldn’t stop. Not even when they brought the food. Little trays with neatly wrapped sandwiches, which I ignored until I was nearly starving, but ate quickly because I didn’t want to stop making Xs on those silent nine windows. In fact hunger only heightened my desire, motivated me, gave me a heroic reason to continue the punishment, the shameful, secret ritual that had locked its iron jaws around my mind.

I began to despise myself for my weakness: it wasn’t a voice, or a pair of hands, but some force had seized me and all my cursing and rebellious fantasies were wasted on it. Superior and inexhaustible it commanded, yes, commanded me to continue.

 

Why did I obey? I loved food. I loved going to the bathroom. I loved living in my dreams. I loved exploring sin, but only in my imagination. Outside of my imagination I was terrified of sin and would never commit one and I’d follow every rule, man-made or dictated by God, no matter how absurd, I listened, I followed. Fear motivated me and I never strayed from the narrow pathway leading from birth to death. I let pleasures elude me. I let people walk away from me, free of my fantasies of them, innocent of my deeply buried desires and dreams, the twisting, fantastic, highly plotted, improbable living dreams in which I satisfied every need and never paid for it, never lost a lover, never felt guilt, never apologized. I turned my back on everything in order to make little miniature Xs on the surface of great industrial windows, tightly interconnected X-patterns as elaborate and lovely as the Book of Kells.

 

What was I trying to make? What code was I trying to break?

 

At times I was vaguely aware of others in the room with me. I didn’t know if they were real or ghosts. I was aware of distant voices, detached and clinical, voices that freeze your blood and incense your mind, voices I tried to ignore as I covered those vast windows in Xs. I wanted to stop and address the voices. To turn around and viciously insult whoever it was who spoke to me in such rude and disrespectful ways. But I found I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t stop making Xs in the windows. Night after night, sleepless, nearly starved, I continued my work in light that obscured my vision and among voices that confused my hearing.

I imagined my fists breaking through the window. I imagined throwing my only chair through the window. I imagined great pure sunlight storming into the room: then air—pure air! And, then, space beyond the window, space to walk and breathe and really live. I imagined eating food again and having lovely bowel movements and rerunning my sexual fantasies and getting an apartment and a car and maybe a temp job in a secure office, some old corporation that would take good care of me.

 

I would like that. I would develop as a human being in that scenario. I would acquire a small selection of elite books. The great thoughts of mankind. I’d buy CDs and listen to the latest tunes. I would flourish within the context of new friendships. People would bring me news of distant places. All would find my story of the room and the Xs appalling and fascinating. I would develop a reputation as an appalling and fascinating individual. No one at the corporation would suspect the depth of the quiet and loyal little functionary in the next cubicle. Storage of so many secrets would only enhance my mental powers. I have been a wanderer, an explorer of the twisting pathways of the mind. My passport is stamped by nations grotesque and wonderful.

 

Over and over again I would be aware of my moral superiority. Over and over again . . . over and over again . . . over and over again . . . as I made my Xs. As I made my Xs in my urine-colored room I realized how stupid these fantasies were. How abject and cruel. My fantasies made me sick. And in that sickness I found a strange liberation.

 

A strange liberation is what you gave me.