I am sitting on the pavement gluing
my back to the red bricks that explode towards the sky. With fingertips of my
left hand I draw invisible patterns and make more complicated calculations. The
sun above me makes everything nearly colourless and two-dimensional. I try to
look up from time to time, but all I can see is only this whole brightness.
Bright totality. Blinding nothingness.
I think I am waiting for someone.
Unable to agree with myself on the details, I am simply sitting and keeping a
neutral look on my face. There is a big chance I am waiting for J. and if so I
am probably too early because J. is never late. If it’s not J. that I am
waiting for, I know there are not many other options but somehow they keep on
escaping me… It’s so hard to focus, with this sharp and impenetrable light that
floods whole world around me. It enters my head through my tightly closed eyes,
it sinks in my skin and somehow manages to travel in my bloodstream – it
multiplies itself within me and becomes stronger, it aims for my heart. It
spreads like disease.
And so – I still can’t remember, I
can barely see.
From time to time I can hear steps
– but they keep their pace when they are passing me by, so I guess they are not
the one I am waiting for (on the pavement, near the brick tower, in this great
and horrible sun). After a while I start to name prime numbers – my own kind of
prayer, my own kind of psalm.
Someone stops just next to me and
casts a shadow on my forehead and eyelids. I want to look up but my pupils
become so heavy and all I can see are dusty and dirty shoes in front of me, deprived
of any colour, with sad and nearly non-existent shoe-laces. I stare at them out
of necessity, as there is nothing else for me to do. I don’t recognize them.
But, to be completely honest, it’s not like I don’t recognize them. My mind resembles cotton candy and there is
not much I can do about it.
Silence doesn’t bother me (it never
did). For unmeasured and unaccounted by anyone time there is only me and these
shoes. Finally I can feel that the shadow over me moved and suddenly someone
grabs me by my neck and lifts into standing position. I squint and probably my
face twists in ugly convulsions. Sun rays attack me in so many new ways, burn
skin under my hair and inside my mouth. I think to myself that it can’t be
normal or at least I want to think that but instead there is only more fluffy
and shapeless matter that fills my head that makes me dumb and indifferent. Probably
only the realisation that now I can’t see the shoes worries me a little bit and
I nearly make a grunt to protest (nearly but not quite). My whole body goes
through the nauseating motions and I can barely stop myself from throwing up or
fainting. In the end though – my vision sharpens and the feeling that I am on
fire disappears.
The person in front of me is mostly
eyes. Blue shadow upon the iris and pitch black pupils – staring at me. Staring
through me. Staring inside of me. They are not blinking so I am trying not to. But
this game is rigged – we both know it. We both know I will lose. We both know I
have already lost (even before it all started). Somehow though - it doesn’t
matter. Game has to be played – and so we stand and stare. My eyelids shut for
a nanosecond and it’s just like a shot from the gun (it would go straight
through my heart if it was real, if I would have a heart). Minimalistic and not
very pretty smile spreads like a melted butter just under these blue eyes. Oh
yes, if it all was real, I would be already dead.
Dead can’t talk so I stay mute,
sort of on a stand-by. All this fluff that filled my head makes it anyway hard
to do anything else. I can’t even decide whether this blue-eyed monster is a
friend or a foe – just in case it might be the latter I don’t allow my face to
change and give away anything that may or may not be happening inside of me.
Fee-fi-fo-fum…
- Shall we…? – I hear the voice
even though the lips haven’t moved and are still frozen in this peculiar cold
smirk. Part of me wants to turn around and simply run away – build a distance
between me and this thing. But, as it could have been predicted, I comply. I shrug
my shoulders and without any protest start following it. For a while we are
walking on little narrow streets with skewed walls around and very much alike
some sort of the labyrinth. I know very well – wrong – I understand on a very
basic level that I can’t see these eyes; that these eyes shouldn’t be able to
see me – yet, with a lot of effort and nearly as if it was against some kind of
the law, I look down and try to hide behind my eyelashes. The thing laughs and
it makes me scared and angry. I part my lips and want to say something
(anything; make a sound – a barbaric and vulgar howl, shapeless and
uncontrolled scream) but suddenly I realise that I have forgotten how to do it.
Like a fish, with similarly stupid expression, I open my mouth several times
and produce nothing but silence. And so – in the language of silence – I say:
- Fuck you.
We continue our walk – between tall
and half-ruined buildings, with no-one around to witness this slow decline of
mine. Finally we stop – just next to the bench. It sits and makes a general and
not very precise gesture that I can sit as well. Don’t know exactly why but my
body choses to sit on its knees. We are nearly the same size, with bony limbs
that are always too long and in a way. Almost instantly I am uncomfortable and I know it is uncomfortable as well.
- I know you probably can’t
remember – how could you really? – it says and even tries to open its mouth in
more or less synchronised way that could pass as talking – but you used to sit
on my lap just like that many years ago, when I was so much bigger, when you
were so much smaller, when things made so much more sense – or at least it
seemed so…
My left leg twitches and suddenly I
know it’s true. The thing makes a sound that is very close to a sigh. This is when
the sky above us opens up and releases its own grunts together with black
clouds and electricity. It takes me a while when I realise that there is two of
me now. But this process hasn’t finished yet. I multiply. I become
spatiotemporally stretched. There are myriads of me. I start to remember.
[α]
I sit on the bench with this puppet
of a human on my lap. Neither of us moves or speaks. The sky above is dark and
almost ready to release the storm of the century onto our heads. I wish I could
explain everything, put into words and then maybe connect these words into
sentences – tell the whole story. Maybe it would help. Maybe it wouldn’t. Who
am I trying to kid? This fragile and skinny human starts to shiver and - I
can’t help it – I start to shiver as well. Both of us look up and for a moment
there is nothing else than chatter of our teeth and distant rumble of the storm
that is coming to get us. The universe must be taking pictures because how else
would you explain the constant flashes above us? “Smile”, I want to say but in
the end I just think it very loudly. My thought becomes audible together with
the thunder and so the shivers become even more violent and uncontrolled.
[β]
He sits by the red brick wall and
squints in the sun. Straight away I know something is off: it’s in the way his
head leans towards his chest; it’s in the way his legs are crossed; it’s all
over his face – absent and lifeless. I wave at him and he nods reluctantly. I
don’t think he had recognised me yet.
I bend down so our eyes are on the
same level. The colour of his iris is so washed out that it looks more like
white than blue I remember. His lips are moving as if he was counting something
but he still doesn’t make a sound. I wait. Sun burns my back.
[γ]
I can hear my mother singing – it’s
a lullaby from the old country, the one that her mother sang to her and her
grandmother sang to her mother. I like this language – with sharp accents and words
that have so many unexpected sounds in them. I drift in the water around me trying
for the very first time to move my arms with purpose, so they match the melody.
Only recently she has started
suspecting that something is off – all her guesses, intuitions and fears
haven’t been yet named and usually she ends up ignoring them and blaming on
pregnancy. But – it won’t be long before my mother finally understands what I
am. I think it might make her cry – at least at first.
She started laughing now and she
taps with her fingers places which I am pushing from inside her belly with my
fists and feet. Her laughter is almost as nice as the lullaby. I decide to play
with her for a little bit longer.
[δ]
Even without looking up, I know J.
is staring at me and he is trying to figure out how far I have gone this time.
But he is wrong - I am simply finishing one of my calculations. I am very much
here and I am very much myself.
He is patient and I think he is
even trying to cast a shadow on me. I want to say “thank you” but instead I
only spit out at him some numbers I am computing at the moment. It happens. It
just happened.
J. laughs and for a moment is
looking for something in his pockets. Eventually he gives me a piece of chalk.
[β1]
He writes on the pavement as in
fever, equations bloom and grow and slowly take over the whole space. We are
sitting in its centre and it almost seems we are becoming smaller with every
stroke of the chalk. I wish I could understand any of that. Maybe then I would
understand him a little bit more. Maybe not – that’s also a possibility.
Chalk dust floats lazily in the air
and builds fractal-like patterns. I watch them in silence. It’s only a
suspicion but I think that the time has stopped.
[γ1]
We are in the park now. She is very
quiet. Usually I can hear long-forgotten and obscure melodies echoing inside
her - but today it is different. I shift myself slightly and look through her
eyes. We look at the clouds. They are just clouds. But my mother stands still
with her head tilted uncomfortably backwards and just stares. I try to
synchronise with her thoughts – electric impulses, brain waves – anything
really…
- You can’t – she says suddenly.
She is smiling now – with unnaturally exposed teeth, resembling more a wild
animal than a human. We start walking towards the pond. I am very quiet now –
just like my mother. Clouds are slowly drifting above our heads.
[α1]
The movement, at first, is almost
invisible. I am pretending that I haven’t noticed anything. Thunders roll
already through the sky with the full force and with almost no breaks in
between. I have to stop myself from the urge to clench my fingers on the arms
of this shadow of the being (I once was). His head finally makes the turn and
now we can see each other faces. It crosses my mind that I should smile, but I
have forgotten how to do it. So, instead, I do nothing.
After another explosion above us we
can feel the first raindrops. My lips part and with the end of my tongue I
carefully taste them. Somehow, I don’t know exactly why, I have expected they
will be salty.
There is another movement of the
pet on my lap. I freeze. A finger lands on my cheek. It digs into my skin and
leaves a small deep cut. I remind myself – with a little delay – that it should
bleed a bit. His pupils dilate and with much less visible fear he starts moving
his finger all over my face. Wherever it stays for longer than three seconds, a
little wound opens. Blood mixes with the rain. All becomes pink. Suddenly it comes back to me. I smile.
[δ1]
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 1 3 2 1 3 4 5 5 8 9 1
4 4 2 3 3 3 7 7 6 1 0 9 8 7 1 5 9 7 2 5 8 4 4 1 8 1 6 7 6 5…
[γ2]
There is a small, wooden deck
painted white in front of us. My mother doesn’t slow down until she reaches its
very end. Then she leans over the railing and look downwards at her own
reflection – blurred and distorted shimmering on the water surface.
- Look. Look now – she says and
there is this unfamiliar tone in her voice – short and sharp. For the first
time ever I feel uneasy about this, truth to be told – about everything – but
of course I do look.
Loose strands of her hair stick to
her cheeks and forehead. Her face is pale white with a blue tint, except for
the shadow around her eyes – in this afternoon light – an uneven mixture of brown
and teal.
I know what’s going to happen (we
both do) but somehow refuse to accept it. I push this thought away from myself
and simply just stare – through her eyes, into her pond reflection, still and
oblivious to everything else.
Something subtle changes in her
face – just for a moment – and she waves to herself and the movement of her
hand stirs the air into the melody of the lullaby. And then, in one swift
motion, she pulls herself over the banister and throws into the dark, bottle
green water. We are sinking. We are singing.
[δ2]
I stop myself just before putting
the last symbol. I raise my head and look at J. He is somewhere far: with the
absent smile and half-closed eyes he resembles more of the statue than a human.
I look through his eyes at myself and give myself a nod. I look through the eye
of the Legion and see myself as one. I look up and I can see sky filled with
clouds, lightened up by the stars, pitch black, aquamarine, obscured by the
branches and on fire.
I shrug my shoulders unable to
think of more fitting gesture and – I finish my equation.
