I can’t sleep. I don’t sleep. I have already got used
to that. There are so many things that you can do at night-time. Tonight Te is
here. A moment ago he gave me a weird look. He asked if I ever turn off the
music. He also asked if I ever go to bed without the book. “No”, I answered
out-loud and then I thought to myself that of course I never do those things.
First of all it would be pointless. Second of all – if I ever stop, I will die.
I will perish. I will disappear. I will be gone and all that’s left will be a
cloud of disorganised atoms. So – no, thank you. I rather stay awake. I am
already used to that.
But I said only this stupid ‘no’ and that was it. And
then Te was sleeping and I have lied in bed and smoked cigarettes. I probably
was a little bit angry for the fact that he is here, asleep, and wondered why
hasn’t he gone home (or at least to the other room) - even though I knew
exactly why. So I have grinded my teeth and waited for the sunrise. I can do it
this way as well.
When the sky outside my windows started to turn grey,
rainbows fell from the ceiling. They got entangled with my hair, coloured my
cheeks and for a moment it felt as if I was gone already. There was only
blinding technicolour and white noise in my ears. I started to count quietly (and
if I am counting, something is counting and then this something must exist;
something has to chew on this mathematical mantra and maybe this something is
even accenting prime numbers and pushes itself farther and tries not to miss
any of them). 789 – and suddenly I am back. I am. Back. Te sits on the bed and
stares at me with his child-like eyes. I want to ask what’s wrong with him, but
for a moment I can’t speak – not yet. I sit up and light a cigarette. Te is
still staring. I really wish I could punch him but I stop myself. “What?” I
finally manage to mumble out. He loudly swallows and points at my left arm. I
follow this gesture with my eyes. My arm is gone. FUCK. I finish my cigarette
in the complete silence and then I close my eyes. I start to forget. I start
from the moment in which we both look at the lack of my limb. Then there are
numbers and rainbows. There is night and there are cigarettes, there is an
estranged look from Te. Just in case I go back few more hours – I forget
everything that happened since last morning…
There is coffee. That’s a good start. Alla sits on the
sofa with absent eyes. Her hair is a mess and all the eye make-up is smudged on
her cheeks. “How are you?” I ask while searching for clean mugs. “Exactly how I
look… How do I look?” and without thinking about it she straightens up and
buttons her shirt. There are love bites on her neck – just above the collar.
“Fabulous, darling” – and maybe she would believe me, if only I would look at
her. But I am busy trying to make coffee for us. I feel some movement behind my
back and suddenly two hands land on my shoulders. I try not to move – I freeze.
It’s already bright outside and it’s so hard just to be; it’s already bright
outside and I really don’t want to be touched. And most of all – I want to have
a cigarette.
She moves away in silence and gives me a long look –
searching for something in my face. We stand in this grey unfinished light and
none of us even blinks. Finally she shrugs her shoulders, puts on a jacket and
goes to the door. Good. Our paradigm remains unchanged.
I finish my coffee. I spend several minutes looking
for my left shoe. I finish another coffee (the one I have made for Alla). I
leave. On the staircase I pass one of my neighbours. I nod to him, he mumbles
something unrecognisable. We don’t look each other in the eye. I push the front
door and suddenly blinding sun swallows me.
Ka sits on the bench and in the nervous manner turns
pages of some book. He bites his nails. I stop in front of him and my shadow
fills in all the white spaces between the printed letters. I pass him a paper
cup with a coffee. He raises eyebrow and looks at me a little bit longer than
he should. “You look like shit” he comments. Then he closes his book and puts
away to the bag. All this movement is a bit too fast for me – I still haven't managed to catch the title. We sit on the bench in silence and look up at the
sky: all this ultramarine and all this brightness floods our eyes and rolls
through our heads. I squint and look at the air we breathe out. It’s also blue
– it swirls softly with the smoke that exits through our noses. I could sit
like that much longer – without unnecessary words, just watching all of that –
maybe this peacefulness of our cells and this distant murmur of our blood would
become permanent… Maybe it would change me into something new and better… But
the moment passes together with the cough that shakes Ka’s body. We slowly get
up and start walking towards the river. I pretend not to notice droplets of
blood on the inside of his hand.
One of the twins brings beer to our table. Everyone is
speaking at once: wind scatters these words together with the smoke from our
cigarettes. Hidden behind my own eyelashes I watch Ka: his grey eyes and grey
cheeks. To be honest – everything about him is grey today (maybe except his
lips, which are so red, as red as the poppies that you can find on the meadows,
as red as the sunset two days ago, as red as the blood hidden inside of the
palm of his hand). Prim` and Double Prim`` start to laugh so hard that the
whole table starts to shake. Beer spills from the glasses and now the whole
surface resembles lake – it changes colours in the sun and refracts the light
and our breaths, our thoughts and words. I extend my hand, just like in the
dream, to save pack of the cigarettes. And my phone. But most of all –
cigarettes.
Te appears from nowhere. He pats Ka on the back and I
can only bite my lip when I see it because I imagine all the damage this
gesture can do to Ka’s insides. Prim` or Double Prim`` gets another chair, I
get up to bring another round.
All the green and brown bottles shimmer above the bar.
I stop for a moment on the doorstep – exactly where the border between the
light and the shadow is running. I squint and let all the air from the lungs
out. I straighten all of my fingers and spread them as far from each other as I
can. “2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23…” I count quietly and in concentration.
Someone very softly touches my neck. “29” says Te and closes my hands. We stand
like this for a minute or two and I watch how sun rays build a halo around his
head, how they penetrate his skin and warm up the blood in his veins. Somehow
it makes him look like a saint. I don’t even know when I start to cry.
They are discussing some pressing problem of the
contemporary world: how the Universe is expanding or maybe how the Equation
for Everything should look like. I look at all of that from under half-closed eyelids and don’t
really pay much attention. I start to blink in a way that will synchronise it with my
own breath. Every time I close my eyes I imagine that I don’t exist anymore. Or
maybe they are the ones that disappear? I feel a bit dizzy so I very loudly
blow out the smoke and straighten up on my chair. Somewhere in the background
all the street lamps turn on. Their orange light softens our edges and somehow it
makes us look a little bit more two-dimensional. Exactly in this moment Ka
starts to cough. All of us freeze. Fingers of his left hand dig into the wooden
arm rest of the chair, while his right hand tightly covers his mouth. Te helps
him to get up and together they start walking away from us. Every step they
make is marked by one cough. I can’t stop myself anymore so I close my eyes and
start to scream. My voice awakens wind and tears apart the clouds; it follows
the birds that are heading south and pierces through the surface of the water
only to crash at the very bottom of the river. Twins press me to the ground and
whisper lies to my ear.
We sit back to back to each other just so we can’t see
each other faces. Every breathe I take is Ka’s exhale, every breathe he takes
is mine. He twists his arm to the back to touch my face. I light a cigarette
and a moment later I can hear clicking of a lighter somewhere behind me – like
a mirror reflection he has repeated my gesture. So we sit leaning at each others back and smoke in silence. I want to say something but at the moment I don’t
know how to even think this, so I stay silent. Quietly and only for myself I
start another sequence: “0. 1. 1. 2. 3. 5.8.13. 21. 34…”. “55. 89. 144…” with
every word his lungs whistle. When he is at 233 he starts getting up and stands
in front of me. He covers my ears with his hands and looks me in the eye for a
very long time. We don’t blink. It might be few seconds or few hours. In his
pupils there is a reflection of mine in which you can find a hidden image of
his, in which there is mine, in which there is his… Our own private infinity.
Suddenly Ka straightens up and smiles in a very sad
way. “I need to go”. I shake my head but he is already at the door. I follow
him. When we are passing the living room Ka puts his head inside to say
good-bye and then he adds: “Te, take care of her”. The other one immediately
moves towards me like a motherfucking guardian angel. I hear the front door
closing and on the peripheries of my sight I can see Te’s hand moving toward my
face. “I am sorry” I think or say out loud and close my teeth on his thumb. He
makes a hissing sound and takes a step back. That’s all I need – I am already
at the exit. On the staircase I take few steps at the time and it’s more like a
controlled fall when I get to the last landing. This is when my word starts to
shake and tremble as if it was in fever. It feels as if it is spitting out on
me strings of colourful air. When I am already lying on the floor it feels a
little bit as if I am already gone. There is only rainbow and white noise. I
start to repeat the alphabet, because if the alphabet is said and after every a there is b, and after every b
there is c, then surely something
must exist and this something is saying all these letters. Somewhere half-way
through the thirty first round (between n
and o) I come back to the world.
Te is standing above me with his thumb in his mouth and twins are trying to have
a look from behind his back. None of us says a thing but I already know what
has happened. Out of a habit I quickly scan my body. My hands. There is only one of
them. I mutter some swear words angrily and start to forget. I forget about the
fall and I forget how I have bitten Te. I forget about the time I have spent on
the kitchen floor with Ka. I forget about the evening by the river. Just in
case I forget a little bit more – all the way to the morning…
Alla is lying on her belly and looks very calm asleep.
I look at her for a moment and then, very quietly, get up. She says something
through sleep and for a minute I fear that I have woken her up. But no, she is
still asleep. In a hurry I put on my clothes and lose few precious minutes to
find my left shoe. Then, very quietly I open the front door and get out to the
staircase. When I am on the very bottom of it I meet one of the neighbours – he
holds the door for me. I get out on the street and suddenly I am being drowned
in the blinding sun-light.
Sun rays dance in the tree tops and when they reach
the pavement they are completely distorted. I open mouth and allow the cold air
touch my teeth. With a tongue I spread it all around and when it’s already
mixed with my saliva – I swallow it. Ka sits on the bench and moves one of his
foot to some melody that only he knows. I approach him and cast a shadow on the
pages of the book that is lying on his legs. He looks up and smiles at me. “I
look like shit, I know” I say. He reaches under the sit and suddenly there are
two coffees in his hands. He passes one of them to me and then very quickly
closes his book and puts away to the bag. “Let’s go and watch the ducks”.
I light another cigarette and blow circles out of the
smoke into the air. I send them, as in the procession, towards the cloudless
sky. Aquamarines and azures fall into our eyes and fill up our heads. My breath
synchronises with Ka’s and now we are already breathing together. Wind starts
to blow from the east. I could stay there, in this bright silence, in this over-oxidisation,
much longer – but the moment passes when the whole body of Ka starts to shake
from the never-ending coughing. I patiently wait for his breath to come back.
His open hand, all coloured with blood, for a moment hangs between us – it
looks like a blossoming poppy. One of us shrugs, the other lights a cigarette.
We start a slow walk towards the town.
Prim` and Double Prim`` are arguing. It will pass in
the moment – it always does. We stop few metres away and wait in silence. Twins
suddenly go quiet and only look at each other angrily. A moment later they
start laughing uncontrollably. Their laughter ascends and echoes between the
buildings as if it was a muezzin prayer. Passer by turn their heads, some of
them stop and wave at us, others take their phones away from their ears and
close their eyes. Air is trembling. Ka places one of his hands on his chest, I
shut my eyes and in my mind I draw a thick black line around myself. We are
like two infidels in the sacred place. Profanum versus sacrum. Ka pulls my
sleeve and starts walking towards the closest bar. After a while twins follow
us.
Te is already inside. His whole body is coloured with
the orange chemical light and it makes him look a little bit like a bronze
statue. We sit down at the round table in the corner. Ka is just opposite to
me, semi-transparent and barely visible in this dimmed light. Twins speak at
the same time to him but he only gives them his absent smile and maybe this
whole thing would look quite normal, if only he wouldn’t be holding so tight to
the table.
I get up very quietly and go outside to have a smoke.
My hands form into fists. “1. 4. 9. 16” every number stands for one heartbeat
of my heart. Te appears in front of me and blocks the sun. For a moment we
stare at each other without blinking. “One hundred…” I throw a punch at his
face “Sixty…” this time my fist lands on his chest “Nine!” – I try again to get
his face but he grabs my hand before that and closes his huge arms around me
until I calm down. I don’t even know when I start to cry.
Ka looks at me above the table and I think he is
talking about some book. I can’t really focus so I only nod and try to look
smart. There is a delay in a way sound and picture are reaching me: and when they
finally do – they are distorted, defected and incomplete. Suddenly Ka’s body
starts to shake but it takes me a while to connect this picture with the
coughing sound. Twins freeze and their eyes become even more round and
child-like than usually. Te gets up and helps Ka to stand up. They go outside.
Now the whole world is mute. I am afraid to move and only stare at the door.
After a moment I take a big breath and start to scream. Somewhere behind me I
can hear bottles breaking and glasses exploding. Prim` and Double Prim`` cover
my mouth and my nose and wait for me to lose consciousness.
Ka lies next to me in bed. With his index finger he
traces contour of my nose. None of us speaks. It’s very quiet. I wait for the
words to form sentences in my head – before I say it out-loud. Without noticing
it and in the background I start another string:
“1-4-1-5-9-2—6-5-3-5-8-9-7-9-3-2…”. “3-8-4-6” Ka moves closer to me and I can
feel his eye-lashes on my cheek. I close my eyes and imagine that it’s a
butterfly. This moment lasts: it might be few minutes, it might be few hours.
Suddenly a butterfly takes off. Ka starts getting up but I grab his hand.
“Please, stay the night”. He shakes his head but at the same time he falls back on
the pillows again. Neither of us is moving, just like the insects pinned to the
board. We might be smiling at each other.
The hum of atoms falling apart fills the night.
Everything around starts to shake and there are big flakes of multicoloured
plaster falling down from the ceiling. Ka strokes my hair and I think he is
coughing. Purples and blues are forcing themselves into my larynx and try to
suffocate. For a moment it feels as if I was already gone. I can still hear
this damn cough, though. And if this cough can be heard, there must be
something that hears it. So maybe I am not gone? I listen to the cough and
wait. Finally, a little bit reluctantly, word comes back. Ka is still next to
me, with a faint smile on his face. There are bubbles of saliva in the colour
of the rust on his lips. He doesn’t blink. I kiss the inside of his hand and
start to forget…
