The Currency of Paper

by Alex Kovacs

  Finally Maximilian decided that he would dedicate these new premises to sculpture. To a single, giant sculpture, in fact. Commencing at floor-level, he would work on the project for many years, gradually building layer after layer, working his way up in a growing sprawl of forms, multiplying and sprouting strange protrusions, utilizing a vast array of different materials, until he had finally reached the ceiling. Each layer would be roughly the same height, representing the duration of a given year, with materials and objects discovered and purchased only during that period. Ladders would extend far into the air, reaching into the midst of the sculpture, leading towards a number of walking platforms that any potential visitors would be able to use. By the time that the sculpture was completed, the earliest parts would look worn and frayed, would be relics from the past already capable of provoking forgotten memories, vanished moments of life. It would not be long before the piece became an exercise in belaboured nostalgia.

  Tending to be a slow worker, he spent many months away from the warehouse whenever he lost interest in the project, before returning to it with great energy. Once he had again become absorbed in the process, he would spend up to ten hours a day working on tiny details, attempting strange new juxtapositions, tinkering with small matters of form, attaching a miscellany of random objects to the central frame. In winter he could often see his breath appearing and dissolving in front of him as he worked. Shivering, he would rub his hands together or jump up and down on the spot until he felt certain of a vague modicum of warmth returning to his extremities. Despite the many difficulties involved, he came to feel a strange joy in the hard labour that such conditions required from him. Lost in the rhythms of his work, he would frequently return home late at night with weary limbs and a genuine sense of achievement, having forgotten all his other ambitions in the meantime.

  He’d soon gathered together a vast collection of tools for this project. They were laid out on a large cotton sheet in a series of carefully ordered rows. Every imaginable object that he could potentially need lay there waiting for its moment of use. Saws, chisels, drills, mallets, brushes, clamps, ladders, boxes of nails, scaffolding poles, pairs of overalls, as well as hundreds of tins and bottles filled with every imaginable liquid, gel, powder. As time went on he became eager to add to his supplies at any given opportunity, purchasing any likely objects with the enthusiasm of a child collecting toys. There was a particular pleasure to be felt at reaching for the correct tool at a given moment out of instinct alone, and Maximilian often found himself grasping it in his hands before he had even decided what its precise purpose would be.

  At first the sculpture seemed very small and insubstantial to him. For a number of years it had hardly gained any altitude whatever, seeming almost pathetic, a grand folly, waiting to collapse on him at any given moment. On many occasions he wondered if he was actually capable of achieving what he had set out to accomplish here, becoming frustrated by his lack of technical skill, and by the enormous lengths of time it took him to complete anything of even the slightest complexity. However, when he found himself assailed with doubts he would somehow still discover the strength necessary to continue his work, and finally, whenever he reasoned with himself, he could find no other purpose for continuing to live his life other than to proceed with his acts of creation. So he persevered.

  Whilst he was working he would always leave a gramophone playing in a corner of the room. For many years he favoured selections of jazz whilst sculpting, a form of music new enough to him that it caused a riot of different sensations, even desires, to rear up inside, until, running out of space, they fought with each other in the pit of his stomach, as Maximilian followed the jagged rhythms with the movements of his hands, often stopping altogether and getting down from his ladder before a song had ended, so that he wouldn’t have to face even a moment of silence. It was always of great importance to maintain the momentum that he had established. As the work progressed, he would look back at what he had completed from time to time and find that certain fragments of melody, nearly forgotten, would return to him with extraordinary force, along with other memories of the period when the music had first struck him.

  After many years, he began to detect patterns in his thinking, objects and symbols that repeated. He eventually realized that he had a predilection for circles, spirals, vertical lines, particular shades of blue, and objects that were in some way related to the sky. He began to place his symbols more consciously and commenced composition of a voluminous series of notes, describing in great detail his own interpretations of the sculpture, recording where each separate component had been obtained, what he knew of its origins and why he felt he had chosen it. All of these notes were kept in a single heavy ledger bound in red leather. Adding to its pages on a regular basis, it soon became an obsession for Maximilian to give his entries as much detail as possible, so that if the piece should ever have an audience they would be able to have access to some of its possible meanings, as well as what the sculptor had felt to be his essential motivations. Despite this general attention to specifics, the piece never did acquire a name. Maximilian felt that a title might limit the scope of what it could potentially say.

  Once he had reached the end of each day’s work he would usually sit slumped against the wall at the far end of the warehouse, listening to a record, a bottle of water in his hand, staring at the sculpture and trying to gauge the progress he had made. When he was in one of his productive periods, he was eager each morning to return to the warehouse and look over how much he had managed to accumulate, to guess where the work would be leading him in the future. Once engaged with the work, he never allowed himself to stop until nightfall; then he would watch as the sculpture threw shadows across the floor at odd angles, a dark maze of contortions, alien shapes of irregular size, jarring lines liable to extend or break in any given direction.

  Tall, snaking tubes writhed upwards, tangling with each other, stretching to infinity; a trellis of steel antennae threw dark scratchy webs across the vast concrete floors; the rotting husks of several cars were piled on top of each other, rust-brown and flaking; clay sculptures of white tortoises ascended for many metres before gradually diminishing into air; broken leather bus seats were pocked with holes that revealed the coils of horsehair within; aeroplane propellers were fixed to gargantuan machines of purely ornamental value, formed from random fragments of scrap metal; hundreds of glass pipes channelled a continuous stream of water from the warehouse’s mains, collecting it into a series of porcelain receptacles arrayed across the floor; directionless staircases hurried towards the horizon with no sense of decorum; pairs of giant, tattered wings were attached to the grotesque forms of unknown creatures; straggling tubular foam tentacles grasped for invisible treasures; orifices gaped at random intervals, inspiring hopes of never emergent eggs; a leather aviator’s helmet was placed upon the head of a naked mannequin wearing a blonde wig, its lips red with lipstick; looping pathways led towards pinnacles of spiky protrusions; paraphernalia associated with a variety of airlines had been strewn across the entirety of the piece, hanging precariously from one or another pole or hook; numbers were inscribed in blue chalk on a wooden doorway that was dangling from a length of rope; small birds of many varieties, carefully worked upon by taxidermists, were mounted on a series of plinths; antique telephones bore intimations of forgotten conversations; price tags were attached to wisps of air; monocles, ear trumpets, and gloves made fleeting appearances; toothbrushes once belonging to sailors were glued to a variety of surfaces; reels of celluloid stored in a series of canisters could be taken down and projected; crinkly bunches of blue cellophane gleamed with fluorescent light; kites bearing proverbs and inscriptions flew upwards, caught in their flight by the debris surrounding them; a broken piano was covered in plastic spiders; typewriters held sheets of paper that were almost blank; it felt, in brief, as if very little of interest had been omitted.

  When he examined the sculpture Maximilian would often discover patte
rns created entirely by chance, by the whims of his mind, finding meanings that he felt he had not previously understood, hidden forms that lay within forms, entities he had not realised the existence of. Faces could be discovered in the fissures and gouges: soft masses of hair, weird hypnotic eyes, cruel jutting mouths. On one forehead he could detect a single tiny, bulbous wart. If he stared even more intently, he could see sweeping black jagged mountain ranges like rows of dislocated giant’s teeth, and swarming galaxies burning and sparkling in vivid hues and colours.

  Many of the objects were attached to the whole only precariously, swinging on hooks, balanced on top of one another, hanging in place by the grace of thin lengths of blue string. A number of the sculpture’s components would creak and rattle as billows of wind drifted through the broken windows and the enormous openings that stood like solemn sentinels at either end of the building.

  In one sense, Maximilian felt that the piece could never really be completed. As long as he was alive, it would always be possible for him to return to the warehouse, to add further layers, to let its forms expand outwards. There was enough space in the warehouse for the sculpture to grow to at least five times its current size. But he sensed he had to reach some point of termination in order to feel that his efforts had led somewhere in particular.

  After finally reaching the ceiling in 1973, it seemed clear that he should soon declare the project finished, but some manic inner urge kept him working for another three years, until one morning in August, 1976, he finally became bored whilst nailing some planks of wood together. Stopping his work for a moment, he turned around and looked out at the world outside, seeing the morning sunlight drift and scatter through the rustling leaves of a beech tree in the back garden of a house that bordered his property. Descending from his ladder, he carefully placed his hammer and nails with the other tools on the dirty cotton sheet that lay on the floor, and then walked all the way to Hyde Park, where in the late afternoon he hired a rowing boat and paddled himself in long languid circles around the Serpentine, smiling benevolently at families as they passed him in pedalos, dimly aware of the distant roaring of the city as prickly droplets of sweat broke out across his forehead and under his armpits, allowing himself to bathe within the generous enveloping heat that had fallen upon everyone without warning that day, all the while gradually becoming aware that such occasions can never be repeated, because they occur almost as rarely as events which are not possible at all. And after that, he never returned to the paint factory again.

  Aspirations to a Complete Inventory

  (1955)

  Amongst other things, Maximilian experienced the following that year:

  3 badminton tournaments attended with mild curiosity;

  5 buttons lost from shirts;

  9 rides undertaken on Ferris wheels;

  12 vivid colour photographs observed in the throes of fever;

  17 circles drawn around particular dates on a wall calendar purchased for a discounted sum in early February;

  23 ships in bottles;

  78 potentially supernatural occurrences causing shivering motions to pass through his limbs and bones;

  116 dreams featuring a peacock feather placed upon a red velvet chaise longue;

  211 mathematical sums completed with relative accuracy;

  328 park benches sat upon briefly whilst experiencing states of serious contemplation;

  692 creases formed within the leather stretched across a pair of black boots;

  937 moments of slight regret;

  1,023 bus journeys to a variety of locations;

  2,341 numbers heard called out in desolate bingo halls;

  3,297 separate occasions on which he considered growing a beard, but thought better of it;

  4,684 instances of wriggling his toes with pleasure;

  23,497 minutes spent gazing listlessly at walls holding no particular interest for anyone;

  46,319 steps belonging to staircases ascended;

  81,682 flurries of steam emerging from his bathtub;

  278,341 moments of finding things more or less unendurable; 356,986 blades of grass trodden upon with firm feet;

  541,095 vertical lines observed forming deliberate patterns;

  672,984 glances thrown at the face of his wristwatch in order to obtain knowledge of the positions of its hands relative to the circumference of the dial;

  985,431 approximations of entities discerned on overcast Mondays;

  1,762,298 repetitions of events that he found familiar, warming and comfortable;

  3,173,902 doubts that his life had yet obtained a meaningful purpose or direction;

  4,876,325 streams of bubbles encountered in mid-ascent through tall glasses filled with liquid intended for his refreshment, and for which purpose were being held in his right hand;

  5,287,781 things impossible to analyse with absolute precision.

  Writings in the Mode of Realism

  (1956–1989)

  During the course of his life Maximilian completed only one book. This came to be the project that he laboured on more intensively than any other, as he obsessively undertook library researches for each subject that he wrote about. From early on in the life of its composition he decided to call it simply The Book of Essays. Once finished it would be exactly one thousand pages long and would contain precisely one hundred essays, each consisting of exactly ten pages. They were essays about mirrors, pencils, magnets, centipedes, electricity, poker, banjos, silk, eels, make-up, cigars, ears, phenomenology, spaghetti, gin, astrology, string, cacti, karate, ophthalmology, semaphore, cinnamon, tattoos, hoaxes, planetariums, bones, surfing, earrings, ventriloquism, martyrs, whistling, curtains, justice, trombones, gunpowder, hats, swamps, Andorra, vases, adolescence, railways, nylon, shelves, bowling, doubt, glaciers, jumping, triangles, chance, steam, brass, sandals, go-karts, denial, superstition, gas, basements, advertising, truth, trout, bubbles, shadows, typography, lightbulbs, melancholia, plastic, acrobats, assonance, dots, houses, clay, benevolence, canoes, buttons, locusts, bells, apples, synthesizers, backgammon, saliva, bureaucracy, algae, aspirins, cuneiform, paint, magicians, noses, ponds, helicopters, melodrama, yachts, arrows, unicycles, radars, classification, singing, lampshades, serenity, riddles, and essays.

  The style of the essays varied greatly. On occasion he would reveal little-known facts about the subject under discussion, assembling concise, truncated histories occasionally spanning several millennia in the course of a paragraph or two. Other attempts at the form would see him forming philosophical interpretations of the “meaning” of a given subject, rather than its material circumstances, employing examples from his own biography and mingling them with arguments that frequently involved a series of wild speculations and abstractions in an attempt to bring common assumptions into doubt. Equally, an essay might focus on a single instance of an object’s manifestation in the world, building a tower of anecdotal surmises from nothing more than the way in which a vase was placed upon a table, or the manner in which a wall had been daubed with its particular shade of paint. Indeed, a few of his essays mentioned their “subjects” only in passing, hiding them within sentences focused on other matters, so that the often ambivalent relationships existing between one thing and another were opened up to potential scrutiny and wonderment. Any possible interpretation of a subject could be included, if only in a brief aside, existing as a stray fact standing at a moderate distance from the central narrative. In the end, Maximilian used so many different approaches to writing that his repertoire began to feel inexhaustible.

  He soon became lost in trails of facts, in pages of library volumes teeming with unknown stories of individuals who had managed to instate themselves at the fringes of significance. Etymologies, distant years, Greek myths, quotations attributed to celebrated figures—there was no end to such trivia. A single bibliography could lead to hundreds if not thousands of new texts, which could in turn lead to thousands more. Maximilian would read through these books in perfect happ
iness for some months, gradually acquiring a mass of material before he was finally ready to commit himself to paper and declare his thoughts on a subject for posterity.

  Once such a point had been reached he would seat himself with straight-backed solemnity, at the centre of the British Museum Reading Room, staring at the blank sheets lying before him, attempting to gather his forces and invoke the muses, until he felt that the optimum moment had arrived for unleashing a torrent of words. He would then generally spend the next ten hours writing, barely stopping to rest. After working in this manner for a few days he would scrutinize every word he had written and then destroy nearly all of them. Twenty or even thirty drafts of each essay seemed necessary in order to reach the pitch of perfection that he believed was required; but once a point of termination had been attained, there was no turning back. Every year he wrote three new essays. All of the completed works were stored inside a rectangular rosewood box that he kept at the foot of his bed. Once in the box, he would never again return to the subject of a particular essay, neither in thought nor on paper.

  Each essay was a feat that did not have to take place, that might never have come into being were it not for the chance conglomeration of a strange series of events and persons. He always chose his subjects at the beginning of the year, at first relying on one of a number of different methods of selection by chance. It pleased him, at first, for his subjects to be chosen in this way, so that each essay would stand as evidence of the whims of fate dictated to him in a given period. Some years saw him opening obscure manuals at random simply in order to seize upon a particular noun. Other years saw him utilizing a pack of playing cards and a series of dice rolls. On one occasion he asked a bemused pedestrian to name the first three household objects that came to mind. A coincidence, a moment’s flippant thought, could mushroom into hundreds of hours of diligent writing and research, until Maximilian possessed so great an overabundance of knowledge on certain subjects that it came close to being entirely useless. After a few years he was to learn that these aleatoric methods of selecting subjects were not enough to engage him, that he would need to discover suitably inspiring subjects in order to find the will to continue his efforts, as the energy and devotion that were needed to complete an entire essay were always considerable.