“Why don’t you ask him?”
“We did, but silence was his only answer. When he finished his bust, a punishment did indeed ensue, but not the one he expected. For the first time he was not satisfied with his work. He’d made the spitting image of himself, yet something was missing.”
“The soul?”
“In all likelihood. So he broke the first bust and immediately set to making another one, sparing no effort. But the outcome was the same. Although physically true to life, once again the marble face had no life inside it. The sculptor’s chisel destroyed this bust too and he began to make a third one.”
“And that one didn’t turn out right, either?”
“No, it didn’t. Nor the one after it. The outside world ceased to exist for the sculptor. He was consumed by his frenzied work on his own busts. He destroyed them one after another, sinking ever deeper into despair. Finally, after the eleventh bust, his atelier was filled with ominous silence. When the authorities broke inside, a terrible sight awaited them. He was lying on the floor with the chisel stabbed into his heart, and the hammer was in his hand.”
“Gruesome. I’ve never heard of someone killing themselves like that.”
“Gruesome, yes, but if you think about it, what suicide could be more fitting for a sculptor?”
I thought it over. “No other.”
“No other, of course. It didn’t bring him deliverance, however.”
“It didn’t?”
“No. He’s continued his penitence here in this place.”
“Does he still make busts in his likeness?”
“Yes, but not in stone. There isn’t a lot of marble on the third floor.”
“Then what does he use?”
“Flesh.”
“Excuse me?”
“His own flesh. He stands in front of the mirror and changes his face with a hammer and chisel. Every day all over again from the beginning.”
“That must be very painful.”
“It is indeed painful. Yet who has ever heard of penitence that is painless?
“No one.”
“But the pain is not his primary worry. He would endure it gladly if he knew that one day he would finally look in the mirror and see his ensouled likeness. That hasn’t happened yet, and no one guarantees that it ever will, even though there is no dearth of time here. All that’s left for him is to hope.”
The elevator door opened at that very moment onto pitch black space. The man stood up and took his basket of apples.
“Here we are on the third floor, and I only managed to tell you one story. If you were to come and visit us you’d hear many more of them, some even more amazing than this one. But for that to happen you need to be a suicide. Did you take your own life?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be something spectacular, like with the sculptor. Even a completely unimaginative suicide would be enough. Hanging yourself, for example, taking poison or cutting your veins.”
“I didn’t kill myself.”
“Even an unsuccessful suicide attempt would do.”
I shook my head.
“Well, never mind. The time has come to say goodbye. I wish you all the best.”
“I wish you the same.”
After shaking hands, the man with the basket went out into the darkness.
I kept my eyes fixed on the door after it closed behind him, but my intuition let me down. There wasn’t any knock. With no advance warning, the two halves were once again pulled aside and the liftboy entered the elevator, carrying a tray with a dessert plate of raisin cake.
I was almost certain that he would chide me for barely touching the main course, at least by the expression on his face, but there was no reproach.
“And here is your dessert for the end,” he said, as he picked up the large plate in front of me and replaced it with the small one he’d just brought.
“I love raisin cake.”
The liftboy smiled but did not leave as he’d done before. He stood next to me and the door quickly closed.
“I hope you don’t mind if I stay with you until the fourth floor.”
“I will be happy to have the company. Please take a seat.”
“I really shouldn’t. It’s against regulations.”
“But I insist.”
The liftboy sat reluctantly on the edge of the chair and put the plate with the barely touched cutlet on the table.
“Thank you. I envy you for finding pleasure in cake.”
“Would you like to try it? I’d be happy to share it with you.” I took the knife and fork to cut it.
“No, no, you didn’t understand me. I don’t eat sweets at all.”
“Do you have a problem with sugar?”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t want to have any either. It’s a well-known fact that sweets are harmful to your health, but people still gobble them up, even though their lives are at stake. Of course, if you eat sweets in moderation nothing should happen to you, although medical books do mention cases of an onset of diabetes from just one piece of cake, even smaller than this one here. But it’s highly unlikely that you of all people would have such bad luck. Please, go ahead and help yourself. Particularly since you haven’t eaten much else.”
I wavered a moment, then laid the knife and fork on the plate.
“I think I’ll hold back.”
“Wise decision. Many people consider themselves immune to bad luck, that it only happens to others. But that is a big mistake.
Bad luck is lurking all around us. We on the fourth floor are the best evidence of that. Bad luck is what brought us together there.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And not just your ordinary bad luck. A man slips on a banana peel, falls, hits his head on the pavement. Or passes unsuspectingly by a building and a flowerpot lands on his head. Our cases are far more discriminating, and what they have in common is the fact that one of the arts is involved.”
“I didn’t know that art had anything to do with bad luck.”
“It certainly does. I could tell you a whole host of unbelievable stories. I don’t have the time, of course, but perhaps you’d like to hear just one. From the lady in apartment number four. It is truly exceptional.”
“I’m all ears,” I said with a sigh.
“The woman is a brilliant painter. Her landscapes are without equal. When you stand before her paintings of the countryside it’s like looking out of a window into a perfect reality. Everything is presented so convincingly that you think you can hear the gurgling stream, the chirping birds, the sound of the wind in the treetops. A feeling of contentment fills you. It’s no wonder that clusters of viewers often formed around her paintings in the galleries. People would stand there patiently, at length, absorbing the bliss that radiated from them. Did you know about this calming effect that works of art can have?”
“Yes, I did.”
“In the end even doctors started to recommend the viewing of her pictures. It was scientifically proven that they had a beneficial effect on many mental problems. Not only simple neuroses and psychoses but depression, paranoid obsessions and different manias. Even mild forms of schizophrenia. Do you have any experience of one of these illnesses, perhaps?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Too bad. You could have cured yourself in an instant. Well, let me continue the story about the painter. Everything in her life was above reproach until the moment she recklessly listened to the advice of her greedy gallery owner about charging a fee to view her paintings for medicinal purposes.”
“Why, that’s inhumane.”
“Inhumane, of course. That’s the reason for the punishment she received, even though as a very caring woman she had reduced the fee to less than one-tenth of the price that the gallery owner first proposed.”
“What punishment?”
“Bad luck started to plague her, one incident stranger than the next. The first happened at the seashore, where she had gone to p
aint a tropical seascape with a long sandy beach, palms swaying over the turquoise water and the sun sinking over a bay. Only a tiny bit of work remained to complete the canvas, when something terrible shattered the tranquility that surrounded her. Can you imagine what it was?”
“Was she attacked by a shark?”
The liftboy shook his head. “Something much worse than a shark. A tsunami.”
“Tsunami?”
“Yes. A veritable tidal wave. It was more than twenty-seven and a half meters high. An enormous wall of water, such as had never been seen before in that region known for its mild climate, suddenly sped towards her from the open sea. Its cause was never discovered. The painter lost several precious moments staring in panic at the monstrous mass hurtling towards her. She finally came to her senses, grabbed the painting off the easel and ran from the beach, but it was too late.”
“Did she perish?”
“No, she didn’t, although at first everyone thought she had. It seemed impossible that anyone near the beach could survive the tremendous crash of the wave’s front, scattering the palm trees like toothpicks. When the giant wave withdrew, the painter was found alive, although terribly bruised and with several broken bones. Unfortunately, there was no trace of the unfinished painting.”
“That was the least thing that mattered.”
The liftboy sighed. “If that were only true. But wait until you hear the whole story. After she recovered, the painter decided to paint her next canvas as far as possible from the sea. The chances of her being the victim of another tidal wave were practically nil, but after what she’d experienced, can we blame her for not wanting to be by water?”
“No, we can’t.”
“She went to the top of a mountain deep in the hinterland. There wasn’t even a creek nearby to remind her of the trauma of the seashore. She took great pleasure in painting the idyllic mountain landscape. She was surrounded by tall firs, pure blue sky, a deep covering of grass, broad vistas. She was just about to finish the canvas when bad luck struck once again. Surely you can guess what it was.”
“Was she attacked by a grizzly bear?”
“A grizzly would have been a real godsend compared to what happened. Although the region wasn’t at all volcanic, the top of the mountain suddenly opened with a horrific roar, glowing hot rocks streamed into the air, and lava started to flow all around her. Disbelief froze the painter to the spot once again. She didn’t get over the shock until the molten innards of the earth reached her feet. As she raced headlong down the hill, fiery rain pelted down all around her. She barely made it out alive. Indeed, she spent more than two and a half months in the hospital recovering from the burns she’d received all over her body. Although they were very painful, the fact that she’d been unable to save the almost finished painting gave her even greater pain. It had ended up somewhere on the mountain slope, set on fire by lava. Is there any worse fate for an artist than to be left without their work of art?”
“But at least she was alive.”
“That is little consolation, as you will see. When she’d recuperated enough to be able to work again, the painter decided not to take any risks. She wouldn’t go near the mountains or the sea. Her next canvas would be a desert landscape. The setting only seemed unchanging at first glance. The artist’s experienced eye discerned a unique beauty in the curves of the waving dunes, the incomparable blush of the sky, the hint of distant oases, and the quivering, unearthly mirages. She set to work in earnest, but once more was not allowed to finish the painting, although several strokes of the brush were all that remained.”
“What could happen to her there? Was she attacked by a wild animal? A lion or a snake? I’m not very well acquainted with desert zoology.”
“Nothing of the sort. The bad luck was yet again of much greater proportions. The desert has always been considered a very stable tectonic region, but when lady luck has turned her back, you can’t depend on anything. The earthquake that suddenly rocked the area was so strong that an enormous crack opened up in the earth right where the painter was standing. At the last moment she somehow managed to grab hold of the edge of the fissure. But when she saw the easel and canvas plunge into the abyss, she almost dropped into it herself. As crazy as that might seem, it’s understandable, isn’t it?”
“I would have climbed up to safe ground instead.”
“That’s only because you’ve probably never seen one of your works of art disappear forever. All kinds of dark thoughts run through your mind. Finally, after hanging over the chasm for seven hours and thirteen minutes, the painter pulled herself out of the crack. Then she wandered about the desert for another four days and seven hours because she’d lost her jeep in the earthquake. She was found at the end of her strength, completely exhausted and dehydrated. They barely brought her back to life.”
“So in the end everything turned out all right.”
“It all depends. After this unbelievable turn of bad luck the painter almost decided to abandon her art. She became superstitious, which isn’t at all strange. Would you see mere coincidence in everything that happened to her?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. One stroke of bad luck maybe, but three in a row is really too much. This is why she didn’t pick up a paintbrush for a long time. When she finally did, inspired by a pastoral landscape she couldn’t resist, she took every precautionary measure that crossed her mind. She had a large first aid kit next to her, almost a small field hospital. There was also a rubber boat on a powered paraglider. She was wearing firefighter overalls with a canister of oxygen. There was a parachute on her back and she had a commando survival kit. One would say she was prepared for just about any disaster that could possibly happen, right?”
“One would say.”
“Well, that’s not what happened. One hundred percent protection from bad luck doesn’t exist, as you will soon see. The initial tension inside her slowly subsided when work on the painting progressed without any interference. There was no sign of gigantic waves, eruptions, temblors or any other natural disaster. Everything around her was serene and harmless, just like in her paintings. But this landscape was never finished either. What do you think was the reason?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. Was she attacked by an animal? There aren’t any wild animals in pastoral regions, but even domesticated animals can be dangerous at times. A raging bull, for example, or a rabid dog. Maybe a piqued turkey?”
The liftboy gave me a dubious look. “There weren’t any animals in the vicinity, either wild or domestic. When the painter was found lying next to the easel with its almost finished picture, she was surrounded by an untouched idyll. It was not at all clear what had happened to her. She had no visible scars. The first assumption was that she’d had a heart attack. It wasn’t until later that they established the cause. I doubt you would ever guess what it was.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t.”
“A meteorite hit the back of her head. It was smaller than a pinhead. Her hair covered the tiny trace at the spot where it had pierced her skull. The chances of something like that are practically nonexistent. But when bad luck is at your heels, probability ceases to play a role.”
“A truly unbelievable way to die.”
“It wasn’t until the painter came to the fourth floor that she realized what lay behind the succession of calamities that had befallen her. She accepted her punishment for greed without complaint, and even increased it. Do you know what she chose for her penitence?”
“No, I don’t.”
“She paints landscapes, but doesn’t finish them.”
“Is she still hounded by bad luck?”
“No, there is no bad luck here. She does it of her own free will. Her apartment is filled with paintings that need just their finishing touches.”
“How hard she is on herself.”
“Yes, but should she be well-disposed towards her transgression and finish her paintings as though
nothing had happened?”
“No, she shouldn’t,” I agreed after a moment’s hesitation. Impenetrable darkness appeared once again behind the opening elevator door. The liftboy got up.
“We’re here. It’s too bad there wasn’t time for you to hear more stories from our floor. Would you like to drop by? You’d meet many interesting people with amazing fates. For that, however, you would have to have had an unfortunate encounter with bad luck.”
“I haven’t.”
“It doesn’t have to be of cosmic proportions like with the painter. Smaller unbelievable turns of bad luck also count. For example, getting hit by a stray bullet in the crossfire of a gangster fight, falling into the only open sewer shaft in the whole town or getting overexcited by winning the lottery and your heart giving out.”
“I’ve never played the lottery.”
“In the extreme case a banana skin or flowerpot?”
I shook my head.
The liftboy looked at me for several moments without speaking. “That means that you keep going.”
“I keep going.” There was another brief pause. “Up?” he pointed his thumb upwards.
“Up.”
A smiled flickered briefly on his face. “I wish you lots of luck.”
“Thank you.”
“Allow me to take care of this.” He indicated the table and chairs.
“Certainly.” I stood up and moved into a corner.
The liftboy adroitly lifted the table with everything on it and took it out of the elevator.
“I’m sorry you didn’t manage to eat anything,” he said after coming back for the chairs.
“It couldn’t be helped.”
He looked as though he wanted to say something else, but just smiled briefly again, raised the chairs a little as though shrugging his shoulders to exonerate himself of something, then went out. He was swiftly swallowed up by darkness.
The door closed behind him. The elevator didn’t seem to be moving, but I knew that was just an illusion.
PART THREE
THE SQUARE
Impossible Stories II Page 16