It's Time

by Pavel Kostin

  Light. There’s a light up ahead of me. Or is it just me? But it is a bit lighter there. I walk forward. Almost running. The way out is nearby. The way out has to be nearby. I can’t wander round in here forever, in the dark. I want to wake up. Or get out.

  If there even is a way out. It has to exist, it has to. Why did she leave me, why, why?

  I come up against a wall. Dead end.

  It’s lighter here. It’s light enough here to see my hands, my clothes, the murky water. The stream disappears. There’s no way out here. I don’t see it. It’s closed off from me. I can’t see it. What’s going on? Dead end, dead end.

  I search the wall, feeling my way. I suddenly get a wave of déjà vu. Like I’ve been here before. Right here. And it was bad, and cold, and there were tears. I don’t understand. How could that be? I go along the wall. I was in a bad way. They were looking for me. Shouting. My mum’s voice.

  My eyes come up against some scratches on the wall. At first I don’t believe what I’m seeing. It must be a hallucination. It’s really dark here. Again. Careful. Max, turn round and have another look.

  ‘My Lady F’ is scratched on the wall. Is that my handwriting? I don’t know. Probably. Have I been here before? I don’t know. Probably. I squat down by the wall. A hideous painting jumps out at me. An inhuman, terrifying form surrounded by lots of strange symbols all mixed together: strokes, silhouettes and hieroglyphs covering some secret motto, some arcane wisdom. Did I paint that too? I can’t figure out what the painting is hiding, but I can’t tear my eyes off it.

  “And now I’m going to be stuck here. Forever.” The thought flashes through my mind, and I don’t have time to hide from it. Followed by, “And I want to be stuck here!”

  So stupid. Where’s this coming from? It’s cold here. Oh well. It’s still nice. It’s quiet and nice. I don’t want to know what’s outside.

  Outside. I can get out. Ozone.

  “Max. Are you sick?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Is this what you call fine? Take a look at yourself!”

  “Lady F, why is your name on the wall?”

  “I don’t know. What difference does it make?! You know my name so you wrote it up there. Tell me, what you are doing right now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m doing fine here.”

  “Incorrect. You’re not doing fine here. It’s time to get out of here, Max.”

  “Outside there’s… there’s something there outside…”

  “Max! Max, listen to me!” She leans over me and I can feel her hair tickle my neck. “You’re going to get up right now and go over to the wall. The water goes out through a grate. You’ll see it. On the right there’s a door. You’re going to go through it and never come back here again. OK?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Max. Don’t let me down! Get up and go. OK?”

  Silence. I want to say “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to leave, I want to curl up in a tiny warm ball and stay here forever, in this dark, gloomy, empty chamber. Because here… because here… here it’s quiet. And you don’t have to think about anything. About what’s outside. Here nothing matters. I want to grow into the wall forever until I don’t exist anymore.”

  Instead I say:

  “Yes, Lady F. I’ll do what you say.”

  I stand up and go over to the wall. The water really does go through a grate. A few minutes ago I was standing in this very spot. But I hadn’t seen this grate. On the right there actually is a door. I was standing two metres away from it. But I didn’t notice it.

  I push the door and it opens. The way out was right in front of me.

  Outside it’s already evening. Soon it’ll be totally dark. It’s lucky I didn’t stay there overnight. My clothes are dirty. I had been sleeping right on the dirty ground. I still can’t remember how I got into the sewer or why.

  A thought, heavy and unpleasant, is tumbling through my brain: I was standing two steps from the door and I didn’t see it. Something’s wrong with me. Something’s very wrong and I need to deal with it.

  I walk away, leaving the hideous painting behind me.

  Discovery

  Imperfection is everywhere, but perfection is very rare. Though, to be honest, there are signs of it everywhere. Infinity is perfect. Green is perfect. Beauty is perfect. But people – no. In reality you can’t see any perfection. All around there are blotches and cracks. Complete perfection is unobtainable. Wherever your gaze may fall, whether it be on something natural or something man-made, however much exquisite beauty it contains, you’ll always find some tiny annoying defect that gets you down.

  But Lady F, she’s perfect. I think about her and a smile appears on my lips. Perfect… Perfect like the concept of pure colour, like a starry sky, like a subtle note, not one made by some human instrument, but one that sings in the impossible, distant heavenly realms of your dreaming.

  I’m on my own. I’m sitting on the roof of an ordinary building in an ordinary part of town. Daytime. The view below me is average. A street, cars and pedestrians hurrying about their business. Nothing special right now really. None of the stuff I love. The stuff everybody loves. No sunsets, no warm starry nights, no rainbows, no storms. But it’s nice all the same.

  That’s because I’m on my own, maybe, or because of the memories. Or because of my thoughts. My ordinary, everyday thoughts, not any magical thoughts about the sublime or anything, but just completely ordinary ones. About how the weather’s nice today. Not, you know, like, totally ideal weather, but it’s not cold today and it’s not raining. It’s a little overcast, but that’s quite nice even – not too baking hot. And I’ve got no particular worries, everything’s normal, somehow. I don’t have to go back to work until the day after tomorrow. So basically I can just sit here on the roof for as long as I like, smiling up at the sky, and everything will be fine. If I get hungry, I’ll pop to a shop, I’ll get a bite to eat and I’ll have it right here on the roof. Maybe I’ll get a beer. It doesn’t matter. Whatever I say goes.

  She didn’t come today, even though I was waiting. So what, we’ll see each other next time. I still feel good. I don’t know if that’s normal or not. I just smile. My city is there below me.

  • • •

  “Sometimes it’s a surprise, just like this total surprise,” Linda explains hurriedly, “as if it was on purpose. You’ve figured something out, but really it turns out it wasn’t you… Ach, what am I saying…. Hang on, let me concentrate and I’ll tell you.”

  We’re standing at the beaten-up door of the theatre studio where Linda is rehearsing. She was running late after work, and I gave her a lift. Linda’s trying to tell me how inspiration comes to her. She’s also smoking nervily and waving her arms about so that the smoke is flying round in wisps, like clouds of frightened midges.

  “So,” she takes a drag and looks into the distance. “So. For example. Something that happened to me. I get invited to this party, some totally random party, that I had no idea about, totally out of the blue. But I go anyway. I meet a guy there who I haven’t seen for like a hundred years. And I never really liked him. But he probably liked me. Because he’s acting like he wants to go back to mine. And I don’t want that to happen. Because he was boring seven years ago, and there’s no cure for that. And of course he’s still single. And despite that he still figures out a way to walk me home. And I can see an absolutely terrible time up ahead, and I’m working out a way to escape. And then – bang! – he says something really interesting about this film he’s seen. And it’s a film that he saw as a kid too, as a kid! He’s saying some interesting stuff. And it doesn’t matter what happens with me and him, the only important thing is the film. Because the next day I find that film and watch it, and as a direct result of what I see I get this amazing idea! A brilliant idea! Not just an idea, but
a real, precise answer to a question that’s been bothering me for a week, to do with the staging. And I start thinking how, how, how did this all come together and I realise that you can’t get rid of any of the links in that chain. It’s the only way and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  I watch her with a smile. She stares at me.

  “You get it? Come on, do you get it? It’s like it’s fixed! No, you haven’t got it! You haven’t understood a damn thing! I mean that seriously! It really is like it’s fixed! As if it was planned that way…”

  She’s totally carried away. I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s deeper than I could have imagined.

  “By who?”

  “I don’t know… But it’s not an exaggeration. Of course, it’s hard to understand all this with thoughts and ideas. Let’s imagine something material. Shall we? OK, imagine this. You’re at home doing a jigsaw. A really big complicated jigsaw out of a box. You’ve been doing it for ages and you’re nearly finished. And suddenly there’s a piece missing from the box. It’s missing and that’s it. A fault at the factory. It got lost. Or you lost it. Or it was never there, they forgot to put it in, it doesn’t matter!

  Linda almost shouts the last phrase and starts waving her hands about again. Not taking her eyes of me, she gets out a second cigarette and lights it from the first.

  “For such a little girl you smoke way too much!” I say.

  “Ah good…” she waves it away. “Someone else who knows what’s best for me. It comes and goes with me. So anyway! This little piece is missing. So that’s it, you’re on your own. And it’s really bothering you and you’re thinking and you’re looking for this missing piece. And then, you go off to some party. Unexpectedly. And you meet a guy there. Unexpectedly. And he takes you somewhere or maybe you even go to another town. And you meet a friend of yours there. And it turns out it’s her birthday – almost too good to be true, to hell with that, keep listening – it’s her birthday and you have to go to the shop to pick out a cake. And you get it put in a box and you go to her birthday party. You follow?

  I smile and nod.

  “And you go in and hand over the cake. Everyone’s like ‘yey, yey’ and they open the box and it’s empty.”

  She waves her hands about showing how ‘everyone’s’ surprised.

  “It’s a scandal! Oh no! There’s no cake. Oh the shame of it! OK, maybe it’s not shame, something else, let’s not go too deep into this. It’s just got to be something that’s not linked… And then there’s this weird thing that’s happened, there’s no cake in the box, which is really weird, and you look in the box, and you find in there this weird little object. What’s this funny little thing? You look and right then your jaw just drops and basically everything just drops because this just can’t have happened, but in this cake box on the birthday of this girl you haven’t seen for like a hundred years, in a different town, in a different situation completely, on a different tram line, there’s that missing piece from that jigsaw of yours.”

  Linda holds out her hands and makes her eyes all big. I nod, pursing my lips. I get what she’s on about. That sort of stuff happens. Those sort of coincidences that aren’t coincidences at all.

  “Bam!” she shouts. “Bam! Get it? You get it now? That sort of stuff really happens! It’s happened! What’re you going to do about it? What should you even think about that sort of thing? How does it happen? Is it planned? Those sort of accidents don’t happen, they just don’t happen, they can’t just work out by accident like that! However many times you try it, it’s not going to happen! So what do you think now? What is this, some grand plan or something? Who would want this? How can this have all come together? And to all this you can add the question of whether you can really think that it’s not an accident. Because if you start thinking it’s not an accident then that’s enough to drive you insane!

  She suddenly slows down and looks sadly to one side. Half her second cigarette has burned down in her slender fingers.

  “And it’s good of course, that the jigsaw finally got done. But this means it was no accident it got done. And if it’s not an accident, then that means someone organised all this. And he probably had some sort of plan. But what plan did they have in mind? What for? Why you? And then you start to think about how much work it must have been to organise all that. Just imagine it was your job to organise that scenario. To fix it. To hide that piece. Or to not put it in there in the first place. Then to look for contacts who know the target and talk them round. I’m talking figuratively here. The film was shot forty years ago. And, you know, the film isn’t about the jigsaw, that bit’s mine… And set all this up and set it in motion. So that by some miracle this jigsaw gets done…Ow!”

  Linda drops the cigarette which has burned her fingers.

  “Ooh… Damn. What do you reckon?”

  “Me? I reckon that it’s not about jigsaws.”

  She looks up at me with her piercing blue eyes.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “No, I’m not making fun… I get it too. It happens.”

  I nod and look at her thoughtfully. We don’t know one another. Not just the two of us, me and her. But in general. You can hang out with someone for ten years and not know them. So you won’t learn anything in a month. Or a year.

  Linda stamps out the cigarette with her trainer.

  • • •

  A blank wall. Not completely blank, to be fair. In the bottom right someone’s written “Money can buy you love!” But I try not to look at that.

  So, a blank wall. Evening. A quiet city street, far from the noisy main roads. And me. A little nervous.

  A blank wall.

  I’ve got three cans of paint. Not new. I don’t even remember who I borrowed them from. Or nicked them. I reckon I must’ve got them off Gray, from that evening when we were hanging upside down above the city.

  A blank wall. I’m a little afraid. Just a little. I mean, I’m a grown man, but I have defence mechanisms. Against fear of failure. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Nothing bad can really happen. On the contrary, if nothing happens, then that’s good. But I’m still a little afraid. Afraid that it won’t work. That the blank wall will be ruined.

  What did I want to paint anyway? Do I even need to?

  I get a can from the bag. Shake it. I hear the ball bouncing about inside. This action makes sense. Can’t go wrong with this. So I can shake it a bit longer. Just in case. Having a little think.

  I lift the can to the wall.

  And it’s then, by the way, that it really gets scary. I’m not afraid now that it won’t work or I’ll spoil it or nothing will work. It’s simple. A different, completely ordinary fear, the fear of doing something for the first time.

  Is it just me or does it smell of ozone? I look up at the sky. Looks like there’s going to be a storm soon.

  It’s hard to take a can to a blank wall for the first time. Because the result is going to stay there. It’s like going through a black door. So what next? You don’t know. But we do know… we don’t want to say it, but we do know that it’s illegal. It’s officially forbidden by law. And you’ve just got to hope that the result is worth breaking the law for. And that people will think it was worth it, and, most important of all, you’ll know that it was. But what if it isn’t? What if it ends up as nothing, and there’s no way of going back. You’ve already made a mess of it. It’s probably the same as what a young surgeon goes through when he’s standing over his first patient, scalpel in hand. I’m not insisting on that comparison. First off, I’m not certain about it, and second, I don’t want to be try-hard. After all, the surgeon is risking the patient’s life. But you’re still scared.

  A blank wall.

  “Are you planning on standing there long?”

  The weight lifts from my heart insta
ntly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Looking for inspiration?”

  “Yeah… Something like that. Plucking up courage.”

  “What’s holding you back?”

  She comes over and stands on my right. Her red hair trembles in the breeze, and her smile is thoughtful and sad. I stop and admire the ideal whiteness of her clothes. What an exquisite colour! Sparkling, blinding, shocking in its perfect purity. Better than the best painting.

  “How’s life?”

  “Pretty quiet. OK. Well… you can see for yourself. I decided to give it a go.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t even know… I suddenly got the urge.”

  “I’m glad you got that urge… Tell me…” She pauses briefly and looks at me intently.

  She has such deep and pure green eyes. Such an exquisite colour… and it’s as if the textured design of her pupils forms mysterious letters, it’s like a whole book is written in her exquisite eyes.

  “Tell me, is there anything you want to ask me about?”

  “Probably.”

  “About what then?”

  “Why is there so little perfection in the world, Lady F?”

  She looks at me in shock. Then starts to laugh a pure, tinkling laugh. She giggles happily, overcome with such an infectious wave of laughter that I also start laughing.

  “Now that’s a question, Max! Now that I understand!”

  “Did I say something stupid?”

  “No, not at all… That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Do you really expect an answer, my dear?”

  I shrug.

  “You don’t have to reply if you don’t want to. I won’t get annoyed.”