by Pavel Kostin
And there’s Ben with them… How could I have forgotten about that? Ben and I… We really were friends. We were the best artists in the city!
On the next page there’s a painting. That silhouette on the White Tower was painted by me. I painted my girlfriend, from a photo. I painted my Tanya. It was one of the best paintings in the whole city. Even Ben was impressed. I remember it clearly now.
Another page and another painting. And another. And another. Now I understand: those paintings which I thought where vaguely familiar, which I kept coming across on walls across the city, they were painted by me. There’s dozens of them, if not hundreds. Some big, some small. Some good, some not so good. In the centre and on the outskirts. They’re a part of my life, a part of me.
I’m an artist. I can make things. I can make art out of nothingness. I can create.
There’s so much more I could do! Somehow I’d like to tell the story of everything I’ve been through! About what I know, what I remember, what I’ve seen with my own eyes and felt in my own heart.
What a shame it’s already too late.
Or is it?
I’m an artist. An actual artist. And a pretty good one. I believe it. I really believe it. I can imagine anything.
Bright light. Nothing but light. Only the white sun from one side to the other.
I open my eyes.
I’m lying on a roof. I jump up, look around. What happened, god damn it? I just saw… I just saw…
“Hi!” Behind me.
I shudder and turn round sharply. My head starts spinning. Am I asleep? Or something worse than that. Looks like I’ve finally gone mad after all. A very familiar guy is looking at me with an ironic smile and a curious expression. I recognise him before he reaches me. I’ve seen him very often, almost every day. I’ve seen him in the mirror. It’s me. Literally me. Another hallucination? The fever dream of a dying mind? Or someone… pretending to be me.
“What’s happening?!” I ask, edging backwards.
“Careful!” he remarks with a smile.
“What’s happening? Have I died?”
“I don’t know,” he… I say with a shrug, “you tell me!”
I look round. We’re on that roof. I pinch myself. Don’t think I’m sleeping. I try to touch the wall around the stairwell… and my hand goes right through.
I stare, not believing my own eyes. My brain refuses to accept that the laws of physics have been broken. I try again. There’s no resistance. It’s like a mirage. Only now do I notice that everything feels easy. There’s no pain in me, no fear. Only silence.
“Awesome, right?” he asks me.
I look at him dumbstruck.
“Does this mean this is this real? Is this what death looks like? Who are you?”
“Can’t you see?” he smiles. “I’m not going to give you an answer. They’re watching us. You and I could ruin everything if we start throwing that sort of line around.”
“Damn it, but… Then how come …” I snap back at him. “If it’s all… Then what else is there to say?! It’s over. That’s it! The final curtain. There’s no way out…”
“Really? Is that you telling me that? I seem to remember you finding it a bit easier to break character before!”
I look at him in silence.
“But isn’t this…” I ask. “Isn’t a beam of light supposed to appear now and take me up, or I dissolve in a whirl of flashing sparks? Or something like that?”
“Sorry, Max,” he says seriously. “No. Any minute demons will appear… and the earth will open up beneath your feet and the flames of hell will swallow you...!”
Pause.
“What?” I ask. “What..? You’re… you’re joking, right?”
“Mmhm,” he laughs. “I’m joking. You see, you know me pretty well!”
“Know you? I know you? I just mean… it’s all so weird!”
“What else did you expect after all that?”
“So no one’s going to appear or anything like that?”
“Well I’ve appeared!” he laughs.
“And who are you?!”
“I’ll say it again: can’t you see?”
I sit on the edge of the roof. At the last moment I suddenly get scared: maybe I’ll fall through? If I’m a ghost. No, doubt that….
“So what happens now?” I ask.
“What would you like?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah, honestly, go on lay it all out! Just go through it in order. No need to hide anything!”
“Well, OK then, let’s go through it. Everything single thing?”
“Uh-huh. Everything you want.”
“I want… I want Tanya to be with me again. I want to paint. And I want it to be good. I want a nice creative job. To always have enough money. I want everyone to like me. And to never have to worry about anything. That’s it, probably. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“You’re finished?”
“Yep, I think so.”
“Fantastic,” he nods. “Now watch this!”
He clicks his fingers, staring right at me. My heart stops. Several seconds pass in silence.
He laughs.
“Sorry… I couldn’t resist again!”
The whining starts again inside me. The blissful quiet is gone.
“That’s not funny!” I shout. “I’m in bad way! Can’t you see that?!”
He nods. He looks at his hands.
“Sorry,” he says. “I mean it, sorry. These wishes of yours… I guess you realise that I can’t bring Tanya back. You know that. But maybe I can help you with the others. Painting, for instance. You do paint!”
“Yeah… On walls…”
“And what’s wrong with walls? Stone’s just as good as canvas. If you want to paint on canvas – go ahead. If you want to paint better – paint. What’s holding back?”
“I don’t think it’ll be any better. I am what I am.”
He chuckles.
“Hey, how many amazingly smart, talented people do you think have been fooled by that phrase! ‘I am what I am…’ It’s about the journey, not the destination! You just need to keep going forward. Just keep going. What if it hasn’t worked out after a year? So what? That means it will after three. That not enough? Ten then. And what’s ten years… What’s ten years…”
“Oh you are a smart one aren’t you,” I say with irritation.
“Me?!” He holds out his hands. “Take a closer look! Max… You... Max, you’re a nice, smart, talented guy. You’re a great painter. You can create. So you’ve got a goal. You can give it a go. No one fully understands the journey that the artist takes to become an artist. There’s no recipe. Everyone becomes an artist in their own way. There’s no method. There’s no algorithm. It’s magic. It’s a journey, and each one is different. No one knows where it leads. No one…”
I look into the distance. The contours of the buildings form a jagged line. Funny, if someone’s looking at my roof from over there, they won’t even see me. I’ll merge with that line, turn into an invisible point on the enormous path across the horizon.
“So,” I ask, “what happens now?”
He shrugs his shoulders.
“You tell me.”
“Me? What... what’s happened to me?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
He nods toward the edge of the roof. I go over and carefully look down. He comes over next to me. It’s quiet. Very quiet.
“Answer just one question for me please…” I say.
“Well?”
“Is she real?”
He looks at me, smiling.
“Of course,” he replies confidently. “Of course…”
For a long time we keep looking into th
e distance, watching the sunset that’s about to happen, saying nothing. Then he breaks the silence.
“So? What now?” he asks cautiously. “Do you know now?”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
THE BEGINNING
My Wall
Contents
The Wings of My Angel
The Distant Red Tower
Magic and Monkeys
The Other Side
Discovery
Rock Bottom
The Secret of My City
My Wall