In/Half

by Jasmin B. Frelih

  Evan waved his hands as he spoke, sitting on the stool, surrounded by spotlights and white tarpaulins that dispersed the sharp light into a gentle pallor. Mundo moved in a circle, catching the rhythm of his diction and taking photos of the vowels whenever Evan opened his mouth wide.

  ‘She leant over me, I was lying there, paralysed, wasted from everything that she’d done to me, and though I can’t remember exactly how I felt I know that somehow I didn’t manage to move much, and she pushed her cleavage into my face, I mean, she came really close to me and her ample breasts were right in my eyes, and between them was a necklace I’d bought her, not long after we’d met, back when she was still stupid and naive, at least that’s how I remember seeing her in my thoughts – get it? – and she shoved her fingers, with those filed and flawless nails painted pink, into her cleavage and extracted the necklace, so the pendant was now dangling right in front of my nose, dangling as if it had been created to dangle there and not to veg out peacefully its whole life, devoid of all commotion, in my damn mouth.’

  Evan was getting worked up, which clearly delighted the photographer. He danced around him, hunting down angles, light, the gaping of the mouth.

  ‘But I pushed her away, weakly, I was so weak, completely powerless, but I pushed her away and ran a finger under my gums, counted my teeth, saw one was missing and said muffer, Mojffa, you’ll pay for ffat!’

  His head had grown heavy. He put his elbows on his knees and his hands over his ears. That straightened out his face. Mundo positioned himself right in front of him.

  ‘And she did.’

  Click-click-click-click-click.

  The city cityish as they drove. The pavements pavementy, the lines liney, the clouds cloudy. Koito’s vehicle was self-driving, fully automatic, no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors. Seaty seats and windowy windows. She pressed a button and with a quiet electric hum they were in the street, streety, hovering.

  ‘Where to now?’

  ‘The director of the theatre wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Something serious?’

  ‘Something serious.’

  ‘How serious?’

  ‘Very serious. We’re going there and the two of you will have a real discussion.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  The conversation was amorphously conversational. The producing director had some bureaucratic problems that Evan didn’t understand and he didn’t know what to say, so he did a lot of smiling and nodding and grimacing concern at the right places, allowing his looks to dissolve into a benevolent Ah, it’ll work out, it’ll all be fine. Strangely, this put the director at ease. Koito remained outside the room; their conversation took place among a great deal of leather furniture. What is it you want from me? thought Evan. The director was opening the notebooks that were on the table, showed numbers and graphs and arrows, and chased them around with his finger on the paper, which made Evan wince. They parted with a dry handshake and Evan left with the unpleasant feeling of having been robbed. The time was slowly timing away.

  A long drive out of the city. The skyscrapers sank out of sight, chased out by forlorn shacks that sprouted up and ate into the swamp for a few minutes before disappearing into the mud. After that, uninterrupted patches of wild growth. Then, for a long time, nothing, just bare earth, split in two by the road, before fences, tall, concrete, impermeable, appeared. The car brought them up to a metal gate. A movable camera gawked at them. Hologram light filled the space in the car.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ said Koito.

  Evan held them open. Soon the door opened. The car hovered its way inside, got swallowed up by the walls.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Lunch, the Mishima family.’

  ‘I’ve read him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Yukio.’

  ‘I do not know who that is.’

  He’d never seen such a manor. A totally sui generis form that was inspired neither by Europe’s colonial past nor by any indigenous culture. The architect must have been cut off from the world, perhaps a feral child who’d never been taught to read or write but only to draw inhuman lines. Evan found it very manorish.

  They were obviously late because the servant ran up to the car and almost gruffly ushered them towards the door where another servant was standing and they were even more gruffly ushered into the dining room. The family was already seated. There was less and less steam rising from the plates in front of them.

  Koito apologized for the lateness (if you can call her cold address to the assembled an apology: We should have arrived thirteen minutes ago), bowed, and sat down. Evan managed a sort of bow before he, with a slight loss of balance, collapsed into the chair. All eyes were fixed on him. He felt awkward.

  ‘I must tell you that the achievements of your – what? Great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather? – have always been a great inspiration for my art, if I may say so, let me tell you that just a few years ago I put on a show, a satire, but not a silly one, I was aiming more at a modern intervention into the membrane of luxuriant greed, whose final act very much reflected the tragically unsuccessful attempted putsch attempt by your – what? Great-grandfather? Great-great-grandfather? – I mean, when I read about it I was struck dumb, what a majestic affair. He wanted to restore the divine nature of the emperor, clothe him anew, so to speak, after the office had lost its shine, eroded by the spiritual vulgarity of the post-war reality, through action, with devotion to the goal, through the complete sovereignty of the human soul, but they all laughed at him, that was in the ’70s when people had already been robbed of the transcendent, robbed utterly, they even booed him, you see how the existence among the masses is crass, they booed him and made him commit suicide. Sepukku. That must make you very proud.’

  Their faces were far away, barely visible in the dark. They looked at one another, someone cleared his throat.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Z—, but I fear you are mistaken.’ It was a woman’s voice, old, raspy and quiet. ‘Yukio Mishima was a pseudonym for Kimitake Hiraoka, a family with whom we have no relation. Because I feel no need for tact, I will add another thing. Our great grandfather was the commander of Camp Ichigaya, the very camp that the writer,’ this was clearly a curse word, ‘occupied in his blasted performance, the one you found so inspiring. Your error was a grave one. I believe it would be better for all of us if we finished our meal in silence.’

  Only now did Evan look at his plate, loaded with – what else? – pancakey pancakes, dripping with chocolate.

  Funny, what a couple of words can do. In a single minute Evan had exchanged eleven lives. He was an offended deity, triumphant father, a wounded lover, an innocent child, a lying woman and an indifferent teenager, he’d been life and death, a lizard, a dog and a hoopoe. She took him to a pet shop, and soon it became clear why. She was testing whether there was any space left in their life, or whether all the cracks were already filled. She knelt down to a golden retriever puppy. The saleswoman smiled at them. This was a common scene for her. She knew what was going on.

  ‘Will you buy it for me?’

  ‘Will you take care of him?’

  ‘But we’ll be together.’

  ‘Mojca.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you need some body to warm your bed when I’m gone, I’ll happily buy it, but, please, stop pretending that I’m not leaving because that’s bloody childish. By the time I’m back that thing will be a real dog.’

  The little puppy pushed its snout between her legs.

  ‘See,’ said Evan, ‘you won’t even know that I’m gone,’ and smiled to himself. The saleswoman hid her indignant face behind the cans of cat food. Mojca got up and stuck her face into his. There was fire in her eyes. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she whispered harshly and blew him off into the caravan of strangers’ heads.

  ‘That did not go well.’

  ‘In terms of the schedule,’ said Koito, ‘it went perfectly well.’

  ‘But I
offended them. They almost kicked us out.’

  ‘In terms of the schedule.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Koito.’

  ‘It is not necessary.’

  ‘Will they come to the show?’

  ‘It is probable.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have lied to them.’

  Evan closed his eyes. Darkling darkness.

  She was hovering high in the air, in the sky, among the clouds, and he was so far down below. Her hair was braided into long, golden plaits. He opened his mouth. Bubbles were streaming out of it and popping right by it, so he couldn’t hear what he was saying to her. She laughed. You’re not going anywhere, she called out. Because you can’t, you can’t go now. Now you have to go upwards. He looked down. His belly was inflated. His heels had peeled themselves from the ground and the wind was pushing him towards her. They were way up high and laughing at each other. They pointed at the world. They hugged and pushed each other away. And again. And again. Laughing. Their bellies inflated, they flew about like balls. Every contact sounded like the muted striking of rubber on rubber. A game. Everything was a game. His hands grasped for her. He grabbed hold of a braid and pulled her towards him, pressing her to his balloon body. He whispered in her ear. That was the only way he could hear himself.

  ‘It’s beautiful up here, but how are we going to land?’

  He couldn’t believe what he’d said: beautiful. She stuck out her tongue, which split into scissors. She put a plait between the split of her tongue. She cut it off and used it to tie him to a cloud.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll leave you here and you’ll never have to go down. Never.’

  With her scissored tongue she pierced her belly and fell. That angered him. He took a deep breath and, as if from a gun barrel, shot bullets of teeth at her.

  ‘Evan Z—!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t do that with your lips.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Blow raspberries.’

  ‘I was dreaming.’

  ‘We’re late. You have half an hour of free time under supervision. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘You know what? I don’t care.’

  The car was standing still. Shadows were flitting by. It had become cloudy, and the light brought rain to mind. A cloud of flies was buzzing above the ground.

  ‘Mao once had all the birds killed off,’ said Evan.

  ‘Mao?’

  ‘Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator.’

  ‘I know nothing about China.’

  ‘He ordered that all sparrows be killed because they got on his nerves.’

  ‘Sparrow?’

  ‘A wretched little bird, like a smaller pigeon.’

  ‘Pigeon?’

  ‘A flying rat.’

  ‘A rat with wings?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is good that he killed them.’

  ‘You don’t like rats?’

  ‘I do not understand the question.’

  ‘Why do you think it’s good to kill them?’

  ‘Rats are dangerous to people. Even more so if they can fly.’

  ‘Koito, just take me to the theatre, please.’

  ‘Ok.’

  The KaBoom-ki theatre is the work of the Japanese architect Kiyonori Yamaguchi, heir to the luckiest unlucky man in the world, Tsutomo Yamaguchi, who survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, then fled to Nagasaki just in time to have the opportunity to survive another one. He died at the age of 93, long after the end of the war.

  The building is in the shape of an atomic cloud, that is, of the deadliest of mushrooms, although the wicked tongues of the local architects like to insinuate that the visuals of the emerald steel and cement of which the building was constructed made it look, from a distance, more like a stalk of broccoli, an assessment with which Evan agreed, since the first time he’d seen it he’d come to a similar judgement entirely independently of those wicked tongues.

  At the base of the stalk, or the stem of the mushroom, or the pillar of smoke, stands a shopping centre hawking antiques and other useless expensive merchandise that Edo’s elite turn their noses up at as they walk, dressed primly and properly, into the theatre. During the day everything is closed, but at the side entrance for stagehands and for other hired hands there’s always someone smoking a cigarette and moving his lips, staring into the air and dreaming he was someone else, somewhere else.

  That’s where Evan and Koito saw Oksana. When she saw them, she flushed.

  ‘Hi, Oksana.’

  ‘Eeeeevan. Hi. And, sorry, this morning was all…fast and I don’t remember…your name…’

  Her voice trailed off, expecting a response, but Koito said nothing.

  ‘Oksana, this is Koito.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Koito gave a slight bow.

  ‘Are there a lot of people here already?’ asked Evan.

  ‘I don’t know. I just got here.’

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

  ‘I don’t smoke a lot. But today, sorry, a strange day,’ she turned even redder, ‘and cloudy. I just…wanted to.’

  ‘Take care of your voice.’

  Oksana nodded humbly, as if he were an accusing father.

  ‘You two going up?’ she asked.

  ‘Finish your cigarette. We’ll go together.’

  An extraordinary-looking man approached them. Such people are to be found only in the imagination of addicts trying to kick the habit, in the dreams of bizarre children, and, most frequently, in the streets of Edo. His hairstyle was a horse-hairy mane, painted orange, curled into strands, like a ripped-up mattress, which made his face look a bit like a lion’s, which was strange, since his thickly white-powdered face looked nothing like an animal’s. His left eyelid, left nostril and the left side of his mouth were sewn together with a thick black thread. His right eye was an almost transparent blue, a wart the size of a hazelnut stared out of his right nostril, looking like a tumour in the making, and the right half of his jaw was unshaven. The half-beard was, of course, bright red. He was wearing a black dinner jacket that must have been salvaged from some ancient cupboard, a moth kingdom, and protruding from his sleeves were what appeared to be stalks of straw. It was impossible to say how old he was. He offered Evan his hand, which Evan shook out of habit, although a chill ran down his spine the instant before contact. The hand was humanly warm, entirely ordinary.

  ‘Junichiro.’

  ‘Evan.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘The pleasure is mine.’

  ‘I came to see how my text is coming along.’

  Evan tilted his head.

  ‘Junichiro, Junichiro, Junichiro…Marukama? Your text? Moody Dick is yours?’

  Junichiro smiled a half-smile and nodded. Evan grabbed hold of his hand again and shook it more fervently.

  ‘I am honoured, Mr Marukama. Your play was absolutely explosive for me, as far as inspiration goes.’

  ‘I am pleased.’

  ‘So am I, so am I.’

  Evan held the door and gestured for Junichiro to enter. He forgot all about Koito and Oksana, so they had to open the door themselves. As Oksana crossed the threshold the first drops of rain fell, bursting inaudibly.

  The troupe was on stage, arranged in a tight semicircle and ready for motivational training led by a tiny, energetic lady named Miiko. Evan sent Oksana into their midst before taking a front-row seat with Junichiro and Koito.

  Miiko raised a hand and bellowed, ‘Everyone here?’, and dropped it before anyone could answer. Then they ran, and jumped, and hugged each other, and danced, and imitated animals, and inhaled and exhaled, and put their legs around their necks, and hollered, and forced out laughter, under constraint, which triggered salvos of real laughter, and then sobbed, and teased their throats with vowels, and rolling r’s, and ran again and jumped and hugged, and so forth.

  Half of Junichiro’s face manifested approval. Evan waved a hand.

  ‘This is harmless time-f
rittering in my opinion, nothing very useful, but, ok, I allow it as long as they then listen to me.’

  ‘Oh, it seems fine to me. Before writing, I too doodle, scribble and spew out words at random so I can calibrate the language. Its varying levels of existence. You have to be in accord with the vibe. Me, language, them, the body. But I understand that you don’t value it, because you are again somewhere else, where it’s not so simple. What does a director have, where he can carelessly examine, before embarking on a structured vision?’

  ‘Ah, nothing special.’ He paused. ‘Life.’

  ‘Bravo.’

  Their faces turned cold. They stared at the stage, where Miiko was standing on tiptoe and stretching skywards, ‘Like a palm, like a cypress, like a ficus!’

  ‘Evan Z—, will you get up?’

  ‘Koito, I don’t need you now. This is my home.’

  He stood up, filled his lungs with air, closed his eyes, counted

  three

  two

  one

  and ran on stage, like a man reborn, ‘Dear friends, tonight will be, with your help, a complete run-through, a smooth and productive rehearsal! We have a guest, Mr Marukama, the author of the source material for our text and I expect you to treat his eyes, his eye, as if they, as if it, were a whole hall, filled to the rafters. I demand flow and sweat and devotion, I demand absorption! Beyond the edges of these boards, there’s nothing. Your whole world lies within them!’ He went to his spot, behind the console that had been set up in front of the stage, a yard below. From there he had the director’s control over his orchestra of people, lights and sound. ‘Today we’re going to do the fifth because we’ve still got a few weak spots.’ Some exasperated groans. ‘Don’t turn up your noses, today is the last time we’re doing it without animals, be thankful. Then it’s really going to get hellish!’ He jumped and shook his body. ‘Let’s go, mourners, into a circle, please, please, people, you know where you’re supposed to be, Oksana, you’re in the middle, people, as if for real, legs apart, as much as you can, as if for real, and where’s Pasha? Where the hell is Pasha? What? A holiday? He’s got a fucking religious holiday? Are you shitting me? What the hell does he believe in? Somebody go call him. I’m serious. Tell him to be here in ten. What? For the fucking love of God, this isn’t a playschool, we’re making theatre here, let him come on stage and do his ritual magic, it’s the right place for it. What? No, wait, are we talking about the same Pasha? My lead actor? That same Pasha that can only be torn away from his pack of whores by a bottle of whisky? One week before opening and he’s got a holiday? Aw, fuck it. He’s not here? You can’t get him? Where’s his sponsor? In jail, hahaha. Nothing. Ok, nothing. Kobo, can you come to the console? Yes, the fifth, I’ll tell you what to do. What? I will. Yes. Me. Give me the tunic.’ He went onto the stage, put on the black gown and spun around. Everyone was in their place. He lifted his chin, looked at Kobo and nodded. The purple strobe light began pounding the stage, the violins filled the air with the sound of anthills. Oksana was lying on the floor with legs spread and her head turned away from the audience. On both sides of her the mourners twisted and turned. ‘Kobo, can you tone down the violins? No, leave the setting as it is, just a little less. They’re getting on my nerves.’ In the front row, Junichiro grimaced. ‘What’s up with the tornado? What? Costs too much? He told me? I agreed? Just for the rehearsal, or in general? Good, good. Then for now we’ll just turn on the ventilators, just for the feel of it.’ The wind blew across the stage, lifting the skirts and revealing the tights stretching over the dancers’ sinewy legs. ‘A double code, opposites, we’re celebrating birth and death at the same time, let me see on your faces, twisted with misfortune, a sliver of hope, how you grasp for it, the short-lived, the transitory, because that’s all you’re left with.’ With firm steps he walked around Oksana. ‘Where are my saints? Put the light on them, Kobo, it’s ready, just press. Yes.’ Enormous paper effigies of a fool and of a clown were raised into the air on ropes, their arms splayed. ‘Ok, this is the opening scene. Everything in its place. Now, movement.’ His face morphed into one of concentration. Clumps of paper descended from the ceiling, the mourners chased after them, and read random scatterings of poetry, in dirge-diction. Evan stood over Oksana; her head was between his spread legs. ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘How will we avoid the wrath of words?’ ‘Whose words?’ ‘The words that have already been written, into the books, into the bodies, printed on tongues.’ ‘They threaten us?’ ‘They’re getting closer and closer.’ The mourners took a step towards them, their mouths full of lines of verse. ‘The old words that have sharpened so many mouths that they have themselves become blunt. What can they do to us?’ ‘Sister, fear repetition, duplication, fear clones, reflections, mirrors.’ ‘I do not understand. Why?’ ‘Basilisks for the soul, you turn to stone when you look at them, avenues of statues, marble, ancient reefs.’ Verses, a step closer. ‘How should I drive them out?’ ‘Through birth.’ ‘But I can’t give birth to anything new. Only to our echo. Will he be able to drive them away?’ ‘We will plug his ears and open his mouth, close his eyes and nose, and his fingers won’t be allowed to feel.’ ‘But jellyfish can also slip in through the mouth.’ ‘Then he will have to scream constantly.’ Verses, even closer. ‘Brother, I do not want it.’ ‘What?’ ‘The new.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because it will be old for someone else.’ ‘For whom?’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ ‘For whom?’ Oksana cried in the throes of giving birth, the mourners pressed the two of them into a circle. ‘For whom?’ A scream. ‘For whom?’ A scream, a step. Evan winced. ‘Where are the dog-heads? Yes! At the fourth for whom, the full moon is uncovered, the saints bow their heads, the dog-heads begin to howl, up front. Let’s go, one more time, the fourth for whom?’ A scream, a step, the backdrop behind the stage exploded in a blaze of halogen lights, dogs’ masks, larger than the bodies and made of styrofoam, turned snout-first into the air above and howled in a chorus, ‘The dog moon breath of the world, breath of the world, the dog moon breathes the world, breathes the world…’ ‘Now the parents come and the light on the saints goes out.’ Two shapes ran from the behind the scenes. ‘Children! What have you done!’ The mourners didn’t let them join in. ‘Father, mother, aunt, uncle. We are always the same. The incest of words, the mating of poetry. Look what emerges from the sameness, from the eternal sameness, from the cycles, from the seasons, from the orbiting of comets, from galactic spirals and double, duplicate helices!’ The mourners lifted the father onto his back, he cried ‘Oh, that you may see no more of what evil I have committed, what I have done!’ and histrionically hit himself in the face, with his own hand. Evan repeated in a mocking tone, ‘Oh, that you may see no more, that you may see no more of what evil I have committed, what I have done,’ and pathetically ran a hand over his eyes. Oksana screamed, loudly wheezed, rose to her elbows and stretched her legs into perfect splits. ‘Oh, no more, no more, no more, no more, no more,’ in a rhythm, and the dog-heads took up the mantra, no more, no more, the mourners tore the sheets of paper into tiny pieces and threw them in the air, and joined in the chanting, no more, no more, Evan, now out of character, jumped and clapped, the whole stage shook with the rhythm of a march, and he pointed a finger at Kobo, held it for a while, then made a fist. The strobe light was extinguished, the music stopped, and the actors froze. ‘This will be the end of the tornado, and they’ll release the birds. Did they get the birds? Problems? What problems? Ok, we can do this without the birds, but still, they could at least have got a few parrots. Parrots, yes, what? Nobody knows what a parrot is? A parroting parrot? Ha ha. Good. That was good. Now comes the difficult part, now you’re all to be perfectly still, like you’re made of stone. Yes? I’ll allow some sweat to trickle off you, but everything else stays frozen. The wheels of time are jammed. When worlds are born, the universe is still.’ He sat down in front of Oksana, his back to the audience, and crossed his legs. ‘Kobo, an E chord, cello, hit it. That’s all. No, an octave lower, please. That�
�s it.’ ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘I see the head.’ ‘Is it beautiful?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ugly?’ ‘No.’ ‘What’s it like?’ ‘I don’t know, like a head.’ ‘Would you like to save it?’ ‘I don’t have a keyboard.’ ‘Would you like to upload it?’ ‘I don’t have a mouse.’ ‘Monitor.’ ‘Resolution.’ ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘We’re cooked.’ ‘Cooked?’ ‘Probably.’ ‘Sing me a song.’ ‘I don’t know any. You sing one to me.’ ‘Which one?’ ‘A completely new one.’ Evan couldn’t see what was going on behind his back, but he did hear the coughing. He waited for it to subside. Oksana raised her voice into a melody. ‘Sister.’ A melody. ‘Sister.’ A melody. ‘Sister, our child will be a pop-art freak, like a can of soup.’ The melody stopped. ‘Like Marilyn?’ ‘It’s a boy.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Because he won’t be allowed to give birth.’ ‘Maybe he will be a black square on a black background.’ ‘Rothko?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Did you know the CIA actively propagated expressionism, constructivism and the radical avant-garde, and deliberately smeared social realism?’ ‘Really? Why?’ ‘Fear.’ ‘Of?’ ‘Change.’ ‘Nothing changes.’ ‘Tell that to the CIA.’ The coughing suddenly sounded rather forced, like it had lost its primary function of throat-clearing and took on an independent purpose as an instrument of disturbance. Evan wrinkled his nose. ‘Sister.’ ‘Brother.’ ‘I expect you to give birth.’ ‘I don’t want to.’ ‘You have to.’ ‘I’m afraid.’ ‘Of what?’ ‘Change.’ ‘Nothing changes.’ ‘Tell that to my skin.’ ‘Surface.’ ‘And inside?’ ‘The world.’ The coughing was replaced by an indistinct murmuring. ‘Kobo, now in G sharp. Thank you. Now if the audience could, please, be a little…’ The murmuring lost its r’s and was now just a mumming. Evan shrugged. ‘Ok. In G, the parents.’ ‘Father, mother, aunt, uncle. Now it’s Pasha’s monologue, I won’t do the whole thing, I’ll show you guys some mercy, everything is peaceful, the G sharp is sustained, the monologue is, let’s say, a few minutes, and at the end there’s, what is it again? Right…’ he hugged the parents, who were all standing by Oksana’s side, ‘…and that’s why we’re here, in the world, to keep right on rolling down, since the path leads only into the depths, and we roll, and on the second we roll the riff on “Whole Lotta Love” once, ok, again, second roll and we roll,’ ta-na na-na-na, ‘down the hill, full of bumps and bruises, and we never reach the ground, that view is saved for our children, who will also roll,’ he nods, ta-na na-na-na, ‘and the view is saved for their children, and they roll,’ ta-na na-na-na, ‘into eternity, downhill, always, eternally, because, as we all know, the earth is round.’ By now he could clearly hear curses coming from the audience. Evan disregarded them and motioned to Kobo, ‘Ok, now play the whole song, good, when Plant revs up that chainsaw voice, gradually get off the stage. The platform will rise, with Oksana, and the rocks will roll, what about the rocks? Aha, good, they’re there. Painted yet? No. All right. And the spotlight, again, back on the saint. The platform will reach the top, right when the solo starts. Yes, I’ve had the technician fiddle with it a bit, now it’s better… Ok, what about the rocks? Like that. Good, Kobo, let me come there, no more Pasha until the end of the scene, no? Ok.’ He walked proudly to the console and saw Junichiro’s threatening face glaring at him. ‘And birth.’ The violin bow struck the strings. Oksana added her voice to Plant’s squeals and they wailed together. The enormous rocks of foam rolled from both sides and disappeared behind the curtains at the edges. A camera descended from the ceiling on a steel wire, peeked between Oksana’s legs and projected onto the surface of the mass of white fabric behind her. Screams, shrieking, wailing strings. Evan pressed a button. A transparent screen with a human heart sketched on it descended in front of the stage. If you looked through it, you could see an opening in the fabric behind Oksana spreading in rhythmic, ever quicker, throbs. A dark crevice. Nothing in it. Evan grinned. As the solo reached a peak, an uninterrupted, animalistic scream came cascading out of Oksana’s throat. The whiteness of the fabric was banished to the edges, the outline of a black hole. A stream of red sand came surging from the top of the platform on which Oksana was lying. The canvas rose, the camera rose, the lights went out and all that remained was a spotlight beam aimed straight at Oksana, the guitar solo was cut off, her screaming died out and the air was disturbed by a quiet, drawn out beating of the heart, the pecking of birds and the sounds of sand seeping into a crimson pile on the floor. ‘… insulting to every aspect of our culture.’ Evan turned around. Junichiro’s hands were trembling as he spoke with Koito. She was peacefully staring ahead, with her arms folded in front of her. ‘What?’ The platform had begun to descend. Junichiro turned to Evan and placed his hands on the edge of the chair to get up when the fanfare rang out. Oksana sat up and was waiting for the platform to join the floor. Then she got up, knelt down, buried her hands in the sand, raised them and spread her fingers so that the sand slipped through. ‘There’s nothing. Praised be, praised be. I was so afraid. But there’s nothing that could be. It can’t go on like this, it dispersed into the cloud of a sunrise. It was a lie, and a lie does not sprout. Praised be, praised be. Toto was right when he first got a whiff of the truth.’ Barefoot, she stepped onto the pile and stretched her hands high in the air. ‘Love can’t lie and a mere word doesn’t become flesh.’ The mourners changed into monks’ tunics and, with rosaries in their hands, went to the edges of the stage and hummed the opening bars of the New World Symphony. ‘A liar will escape, another liar will hang. And both will sprout wings. And beaks. Their home will be the heavens, and they will not be allowed to land. Never again. May it never be repeated. I ask for just this one thing, from the heights, just one thing, may it never, never, be repeated. May everyone live anew, and not again. Red wings. Never again ground.’ The light fell. Darkness. Evan clapped. Alone.