by Pasha Malla
I slunk back to my quarters and behind my desk.
Five weeks left of the residency. Thirty-five days, that is, before I’d be reunited with the love of my life.
The blank page gaped before me.
Death, treachery, debasement—that was the story of the mall. But was I the one to tell it? And even if I were, where would I even begin?
PROGRESS REPORT #4
Where would humankind be without swimming? On land, definitely. But, more existentially, a degraded race, like the flightless chicken whose wings are good only for snacking, or a legless dog shoved around the floor. From the moment the waves kiss your naked flesh to when at last your seaweed-slathered body is washed gasping onto the sands, to swim is to live, to love and to dream. And, in many ways, to die.
Some say our ancestors were fish. Others, apes. To each his or her own, though giraffes seem out of the question. Whatever side you’re on, it’s undeniable that we’re happiest in water. Certainly more so than amid the other elements, i.e., air (falling from a cliff), fire (incineration in a nuclear holocaust) or earth (being buried alive). A common argument suggests that drowning is a shoddy way to go, but think of it, really: embraced by the depths, tugged gently down and beckoned toward that bottomless sleep. Of all the available furniture, interesting that we call it a seabed—what’s more comforting than an eternal rest on that? To think you once had to be a pirate to earn a watery grave!
Unconvinced? Think of bathing—a sort of stationary, confidential swimming that happens at home. It’s something we do every day. Why? Hygiene, yes, but mainly because we’re not all lagoon-cavorting billionaires who take their baths under the cascading torrents of an erotic waterfall, head thrown back while shampoo, wealth and ecstasy foam all around. So we humbly fill a ceramic basin and climb on in, splashing around in our own grime until our skins pucker like sun-spoilt fruit. Then out we climb, rejuvenated, slightly cleaner, and mostly whole again.
Despite its firm appearance, the human body is made of water in some improbably high percentage—60, 70, something insane like that. Like they say: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and moisture to the very same. Next time you see a fountain, bight, reservoir, bay, gulf, loch, tributary, canal, marsh, estuary or firth, head on in, the water’s warm (actual temperature may vary). It’s your calling. Just have some perspective: imagine if every wad of snot-clogged tissue were so lucky as to return to life as a tree.
Even a puddle with someone’s weird sock in it! Anywhere will do, crazed as we are for even the feeblest suggestion of a swim. And whether it’s a marathon haul from one shoreline to another, a daft paddle or simply dunking your arm in a toilet, those of us who crave it will pursue a dip by any means, at any cost. Our dignity, a hundred dollars—just try us. We love swimming that much.
Babies are sometimes birthed in water, a testament to the innately aquatic miracle of humankind, and also the boldness of modern medicine. What’s next, nose jobs in space? But if you’ve ever seen a baby unleashed in a pool, eyes wide and pudgy limbs churning—such desperation! such liberty!—you’ve likely also had to fight the instinct, even for a moment, to dive in and haul the kid out. Curiosity beckons: Will the little gaffer make it? Usually they do.
And what of self-expression? There are as many ways to swim as there are death threats in the sea. For every shark, electric eel and whirlpool eddying down to the netherworld is a stroke for all seasons: back, front, side, some personally unique whirling this way and that. Or maybe you prefer “breast”? When it comes to swimming there are no judgments. So proceed however you desire, fiend. Friend, rather. All swimmers are friends.
In conclusion, sometimes we forget, walking around as we tend to on our legs and feet, on land, that there are other, better options. We see a river and think, “Great, where’s the bridge?” Instead maybe we should just be thinking, “Great!” And then off come our clothes, discarded in a heap on the bank, and in we plunge, diving under the scum-slicked surface into that glorious rush of two hydrogens and one oxygen, times a million. And then we don’t just cross to the other side (boring) but swim off somewhere down- or upstream—toward what? Who knows. Probably freedom.
MY FIFTH WEEK BEGAN with a clear intimation of what was to come.
K. Sohail released me as always, right on time on Monday morning, but with a palpable sense of, I thought, pity—as one opens the cage of a flightless bird. Even when her jingling and squeaking faded off into the mall, I did not rouse myself from bed. For I knew where she was heading: up to the former House of Blues, now a den of iniquity, housing as it did a murderer and usurper—a despicable creature, regardless how luxuriant and elegant, gathered as he was into that cascade of gorgeous, flowing hair.
I pictured my trip to the food court, waiting in line behind Mr. Ponytail as he demanded his morning eggs. (Poached, probably; I knew his type.) Then I’d slink up to the counter, where the teens would splat down a ladleful of yellow mush onto a paper plate, plop a teabag into some tepid water and dispatch me to my table, where Mr. Ponytail would already be situated—in my chair! What could I do but sidle up alongside him and watch as he wolfed down his eggs with aplomb? We were colleagues now, apparently, which made me complicit in all the vile, unforgivable things he’d done.
No, I would not dishonour Dennis’s memory by breakfasting with his killer. Not when there was a mystery to be solved, a wrong to be righted and justice to be served. But how? I had no allies in the mall, no real agency. K. Sohail was clearly powerless. Oh, she had a good heart beneath all that beige polyester, but the mall stifled its every struggling beat. And her behaviour that morning suggested that I had indeed wounded our relationship by venturing out after dark and taking the elevator to the basement, where I’d discovered the mall’s deepest, darkest secrets. (And pool.)
Lying there in bed, dragging the flaccid (despondent, I felt) tongue-hair back and forth over my teeth, I wondered what purpose I now had in the mall, what with a competitor of such magnificence and emancipating lack of morality residing upstairs. My thoughts were interrupted by a rustle in the hallway, a noise so unlikely and alien that at first I couldn’t place it—even as it sharpened into voices and footsteps.
People!
I peeked out from behind my screen and there they were. Four human beings. Striding past my quarters. With purpose. With resolution. With exhilaration, I thought, my spirits deflating. I padded out to the hallway in my pyjamas to watch them turn the corner toward the food court. Toward, I knew, the escalators, and up to the second floor, where Mr. Ponytail—my rival—resided. Patrons! At this hour! Only minutes into his stint as the mall’s pre-eminent resident and the dastard was already going full blazes engaging the public. No, even more disheartening: the public was engaging him. What “work” was he “making”?
I stood there, loathing myself for my curiosity, while the hair sprung to life and began to dance upon my tongue—stimulated, no doubt, by its master’s unholy dominion one floor above. Yet perhaps I might find some benefit in discovering what had enticed the public with such pre-emptive fervour and commitment, and what excited my tongue-hair so. So despite myself—despite everything—I followed those four strangers up to the former House of Blues and joined the small crowd, half a dozen strong including me and an especially reverent K. Sohail, gathered outside the shop, gazing in with looks of rapture as if upon the lair of some god or demon.
Mr. Ponytail had assembled several buckets of paint along the front of the store, forming a barricade between him and his audience. He moved between them with (I thought) contrived nonchalance, a concerted (I thought) attempt to communicate his obliviousness to our presence, but which (I thought) was an obvious show of pretension. Yet it had the intended effect, turning the crowd hushed and humbled as they (we, I thought, with a sigh) waited for him to begin.
And so, as the hair trembled with anticipation inside my mouth, he began.
With a great flourish, Mr. Ponytai
l dipped himself into a bright blue number and scuttled up the wall, dragging his hindquarters like a brush. The slash of colour he left behind was striking—a cry in the dark! a wound of sky! Someone actually gasped. But then came the climax: just below the ceiling, he took a drastic turn to the left, creating what was almost a number seven (7), but not quite.
And then, like a spider, Mr. Ponytail released from the wall, dropped to the floor and lay there motionless, in a pose that was either a bow to the audience or an expression of penitence before his own work. Regardless, a clatter of applause broke out among the public, K. Sohail included; so he’d duped her too. The tongue-hair thrashed around my mouth, straining at the root with such fervour that I had to clamp my teeth to stop it from wrenching free. And, to be honest, the piece was admittedly striking, with a tantalizing tension between expectation and outcome. What vision! What sophistication! I fairly cried aloud, and found myself tapping hands along with everyone else.
Only when Ponytail roused himself did I remember that I was meant to loathe him. His performance was a sham, built as it was on Dennis’s demise, I thought, seizing the tongue-hair between two molars and holding it fast. Regardless how exquisite his work, this guy was a reprobate. I looked around to see if anyone else was tormented by enjoying such glorious work by such an inglorious creature—but the five other faces in the hallway were aglow with a kind of benediction.
Meanwhile Ponytail seemed to have been defeated by the efforts of his own artistry. He flapped vaguely at us, his audience, as if ushering us away—show’s over—and retreated behind his sleeping screen (an obvious upgrade from my own, replete with Eastern ornamentation of waterfalls and dragons), leaving us to stare dimly at his creation, that not-quite-seven rendered in paint the colour of a summer’s day.
The four members of the public seemed to find nothing derisive in this dismissal, and in fact, if their awestruck head-shakes were any indication, were in fact impressed by it. Scorn was simply the way of the true artist—in fact, it rendered Mr. Ponytail even more compelling to his adoring public. The four of them wandered off, whispering in reverential tones—That was something, I’ve never seen anything like it, etc.—leaving me and K. Sohail alone, ten feet apart and eyeing each other awkwardly.
I ventured a nod, teeth gritted.
K. Sohail nodded back.
I sensed an opportunity. Just the two of us, a possibility for an honest exchange, maybe even the truth. But before I could speak K. Sohail placed her finger to her mouth, shushing me. She nodded toward the screen, behind which Mr. Ponytail—exhausted by his output, emotionally and physically spent—was snoring.
FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK, I faced the blank page with renewed desperation. I’d already worried that my Progress Reports, doubling as they did for “making work,” were a shortcut or cheat, and now I was confronted with someone—Mr. Ponytail—whose talents were so monumental that they necessitated patricide to be set free. Would I kill for the residency? One of the teenagers at the chicken stand, perhaps? No, even they didn’t deserve to die in the service of art—certainly not my “art,” such as it was.
How to compete with the spectacle of Ponytail’s not-quite-seven? I tried sketching an incomplete eight (8)—and realized immediately that all I’d done was write the number three (3). Fool! I’d only confirmed the guy’s supremacy. He’d put his whole being into that initial piece, a literal self-impression of body, mind and spirit that altered the space irrevocably. He was his own instrument. He worked intuitively, as if channelling a transcendental communiqué from some loftier plane. He was, unfortunately, a genius.
I, meanwhile? I’d had no feedback on my Progress Reports; did K. Sohail even read them? Or were they simply passed “up the chain” to the mall’s executive branch? Even then I pictured them stashed bureaucratically in a filing cabinet amid thousands of similarly ignored documents—or worse, fed straight through the shredder. My words! My work! Was it all for nought? Why, then, bother?
Meanwhile Mr. Ponytail’s brilliance, graphically displayed upon the mall, seemed to engage the public at a fundamental level. There was no way to compete. My concerns were not the concerns of others. In fact I wasn’t sure what my concerns even were. At best I spent my days trying to avoid banishment from the mall—fulfilling, in the least disruptive way possible, the requirements that permitted me to live there.
I was only occupying space, I realized, while Ponytail’s activities inspired awe and delight, despite the fact that he engaged the public by treating them like swine. Was that what people wanted? To be made lesser and penitent?
It was then that I recalled, from so many weeks ago, the Ornately Hatted Woman. Yes! My first patron! Fine, my only patron. And yet. She’d liked what she’d seen. A single member of the public, which in the face of Mr. Ponytail’s slavering minions might not seem like much—but still. It was a life! A human life, transformed by my work. Or at least distracted, briefly.
My god! Via my work we’d fairly fallen in love—albeit a platonic sort of love, of course, what with Klassanderella down in the islands and our wedding imminent. But compared to the public who drooled all over Mr. Ponytail, even as he slighted them, the Ornately Hatted Woman was different. She understood my work, having observed—and even inspired!—its humble beginnings and been impressed enough to return for a second look. She was a conscientious and courteous person, with clearly, if her hat was any indication, refined and particular taste; her return suggested that she saw me as the type to require space and time to really come into my own. Her absence ever since wasn’t cruel, but respectful: she was simply letting me find my way.
But find my way to what?
The mall, I thought. And everything that it suffocated, trapped and concealed. All that dereliction wasn’t the failure of personal enterprise; it was a symptom of something hideous and dormant, something designed to annihilate humanity itself. And I was at the cusp of discovery, which the Ornately Hatted Woman sensed, which was why she’d anointed me as her proxy. Not just my patron, then, but an ally and a muse. Unlike Mr. Ponytail, I didn’t condescend to the public from on high. No, the people and I were one and the same: I was a person too! United, unified and on the side of all that was good and right—about everything.
I smiled discreetly to myself. And then, with that brand of confidence that blooms from within and flowers in an outward flush of the spirits, into the camera. Directly. Steadily. With the wild abandon of self-actualization, for a count of (almost) four. Whoever was watching—K. Sohail, the mall’s powers-that-be, Dennis from the afterlife, maybe even the arrogant albeit impressive Ponytail—would witness my transformation.
No longer would I wallow in inadequacy. No longer would I be cowed by the mall. I had a purpose. I could not be stopped. The Ornately Hatted Woman would return soon enough, and I owed it to her to make her visit worthwhile. Revolution was at hand. It was time for my real work to begin.
RATHER THAN OBEDIENTLY HEADING to breakfast the following morning, I shaved my tongue (plucking the squirming hair from my razor and flushing it down the sink) and headed out of my quarters not right, but left—toward the exit and the world outside.
The world outside!
I was on a mission. And while leaving the mall might seem counterintuitive to that mission—which involved detective work inside the mall—I needed to reclaim some agency. To see the sky, to breathe the air, to sup, even passingly, from the trough of freedom. In my past life, I could roam (and had! oh, how I’d roamed!) the town as I pleased, save certain desolate or derelict districts where I’d be taking my life into my own hands. (A strange phrase: in whose hands was my life if not mine?)
But this was no time for semantic interrogations, I thought, striding past a long-forgotten banking-adjacent concern, Payday Cash & Loans, and an abandoned bookstore-cum-stationer, Page One Gifts. With each step I reclaimed some autonomy. No more shuttling to the food court for my daily allotments of poultry products
, like a marionette yanked along a string. I was no one’s puppet. I was a human being. An animal! I was wild and free.
Yet I did worry, as I made my way down the hall, that I hadn’t brought a jacket. Several weeks had passed since my internment in the mall and it seemed probable that autumn had descended. Wild animal or not, I certainly didn’t want to catch a cold. And while there was no provision in my Acceptance Letter banning me from leaving the mall, anyone watching the security footage might misconstrue my little venture as a getaway. I pictured Dennis, face down in the pool—punished, clearly, but why?—and broke stride.
Coming to a halt before a former haberdashery, Impresario, Esq., I came up with a plan: if questioned, I would claim to be simply checking on my bicycle. After all, it had been chained up for weeks now, and while I had complete faith in the workday oversight of K. Sohail, there was no telling what the hooligans of our town might get up to under cover of night—a stolen brake pad here, a fecal smear there. It seemed reasonable to be concerned, especially about my only means of transportation—I was no motorist, and public transit tends to seethe with disease.
Yes: a bike check. A clever ruse indeed! Invigorated, I resumed walking past abandoned enterprises—Go-Go Snaps, Guillemot et Frère—and peered ahead for a sign of the doors to outside. Nothing yet: the view still narrowed to that distant vanishing point with failed stores lining either side. Upon my arrival at the mall, I must have been so rapt with anticipation (or dread) that I’d failed to notice its incredible size. What a hallway!
Certainly there were a lot of stores.
On and on I walked, and on and on they went, with their forsaken purposes and misbegotten futures: Sportsbarn; The Honest Dodger; Scott’s Sausage; Tech Stuff; Big Bear Outfitters; Kitchen Republic; Zippy’s; Pharmapause; Socrates Opticians; Biodynamic Earth Wellness Organic Foods and Fresh-Pressed Juice Bar; The Shoe Revue; Knit Knack Wool Shack; Toothworks Dentistry; Naughty Bits Adult Fun!; Kiddie Karousel Daykare; Jupiter Big and Tall Fashions for Him; Jupiter Big and Tall Fashions for Her; Nailtime; 12 to 6; Jacob Bros. Bridal Experience; TJ Lumber; Bikini Parish; Frugal & Scrounge; Dr. Duane Orthotics; EZ Play Gamez and Toyz; Golddust Jewellers; Hobby Horse Pastime Co.; Body and Soaps; Plants Forever; Tech Stuff Xpress; C’est ça?; Tech Stuff Kids; Meringue; Big Sleep Interiors; Müd.
