Intrigued, intelligent, cynical faces.
Assessors of stories. They knew nothing but stories, they were skeptical of life. I thought they’d spit on this, unless, by chance, it struck them as refreshing. They were thirsty for refreshing. They must have grown tired of the same old same old.
Then, a slender figure in overalls appeared by the turbine, wearing a helmet and safety goggles. It was not possible to tell whether the person was male or female. This person opened a case and pulled out a special metal cutting saw. Once it was turned on, the person approached the turbine, and a murmur of confusion, or maybe disapproval, maybe even a little pain, spread through the room when the sparks started to fly.
I had to get out of there.
It was windy at the exit. Branoš was already there. The smoke from his cigarette was wafting away and disappearing into the neon night.
I didn’t say I couldn’t watch it, and neither did he; Malcolm needed an event, and we knew this. Branoš just stood there smoking into the wind, in a black suit. He gazed in the direction of the Thames. Maybe he was hiding his face.
After a few attempts, I lit my cigarette.
“I was in the emergency room once,” Branoš said. “I’d been cut, so I had to get stitches.”
He turned his head and looked at me.
“And a man was sitting there in the waiting room, black. I mean, he was a white guy, but he was all purple and black. I didn’t ask anything. You don’t know what to ask. He explained he’d been electrocuted and was waiting for the test results. Now, check out what the guy asks. He asks me where I go on vacation. I told him, and said I hadn’t been on vacation for two years. He said, ‘Neither was I last year. The job is good, but you can’t take vacations when you like.’ Then he said, ‘My wife and I decided to go to London this year.’ —‘That’s nice,’ I said. —‘She’s younger than me. She wants to see London, and I’ve never been there, either.’ As if he weren’t sure and was asking for confirmation that London was worth a visit. He came to mind a moment ago.”
When he paused I wasn’t sure if the story was over yet or not.
“So I go in there to get stitched up, and they ask me how I got cut and so on. While they were stitching me, I asked what was up with the guy outside. ‘Shocked by high-voltage electricity,’ the doctor said, ‘we’ve already called his family. He’ll live for an hour, tops. He’s falling apart.’ So I go out, the guy’s still sitting there, asks me if everything went okay. I see the man wants to talk. I said, ‘It did’—and I got out of there as if I were on the run. Then for some reason I stopped, outside, to light a cigarette, but I was actually troubled by the thought that I was wrong to run away like that, it would be nicer of me to stay and talk to him casually. When I was already about to turn around . . . something compelled me again to get away from there. Because what does this man mean to me that I’d have to go through death with him? And so I smoked while thinking, as I am now, and out he comes.”
Branoš looked at me, almost as if I were the guy. I wanted to tell him not to look at me like that.
“So the man lights up a cigarette and says to me, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t, eh?’ I think to myself, What should I tell him? I don’t want to be the one who makes him realize he’s dead, so I go for the logic of a drunk: ‘I was told the same . . . But you only live once.’ ‘I tried everything,’ he said, ‘including the nicotine patch, but it didn’t work.’—‘What I’d give for a beer right now,’ I say, and I actually wonder where I might go to pick up a six-pack, because with alcohol, I think, this might all be easier—and he says, ‘Sorry, no can do, I drank two or three today, and then got the shock.’ So I go back to the London story. I ask him when he plans to go on the trip, if they’ve already bought the tickets. . . . Drivel. . . . He tells me about it, and I realize I’m not listening, I can’t, and then he stops and I say to him, ‘You should go to London. I’ve been and it’s a must-see.’—‘It is, ain’t it?’ He looks at me, his eyes turning dark.—‘Yes, my friend. London’s a fine destination. Unfortunately, gotta go now. I have to, there’s work to be done,’ I say, and shake hands with him. I had to go.”
I thought, I probably could have lived without this story tonight.
“Yeah,” I said. “London.”
Branoš lit another cigarette. His legs akimbo, wearing the suit, in the wind, he was like a mobster from a black-and-white movie.
“I’ll tell them this is not fucking art,” he said.
He was the one Malcolm chose to say something on behalf of the workers. I understood that I didn’t look workmanlike enough, and Šeila was simply too beautiful. “Have you talked to Malcolm about it?”
“No. But I’m furious about the turbine being sawed through. It’s different when you get to watch.”
“I’m not too happy about that, either.”
“Good thing our people aren’t watching this.”
I wondered; did Malcolm know what was coming?
I tried to sound relaxed. “I’ve known for a long time that I’m not running this show. Whatever you say is fine. Just be calm. Let’s keep this civilized.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “You think they’ll call us when they finish that shit?”
“We’re not hard to find.”
Šeila came for us. She said the worst of it was over and back in we went. Malcolm was talking, and I noticed some puzzled, perhaps fascinated, faces as the men in overalls carried away the last pieces of the destroyed turbine.
“The initiator disappeared in the revolution. The contractor and the artist behind these sculptures was killed. . . . And the client was killed. This is just a small part of the story. In the exhibition guide you’ll find the other details documented,” said Malcolm like a stern sovereign.
He paused to look at the audience, as if wondering whether they were worth all this, and then poured it all out.
“This is a blood-filled story about passion, passion for work, passion for investments and risk, passion for survival and hope. This is a story about people from socialism and capitalism, a story about a strange small town between the East and the West, a story about passion for the free market that crosses borders even when that’s prohibited, and a story about the passion of workers who rebuilt a factory as their home and couldn’t stop even when the project became illusory and pointless by market standards. All this is presented with this antiquated turbine, the 83-N, dubbed The Last Socialist Realist Artifact. It combines not only the past and the present, but the future as well, because this event projects itself into the future, the future of art.
“This is The Last Socialist Realist Artifact!” said Malcolm, and slowly stretched out his hand toward the red curtain being lifted.
There, under the bright light, stood our last turbine.
Louder than before, Malcolm continued. “The first 83-N turbine was manufactured for commercial purposes, an industrial product. They thought they had a buyer. We will exhibit its parts tomorrow. This second turbine remains. It is a pure artifact. It was manufactured even though there was no buyer. The only potential buyer had already been killed. The people who made it never even imagined it would be exhibited here. It was not made for display. Some of them are still against it. The turbine was, nevertheless, manufactured. It was made because it had to be—in the same way art is made. Although this is something we’ve forgotten.”
He said this as if reproaching someone of stature.
“Beyond the incredible history this fascinating artifact has had, today we are building a story. We have dared to recognize this work as art. Our story might seem puzzling today.
“Of course.
“Only to become legendary tomorrow.
“I will not be modest. I will state—this will be a legend! An event which will be remembered as the next among the grand, perplexing acts of the avant-garde.”
He waited a moment for his words to sink in, then scanned the audience as if to make sure everyone was following him, and then he said, “With us here is the representative of the team, Mr. Branoš, who will say something on behalf of the authors who built all this.”
Malcolm stayed there. The plan was that he would say a few more words after Branoš, and then the event would finally be over.
Branoš slowly approached the microphone, scowling at the audience. “I speak on behalf of the workers who made this turbine which you are calling an artifact. We do not think if it as art.”
Silence was heard in the brief pause.
“I was determined to say this, as my colleagues know. If this turbine was manufactured with passion, as said, it was not with the passion of artists, but the passion of workers. I’m not even sure this can be called a passion. I would rather say it was our desire to make everything meaningful. All that has happened. Had we stopped working, we’d have felt incomplete, and even pointlessness looks better when it’s finished. If deliberately finished. By making these turbines, one of which we sacrificed here, we became aware of many things. We became aware, again, of ourselves. This is why we wanted to finish the turbine. You know your business, we know ours—this here is your world. Everything the gallery curator said about the history of the turbine is nice, but I have to say that we’re not here to sell a story. We’re not selling our dead friends. We’re selling their work and our work, as always. Ultimately, we don’t care if this is art. If someone wants to pay for our work, we’ll take their money. My colleague, who is sitting here, thinks the payment itself will be an act of art. Fine, maybe so.”
Šeila looked at me and huffed as Branoš stepped away from the microphone. She whispered in my ear, “I did say that. He’s really taking this to the edge.”
Malcolm listened to all of it almost proudly, as if Branoš’s speech confirmed everything he’d just said. It looked as if he wouldn’t be speaking anymore. Yes, he, too, stepped back.
“I was so anxious,” said Šeila, as the applause erupted. I didn’t know how strong the applause should be, but it did not sound indifferent to me.
“Me too,” I said. “But it’s all good!”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said.
“Whatever.”
Branoš joined us.
“If my daddy could see me nowww,” said Branoš, so we started laughing, shaking off the grimaces that had frozen our faces.
The audience murmured while examining the exhibits.
“It’s time for a drink,” I said, taking three glasses of champagne from a tray a gracious black hostess was carrying, smiling warmly as if to say she was on our side.
Malcolm showed up, took a glass, and toasted, “To the great bank robbery!”
“What do you mean, Malcolm? Have you heard something?” asked Šeila.
“This is an exhibition I know nothing about, believe me,” said Malcolm. “I love it. I can’t be realistic as to the estimates.”
He raised his drink again and we clinked our glasses.
“It would be wonderful if we sold something tonight,” he said. “Anything. That would mean that the whole thing is being, in a way, legitimized. And, strictly between us, I happen to know we’ll sell something tonight.”
He grinned.
Before he left to mingle further, he said to Branoš, “I had nothing to add!”
“I have to light one up,” said Branoš then, and out he went.
“What did he mean by that, that we’ll sell something?” I asked Šeila.
“He’s probably arranged for an icebreaker.”
“Too bad he and Oleg never met.”
A few minutes later, Malcolm went to one of Sobotka’s sculptures and stuck a red dot on the card next to it.
A murmur rippled through the room.
“Sold,” said Šeila.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Sobotka was the icebreaker.”
Everybody was watching Malcolm. He was now staring at his smartphone, blinking. He looked around, searching for our gazes, and then looked back at his gadget, blinking like he was counting. Then he raised his hand and lifted his index finger in the air. He went to the painting The Arrival of the Investor and put a red dot on the card.
There was an eruption of applause. Only then did I notice Rio, the smile he was doing his best to suppress, so it wouldn’t look as if he cared. The Blue Lagoon had become a legend. I lifted my glass to him. He didn’t see me.
“You think this, too, was an icebreaker?” I asked Šeila.
“I don’t know,” she said, without looking at me, following Malcolm as if she were watching Elvis leave the building.
He was heading for the turbine.
37
THE NEXT DAY, at checkout time, they were very hungover. They sat in the hotel lobby, trying to extend their stay, because they’d planned the thriftiest option in case the exhibition was a fiasco; but now they’d decided to stay on a few more days. Cancellation of cheap return tickets would be no great loss.
“No rooms available for us,” Branoš said after coming back from the front desk. Then he added, “I spoke to an Englishman who was with me in Iraq. He says I can sleep at his place. . . . But I have the impression he hasn’t slept for some time now.”
“A soldier?”
“A plumber. It takes him a lot to get drunk, I think. I’ll go check his current condition. I might use my ticket today after all.”
“What about us?” asked Nikola.
“I’ll look for something online,” said Šeila, and went over to the guest computer.
As Nikola watched Branoš slip into a cab, he felt he was watching the closing scene of a movie in a sudden blaze of sunshine; light reflected off the wet street, the parked cars, sparkling. His head throbbed.
He would have preferred a dark room. He thought about asking Šeila out to a matinee showing of a movie as a joke; he hadn’t been to one of those since the days of Brooke Shields.
Then he remembered that, after putting it off for weeks, he’d told himself he would tell her after the exhibition. High time. He needed to say, I made this promise to Lipša.
She’d say, What?
Hell, he couldn’t even imagine if the “What?” would be the last thing he’d ever hear from her. What does a woman do after finding out her partner is having a child with someone else?
Will she accept all this after he’d explained? He had nothing to compare the situation to. Had anyone else ever done something like this?
Šeila aside, he was scared of the promise. Then he imagined himself in the future, and thought he would probably be glad. Still, he was tempted by the idea of putting off the talk with Šeila.
It would be best if this time in London goes well, he thought. Let this be our little honeymoon.
Yes, we could go see a movie. A naive romance. What are today’s romantic movies for teenagers like? he thought. He had no idea.
She came back and said, “Hotels, only some are pretty far away. But there’s a site with apartments, I checked.”
“Sounds good.”
Then she paused, as if about to say something else.
He tipped his chin: Say it.
“I didn’t really think about this consciously,” she said, “but now when I clicked on the site I began thinking. . . . Actually, I’d like to stay here for a while. What about you?”
He looked at her and—whether it was her posture, or just his imagination—he felt her slipping away.
“I hadn’t thought. How long is a little while?”
“I don’t know. . . . It would be kind of strange now to go back. I don’t work with you. I . . . I’ve pulled this off and now what? Sit and wait for you at the Blue Lagoon? You know, I don’t know what there is for me to do down there.”
“Has Malcolm offered you somethin
g?”
“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t hide that from you. But if he did, I’d consider it. The thing is I have nothing to do back there. See? It’s not about Malcolm, it’s about me.”
He exhaled, and for a moment his temples ached a little more.
He looked at her, as if seeing her in a new light; he thought: yes, of course. And he had the impression that everything was slipping away, the lobby and the front desk, and he was slowly detaching from the world, as he’d dreamed once as a child, after watching a show about deep-space distances and light-years. When he finally understood the years that carried the flickering of stars, they made him feel smaller than a microbe.
He closed his eyes to the glare.
Then, in a swirl of colors, the image of the scorched electrician from Branoš’s story appeared, and he opened his eyes.
She put her hand on his shoulder.
“I get it,” said Nikola.
“By doing this, I’ve pulled off something I didn’t know I could do. Now I know. I mean, Malcolm pushed the story, but everyone knows the idea was mine. Tima knows, the painters know.”
“You think this may open doors for you?”
“This is just a hungover morning. There’s been too much since last night. . . . But I cannot leave before I explore this. I’d feel as if I’d missed out on something important. What’s more, for the first time in my life I have some money. I can stay here, no panic. Please understand.”
“I understand,” he said, making the effort not to burden her with his tone.
He thought, This is what success looks like. Yes, things turned out well. She can no longer sit there at the Blue Lagoon.
“Hey, this doesn’t mean anything. I’ll go search a little more,” said Šeila, “and you think about it.”
It’s true, she did come up with the story, and she rescued me from a nightmare, he thought. We owe her. He had said as much to Branoš the previous night, and Branoš agreed. She took them from rock bottom to the wonder of selling the turbine to a global Internet company. The guy who represented the company told Malcolm they would set it up in the atrium of their headquarters. It clearly had symbolic meaning for them, a reminder of the previous generation’s industry, which had been turned into an artifact. “It is a symbol of their victory,” said Malcolm. “And the news is already being reported, and they’re getting their money’s worth of advertising through the news coverage.”
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