Emil laughed. “I made pots for a year. They were very good pots. Everyone said so. I sold all of them. To big collectors. For big money. I had the gift now, you see. At last I was good.”
“That’s quite a story. What did you do then?”
“Oh, I took my money and learned again how to read and write. Also, I took English lessons. I never could learn English properly before, but, in the state I was in, English was easy. Bit by bit, some of my old memories came back. Most of my personality is gone forever. No great loss. I was never happy.”
She thought this over. She felt glad she had come to Praha. Here of all places she’d somehow found someone who was truly her kind of guy.
“Let’s go back to the party now.”
“No, I can’t bear to go back. My studio is just up this street.” Emil shrugged. “He’s a nice man, Paul, he means well. Some of his friends are all right. But they shouldn’t admire people like me. I made a few good pots, but I’m not Paul’s case study in the liberation of the holy fire. I’m a desperate man who destroyed himself for the sake of mud. Paul’s people should admit this to themselves. I’m a monstrous fool. They should stop romanticizing posthuman extremities.”
“You can’t go home and brood, Emil. You said you’d show me the city.”
“Did I tell you that?” said Emil politely. “I’m very sorry, my dear. You see, if I promise something early in the morning, then I can almost always fulfill it. But if it’s late at night … well, it’s something to do with my biorhythms. I grow forgetful.”
“Well, then, at least show me your studio. Since we’re so near.”
Emil locked eyes with her. A very knowing look. “You’re welcome to see where I live,” he said, meaning nothing of the kind. “If you feel you must.”
The building was dark and impossibly old. Emil’s studio was on the second floor, up a creaking set of stairs. He unlocked the door with a metal pocket key. The floors were uneven wooden boards and the walls were lined in ancient flowered paper.
Most of the floor space was taken up with tall wooden racks of earthenware. There were two big mud-stained sinks, one of them dripping steadily. A white kiln, and stained pegboards hung with tools of wire and wood. A potter’s wheel, a crowded worktable. Dusty sacks of glazing compound. A primitive kitchen full of handmade crockery in finger-grimed white cupboards. Old windows warped with damp, with lovely flowerpots sprouting the skeletal remains of houseplants. Crumpled sheets of canvas and paper everywhere. Sponges. Gloves. The sharp smell of clay. No shower, no toilet; the bath was down the hall. A sagging wooden bed with grime-smeared sheets.
“At least you have electricity. But no computer of any kind? No netlink? No screens?”
“I once had a notebook here,” Emil said. “A very clever machine. My notebook had my schedules written in it, addresses, numbers, appointments. Many helpful hints for living from my former self. One morning I woke up with a bad headache. The notebook began to tell me what to do that day. So, I opened that window there”—he pointed—“and I dropped that machine onto the street. Now my life is simpler.”
“Emil, why are you so sad? These pots are beautiful. You took a medically irrevocable step. So what? A lot of people have bad luck with their upgrades. There’s nothing to be gained by fussing about that, once it happens. You just have to find a way to live on the far side of that event.”
“If you must know,” Emil grumbled. “Look at this.” He put an urn into her hands. It was squat and round with a glaze in ocher, cream white, and jet black. The pattern was crazily energetic, like a chessboard struck by lightning, and yet there was enormous clarity and stillness to the piece. It was dense and heavy and sleek, like a fossil egg for some timeless state of mind.
“My latest work,” he said bitterly.
“But Emil, this thing is wonderful. It’s so beautiful I wish I could be buried in it.”
He took the urn off her hands and shelved it. “Now look at this. A catalog of all my works since the change.” He sighed. “How I wish I’d had the good sense to burn this stupid catalog.… ”
Maya sat on Emil’s workstool and leafed through the album. Print after print of Emil’s ceramics, lit and recorded with loving care. “Who took these photographs?”
“Some woman. Two or three different women, I think … I’ve forgotten their names. Look at page seventy-four.”
“Oh, I see. This one is very like your latest work. It’s part of a series?”
“It’s not very like, it’s identical. But that piece was spontaneous. It came to me in a moment’s inspiration. You see what that means? I’ve begun to repeat myself. I’ve run dry. I have hit my creative limits. My so-called creative freedom is only a cheap fraud.”
“You’ve created the same pot twice?”
“Exactly! Exactly! Can you imagine the horror? When I saw that photograph—it was a knife in my heart.” He collapsed on the bed and put his head in his hands.
“I can see that you regard this as something very dreadful.”
Emil flinched and said nothing.
“You know, a lot of ceramics people create work with molds. They make hundreds of identical copies of a work. Why is this so much worse than that?”
Emil opened his eyes, hurt and bitter. “You’ve been discussing my case with Paul!”
“No, no, I haven’t! But … You know, I take photographs. There’s no such thing as an original digital photograph. Digital photography has always been an art without originals.”
“I’m not a camera. I’m a human being.”
“Well, then that must be the flaw in your thinking, Emil. Instead of torturing yourself about originality, maybe you’d be happier if you just accepted the fact that you’re posthuman. I mean, people don’t remain human nowadays, do they? Everyone has to come to terms with that sooner or later.”
“Don’t do this to me,” Emil moaned. “Don’t talk that way. If you want to talk that way, go back to the party. You’re wasting your time with me. Talk to Paul, he’ll talk like that for as long as you like.”
Emil kicked a wadded bathrobe from the edge of the bed. “I’m not posthuman. I’m just a foolish, very damaged man who had no real talent and made a very bad mistake. I can no longer remember things very well, but I know very well who I am. All the clever theories in the world make no difference to me.”
“So? It seems like your mind’s already made up. What’s your solution for this so-called crisis?”
“What else?” said Emil. “What else is there to do? I can’t spend my existence going round and round in circles. I’m going to throw myself out the window.”
“Oh dear.”
“Taking the amnesiac was only a cowardly compromise. A half measure. I’m not what I wanted to become. I never will be that person. I can’t live being anything less.”
“Well,” Maya said, “of course I’m not one to talk against suicide. Suicide is very proper, it’s always a perfectly honorable option. But …”
Emil put his hands over his ears.
Maya sat next to him on the bed, and sighed. “Emil, it’s silly to die. You have such beautiful hands.”
He said nothing.
“What a shame that such beautiful strong hands should be turning into clay. Deep under the cold, hard earth. When you could be slipping those hands under my shirt.”
Emil sat up. His eyes gleamed. “Why do women do this to me?” he demanded at last. “Can’t you see that I’m a shattered emotional wreck? I have nothing to give to you. In the morning, I won’t even remember your name!”
“I know that you won’t,” Maya said. “Of course I realize that about you. I never met anyone quite like you before. It’s a very attractive quality. I don’t know quite why, but truly, it’s very tempting, it’s terribly hard to resist.” She kissed him. “I know that’s an awful thing to say to you. So let’s stop talking now.”
She woke in the middle of the night, in a strange bed in a strange city, to the soft rise and fall of another hum
an breath. The structure of the universe had shifted again. She felt soft and sweetly wearied, deeply warmed by his sleeping presence. Having a lover was like having a second soul. She had enough spare souls for every man in the world.
In the morning she made them breakfast. Emil, just as he had promised, did not remember her name. He was cheerfully embarrassed about this fact. A quick bed-wrestling match knocked their affair into order. Emil ate his breakfast, grinned triumphantly, and started working. Maya, unable to bear the disorder, started cleaning the studio.
To judge by the state of his catalog, Emil had been living alone for two, maybe three months. The documentation of his work was out of order and out of date. She would have to see to putting the record straight. This was clearly the open-ended legacy of being with Emil. To judge from the varying competence of the photographs, she was the fourth in a series.
Giving the place a good cleaning job was even more revelatory. Women had blown through Emil’s studio like a series of storm fronts. Hairpins here. A single crumpled stocking there. Shoe liners. An empty lipstick. Pink feathers off some long-lost costume. Cheap sunglasses. Mismatched cooking utensils. Lubricants. Blood testers. And, of course, the photographs. The women doing the photographs had been the ones investing real effort.
“I feel good today,” Emil declared, as well he should. “I’m going to create a new piece just for you, Maya. A piece to capture your unique qualities. Your generosity. Your goodness.”
“I’m not your clay vessel, you know.”
“Of course you are, my dear! We are all clay vessels. Why contradict Scripture?” Emil chuckled merrily and started pounding clay.
Maya found her way downtown and rescued her luggage from the storage locker. Klaudia’s backpack and garment bag were gone. Klaudia had left her a note. In Deutsch. Maya couldn’t read Deutsch, of course, but to judge by the angular scrawl and the forest of exclamation points, Klaudia had been furious.
Maya found a public netsite. She plugged in her camera and wired her photos to Therese at the shop. Then she had lunch.
When she had finished dutifully nourishing herself, she called the shop in Munchen.
“Where are you?” said Therese.
“I’m still in Praha. How is Klaudia?”
“She’s back. Mad. Worried. Hung over. Humiliated. You’re not being helpful, Maya.”
“I picked up a guy.”
“That’s exactly what I thought.… When will you be back?”
Maya shook her head. “Therese, if I don’t look after this one, he’s going to throw himself out the window.”
Therese laughed. “Have you lost your mind? That’s the oldest art-boy scam in the book. Show some sense and get back right away. I’ve brought in a lot of new stock.”
“Therese …” She sighed. “You were right. The Tête is a scene. I’m very taken with these artifice people. They’re going to teach me to be vivid. I’m not coming back to Munchen.”
Therese was silent.
“Therese, did you see my photos?”
“The photos are not bad,” Therese said. “I think maybe I can use the photos.”
“They’re awful. But I’m going to take lessons. In photography, in spex work. I’m going to get better. I’m going to get better equipment and I’m going to really work in artifice. I’m going to make myself into one of these people.”
“You’re not happy here at the shop, darling?”
“I don’t want to be happy, Therese. There’s not enough of me to be happy. I’m not my own woman yet, I have to learn to be more like myself. These artifice people, I think they can help me. They have my kind of hunger.”
“You sound very certain very suddenly. What changed your mind for you? One night in bed with some man? Why don’t you get on the train and come back here? Trains are very easy.”
“I can send you lots of photos, if you want them. But I can’t go back to the shop.”
“If you don’t come back to Munchen, I’ll have to get someone else. There won’t be a welcome for you anymore.”
“Get someone else, Therese.”
“My poor little Maya! Always so ambitious. And artifice people are so chic.” Therese sighed. “Cleverness doesn’t make them nice people, you know. You’re very innocent, and they could hurt you.”
“If I wanted safe and nice, I’d have stayed in California. My life is risk. I’m an illegal. I’m on the drift, the wanderjahr. You were very good to me, but Munchen’s not my home. I had to leave sometime. You knew that.”
“I knew that,” Therese acknowledged. She lowered her voice. “But still: you owe me. Don’t you owe me?”
“That’s true. I owe you.”
“I fed you, and I clothed you, and I sheltered you, and I never turned you in. That was a lot, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was a lot.”
“I’m going to ask you for a big favor in return, darling. Someday.”
“Anything.”
“You’ll have to be very discreet for me.”
“I can be discreet,” she promised. “I can specialize in discreet.”
“When the time comes, you’ll know. Just remember that you owe me. And try to be careful. Wiedersehen, darling.” Therese hung up.
Though he couldn’t be bothered to feed himself properly, Emil very much liked to eat. With a woman in reach, he complained bitterly if not methodically fed, as if this were some fracture in the bedrock of the universe.
Emil had a little money. He was too confused to properly manage the funds he had acquired; there were half-drained little cashcards stuffed in nooks and crannies all over his studio. So Maya went shopping for them, and began eating with more regularity and determination than she ever had before. Czech medical chow, such as noki. Chutovky. Knedliky. Kasha, and goulash. It was solid and enticing food and it made her cheerful and energetic.
Once Emil was properly fed, he generally became lively. It was sweet to be Emil’s lover, because he was never blasé. Whenever he ran his agile and dexterous hands across her flesh, there was always an element of shocked discovery to his caress. Sex made him all surprised and pleased and reverent and grateful.
Emil became very productive under this hearty regimen. He kept firing up his kiln. The kiln wasn’t a microwave exactly, it was a specialized potter’s resonator. Like most modern gadgetry, Emil’s kiln was foolproof, very clean, extremely quick, and altogether eerie. He’d pull out a freshly zapped pot with a monster pair of padded tongs. The irradiated clay would give a ghastly crystalline shriek as it hit the air and began to cool. The pot would gush heat like a fireplace brick. The whole studio would steam up and get very cozy. Maya would saunter around in slippers and an untied bathrobe, naked under her diamond necklace. Hair almost long enough to fuss with now. It was rather stiff and scruffy hair, but the speed of its growth was impressive.
If he liked the way the work had turned out, he would throw her on the bed to celebrate. If he didn’t like it, she would throw him on the bed to console him. Then they would tiptoe down the hall and wedge into a hot bath together. When they were clean they would eat something. They spoke English together, and a little guttural Czestina in Emil’s more intimate moments. Life was very simple and direct.
Emil hated time stolen from his work. From Emil’s subjective point of view, any day spent in keeping up life’s little infrastructures was a small eternity lost forever. With a permanent magic supply of groceries and electric power, Emil would have slumped into solipsism.
It was impossible to manage Emil in the morning, because he was always so startled and intrigued by her unexpected presence in his household. However, after a week, a certain visceral familiarity with her seemed to be seeping into Emil below the level of his conscious awareness. He seemed less surprised by her intimate knowledge of his desires and routines, and he became more trusting, more amenable to suggestion.
One evening she sent him out to buy new underwear and get himself a proper haircut, carefully noting the shops to be visited
and the exact items and services to be purchased. She wrote them down on a cashcard and strung the card on a little chain around his neck.
“Why not tattoo it on my arm?”
“That’s very funny, Emil. Get going.”
She felt much better without him underfoot. Maybe it was that steady and nourishing diet, maybe it was the unceasing intensity of their relationship, but she was very restless today. Irritable, almost ready to come out of her skin. She felt as if she needed to be contained somehow, and dressed in tights and a sweater.
There was a knock at the door. She assumed it was Emil’s dealer, an obscure gallery owner named Schwartz who dropped by every couple of days looking for product, but it wasn’t. It was a portly Czech woman in a powder blue civil-support uniform. She carried a valise.
“Dobry vecer.”
Maya quickly tucked the bird-nest translator into her ear, a reflexive habit by now. “How do you do. Do you speak English?”
“Yes, a little English. I am the landwoman here. This is my building.”
“I see. I’m pleased to meet you. May I help you with something?”
“Yes, please. Open the door.”
Maya stepped aside. The landlady bustled in and looked the studio over sharply. Slowly, a pair of the lighter stress marks disappeared from between her much-furrowed brows. Maya took her for seventy-five, maybe eighty. Very sturdy. Very well preserved.
“You go in and out for days now,” the landlady said briskly. “You’re the new girlfriend.”
“I guess so. Uhm … jmenuji se Maya.” She smiled.
“My name is Mrs. Najadova. You are much cleaner than his last girl. You are Deutschlander?”
“Well, I came here from Munchen. But really, I’m just passing through.”
“Welcome to Praha.” Mrs. Najadova opened her valise and thumbed through a series of accordion folders. She produced a fat sheaf of laminated papers in English. “This are your support documents. All for you. Read them. Safe places to eat. Safe places to sleep. This is important medical service. Maps of Praha. Cultural events. Here is coupons for shops. Schedule of train and bus. Here is police advice.” Mrs. Najadova shuffled the documents and a little stack of cheap smartcards into Maya’s hands. Then she looked her in the eye. “Many young people come to Praha. Young people are reckless. Some people are bad. The wanderjahr girl must be careful. Read all of the official counsel. Read everything.”
Holy Fire Page 17
