P09 (Part 1)

Clutching a VIP pass in hand, Silva made his way towards the venue entrance. Tearing through a long line of waiting crowds he was promptly ushered in, once the VIP pass was waved in front of the ushers face.

‘This way sir, please come in. I can see you’re not wearing a black evening jacket. It’s mandatory sir for today’s exhibition. But we can take care of it. There are several evening jackets meant only for purposes as these. We can loan you one for the night. If you could just step this way sir. 

Ah, perfect this one is your size. Here’s a tag that you must keep with you at all times and return to us along with the jacket once you leave the premises sir.

Have a very good evening’ 

Silva could still feel the cloakroom manager’s oily voice trickle down his ears, as he buttoned his black rental.

The air was thick with murmured voices and adulating exclamations. People dressed in ceremonious formal garbs. 

An air of elite formality surrounding each art patron as they walked in exaggerated swishes of their expansive clothes undercut by careful twitters of elegant laughter.

To either side of him on impossibly white walls were tapestries of oddities that important people took to staring at for long moments, discussing with their peers the abstractions of pain those strange tapestries depicted. 

Straight ahead, as the eclectic signs done in avant-garde frames said, were the oils and pastels. To the left of the long passage inside closed doors were the artists light shows and several reels of previously done performance arts.

To the right of the passage were photography stills, amassed by the artist over the years and in a bigger room behind the bend of the corridor on the right were the sculptures, for which the artist P09 was most popular.

This was P09’s biggest art exhibition after a hiatus of almost seven years and the who’s who of art world and everyone who wished to be seen at the right place at the right time or be known for their omnifarious existence could be seen walking the aisles of "exhibition movement #6", as was the wont of P09 to give peculiarly overblown names to all her art exhibitions, thus confirming her ironically grandiloquent status in the ever pompous multifarious world of art.

Silva could feel a surge of hateful thoughts cloud his vision. His visions that were now marred with a crowd of dilettantish super inflated windbags who were here to judge art and pretend to be awed by the sculptures and the blurry still life’s and the non communicative reels of performance arts, when they knew nothing. 

They know nothing of art, nothing of P09, just like he and Mayon did not when they first visited a P09 exhibition almost nine years ago. 

***

Mayon’s most precious possession was his grandfathers vintage pen that had been known to stay in their paternal line for ages, and this relic he began to fervently stick in his front pocket.

It was only right, seeing how each generation believed in producing one writer and this legacy was now on Mayon’s shoulders which he most earnestly devoted himself to. 

Perhaps this was also one among the many reason why his forefathers, him including never found themselves rich, and why he and his friend Silva had to rent formal clothes to an art exhibition they found passes to.

It was in a printers/publishers office where Mayon worked as an editors assistant. The money wasn’t much but it was enough to help him pay rent. He in turn got to read a lot of contemporary tripe that was passed on as literature and given a green signal for printing. 

It was here that a coffee table book on P09’s art was being printed and the editor was gifted with two complementary passes to the new exhibit.

The passes never made their way to the editors desk but did find themselves sitting with Mayon who'd been following P09’s works for some time and was visibly awed by her.

‘No one knows much of her. She’s like this mystery descended on earth. Her sculptures are so real in pictures’ he was chirping away while fixing an all knowing gaze to the mirror. 

‘I don't know Mayon. I’ve only heard of her through what I’ve read and watched in the gossip vines. That she’s super exclusive and that she’s got horde of 'servants' around her. No one’s allowed to talk in her house and that she lives alone.

What’s even her real name?’

‘Who knows. Artists are given to eccentric behaviour. That’s what makes them so creative’

‘Really? I thought it was the other way round’ 

‘I don’t care what she’s like Silva. I know she’s a real wonder. She can’t be anything but. The beauty in her sculptures is heart shattering. They’ll make you cry. Such perfection in detailing, to detail the minutest imperfections. Oh, P09, she’s a puzzle’

‘you mean curiosity. what if you get to meet her?’

‘I will be down on my knees, prostrating myself for her one glance thrown tenderly my way and ask her to sign an autograph with my grandfathers pen’ 

‘You’d let her write with that pen? you never let me as much as touch it’

‘It’s a pen of artists for artists and them alone, Silva’

‘You’re no artist. You write poems’

‘same difference’ he scowled.

***

Sipping complementary champagne, Silva sat staring at a sculpture. The noise in the background was a mild undercurrent of clinking glass, enamored discussions on present art and often ebbing and growing sounds of whispering light show music that emanated from the door of its room being frequently opened and shut.

Silva stared at a sculpture named ‘ambitious heart’ of a withered man looking into oblivion with seemingly dead eyes.

He wanted to snigger, throw his head back and laugh maniacally at the obviously stupid name of the sculpture, he wanted to tear down each tapestry and light a match to every out of focus picture of tree barks, but for that he realized he needed to drink more. 

A woman of rather chunky constitution was making her way to the sulking Silva, now on his third glass of champagne, and with a deeply audible sigh made herself heard in his vicinity.

On getting no reply from the would be drunk she intoned in bogus consternation ‘such pathos in these sculptures, wouldn’t you say dear boy?  such poignant sentiments..err.. this singular echo of helpless loneliness’ she droned

Silva knew these words to be the exact quotes from the literature handed out at the main entrance by a docent and he felt no obligation to talk to her, but the alcohol thick breath that rode on this heavily attired, jewel laden woman worked as a soothing unguent to his seething wounds, and with a weary sigh he turned to her. 

‘you like P09’s works?’ he asked her in a voice that was cool with emotionless calm

‘who doesn’t? she’s remarkable, you know. She’s shortly due to make an appearance. Would you meet her?’ she cooed in a thick voice

‘I just might’ he said slowly

***

‘Oh there she is, there she is. Let’s go’

‘How Mayon? she’s surrounded by her people. You see those burly men. They’re probably her guards, and we’d have to line up to seek her blessings. Look at the sea of faces moving in a wave towards her. Yikes, like she’s a movie star’

Mayon looked at him hurt ‘please don't be disrespectful. She’s an artists not a star’

‘same difference’ Silva barked a laugh.

‘How do I get to take her autograph?’

‘You don’t’

With a twisting knot in his stomach and the revelation of something unexpected Silva seemed to reel under impromptu attention as signified by a sudden movement of hundred gazes now directed in their general area.

‘Why is everyone looking at us?’

‘Mayon, they’re looking at you’

Silva ran his gaze against the current of those stares to meet the eyes of P09.

Dressed in a rather long flowing black robe, standing tall and gaunt was P09, looking curiously at his friend.

You wouldn’t call her beautiful, at least Silva wouldn’t but there was a preternatural attractiveness about her queer face.

It was something magical, with the power to breach any strong facade. It was smooth, smoother than any face, but for some features that were lined like ancient furrows. There was a sorcerous knowledge to her gaze. It could peel you apart, layer by layer and pluck at your soul. 

The way she blinked looked unnatural, like an effort, a put on, a show, yet it was her eyes that looked like they held unearthly secrets.

‘Would something jump out of her eyes?’ he smiled at the thought 

Mayon and Silva walked to her. Mayon was mumbling something in his mouth and fumbling with his ancient pen and a piece of paper. The quietness of the room was back to a bizarre throb of people chaotically clambering over each other to reach out to P09, but she looked at no one save the approaching strangers, particularly the one uncapping his pen. 

‘autograph please’ Mayon croaked like a pre pubescent teenager handing out his pen and paper and Silva felt a twinge of irritation sweep inside him.

He saw her left lip twitch momentarily as if trying a smile and exhausting itself in the effort.

She handed him back the paper with an indiscernible scrawl and drew back her gaze into a shell of unassuming indifference towards the crowd.

The friends were presently pushed back by other autograph seekers and fans and they watched P09 withdraw into a protective cocoon of her burly guards who for the most part of the evening looked like dead sentinels with brawny arms and mountainous shoulders. 

‘Can you believe it? She gave me an autograph. She picked me out of the crowd and acknowledged me’ Mayon was prickled with excitement barely restraining his ecstasy. 

Silva could see Mayon's arms ridden with goosebumps and had begun to look alarmingly diseased and suddenly with a start he noticed the empty pocket near his lapel. 

‘where’s you pen?’ Silva cried out

***

‘What you’re saying dear boy is that you’ve met P09 and she stole your friends pen?’ the fat woman was shaking with laughter; rolls of fat faintly visible under voluminous fabric of expensive silk.  

‘She didn’t steal it’ droned Silva handing his alcoholic reveler another flute glass of suspended bubbles while downing his fifth.

‘I never said she stole it. She gave it back the very next day

we never got to look at any sculptures or any art at that exhibition. My friend was so distressed that we returned back home after getting drunk, just like we do presently, dear lady.

Mayon was only one short tear away from crying and getting drunk did not nearly help as much as I’d anticipated. He talked all evening about his grandfather and his poetry and P09’s art.

Berating himself all night until he came to the conclusion that P09 was his goddess and the pen was his offering. But that argument held no water he knew, having lost something that belonged to his family for ages. He slept badly and so inconsolable was he, that it hurt me and made me angry at that shallow woman, who’d nicked my friends family heirloom. 

I was dreaming up plans on getting back that pen, and made it a point to visit the art gallery next day to somehow find P09’s contact and ask her to return the relic.

As it happened, I had to do none of it.

I woke up to a faint rustle from behind the door. There were no footsteps. The world cast no glow in the room. The outside held a quiet presence. 

I’d stayed over at Mayon’s place, not wishing to leave his side that night and glad was I at that moment because he slept while I stayed awake. The hair on my neck were standing in alarm and I was spooked.

There was an eerie movement at the door, and at that moment I felt like I was drowning in shadows. Someone had smeared coal into an already pitch dark gloom which was just an hour from daylight, everything outside that door felt dead and darker than how I perceived the night outside. 

My heart was racing when I opened the door, menacingly quiet, hoping it was nothing, except she was standing. P09, wearing the same black robe from the exhibition gala. Blinking in that same odd way.

‘I wish to return a pen’ she spoke in a gurgle of small pebbles draining from a glass bottle.

***