P09 (final)

Read part 1 here

Read part 2 here

Read part 3 here

***

‘Friend, you look sick’ Silva spoke slowly, mournfully.

‘No. I’ve never been better. hand me those books too, and those. Have to take them all to P09’s’

‘Her? what are you talking about? What has that scam artist got to with any of it? Mayon, has P09 done this to you?’

‘Silva, you don’t understand. Remember she told me to find her. I don’t know but the next day after you’d left I knew exactly where to find her, and I did. I just knew the way to her house and ever since I’ve been her shadow. She’s been guiding me.’

‘No, no, no. Don't believe any of it. She’s not right. There’s something terribly wrong with her’

‘My skeptic friend. You’re a treasure’ Mayon replied laughing. ‘She has opened me. I was a closed book. Imagine, me a writer, I’m not supposed to be a closed book. If I am to be known then I must to what artists do.’

‘And what’s that?’ Silva sneered

‘Dissolve’ Mayon replied with a careless shrug.

‘Look, we can still turn back and everything can be normal as it was. Your job, your life, your room’ Silva was tense as he screeched his car to a halt in front of what seemed a jungle, but was in fact a lush landscaping of amazonian trees that hid a fortress of a house.

‘Everything is normal, Silva. Just be happy for me. We have a mission to accomplish.’

‘Well, at least can I meet her? I don’t know when I’ll get to see you next’ Silva's knotting stomach burst into sickly palpitations as he heard himself say these words.

Mayon’s face spread with an approving smile and soon they were ushered into a palatial house. To Silva’s eyes it lacked a soul. As beautiful as everything was it lacked meaning. A babel of art knick knacks thrown in a discombobulated confusion. 

‘Brother you’re here’ a rail thin man, no older than twenty came to greet Silva and beamed with a smile so radiant it was almost believable. 

‘Silva, this is No.4. He lives here as well’

‘No.4? is that a name?’

‘Yes, our identities here have nothing to do with our previous existence in the world outside.’ spoke No.4 with a memorized perfection. ‘Together we are a symphony of art, here to make possible a world as no one’s known before’

Silva was blinking incredibly at No.4’s words, unable to understand anything of what was spoken, but with a spine chilling realization that a lot of it sounded like Mayon’s half crazed words a few hours prior. 

With a blood curdling startle he realized that there were more of them. No.4 and Silva were just the two elements of this symphony, there was a whole orchestra of similar emaciated, almost cadaverous young men. Intoning almost exactly the same spiel. 

Their faces happy, their eyes slowly going vacant. 

‘No.13 here is a photographer’ haltingly, these words made themselves audible through a haze of disbelief. Silva was groping for something real in dark and all sounds had but dimmed into a lull that was now receding. Voices could be heard and the young men were talking ‘and No.8 is a sketch artist and an occasional poet’ laughter and smiles. 

‘Whats going on? Silva couldn’t breathe. What had he stepped into?’ everything was surreal. This is not true. I’ll wake up any moment now. .Now. But there was no waking up. Silva was in P09’s house, disoriented, confused and full of questions.

I’m upstairs

A voice spoke in his head. Has he gone mad too, along with all these numbers? who’s it? Silva was shouting. His face reddened and peeling into layers of sweat. 

‘I can hear voices. Mayon let’s get out of here’ but Mayon was so happy. He was laughing, was he a number now ? 

‘Mayon? can you hear it too? these voices?’

‘Of course. She’s calling you. Go now’ and Mayon had disappeared 

or did he just become one with his symphonies? those synergies? symbiosis. What was he saying? upstairs? I need to go upstairs.

A series of never ending serpentine stairs that shone of onyx reflections, polished to a mirror shine lead him to a hall which felt like a museum of all that was supposed to be art. Unfinished sculptures, drawings, paintings- some so large as to touch ceilings. Projected images of fleeting beauty on a wall, reels of performance arts, interrupted by still life drawings and pictures of woods, children playing, birds and aeroplanes.

‘What was this place’ Silva was still staggering, trying to come into grasping reaches of reality. Somewhere far away the cackle and good hearted laughter of skinny young men still carried on. 

He was walking towards her, she was a blur at first, but he wiped out the sweat and his eyes adjusted to see a figure whom he’d grown to hate or was it love? He hated it. He knew it. 

Ghoul he called her. That’s what she was.

A plaster of paris mould of perfection. Smooth and vacant and dead. Someone wearing human skin, someone else inside that puppet, making it blink, talk, breathe. 

P09, funny name for a person he was thinking and slowly walking towards her. 

Her face immobile, like the spirit that possessed her had just stepped out. Her glance with the power to split him into two. He knew if she looked at him any longer he’d lose himself. She’d pluck out what was in essence Silva. ‘No, she can’t do that to me’ and yet he walked until he glanced from the corner of his eye at a sculpture. Half finished but even in that incomplete state it looked alive. It looked like someone he knew. It looked like Mayon.

Silva stood and stared at that living sculpture that looked like it would blink any minute now, that looked like it was crying.

‘What’s this?’ Silva rasped and felt a frigid glare in his direction. 

‘Is this Mayon’s sculpture?’ he scowled.

‘If they’re lucky, I make them into a sculpture’ P09 spoke. Her voice was sand lashing against glass. Rough, silvery and spooky.

‘I don’t understand’ said Silva, still staring at the sculpture that looked like it wanted to move.

‘I have yet to finish it, perhaps a few months more, and this will be Mayon’ she laughed. 

scattering of pearls

Silva now saw, tears that were carved into the sculpture all so real. It was Mayon, slowly being absorbed into the sculpture. Once it was complete, Mayon would exist no more, he knew it. 

‘He’s crying. You’re hurting him’ 

‘Tears of happiness. Of knowing true mercy. Of being set free from bonds of oblivion and nothingness.’ P09 spoke slow, each word measured.

‘You’ll find Mayon not just in this sculpture, but everywhere. His poetry done up in drawings, his words rendered into colours, painted upon canvases larger than life. Your dear Mayon will diffuse into higher conscience. It is after all an artists burden to dissolve’ P09's face quivered at the lips to form a smile.

‘You, you’re making him into art? How dare you? him and all those numbers? You witch’

P09’s face remained as indifferent, not a flicker of movement breathing invisibly.

‘Everything is art. Art, like poetry. Blatant, complicated and understood largely by the artist itself. 

Wouldn’t this world be ugly were it devoid of art?’ P09 spoke in a calm trickle.

‘Oh. Is that why you’re ugly, because you’re devoid of anything absolute, devoid of what you believe to be art? Is that why you must absorb everything, because in reality you’re nothing? 

I know you for what you are P09’ Silva’s voice came out in a grating snarl of anger.

‘And what am I?’

‘You’re not real.. just a pathetic rendition of all that you’ve consumed, without which you wouldn’t exist. 

You’re nothing. Absolutely nothing, You’re a black hole’

***

He had waited for long, longer than he expected his patience to accompany him. P09 was somewhere at the far end of the gallery, meeting and greeting. Collecting subjects for her art no doubt. Poor destitute artists to absorb into pictures and drawing and sculptures, to make into newer exhibitions. 

Silva wanted nothing of it anymore. He wanted the last remaining memory of a friend. Mayon’s ancestral pen that he’d seen with P09 when he was last at her house. 

That day from nine years ago, when she wanted to make her one of her numbers. He wouldn’t let that happen. He didn't want to get devoured. He’d escaped. How? He didn’t remember. She’d let him go. Maybe she didn't want him.

Why?

Unknowing he’d begun sobbing. 

It was difficult to understand what he was angry about. He hated himself for this duality. Silva was contradicting his reasons for coming here.

He saw the fat woman from a couple hours ago, his drunk companion who had offered P09 one of her boys. 

She was walking towards him- still drunk and holding a piece of cheese.

‘P09 wants to see you’ the hefty woman carelessly intoned, arranging the ruffles of her silks and walked off. 

Silva didn't have to ask for directions, he got up and began walking until he faced P09.

Gaunt, smooth, vacant in a blue robe that flowed down in quiet pleats.

‘I, I have nothing to say to you P09. I just want Mayon’s pen that you have’ Silva immediately followed these words with a stare, waiting for her to look back at him, to gather all that was within him and extract out his soul.

She stayed unmoving. A pen appeared in her gloved hands which she handed to Silva. Mayon’s pen. He recognized. It looked as it always did.

‘You didn't have to wait all these years. I wanted to give it to you that very day nine years ago, but you ran away. I’ve had no use for it. It’s burdensome to carry dead things’ P09’s voice was cool, her mouth moving in a lip synch.

She turned her back and soon disappeared in a crowd. Silva didn’t see her again.

An unnatural chill washed him with a nauseous wave of dejection and cold fury. He slid his hands in his coat pockets and found the tag that needed to be returned along with his rental in the cloakroom.

P09 (Part 3)

Read P09 (part1) here

Read P09 (part2) here

***

Mayon’s room was austere at best, enclosed in walls that might have seen better days, but probably wouldn’t remember them. 

It was a copious mess of books and hastily stapled documents that stayed haphazardly piled, some falling off and some simply scattered. Of personal belongings there was little, if one was to count ancient moldy books, that were known to have passed down generations and a well used typewriter that sat silently on a desk which might have been rather large, gauging the smallness of the room.

On the wall opposite where sat the writing desk, hung a soft board. It was covered with cut outs, torn pieces of papers, receipts, bills, notes, notices, pictures from magazines, all randomly pinned over each other. 

On the cleanest most disused spot of that recklessly pinned board hung an oddly scribbled autograph on which now P09’s eyes rested.

‘It’s that smile again’ Silva was thinking to himself, as he poured her some tea in a styrofoam cup.

‘Huh, I’ll wake Mayon up. He’s been mourning his loss of pen ever since we got back from your exhibition. It was his grandfather’s pen you see, handed down each generation. I think Mayon will give it to one of his children, whoever decides to become a writer, that is’ Silva droned on, trying to keep his gaze distracted from P09’s immalleable form. 

She sat stiffly, with the grace of a congealed statue and stared still at the autograph. 

‘Umm, he wouldn’t believe that you came personally to give his pen, that too so late at night’ Silva tried unsuccessfully to pull as much as a single glance from her.

The only chair in the room having been occupied by P09, Silva sat at the edge of Mayon’s bed and followed P09’s distant eyes as she slowly surveyed Mayon’s room between sips of hot tea. 

It didn’t look like she was drinking much.

‘If only wetting lips were called drinking’ Silva mused and with a startle realized that she now looked directly at him, a second of disinterested glimpse later she rested her vacant glare at the sleeping form of Mayon and smiled again.

It was not a smile, as much as a hope for a smile.

To Silva, the night couldn’t have been more singular. His goose bumped arms were still tingling with a tension which he could feel at the pit of his stomach. Each second seemed to linger on a full minute and the macabre tranquility that seemed to emanate from P09 was becoming difficult for him to bear.

He wanted her to leave, to get out. He wanted to scream on her face and throw her out of the room.

That she wasn’t speaking a single word only made it more difficult to be in her presence. 

Her breathing pattern looked like she was putting on a show. Her every little action that helped build her frame was a performance art to Silva. 

‘Wake him up please’ P09 finally spoke, and Silva wished she hadn't because the voice that came out of her didn’t even feel like hers. Like silk threads flitting into each other, like the soft crunch of rope tightening into a noose.

‘Wake up you weeping drunk, look who’s here’ Silva was shaking Mayon by the elbow and a few smacks on the back later mayon was sitting upright and staring at P09.

‘Before you ask any questions’ Silva immediately spoke ‘P09 came here to give back your pen. Of course it doesn’t matter how late it was, artists have little knowledge of time’

If Mayon was listening then he gave no indication because he sat still struck dumfounded at the inelastic form of P09 still seated on a chair, rigid in form, her smooth skin now a shiny lacquer of bleached wooden frame. Her hand outstretched holding a pen, she nodded to Mayon and his still puzzled form slowly reacted by plucking the pen from her fingers. 

He was stunned into stupidity and gurgled to speak ‘How, how did you find us?’

‘Just as you would find me tomorrow my dear Mayon’

She then calmly stood up and with muted footsteps strode towards the door and left.

‘Ok fine she was here, she gave you your lost pen and now she’s gone. Let’s not discuss this anymore. As sweet as that gesture was Mayon, it was pretty frightening to me. What did she mean by find her? She’s a ghoul I tell you. 

She didn't even drink her tea’ Silva was throwing the styrofoam cup into a dustbin ‘and what a time to pay a man a visit?’ 

‘Will you shut up Silva?’

‘I will Mayon”

‘Good. Then go to sleep’

***

The only thing that had changed in seven years were the dates and the scale of her exhibitions. They were lofty before Silva remembered, but this, this was monumental. It would be impossible to trump this majestic opulence. It was after all P09’s exhibition and she was the biggest star in their galaxy right now, but for all that Silva wanted to stick a dynamite in the foundations of her so called art and blow each piece into a million bits of burning nothing. He knew the truth of it, at least he though he did.

The soft susurration accompanied by trickles of laughter and clinking of dainty glasses suddenly buttoned up. A sort of quietude descended over and Silva knew it to be exactly what it was.

***

‘It’s been one week. I haven’t heard from you, your office hasn’t heard from you. Where on earth are you? have you finally quit your job?’ Silva was talking into the phone with a questioning probe.

‘I’m just busy’ came Mayon’s hurried reply

‘In a rush, can’t talk’

‘Wait, wait. Is everything okay? tell me you’ve hit gold with your words’

‘I have Silva, and she loves every bit of it, every bit of me. I have to go now’ and the line went dead on the other end leaving Silva in a febrile haze of puzzles and doubts.

Two weeks had passed by and there was no word from Mayon. His phone was dead and he didn't seem to be occupying his house anymore.

Silva had paid him a visit every few days, letting himself in with his spare keys only to find Mayon’s house as untouched and uninhabited as he’d last seen. 

Nothing seemed to have changed from the last time he had stayed here, that night when P09 paid them a visit. The styrofoam cup still lay in the dustbin, her autograph still pinned to the soft board. The only thing missing from these surroundings were Mayon and his pen. 

Silva was here today because he’d received a phone call from his friend asking him to meet him at his old place. Whatever did he mean by that? Where was mayon now Silva thought. A sick feeling gnawing at his insides. 

‘Did you have to wait long?’ Mayon slapped his friends back while unlocking his house. 

‘No I just got here, but where have you been, I..’ Silva had half a mind to drown his friend in a question enfilade but stopped midway when his eyes met Mayon’s.

‘What happened to you?’ Silva was staring this man he once knew to be his brother, his friend. ‘Have you not been eating? you look sick. Mayon what is going on?’

Silva looked at what was left of Mayon. He looked addled. His skin thin as tissue paper wrapped about his skeleton. Cheeks sunken into dark hollows, his wide shoulders now a set of drooping bridge and yet his smile as effervescent if not more.

‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ Mayon was excitedly smiling, ‘work can sometimes stress out us artists. It’s been a  whirlwind few weeks I tell you friend. Life could not have been better. My fate smiles and guides me. I now know what I’m supposed to do. I’m an imperishable force, Silva. Nothing will stop me. Stop us. We are as one, a unity, a unit of creative energies. An inventive synergy of harmony and symbiosis’ Mayon prattled on non-stop.

‘What on earth are you talking about. Why don’t we get us some food. You need to eat, friend’ Silva looked worriedly while Mayon still passionately kept on talking. 

‘Yes, yes. there’s always time for food. You don’t understand, she is showing me what I really am. In this kaleidoscope of many me’s, what’s the real me. I’m not just Mayon your destitute friend, but also Mayon the man with a brain that can fashion a hundred poems, give vision to every word I speak, splatter a canvas with colors of my writing. I’m truly energizeed. I have been revived Silva, She has done it’ and with that he burst into tears.

***

Time could merely be a metaphor, a mirage for mundane humans to suffer through. It was meant to affect the weak, the dying, the faithfuls. Time was of no significance to P09.

She looked as she did nine years ago, as she did on that night, as she did when Silva had met her in her house. As gaunt, and lifeless with a twinkle that spoke of sorcerous knowledge. Her skin just as smooth and polished lined still with ancient furrows that stayed intact in time. Her every movement, blink, breath, smile, a mere show for mortals. 

A mechanical repetition of similar organic activities that tried to pass off as normal. Her eyes vacant and ready. 

P09 didn't seem to notice Silva among the thousand odd crowd of patrons, fanatics and fakes, and if she did, she never let it show.

A line of sentinel like bodyguards surrounding her every side while a throng of crowd went mad, just as it did all those years ago. A grim deja vu and Silva could feel the knot in his stomach rise to a bilious pain.

He walked towards her, deciding to pierce through the maddening crowd of human refuse, grab her arm and wretch that pen from her, or did he want to fling himself at her feet? lie prostrate and beg? 

No he didn’t come for that. His rage was unmistakable. His anger needed a vent, he wanted to laugh and tear through her facade and scratch at her impervious layer of unreal creativity. He wanted to drill fissures through her smooth veneer and rip out all the layers of truth as he knew them to be. 

He wanted to avenge his friend, he wanted to hate her and yet each time he looked at her, seeing that she glanced not once in his direction he knew he wouldn’t be able to do any of that. He couldn’t reach her. She’d have to reach him, and so he waited. 

***

(cont..)