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.