THE
WRITER'S LIFE | FICTION
Most
of my short stories nowadays tend toward the longer end of that
definition (4-6000 words), but I've written shorter ones, right down
to flash fiction of 500-1000 words. I wrote many of the latter when I
was homeless, writing whenever, and for as long as I could: In
hospital waiting rooms, beneath street lamps, or by candle light. The
story below was written in a doctor's surgery.
My
exposure with novels is limited to those who can afford them
(although I make my books available by request through public
libraries too), and with the time to read them. The latter isn't such
an issue with short stories, 25 of which are in my anthology.
I continue to write short stories for magazines and web zines, and
I'm planning a second collection of 17 longer stories for publication
next year. This is the title story from the first, and it's only 1760
words.
Like
most of my writing, there are analogies, parallels and subtexts in
The
perpetuity of memory.
It's been said by others that many of my stories stand up to repeat
reading, often revealing details which weren't apparent previously.
Like all good writers of short fiction, I try to carry maximum
meaning and context with minimal words. If that all sounds a bit
elitist, just think of this one in the context it was written:
Waiting to be seen by a doctor, for ongoing mental health issues,
while of no fixed abode. Other patients in the waiting room, all
looking better than I felt, and no doubt returning later to a hot
meal in a family home.
Living
street homeless will leave scars on anyone.
The perpetuity of memory
“When
you see what Dom Pablo has done, at first you may recoil. But Dom’s
art is personal and subjective; each work is unique and creates
another life for the owner. A gift from an admirer.”
The
invitation to be part of a rare commission by Dom Pablo Solanas was a
work of art in itself: exquisitely crafted by the artist and a future
priceless piece. This alone was a luxurious gift, even to someone of
Christiana Kunsak’s means, yet it was merely an invitation to a
private audience with Solanas himself. A box, carved from a single
piece each of ebony and rare boxwood, interlocked to form a puzzle.
The piece is entitled La
armonia.
The accompanying notes state that the name only exists for as long as
the puzzle is in its unsolved form: once the puzzle is solved and the
two pieces separated, a mechanism inside the piece ensures that they
cannot be re-joined. Once the puzzle is complete, La
armonia ceases
to exist and the work becomes La
ansiedad.
La
armonia was
a rare and beautiful thing. It also held a secret: an invitation to
meet with Dom Pablo Solanas. The nature of that meeting was unknown
and therein lay a form of gamble; a wager with oneself: La
armonia was
unique and intricately crafted; its aesthetics were unquestionable in
that initial state. Further value must be added for the simple fact
that the piece contains a secret. If that secret is revealed, it may
reduce the value of the work. The invitation will be spent. La
ansiedad may
not be as pleasing to the eye as La
armonia and
it is the permanent replacement, with La
armonia destroyed
forever. Conversely, the construction of the work is so fine and
detailed as to invite curiosity, more of what it might become than
what it is: should that beauty be left as potential, or revealed? Is
it something which may be left to a subsequent benefactor? What might
they find inside La
armonia?
Christiana could not deny herself a pleasure which someone else might
yet have, and which she may never see.
As
soon as the first link clicked audibly out of place somewhere inside
the box, La
armonia was
no longer. There were no instructions on how to create La
ansiedad:
it was a work to be created by a new artist from the original. Only
when the puzzle was complete would it reveal its secret and until
then, it was nameless and in flux.
Held
in both hands, the wooden box – around the size of a large cigar
box – felt as heavy as it should, carved from solid wood and not
hollowed out. It was slightly heavier at one end than the other. The
seamless interlocking of the ebony and boxwood formed variously
alternate, interlocking and enclosing patterns of dark and light.
Aside from the initial click, no amount of tilting, pressing,
pulling, twisting and pushing of the device produced any change.
Christiana alone had been privy to that first movement, so to anyone
other than her, La
armonia still
existed. But she wanted to create and to see La
ansiedad.
The
box remained unaffected by manipulation, until Christiana’s
housemaid picked it up to clean around it. Snatching the box from the
maid’s hand, Christiana heard another click from the device and
almost immediately noticed a change: the box remained a cuboid but
the dimensions and patterns had altered. Closer examination of the
new patterns revealed some to have assumed shapes which suggested
movement: swirls, series of dots and even directional arrows. The
introduction of a third party had revealed a form of instruction.
Over
a period of around four weeks, the wooden box became a collaborative
project, with guests to Christiana’s apartment invited to examine
the puzzle and attempt to solve it. During that time, the box took on
many geometric forms: pyramid, cone, octahedron and latterly, a
perfect cube, with opposite ebony and boxwood faces: it was more
perfect in form that it had ever been but it still harboured
something inside.
The
geometrically perfect cube would let up no further information and
remained static for a number of days, until the housemaid picked it
up once more while she was cleaning. The top half separated from the
bottom, the base now a half-cube on the table. The surfaces of the
half cubes where they’d separated were a chequerboard design: a
game of miniature chess could be played on each ebony and boxwood
surface, the size of drinks coasters.
Christiana
placed the two halves back together and a perfect cube once again sat
upon the table, for a while. After around five seconds, the cube
began to make a whirring sound, as though a clockwork mechanism had
been invisibly wound inside. Slowly and with a smoothness suggesting
the most intricate mechanical construction, the individual tiles on
top of the cube folded back from the centre to the edges, eventually
forming a five-sided cube with a chequered interior. It was seemingly
the lack of any further outside intervention which allowed the wooden
device to complete a long transformation by self-re-assembly and
after a while, the device resembled a chequered wooden hand. A slot
opened in the palm and a card was offered between the forefinger and
thumb: a card roughly the size of a visiting card and folded with
such accuracy as to disguise the fact that it was anything other. Yet
unfurled, it was an octavo sheet: eight leaves. The reverse of the
flat sheet was blank but the eight pages to view on the face were
images of art.
Oil
and watercolour paintings; portraits, landscapes, sill life and
abstract; cubist, surrealist and classical. Wooden, metal and glass
sculptures; pieces made using prefabricated materials, notably shop
window mannequins, plastic dolls, action men and tin soldiers. Body
art as well: tattoos drawn in such a way as to give them a third
dimension: an arm with skin pulled back to reveal muscle and bone
beneath by way of a zip; a human chest splayed open to reveal a
metallic cyborg beneath: living art made from human flesh, these two
suggesting something beneath the skin visible only with the benefit
of intimacy with the bearer. Another tattoo made the wearer’s right
leg appear as though the limb were an intricate sculpture made from
wood: one organic material transformed into another, which can be
transformed in a way that the material it’s made from cannot, to
create the illusion of just such a thing. All of these things had
been made by the hands of Dom Pablo Solanas. All were arresting at
first sight and invited closer inspection. Even as facsimiles and at
such small sizes, the works of Solanas were breathtaking. At the
bottom of the sheet was a phone number: apparently a direct line to
Dom Pablo himself.
La
ansiedad quietly
whirred into motion again, the mechanical fingers retracting into the
wooden flesh of the hand until the sculpture was briefly a chequered
ovoid, before flipping open like a clam shell. It continued to change
form, seemingly with perpetuity.
Dom
Pablo arrived promptly and attired in a fashion exhibited in many
public portraits of him: conflicting primary colours which somehow
worked, on a man who also wore a fedora hat at all times, and who
sported a perfectly manicured handlebar moustache.
“Ms.
Kunsak. A pleasure to meet you.”
“Please
sir: Christiana. Likewise, Mr Solanas.” Christiana offered her
hand, which Solanas held firmly.
“As
you wish. And please, call me Dom Pablo.” His voice was deep and
relaxed. “Christiana: what is it that you’d like to do today?”
“I
already have a great gift before me. This is a chance for me to turn
your natural gift into something I can share. I have everything I
could need around me, but this is an opportunity to own something
which is so treasured, I may not wish to leave this apartment again.”
“Indeed.
That is one of the rules I apply to my arts. Just as I turn my raw
materials into others – like flesh into wood – so I wish to allow
others to use me as a creative tool, so that what I create is their
own. My subjects and prefabricated materials are artworks in
themselves but together, we make unique pieces. By allowing a subject
to commission me, I am subverting the art and holding a mirror to the
process.
“You
will of course have an idea of who the giver of this gift is.
Association with such a person is to be in the membership of a
society which respects certain things, like privacy. Therefore, I
never discuss the details of a commission with the subject. It is
highly unlikely that anyone should wish to attract attention to
anyone outside of a certain group, that they have been a part of my
work. All of my pieces are unique and personal.”
“It
is those very people, those within my inner circles, that I have in
mind as I enter into this: it was within my closest circles that I
came to receive this, and only those of a certain standing will have
access. Dom Pablo: I should like to carry your work with me in those
circles; I would like you to use me as a canvas and make me a living
work of art.”
“A
truly beautiful idea. Although the canvas is living, I must render it
inanimate so that I may work. As such, I shall administer a general
anaesthetic, so that you feel no discomfort. I don’t like to talk
when I work. When you awake, we will have new art and the Dom Pablo
art changes lives. You will enter an even more exclusive, innermost
circle of my very own. Excited? Sleep now…
“…When
you see what Dom Pablo has done, at first you may recoil. But Dom’s
art is personal and subjective; each work is unique and creates
another life for the owner. My art remains with you, just as the
motion of La
ansiedad is
perpetual. This latest work is entitled The
perpetuity of memory.
Christiana
stared into the mirror and a wooden tailor’s doll looked back: her
face, neck, chest, arms and legs had been tattooed and the illusion
of carved wood from human flesh was utterly convincing.
It
would take a level of intimacy permitted to very few, to see the
original raw material beneath the artwork, made by Dom Pablo.
©
Steve Laker, 2016.
My
books are available on Amazon.
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