They gave me fifteen minutes. I tried not to blink to get a good look. During this time, you can go around the whole room, and I went around it slowly clockwise. But in the first second I felt where the Mexican was hanging. And of course, I was drawn to her. It was probably a little brighter than the other paintings. And she looked like she was alive: I even heard the rustle of a dress and a laugh. Or maybe he immediately caught the look of the girl from the canvas. Someone says she looks mockingly - just like Mona Lisa. And just as overrated. Both are nonsense. I would say that she looks at you as if she knows your thoughts. She probably laughs at someone's thoughts. These are the people who spread similar rumors. And rightly so, that "Mexican" does not hang in the museum, but is hidden behind seven seals. Why confuse people with this x-ray look? They will manage with reproductions.
The security men - all in black suits and white shirts - polite, with low voices, like consultants in a funeral service salon, apologized for having to make a puncture in the neck. What nonsense.
Yes, I would give my hand to get into the vault.
That's just it: burning the skin on your fingers to fake a print pattern - little things. You have to be one step ahead of the attackers. Therefore, I did not mind the implant. The safety is worth it.
The operation took half an hour. They woke me up, let me come to my senses, shoved a cardboard cup of coffee into my hands. The puncture site sank a little, and I felt strange: another track, a data bus, was laid into my brain, and they would use it as a key. I got the feeling that someone was constantly looking at me. I didn't have time to really listen to the sensations: they came for me to take me to the storage.
They escorted me through the steel doors, left me alone, doused me with some kind of aerosol from the ceiling - and with the signal of the light they made it clear that I could get through. Hissing, clinking mechanisms, buzzing. The further, the more terrible and solemn. And the air seems to be more sterile, and my reflection in the steel surfaces of the next doors is more and more surprised.
And then - I am alone in a sparsely lit room, the walls of which are hung with precious paintings, among which was her - "Mexican".
I, of course, like everyone else, knew her only from reproductions: every curl, every button on the dress. But I didn’t even come close to expecting her to burn so much when I saw her live. And why would I be so honored?
Indeed, for what?
I, of course, asked Victor about this - after, when he invited me to dine together. Victor explained that dealing with contemporary art critics is like letting a fox into a chicken coop with your own hands. Everyone was bought, even those who were not for sale. They are spoiled by money and the conjuncture of the so-called contemporary art. What is contemporary art? Put the mouse in the blender, sell the mince for a million dollars. In general, I have to understand what's what. And since I understand, it is precisely such a young, open-ended talent from the provinces who is the one they need. The Pope himself made it a rule to involve "fresh blood" in any projects. And he cannot be denied insight.
And I certainly didn’t deny the vision of the man who founded the world famous technology company. Rumor has it that he sold his soul to the devil to learn how to create such amazing robots. But maybe he was just smart.
His giant photograph adorns the lobby of this skyscraper: ten steps from left ear to right. Victor looks like his father, although he did not purse his lips so capriciously. However, this habit makes Victor look like an aristocrat. It took my breath away when I saw him. As if I had met a man of those times from which the "Mexican" came to us.
By the way, they say that when you connect your fate with this picture, strange things begin to happen to you.
The most popular legend says that the first owner of "Mexican" - the Englishman Oldfield - met the girl personally: he entered the room and saw that the canvas was empty. He heard a low laugh, turned - and she was standing behind him. Further, the stories differ. According to one version, the Mexican told Oldfield a secret. On the other - she kissed once on the lips. In any case, Oldfield ended up in an asylum for the mentally ill - the famous London Betlem, aka Bedlam - and the Mexican moved to a different owner, who suspiciously quickly gave it to the museum.
- What do you think about this? - Victor asked me.
“Superstition,” I replied. “Firstly, Sir Oldfield lived before Bedlam was built, and he couldn't get into it. Second, the records show that Oldfield died at home and in a clear mind. Third, the paintings do not come to life.
- Really? - Victor asked with surprise, and then smiled out of the corner of his mouth, making it clear that he was joking.
“I assure you as a specialist,” I replied with the same feigned seriousness.
- And you are well versed in the subject.
“Thank you,” I felt myself blush.
- This is not a regular compliment. You know, we missed such a team member. A man with erudition and at the same time a skeptic. You have just confidently refuted the myth by simply comparing the two dates. This is valuable. When you inherit pictures, you get along with them a lot of myths, rumors, all sorts of crazy people with shifting eyes, calls from journalists. I am already silent about swindlers, burglars, speculators ...
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
Victor thought and stroked the bridge of his nose.
“That's why I love modern technology,” he said. - Someone says that with them dryness, mechanicalness comes into our world. And I love that they bring clarity. You know, I love playing keyboards ...
He put down his glass and put his hands on the table as if he had taken some kind of chord, so that his thin fingers formed several arches.
-… and I find myself preferring synthesizers. Yes, the piano tone is more interesting, richer.
But he pulls along the entire history of the instrument. You can't just hit a few notes without making the listener think of Schubert or Keith Jarrett. Yes, even about Elton John. It's easier with synthesizers. Pure, bare sound. Simple and clear.
He looked at me and added:
- So I'm not shy of computers, I'm not afraid of robots. And I don't stay away from neural interfaces. Hope it didn't hurt you?
- Oh, what are you, not at all - I lied a little.
- Thank you for agreeing to the operation.
“So you left me no choice,” I wanted to joke with a serious air, but did not dare.
“You have no idea what the robbers can do,” Victor said thoughtfully. - We have to defend ourselves in the most radical ways. By the way, if you are suddenly pestered with strange conversations…. By the way, the security service has probably already warned you. So you know what to do and who to call.
I nodded. Victor smiled contentedly:
- That's nice. You cannot be intimidated by living people, and you do not believe in ghosts.
I took a deep breath to answer, but then Victor got up from the table and wished me all the best.
I also smiled automatically.
- Did you want to say something? Victor asked.
“No, no,” I replied, “all the best.
I went to the hotel to rest and prepare for a new working day. More precisely - I was sent, ordered to have a good rest and digest impressions. It's easy to say. The gigantic, high-tech art storage was overwhelming, but the huge, expensive hotel was impressive. Of course, there are no steel doors with combination locks in the hotel, but if you are a provincial, then it is easy to amaze you, for example, with a vacuum cleaner. Especially if he is robotic, shiny, and the maid who pushes him around is dressed in a uniform worthy of the space forces.
I rolled my suitcase into my room, opened it and made sure that my collection, my "manifestation map", was safe and sound. The paper cards and a skein of thread were neatly lined with clothing. I planned to hang the cards on the wall on the first day, but I felt that I was too tired for this. It was early to sleep. I sat on the bed, inhaling the smell of the hotel: this seemingly not very pleasant, but romantic smell ... what? Cleaning products, I guess. Fragrances for linen. Nice, but a little sterile. They seem to be trying to please you, but at the same time they hint that you are not here for long.
And good. You are not at home, you are somewhere else. Your life does not stand still. If you leave, they will take care of you. And you will go further. It takes your breath away when you think about it. It's damn valuable to know that you've gotten out of a small town. This is the second time in my life in a hotel. I went on vacation with my parents when I was seven years old. And today I'm only twenty-four, and I got out on my own. More precisely, I was chosen.
Me! I can't believe it. Incredible. Although, if you think about it, well, someone had to be in this place: "Mexican" is being studied by many art critics around the world. Sooner or later, someone's phone rings - they are invited to the capital to work with the originals.
My brother said it was suspicious: I am not a good enough specialist to invite me in person. My girlfriend said that he was just jealous: older brothers often envy younger ones, because they are more loved. I didn't know what to say. On one of the last days before leaving, I went to the mall to buy a new suit and, passing by the entertainment area, I saw how an iron sparkling claw grabs a stuffed toy and pulls it up, separating it from the plush mass of similar ones.
The children stuck around the machine gun screeched so hard that my ears were blocked. I smiled at the toy. She also looked happy.
I smiled at myself in the mirror and decided I deserved a little treat.
Tired business trips kill evenings in the hotel bar. I don't know how to make acquaintances, but somehow it happened by itself that I was bursting with impressions, and the bar counters seem to be designed for unobtrusive conversations. At least that's what the movies show.
- You know, I have also been involved in paintings in recent years.
- So you are also an art critic?
- I'm a biologist. I was attracted to one project. You see, in some of the old paintings, the characters have strange fingers. People God knows what they are making up to explain this. We think they just have rheumatoid arthritis. Or gout.
I, of course, remembered the gnarled fingers on one of Rubens' graces. Rubens himself suffered from arthritis. As, perhaps, his wife, who posed for this picture. In general, in those days, few were completely healthy. It made me laugh that someone was seriously trying to figure out what exactly those unfortunates suffered. My interlocutor, it seems, was not particularly embarrassed. However, she is a physician, biologist. They have a habit of talking dryly and mundanely about things that are usually voiced with an awkward laugh. Even for a second it seemed to me that she was wearing a white robe. I glanced at her and made sure she was wearing a regular blue and gray dress. It happens that over the years the profession leaves an imprint on manners.
I made fun of the research customers.
- Well so, - the biologist objected. - People tend to seek explanations. We can say that people survive only because they know how to look for and find them. In a way, um, it makes us human.
- But much remains inexplicable. In people. The same art. Can art be explained? What makes people paint pictures?
- Lack of cameras? - she spoke seriously.
- It used to be. And now?
The woman thought about it. It is very strange to talk to a person who does not feel a simple touch of beauty - I more often felt sorry for such than despised. While the biologist was gathering her thoughts, I drank from a glass. It was a gin and tonic, and I drank it for the first time in my life. Not a synthetic fake, but real gin. Real gin gave the impression of tricky jazz: first, a cacophony of taste, a sharp blow to the receptors, which softens after a few seconds and unfolds into a complex, rich harmony. Everything in it was in place, and even the hubbub of the bar did not annoy, because it seemed to me that it was the noise of the audience who came to listen to jazz.
- You know, there is such a bird - the Australian bower, - my interlocutor finally answered. - Her males build such arbors, arches for females. Extremely intricate. You cannot live in them, you cannot lay an egg in them. In general, no benefit. Birds decorate them with flowers, all sorts of feathers, stolen buttons. It comes to the point that they can crush the berry and paint the hut with its juice, dipping a leaf into the juice like a brush. Everything in order to charm the bride. My ex-husband, by the way, also looked after me beautifully. And in courtship, his role in procreation ended. Art appeared as an advertisement for the qualities necessary for procreation. Fitness indicator.
I took another sip. I have to admit that my biologist was just as different from my biology teacher as real gin was from synthetic gin and tonic. Here is a real specialist, not a driver of schoolchildren in a distilled program.
“Wait, but these are instincts,” I said. - Real art is inexplicable.
- Well, if we could talk to the bird, she would also not be able to explain why she has such a passion for decorating arches. She feels, um, a creative impulse. Not explicitly related to finding a partner.
- But this is not creativity!
I guess I blurted it out too loudly. The bar was quiet for a couple of seconds, and I heard a short female laugh, as if the Mexican herself came down here and cheered up, watching the drunken young man. The biologist, however, remained as calm as a metronome.
- Why not creativity? If you give her yellow and red buttons, then she will confidently discard the yellow ones, and will still fight for the red ones.
- But Rubens is not buttons!
We argued for two hours until the bar was empty. The woman methodically explained how genes responsible for taste for beauty are transmitted through the population. Like, females should like those qualities of males that were supported by selection from her parents. The one who is strong - the hut is more beautiful. Whoever has a prettier hut is dad. Whoever loves beautiful huts is also a mother. And the children are all like dad and mom. Is it logical? It is logical!
I could not object to anything, but I kept repeating that I have been doing art all my life and I understand for sure that it is full of the inexplicable. We parted after midnight, and each stayed with his own.
I went up to my floor, brought my smartphone to the lock of the room. For half a second, the lock thought, doubting whether to let me in or not, made a squeak, and the door opened. My eyes fell on the open suitcase: I left it in the middle of the room. In the suitcase, I could see my sloppy, washed laundry, the sleeves of my pajamas hanging over the edge. I frowned: against the background of a perfectly made, starched bed and other strict elegance of the room, the linen looked like a boorish wretched detail. If I had conceived the painting "Provincial in the Capital", then I would have depicted exactly this - the presence of a person would not even be needed. I would write a suitcase full of junk in this well-adjusted, pleasantly gray interior, saturated with austere Bauhaus, and you're done.
However, do not care. I am needed here, and I am not here by chance.
It is so?
I took the cards out of the suitcase, took off my shoes, climbed onto the bed and began to hang them on the wall, gluing them with pieces of scotch tape. When finished, I took a skein of thick red thread and began to connect the cards with colored lines. It was similar to the way detectives in American films plot the intricate crime schemes.
Perhaps I was also unraveling someone's plan. Not criminal, but grandiose. This was what I did not dare to tell Victor about. And in a conversation with a biologist, he did not even mention it. I have no doubt she would have laughed at me. Of course, I wouldn't literally laugh, but I'm sure I would have found a couple of well-aimed arguments, and each my next word would only make me a fool more.
When I was finished with the cards, I took my laptop out of my backpack and looked for training videos on sex selection. Hmmm. Birds, genes, phenotypes. Everything is convincing. Argue with her. In three minutes I would be like a chess player who has been lured into a fork, and I would have to choose what to save: face or beliefs.
However, belief is the wrong word.
My meditation teacher says there are several varieties of knowledge. There is what you understand with your mind, and there is what you know because you directly feel. It is important to distinguish between them if you want to practice meditation, and not sitting in the lotus position. Let's say you feel the breath. There is a difference between touching the inhalation experience and the concept of "I am breathing right now, I am breathing in."
I went to the far corner of the room and examined the diagram.
The familiar picture calmed me down a bit. I felt my knowledge again. It was as real as breathing, and as barely expressed in words as feeling the train of your thoughts. Like the difference between "I think a thought" and "I noticed my thought."
The top left card read:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
The red thread from this card led to the portrait of the author, Samuel Coleridge. Below was a card depicting Kublai Khan's palace proper, which Coleridge wrote about. From the palace, a thread led to the portrait of the khan. From Coleridge and Khan, threads led to a blank card. I still had to find out its content. Look out, look out, sniff out. To let the slime of time pass through oneself, drink a sea of ​​information and catch a grain of sand with thin gills.
I had several such unfinished schemes. Whether I would ever be able to complete them, I did not know. But I knew these connections were real. Of course, a biologist would argue with me. Although ... at least what would she object to the facts?
It is known that these delicious-sounding lines - the best in English poetry, with which few argue - came to Coleridge in a dream. He was ill and, taking opium as an anesthetic and sleeping pill, in a narcotic dream he saw what he had read at Marco Polo's: Kublai Khan's palace. Coleridge woke up convinced that he had composed (or perceived?) Two or three hundred lines. The beginning - a small fragment of a poem - he wrote down. His work was interrupted by a sudden visit, and he could not remember the rest, much to his chagrin.
This happened in 1797.
What is less known is that in 1816, twenty years later, the first Western translation from Persian of Rashid ad-din's Jami at-tavarih (collection of chronicles) was published in Paris in Paris. In this book it was written: "To the east of Xanadu, Kublai Khan erected a palace according to the plan, which he saw in a dream and is preserved in his memory."
The Mongol emperor in the 13th century sees a palace in a dream and builds it according to his vision. In the 18th century, an English poet, who could not have known that this structure was generated by a dream, sees in a dream a poem about this palace.
Of course, you can puff up and look for rational explanations. But you can listen to yourself, listen to the verses, feel the hesitation that the music of words leaves in your soul, and admit that you feel the plan. Someone influences the souls of sleeping people. They wake up and embody the image inspired by them into reality. Some - in marble and metal, and some - in words (surprisingly more durable).
One cannot help but feel, Borges said, the "superhuman character" of the executor of the plan. At least five centuries have passed between the attempts we know.
I felt that I was tired beyond measure. The flight exhausted me. An argument with a biologist sucked my soul out. My ministry - my search for a great creator - was already difficult, and today, more than ever, I felt tiny and helpless. I was a small man in a huge city. A light was on in my room, and it was a small yellow square, lost among hundreds of other yellow and gray squares of a skyscraper, squeezed into the block among a dozen other concrete needles.
Someday, God knows when, another person will have a dream, and the palace will again appear in reality: in the form of a statue or music. Or, who knows, a computer program or a robot.
It will take a man who recognizes the palace. How? The palace will be beautiful. Beauty must be able to see and recognize. I am doing my best. But God, how tired I am.
I turned off the light and lay down under the covers. My eyes got used to the semi-darkness, and I saw my scheme from a different angle: strange, gnarled leaves, carelessly stuck to the wall. For a moment I somehow felt ashamed of them. I got used to them when they hung in my room. Even my mother was prohibited from entering it. Everything in the room had its place and meaning. In this issue, in a practical cell for business people in a big city, the pieces of paper looked like leaflets stuck on a lamppost by some crazy person.
I tossed and turned. Damn, where does the light come from? The windows of the room must be closed with opaque curtains. I raised myself on my elbow and saw what was preventing me from sleeping: my laptop, on the screen of which there was a video about sex selection paused. This is a computer with its cold, rational blue light on my circuit. I swore and slammed the laptop lid shut.
That night, I dreamed of a bowerbird that said: “Having abandoned the local light inherent in my early works, I achieved the finest gradations of raised tones. And my secret is that the final colors are applied in a corpus, after glazing. "
The next morning, Victor, appreciating my sleepy appearance, with his aristocratic politeness immediately offered coffee. I finally fell in love with Victor. I must say that there are no less fantastic rumors about him than about his great father and about his collection. It is understandable: it is easy to arouse suspicions if you are rich from birth, unsociable and hide from the whole world a precious collection of paintings. I, however, tried not to clog my head with prejudice. And, apparently, he was right. Two true art connoisseurs will always find a common language.
Over coffee, Victor announced the good news: I'm going to the holy of holies again. As it turned out, people were reluctantly allowed into the cell so as not to destroy the microclimate; and I have to go alone again to take the Girl on the Beach to the laboratory. I certainly didn't mind.
But, to my surprise, the new visit did not please me too much. Finding myself under the gaze of the "Mexican", I suddenly felt guilty. As if yesterday's midnight argument was an important battle, and I lost it. Not that I dropped the spear, but the horse was knocked out from under me. How strange: all my life I have served beauty, but then a dry biologist appears and says something that makes me suddenly feel funny. Art pulls us up, doesn't it? We have the word “sublime”. Elevates us. But a person appears who explains our souls from the bottom up, not from top to bottom. It doesn't take anything away from us, it seems. He doesn't even argue with anything in particular. But why do I feel like a secret has been stolen from me? Why couldn't I defend the secret?
Am I not worthy of this knowledge? Whoever came to our world with his superhuman objects - he seemed to unfold halfway and crumble into dust along with his immensely beautiful creations. Only ruins remained from Kublai Khan's palace - even a century before Coleridge, travelers with disappointment found only fragments on the site of the glorified palace. Even the wonderful city of Shandu (aka Xanadupur) is today a wasteland: grass, remnants of adobe walls and brick foundations. Only half a hundred lines have come down to us from the poem. Coleridge spent the rest of his life trying to complete what was once “given to him in its entirety,” but to no avail.
Beethoven, falling asleep in the carriage, composed a canon, but waking up, he could not restore it in his memory. The next day, being in the same carriage, he remembered it and wrote it down. As you can see, not everyone can fall asleep on time. Turn off your damn head.
Perhaps people are simply not worthy of such a gift. Reason, creeping out of the ugly convolutions of our brain, eats holes in what should rise and sparkle in the sun.
Or even live in the flesh.
This was my theory. If the "Mexican" appeared to us in the form of a picture, can she appear to us in the form of a living girl? And if so, what are we rational creatures going to do with her? Are we going to shoot TV shows? Shall we pay her for an ad for mascara? Do we replicate her image on billboards? Or maybe she will come to the casting, sit for an hour in line and leave with nothing? Or maybe no one will just notice her, will not appreciate her, and she will walk with a folder of papers in the office center - the one that I saw through the window half an hour ago while drinking coffee in the dining room? Its windows reflected the windows of my building. Gray glass in gray glass.
There was another option: all this is nonsense. There are no rebirths and incarnations. The English poet and the Mongolian khan had a dream - and this is a coincidence. Two facts out of a billion facts. The biologist is right, but I am not. "Mexican" is a paint on fabric. How would she say? "Nice looking image of a fertile human female"?
I need to remove the papers from the wall and send them to the trash can, and sit down for educational videos myself. And in a couple of weeks all these speculations will seem naive to me.
I closed my eyes and listened to myself. I could feel my breath, but I didn't feel the same confidence in my ideas.
He opened his eyes and met the portrait. The "Mexican" did not condemn me, did not laugh at me, but her eyes were so understanding that I was at a loss. And when I took the modern "Girl on the Beach" from the counter with my hands in white gloves, I got the feeling that I was stealing it.
What the hell is this? I'm not a thief. I work here. I was missed by a whole squad of guards, I even have a neuroimplant somewhere in my skull, which informed the local security system that I was the same person who passed one hundred and twenty tests for competence and moral strength yesterday. And neuroimplants don't lie. I'm not lying either.
And I honestly worked that day, hunched over laboratory scanners. By evening, colored spots from color calibrators floated in my eyes. I firmly decided not to go to the bar and not look for acquaintances, but still get some sleep. But when I was going down in the elevator, the phone barked: a message came. The message finished me.
To hell with him, the girl, of course, can leave you. Worse, a girl can leave you just by notifying you of the decision - while you are away. Three lines. Kind of like everything you deserve. Why doesn't she want to pick up the phone? Doesn't want to make excuses? Is it hard for her to talk to you? Perhaps she's with someone else right now?
Why at all? What happened?
When we were saying goodbye, I quoted Mayakovsky to her: "I will cherish and love your body, like a soldier cut off by war, unnecessary, nobody's, protects his only leg."
Mayakovsky invented this metaphor in a dream. He woke up in the middle of the night and in the darkness with a charred match he wrote “a single leg” on a cigarette box and fell asleep. In the morning I could not understand for a long time what it meant. I did not tell all this to the girl, because I did not tell anyone about my research. It's too intimate even to share with your only beloved. Although I really was ready to be gentle to her that way.
For the fifth time I dialed her number, dropped the call and closed my eyes: at first it was just dark, then brown spots swam - faded ocher, faded ocher, then the face of the "Mexican" appeared.
Or maybe this is a test, I thought. Check, test. Who are you, what do you do, why is it worthy to come to this picture? What if you shake your beliefs, cool down your passion? Try to mix you with zoology, crucify you on the surgical table, smear you on a glass slide? And then take away love? What will be left of you, art critic? Where is your passion? Where is your sense of beauty?
Where is the truth?
No, I don’t think she’s to blame, but for reflection I found myself at the bar again. The bartender asked on duty what to offer me. I glanced over the illuminated bottles along the mirrored shelves. "Who cares?" - I thought. And he said:
- Something stronger.
- Stronger to celebrate? Stronger to forget? Stronger to recover? Let me guess: first a little to forget, and then a little more to come to my senses, because tomorrow I will return to work.
I laughed.
- And you are astute.
- Like everyone who is behind the counter every day.
He poured something odorous. I drank it silently in two gulps. The drink was strong and odd in taste. I closed my eyes. For a few seconds, all my thoughts disappeared, except "Oh my God" and "Wow!" Then the thought appeared: “Maybe it should be so?”.
Maybe it should be so? Maybe that's the way it was meant to be? Maybe this is one of the elements of the circuit? Did she disappear from my life to reincarnate in someone else? In a man, in a robot, in a statue?
How beautiful and meaningful everything is. Maybe I'll meet another? More like an ideal? But when? Where? Do I see her in a dream? Or should someone else see her?
And God, why does it hurt so much?
Yesterday came to Paul McCartney in a dream. This is a breakup song. Does this mean that it came to our world as a song, and now it is trying to appear again and again: as an event? And my loss is the same as the song?
No, some nonsense. And what is happening to me does not sound like a song at all. There is nothing beautiful about parting. Just a message - and you go to such and such mother, boy.
Lord why does it hurt so much?
The bartender left to fiddle with the dishes, and then reappeared, as if he was waiting for me to take a breath after a sip and again want to speak.
- Are you waiting for it to work? He asked sympathetically.
One more. Clung on.
- I cauterize the wounds, - I answered dryly, - in the days of Rubens, the cuts of soldiers were poured with boiling oil. Not that the soldiers are getting better ...
“Woman,” the bartender concluded. - The unhappy person at this bar is of two types: a "failed deal" and a "woman." But if you were in trouble in business, you would ask for ice and drink in small sips, because you unconsciously decided to save. And those who swallow strong, without feeling the taste, this is how you are doing now - they were hit on the heart, not on the wallet. And why do women love to end long-distance relationships so much? A man is in the capital on business - and he has a knife after him. In the back!
- Are there many of us?
The bartender made a significant towel gesture.
“But you're not a businessman, are you? - he asked. - Judging by his clothes, a highly paid specialist recently?
“An art critic,” I instantly admitted and immediately regretted: half an hour ago I promised myself not to talk to anyone else about the beauty in this damned city.
- So drink slowly! The bartender suggested unexpectedly. - Whiskey is also art. This drink tastes of malt and peat smoke, with which malt was smoked, as well as a little sea saltiness, a little viscosity from an oak barrel. What is the lesson to be learned? Our feelings are tender, like barley sprouts, and just as short-lived. But the pain flies away like peat smoke. That the footprints we left are washed away by the sea. That a powerful oak went to the barrel - which means that after death you can serve as something ...
- Yes, you are a poet!
- Any bartender - a poet, philosopher, TV presenter and doctor in one bottle.
“It must be hard work.
- I will not deny it. I will be modest. Who am I? Listener. Different people come, sit at the counter, start talking. Visiting businessmen and metropolitan specialists, foreigners and life-seekers. My job is to pour, stand by and not cover my ears. If it seems to you that I uttered wisdom, I will disappoint: I picked it up from someone. Thank those who sat at the counter before you. I am an intermediary. Only an intermediary.
- Honorable mission.
- If only they paid me for every word!
I pulled a dented bill out of my trouser pocket.
- Come on! Hide the money, you will need it! Listen for free. I will litter with words, and you choose what you like. Are you offended by someone? So, "for each person, the neighbor is a mirror from which his own vices look at him."
- Who said that?
- Well, how do I know. Some Spengler or Schopenhauer. But personally, I heard this from a humanist who had gone bald ahead of time, who went through tequila, sitting on this stool. Have you lost your faith? “The soul does not love, it is love itself. It doesn't exist, it is existence itself. She does not know, she is knowledge itself. "
- Is this some tipsy Buddhist?
- A Hare Krishna convert wearing a fine wool suit. Loaded a friend all evening.
- And he objected to him?
- Still would. He said: "Science does not destroy the soul, but takes it by the hand and leads it out of the world of fairy tales into the huge, beautiful world of reality."
I listened and got drunk. The bartender did sprinkle quotes without interruption. I was already getting tired of his chatter when he suddenly mentioned a female biologist in years, who was talking with a bearded colleague.
“… One hundred billion neurons. Each of them is connected to other thousands of scions.
I started up.
- So what?
- And nothing! He says to her: how to study this? How to figure it out? They invented neural interfaces. There was some noise! Built a bridge to the brain, right? What's the point? A bridge to an immeasurable ocean of information, into a chaos of impulses, into an endless labyrinth that rebuilds itself every fraction of a second, into a secret clot of strange tissue, with which the universe knows itself!
- You're a poet!
The bartender looked at me anxiously.
- You know, it's late.
I took the bill out of my trouser pocket again and felt my palm sweat.
“Good night,” I replied, trying not to get tangled up. - - But first, tell us who won the argument.
- Do disputes win? They only get lost. And that is not served. But you know, I felt a little sorry for that woman. Her interlocutor kept sprinkling numbers: billions of years, but hundreds of centuries, and thousands of synapses. Finally, he pinned her down. You, he says, are anthropologists - just children who found a shell on the shore. But you are trying to judge the whole ocean by it.
- Ocean ... in which bridge?
- So ... your number is 411. Lift from the door to the right. Third floor. As for the ocean, I think you got it right.
I left the bar and walked to the elevator. The world around me was indistinct, as if I was ripped out of reality and lowered to the bottom of a glass of vodka. I rarely got drunk to that extent, so I stared at the world in amazement. The rich hall and the patterns on the wallpaper were all strange. And the bartender was weird. But cute. And I seemed strange to myself. I wonder if he liked me? And he is nothing like a man. Victor warned me that suspicious types can start suspicious conversations with me, but this is clearly not that.
I looked around and saw the elevators. Something flickered in that direction, but then disappeared. There were armchairs and coffee tables in the lobby not far from the elevator doors. It seemed to me that some girl put a book on the table and immediately disappeared like a ghost. I blinked. The girl was vaguely familiar. Although where I can have acquaintances girls in this hotel - I could not imagine. I walked over to the coffee table. There really was one book on it - as if so that the person who came up immediately read the title. The rest of the books were on a shelf nearby.
The book was called Poetry from K to K. I looked around to see if anyone was looking, took the book and went to the elevators. I had a feeling that this book was for me. Whoever this girl is - she left the book for me. Even if it's a figment of my drunken imagination.
If people come up now and demand to hand over the book, I will kick them in the face. I have too much malt, and peat smoke, and oak (and therefore - the bartender will confirm - and the sea, and fire, and a powerful tall tree) to come up to me and select my books.
I said so.
But no one came up to me. A pity, I would have kicked in the face: to everyone and for everything. Instead, I pressed the elevator call button.
In the room, I plopped down on the bed without taking off my shoes. There was a bookmark in the book: a strip of thick, good paper without inscriptions and drawings, but colored. I turned it over in my hands - the color was unusual and vaguely familiar. I read a poem that was in the laid place:
Bells ringing,
And green maples,
And bats,
And Shakespeare, and Ovid -
For the one who hears them,
For the one who sees them.
That's why everything in the world
And grieves about the poet.
So, biologists, I thought. There are things that are only for those who see them. Fuck with your science. Fuck a thousand times every Friday.
With this pleasant feeling of impeccable righteousness, I passed out.
I was sprayed with aerosol from the ceiling, and I smelled sterility. "Maybe ask her?" - I thought. People talk with icons. It sounds strange, but what's the big deal? All the same, except for me, there will be no one in the storage. Just ask? Does she send these people to me? Why are they talking to me about these matters? Confused how much in vain.
Time passed, I stood in the airlock, but for some reason the doors to the vault did not open.
I got tired of waiting and began to call the guards. No one answered. I began to look around and knock on the windows. I waited another ten minutes and began to get out back. The doors suddenly gave way, I went out into the corridor. The hallway, usually filled with storage staff, was empty. What the hell?
There was a rustle on the right. Some familiar rustle. I went that way. There was no one around the corner. But something flashed at the end of the corridor. Again, something vaguely familiar. I stepped in that direction, feeling a tickle in my stomach. What flashed was that color ... It was the color that I saw ... That I saw only ...
Stop! I stopped and tried to collect my thoughts. What's happening? Why is the hallway empty? Something flashed, so what? Some employee was in a hurry about her business, and I saw the edge of her dress. Why am I so creepy?
I sensed that there was someone around the corner. Someone breathed a little agitated. I took a deep breath, preparing to speak, and stepped around the corner.
There was a Mexican woman. Itself. And she smiled. And looked into my soul.
I felt something build up in my chest. It's like I was an empty glass being filled with champagne. And it hisses, like the sea near which a little girl is playing who will become a biologist. I must have smiled to the top of my mouth. And suddenly I realized that I would ask her. But he bit his tongue. What if the ghost disappears from the sound of the voice? Thinking about it, I, out of the corner of my consciousness, in the background, but at a frantic pace, did the only thing that I was good at: matching colors. So that's what shade her dress really is. So this is what color the skin really is! Dust, patina, microcracks - there is nothing between me and a beautiful woman. I spoke.
And he himself did not believe what he said.
“You've got a shot on your shoulder,” I said.
The Mexican woman raised her eyebrows slightly, as if she did not understand my language.
“You have a vaccination mark on your shoulder. BCG scar. It can't be. The "Mexican" lived in the 15th century. They began to vaccinate against tuberculosis in the middle of the twentieth.
The Mexican looked at me in surprise, and then said:
- Well, fuck your mother!
She turned around and walked away from me along the corridor, clattering her heels.
I shook my head in a daze and followed her. At the end of the corridor was a brightly lit office with oak doors. Near the door stood Victor with folded arms. A female biologist was standing next to him. A bartender peered out of the door.
- You ask, what does it mean? - Victor asked and, without waiting for an answer, continued. - I'll explain now. As you know, my father's company made a breakthrough in neural interfaces. But this does not mean that we have learned to read minds. The brain is too complex. All we can do is send a series of input signals and receive output signals. How did they transform? Why did we get this answer and not another? How does this particular brain work? Riddle. It's like throwing a piece into a meat grinder and trying to determine the shape of the minced meat what shape the knives are.
I must have winced.
- Yes, something I started from the wrong end. It doesn't matter, - Victor always spoke in the tone of a man who was sure that he was being listened to. His "don't matter" was bland, but implying that no one would mind. And there was also a drop of monotony: I realized that he was not telling this for the first time.
- Never mind. My father, shortly before his death, transferred the lion's share of his fortune into art objects. You've seen them. The door to the vault is opened with a regular neurokey. This is how you were implanted with your consent. There is a nuance. Usually biometric locks work in such a way as not to let strangers in, but let in acquaintances. This is not how the vault lock works. More precisely, not at all. He will let in a stranger, but will not let in a friend. What for? I will explain. My father was an extraordinary person. He was constantly evolving. He devoted his life to personal growth, as his biographers say. Therefore, he did not have time for a family. And when he realized that he was dying, he decided that the growing children needed not so much an inheritance as a father. Teacher. The one who will make us grow, change. Therefore, he placed barriers for us on the path to inheritance.
- I'm not something…. - I interrupted Victor. Victor made an inviting signal with his thin palm, and the female biologist spoke up.
- The neurointerface gives access to the hippocampus. Through him - into long-term memory. If we send a beam of chaotic signals to the input, then at the output we will receive another beam, also chaotic. But certain of his statistical characteristics will be the same for the same person, and will depend on life experience. They will change throughout life, but slowly, as experience accumulates. Thus, the vault lock measures how much life experience you have accumulated since the last visit. And if not too much, it won't open the door. And if it's enough to consider you a different person, it will open up.
“I can get my inheritance one thing at a time,” Victor interrupted the biologist. - Once every few years I can go in and bring out one picture. To get the next one, I have to gain experience. Hence, change.
“Change,” the biologist continued. - Long-term memory works for the so-called "crystal intelligence". If you have a different life experience, then you make decisions differently. You don't have to wait to unlock the lock twice in a row. Enough for you to change your outlook on life. Reacted differently to incoming signals. Have retrained.
- The Pope idolized change. It was second nature to him. When he heard the phrase “Just be yourself,” he began to grind his teeth: he believed that every day you need to try to become something more than just yourself.
And this is his main legacy. The main point of the will. He didn’t want his children to get wealth all at once. Let them grow above themselves. Actually, the castle allows any person, but gives the right to take out one picture, starting from the second visit. And the number of attempts is limited. And the number of candidates is limited.
“And in no way…” I blew.
- And there is no way around it. There is protection, there are tanks with sulfuric acid and a computer ready to destroy the collection in case of a break-in. The lawyers of the foundation founded by our father are circling around us, ready to defend the paintings with their breasts. All that remains for us is to wait at the door and scratch out our inheritance bit by bit. Thank God, the audience knows nothing ...
Victor took a breath and continued.
- You have now assumed that there is no problem to grow above yourself. But there is nothing pleasant about that, I assure you.
I didn’t interrupt, but I must have grimaced skeptically. Victor spoke even colder.
- My sisters and I have tried a lot: travel, trainings, psychotherapy. To go through the castle again requires a great inner change. Painful, usually. Mental shock. It hurts. You grow, but you lose your taste for life. You leave your next wife, leave the project, curse the church, join the party ... You get bored with old friends, you pack your bags into the unknown or, on the contrary, tear tickets to your favorite places ... In general, how my father lived. Believe me, he had no time for family and happiness. It hurts to change. Up to twenty-five, the brain is plastic. And further training is given with difficulty.
“At one time it was believed,” the neuroscientist put in, “that neuroplasticity is a property of an exceptionally young age. In fact, the brain changes throughout life, but in adults it happens much more slowly.
Victor nodded.
“Most people get stuck developing around twenty-five. They choose their own way of life - and live as usual. Father was pissed off. He believed that a person should study all his life. Constantly reinventing yourself in spite of the pain.
“But he created this company,” I suddenly stood up.
“Created it,” Victor agreed readily, as if he had put another gloomy fact in his piggy bank. - Now to the point. Sometimes we invite people on the pretext of working on paintings. They make several attempts to enter the vault. The second time we ask them to take out the picture. And in between attempts, we try to change their outlook on life. Those performances that you watched were intended for this. And if you think you can sue us or tell this story to the press, you are wrong. My assistants will remind you of the terms of the contract.
Victor didn’t let me interrupt him with a gesture.
- Tomorrow you will have another attempt to enter the vault. The last one. This time for a good reward. About ten percent of the cost of the canvas. That's enough for a decent home for you and your girlfriend.
I grinned:
- By the way, I don't have ...
- You have a girlfriend. The message was fake.
- So ... so ... and now why should I believe you?
- Here! - said the biologist with her trademark intonation of a scientist stating a fact. - Should not. This is why we show our cards. So that you start to doubt our words. You are twenty-four and you are still gullible. Believe adults, you might say. But today you were taught a lesson. The lesson is that you can be taken - and blatantly used. As a master key. In peacetime. Decent people.
I didn't know what to say.
- Well, - Victor said, - go home, sleep, your hippocampus will transfer information into long-term memory overnight. And tomorrow, with a new experience, you will probably be able to enter the repository. If I were you, I would very much hope so.
Victor wrote the amount on a piece of paper and showed it to me.
- On this we will part, we will not squeeze out more of you. But you can be proud of yourself. A brilliant range of changes for three days!
“And I'm not a biologist,” said the biologist. - I am an information security specialist who has gone over to the evil side. Let's just say I'm an information hazard specialist.
“And remember: there are no poetic bartenders,” the bartender added suddenly.
- Yes, this is an image from the cinema, - Victor nodded. - Good, isn't it? So, okay?
He looked at me questioningly.
Have we agreed? I did not immediately realize the question, and then I felt that it was time, finally, to swear. And finally go home - but then I remembered the words of Victor, who offered me a new home. He apparently made inquiries and knew that I was living in a rented apartment. This made me even more angry and already opened my mouth to send him away. But something got in the way. I remembered how the bartender said that we all have common vices and we are angry with people only because at that moment the vices did not appear in ourselves. May I be indignant? Than? The greed of these people? But I, too, now think about the money that Victor offered me. And I want money terribly. Unwillingness to change? Did I want to change myself? No, I clung to my ideas about the sacredness of art. Protected my schemes. Oh my God, and they probably saw my leaves.And I suppose they were pushing me to believe in this nonsense.
On the other hand: I let go of these ideas, since I was able to get into the storage. I can be proud of that. To be proud? Yes, he manipulates me, such a bitch! And this fake bartender ... Yes, but why did I believe him? After all, this is an image from the cinema. Perhaps I wanted to believe, that's all?
I felt my lips dry: I must have been sitting with my mouth open for several minutes. And, probably, with a stupid expression. I closed my mouth and took a deep breath in my chest, not knowing what to say. Once again during these days I felt that I had nothing to rely on: all my usual thoughts and ideas slip away. I groped for something new instead of them. But this new thing was unusual and cold.
I looked at Victor. He looked back sadly.
- Here, - he said, - I told you: it hurts to change.
Writer Pavel Gubarev . Download the entire book, subscribe.