“English is fine, Maya. I’m a programmer, I’m a conquered subject of the global argot of technique. We might as well collaborate with English. It’s silly to fight it now.”
They sliced a yellow stick of lipid and stirred white cubes of sucrose into their kasha, and they ate together on the bed. The cozy little ritual made her feel five years old. She was very weak and had a viperish temper. It was not a good idea to fight with Paul.
“I’m not easy to get along with when I’m this way,” she said. “We had an argument last night and I upset him. It’s not good to tell him things late at night, it affects his sleep.” She sighed. “Besides, this morning I do look half-dead.”
“Not at all,” said Paul. “In your own hair and without cosmetics your face has great character. Less conventionally pretty perhaps, but far more compelling. There’s an element of melancholy remoteness, a Weltschmerz. It’s a face that is almost iconic.”
“You’re very tactful and galante.”
“No, I’m speaking as an aesthetician.”
“What do you do in Stuttgart, Paul? I’m very sorry that I took you from that work today, whatever it was.”
“I program. And I teach at the university.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.
“They let you teach at that age?”
“The European university system is very ancient, and convoluted, and bureaucratic, but yes, if you have publications, and sponsors, and a concerted demand from the students, yes, you can teach. Even at twenty-eight.” He smiled. “C’est possible.”
“What do you teach?”
“I teach artifice.”
“Oh. Of course.” She nodded repeatedly. “You know, I need to find someone who can teach me photography.”
“Josef Novak.”
“What?”
“Josef Novak, he lives here in Praha. I don’t suppose you know his work. But he was a great master. A pioneer of early virtuality. I’m not sure that Novak still takes students, but of course his name leapt to mind.”
“He’s a gerontocrat?”
“ ‘Gerontocrat’? A good teacher should never be scorned. Of course, Novak is not an easy man to know. The very old are rarely easy people to know.”
“Josef Novak … wait, did he do a desktop environment called Glass Labyrinth back in the teens?”
“That’s far before my time.” Paul smiled. “Novak was very prolific in his youth. All lost works now, of course. The tragic loss of all those early digital standards and platforms … it was a great cultural disaster.”
“Sure, Glass Labyrinth, The Sculpture Gardens, Vanished Statues, Josef Novak did all of those. Those were big hits then! They were wonderful! I had no idea he was still alive.”
“He lives about a block from here.”
She sat up. “He does? Then let’s go see him! Introduce me, all right?”
Paul glanced at his wrist. “I have a class in Stuttgart this afternoon … I’m a bit pressed for time today, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.”
“But I’m glad to see that you’re feeling so much better.”
“Those painkillers kicked in. Thanks a lot. Anyway, I’m always much better after I eat.”
“So you’re familiar with Josef Novak’s early work. You’re an antiquarian, Maya. That’s very interesting. It’s remarkable. How old are you?”
“Paul, maybe it would be a good idea if I didn’t see Emil for a few days. It might be better for Emil if I just cleared out of his life for a little while. I mean, considering. What do you advise?”
“I’m sure Emil will recover by tomorrow morning. Emil almost always does. But I can imagine that course of action might be wise. Considering.”
“Maybe I’ll just wanderjahr for a few days. Do you mind if I take the train back with you to Stuttgart? Just to talk along the way. If that’s not an imposition.”
“No, not at all, I’d be delighted with your company.”
“I’ll dress. All right?”
There was no place in the studio to dress in privacy. The young were not much concerned with privacy. Maya tunneled awkwardly into tights and a sweater. Paul, with perfect indifference, did the washing up.
She glanced into her pocket mirror and was horrified. The truth could not have been more obvious if it were flashing on her brow in neon. This face was not the face of a young woman. It was a posthuman face, pale and pinched and brimful of exotic forms of anguish it was not fully allowed to experience. The sculptured, waxy face of some outmoded plastic mannequin.
She rushed to the kitchen sink and set to work with cleansing gel. Toning lotion. Pore reliner. Epidermal matrix. Foundation. Blusher brushes. Mascara. Eyeliner. Gloss. Eyelash curler. Scleral brightener. Brow pencil. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth. The teeth would have to do.
The mirror showed her that she’d beaten the truth into submission. Smothered it in cosmetics. The hair was still awful but the natural hair was always pretty bad.
She found a bright Czech shawl, her kick-on shoes, her big warm gray beret. She slipped a couple of semidepleted cashcards into her backpack. Somehow she’d be all right now. Wrapped up, warm, contained. Perfectly happy and confident.
Paul, all patience and indifference, had been studying Emil’s more recent works. He’d found a wooden box and opened it. “Did he ever show you this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s my favorite.” Paul reached with exaggerated care into the shredded lining of the box and retrieved a delicate white cup and saucer. He set them on Emil’s worktable. “He did this piece just after the change. He was thrashing at reality like a drowning man.”
“A cup-and-saucer set,” Maya said.
“Touch them. Pick them up.”
She reached for the cup. The cup sizzled under her fingertips, and she jerked her hand back. Paul chuckled.
She reached out again with one forefinger and gently touched the saucer. There was a faint electrical tingling, the feeling of something soft yet spiky brushing back at her skin. A crackly sandpaper creeping.
Paul laughed.
She gripped the cup with determination. Without moving, it seemed to buzz and writhe within her fingers. She set it back down. “Is there a battery inside it? Is that the trick?”
“It’s not ceramic,” Paul said.
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know. It resembles ceramic, and it gleams like ceramic, but I believe it’s piezoelectric foamed glass. Once I saw him pour a tincture into that cup. The liquid slowly seeped through both the cup and the saucer. Some quality—the porosity, or the fractal dimension, or maybe a van der Waals charge—it reacts very oddly when it contacts the fingertips.”
“But why?”
“It is an objet gratuit. A work of artifice that demonstrates the bankruptcy of the quotidian.”
“Is it a joke?”
“Is Emil a joke?” Paul said somberly. “Is it a joke to be no longer human? Of course it is. What is a joke? A joke is a violation of the conceptual framework.”
“But that’s not all there is to it.”
“Of course not.”
“So tell me the rest of it.”
Paul restored the cup and saucer to its box, and put the box back on its shelf, with reverent care. “Are you ready to go? Then we should go.” He picked up his backpack, opened the door for her, ushered her through, locked it carefully behind him.
They walked loudly down the creaking stairs. Outside, the day was overcast and windy. They headed toward the Narodni tubestation. She walked at his shoulder. In her flats, she was as tall as he was. “Paul, please forgive me if I’m too direct. I come from very far away, and I’m a naif. I hope you can forgive me that. You’re a teacher, I know that you can tell me the truth.”