to ourselves just how to go about it, so we could see it together in the morning. We’d get Paul to help us. Paul is good, he’s clever, he has friends and influence, he likes me. We’ll marry, we’ll leave the city, we’ll go into Bohemia. We’ll plant a garden and work clay. We’ll be two new creatures together in the countryside, and we’ll live outside bourgeois reality, forever!”
He was full of passionate excited inspiration and conviction, and she was trying to respond to him, when the black lightning of suspicion hit her and she knew, with a deep uneasy lurch, that he had made this offer to other women before.
When she woke in the morning there was no sign of Emil. The room reeked of blood. She’d bled all over the sheets. She crawled out of bed, stuffed a makeshift pad into her underwear, put on a robe, and made herself a pain tincture. She drank it, she stripped the sheets, she turned over the stained mattress, and then collapsed into bed exhausted.
Around noon there was a knock on the door. “Go away,” she moaned.
A key rattled in the lock and the door opened. It was Paul.
“Oh it’s you,” she blurted. “Ciao Paul.”
“Good afternoon. May I come in?” Paul stepped into the studio. “I see that you’re alive. That’s excellent news. Are you ill?”
“No. Yes. No. How can I put this delicately? I’m not at my feminine best.”
“And that’s all? That’s it? Well.” Paul smiled briefly. “I understand.”
“Where is Emil?”
“Yes,” Paul hedged. “Let’s discuss that, shall we? Your name is Maya, am I right? We met very briefly at last month’s session at the Tete. Your friend was the couturiere who got very tight and had the shoving match with Niko.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that.”
“Have you eaten?” said Paul, slinging his backpack onto the floor beside the kiln. He smoothed his dark hair back with both hands. “I haven’t eaten today. Let me make us something. This kitchen seems nicely stocked. How about a goulash?”
“Oh goodness no.”
“A little kasha. Something very light and restorative.” Paul began running water. “How long have you known our good friend Emil?”
“I’ve been living with him ever since that night at the Tete.”
“Three weeks with Emil! You’re a brave woman.”
“I’m not the first.”
“You’ve made changes here,” Paul said, gazing alertly about the studio. “I admire your sense of devotion. Emil requires a lot of looking after. He called me this morning. Very agitated. I took the express from Stuttgart.”
“I see.” She found the bedspread and pulled it up over her knees. “He said you were close friends. He always speaks very highly of you.”
“Does he? That’s touching. Of course, it was natural of Emil to call me. I have my net-address tattooed onto his forearm.”
She blinked. “I never noticed any such tattoo.”
“It’s rather subtle. The tattoo only becomes visible on his skin when he is very upset.”
“Was Emil very upset this morning?”
Paul sifted yellow powder into a saucepan. “He woke me this morning and told me that a strange woman was dying in his bed. Dying, or possibly dead. An incubus. A golem. He was very confused.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s relaxing, he’s having a sauna. Schwartz is looking after him. I’ll have to call them now. Just a moment.” Paul undipped the netlink from his collar and began speaking in Deutsch as he delicately stirred the pan. Paul was soothing, then funny, then authoritative, then lightly satirical. When Paul had restored sense and order to the universe, he clipped the phone back to his shirt collar.
“You should keep your fluids up,” he said. “How about a nice mineralka? With maybe two hundred micrograms targeted enkephalin and a bit of diuretic and relaxant. That should put you to rights.” He fetched his backpack, opened it, and pulled out a clear zippered bag. It held an arsenal of stickered foils and airtight capsules.
“Did you think I’d be dead when you walked in here, Paul?”
“The world is full of possibilities.” Paul opened a cabinet, retrieving spoons and bowls. “I thought it best to be here first, that’s all.”
“To put the proper cast on the situation before the authorities showed up?”
“If you like.” He brought her a fine ceramic bowl of steaming mush and a tapered china vase of mineral water. “You’ll feel less distraught if you eat this.” He went back and fetched his own bowl.
She sipped at her fizzing mineralka. “
“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. “
“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
“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,
