“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
“It is an
“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.”
“I’m touched by your optimism,” Paul said.
“Please don’t be that way. What do I have to do—to convince you to tell me the truth?”
“Consider that object,” Paul told her very politely. “It destroys the quotidian swindle. It confronts us with a tactile violation of conventional cognition.”
“Yes?”
“The destruction of the human condition offers us an avalanche of novel creative approaches. Those possibilities must be assimilated and systematically deployed by the heirs of humanity. Artifice is
They walked down the stairs of the tubestation. Paul discreetly produced a laminated travel pass from an inner jacket pocket. “The human condition is over. Nature is over. Art is over. Consciousness is ductile. Science is an infinite powder keg. We confront a new reality formerly obscured by the inbuilt limits of mammalian primates. We must create work which brings this new reality to the surface, a sequence of seemingly gratuitous gestures which will form in their aggregate the consciousness of posthumanity.” Paul’s limpid gaze grew more intense. “At the same time, politically, we must not shatter the fragile surface tension of an aging human civilization which pretends to Utopian tranquillity but is secretly traumatized beyond all possibility of healing. Beneath the repellent husk of the dying humanist agenda, we must systematically alter the physiological basis of cognition and the state of culture, and bear an honest, objective, and unpretentious witness to the results. That is the basic nature of our program as artificers.”
“I see. Can you buy me a ticket?”
“A ticket to the train station, or a ticket all the way to Stuttgart?”
“Actually, could you buy me both of those tickets? Including a round-trip ticket.”
“Why don’t you just take my Europass? It lasts till May.”
“Could I do that, Paul? That’s too generous.”
He handed her the laminated pass. “No no, I can get another smartcard from the university. Europe is full of situational perquisites.” He approached a machine and did business with it.
They boarded the Praha tube and clung to the hand straps. She looked at him. She loved the way he swept his hair back behind his ears. She admired the fine sweep of his dark mobile eyebrows, the line of his hooded eyelids. It was a comfort to be in his physical presence. He was so young.
