The Last Rational Man Page 22

part of him. No, not his right arm. That really was a bad idea. He was good at ideas, especially bad ones. He wasn't that good at forgetting them.

  She wouldn't put a rotting arm on her piano in any case. What was wrong with his head? And how could he cut it off? There was that guy whose arm got stuck while he was hiking, and he had to cut it off to survive. He spent hours at it. No, he'd use an electric saw. It'd be over in seconds. Ridiculous. She'd think he was sick, and there was no way she'd keep that on her piano. Think of the stink! Unless he got it preserved, like that German guy who made art out of preserved cadavers.

  It was a bad idea anyway you looked at it. He needed something practical, something that would impress her as an artist. It had to be something creative. Something beautiful and special that he could create. Not music, since anything he would do would be amateurish to her. A painting or a sculpture. He didn't know how to paint or sculpt, but he could learn enough in a few months to at least express himself, even if not very professionally.

  That settled; it was just a matter of picking a concert. That would set him a deadline for the artwork as well. Two or three months would have to do. Any longer and he'd go nuts. London, end of July. Not Beethoven, but it would do. The timing was right, and it was a country where they spoke some version of English, so there was hope of figuring out how to see her after the concert.

  C was pleased. Ever since he'd started the art class, J had become much calmer. It was amazing how much it helped him. It gave him a positive direction to channel his creative energies in. She was right, but she never understood the motivation, not till it was too late.

  J went for sculpting. In some ways it was harder than painting, since it was three dimensional. On the other hand, the image he had in his mind, the human piano, was three dimensional, and converting it to two dimensions was too much of a challenge for him.

  The beginners class that he had signed up for modeled in clay. The techniques involved in carving wood and stone were too advanced for beginners, and would distract them from the basic skills needed to create three dimensional art.

  After getting through the assigned exercises, he made his first attempt. A human whose head was stretched to an absurd width, a huge smile on the face. The teeth were piano keys, the feet pedals. The back of the head was swollen towards the back, a cranial soundboard. One arm was twisted backwards and down to the floor, to be the back leg of a grand piano. The other arm stretched up to a wide flat palm holding sheet music.

  J liked it, but it was too simple. It looked like a caricature, like a cheap souvenir you'd buy somewhere. A souvenir that you'd buy under the influence of a mind-altering drug, but a souvenir none the less.

  The concert was in a month. J pulled some money out of their savings account and bought plane tickets and a ticket to the concert. Yes, the money was supposed to go to their dream vacation, but C never looked at the finances, so why worry about it?

  He didn't have much time, so the second sculpting attempt better be right. This time he borrowed from his dream, self-plagiarism at its best. A few minutes with an anatomy text straightened out the details.

  A human form, on its hands and knees. Twisted, so the two hands are on the ground on one side of the body, the hands forming pedals. One of the legs extended forward, stretched and twisted to balance the figure. The skin on the back was slit open and pulled back, exposing the vertebrae from tailbone to neck.

  The scalp was slit as well, and the skull cracked to show the brain. J was especially proud of the brain, which was made of three dimensional notes, wholes, halves and quarters, all molded of clay and jumbled together into a loose ball.

  His art instructor congratulated him for his interesting work, and said that it was quite creative, but J could tell that she was perturbed. She was the one who told him that art should have an effect on the viewer, and if the work bothered her, so be it. Besides which, this piece was aimed at an audience of one, the instructor didn't really count anymore.

  In the beginner's course the instructor took care of drying and firing the pieces. The students were supposed to concentrate on the artistic side, without being overly concerned with the technicalities of modeling in clay. The risk was that a student would create something that couldn't be properly dried and fired, and would end up with a mass of broken chunks of clay. The teacher tried to avoid that, guiding the students in the proper handling of the clay and explaining the limitations of the material, but even so there were always a few pieces that didn't survive the process.

  J had to wait a week before he could see the final result. So many things could go wrong. Maybe making the brain out of notes was a bad idea. They were so delicate. On the other hand the big round mass of the head wouldn't have dried well if it was one solid piece. The extremities would be an issue. If the hands didn't work right, the whole thing would be a fiasco. There would be no pedals, and the whole construction would be unstable.

  There was too much fine detail in the piece. Even fine cracks could be a big problem. If the vertebrae didn't come out right, he would never be able to turn the sculpture into a human piano. And there wasn't enough time to create another one and dry and fire it. And he had to remember that there was a bit of painting to do as well.

  J wasn't sleeping well, but then again he hadn't been sleeping very well for quite a while. Maybe he should start a second one, just in case the first sculpture didn't work out? Best just not to think of it. Think of meeting the Pianist. Should he actually listen to the concert, or just wait backstage in hopes of catching her? And how to present it? Should he wrap it? He'd have to bring it inside of something to the concert hall, but wrapping didn't seem right. He wanted her to see it right away, while he was there. If he wrapped it she might take it back to her house or hotel and only then unwrap it.

  The only real option was a box, like a shoebox, but decorated. He found a shoebox the right size, but decorating it was an issue. He didn't want the box to be decorated to the point where it would distract from the gift itself. It should be elegant, and above all it shouldn't look like a shoebox. A nice wooden box would be best, but he didn't know where to get one, and it would be pretty heavy.

  He settled for painting the box a solid color. Three layers of black spray paint followed with a layer of clear shellac turned the box into ebony, the ebony of a piano – if you didn't look too closely.

  Fortunately, the sculpture came out OK. A couple of hairline cracks, but nothing critical. In any case he planned on painting it, or at least part of it. A fine brush, a little paint, and every other vertebrae was soon black. A virtual vertebrae keyboard. J was pretty pleased with it. It would never make it into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he didn't want it there anyhow.

  There were a few last-minute arrangements to make. It didn't take much to make C think that he was off to Korea again. The train was the cheapest way of getting to the airport, but he paid for a cab, so it would look like a business trip.

  London was expensive. Everything, the hotel, the food, cost more than he had expected. And he had to stay there a week to maintain the illusion that he was in Korea. But hang the cost. He had to do this. It was the only way to cure himself of what even he had to admit was an unhealthy obsession. The sculpture was a sacrifice, brought to appease the goddess Obsessa.

  He should view the cost of the trip as part of the sacrifice as well. In some countries they burned money as a sacrifice. Or was it a way of ensuring that you would have enough cash in Heaven? Either way, if spending some money would get him out of his current hell, it was well worth it.

  He had made sure to arrive in London the day before the concert, so he could get a good night's sleep before the big day. Who was he fooling? He hadn't slept in months, and it wasn't going to get any easier now. He went out to get some dinner before turning in for the night. Fish and chips. Not that he liked fish and chips. Nor was he particularly hungry. But eating fish and chips made him feel like he was a regular tourist, not some guy trying to exorcise a demon.


  Hélène as a demon? No. That was impossible. The demon was himself. Hélène was innocent. She was a perfect dream. The problem was within him, the need to possess the dream. He had generated the demon within himself. It was a good thing that he was basically sane. Otherwise, who knows what could happen. Men with similar obsessions sometimes committed suicide. Some even murdered the object of their obsession.

  There's a thought. If Hélène didn't exist, he would be free. It had to work. All he had to do was get hold of a pistol. There had to be someway of getting hold of one in London. Sure there'd be an added expense, but in for dime, in for a dollar, as they said. He'd already spent a fortune on the tickets and the hotel, so what was a few hundred extra pounds?

  The whole idea was ridiculous. He had a hard time squashing a roach. He couldn't harm the innocent target of his own craziness. Whatever put these ideas in his head?

  Sleep, not surprisingly, didn't come easily that night. He lay in bed, looking up into the darkness, imagining over and over again what would happen. Almost anything could happen. She could be delighted, thank him, and go on her way. Maybe someday she would read the note in the box and actually email him. She would lift her hand to him, and he