9781566632751

Chapter One

The Choice

It is raining everywhere except here inside. No matter how strong, how constant, how persistent, how cold or all-powerful the rain might be -- the blue rain of the river in its slanting lines, the red rain of the sun in its large check patterns, the green rain falling down through the leaves on to the point of the hood of your cloak, across your shoulders, down on to the ground and then into the stream of the gutter, into the canal and on out of the City -- no matter how strong it might be, this rain, here inside a human being it is thought that flows, that swells with the blood, that emerges from the mouth as steam or congeals in the brain as memory that might be needed some day. Everything outside a human being is subject to the laws of nature, but nothing here inside a human being is subject to any laws at all. He can live his entire life underground, that is, within himself, and no one will ever know, because he will walk home through the streets of the City just as the Face-Maker is walking home from work at this very moment, because at home his Muse is waiting for him, the Muse who was granted to him by chance, his own faithful Muse, just as our Muse is waiting for our Face-Maker at this very moment. The rain simply keeps on falling downwards, but the blood inside the body moves in its own unswerving, anomalous direction, quite independent of the direction of the rain. This, or something like this, is the way the Face-Maker reasons in his joy at the fact that sooner or later, if you remain exclusively faithful, the thing you are waiting for will happen. But even so, the hour of a person's encounter with his own fundamental identity is unexpected and fortuitous, possibly even disastrous, it might even be better if it never arrives at all, for the longer you live in anticipation of this hour, the more meaningful your life will become. This, or something like this, perhaps even in words something like these, is the way the Face-Maker reasons on the deserted street of the City, not even aware that thought is protecting him from what is happening outside him; he walks on, unaware of the rain squeezing his body with its cold, heavy hands and bowing his head down towards the stone that serves the inhabitants of the City so forcefully by lying beneath their feet.

How everything has changed! Only yesterday the Face-Maker had walked along these same streets with almost exactly these thoughts, feeling the rain on the folds of his cloak, and then on the folds of his skin, accepting the weight of this torrent pouring down from above. Today the rain is still pouring down, perhaps even more heavily, but the Face-Maker is totally insensible to it.

The thing he has been waiting for for years has happened.

On one occasion already, in his impatience at waiting so long, the Face-Maker had forfeited the final remnants of his gaiety, then after the Commission he had simply become indifferent to fear, and begun over again working secretly to prepare himself for today -- without knowing, of course, that it would be today. The Official had appeared in the laboratory during the final quarter of an hour before the lunch-break and the patient lying on the table had pulled the sheet up over her breasts as she gaped wide-eyed at him, and attempted to get up. That was when the Face-Maker had seen the Official in her eyes.

The Official gestured for the patient to get up from the table. She wrapped herself more tightly in the sheet against the cold and stood up. Then she realized she was being banished from the surgery, and she hurried out.

The Face-Maker stood there with his arms dangling awkwardly, the fingers of one hand still clutching a scalpel. He tried to assume a more independent pose: he bent his arm and tossed the scalpel with an easy movement into the white nickel-plated instrument box, but the ease was evidently more pretense than reality, and in his agitation the throw proved awkward. The scalpel clattered on to the bottom of the box and bounced, skidding over the edge and flying point-first towards the floor, glinting momentarily like a fisherman's spinner in the water before it was extinguished.

The Face-Maker was astonished to discover within himself the traits he had possessed before the Commission. Firstly, he was nervous, and secondly, he had lost control of himself to such an extent that his agitation was visible to others. The Face-Maker was overjoyed, the way a person who has fallen over a cliff is overjoyed, on reemerging from unconsciousness into life and feeling himself all over, to discover that he is not only alive, but unharmed, his arms and legs obey him, his eyes see and his ears hear. Unable to believe the evidence of his senses, he is overjoyed even at his own disbelief.

This meant that beyond the bounds of his daily routine the Face-Maker still possessed all the same old feelings. The Official's arrival was something that went beyond his daily routine, something from a higher plane, from a life in which the Face-Maker had had no place until today. From the life which last year the Face-Maker had been in such haste to enter that he had almost broken his neck in the attempt. But perhaps his experience in indifference and self-control could serve him well enough even in this other life, if only he could impress upon himself the idea that the Official's visit might be something new, but it was still a part of daily reality, it was almost like the return of his old freedom, just with a certain extra tension.

But even this fancied freedom lasted scarcely more than a moment before it was gone like a spike driven into a railway sleeper -- the first blow secures it, and after the second there is nothing left but the head showing on the surface. Not only had the Official himself come -- and his appearance in itself was a sure sign that you were somehow involved in the principal affairs of the City -- but there had been a second blow, the one which took away the Face-Maker's fancied freedom: the Official had come to see the Face-Maker on business. He began to speak.

His speech stacked itself away on the shelves of the Face-Maker's memory like bolts of cloth in a haberdashery shop. The Face-Maker saw the meaning, but not the words, for the external sense of words never expresses what the speaker really wants to say to you, his desire to astonish or conquer you, to crush or compel you to love him or to stop loving him, and all the rest ... You have to filter all this out from the spoken word like salt from water, and not everyone is capable of this. The Face-Maker, though, was a master of the technique of translating words into meaning.

The Official was suggesting that the couple the Face-Maker was working on should be altered to become the Principal Couple -- but although his couple and another were both involved in the Choice, the distance between them was as insurmountable as a precipice for a tortoise or a pane of glass for a butterfly, and the distance was even greater that separated our Face-Maker from his teacher, the Great Face-Maker, who was preparing the Principal Couple.

The Face-Maker did not know what to do with his hands, he stood up ... picked up the scalpel ... he sniffed (which was tantamount to disrespect), became even more embarrassed, carefully placed the scalpel in the box. The scalpel clinked once and was silent. Apparently heartened by this steely signal from fate, he shuddered once and -- to external appearances at least -- regained control of himself.

The proposal was as unexpected and impossible as a proposal that a girl from the corps de ballet should dance the leading role in a major competition. Of course, the Face-Maker was precisely that, a Face-Maker, but the gap between him and the Great Face-Maker was wider than that between the prima ballerina and a chorus girl.

The Great One was unique.

Of course, he could have regarded the proposal as a test of the extent of his own secret vanity, but testing that was obviously not a job for the Official. To regard the visit as a test would have been the extreme limit of fear and mistrust, and even after the Commission, the Face-Maker, like all who had acquired a name, knew only moderate fear.

Today the Official was neither joking nor testing him. For all his experience in mistrust, the Face-Maker gave precedence to the simple sense of the proposal in the Official's words. In any case, it appeared that he could wait until the following day before deciding whether or not to accept. Yes, taking everything together, the interpretation of a combined test and deception could effectively be ruled out. But the Face-Maker did not entirely dismiss this meaning, he simply assigned it a subordinate position in the system of possible variants, and regarded the simple sense of the proposal as the fundamental one. The effort cost him all the energy that he had accumulated and conserved. This was the first step towards the life-goal for which he had been preparing -- with the Muse's help, of course. But had he really been preparing? And was he ready now?

The rain grew stronger and finally forced a breach in the Face-Maker's concentration -- a small, narrow breach just large enough for a single drop -- and it seeped through into the Face-Maker's consciousness, like a mouse that twists and stretches itself in order to wriggle into a room through a crack in the floor. The Face-Maker's shoulders twitched, and once again he saw himself alone on the street in the rain, hunched and wretched, hiding away from people within himself, the way he had seen himself almost all his life, apart from those moments when he thought of the Muse, who waited for him in the dry apartment, pretending to read something, when she was really listening to hear the bang of the front door, which meant that in a moment the door would open. In contrast with the Face-Maker, who was waiting for his hour to come, she had long since been prepared to live in any way that life allowed, whether that meant success or living out the rest of their years as they had been living, always waiting for each other and glad to see each other, and ... Perhaps the Muse would have preferred the second option, because success was something unknown and even frightening, it would open up another way of life which might distort and perhaps mutilate everything that had been built up in the course of their long and faithful relationship, perhaps making them more tender and loving, but perhaps finally pulling them apart. She did not want these potential blessings or misfortunes, she was happy to exchange them for what they had already, which she treasured, and which made her happier than many of the people she encountered at work or afterwards. Sadly this choice did not depend on her, however, she was dependent on the Face-Maker, and he was dependent on many different things, including the Official, as had been confirmed by that day's meeting.

III

If that day's meeting had not taken place, there would have been no novel. Their previous life is not the subject of this novel, it is a life like everyone else's; and the things that are known to everyone, that everyone can see, are not, even in their most pronounced form, the subject-matter of the novelist, but of the chronicler of social mores. The subject-matter of a novel is something concentrated in one or several individuals, which entirely changes the lives of all people living, changes them and the shape of their days, so that the chroniclers of the future may continue to perfect their art and describe the subtle forms of realities which came into being without their assistance. Therefore our novel begins with that day's meeting, which affects the destiny of everyone living, not only the Face-Maker and the Muse. Of course I need not have written that, I could have left it for the critic to guess: when they finish building a house they take away the scaffolding, and only an architect would know where to position the support if the building had to be renovated. But I want to leave the critic with no work to do, because his fate is to serve the chronicler, he is the second half of this pair, which feeds itself by gathering the corn planted earlier by a sower who scattered his own substance on the soil in place of grain.

How strange it was: until today nothing had depended on the Face-Maker, everything -- his work, his pay, his routine -- had been decided without him being involved, and he had been entirely dependent on people above him, but today his own voluntary decision would determine whether or not he would carry out the work proposed by the Official, because this was something you could not be ordered to do.

The Face-Maker slipped. He just barely managed to keep his balance, like a tight-rope-walker, and his hand touched the building's cold, windowless wall. The next house was his. He moved on cautiously, spreading his legs wider to make doubly sure. If not from the sky, then from the ground, the rain had still succeeded in distracting his attention. Even when you were absorbed in thought you still had to take it into account. End up smashing the back of your head against the stone, and all your great decisions and desires would flow out and down through a crack in the earth's crust, mingle with the rain and disappear, flowing out beyond the city along the canal that ran down the hill. Special caution was needed: today he needed that crust more than ever, he should carry it with care.

Replying to the Official's proposal was not so simple. On the one hand, there was the prospect of what he longed for: the Face-Maker would occupy the first rung on the ladder and become the Great Face-Maker, and that would be followed by everything the Face-Maker had been striving for, or at least, what he had thought he was striving for initially. On the other hand, this was the same adventurism that had nearly cost him Departure. Of course, the Official was involved in this piece of adventurism, but everybody knew what became of verbally delivered official proposals if something went awry in the course of their implementation. The proposers simply forgot their proposals, and the responsibility was borne by those who were implementing them. In this case the person who was supposed to implement the proposal was the Face-Maker, and he had already been through one Commission, and only recently ... And then again, who wants to take over from someone who is alive and working, especially when he is your teacher and his work is excellent, far better, in fact, than your own? Of course, the Face-Maker could have disputed this, but only in his imagination. He had never carried out any Real Operations of Likeness of the same class as the Great Face-Maker. Last year's operation had been an amateur affair, and in the present circumstances working by eye was simply pointless. Yes, the proposal was sufficiently complicated for an unconsidered answer to mean ... These are the thoughts that circle around the two hemispheres of the Face-Maker's brain, in the way that pigeons loosed into the sky by an experienced fancier will swirl around and around and are quite incapable of stopping, and it requires an effort of will-power to drive them back into the dovecote so that you can calmly inspect each of them at close quarters and let them rest. The true dovecote of the Face-Maker's thoughts was the Muse -- which brings us back to the person without whom our Face-Maker would not exist. The Face-Maker owed everything that he was and everything he could do to the Muse, and she was with him everywhere -- when he was relaxing, absorbed in his thoughts, and when he worked with the scalpel at home, to improve his fingers' control over the instrument. Only once had the Face-Maker ever decided to act on his own, when he had launched into last year's undertaking.

If the Face-Maker had asked the Muse, simply and clearly, whether he ought to do it, she would have managed to persuade him to refuse, for the chance always comes to do the same thing with less risk. But last year the Face-Maker had almost stopped talking to the Muse and decided for the first time to do without her help. Ignoring the Muse's persistent requests to tell her what was happening, he set out to realize his plan, remarking nonchalantly that nothing was happening that hadn't happened before to someone or other.

The Muse calmed the Face-Maker; the means were various, but always as a result the Face-Maker's thoughts would become quiescent, and fold away their wings, just a little nervously at first, and then settle down and allow themselves to be handled.

Show me the person who can identify the species of a bird flying in darkness -- and the state of anxiety is a darkness, filled with the rustling of wings and clamorous cries.

Museum Attendant Two Hundred and Ninety Two -- such were the post and the number of our Muse when she met the Face-Maker at one of the Likeness Operations. She was younger then, and so was he. The Face-Maker had leaned his chest across her uncovered body in his usual manner, but scarcely had he raised his scalpel to the first upper quadrant of her face, as he had done a thousand times before, when he felt the entire surgery reel and roll, turning entirely upside down. Then it had begun to expand and shrink alternately, as though it had been transformed into some kind of pendulum. When the Face-Maker recovered his composure half an hour later, he was quite simply delighted that the Muse was still alive, although less in need of the Likeness Operation, than of basic resuscitation, but that wasn't really a problem. If the Face-Maker was to take her as his wife, then there would in any case have to be another operation, as a result of which she would be given a name. Perhaps, in fact, she was first given a name and then the Likeness Operation was carried out, but regardless of the order of events, a week or two later the Muse, like the other lucky ones (and cases like this were as rare in the history of the City as wells in the desert) was transformed from a Museum Attendant into a Muse, with a face which was a corresponding likeness of the Image.

In general it would be just as impossible to say which had priority in the City -- the number or the corresponding face -- as to decide whether the chicken or the egg came first in human history. Therefore, in the City, which was full to overflowing of order and justice, blind chance still remained the main factor in determining a citizen's fate. Something happened, and as a result people's numbers changed, and then so did their faces -- or the reverse. And the Face-Maker, on whom the citizen's fate might appear to depend, had only to perform the operation corresponding to the citizen's class, nothing more and nothing less. There was no making head or tail of the whole mysterious business.

In any case, it does not matter whether the name or the face came first, but a certain Two Hundred and Ninety Two became a Muse. Any ordinary person would quite simply say she had been lucky. `Fate' was the Face-Maker's only comment on the matter. Not by any means that they were both in the habit of keeping silent; all of their time together they spent talking -- and how they missed each other!

But this day, as we know, is a special one. The Muse is as sensitive to joy as a dog is to scent -- and to grief, too -- the Muse is sensitive to any departure at all from the humdrum routine of life. She won't show it straight away, she may not ask any direct questions, and she won't try to talk about what the Face-Maker is feeling, but in their idle chatter and nonsense she will weave a spell of confusion around him with her very intonation, and somehow or other an hour later the Muse will know everything. The Face-Maker has still not been able to understand how this happens. But he has noticed one thing: when some special occasion entirely transcends the limits of a routine occasion, the Muse, alas, is once again powerless. Of course, she guesses at what has happened, and picks up half of it from conversation, but as far as complete understanding is concerned ... On these occasions there is no way to break the Face-Maker down.

Today is one of those very special occasions, a difficult day for the Muse. But since the Face-Maker barely survived on the one occasion when he relied on himself to deal with a doubly-important occasion, he is no longer quite so reserved. Almost on the threshold, almost before the Muse had time to take off his cloak and thrust it into the drier, to lead him into the dining-room, pressing her face to his back and embracing him from behind, the Face-Maker had informed her of the Official's visit, and the proposal, and the decision which has to be communicated the next day. But the first question the Muse asked took the Face-Maker by surprise: in view of all the possibilities -- on the one hand the moral question, and on the other the fulfillment of the Face-Maker's own personal destiny (in general people's lives are governed by a social destiny, in the present case, for instance, the destiny of the City) -- it turned out the Face-Maker had forgotten something quite fundamental:

`But have the deadlines been extended?' the Muse asked him. `It's twice the amount of work.'

`Three times,' said the Face-Maker, sinking down into an armchair as he pondered the problem. He recalled that not a word had been spoken about it, and therefore there could be no question of any extensions.

`Well, if that's the case, there's really not much point in thinking about it,' said the Muse, `I think one lesson should be enough for you. Show a wise man a feather, and he'll show you the fox that ate the chicken.'

`What's a fox got to do with it?' asked the Face-Maker, his mind on something else entirely.

The Face-Maker paid no attention to the Muse's explanation, with its Official and its fox and its chicken, and he suddenly came to his own decision, the way a man who has set out to fetch water but finds gold on the way will run home, not to the well. He took a firm grasp of his own idea and changed the conversation to a different subject, a subject that our couple had developed to such a high degree that all he had to do, for instance, was to roll his tongue up into a tube and stick it out slightly and move it about a bit. Or else simply form the shape of the sounds `oo-wah' with his lips.

`Wait,' said the Muse, `you've come to a decision, and so have I, and I think there can only be one opinion here.'

She told him how unbearable it was for her to wait for him every day since the Commission, and how the agony of his possible Departure tormented her, and how she saw today's visit as a sign of destiny's desire to test him and remind him of last year's lesson, from which it followed that he shouldn't have any desires or regrets.

It should be said that if the Face-Maker had thought as she did that evening, or if he had not been preoccupied with a decision he had already taken, or let us say -- for the sake of accuracy -- with another desire, and if he had listened to the Muse's arguments, then perhaps what was to happen in the City would not have happened. But how could the Face-Maker take the Muse's arguments seriously when he had been struck so hard by his own inspiration? We must, of course, give the Muses their due -- they are always absolutely right. I can see that doubts have begun to appear as to whether the event might not possibly have occurred without my Face-Maker. Yes, it could have and it would have. But not necessarily now, in fact, definitely not now. An event can only take place when two equally necessary conditions are fulfilled -- its readiness to occur and the presence of the person who sets the event in motion. If it were not for my Face-Maker, this novel would not exist, there would be a different novel, perhaps with the same epilogue, but not today, and other people would set the time in motion in a different manner. I am as sure of this as a man who is neither drunk nor blind is sure there is a birch tree in front of him when he is standing there looking at it.

Ah, birch tree, what a soft, white trunk you have, how tender and pleasant it is to my fingers. My fingers feel warm and sensitive as if they were stroking birch-bark, I hear the leaves rustling, and the wind whispering gently in the torn fibers of the bitch's skin.

Once again the Muse gave way to him. She put her arms on the Face-Maker's shoulders and around his neck, slid them down over his smooth, cool skin, bent her head and pressed herself to him, softly and tenderly.

If everything the Face-Maker had planned had indeed come to pass, and if he were to have turned the world upside down and transformed it into the very shape and substance of his own secret desires, then these same hands would still have been placed on his shoulders in the same way, these same lips and fingers would still have felt his body swelling and his thought broken off when it was only half-spoken, half a phrase, half a thought ... Light began moving backwards through time, confusing the sequence of numerals and the ordinal numbers of the time zones. The Muse knew this, but the Face-Maker did not know it, his boat swung high into the air and a wind sprang up and swelled the sail. The red oars were lowered into the water, and a pillar of fire sprang up and raised the boat high on its crest, with its white sail and its red oars. The lightning struck, and its branches spread out across the sky, shielding the boat from the slow fire, and then its roots grew down through the boat and it flared up. Burning slowly, slowly, the boat dropped back into the sea and lay on its calm waves, and the red oars were extinguished, and the scrap of scorched sail slowly dragged it to the shore, only half-alive, scorched pink by the fire.

VII

They lay for a long time without moving. The Muse got up first. It was as pointless talking to the Face-Maker after this as trying to persuade a telegraph post to sink roots into the earth and shed its wires. First she had to revive him, to teach him to talk, and only then could she start asking him for things. So the Muse simply stood up without speaking. But in order to completely rid her conscience of the guilt to come, which she might well feel if there had been the slightest chance at all of bringing the Face-Maker back to the conversation that had been taking place, and changing his mind, the Muse took his hand and tried to make him sit up. The Face-Maker was not capable of speaking, or arguing, or agreeing, he simply continued being absent. There was no way anyone could rouse him from this state within the next half hour, but the Muse did not give up straight away, she felt so sorry for the Face-Maker now. Why this feeling, as though she was losing him today? And it hurt her so, as though it had all happened yesterday and today it was all beyond repair. But the sensation of pain is one thing, and our actions are another, and the Muse quietly dressed, pulled on her cloak and went out into the street. She had decided to attempt to change something; since she couldn't change him, she would change the circumstances.

The Hundreds, whom the Face-Maker was preparing for the Choice, were her friends. In fact, it was the Muse who had found them for the Face-Maker. Every Face-Maker preferred to work with faces that they not only knew, but with which had some kind of personal connection, and the couple's personal connection with the Face-Maker lay in the fact that the Muse was their friend. This friendship had endured from a time long before, when they and the Muse had lived in rooms next door to each other -- the Hundreds had been living together even then. It had all begun with the male Hundred's courtship of the Muse -- he was then Two Hundred and Ninety Five -- which came to absolutely nothing, but developed into a friendly relationship with his partner. That was all quite a long time ago now. In some way alike in the past, now they were very different from each other. But without faithfulness to our memories, how could we carry on living? This friendship had somehow dragged on, without, in fact, bringing the Muse much pleasure. But she had not made any other friends, when you have a Face-Maker for a partner, you hardly need other people. His energy, his desires and problems are quite enough: from thinking of something new to do in bed, to his delirious desire to make a new face for you, because he is fed up with this one. And then there was her own work; although she now had the right to give it up, the Muse had carried on in her job, and to some extent this had weakened the thoughts which sometimes seemed about to drive her mad. Sometimes, indeed, these thoughts could even produce some deft and simple result by transforming themselves into something both useful and calm. Today she really felt less than ever like going to see the Hundreds, but she had to -- for the Face-Maker. Once again everything was settling back into place.

On the street the rain grabbed hold of her and squeezed her, as though it was trying to make her small and light, so that its streams could knock her off the pavement and carry her away out of the city. Her heart began to ache from the pressure. What if it did knock her, then who would help her? There was nothing around her but Stone, and Stone is not afraid of the rain. Numbers. Bridges. Not a single tree. Not a single branch. Not a single bird. Not a single living soul. It was rare for anyone to venture out on the street, and then they went alone, glancing over their shoulders, and only if they were driven by some exceptional need: there were almost no needs at all, everyone socialized within the limits of their ten-units, that it, within the limits of their house. So the streets steamed in quiet solitude, and mist rose from the canal, the only sound was the monotonous noise of the rain, there was no other sound at all. The silence of the noise. The silence of the rain. The silence of the stone walls. The silence of the mist. The silence was deafening.

(Continues...)

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The Face-Maker and the Muse

1566632757

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