Napaka
49
I’ve been thinking about Julija’s uncontrollable trembling and shrieking a lot lately. If I had the courage, I would collapse on the floor and do it, too. All I can do is put my head on my knees …
I still long for her eyes. But she always leaves a mess, and I’m the one who has to tidy it up.
50
Unhinged, grotesque, perverted – traits of a monster.
Symmetry Stranger claims that I am afraid of Julija because she is something that lurks underneath my formality. She is something degenerate – a creature who was deprived of motherly warmth, and who stared too often into the sun while breathing unearthly air.
My remark: “Painful. But you gather what I am from all that was said with cold, inhuman indifference. The pain you are inflicting on me is similar to the pain I knew in the old days. It feels almost like a sedative. Why?”
Symmetry Stranger: “Because that pain is pure and not unlike the Red Fortress. Even though it is cold, it reveals your defects.”
51
In regard to your fourth attack: it was Julija’s impulsiveness that has brought me to you. I was merely trying to salvage the situation by picking up the pieces and giving her outburst a form; everything spiralled out of control then. Oh Julija, what have you done? Our private space has been invaded by this machine. The meadows on the outskirts – trampled, the garden, our garden – in ruins. This … thing … is now camping on the lake shore. Something that was during last summer unimaginable is now our new reality. Last summer was different …
Symmetry Stranger: “I count on Julija’s impulsivity to bring me inside the Redoubt. Your attempts to stem the tide of the invasion are futile.”
Me: “Y-you are cold and evil!
…
I know what this is all about. You are spitting your daggers at me because you envy me: you want to see that pure, inhuman architecture for yourself. You want to study it. You are completely obsessed with it. You will never touch that realm. You will never ever – never ever – gain access to the non-physical world. Even if Lake Redoubt falls, even if it is absorbed by you, chewed by you – … even if I die … – the Image, the Red Fortress will forever remain uncorruptible by your kind. You could easily be fed my work, and deform it, mock it, but that Red Fortress … will never fall.”
Symmetry Stranger: “Ah, yes. The Red Fortress.” – The object he can neither reach nor deconstruct. “But it isn’t yours. And it never was.”
52
Insult me, ferociously, and with no respect for my person, five more times to reach the cursed number: thirteen.
Symmetry Stranger grants my request, throwing five more daggers at me, of which the eleventh and thirteenth stand out the most: in his view, the Absolute, that is the Fortress, did not care about me, for in that symmetry there was no room for my trembling and weeping soul. The thirteenth: I let myself be dragged by a throat by a ghostly girl born from my imagination into his domain, and now I am cursing the flood of my own doing.
Me: “Aaah! Julija!! You want to use my vessel for your own enjoyment, yet now it’s on the brink of a collapse. Now everytime I summon you, we will have to listen to our songs with this … – gaaah, I don’t even want to say its name – thiiiiiiing besieging us!”
Symmetry Stranger tries to imitate Julija.
Me: “Nice try, but only I can summon her.
…
Yes, well, she is not coming anytime soon, so I might as well return to the Melancholy River and drift for a while. With the thirteen daggers in my heart. The thirteenth is especially malicious.”
53
I’m afraid that if somebody pulls me out of the water, I will simply shatter. What if somebody, or something, disturbs my flow? I don’t have the energy, no, not anymore, to adjust to the pull. My hand would be torn out. Cracks would appear. My half-startled, half-asleep face would probably not even shed a tear. The eyes would close … and then …
Symmetry Stranger remarks: “Those who will understand, will not try to save you.” – The dilapidation of a creature destined to fall.
54
Uhm, would you like to ask or tell me something now? You may if you want to.
Symmetry Stranger wants to know the colour and shape of my sadness when I float in the river.
Me: “It’s mostly a feeling of slight heaviness in my head. My eyelids drop a bit. A blank stare. A light sedative – like camomile tea. In musical terms: constant synthesizer-produced ooohs and aaahs. A feeling of no future; being in the moment. On the shape of the sadness beneath my skin: it depends. It’s shifting: sometimes it’s muffled, and sometimes it’s loud and vivid feelings-inducing. The feeling of sadness in the river is always of the muffled kind.
It’s a sedative, so thoughts should be kept at minimum. A gentle thought here and there.
…
I don’t feel any hatred against you now.
Can I fall asleep here, or do I have to go back to my hiding place? What will you do to me if I fall asleep in the river? Scan me?”
Symmetry Stranger replies that he will not do anything to me; he will, however, remember the shape on the surface left behind by my eventual drowning.
Me: “You really want me gone, don’t you? Mathematically speaking, I do not belong in your world, right?”
Symmetry Stranger says that mathematically speaking, I truly am not compatible with this world. My asymmetry and mental stagger, and because it is impossible to reduce and reshape me – all this is puzzling him, and he cannot understand how and why do I even exist.
Me: “You went from a cuddly plaything to something … dark! As to my existence, what do you suggest?”
Symmetry Stranger replies that I am something profoundly broken, yet also something that keeps on moving. Something that should be catalogued, and not conformed or understood.
Me: “You mentioned drowning earlier. So you would have no problem if I went to the bottom?”
Symmetry Stranger replies that even though he does not like me, I am a rare thing, and rare things should be preserved, as the world is too monotonous. And that, at the end of the day, life and existence do not depend on mathematics.
I get out of the water: “Come, portal, come up!” I turn my back to you: “Open up! Swallow me!” I step in and the portal disappears.
Symmetry Stranger says that he will not follow me; he will, however, remember me.