Morphine the phantom of love

‘I’ll find you.’

‘What if you don’t?’

‘Then I’ll make you look for me.’

‘How?’ she asked puzzled and a gentle smile lighted her face.

‘I’ll simply disappear, and one day you will remember my love for you and realise that no one had ever loved you as I had.’

‘Vova,’ she paused for a moment, ‘I’m so happy to have you.’

‘Does that mean that you won’t be leaving anywhere?’ I asked teasingly.

‘No, silly,’ she said as she punched my hand with her small fist. ‘And don’t you dare leave either.’

‘And if I do?’

‘Then I will forever be alone.’

‘Wouldn’t you try to find someone else?’ I said pulling her leg/tauntingly.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re in my heart forever. And even if you are gone, I won’t dare give this place to anyone else. I won’t dare touch someone’s lips, give sweet names to another man. I will not let anyone else touch me. And spending cold evenings alone, I would reminisce how you had replaced the whole world for me. Not just the world, the entire universe.’

‘Enough,’ I interrupted her. I felt uneasy at the thought that we might part. ‘We’ll always have each other, no matter what happens, no matter what.’

I kissed her cheek and, hugging her around the waist, stood behind her.

‘Look, over there, the Dnieper meets its inlet,’ I extended my arm to the south.

From my parents’ balcony, there is a wonderful view of the Andriivskyi Descent and of the reviving Dnieper in the spring.

“The exact same view, but such different emotions,” I thought as I stood alone on the sun-bathed balcony. “I did not believe it, but you still left… If only you knew Marina, how indifferent I am to this entire universe without you. Without you…”

My lips let slip a few phrases, and the careless wind carried them away, around the corner of the house, and further away, maybe to the edge of the earth, where the world ends and the entire universe begins.

Chapter 4

I would wake up and stroke her chestnut hair, cover her shoulders with kisses, explore the curves of her dormant body with my hands, while she hadn’t yet opened her eyes from her slumber and she was not bestowing on me her tender gaze. A wave of pleasure would sweep over us; we would hide in the sheets. I would enter into her looking straight into her eyes. She would extend towards me and fall back down. I would hold her in my arms, taking pleasure in the movement of our bodies, the meeting of our souls. She would cry out my name in orgasm, and after a moment in fear.

We were in some dark deep waters. She was drowning, gasping for air. I tried to dive deeper towards her, but something prevented me from reaching her. Marina was stretching out her arms to me, but no matter how hard tried, I could not reach her. She was calling out, but I could not make out her words. Water was filling her lungs. She was going deeper and deeper, dissolving in the darkness. The water prevented me from reaching her, as if something was keeping me at a distance. I felt like my body was not responding to my mind. She was almost gone. I filled my lungs with the seawater, hoping to follow her. Something pushed me to the surface. Gasping for air, I flung my eyes wide open.

It was just another nightmare. I tried to pacify my heartbeat. Fragments from my dream would keep playing over and over again in my head. I leaned back on the sheets of my cold bed, stroking the space around me. She was not there. Never again will the woman I love lay there.

I would close my eyes and go back to her.

‘It’s only a dream’ Marina said as she stroked my head, like the mother of a frightened child, ‘a bad dream.’

‘You were slipping from me,’ I hugged her tighter.

‘I’m always here. I’m always with you,’ her lovely voice whispered to me.

‘Always with me,’ I muttered in my dream.

Chapter 5

The kitchen was a complete mess. It has been a long time since I had not cooked a proper meal for myself. Usually, I oatmeal with nuts and fruit did it for breakfast. Sometimes, I replaced that with an omelette and sausages. In short, whatever would take less time to prepare. My lunch always consisted of a sandwich and a coffee. When for dinner, I enjoyed deliveries. I loved Italian pizza and Chinese noodles. Of course, they were not brought in from Italy or China, but for the price of a coupon. These were the lavish dinners of a bachelor.

I was preparing steak with fried potatoes. Last night’s dream would not leave me. Outside the window, the thermometer had rocketed to seventeen degrees above zero, and it was only March.

“I’d love a drink,” I thought as I opened the bar. “Not much of a bar though.” There was a bottle of expensive rum that has been lying around for seven years, and a cheap bottle of wine. It was not lunchtime yet, so I left the rum there for another year or so and uncorked the wine bottle.

The steaks were starting to burn, and as if out of spite, the doorbell rang.

‘Coming!’

I quickly scraped off the pieces of meat from the pan and transferred them to a plate. I wiped my hands and headed to open the door for the uninvited guests.

‘Good day. My name is Valeria. Friends call me Valerie,’ said a smiling girl as she extended her right hand. ‘You are my new painting teacher.’

It was the same beautiful girl who had called me rude a few days ago.

‘Are you going to ask me in?’ she asked as she lowered her hand without waiting for my shake.

‘Yes, of course.’ I stepped aside letting my pupil in. ‘Rude?’ I asked smiling.

‘It seems so.’ Valerie nodded, and we both laughed.

‘To be honest, I was expecting you at three.’ The fingers of my hand reached for my eyebrows.

‘My dad was giving me a lift. He has some business today in downtown. We do not live close to the Andriivskyi Descent, so I tagged along. But if I’m too early, please let me know,’ she said as she moved slowly back to the door. ‘I can take a walk around here and come back in an hour.’

‘Oh, no. That won’t be necessary,’ I said trying to remedy the situation. ‘I’ve just made lunch. If you’re hungry, I’d be glad to share it with someone.’

‘Mmm…’ She closed her eyes and inhaled the smell of the food, adding: ‘I haven’t had a burnt meal for a while. So be it. I’ll keep you company.’

She laughed and without waiting for my help took off her coat, put it on the couch and ran to the kitchen.

‘How can I help?’

‘No need. I’ve already burnt what there was to burn.’ We both laughed. ‘Have a seat at the table.’

I served her a plate and one for myself.

‘Oh, that’s too much for me.’

‘It’s fine, you don’t have to finish it if you don’t like it,’ I reassured her.

‘You haven’t introduced yourself,’ the girl said boldly, looking straight into my eyes.

‘Vladimir.’

‘Patronymic?’

‘You can call me by my first name.’

‘You, too.’

She was probably insinuating that from the very start I was ill mannered to call her by her first name.

‘Bon appétit!’ I said.

‘You, too!’ Valerie replied.

‘Would you like some wine?’ I stood up for the bottle, which was on the table behind me, but then it dawned on me. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t, you’re probably too young to drink.’

Without looking up at the girl, I poured some red wine into a cup. When I was done, I was feeling awkward as she was staring straight at me in silence.

‘Is anything wrong?’ I said at a loss.

‘Yes, something is wrong.’

Valeria got up from the table. I thought I had hurt her, but she confidently came up to the kitchen cabinets and, as if knowing the location of the dusty wine glasses that I never used, took one wineglass. She rinsed it under cold running water, and came up to me, put the glass on the table and poured the wine herself.

‘I am seventeen already, and wine is the last thing that can harm a person at my age’.

She was seventeen. She said it so proudly. But she was only seventeen.

‘Well, to our meeting!’

Valerie raised her glass to my cup to clink, but I moved my cup away, took a sip and said: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t clink glasses.’

‘Why not?’ she asked puzzled.

‘I’m not used to it.’

She took a sip, sat down at the table and began to eat.

I do not know what confounded me so much about her, but I just sipped my wine slowly and watched her. “Can all schoolgirls be so carefree at this age?” I wondered.

‘Is anything wrong?’ she said noticing my gaze.

‘No, everything’s just fine.’

We went on with our lunch. To break the silence, I decided to ask her a few questions: ‘How long have you been painting?’

‘Two years. And you?’

‘About seven.’

She looked surprised but did not bother with the figures.

‘So, what do you paint with, Valerie?’

‘Watercolours, oils, pastels.’

‘Have you taken any painting lessons before?’

‘Yes, as a child, my parents enrolled me in an art school. I used to really like it. Then I quit, and only five years later did I get back to this hobby, which can become my vocation.’

‘Wow!’ I said as I nodded. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, if someone were to ask me what I’d like to do for the rest of my life, I would definitely say paint.’

‘That’s an interesting aspiration,’ I said and started cutting the second piece of meat.

As if not eliciting any real understanding from me, she looked down at her plate with the potatoes and steak and after having a small piece of the meat, said: ‘You’re not a bad cook.’

‘I don’t cook at all.’

‘Oh, then I’m very lucky that you decided to reveal this side of you on the day you were going to meet your new pupil. I will remember this dish.’

‘I cooked it for myself.’

She felt the nervousness in these words and changed the subject to one which was even more inappropriate.

‘Do you live here alone?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly, tossed the last piece of meat into my mouth and started chewing energetically.

‘Why?’ the girl asked naively. She probably did not even realise that she was rubbing salt into my wounds with these questions.

‘Valerie, it’s none of your business.’ I placed my fork on the plate and stood up from the table. ‘Have you finished?’

‘Yes,’ she answered changing the tone of her voice.

I put my dish into the sink and was about to remove her dish, but I noticed that her plate remained mostly intact.

‘But you haven’t touched it?!’

‘I’m not hungry,’ she pushed her plate away and took a sip of the wine.

‘Well…’ I put her plate aside, took my cup of wine and invited my pupil into the studio.

‘Can I take my glass with me?’

‘Yes, you can. But I hope you won’t turn into an alcoholic during our lessons.’

She smiled again and followed me out of the kitchen.

‘How many hours a week would you like to attend?’

‘Vladimir, I have to fulfil some entry requirements to the Academy of Arts mid-summer. I hope to improve my skills greatly by that time and I think I’ll need at least one lesson per week. What do you think?’

I disregarded her question and asked whether she had brought any of her works along. Valeria took out her phone and showed me photos of her paintings. I was pleasantly surprised. This seventeen-year-old girl was definitely talented.

‘I believe you are perfectly capable of meeting those requirements without my help.’

‘No, Vova, you don’t know how strict selection is to this Academy. A hundred applicants per place, and all of them paint no worse than I.’

‘Well then, let’s make you the best applicant! How is the selection process conducted?’

‘There are certain criteria. We have to present our works, drawn from nature. They will be evaluated and only then I may be admitted to the competition, where I’ll have to demonstrate all my skills and painting technique.’

‘Then we should focus on painting from nature,’ I noted and lit a cigarette.

‘Right.’

‘Do you mind?’ I pointed to the lighted cigarette.

‘Not at all, go ahead.’

Valeria looked around.

‘So, this is your studio.’

‘Yes.’

‘And is this your latest work?’ She walked up to the table with the canvas with the blue sky and a field of poppies. ‘That’s strange, this painting is nothing like the ones I saw yesterday on the descent.’

‘You’re right. Do you like it?’ I asked her with dubious indifference.

Valerie was silent for a moment, then said: ‘It is different…’

‘How different?’ I said as I puffed out smoke.

‘It lacks that depth of sadness which I noticed in your other works. It is warmer but, at the same time, superficial, so to speak.’

I took the cigarette in my mouth again, came up to the girl, turned around the canvas and looked at it myself again. She was absolutely right.

‘I was painting it to make money to pay my bills.’

‘What about the other paintings? You didn’t paint them for the money, right?’

‘Right.’

This time she did not try to find out the details, apparently, she learned her lesson from the previous experience of questioning me.

‘So, how many hours would you need to spend with me to pay all your bills?’

‘It depends on how many hours I’ll be able to stand you.’

The corners of her lips crumpled into a smile again.

She was very pleasant and uninhibited as company, but her numerous questions have from day one either thrown me off balance or revived my ability to smile. I thought she was a cute and goal-oriented schoolgirl, who did not lack care on her parents’ part and was probably spoiled for choice with boys’ hearts. It was not surprising: Valeria was a beautiful, fit girl with already developed breasts and good posture. Her thick golden hair would charmingly change shades as it caught the light.

We went out into the balcony, and she asked for some more wine.

‘Are you sure you’ll be able to hold the brushes steadily after the second glass?’

‘Stop it. Someone is just afraid of getting drunk first,’ she said smiling.

I was not afraid of getting drunk. Yet the wine and cigarettes had already unwound me a little. I had not had alcohol for long. The winter did not predispose to that. For many people, winter with its holiday season is the period when the level of alcohol in their blood rises, but not for me. I practically do not celebrate those holidays that transform the homes of normal people.

‘Let’s begin then.’

I removed my painting from the table and walked out of the studio for a second. When I returned, I saw Valeria sitting at the table and examining the room’s interior.

‘What’s that?’

‘An apple. We’re going to compete in drawing this apple from nature.’

Drawing an apple is an elementary exercise that demonstrates a budding artist’s basic skills.

‘What will we use?’

‘Coloured pencils,’ I took out two sheets of white paper and pencil stubs from a drawer. ‘Here you go. We’ll start on the count of three. We’ll have ten minutes all in all.’

‘I’m ready,’ my pupil assured me.

‘Three!’ I started drawing.

‘Huh? Already?! What about one and two?’ She laughed, but having seen how fast my pencil was running on the paper, she set about drawing too, only adding: ‘Cheat!’

I smiled and continued to concentrate on the lines. Four minutes in and my apple was ready. All that was left was add some volume with colours. I began colouring without rushing and glancing at Valeria’s work from time to time.

She was doing everything right: contours of natural shape, a dimple at the top, and a base at the bottom. Time for shadows. I noticed how Valerie hesitated when deciding where to place the centre of light in the drawing. She was moving her eyes from the apple to the sheet and back to the apple.

‘Why are you peeping, cheat?!’

I smiled again and got back to my drawing. The ten minutes were running out. My apple was ready, and I watched Valerie finish hers.

‘Time’s up!’

She put the red pencil aside and moved her drawing towards me. I examined it silently, looking at her work. It had the correct proportions of the object, the shape was analysed constructively; the lines, strokes and the light and shadow ratios were well combined.

‘Well done…’

‘You, too,’ Valerie said as she passed back my drawing.

I realised that this girl was not a beginner, and decided to give her a more difficult task. I added her glass of wine and a low vase with painting brushes next to the apple. But something was missing. I got up and drew the curtains over the window and balcony door. I took out a thick candle, lit it and placed it behind the glass. The red wine shimmered with ruby hues in the crystal glass and the candlelight cast shadows on the objects.

I looked at Valerie’s face and realised that she would easily take on this challenge. I had to make the task even more demanding.

I lit up a cigarette and placed it glowing into a glass ashtray that was full of cigarette butts.

Valerie took a sheet of paper from the same chest of drawers, gave me a sheet and began to draw with enthusiasm.

The cigarette smoke slowly rose in a narrow wisp, skirting the contours of the glass and flirting with the candle flame. When one cigarette burned out, I replaced it with another…

We were drawing carefully, locked in a dark room in the middle of a sunny spring day. I have to admit, it was the first time in a while that I was enjoying this activity. I even turned on the music, which helped me relax and concentrate on the drawing.

When he turned on the music, everything transfigured suddenly. The darkness, the smell of the cigarette smoke, the play of the shadows in the glass of wine, the music drifting away, the man’s sinewy hands in the shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the scribbled curves and lines, his rare sighs, like measures of beats, his glancing and my shyness cast a spell over me and carried me away to distant shores.

I did not even dare to look at him anymore. Just the still life and my paper. If I said that I was able to focus, I would be lying.

I felt an unusual bewilderment. I found myself in a confined space, alone with a man I barely knew, who was lonely and could sometimes be rude. I thought he would try to make a pass at me. But his aloofness and detachedness for the entire next hour or two really astonished me. I realised that he was present physically, but in fact he was elsewhere, absorbed in the single source of light and the smoke around him.

We finished. The rays of the setting sun seeped into the room. The cigarette burned out. The candle went out.

He took my picture without even looking at it. In a minute, he was already helping with my coat and said that he will see me next week.

I was dumbfounded as I descended the staircase. There was something mysterious about this man… This something left me in a state of confusion and unusual curiosity. “Why is he alone?” this was only the first in a series of questions spinning in my head.

‘How did it go?’ her daddy asked.

‘Well.’

I was still under the spell of this new acquaintance when I got into my father’s black Audi, and we drove home.

A cigarette filled my lungs with smoke. I was holding the picture of this talented girl in my hands. It was perfect. Just as her life would be. Their car disappeared around the corner of the house. I left the unfinished cigarette to languish in the crystal ashtray on the balcony.

Chapter 6

The teal blue sea, bringing forth dozens of waves that rise and fall in furling white crests, with tossing blows battles the grey creation of man. Three hungry gulls scan for prey at the beginning of this pier, not heeding their ilk soaring upwards to the single beam of light. The birds are flying towards the sun amidst the cloud-bound, menacing sky. They do not suspect that a storm would soon break forth and flying would become unbearable.

On the other end of the pier, a couple in love is in hiding, whispering something to each other. A man in a tweed coat, wet from the salty water, is hugging a woman with chestnut hair blowing in the wind. Squeezing her with his embrace as if something is predestined to separate them any moment now. He is embracing her as if for the last time. For the last time, their eyes look at each other while his lips utter words dissolving in eternity three minutes before the storm.

‘How much is this painting?’ asked a middle-aged man in a black tweed overcoat. His left hand was hiding inside the coat pocket while his right hand was holding a black hat that was actually pointing at the painting.

‘Which one?’ I promptly replied.

‘With the couple on the pier,’ he said bending towards it as if trying to identify the protagonists.

“Three Minutes before the Storm…” ’ I said realising which one it was as I tried to calm the storm billowing inside me. I added: ‘It’s not for sale.’

The man scrutinised me with his big black eyes, with his left thumb and forefinger stroking his greying black moustache from top to bottom, and then looked back at the canvas.

‘I’ll give you ten thousand for it.’

‘I think you didn’t get me, it’s not for sale,’ I said as I cleared my throat to disguise my trembling voice.

‘No, I think’ – he looked at me over his shoulder – ‘you didn’t get me. I’m talking about ten thousand dollars.’

I pinched the edges of my lips and I stood up to him, looking right into his face: what type of a man was this who was willing to pay for one of my paintings a sum that an average artist barely made in months? At first he returned my look, and then, as if on command, we both turned to the painting. I do not know what he saw in this combination of paints and torment. I cannot even imagine why or for whom he was willing to splash out such a hefty sum. One thing I knew for sure, I could not just part with it. I silently looked at the painting and all I could see was my beloved and I standing at the edge of the precipice. I was experiencing the same emotions, calling for help to the sole and last ray of light streaming from the sky. I recalled how powerless we are before the elements, nature and the skies. Before those forces that furtively watch us from behind the clouds, casting our lots.

‘The painting is not for sale,’ I said slowly.

‘Then what is it doing here?’ asked the man as if a match sparked and immediately went out, following up with a new sum of twelve thousand now.

‘No,’ I refused again.

‘Fifteen.’

‘Unfortunately, no.’

The man looked at me in incomprehension, then looked around at the other sellers, the other paintings, and back at me. He did not move and was about to say something when I said:

‘Maybe you would be interested in any other of my works?’

‘Are you the author?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I think it would not be difficult for you to paint something similar one more time. I appreciate your other works, but I only wish to acquire this one.’

‘I understand,’ I said like a troublesome kid and looked down, ‘but I won’t be able to.’

‘Able to what?’ he frowned as he tried to make out my quiet, dry voice.

‘I won’t be able to paint another one…’

‘So, you find my offer to be too low,’ – I was mistaken to think that this man would be able to feel the full extent of this painting’s importance to me – he nodded and continued to bargain: ‘Fifteen thousand.’ He stroked his beard with anticipation, putting my principles to the test.

‘Unfortunately…’

‘Damn it! How much do you want for this piece of art?!’ he burst out in irritation.

‘I can’t sell it to you, or anyone else for that matter.’ I was still looking at the ground.

‘You know, artists are very strange people,’ intervened Gennadiy Vasilevich, ‘they paint for others, but when it comes to parting with them, it is as if they were giving away part of themselves. And the fact of the matter is that they are not always ready to give away a part of themselves, however weary they have grown of it.’

The man heard out Gennadiy Vasilevich and tried to overcome his irritation.

‘Well, I have offered a fair price for this work. Fifteen thousand US dollars. I am quite confident that most of you have never even seen such money in your dreams!’

Gennadiy Vasilevich put his arm around the man’s shoulders and moved him away towards his stall: ‘You have to understand, Vladimir is a very special person.’

‘Why should I understand? If he’s here, then he’s surely selling something. And why on earth would he refuse such a generous offer?’