Nutscracker

When did they find time to lock it?

UGLI 666

I don't know.

Nutscracker

And are you sure you didn't just dream it all, like Ariadne?

UGLI 666

Yes, I'm sure. The canon gave me a rosary and I'm holding it in my hand. I'm going to take a rest now.

Monstradamus

Yes, Ugly, take a rest. After all you've been through it will do you good.

Nutscracker

An interesting crossword puzzle. But from a mystical point of view, how do you explain that at the very centre of the labyrinth of life there lies the letter 'S'?

Monstradamus

That ought to be clear enough to you of all people, Nutcracker.

Nut$cracker

Why?

Monstradamus

You have the same letter at your centre too. And just at the moment it's looking really lovely.

Nutscracker

Where? Oh, that. That's the moderators taking the piss again. If that's what you had in mind, I can tell you the pay for my job is so low it's an insult.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Isolde, are you back yet?

Monstradamus

Hi there, Romeo.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Are you IsoldA then?

Nutscracker

Cohiba's in a bad mood today.

Monstradamus

I liked the phrase 'With every new second I was immersed deeper and deeper into the past.'

Nutscracker

Yes, I noticed that too.

Monstradamus

Pure poetry. With every new day we slide deeper and deeper into the past. We disappear into it, like a diver sinking under the water in a slow-motion sequence. What is the difference between an old man and a young man if you put them side by side?

Nutscracker

One of them is old and one of them is young.

Monstradamus

Yes, but what does that mean? That there is only a tiny little piece of the old man left in our dimension  -  he is almost completely submerged in Lethe's waters of oblivion. But the young man is still all here  -  he has just barely touched the surface of the water. Isn't that it?

Nutscracker

I don't know. The way things are these days, they could both go down together at any moment. And the size of the pieces would depend less on their age than the force of the blast.

Monstradamus

That's also true.

Nutscracker

And, as for that phrase you liked, I think Ugly was thinking of the helmet of horror. The future is produced from the past, so the further we go into the future, the more past is required to produce it. You know, the closer you build to the stars, the deeper the pit you dig the soil out of ...

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Isolde, are you there? Isolde!

Nutscracker

And, to complete the picture, you could say the bubbles of the past were bursting in a helmet that was running 'Sticky Eye' and 'Sunny Kiss' simultaneously.

UGLI 666

What?

Monstradamus

Are you still here, Ugly? Take no notice, he's joking.

UGLI 666

I should never have told you.

Monstradamus

Don't be offended, Ugly.

UGLI 666

I'm never going to tell you anything again.

Monstradamus

Say you're sorry, Nutcracker.

Nutscracker

For what?

Monstradamus

Please, say you're sorry.

Nutscracker

All right. I'm sorry, Ugly.

UGLI 666

God will forgive you.

IsoldA

Romeo, where are you? I'm back.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I was starting to get worried. Tell me what happened.

IsoldA

You first.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

All right. I would have reached the pavilion quickly, because last time I marked which way to go at the forks in the path. But I met someone really terrifying on the way.

IsoldA

You too?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What happened? Are you all right?

Isolde

Yes, everything's fine. Go on.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

When I got past the bench where I can see the roof and the fountain, I suddenly sensed a movement behind me. And when I turned round I saw something absolutely incredible. Just imagine it, a long narrow corridor between the bushes. And coming towards me along it on roller skates was ... I don't even know if it was a man or not. He was immensely tall, wearing a sombrero hat and an ice-hockey goalkeeper's mask made of white plastic. And there were two smaller figures on roller skates behind him. I could hardly see them, because he took up the entire passage. He was wearing a goalkeeper's uniform too  -  an immense blue sweatshirt with the number '35' and the words 'chicago bulls'. Or at least, that's what I thought at first. But when he got closer, I could see the number was actually totally weird: ' - 3.5%', and the word 'bulls' was really 'BEARS'. It was just that the minus sign and the percentage sign were the same colour as the sweatshirt and I hadn't spotted them from the distance. And he was holding a double hockey-stick.

IsoldA

How do you mean?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

You've seen a goalkeeper's stick, haven't you? Now imagine it has two blades curving in opposite directions. Of course, you couldn't possibly play with one like that.

IsoldA

And what happened when he reached you?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

He didn't get that far. When he was only ten feet away, he turned a corner and disappeared into a side passage. And the others darted in there after him as well.

IsoldA

Who was it following him?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

It was two dwarves. They were on roller skates too, and wearing sombreros. I couldn't see their faces, they had their heads lowered so the wind wouldn't blow their hats off. And they were holding up the hem at the back of his sweatshirt, like ladies in waiting.

IsoldA

Was that all?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Fortunately, yes. Who did you meet?

IsoldA

It was at the corner of one of the alleys. I heard the sound of a guitar string behind me. When I turned round, about twenty metres away from me I saw an immensely tall man standing beside a fountain. He was dressed all in black and gold like an eighteenth-century gallant, and he was hiding his face behind a mask in the form of a golden sun that he was holding on a stick. There were two dwarves dressed up in red velvet standing beside him, holding old potbellied guitars. They strummed a few soft chords, then the giant turned his mask slightly and the sun glinted on it so brightly I was dazzled and I screwed up my eyes. And when I opened them again there was no one beside the fountain any more. I didn't even have time to be scared and I thought I must have had a hallucination after everything I'd been hearing. But now I don't know what to think. You go on.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Well, I decided that if the giant had wanted to kill me he would have done it already. So I carried on as though nothing had happened. I didn't meet anyone else on the way. The door in the wall of the pavilion was open. And behind it there was a winding corridor. Naturally, there was no light. The floorboards squeaked horribly, as if every one of them had three mice sitting under it. It was absolutely terrifying. There were doors in the walls and more doors behind them. I began groping my way at random through the musty, squeaking darkness and became disorientated straightaway. I was overcome by apathy. I wanted to drop down on the floor, close my eyes and forget about absolutely everything. Probably that's what I would have done, but then one of the doors led me out into a large room where there was a light on. It was deserted and dusty, with no windows and divided in half by a set of steel bars so thick they could have kept out an elephant. There was no furniture at all, if you didn't count several pictures turned around so that the images faced the wall. I thought it was probably so they wouldn't get dusty  -  clever and very simple, no need for any glass. Hanging on the door, which closed behind my back, was a plaque that said 'Silence!' And beyond the bars was a fresco with a portrait of the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. Right across the whole wall.

IsoldA

A girl right across the whole wall?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

No, the fresco. Some kind of garden full of wonderful plants and birds. And the girl was at the very centre, life-size. Absolutely naked, but it suited her really well. She had green hair that looked like grass, fluttering in the painted breeze. And green eyelashes too. She was lying in a mother-of-pearl shell, barely concealing the lower part of her belly with a bouquet of flowers. There was one strange thing, though  -  the edge of the shell above her head was covered with projections that looked like horns. And there were black rubber handles attached to them. That is, the projections were painted, but the handles were real, like in a bus. I touched them and I could tell it really was possible to hold on to them. But I couldn't understand what for.

IsoldA

How could you touch them? You said there were bars between the door and the fresco.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

That's right. But it was easy enough to slip between the bars. So that's what I did. They probably weren't meant to keep out people.

IsoldA

Describe this girl.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

I suppose she was about eighteen, but she didn't look any older than fourteen. I'd describe her pose as brazen, but entirely natural. What I mean is, the pose would have been absolutely brazen, if she'd been lying there like that, knowing that she was being watched. But if she lay around like that at home, especially if it was hot, then of course, there wouldn't be anything brazen about it. But on the other hand, she was looking straight out of the picture at the spectator, which in this case meant straight at me. She had her eyes half-closed, as though she could see me and was taunting me, and she was smiling. And her eyes were as green as could be. I began to understand what the artist was trying to say. Either she'd posed like that knowing she was being watched, which meant she was absolutely shameless, which I didn't want to believe. Or she'd been lying like that because she thought there was no one around, and she was smiling at the spectator simply out of inertia, because she'd only just noticed him. In that case the artist was a real genius, because he'd caught the precise moment when her brain had already given the command to scream, but the command still hadn't reached the muscles of her throat. In that case, for as long as I carried on examining her, I was free of shame myself, so free in fact that it was actually arousing. In a word, genuine art. An absolutely enigmatic masterpiece. But I didn't have time to study her properly, because the bouquet she was using to conceal the lower part of her belly trembled and started sliding downwards. And it wasn't just the lower part of her belly she'd been hiding, but the lowest part of all, so low you can't get any lower, only higher ...

IsoldA

All right, Romeo, I get the idea.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

There must have been some kind of mechanism in the wall. The arm that was holding the bouquet began turning from the elbow, like the hand of a clock. But I didn't get a chance to see what was behind the bouquet, because the light began to fade and soon it was completely dark. I went up to the wall and began feeling it with my hands. Where the bouquet had been quite a big gap had appeared. I put my hand into it carefully and suddenly felt something soft and alive that jerked away from me. I think it was another hand. I cried out in surprise and suddenly there was a spray of something acrid from the ceiling, like tear gas. I jumped back. The light started coming on. When it was bright enough to see, the bouquet was already back in place. My eyes were stinging really badly and I ran out of the room like it was a gas chamber.

IsoldA

Do your eyes still hurt?

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Not any more.

IsoldA

Now I see.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What do you see, Isolde?

IsoldA

It seems I discovered the same amusement arcade from the other side. After the giant with the sun-mask disappeared, I went to the pavilion. The door was locked. And the windows too. I broke a window, lifted the latch and opened it. Behind the first door was the beginning of a dark, winding corridor like the one you told me about. From there I found my way into a large room with a light and no windows, just like you did. Instead of pictures it had mirrors painted over with white paint. Standing in the middle of the room was an absolutely huge steel ring as tall as the ceiling, with nylon mesh attached all around its edge  -  it hung down from the ring and trailed across the floor like a seine net. On the door there was a plaque about keeping silent, just like on yours. And on the wall behind the ring there was a mural, only it was very different from yours. It was a picture of something like the Grand Canyon. Through the mist I could make out the desert floor far below me. And on the edge of the red cliff, right up in front of the spectator's eyes, there was a car with a cloud of painted dust settling around it. It all looked just as though the car had braked after a steep turn and stopped at the very last moment, with its wheels hanging over the edge of the precipice. It was a Rolls-Royce jeep, in perfect profile, like a photo in an advert.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Are you sure it was a Rolls-Royce?

IsoldA

Of course. It had the initials 'RR' and a little Oscar with wings on the radiator, like they all have.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Then it wasn't a jeep. Rolls-Royce don't make jeeps.

IsoldA

Romeo, I can tell my SUV from my elbow. I even saw the name of the model  -  'Full Drive Shadow' I think it was. That's the whole point. It was an artist's fantasy, but it was so convincing I could see straight away that if Rolls-Royce decided to make an SUV they'd have to make the car that was painted there; circumstances would simply force them to do it. The jeep was made of gold and steel, like an exquisite watch. To say it looked impressive gives you no idea. If the space shuttle and the most expensive diamond necklace in the world could together produce a son, then it would probably look just like that when it grew up. In front of the jeep was a platform with steps. I mean the platform wasn't in the picture, it was on the floor of the room, real, made of wooden boards. And the jeep's windows were real too, tinted glass that looked black and there were skis and a surfboard on its roof.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Real ones?

IsoldA

The skis and the board were painted. But the rack they were attached to, or that they looked as if they were attached to in the painting, was real, made of steel and gold.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

What kind of rack?

IsoldA

I don't know what its proper name is  -  the kind they make so you can tie on what you carry on the roof. There were loops of black leather hanging from it, like the ones used for doing gymnastics; they were real as well. And, apart from that, the door handles and the hub-caps were real  -  and they were made of steel and gold too.

Romeo-y-Cohiba

Did you try opening the door?