Incredible Spy Detective. Poets and Liars. Stella Fracta
to miss a second.
He texted her on one of her social medias, from a cover account of an actor Richard North – with very believable photos from his theatrical work, made-up past relationships and buddies – though she didn’t reply right away, only in the evening.
She said that the morning is the most productive time of the day, and therefore it’s better to meet for breakfast. Ante meridiem London was lively on weekdays, life was bubbling over, on City of London’s narrow streets cars lined up in rows in front of streetlights, pedestrians rushed to work, picking up coffee to-go on the run.
“The point of a detective is in narrating the sequence of solving a mystery, murder here is both the crime and the disruption of balance between good and evil,” continued Alexandra. “It’s the rule of the genre. The structural elements of the system define it. There’s always a conflict and a task, and the more developed the detective story is, the more believable it is – because it is more stable.”
Richard nodded, licked his lips. Alexandra had barely gotten through half of her breakfast – busy with the conversation, with a habit of not rushing her meals.
“Well, you understand it all yourself, it’s the same thing in acting. The more you understand the character, his motivation and his essence, the more indistinguishable from reality he will be.”
He did understand. All of his life was spent under false names, in foreign countries, all his life was spent on edge, parting lies from truth wrapped in tapestries of lines of mystification and artificially made set-dressings.
She created plots the verisimilitude of which was hard to doubt.
“When you have to learn a new occupation to act in a single minute-long scene,” Richard smirked.
“When you have to pry into archives of the National Library in Paris and translate the periodics of the entire summer of a specific year of the 19th century – to write a single episode in a historical novel,” Alexandra joined in. “Exactly so. Man underestimates his imaginative abilities – and gives little thought to the fact that the objective reality is no different from a fictional one.”
“It would be good if everyone only did evil in their own head.”
“Yes,” she agreed easily. “Ideally – yes. But no one listens – even though everything is so simple.”
Truly, simple … But both of them are now sitting in a café in reality, not in imagination, and the world around them is real and corporeal – just as the unfinished cup of cappuccino and the half of a bagel on the plate.
He felt that it got hotter – like in a Hot and Cold game. She was smart and perceptive, she was still looking at him closely – to see something that he hid behind the mask of sympathy and bashfulness. He wasn’t acting out the part of a ladykiller, he wasn’t portraying a head-over-heels fan – he chose something in the middle, he wanted to show that he was different from the rest – though unsuccessfully for now.
He talked little about himself – and listened more instead. Richard, for some reason unknown to himself, did not try to hang noodles on her ears, playing the role of someone who wants to present himself in the best light – in front of her.
She’s gotten used to being used – she’s gotten used to being wanted. She hid under the guise of openness and disinhibition, but behind the acceptance of the world as it is – with the ignorance and the cruelty – she hid disappointed resignation.
Everything’s simple.
“You speak as if you know everything there is to know, and you’re bored because of it.”
She paused to think, her dark eyes were looking not at Richard but at the window, at the shop signs on the opposite side of the street, at the passers-by and the passing cabs.
“Maybe,” she said after some time. “Sometimes that’s how it is, no kidding. Moreover, I share it, I tell a lot and translate a lot into an accessible language – of metaphors, archetypes, role models and digestible plots – but it still only reaches those who want to see and hear.”
Richard hid his excitement, he merely shifted his legs on the bar of the counter-height stool.
“Alchemy?”
“The very one,” Alexandra replied with a smile. “The wine of the blood of kings, the becoming and the purpose, the Great Work … Who needs all that – if everyone saw cats and vineyards, medieval catacombs and a dog-loving autistic being rescued from prison by his visionary wife?”
Riddles again … She explained the meaning of every metaphor in her books, they came together into a certain algorithm of success of any work – but there was always something missing. Like in encryption: she made one key public, the other kept to herself – because only those among the Poets had that key.
“I need it,” Richard raised his eyebrows slightly, he looked at Alexandra closely until she looked back at him. “I seemingly understood everything – and still understood nothing.”
She sighed and smiled. Softly, forgivingly. She had assumed they would talk about the objective reality – London, Moscow, parties and masquerades, the sphere of work they had in common – according to his cover story … And he’s expecting a revelation from her – as if she could, here and now, show him the secrets of existence.
“And why do you need that?”
Good question. To complete the mission.
“To become myself.”
He himself didn’t understand why he said it like that – his mouth spoke it on its own. Odd – but it was as if he began to hear her better, speak her language – without coercion, without constant interpretation of every outputted sentence.
“You already have everything you need to do that, Richard North. Don’t look for answers on the outside – they’re inside us. As soon as you learn who you are, everything will happen on its own – because there will simply be no other option.”
“That’s complicated.”
“Complexity is a habit. We build a pile of terms and concepts all our lives, trying to describe the world around us, we use the visible to describe the visible – and we deny what we don’t understand or can’t describe. If I tell you that there’s someone behind your back, and you won’t turn – will you be able to describe what’s behind you?”
Laymen get migraines from such conversations. MI6 agents mustn’t have migraines – because they’re ineffective.
“I will,” he said, moving his shoulders involuntarily as if he had goosebumps. “Intuition, imagination, juxtaposition of indirect indicators – the reflection in the glass, breathing, noise, the direction of your gaze—”
She liked the answer.
Alexandra beamed, “So you know everything even without me – and understanding will come when the right time comes. Alchemy is, foremost, not transformation of the external, but transformation of the internal.”
The only thing he’s managed to understand so far was, the more he opens up to her, the more she trusts him. She asked the imaginary intelligence agent to undress not out of lust, but so he would bare his soul.
Richard ran his palm across his face, his cheeks reddened – from a genuine feeling of absurdity. He’ll have to pull real bashfulness out of himself – not the sly, feigned one – with the quickened pulse and cold sweat on his temples.
“It’s easier to discuss dead bodies,” he chuckled.
“Because everything’s clear with them, going back to the rules of the genre. In our own soul we do the same investigation, we get the system of symbols, the castle of imagination in order. We