{"id":211,"date":"2022-11-21T19:44:57","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T19:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/?page_id=211"},"modified":"2023-09-20T20:02:01","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T20:02:01","slug":"dalis-clocks","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/dalis-clocks\/","title":{"rendered":"Dal\u00ed\u2019s Clocks"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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I was living in Gda\u0144sk back then, in a newish block of flats overlooking the Wisla just outside the Old Town. In the mornings I could sit on my balcony and eat breakfast while the fake pirate boats took tourists downriver to take photographs of the old fortifications at Westerplatte. Evenings, I could wander through Hanseatic splendour, take my pick of hundreds of remarkably fine restaurants, cross the river to the concert hall to attend a performance by the Baltic Philharmonic, visit art galleries, catch a film. Good times, and I took it all for granted.<\/p>

These days, I don\u2019t really live anywhere. Or rather, I seem to live everywhere.<\/i> In every town I visit, every city, every one-horse hamlet, a welcome is waiting for me. Hotels throw their doors open to me, private citizens unroll the red carpet. I haven\u2019t had to pay for a meal or a night\u2019s lodging in almost eight years. The clothes I wear, the car I drive, the cigarettes I smoke and the beer I drink are all gifts, pressed on me by a populace either eager to curry favour or to express its gratitude. You\u2019d think it would become wearying, but you\u2019d be wrong; there is nothing in this world better than never having to pay for anything ever again. And trust me, having people hanging on your every word, your every opinion, never ever<\/i> gets old.<\/p>

On the other hand, I\u2019m on the road all the time. I have no choice. If I didn\u2019t go to them, they would come to me, and that would<\/i> become wearying.<\/p>

Back then, I had a little architects\u2019 practice. The first wave of post-Communist rebuilding in Poland had crested and a lot of ambitious, hungry little firms were following it up. There were a lot of neo-Hadid public buildings going up, and down in Krak\u00f3w it seemed as if every other office block had been presided over by the spirit of Norman Foster.<\/p>

In Gda\u0144sk we were, I thought, a little more original, although there was a fashion for Baltic Baroque, bits of architecture looted from up and down the coast. I\u2019d designed some of those buildings myself, and been paid handsomely for them. And when I drove past them I knew those hungry, ambitious little firms were already planning for the next wave, because that was what I was doing, too.<\/p>

I don\u2019t design buildings any more. The world is full of architects these days, most of them completely talentless but all of them supremely enthusiastic.<\/i> And that\u2026that does<\/i> become wearying.<\/p>

Ten years ago, on the morning that Marcin walked into my office and invited me to the party, I was working fourteen-hour and sometimes eighteen-hour days in order to get ahead and stay ahead. I was still young. I reasoned I could maintain this for a few years, build myself a healthy bank balance and a healthy reputation, then take my foot off the accelerator a little and enjoy my life.<\/p>

It was ten to eight in the morning and I had already been in the office for more than an hour when I looked up from whatever it was that I was doing \u2013 I\u2019ve forgotten what it was \u2013 and saw a familiar bulky figure with tousled sandy hair talking to Agnieszka, our receptionist.<\/p>

I got up from my desk and walked across the office, and as I approached the figure looked up from speaking to Agnieszka and grinned at me. \u201cHey, Jarek,\u201d he called when I was still only halfway across the office. \u201cWant to go to a party tonight?\u201d<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

At school, Marcin had been one of those big soft boys who seem designed by Nature for the express purpose of attracting bullies. The first time I ever saw him he was eleven years old and two thirteen-year-olds were beating him up in the playground for no other reason than it was fun. I was on my way to a History lesson and I was two days short of my fourteenth birthday and this unknown fat boy\u2019s plight was nothing to do with me and I kept on walking.<\/p>

And then I stopped. I stood listening for a few moments as the two boys slapped the fat boy and I have no idea why I did what I did next.<\/p>

I turned and said, \u201cLeave him alone.\u201d<\/p>

One of the bullies, a nascent football hooligan named Franek, looked me up and down and said, \u201cFuck off, Jarek.\u201d<\/p>

I turned to face them properly. Franek\u2019s companion was a near-imbecile named Piotr who had only just been allowed back to school after being excluded for beating up another boy. I said, \u201cLeave him alone,\u201d again, and Piotr gave me a ghastly expectant grin.<\/p>

I wish this little tale had a happy ending, but I spent the next three nights in hospital with broken ribs and a suspected concussion. On the other hand, Franek and Piotr were never seen at school again and the day I left hospital Marcin was waiting for me outside with a shopping bag for me full of CDs and DVDs he\u2019d pirated from the internet.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/div>

\"\"<\/p>

\u201cYou work too hard,\u201d Marcin told me.<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cI said you work too hard!\u201d he said in a loud voice that I could barely hear over the party\u2019s sound system.<\/p>

I shook my head. \u201cIt\u2019s only for a little while.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cOh, for – \u201d I grabbed him by the elbow and steered him through the people crammed into the flat. The flat wasn\u2019t very large, but a surprising number of people seemed to be here. The sound system was pumping out death metal and someone had filled the bath with vodka and ice and the party was full of people like\u2026well, like me, actually. Young professionals, comfortably-off, letting off steam. Parties like this were called `hit-and-runs\u2019; many of Gda\u0144sk\u2019s elderly Soviet-era blocks were almost empty, the residents moved to other developments and the buildings awaiting demolition. A shell company took out a short-term lease on a flat, enormous amounts of alcohol and recreational drugs were moved in, and for one night only it was party, party, party. If anyone bothered to complain about the noise and the police bothered to turn up it would transpire that no one at the party actually lived at the flat, and further investigation would reveal that the shell company which had rented it had already been dissolved and its principals had never existed anyway.<\/p>

I dragged Marcin through the mass of heaving bodies towards the front door, which was not easy to do for two reasons. Firstly, there were a lot of heaving bodies. And secondly, he was a big man. He wasn\u2019t fat any more, but he was tall and bulky, like an amiable bear. He was wearing designer jeans and a white shirt and a jerkin of butter-soft leather. After university, he\u2019d gone to work for a little biotechnology company in Belgium, and from his clothes it looked as if they were doing well.<\/p>

Finally, we reached the door and stepped out onto the landing, where we could finally hear each other.<\/p>

\u201cDo you know whose party this is?\u201d I asked.<\/p>

He shrugged.<\/p>

\u201cIt was your idea to come here,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cYou know how these things work,\u201d he said. \u201cAnonymized emails, posts on bulletin boards. Nobody ever knows whose parties they are.\u201d<\/p>

There was shrieking behind us. We looked round and two topless girls were standing side by side in the doorway. \u201cHey, Marcin!\u201d shouted one. \u201cGreat party!\u201d<\/p>

Marcin grinned and waved hello and the girls turned and plunged back into the flat.<\/p>

\u201cOkay,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s my party. But don\u2019t tell anybody.\u201d<\/p>

I was staring at the naked backs of the two girls as they half-walked, half-swam through the press of bodies. I was fairly certain that I had last seen one of them in the newspapers, receiving an award as Young Polish Entrepreneur Of The Year.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019ve got something for you,\u201d Marcin said.<\/p>

I smiled. Marcin\u2019s company developed what used to be called ‘designer drugs’, and down the years he had been a fairly reliable source of pre-release medications. Most of them had been of limited use to me, but he had been responsible for several evenings of chemically-induced happiness. He didn\u2019t come home all that often these days, but when he did he usually had a present for me, a successor to those CDs and DVDs he\u2019d given me when I left the hospital.<\/p>

He reached into a pocket of his jerkin and took out a little plastic envelope and handed it to me. \u201cThere you go,\u201d he said. \u201cA taste of the future.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWhat does it do?\u201d I asked, turning the little envelope over in my fingers.<\/p>

The sound system emitted a single huge chord that reverberated through the building as he said, \u201cIt\u2019s paint medication,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m not in pain,\u201d I told him.<\/p>

\u201cNo,\u201d he said a little louder. \u201cNot pain, paint.<\/i> Paint medication.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d<\/p>

He sighed. \u201cDo you want it or not?\u201d<\/p>

I thought about it. He had never brought me anything harmful. I tore the edge off the envelope and tipped its contents into my palm. It was an odd-looking tablet. Round and thin, a couple of centimetres across, and made of some gelatine substance. It was floppy,<\/i> which in my experience was an unusual attribute for a medication.<\/p>

I put the floppy tablet in my mouth and it melted on my tongue. It tasted very faintly of kiwi fruit. I looked at Marcin and raised my eyebrows.<\/p>

He grinned. \u201cThere you go,\u201d he said and he put his arm around my shoulders and started to steer me back into the party. \u201cNow, let\u2019s see if there\u2019s anything left in the bath\u2026\u201d<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

I regained consciousness the next morning and my phone was ringing. I lay where I was, eyes closed, for quite a while waiting for the ringing to stop, but it didn\u2019t. Finally, without opening my eyes, I reached out to the bedside table, picked up the phone, and after some fumbling located the little button that turned it off. Then I lost consciousness again.<\/p>

Some time later, I became aware that the entryphone by the front door was buzzing. I didn\u2019t know how long I\u2019d been awake; it seemed, at the moment, that I had been listening to that buzzing noise all my life.<\/p>

I waited for the buzzing noise to stop. I waited a long time. It stopped. Some time passed. The buzzing started again. I opened my eyes as far as they would go, which wasn\u2019t very far at all. Down on the river, a speedboat went by and it felt as if the noise was scalping me. I became aware that something awful had happened in my mouth over the past few hours, and now all my taste-buds were misfiring. Meanwhile, the buzzing went on and on and on.<\/p>

I closed one eye again, which made things a little more bearable, although not by much, and rolled off the futon onto the floor, where I briefly fell asleep again until the buzzing brought me round.<\/p>

Slowly, I rolled over onto my stomach, and from there managed to lever myself up onto my hands and knees, and in that position it was a crawl of only a couple of light-years to the front door, where I slapped at the button to open the downstairs door.<\/p>

A minute or so later, there was a knock on my door. From where I was sitting, I pawed at the lock until it clicked. \u201cOpen,\u201d I managed to say, and then I was sick in my lap.<\/p>

The door opened and Marcin stepped into the hallway. He saw me sitting slumped against the wall and he shook his head. \u201cAnd you call yourself a Pole,\u201d he said. He looked almost painfully bright and clean. He knelt down beside me. \u201cHere,\u201d he said, holding something out between his thumb and forefinger and pressing it to my lips. \u201cTake this.\u201d<\/p>

Whatever he was holding made it between my lips and I swallowed reflexively.<\/p>

I\u2019m not sure I can describe what happened next without it sounding like an hallucination, but a sensation began at the soles of my feet and travelled like a wavefront up my body. It was as if all the crap and pain and poison and illness and fatigue was carried ahead of the wave, and when it reached the crown of my head it fountained up into the air and I was crystal-clear sober again. As far as I could judge, the whole thing took less than five minutes.<\/p>

\u201cWhat the fuck<\/i> was that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>

\u201cCan\u2019t say, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d Marcin said, reaching a hand down to me. \u201cThere are copyright issues. You need a shower.\u201d<\/p>

I looked down at my lap. \u201cHm,\u201d I said.<\/p>

It was, as it turned out, the most extraordinary shower I had ever taken. It was as if my skin was a drumhead; I felt every individual drop of water hitting my body. I could smell each ingredient of the shower gel I used. I became fascinated by the grout between the tiles of the shower because I could see the way its surface had crystallised as it set. Everything was pin-sharp, as if a gale had howled through my head and blown away a fog.<\/p>

Stepping out of the shower, I smelled coffee. Marcin had obviously decided to make himself at home.<\/p>

\u201cCoffee,\u201d I said, walking into the kitchen towelling my hair.<\/p>

Marcin was sitting at the table, a steaming mug in front of him. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to drink coffee after what I just gave you,\u201d he said. \u201cYour heart couldn\u2019t take it.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI just want to taste it,\u201d I said, and I picked up his mug and took a sip and it was the most extraordinary thing I had ever tasted. I didn\u2019t have the language to describe the experience.<\/p>

I put the mug down and sat across the table from him, draping the towel around my neck. \u201cHow long is this going to last?\u201d<\/p>

He shrugged. \u201cDifferent subjects metabolise it differently. If you\u2019re in the median, you\u2019ve got another hour and a half or so, then you\u2019ll be back to normal, but without the hangover. In about twelve hours you\u2019ll crash and sleep like a baby.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHave you got any more?\u201d<\/p>

He looked levelly at me. \u201cWhat I just gave you is at least five years away from human trials. I could go to prison for the rest of my life just for giving you that one tab. And you ask me if I\u2019ve got any more.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cExcuse me?\u201d I said. \u201c`Human trials\u2019?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019ve just started testing it on lab animals,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cYou\u2019re giving it to monkeys.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cPrimates next year. So far we\u2019ve been giving it to rats.\u201d He shook his head at the expression on my face. \u201cDid it work?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHell, yes,<\/i>\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cWell then,\u201d he said, and took a drink of coffee. He put the mug back down on the table. \u201cI\u2019ve been taking it for the past six months, on and off. I know it\u2019s not dangerous.\u201d<\/p>

I was appalled, which with my current clarity of mind was even worse than it might normally have been. \u201cYou had no right to do that,\u201d I said. \u201cBut thank you.\u201d<\/p>

He inclined his head.<\/p>

\u201cAnd thanks for cleaning up.\u201d I could smell the individual ingredients of the soap and disinfectant he\u2019d used to clean the mess I\u2019d made.<\/p>

\u201cDon\u2019t mention it,\u201d he said.<\/p>

I said, \u201cIf you\u2019ve been taking it for six months, you must have a steady supply.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cJarek,\u201d he said, \u201cstop it.<\/i> That was your last dose until it goes into production. I only brought a couple of tabs out of the lab, and that was my last one. You\u2019ll have to be patient.\u201d<\/p>

I looked around the flat. It seemed as if I had never looked at it properly before. \u201cThis is genuine doors of perception stuff, isn\u2019t it,\u201d I said wonderingly.<\/p>

\u201cJarek,\u201d he said. \u201cJarek. Look at me, Jarek.\u201d<\/p>

I looked at him.<\/p>

\u201cHow do you feel?\u201d he asked.<\/p>

\u201cI feel marvellous,<\/i>\u201d I told him. \u201cI thought we\u2019d established that.\u201d<\/p>

He shook his head irritably. \u201cNo, no. Do you have any urges? Do you feel as if you have to capture how you feel in verse or prose? Do you need to draw something? Is there a tune going through your head?\u201d<\/p>

I shrugged. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNo urge to jot down some brilliant ideas for new houses?\u201d<\/p>

I shook my head.<\/p>

Marcin scowled and drank some more coffee.<\/p>

\u201cWhat?<\/i>\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt so well in my entire life, you tell me it\u2019s only going to last another\u2026\u201d I looked at the clock on the microwave \u201c\u2026hour and a quarter, and I\u2019m wasting it answering stupid questions. I should be\u2026\u201d I stood up. \u201cFuck you, Marcin. I\u2019m going to enjoy this while it lasts.\u201d<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Down the years, I have blamed Marcin for many things, with justification. But I will always thank him for that hour and a quarter, because the city of my birth never looked as beautiful as it did on that Autumn morning.<\/p>

We walked along the river for a while, then turned through the gateway into the Long Market. It was a miracle we made it that far; I couldn\u2019t stop smelling the air and looking at things and touching things, rejoicing in the pure sensory signals. Imagine suffering a minor eye problem all your life, something you could easily overcome in your everyday life, and then one day you have surgery to correct it and for the first time you see the world properly. That\u2019s what it was like, for all my senses. I was torn between standing very still and looking very carefully at everything I could see, and rampaging along ulice Mariacka and looking at everything.<\/i><\/p>

In the end, I compromised. We went up Mariacka towards the Cathedral and I couldn\u2019t stop smiling. The designs of the old Hanseatic buildings made sense to me in a way they never had before, and they sparked off a cascade of ideas for new designs. It was the loveliest<\/i> day.<\/p>

All the time, Marcin was talking, but I was barely listening. I checked my watch. \u201cRestaurant,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cRestaurant. I\u2019ve only got forty minutes left.\u201d I looked around me. Crowds of tourists from all over northern Europe, tall old buildings, stall after stall selling amber jewellery and knicknacks, coffee bars.<\/p>

Marcin sighed. \u201cHave you been listening to me?\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>

He shook his head and grabbed me by the sleeve. \u201cHere,\u201d he said, and he dragged me down a side-street.<\/p>

\u201cNo,\u201d I said, realising where we were going. \u201cThat\u2019s a terrible place<\/i>. No, I\u2019ve got a better idea.\u201d<\/p>

As it turned out, my better idea was closed for renovations, so we wound up in a little Ukrainian restaurant on a square just beside the Cathedral. The place was dark and quiet and down two flights of stairs and to me it felt like descending into a warm, velvety bath of sensory impression, intense cooking smells, buttery lamplight shining off porcelain and silverware, the weave of the tablecloth under my fingertips. I could have sat there all day, but instead I ordered quickly for both of us and then I sat drumming my fingers on the tabletop and checking my watch waiting for the food to arrive.<\/p>

Marcin sat watching me with a sour look on his face. \u201cYou know,\u201d he said, \u201cI wish I\u2019d never given you that stuff.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t,\u201d I told him. \u201cThis is the best thing that\u2019s happened to me in\u2026oh, ever<\/i> such a long time. When are you going to put it on the market?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt probably won\u2019t be all that widely available,\u201d he said.<\/p>

I raised an eyebrow.<\/p>

\u201cHave you any idea how much it cost to develop that tab?\u201d he asked. \u201cNo, you don\u2019t, and you\u2019d never be able to guess. It\u2019s not meant to be a hangover tablet. It\u2019s a cognitive enhancer; it\u2019s meant for fighter pilots, battlefield troops, astronauts. The hangover thing\u2019s a side-effect, that\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI think your employers need some tips on marketing,\u201d I told him.<\/p>

He shrugged. Then he leaned forward slightly and said, \u201cHave you ever wondered where creativity comes from?\u201d<\/p>

I was looking at my watch again. \u201cSorry?\u201d<\/p>

He sat back. \u201cAm I going to have to come over to that side of the table and shake you by the ears, Jarek?\u201d<\/p>

I put on an attentive expression.<\/p>

Marcin started to say something, thought again, started to say something else, closed his mouth. Then he said. \u201cYou remember Miros\u0142aw Sierpinski?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMirek? Sure.\u201d Mirek Sierpinski had been in the same class as me at school. \u201cHey, did you hear he\u2019s up for a Pulitzer Prize?\u201d<\/p>

Marcin rubbed his eyes. \u201cHe won<\/i> the Pulitzer Prize, Jarek. Last year. Don\u2019t you read the papers?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cLast year was really busy for us,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cAdmit it. You didn\u2019t even know he\u2019d gone to New York until you heard he\u2019d been nominated for the Pulitzer.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cI despair of you, Jarek. I know where every one of my classmates is right now, and what they\u2019re doing. I have done ever since I left school. How many of yours have you seen in the past fifteen years?\u201d<\/p>

I put my hands up in surrender. \u201cPoint taken. Okay.\u201d<\/p>

He shook his head again. \u201cMirek\u2019s dad was a fitter at the shipyard. His mum cleans offices. Both of them barely finished school; I don\u2019t think either of them ever wrote anything more complicated than a shopping list.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMirek\u2019s dad wasn\u2019t stupid,\u201d I told him. \u201cBig Union man, very smart. I went to his funeral,\u201d I added, to make a point. \u201cLots of old Solidarity guys were there.\u201d<\/p>

Marcin was nodding. \u201cFine, fine. He was well-respected. But not a literary giant, I think we can agree.\u201d<\/p>

It was impossible to argue with that. \u201cOkay,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cAnd nobody else in the family ever showed the slightest inclination to write, or paint, or play the piano.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHow do you know?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cBecause this is what I\u2019ve been doing<\/i>, Jarek,\u201d he said in an exasperated voice. \u201cI\u2019ve been researching the nature of creativity \u2013 and if you\u2019ve just opened your mouth to tell me you thought I was working on a hangover cure, I swear to God I\u2019ll come round there and put my fist down your throat.\u201d<\/p>

I closed my mouth.<\/p>

Marcin put a hand to his forehead and muttered, \u201cJesus Maria.\u201d He took a breath. \u201cOkay. So we have Mirek\u2019s family, who are not creative at all. And we have Mirek, who is being talked about, quite seriously, as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. How does that happen?\u201d<\/p>

I shrugged.<\/p>

\u201cAnd then there\u2019s Kasia Gadomska and Andrzej Chlebowski, what does their daughter call herself?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cTutu,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cTutu,\u201d he repeated sourly. \u201cWhose only talent seems to be attending parties and getting falling-over drunk.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThere was the chat-show,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cTutu Talks<\/i>, yes. Possibly the worst chat-show ever seen on European television \u2013 and there\u2019s an awful lot of competition. How can it happen that two people with no apparent creative talent at all can produce a son who writes novels of exquisite<\/i> beauty, while two of the greatest actors this country has ever seen \u2013 from families with an acting tradition that goes back generations<\/i> – have a daughter with no artistic talent at all?\u201d<\/p>

I shrugged. \u201cBeats me.\u201d<\/p>

He said, \u201cIt\u2019s genetic,\u201d and all of a sudden, without any warning at all, a veil fell upon the world. Marcin must have seen it in my face, because he sighed and said, \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>

I looked at my watch. \u201cI\u2019m supposed to have another half an hour,\u201d I told him in a pathetic little voice.<\/p>

\u201cOh, for Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s neurochemistry, Jarek. It isn\u2019t rocket science, okay?\u201d<\/p>

I looked round the restaurant. Everything was dull<\/i>. Sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. Everything. Like listening to a concert while wearing earplugs. I sighed.<\/p>

Marcin got up and tossed his napkin on the table. \u201cFine,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not hungry,\u201d he told the waiter, who was approaching with our starters, and he headed for the exit.<\/p>

\u201cSomething came up,\u201d I said to the waiter. I dropped some z\u0142otys on the table and followed Marcin up the stairs.<\/p>

Outside, everything was disappointing. Ordinary.<\/i> I caught up with Marcin at the Cathedral and said, \u201cGenetics.\u201d<\/p>

He shook his head irritably. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter, Jarek. You\u2019re not interested, and you seem to be immune anyway. So no big thing, yes? Forget it.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe hangover pill.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s not<\/i> \u2013\u201c<\/p>

\u201cA hangover pill, I know, I know. But you know when you give it to rats?\u201d<\/p>

He sighed. \u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHow do you know it\u2019s working?\u201d<\/p>

Marcin thought about it for a while. \u201cThe rats smile.\u201d He looked up at the great brick edifice of the Cathedral. \u201cHave you ever seen a rat smile?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNot so far as I\u2019m aware, no.\u201d<\/p>

He grinned, and there was something otherworldly about that grin. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful,\u201d he said. \u201cThe most beautiful thing you ever saw.\u201d<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

I moped around the flat for the rest of the weekend, watched television, sat on the balcony and looked at the river and the boats and the tourists heading for the Old Town. Everything was dull, flat, uninspired. Uninspiring<\/i>. Marcin phoned a couple of times to ask how I was feeling, and by Sunday night I was able to report that I had a banging headache and a sore throat.<\/p>

\u201cIf your fucking pill has given me the flu, I\u2019ll kill you,\u201d I told him.<\/p>

\u201cHm,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s probably nothing. Take some paracetamol and drink plenty of fluids.\u201d And he hung up.<\/p>

Monday morning, I felt vaguely achy and feverish, but we were in the middle of a big commission for an American bank so I went to the office and sat feeling miserable.<\/p>

Tuesday was more of the same, with added shivering and a blocked nose. I tried to call Marcin at the hotel where he\u2019d been staying on his visit, but they said he\u2019d checked out.<\/p>

I barely made it in to the office on Wednesday. I had a phone conference with a man in Chicago and a man in New Jersey and when it was over I had no idea what we had been talking about. I was sweating and my eyes felt as though they\u2019d been lightly sandpapered. Tomek, one of the partners, helped me home in the afternoon, told me he really enjoyed working with me but no way<\/i> was he going to get me undressed and help me into bed, and left me on the sofa.<\/p>

And then the rest of the week just\u2026went away.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

It was the following Tuesday before I felt well enough to go back to work, but I still didn\u2019t feel up to doing much apart from contemplating firing Tomek for his failure to come to his boss\u2019s aid in his hour of need. Nobody else seemed to be in the mood for work, either. Tomek and his wife Hania were sitting at one of our big draughting tables, sketching. Agnieszka was doing some embroidery. All the momentum had gone out of the office.<\/p>

At one point, Agnieszka brought me a coffee and then held up the piece of cloth she\u2019d been working on. I looked at it. Then I looked at her.<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cWhat do you think of it?\u201d she asked.<\/p>

It was an embroidered image of some species of rustic scene. Not very well embroidered. \u201cVery nice,\u201d I told her. I raised my voice. \u201cEverybody?\u201d<\/p>

The rest of the office raised their heads from whatever they\u2019d been doing. Bartek Kowalski appeared to have been sculpting something from a chunk of styrofoam packing block<\/p>

\u201cGo home,\u201d I told them. \u201cWe\u2019re not getting anything useful done. Go and get this out of your system and let\u2019s come back tomorrow with our minds on the job, please. Okay? Now go.\u201d<\/p>

Everyone started to get up and gather their things together and get their coats. Agnieszka stayed where she was. \u201cDid you mean it?\u201d she asked.<\/p>

\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cGo home. Get some sleep. Whatever.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNo,\u201d she said, holding up the piece of embroidery. \u201cDo you really<\/i> like it?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s lovely,\u201d I assured her. \u201cNow go. Get out of here. I\u2019ll lock up.\u201d<\/p>

After everyone had gone I sat in the office for a while, feet up on my desk, head tilted against the back of my chair. The German ergonomicists, who I had been assured by the salesman had developed this model of chair, had not countenanced anyone treating their furniture in quite this way, so it was more than a little uncomfortable and after a while I took my feet down off the desk and got up and wandered through the office. I had not, I realised, yet shaken off the sense of loss I\u2019d felt when Marcin\u2019s hangover tablet \u2013 cognitive enhancer, whatever \u2013 wore off. Which was rather alarming. My history of recreational drug use had never been very illustrious or \u2013 Marcin\u2019s occasional little gifts apart \u2013 adventurous. It had never affected me like this before. I felt vaguely heartbroken.<\/i><\/p>

I locked up the office and went to the cinema and watched Wajda\u2019s Katyn<\/i> again. It suited my mood. After the film, I bumped into a couple of designers I knew in the foyer and we went to a restaurant, where I tried to work up some enthusiasm for the food, and afterward we went on to a party. Not a hit-and-run but a civilised drinks party, responsible professionals, canap\u00e9s, darkwave playing quietly on the Bang & Oluffson so as not to disturb the neighbours. The host and hostess, who I knew slightly, were showing their guests some quite spectacularly-bad watercolours they\u2019d done, and when they asked me what I thought of the paintings I smiled and nodded and said, \u201cVery nice.\u201d<\/p>

The hostess looked critically at me. \u201cYou don\u2019t look very happy, Jarek,\u201d she said.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m fine, Iwona,\u201d I told her. \u201cI\u2019ve had flu.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cAh,\u201d she said. \u201cYou should try one of these.\u201d And she took from her pocket a familiar-looking little plastic envelope and handed it to me.<\/p>

\u201cWhere did you get this?\u201d I asked.<\/p>

\u201cAt the University,\u201d she said. \u201cOne of the Sociology Faculty was handing them out. He said it was some kind of experiment. You know, something about whether you\u2019d take drugs from a stranger.\u201d She laughed. \u201cOf course, he\u2019s not a stranger so I didn\u2019t count, but he gave me a few anyway. Try it. He said it was just vitamins.\u201d<\/p>

I opened the envelope and tipped its contents into the palm of my hand. It was a round, floppy tablet just like the one Marcin had given me, but someone had printed a clockface on this one. The hands of the clock stood at five to midnight.<\/p>

I smiled at Iwona and put the pill back in the envelope. \u201cI already tried one, thanks,\u201d I said.<\/p>

When I arrived at the office the next morning, there was a styrofoam sculpture of a cat sitting on my desk.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

The weeks went by and we rolled into October and then November. It rained. Gales blew in off the Baltic. Then it snowed. In the office, the staff and partners managed to curb their collective artistic urges and we got our heads down and did some serious work on our outstanding projects. I managed to become so engrossed in my work that I hardly ever thought about Marcin\u2019s hangover pill.<\/p>

It was somewhat harder to forget about the floppy pill, though, because it was on the news. People were calling them, reasonably enough considering what was printed on them, \u2018clocks,\u2019 and they seemed to be everywhere. Nobody seemed to have the slightest idea where they were coming from, but they were turning up all over Poland and Germany and the Low Countries and even in London. The authorities \u2013 who still hadn\u2019t managed to get hold of one for analysis – were warning people not to take them. There were stories of people holding clock parties. One op-ed piece in a magazine ventured the utterly charming theory that the clocks were in fact completely harmless and part of a huge sociological experiment into the way new drugs spread through a society. There was said to be a mild euphoric effect after taking them, but this could be ascribed to the latent suggestibility of the human mind. It was actually charming enough to be plausible.<\/p>

I seemed, meanwhile, to have gained a minor reputation as some kind of critic, because Tomek\u2019s sister and Hania\u2019s father and half a dozen other family members and friends of the staff and partners had taken to visiting the office and leaving me paintings and poems and CDs of music and strange pottery shapes for my opinion, which was baffling but ever so slightly gratifying. As the weeks went on more and more of this stuff arrived, along with its penitential amateur artists, until one morning around the beginning of December I quipped to Tomek something along the lines that I hadn\u2019t realised my colleagues had so many relatives and he answered that it had been some weeks since he or anyone else in the office had recognised any of the artists.<\/p>

\u201cWe all thought you<\/i> knew them,\u201d he said.<\/p>

That was when I phoned Marcin\u2019s employers to try and find out where he was. They told me he was on a sabbatical, but a few days later I was visited by a very polite young man who said he worked for the Ministry of Public Health and was interested in speaking with anyone Marcin had been in contact with while he was in Poland. We talked for a very long time about generalities \u2013 did Marcin seem ill, at all? Was anyone with him? Did Marcin, perhaps, use any medication<\/i> while he was with me?<\/p>

I answered the polite young man\u2019s questions as truthfully as I could, short of mentioning the hangover pill and the clock. Did Marcin, perhaps, discuss his work at all? He certainly did. Did Marcin, perhaps, express any strong anti-social<\/i> opinions? He did not. Did Marcin, perhaps, express any strong religious<\/i> views?<\/p>

At this point I stood up and told the polite young man that I didn\u2019t see what Marcin\u2019s religious views had to do with the Ministry of Public Health, and the polite young man agreed that they didn\u2019t and proceeded to arrest me.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

I\u2019m very well-connected these days. I can open my phone and speed-dial the chiefs-of-staff of half a dozen European Prime Ministers and Presidents (including the President of the European Union and his wife) and be put through immediately. Except the President of Albania, who took personally my description of his latest novel as `infantile.\u2019 But he\u2019ll be back. They always come back.<\/p>

A few years ago, I was not nearly as well-connected. But I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, and there was a cascade of favours owed and favours paid and I have no idea how it all worked out for the individuals involved, but at the end of it all I was sitting in a white room in a prison just outside Antwerp, where Marcin was just beginning a forty-year sentence on terrorism charges, with a side-order of industrial espionage.<\/p>

\u201cMy lawyer\u2019s going to drive a fucking truck<\/i> through this,\u201d he told me. \u201cThey\u2019ve totally<\/i> misused the anti-terror legislation.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWho\u2019d have thought the Belgians would have been so vindictive about you stealing their patents and handing out their drugs on the street?\u201d I deadpanned.<\/p>

Marcin glowered at me. He was sitting across the table from me, wearing a bright orange jumpsuit of the kind made infamous by Guantanamo inmates. He was also wearing a complicated chain-and-handcuffs arrangement which meant that he had to walk in a kind of hunched-over shuffle and couldn\u2019t raise his hands above his waist. I thought the chains were overkill, but maybe the Belgians still hadn\u2019t finished making their point.<\/p>

\u201cGenetics,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cOh, you want to talk about it now, do you?\u201d he said. He looked at the large guard who had accompanied him into the room and then taken up impassive station in the corner. \u201cAnd you<\/i> can fuck off,\u201d he told the guard. The guard ignored him. Marcin tried to rub his eyes, but the chains pulled his hands up short. \u201cFuck,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cGenetics,\u201d I said again. \u201cI\u2019m serious, Marcin. What have you done?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>

He looked at me. His hair was longer than I remembered, and it was crumpled up on one side as if he\u2019d been asleep when they came to bring him to the white room and they hadn\u2019t given him any time to comb it. His eyes were red-rimmed and his nose was running.<\/p>

\u201cMirek Sierpinski,\u201d I said. \u201cTutu.\u201d<\/p>

He sighed and seemed to crumple a little in his jumpsuit. \u201cWhere does creativity come from?\u201d he asked.<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cWell,\u201d he said. He sighed again. \u201cThe science is complicated.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cDon\u2019t you dare<\/i> patronise me,\u201d I warned.<\/p>

He shrugged. \u201cThere\u2019s a genetic mutation which, basically, codes for creativity. A few years ago it was thought that about fifty percent of people carried it, but it turns out the figure\u2019s a lot higher than that. Somewhere in the ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent. Everyone\u2019s carrying the mutation. Pretty much.\u201d<\/p>

He paused, and I leaned forward slightly. \u201cMarcin,\u201d I said again, \u201cwhat have you done?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOkay.\u201d He tried to rub his eyes again, got pulled up short by the chains again, shook his head. He looked at me. \u201cSo everyone has the creative mutation \u2013 which also causes schizophrenia and psychosis in some cases, by the way \u2013 but the world isn\u2019t flooded with artists. Why is that? Why didn\u2019t Tutu\u2019s parents pass the mutation on to her? Well, god help them, they did. But Tutu has another genetic mutation which\u2026\u201d He looked at me. \u201cThis next bit\u2019s a little vague.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s better than nothing,\u201d I told him.<\/p>

He thought about it for a few moments. \u201cThere\u2019s a mutation of another gene which makes people want to be creative.\u201d He watched the look on my face. \u201cI know, it doesn\u2019t seem a like a distinction at all, does it? But it\u2019s an important one. Tutu, if we\u2019re taking her as our model, has the mutation which makes her creative, like almost everybody, but she lacks<\/i> the mutation which makes her want to do<\/i> anything about it.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cShe\u2019s been writing poetry,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s been in the papers.\u201d<\/p>

He raised an eyebrow. \u201cAny good?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s some of the worst poetry I ever read.\u201d<\/p>

He looked at me strangely and, I thought, rather slyly. \u201cWell, there you go,\u201d he said. \u201cTalent<\/i> remains an unquantifiable thing, a complete mystery. Nobody\u2019s found the mutation for that yet. But the impulse<\/i> is there. I\u2019ll bet you\u2026oh, a lot<\/i> of money that she doesn\u2019t go to quite so many parties from now on. Have you got any paper?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cPaper. Oh, never mind.\u201d He looked at the guard. \u201cCould I have some paper, please?\u201d<\/p>

The guard went over to a cupboard in the corner of the room, unlocked the door, and took out a pad of scrap paper, with which he returned to the table. Marcin\u2019s chains just about allowed him to reach the tabletop and tear a sheet off the pad.<\/p>

\u201cWhat did you give me?\u201d I asked.<\/p>

He was folding the sheet of paper corner-to-corner and smoothing the crease down with his thumbnail. \u201cEh? Oh, the active ingredient was MDMA.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou gave me Ecstasy?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cA mild dose. But very pure.\u201d He unfolded the paper, folded the opposite corners across, and creased them down. \u201cA really mild dose. Nobody would want to take it if it didn\u2019t make them feel good. But the payload,<\/i> the thing that gives the clocks their gong fu,<\/i> is a virus.\u201d<\/p>

I was not even remotely unprepared for this. After the polite young man arrested me I had been taken to a rather grim building on the outskirts of town, not far from the airport, where I was told to sit in a room not unlike this one and I was questioned for almost fifty hours, singly and in groups of anything up to five, by a large number of people who were not polite at all. None of them actually came out and said it, but by putting all their individual questions and accusations together it seemed to me that they believed Marcin was guilty of releasing some kind of biological weapon and was now on the run.<\/p>

Finally \u2013 I suspect by then they had found Marcin and arrested him, because we had not even begun to scratch the surface of places I might think he was hiding \u2013 I was led out of the room, down a corridor, out of the building and into a waiting taxi, which took me home. No one said goodbye or thank you or \u2018don\u2019t even think of going to the media about this,\u2019 from which I gathered they were either very excited or very nervous now they had Marcin.<\/p>

When the taxi delivered me at my building, there was a small crowd of artists and writers waiting around the front entrance.<\/p>

\u201cThe virus rewrites your genome,\u201d he went on. \u201cIt inserts the mutation which predisposes people to want<\/i> to be creative.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou absolute<\/i> bastard,\u201d I said. \u201cHow dare<\/i> you do that.\u201d<\/p>

He looked up from the sheet of paper, which had ceased to be rectangular and was now a frantically-complicated landscape of pleats and folds. \u201cI thought it was worth a try,\u201d he said.<\/p>

\u201cYou thought it was \u2018worth a try\u2019?\u201d I yelled with enough violence to make the guard shuffle his feet.<\/p>

Marcin went back to the sheet of paper. \u201cDo you know what the problem is with modern society?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cToo many fucking scientists?\u201d I said in a very loud voice.<\/p>

He sniffled and shook his head. \u201cToo much time on our hands. The human race is, on the whole, all right.<\/i>\u201d He looked at me. \u201cWe\u2019re fine, Jarek. Nice people. Wouldn\u2019t hurt a fly, most of us. But there\u2019s a tiny percentage of people who are not fine. The world is not full of assholes, but the assholes run the world. They need something else to do.\u201d He folded a corner of the thing he was working on into a pocket formed by two other folds and smoothed it down. \u201cI\u2019ve given them something else to do.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHitler was a painter,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cHitler was a maniac. He didn\u2019t have the second mutation. He didn\u2019t want<\/i> to paint enough to stop him being a maniac.\u201d<\/p>

I glared at him. I kept glaring at him until he noticed and looked up from whatever he was doing with the sheet of paper.<\/p>

\u201cI had flu,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cThat wasn\u2019t really flu. That was your immune system trying to reach an accommodation with the virus,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll have been fanatically<\/i> infectious for the four or five days before your symptoms presented.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cBastard,\u201d I said.<\/p>

He smiled sunnily. \u201cRelax,\u201d he told me. \u201cYou were never in any danger. You\u2019re quite unusual, having that reaction. Most people won\u2019t even realise they\u2019ve been infected until they start being creative.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI<\/i> don\u2019t feel creative,\u201d I said.<\/p>

His fingers paused in their manipulation of what I had long since ceased to regard as a simple sheet of paper. \u201cThat, Jarek, is because you\u2019re immune,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re among a vanishingly-small percentage of the population who don\u2019t have the original creative mutation.\u201d He smiled at me. \u201cI know, I know. You\u2019ve done good work, good creative<\/i> work. But you\u2019ve done it despite being entirely undisposed to creativity. You\u2019ve done it, effectively, by being a very good manager.<\/i> Now, you think back and try and remember how much of that work actually originated<\/i> with you, and how much originated with other people.\u201d<\/p>

I thought of none of those things. I just stared at him and thought of murder.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019ll bet,\u201d he said, making another fold, \u201cthat if you think back far enough, you\u2019ll remember that people were always coming to you with poems and paintings and photographs and asking what you thought of them. Because people with the mutations subconsciously recognise the people without them and realise they can give an objective valuation. I don\u2019t know why that happens. Pheromones, maybe. Or body language. Hard to see how it could have evolved, but there you go, the wonderful world of Nature, eh?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIs there a cure?\u201d<\/p>

He shook his head, then stopped himself. \u201cWell, yes, theoretically. Gene therapy to repair the mutation introduced by the virus, but it\u2019s tricky and you don\u2019t want to release it into the population until you\u2019re sure how it\u2019ll work in the wild.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cLike you did.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI was as sure as I could be.\u201d He finished whatever he had been doing to the sheet of paper and held it up between his finger and thumb, a ridged little pill of paper the size of a pea and the shape of a grain of rice. \u201cIt could take years to develop the right gene therapy, and in six months nobody will care any more. The world\u2019s going to be full of artists, Jarek.\u201d He grinned at me and relaxed his thumb and forefinger, and the pill of paper sprang gently open as its fibres were released and it bloomed into the figure of an armoured knight on horseback, all rendered in fabulously-complex folds. Brave new world. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to the people who aren\u2019t affected by the virus?\u201d I said.<\/p>

He looked a little cross. \u201cYou could always become critics,\u201d he said, gesturing with the origami knight. \u201cWhat do you think?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Marcin\u2019s trial was held in camera<\/i> and the details were never made public. What else I know comes from patient work down the years, from favours called in and contacts made, from hundreds of manuscripts read and plays watched and arias listened to in return for snippets of information.<\/p>

The original purpose of the virus had been for occupational therapy \u2013 it was meant to be used on accident victims and the survivors of serious trauma, making them want to take part in creative activities as part of their recovery. Paint medication. Medication that makes you want to paint.
But viruses are fiddly things to work with and you can\u2019t always get them to do quite what you want, and by the time Marcin and his colleagues stepped back and looked at what they had created they realised it was incredibly virulent<\/i>. A doctor infecting a trauma patient with it would wind up infected himself, as would nurses and other nurses and other doctors and other patients and their families and people on public transport\u2026and so on.<\/p>

Marcin\u2019s team decided it was just too contagious to release and they put it away and went off to think about what to do next. But Marcin \u2013 and I can\u2019t know this for sure but in my imagination it\u2019s the only way it could have happened \u2013 Marcin didn\u2019t go away. He stood and looked at the jar or the vial or the box or whatever the hell they locked the virus up in, and he tipped his head to one side and he saw possibilities.<\/i><\/p>

The lab Marcin worked in was very well-designed. It was, actually, impossible for someone to infect themselves, by accident or deliberately, without setting off alarms, but you can have the best security system in the world and it\u2019s still only built by people, and nothing built by people is ever perfect.<\/p>

He got the virus out of the lab by infecting himself, then he took a holiday. In a lock-up garage in Ghent, which he\u2019d kitted out with equipment bought from various medical and scientific supply houses around Europe, he isolated the virus from his blood. Then while he was still contagious, he set off on a five-day tour of Europe\u2019s major airports.<\/p>

He shook a lot of hands and bought a lot of airport coffee with coins and banknotes liberally smeared with his sweat. He sneezed on a lot of duty-free bottles of perfume and alcohol and squeezed a lot of those fluffy toys you get in airport gift shops and checked a lot of souvenir teeshirts to see if they were his size. I\u2019ve seen some of the security video of him at Heathrow and Schiphol and Orly, and when you look at it all together it\u2019s rather comical, until you remember what he was doing.<\/p>

He was very sly; he knew a small percentage of infected people would present with flu symptoms, so he timed his five-day excursion so that the symptoms would be lost in the general seasonal flu. In the Southern Hemisphere, outside flu season, they caused brief alarm but nothing more.<\/p>

Finally, not infectious any more, he returned to Ghent, where he started to manufacture clocks as another way to spread the virus. A member of the Belgian Secret Service said they had no idea how many clocks he\u2019d finally been able to make, but checking back with the suppliers who sold him his raw materials the number could have been in the tens of thousands. By the time they finally caught up with him in Biarritz, it was already too late.<\/p>

And one thing Marcin said was absolutely right. By the time I had assembled the full story, nobody cared any more. Virtually everyone on Earth had been exposed to the virus.<\/p>

And by then I was on the road. The trickle of people wanting my opinion of their work, by word of mouth or pheromones or body language or god only knows what else \u2013 had become a torrent. I was besieged at home. I was getting letters and emails and phone calls from all over Europe, promising me unholy riches if I\u2019d only come and see their play or read their book or sit through their operetta.<\/p>

The only way to stay sane, I thought, was to go to them.<\/p>

\"\"<\/p>

Sometimes, we bump into each other. In Eindhoven or Alen\u00e7on or Cologne or Madrid or one of the little towns inbetween. You\u2019ll be sitting in the restaurant of another free hotel, eating another free meal, and you\u2019ll raise your head and there across the dining room you\u2019ll see someone else with weary, haunted eyes from too many hours watching the roads unwind, too many hours spent giving their honest opinion of oil paintings and watercolours and sculptures and happenings and films in too many genres to list properly. And they\u2019ll raise their head too and your eyes will meet, and you\u2019ll nod to each other.<\/p>

Surprisingly often, that\u2019s as far as it gets. You\u2019ll nod to each other, then go back to your meals, there in the dining room with walls covered with execrable oil paintings done by the manager or the waitress, and you\u2019ll go back to your rooms afterward, and in the morning you\u2019ll tell the manager or the waitress what you think of their paintings. And then you\u2019ll leave, separately, without ever having exchanged a word.<\/p>

Sometimes, though, we do speak. In Basel I met an English girl named Caroline, who had been a bond trader in London, back in the days before her friends started bringing their drawings into the office and asking her what she thought of them.<\/p>

Caroline and I travelled together for a while. We drove down into Italy, visited Florence, where she told me about Stendahl Syndrome, a condition which apparently affects visitors to the city, the sheer beauty of the place simply overwhelming them, making them giddy. Neither of us experienced any symptoms, which I thought pretty much said it all.<\/p>

In Turin, we had an argument over the relative merits of an enormous landscaped garden in the grounds of a villa belonging to a man who was rumoured to be a Capo di tutti capi<\/i>. He had apparently abandoned his other activities in order to concentrate on his garden. I thought the result was utterly laughable, a fatal collision of styles from ancient Rome to Capability Brown. Caroline was entranced. Later, at our hotel, we argued violently, and the next morning Caroline drove off in a brand-new Mercedes provided by the alleged Capo<\/i>. I found a Peugeot dealer who was composing enormous, bombastic rock operas. I told him his latest magnum opus was marvellous, and left in a new car. I sometimes check out Caroline\u2019s blog, where she delights in spreading poison and lies about me.<\/p>

How many are we, those of us with the fatally-absent mutation? More than Marcin thought, but less than you might expect. In Europe there are probably a couple of thousand. Enough to fill a village, say. Around the world, maybe a couple of million. A lot of us blog, although I do not.<\/p>

It\u2019s not such a bad world, this world of clocks. There is, in truth, much art that is astonishing. Some of it is breathtaking. Generals are writing novels that, before the clocks, would have gone down in literary history. Shopgirls are producing art that challenges Leonardo and Titian and Hirst. In Caen I sat through an oratorio by a ten-year-old schoolboy which left tears running down my cheeks.<\/p>

As Marcin said, all these works were already there, in a sense, in the minds of their creators. Clocks don\u2019t make someone a great artist; what they do is unlock the impulse, conquer the writer\u2019s block, provide the enthusiasm.<\/i> They\u2019ve rewritten our genome so that we want<\/i> to be artists.<\/p>

We \u2013 I should say they <\/i>– don\u2019t want to be artists to the exclusion of all else. That would be a world out of a nightmare. Everyone carries on with their normal lives and jobs; they just want to spend their free time creating art.<\/p>

This has had some interesting side-effects. On the whole, people have better things to do with their free time than hating each other or worrying about geopolitics, and warfare around the globe has dwindled away to almost nothing. I say \u2018on the whole\u2019 and \u2018almost nothing,\u2019 because there is a small civil war going on in the Czech Republic between two groups of Dadaists over an invisibly-fine splitting of hairs about the direction of the movement, and an entirely incomprehensible insurgency in Britain which seems to revolve around the definition of science fiction. That one may be running down; a number of us posted an announcement online to the effect that we would boycott Britain until things calmed down, and calm of a kind appears to be returning. At any rate, it\u2019s been several weeks since there have been fatalities.<\/p>

In odd moments, on autobahns and motorways and autostrada and in the first-class lounges of airliners, I think about Marcin and his brave new world. He said he thought that Humanity as a whole was not so bad, that it was only the occasional asshole who gave us a bad name, and now and then, when I\u2019m not listening to someone\u2019s symphony or reviewing a novel or trying to work out whether an hallucinogenically-Turneresque watercolour has actually been hung the right way up, I do wonder whether he hasn\u2019t been largely successful. And if he has, it occurs to me that we, the critics, are the most dangerous people on Earth, because we are not distracted by the imperative to create.<\/i> If we wanted, we could rule the world. And then it usually occurs to me that we do<\/i> rule the world, in a way. And yes, it\u2019s very very nice, thanks.<\/p>

It is still not a perfect world. But it is, by any stretch of the imagination, a beautiful one. Now, if you\u2019ll excuse me, I have to get some sleep. Tomorrow I have to drive to Barcelona and tell a surrealist sculptor what I think about his new work, which in photographs appears to be made entirely from human toenail clippings.<\/p>

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@Dave Hutchinson 2026\u00a0 by kind permission<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dal\u00ed\u2019s Clocks Dave Hutchinson I was living in Gda\u0144sk back then, in a newish block of flats overlooking the Wisla just outside the Old Town. In the mornings I could sit on my balcony and eat breakfast while the fake pirate boats took tourists downriver to take photographs of the old fortifications at Westerplatte. Evenings, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-211","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":128,"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/211\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benteh.no\/dave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}