Whatever he was holding made it between my lips and I swallowed reflexively.
I’m not sure I can describe what happened next without it sounding like a 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.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked.
“Can’t say, I’m afraid,” Marcin said, reaching a hand down to me. “There are copyright issues. You need a shower.”
I looked down at my lap. “Hm,” I said.
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.
Stepping out of the shower, I smelled coffee. Marcin had obviously decided to make himself at home.
“Coffee,” I said, walking into the kitchen towelling my hair.
Marcin was sitting at the table, a steaming mug in front of him. “You don’t want to drink coffee after what I just gave you,” he said. “Your heart couldn’t take it.”
“I just want to taste it,” 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’t have the language to describe the experience.
I put the mug down and sat across the table from him, draping the towel around my neck. “How long is this going to last?”
He shrugged. “Different subjects metabolise it differently. If you’re in the median, you’ve got another hour and a half or so, then you’ll be back to normal, but without the hangover. In about twelve hours you’ll crash and sleep like a baby.”
“Have you got any more?”
He looked levelly at me. “What 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’ve got any more.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “Human trials?”
“We’ve just started testing it on lab animals,” he said.
“You’re giving it to monkeys.”
“Primates next year. So far we’ve been giving it to rats.” He shook his head at the expression on my face. “Did it work?”
“Hell, yes,” I said.
“Well then,” he said, and took a drink of coffee. He put the mug back down on the table. “I’ve been taking it for the past six months, on and off. I know it’s not dangerous.”
I was appalled, which with my current clarity of mind was even worse than it might normally have been. “You had no right to do that,” I said. “But thank you.”
He inclined his head.
“And thanks for cleaning up.” I could smell the individual ingredients of the soap and disinfectant he’d used to clean the mess I’d made.
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
I said, “If you’ve been taking it for six months, you must have a steady supply.”
“Jarek,” he said, “stop it. 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’ll have to be patient.”
I looked around the flat. It seemed as if I had never looked at it properly before. “This is genuine doors of perception stuff, isn’t it,” I said wonderingly.
“Jarek,” he said. “Jarek. Look at me, Jarek.”
I looked at him.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I feel marvellous,” I told him. “I thought we’d established that.”
He shook his head irritably. “No, 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?”
I shrugged. “No.”
“No urge to jot down some brilliant ideas for new houses?”
I shook my head.
Marcin scowled and drank some more coffee.
“What?” I said. “I’ve never felt so well in my entire life, you tell me it’s only going to last another…” I looked at the clock on the microwave “…hour and a quarter, and I’m wasting it answering stupid questions. I should be…” I stood up. “Fuck you, Marcin. I’m going to enjoy this while it lasts.”
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 had never looked as beautiful as it did on that autumn morning.
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’t 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’s 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 ulica Mariacka and looking at everything.
In the end, I compromised. We went up Mariacka towards the Cathedral and I couldn’t 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 day.
All the time, Marcin was talking, but I was barely listening. I checked my watch. “Restaurant,” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Restaurant. I’ve only got forty minutes left.” I looked around me. Crowds of tourists from all over northern Europe, tall old buildings, stall after stall selling amber jewellery and knickknacks, coffee bars.
Marcin sighed. “Have you been listening to me?” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head and grabbed me by the sleeve. “Here,” he said, and he dragged me down a side street.
“No,” I said, realising where we were going. “That’s a terrible place. No, I’ve got a better idea.”
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 table top and checking my watch waiting for the food to arrive.
Marcin sat watching me with a sour look on his face. “You know,” he said, “I wish I’d never given you that stuff.”
“I don’t,” I told him. “This is the best thing that’s happened to me in… oh, ever such a long time. When are you going to put it on the market?”
“It probably won’t be all that widely available,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow.