Vishnik emptied his glass and poured another. Lom wondered just how drunk he was. And how long since he’d had an audience like this.
‘But before they went,’ Vishnik continued, ‘one of them, a forest god, made a copy of the world, the whole world, as it was at the moment before the first angel fell to earth. It was a pocket world, a world in stasis. Everything squeezed up into a tiny box. A packet of potential that would exist outside space and time, containing not things themselves but the potential for things. Possibilities. Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I guess so.’
‘The idea was,’ said Vishnik, ‘that this other future, the future that could not now be, in our world, was to be kept safe. Waiting. A reserve. A fall-back. A cupboard. A seed. That’s the Pollandore. That’s the legend, anyway.’
‘But what happened to it, Raku?’ said Maroussia. ‘Where did it go?’
‘The people of Lezarye kept it safe for a while, but in the end the Vlast took it.’
‘Yes,’ said Maroussia. She was leaning forward. Looking at Vishnik intently. ‘But what did they do with it? Where is it now?’
Vishnik shrugged.
‘They tried to destroy it,’ he said, ‘but they could not. It was lost. Why are you asking me this, Maroussia? These are old forgotten things.’
‘I want to find it.’
‘Find it?’ Vishnik looked startled. ‘Fuck.’
‘Yes. And please don’t tell me it doesn’t exist. I don’t want to hear that again.’
‘But… It’s a good story, yes. A symbol. Truth in a picture. But what makes you think this? That it actually exists?’
Maroussia hesitated. Lom tried to read her expression but couldn’t. She was looking at Vishnik with a pale and troubled look.
‘Things have been… happening,’ she said. ‘Things have been coming… to my mother. From the forest. She was there once, long ago, before I was born, and something happened. I don’t know what. But she always used to talk about the Pollandore. And now… Things happen in the city. I see… stuff that isn’t there… only it’s more real than what is there. It’s like glimpses of a different version of the world. It’s as if the Pollandore was trying to open. That’s what it feels like. That’s what it is.’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not saying this right.’
But Vishnik was hardly listening any more.
‘Oh, my darling girl!’ he said. ‘You see these things too? I thought I was the only one. And you think it’s the Pollandore? That’s… that’s… I hadn’t seen that, but it could be. It could be so. What an idea that is. Fuck. Yes. But—’
‘Raku? Do you mean you know what I’m talking about?’ said Maroussia. ‘Fuck,’ said Vishnik. ‘I could hug you. I could fucking hug you.’
‘Could somebody tell me, please,’ said Lom, ‘just what the hell you two are talking about?’
‘Tell you?’ said Vishnik. ‘Fuck. Show you.’ He stood up and lurched unsteadily in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Raku?’ said Lom. ‘What are you—’
‘Wait,’ said Vishnik. ‘This is what I was going to show you anyway. Wait.’
Lom and Maroussia sat for a moment in awkward silence while Vishnik rummaged in the other room and came back with a large round hatbox. He dumped it on the low table and took off the lid.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Look.’
The box contained photographs. Hundreds of them. Vishnik shuffled through them, picking out one after another.
‘See?’ said Vishnik. ‘See?’
The photographs were odd and beautiful. A light in a window at dusk, shining from a derelict building. A penumbra of gleaming mist about a house. A great dark cloud in the sky. There was a sad magic in them all. It was in the sunlight on a street corner, in the ripples in a pool of rain on the pavement, in the way the light caught the moss on a tree. Gleams and glimpses. Tracks and traces. There was a purity of purpose in Vishnik’s work that was strangely moving.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ said Vishnik, pointing to one picture. ‘That building there. See it. It does not exist. It never did. I photographed it, but it’s not there. I have been back. Nothing.’ He picked up another. His face was flushed. His breath ripe with brandy. ‘See this burned-out store? There was no fire. See this alleyway? Its not on any map. See this island? There is no island in this water. And this couple has no children. I know them, Vissarion. They live here. But see… there… that child?’
Maroussia was looking through the photographs intently, staring at each one with a frown of concentration. She said nothing.
‘And these,’ Vishnik was saying, opening a small package and laying the contents out on the table. ‘These are my specials. My very fucking absolutely specials.’
The first picture was a street scene, but the familiar world had been torn open and reconstructed all askew. The street skidded. It toppled and flowed. All the angles were wrong. The ground tilted forwards, tipping the people towards the camera. It wasn’t an illusion of perspective, the people knew it was happening. A bearded man and an old woman threw up their arms and wailed. A baby flew out of its mother’s arms.
Maroussia picked up the picture and stared at it for a long time.
‘Oh Raku,’ she whispered. ‘This is it. Yes. This is it.’
Raku went to sit next to her.
‘How often do you see this?’ he said quietly.
‘Not often,’ said Maroussia. ‘Sometimes. You?’
‘All the fucking time. But then I look for it. Every day.’
‘How long have you been doing this, Raku?’
‘Two years,’ said Vishnik. ‘Maybe more. Other people are seeing it too, I’m sure of it. It’s not the kind of thing you talk about though.’
Lom remembered the woman in the paper, the mother who had killed her children. The floors keep opening, that was what she’d said. Will no one stop it? He looked through the other pictures. Vishnik’s specials. One showed an interior, a hotel bar, but the walls of the room were broken open to the elements and the ceiling was studded with stars. A woman’s head was floating upside down in the corner of the picture, smiling. The barman, from the waist up, floated in mid-air, while his legs — were they his? — danced at the other end of the room. In another, a girl was descending like a messenger from the sky to milk a luminous cow. In her ecstasy at the lights blazing across the black night, she had left her head behind. The whole city was ripping open at the seams.
‘You made these?’ said Lom.
‘All the time,’ said Vishnik.’Always.’ He picked one out and showed it to Maroussia. ‘This is today’s. It’s a good one.’
She looked at it and passed it to Lom. The print was still damp. It had been taken in a café or a bakery, something like that. There was a girl in a black dress floating in the air. Up near the ceiling. The top had come off the counter: it was up there with her.
‘These are good,’ said Lom. ‘How do you do it?’
‘What, you think these are fakes?’ said Vishnik.
‘Well—’
‘Fuck off with fakes. Of course they’re not fucking fakes. This is what’s happening. Out there. This is the city. Maroussia has seen this.’ He looked at her. ‘No? Am I not right?’
‘Yes,’ said Maroussia. ‘It’s the Pollandore.’
‘See?’ said Vishnik. ‘Shit. Why would I make such stuff up? Why do fakes? Fuck, Vissarion. You’ve been a policeman too long.’
Maroussia stared at Lom.
‘What?’ she said. ‘What did he say? You? You’re the police?’