Read by Patsy Prince
The envelope arrived at Olena’s desk at 12.01 exactly. It had all the markings of important and urgent work. She opened it carefully, and inside found a single photograph.
It was an image taken just outside the Party Congress Building. There were two men in the centre, seemingly overflowing with happiness at some glorious news. A banner above them declared the cause of their jubilation; apparently the nation had constructed a record number of tractors that year. The two men themselves she recognised instantly. One was the Great Leader, the Dear Father of the nation. The other was Konstantin Gregorin, chief minister in a dozen departments.
A note was also inside the envelope. It read simply “No more Gregorin.”
When facing a challenge, Olena liked to look at the large framed picture that hung above her desk. It was indubitably her masterpiece; perhaps the single work that had most established her reputation. It depicted an International Peace Conference in a far-off decadent capital; the Great Leader surrounded by cowering foreign rulers as a local crowd looked on in awe.
It did not matter that an attack of gout and paranoia had meant that at the last minute the Great Leader had pulled out of even attending the Peace Conference. Olena’s work had managed to place him right in the centre, taking full charge of the proceedings. Every aspect of the picture had had to be retouched or altered, and she felt she knew every face in that crowd, every background building and street in that far-off city. Whatever difficulties erasing Gregorin would pose, they were nothing compared to what she had previously achieved.
So two minutes later she was in the department’s main studio. There she took a photographic copy of the image so perfectly that few could have told which was the original. She prepared an array of inks, shades of black and grey that matched those in the photograph. Meticulous though these tasks were, they were nothing compared to her next.
From her jacket pocket, Olena produced a beautiful silver scalpel and began work on the original photograph. The tiniest sleek edge of the blade pricked the surface of the image, as slowly and delicately she started to trace around the form of Gregorin.
She began to feel the resistance when the scalpel approached the outline of his constellation of medals. This was always the moment where the task got harder, when the figure in the picture finally realised what was happening. She sensed a squirming movement beneath the blade.
“No, you don’t,” she muttered under her breath, and stared into the defiant black-and-white eyes of Gregorin glaring from the photograph. “You won’t stop me.” Obviously, she was not talking to the actual Gregorin. The exact fate of that once-powerful statesman was unknown, but likely he was lying dead in the dark basement of a Secret Police building. Maybe by this point his lifeless corpse had already been flung into some anonymous furnace.
No, this was the Gregorin of the image. The once-eternal Gregorin captured for the ages. These two-dimensional versions never liked to be removed from what was meant to be their place in history. She placed her thumb firmly over his face, and continued her incision. He never stopped struggling, making the task all the more tricky. But Olena knew that the key skills to success were the same: patience and a steady hand. Eventually, the tip of her scalpel found its way back to the precise point where she had started.
Years ago when she first got this job, she’d felt pity for those she removed from official photographs. She had obtained a large fishtank from a benevolent middle-aged woman who worked in Acquisitions and started placing the unwanted two-dimensional people in there. Every morning the first thing she did when she arrived at work was check on the tank, watching the recently detached as they swam around. Just after removal, they would race about, driven by either anger or despair. As the days went by they would gradually lose purpose, and begin floating aimlessly. Eventually, they would fade away.
Time had taught her that pity was pointless. If something had to be removed, better it was done swiftly and completely, and never seen again. So when she lifted the struggling Gregorin from the photo she swiftly dropped him in a nearby bowl filled with turpentine, acetone and benzene. For a split second, this Gregorin made one more wiggle of resistance before his whole body began to fizzle. Then he dissolved into nothing.
Olena admired her handiwork. This was truly a job she was good at, worth the sacrifices it had taken to achieve. But this was only one part of the larger task. The scene’s setting outside an iconic building meant she would have to use a photograph of the same building, taken from the exact same spot, to fill in the Gregorin-shaped gap.
The ideal camera for this was highly advanced and of considerable value to the State. Therefore there was absolutely no way she would be allowed to remove it from the building unaccompanied. A large glowering man with a particularly hairy moustache was tasked with accompanying her and ensuring she didn’t steal it. Then another, near-identical large glowering man with an equally hairy moustache was assigned to keep an eye on the first man. Just in case he stole it. Olena waited patiently for the bureaucracy to arrange this. However, when she was informed that a further meeting had been called to discuss whether a third security official could be requisitioned to keep an eye on the first and second men, Olena decided to take her chances. She quietly lifted the camera and slipped out of the building.
The glorious low summer sun shone through the city as she made her way to the Party Congress building, the large poplar trees casting elongated shadows across the wide boulevards. As she crossed the Bridge of the Glorious Revolution she saw a group of people moving on the riverbank ahead. An old man was playing a popular folk-tune on a worn balalaika, and around him people had gathered to dance. Olena stopped on the bridge and looked down, carefully observing the gathering. She felt a detached alienation from the scene as she watched the dancers form themselves into couples, wrapped in each other’s arms. But then Olena’s eyes were drawn to a striking woman, clasped in the arms of a young man with an army haircut.
Despite herself she could not help but stare. As she watched, she imagined the movement of their dancing sliced into a long line of static images. She pictured all of these, single frames strung out one-by-one, each brief moment of time frozen. Olena pictured herself drawing the silver scalpel from her pocket, and laboriously going through each image in turn, carving out the young soldier. Then, with her task completed, she imagined running those images back together, speeding them up like film in a projector, until finally reality was restored. Only now the pretty woman was dancing alone, her arms holding nothing but air, yet her joyful smile undiminished.
Suddenly the old man struck the wrong note and she was jolted out of her happy daydream. And at that moment Olena felt a great lonely sadness and she hurried the rest of the way across the bridge.
At the People’s Congress, her misery was compounded by the discovery that the light was all wrong. The intensity and angles of the sunlight and shadows would not match the original. When the lighting didn’t match, people might be unable to explain what was wrong with the doctored photo, but they would instinctively know it was unreal.
She looked at the sky. Maybe if she waited a few hours, the sun would move into a position that might make a photo usable. So she stood, silent and still, outside the People’s Congress with her camera, waiting.
It didn’t cross her mind that this might be illegal until the police turned up.
Three uniformed men with cold, motionless faces informed her that such activity was forbidden without permission. They demanded her name, her address, and who she worked for. And when the guard with the smallest head but the hairiest moustache had returned from checking this information, their faces became even colder. A missing camera had been reported. But they had dug up more than that. A life before she had been re-educated at the corrective institution. A history she thought had gone forever, a mental degeneracy she had excised from herself and watch fizzle away. So that she could become a good citizen. So that she could do this job.
The guard with the largest head and the thinnest moustache looked up from his clipboard and slowly panned his eyes up and down her. Then he smiled a cold smile. Stepping forward, he informed her that there was another crime under investigation: approaching the People’s Congress in possession of unauthorised weaponry. And with a flourish he stepped forward, reached into her pocket and removed her silver scalpel.
Olena felt like the world in front of her and the world behind her had suddenly rushed together, trapping her in this moment as if between two planes of glass. She panicked and jerkily tried to move and to her surprise, she did.
The three security men, it seemed, were not so lucky. They stood in front of her, trapped and motionless, one caught at the very moment of saying something, mouth frozen just before a sound could emerge.
She hesitated, then walked up to them. She plucked her scalpel from the guard’s clutched hand. He wobbled, but his posture remained unchanged. Not knowing what else to do, she waited to see if they’d start moving again. As she waited, a small crowd of passers-by gathered, observing the men.
“Such fine discipline,” one remarked.
“It’s a test!” declared another. “To see what we’d do if we think the Security can’t move.”
“If they want proof we’ll behave, let’s show them!” a man shouted proudly, and the crowd all began obediently to stand watch over the frozen soldiers.
All except Olena. This mob in front of the building meant there was no chance of getting her shot. She slunk back to her place of work, where an angry bureaucrat shouted at her for taking a camera, for which she would have to fill in several lengthy forms. And then promise not to do it again. For which there were more forms. Plus they had become aware of her previous mental disease, and that meant they had to revise her security status, requiring the completion of still more forms. And she wouldn’t be allowed to return home until every single one had been completed.
After six hours and seventeen forms Olena decided she’d had enough. She returned to her office and stood in front of her masterpiece. She took out her scalpel and, carefully and patiently, she began to trace out the outline of her own body. It was surprisingly swift work – men had often told her she had an uninteresting figure – and before the final rays of sunshine disappeared over the horizon she was gone.
Nobody else in the department ever looked at the photos on the walls. So nobody spotted the extra figure in the crowd at an International Peace Conference in a far-off decadent capital. Or noticed when, a week later, she had disappeared into the city.
(c) Alan Graham, 2019
Alan Graham studied "Creative Writing" and "Economics" at UEA and is still unsure which discipline relies on make-believe the most. More of his stories can be found at www.alangrahamwords.com
Patsy Prince trained at RADA and KCL. Recent film includes: The Bad Nun, Mummy Reborn and Culture Shock. Theatre includes: Voices from September 11th (Old Vic) and Swallows (OFS Theatre Oxford). She also co-hosted 'Open', a podcast on The Women's Radio Station. Patsy is an ex-lawyer, ex-parliamentary candidate and ex-hotelier, now excelling at being a bad wife, drinking too much gin and expanding her collection of millinery.
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