Anna Masliakova

A Missing Man

Elegy One

Knowledgeable people keep repeating that everything in the world is fleeting. And no matter how hard we try, it is utterly impossible to foresee what awaits us.

Inspector Vulkan had never suffered from insomnia throughout all his years with the Istanbul police. Yet, when he woke abruptly on that July night—which would later prove to be a momentous one—he realised at once that going back to sleep was completely out of the question. Resigning himself to the inevitable, he got out of bed and began his usual morning routine, which started with light exercise and ended with a walking meditation.

 Inspector was feeling decidedly unwell and lacked the necessary strength to take a stroll around the ancient city center. Yet since it was absolutely impossible for him to stay at home either, he put on his raincoat and galoshes and trudged through the pouring rain toward the nearest park. Despite the early hour, the streets of Istanbul were not deserted. At the same time, one could hardly say he was walking into a crowd. It appeared that while Vulkan was not the only person susceptible to the influence of hidden atmospheric energies, there were evidently few men like him.

Upon reaching a small secluded area at the foot of the hill, he spread a plastic bag over the wet bench, poured himself some hot Turkish coffee—which he, as usual, had thoughtfully brought along—and took a sip of it while holding his umbrella in his left hand and the coffee cup in his right.

Trying to alleviate stress and anxiety, Inspector turned his attention to the pleasant touch of the gentle Bosphorus breeze against his face. The exhaustion that had been accumulating for months finally took its toll. He sat motionless, staring blankly into the infinite distance beyond the landscape spreading out before him.

Author’s note: Black-and-white image. The rain gradually intensifies, creating a dense wall of water.

 

 

Elegy Two

Having weathered the pandemic and experienced at least two nervous breakdowns during recent years, Inspector Vulcan discovered that he developed a special affinity for nature. Upon entering the park, he would immediately start deep philosophical conversations with the old trees and forest spirits. More often than not he was overcome by an irresistible desire to merge with the landscape—to become an organic part of it, like the stones, the grass, and the compost.

His endless fatigue coupled with the chance to simply sit on the park bench doing nothing in particular had a hypnotic effect on him. He was unable to move—much like a field mouse, small with a dark brown stripe along its back, caught in the mesmerizing gaze of a large, cunning serpent. Raindrops puttered against the waterproof fabric of the open umbrella. There was no one else in the park.

Gradually, the impenetrable wall of rain began to clear. But instead of the familiar forest landscape, Vulcan saw… himself, sitting on the bench under the umbrella! At last, the overwhelming desire to escape the endless urban hustle had thrust him out of the meaninglessness of the “real” world. Or perhaps, conversely, mysterious forces—having witnessed his suffering—had finally taken pity on him and brought him home.

Inspector Vulcan’s Double gazed intently at his “original.”—The Other Man was deep asleep. —He was struck by the expression of absolute peace on his former face. He smiled sadly, turned on his heel, and slowly walked away. The last thing he wanted was to go back.

Author’s note: The image fades and shrinks until only a small circle in the center of the screen remains, depicting the receding figure of a man.

 

Elegy Three

Inspector Vulcan felt far better in the guise of his Double. Indeed, the world around him—reality turned inside out—took on vibrant new hues. His gait acquired a springy lightness. An interest in life began to stir.

The path led him to a chain of overgrown ponds. It crossed his mind that all that might have been created especially for him—as compensation for what he had endured—but then an elderly man with a dog appeared. Out of habit, Vulkan prepared to berate the intruder for letting his dog scare the migratory birds. But the man stopped by the pond and began feeding breadcrumbs to the ducks and ducklings that had swum over to him, while his dog stood by patiently, wagging its tail curled into a half-eaten donut. He definitely needed time to stop expecting the worst.

Feeling a little bit hungry, he hailed a taxi so as to get to the nearest café. For some reason, he found himself with no money to pay the fare, but during the conversation, it turned out that he and the driver, Ahmed, were “fellow countrymen.” That is to say, Ahmed had also once lived in the “real” world. And after congratulating Inspector on his new home, he drove him to the location for free.

The car pulled up at a large shopping mall. Since it was still early, only the hardware store on the ground floor was open. Inspector remembered that his old sofa had refused to fold up properly again that morning. And it was high time he picked out a better model.

He walked past shelves stocked with fluffy acrylic brushes and paint cans of all shapes and sizes. There even were special concoctions for creating textured finishes—exactly what he had long been looking for. Clearly, the New World suited him much better. Everything that had been missing “Out There” was found in abundance Here.

Reaching the textile section, he suddenly realized why he hadn’t found a single sofa in the shop. The thing was that he had still been trying to solve a problem from the “old” world in the New one. —And sofas didn’t break Here!

Vulkan thought with chagrin of that “Other Man”—the one sitting in the rain, lost in a deep dreamless sleep…

Author’s note: The scene is filled with color, except for the final black-and-white flashback shot.

 

 

Elegy Four

While Inspector Vulcan’s Double was examining the merchandise, the time came for the café to open. That particular section of the mall was in total darkness, save for the square of the café window glowing with warm light. He walked past the security guard on duty at the entrance without saying a word. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the man making a vague movement, but he was already inside.

Deep red ceiling chandeliers, resembling large spiders, dangled right above the tables. Vulkan noticed that there were no windows visible from the inside of the café. Mirrored walls took their place.

In one of the reflections, the image of the “Other” Inspector Vulkan flashed by. He was still asleep, sitting on the bench holding his umbrella. Only now, the trees leaned closer toward him as if trying to shield him from the storm. At some point, it even seemed to him that the “Other Man” looked less like a real person and more like a shape concocted from moss, twigs, and squirrels’ tails.

And then the vision disappeared. In its place, he saw himself sitting at a café table. The coffee had cooled to the exact temperature he liked: neither hot nor cold. He would never return “There.” They had traded places: the Other Man had become a copy destined to fade from memory soon and forever, while he was the real Inspector Vulcan. And the story of his life was just beginning.

Let the “real” world consider him “a Man Missing.” Having vanished from the lives of the others, he has—perhaps for the first time—found himself.

Author’s note: The images of the two Inspectors alternate in the mirror’s reflection, changing from black-and-white pictures to the colored footage one and vice versa. Then the images fade, and the screen turns black.

 

Elegy Five

A trip to the Theater was planned for the evening. After seven years of seclusion—initially forced, but later, amidst nervous exhaustion, voluntary—Inspector Vulcan set himself the goal of revisiting all the theaters and concert venues where he had once considered himself a regular.

The old stage of the Istanbul Theater was the last stop on his itinerary before the end of the season. Although the taxi driver had dropped him off at the parking area right by the entrance an hour before the performance, he still managed to get lost and was almost late. After hurriedly checking his coat and double-checking the route to his box with an usher, he took his seat in the front row.

The space between the rows was so narrow that it was practically non-existent, and spectators had to lift their legs above their heads and literally squeeze their way into their seats. The most striking thing, however, was that the chairs were linked in groups of three, making it impossible to move without involving the others—creating, in a sense, a so-called “tripartite basic unit of society.”

Mozart’s opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” would have completely captivated him—were it not for the woman to his left, who was in constant motion. She kept leaning forward against the box railing and then reclining against the seat back. She would cross her left leg over her right, then her right over her left. And she waved her theater program so vigorously that it made Vulcan’s eyes water. The saving grace was that nothing in the New World seemed to irritate him. It was as if he was observing everything from the outside: a copy of Inspector Vulcan had produced a copy of its own, which was watching him as he gazed from his box at the stage where the drama was being unfolded.

Author’s note: We see a hall of mirrors, in which one mirror reflects the other, and so on, ad infinitum.

 

Elegy Six

The new sensations quite unnerved him. For a moment, he felt as though he was floating in weightlessness. Exactly how many versions of the same person could there be? As fatigue and anxiety drove him further and further away from his true self, he realised that his inner anchor was slipping away, too.

He was also surprised by the interpretation of the finale of the opera. Instead of showing mercy to his arch-enemy’s son and letting him and his bride go in peace, a Turkish pasha cold-bloodedly sentenced them to death! It turned out that he was not an enlightened ruler but a cruel tyrant. Not everything in the new world was quite as it seemed at first glance …

Inspector Vulkan remained silent on the way home. Istanbul was incredibly beautiful at night. Streetlights reflected in the waters of the Bosphorus, and the sharp spires of mosques punctuated the dark sky. Yet, he could not push away the nagging feeling that all that brilliance was, in fact, rather sinister—that everything around him was somehow unreal, and people were insincere and were merely putting on an act. Even the taxi driver looked like a living corpse crawled out of the rougher corners of Chinatown.

Much later, while sitting at home, he recalled that a couple of days earlier, the “Other” Inspector had been assigned to investigate a particularly strange case. The call had come in late in the evening, and since most of the police force was on leave, he was the one appointed to the job. It appeared that the murder had taken place in the basement of a greengrocer’s shop.

A man’s corpse lay in the middle of a cheval mirror in such an unusual pose that it looked as though he had slipped while stepping out of the mirror, fallen, struck his head, and died. —Tomatoes or blood?

Author’s note: A black-and-white image of the corpse of a man lies in the center of the mirror. Surrounding him is a red pool of blood.

 

Elegy Seven

Inspector Vulcan’s Double lived in the same old apartment, yet the interior looked somehow different. He felt that all his belongings became not alienated but rather detached from him. His black cat with the one white front paw was asleep on the windowsill, curled into a donut. In place of the old sofa stood a new one with a backrest shaped like a dolphin’s fin—and, to his immense delight, there was no need to fold and unfold every morning and evening.

But he did not sleep for long. A strange knocking sound was coming from the large mirror in the hallway. Glancing into it, he saw with horror that a violent storm was raging in the world on the other side of the glass. The Other Inspector was nowhere to be seen, and the park trees were desperately trying to reach him with their long branches by way of the mirror.

Something had to be done. So, early in the morning, he headed to the station to continue the investigation. But the deeper he immersed himself into the paperwork, the stronger the impression became that everything had somehow been turned upside down—as if TIME WERE FLOWING FROM THE FUTURE INTO THE PAST. The report he had drafted the day before lay in the folder as nothing more than a blank sheet of paper. As for the books that had been kept in the top drawer of his desk, there was nothing left but empty space—since they hadn’t yet (or rather, had “no longer”) been written!

He stepped outside to get some fresh air and calm down, but even there he failed to find peace. Passersby seemed utterly detached from their surroundings. Having long ago separated from their doubles and remaining withdrawn from “reality,” they no longer suffered as they once had. Yet, it was not because the “mirror world” was kinder or more just, but because, having lost half of themselves, they experienced everything with only half the intensity. Nor could they truly feel joy anymore.

There were no real people—only upright, living corpses with atrophied emotions and reactions. That was the surest way to become part of nature rather quickly by actually turning into a fossil or compost...

The newspaper clippings crumbled in his hands, yet he managed to gather enough information to realize that the CORPSE WEDGED INSIDE THE MIRROR BELONGED TO A MAN WHO—like him—HAD UNDERSTOOD WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN THE REVERSE WORLD AND TRIED TO ESCAPE BACK but failed.

Author’s note: The black-and-white texts in books and newspapers transform into blank sheets of white paper. The light intensifies to maximum brightness.

 

 Elegy Eight

What is there to do when “reality” is slowly destroying you, the “mirror world” lulls you into a stupor and renders you motionless, and all the attempts to flee lead to a certain death? Perhaps animals, unlike humans, have a better grasp of the true nature of things. Whenever the Inspector looked at his sleeping black cat with the white front paw, he felt as though his furry friend existed in two worlds at once, enjoying life without taking it too seriously.

He stepped into the café on the ground floor of the shopping mall and took a sip of Turkish coffee. In the reflection of the mirrored walls, the image of the “real” Inspector Vulcan shimmered faintly—still sitting on the bench, holding an umbrella in his left hand and a coffee cup in his right. But what could he do? He had no desire to share the fate of the Corpse in the Mirror...

One day, as he was walking along a narrow city street of the “old world,” an elderly woman approached him and asked him to walk her to a local bakery. She wanted to buy some pancakes with cottage cheese, but unfortunately, they didn’t have any, so Vulcan had no choice but to offer to walk her home. They stopped several times along the way, and finally, upon reaching a nearby bench, he called a taxi for her. The woman was grateful, but while they were waiting for the car, a man approached them, smelling strongly of alcohol, even though it wasn’t noon yet. He helped the woman into the taxi and, upon learning that Vulcan could not accompany her—and that, in fact, he was already late for an appointment—accused him of being unfeeling. Yet no one remembered that many people had walked past the woman or flatly refused to help her before Vulcan stepped in.

We live in two worlds simultaneously, as it were. In “reality,” people judge us by their own standards. They mock their own flaws in us and, in doing so, feel better about themselves. But the effect is fleeting, and they are forced to repeat the maneuver over and over again. Meanwhile, they carefully conceal their personal imperfections. It is hardly surprising that the “real” police quickly closed the case of the “Man’s Corpse Found in the Mirror”—citing a lack of evidence—since his influential relatives wanted the whole affair to be forgotten as soon as possible. Meanwhile, in this inner, Inverted World, everything is effectively turned inside out: sorrows no longer touch us, yet we are also incapable of feeling joy. And sooner or later, as the investigation revealed, one is overcome by the strong desire to escape back to Reality.

In American movies, a superhero capable of handling anything usually comes to the rescue. In Indian cinema, by contrast, everyone first breaks into song and dance until the adversary collapses from sheer exhaustion. So, what would our mutual friend Inspector Vulcan do?

He walked up to the mirrored wall, closed his eyes, and stepped forward.

Author’s note: The mirror shows the reflection of a receding figure.

 

Elegy Nine

Much later, while sitting at home on his old sofa in the company of his black cat with a white front paw, a sudden realization struck him. A person is only as strong as their WEAKEST, HIDDEN SIDE allows them to be. In a sense, each of us is our own superhero who sometimes needs to take a break in order to find his (or hers) TRUE SELF THAT HAS GONE MISSING amidst the hustle and bustle of daily cares and to embrace every facet of his (or hers) personality: visible and hidden, real and imagined, human and feline.

Author’s note: Camera zooms in on the cat’s fluffy face.

Curtain.