FUTURES

himself on one of the strips of grass between the garbage cans and
the parked cars and began to portray his environment in all its
bizarre detail. He painted the apartment buildings, the mall with its
shoppers, the high rise, and the House of Silverbacks.
But one day – he was painting a family of four who sat in a
shopping cart and were moving it forward with their own breath –
René felt the urgent need to relieve himself. He was conscientious
enough to interrupt his work to make absolutely sure that no accident
would happen – leaving the father and the mother he was depicting
headless, although the children’s feeble puffs would not be powerful
enough to move the cart by themselves. He hurried to the building
that contained his family’s living quarters and his former studio, and
pushed the elevator button. As the boy waited for the elevator to
descend from the 70th floor, his urge became so strong that he had to
hop from one leg to the other. When he was finally riding up in the
elevator, René was so desperate that he had to pinch himself hard
in order not to burst. The pain he inflicted on himself momentarily
distracted him from his urge to urinate. But this did not suffice, since
the apartment of the Magritte family was on the sixty-first floor
and the elevator ascended even slower than it had descended. René
might as well have remained downstairs, for by the time he finally
stood in front of the door to the apartment, his pants were dripping.
Needless to say, Madame&Monsieur Magritte forbade him
to paint from nature for several weeks. This interdiction remained
in force until René could convince them that such a calamity would
never happen again.
And indeed, he became much more cautious. For one, he
refrained from putting Cognac in his breakfast coffee, and gave
up the recommended glass of wine before lunch. Moreover, he took
up painting in close proximity to the elevator and was careful to
note even the slightest urgency of mictoration, which meant, in the
language of the time, having to pee. At the first hint, he threw down
the paintbrush and dashed off in the direction of the elevator,
regardless of the fact that the landscape he was painting – which
was, peculiarly, situated within an interior scene – still lacked all
lighting. But as he approached the elevator, he had to witness the
doors slowly closing on him. As the artist hammered against the
closed doors with his fair painter’s hands, they merely responded
with a metallic thud, for the elevator was already making its way
back to the upper floors.
Again it took several weeks until René regained permission
to work on one of the strips of grass. Initially, Madame&Monsieur
Magritte had even thought that giving him another chance was out
of the question, for it seemed that painting had something to do with
his ongoing stained state. René’s honest effort, his willingness to
forego all stimulating drink, which beset him with the occasional
withdrawal symptoms, finally brought Madame&Monsieur around.
It was not least the residents of the housing development who
contributed to this decision: they had become quite accustomed to
the painting lad with the strained expression on his face.
With a strict countenance, Madame&Monsieur reminded their
son what was at stake, but René was fully aware of this, and he
entered the courtyard of the housing development just as Adam&Eve
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would have entered the Garden of Eden had they been given one
last permission to enter it after the incident with the apple.
René swore by all his role models and his future progeny to use
this chance to the best of his abilities.
As a first precaution, he moved his work space to a piece
of lawn abutting the elevator shaft, regardless of the trash bins
with their intensive smell of organic waste. Following this, he calculated
the approximate point in time when the modicum of firewater,
which he secretly imbibed, would make itself noticed. When the time
came, he completed, with several apt swipes, the propellers on the
heads of the black birds on his canvas, which were smoking cigarette
butts on the neighboring lawn, laid the brush aside and calmly
walked towards the elevator. Only on the last meters did he begin
to trot to avoid unnecessarily wasting time. Even if the elevator were
on the top floor, everything would go smoothly this time.
On the piece of paper taped to the elevator door, René
read that the maintenance would take until after lunch, at the latest.
In his despair, René decided to do it the way he had observed it with
Remy. The clever dog would look for a semi-dense shrub, and
René found one, in front of which the mall’s delivery van was parking
that day. Just as he was beginning to go about his business, the
van set off for its delivery, and the ever-sober janitor grabbed René
by the collar and eagerly proclaimed that he would immediately
deliver him to Madame&Monsieur so that he could receive his just
punishment. This was the end of his plein air painting, and the young
artist was left with nothing but the realization that, even with a
mere glance through the window, one can see in one’s head what
is occurring outside or what will occur there or what could occur
there. Had he not, given the natural state of so many things, already
created his own interpretation of it all?
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