замечательно, she says, which means remarkable, in Russian. Once the painting had been completed, it was hung upside down, so that he could never again see himself as he truly was. To look at life in the face, to know it for what it is, to love it for what it is, and then to put it away, she had written, as he repeats these words to himself, just as they come back to him. His best friend too, after enduring excruciating suffering, often writes incomprehensible, even incomplete, sentences on small scraps of paper that she holds in one hand while walking through crowded streets; she also cries on the phone, sometimes. Замечательно, he doesn’t know if he says it the right way, but he likes the sound of this word. The old woman was dying of cancer and in sheer agony that day, so he lay down next to her and closed his eyes, since there was nothing else to do, even, as to comfort her. Walking back under the rain, walking towards the metro, his skull was bending down under his top hat, the kind of hat that few still wear nowadays, and his feet went staggering somehow on the sidewalk. Remarkable, he was probably not at all, but into his madness.
Ivan de Monbrison is a person affected by strong psychicatric disorders that prevent him from having what others may call a “normal” life. He has found writing to be an exit to this prison. Or maybe it is a window from which – like an inmate – he can see a small square of blue sky above his head. His writing often reflects the never-ending chaos within him, but contrary to this mental chaos, the paper and the pen give him the opportunity to materialize this in a concrete and visible form. Writing can feel like a slow death, but it’s better than mere suicide in the end.
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