The Museum of Modern Love(24)

At 3.33 am she closed the laptop and switched off the bedside light. The day was running towards her, coming at her from Europe, travelling relentlessly on and she must sleep while she could. She wished she had melatonin. Something about the performance was turning her into an insomniac. She wondered where Marina slept in Manhattan. Did she have sleeping tablets? Marina who could not take a nap through the long afternoons, couldn’t pee or stretch or yawn or sneeze or roll her shoulders or tap her feet or scratch her nose. What were her nights like?

Brittika set her alarm to wake her at 8 am, giving her time to grab a blueberry muffin before she lined up outside the gallery for day thirty-five. If she was lucky, she’d get to sit again today.





HERE IS MARINA, AGED FOUR, in Belgrade. This is a true story. This was, I like to think, her first public performance. Playing to an audience of one. Me.

Marina was seated at the kitchen table. Her grandmother said she would be back. But already it had been a long time. Her grandmother had gone to the shop. The shop was not far. The shop was down the stairs, past the little garden and the barking dog. Wait in the queue. Talk to the other women. Talk about bread. Talk about sausage. Talk about the neighbours. Finish shopping and talking. Then, holding the bag, walk past the little garden and the barking dog back up the stairs. Put the key in the door.

Marina heard people coming up and down the stairs but none of them turned the key in the lock. None of them was the sound of her grandmother arriving home. She thought about going outside and asking if anyone had seen her grandmother but she was not tall enough to turn the handle on the door. She could get on a chair to do it. But she did not. She sat.

Her grandmother had said to sit and wait. So she sat and waited. She could hear the sound of a fly caught between the glass and the curtain. She could hear her own breathing. The tap in the bathroom dripped. The pipes creaked and gurgled. Someone upstairs was playing music. Soon it would be time to light the candles.

Marina observed the glass of water on the table. She was very thirsty now but she did not touch it. She thought that if she drank the glass of water, her grandmother would not come back. She wanted to pee. She needed to pee. But she would not pee. If her grandmother didn’t come back who would live with her? Her mother and father might take her to live with them and the new baby, when it arrived. She did not want to live with a baby. She wanted to live here. She wanted her grandmother to come home.

Her grandmother had gone. The door had closed. The door would open again. Her grandmother would come back. If she sat very still.

The clock ticked on the wall. It was the sound of no time passing. In the glass of water she saw tiny specks of colour. The table through the glass was moving as if it wasn’t really a table at all.

‘What are you doing?’ her grandmother asked. Suddenly she was there and Marina had not heard the footsteps, nor the key in the door. Her grandmother smelled like outside.

‘I said to sit and wait, but I didn’t mean you couldn’t leave the chair. They didn’t have what I needed. I had to take the trolleybus. But then on the way home it broke down.’

Marina gazed at the face of her grandmother, full of dust and light.

‘There, there. You must be hungry. Tsssk. To think you sat there the whole time. What were you thinking?’

Marina observed the glass of water, reached for it and took a sip. There were no words. Her grandmother had come back and the hours crafted from silence were over.

I looked at that small dark-haired, dark-eyed girl and I thought, ‘Bravo.’





HEALAYAS KNEW HER VOICE HAD always been one of her best resources. It was the voice that had convinced teachers she was not lying. It was the voice that soothed her mother when she had been suspicious. With singing, in media and with her lovers, it was her weapon. She kept it supple with daily exercises. Coaching had helped to free it from the confines of her French accent, making her completely accessible to any American ear. Now her vocal lessons were focused on maintaining her longevity: ensuring she didn’t strain her voice or develop habits that would limit her lifespan as a singer or as a media personality.

The microphone was her metier. In the softness of the recording studio, on a TV set under lights, on the stage, the tension between her mind, her mouth and her body was palpable. She often came away with sweat drying on the skin between her shoulder blades. With Arnold Keeble she had gained more nerve.

Being black, raised Muslim in Paris, she had learned early the peril of defying men. She was too tall, too rebellious. It had not done her any favours. But as an international student at NYU, then as an intern, and through her early jobs at various radio and television stations, she had discovered she could make men pliable. Keeble had been brusque, arrogant, rude even when they had first met. He was handsome and famously opinionated, irritating but also often wise. She had found herself drawn to him almost unwittingly, not recognising the early signs of attraction—the multiple wardrobe changes before going in to do a show with him, the part of her that lost concentration as she was prepping. It was lingering by the red peppers in Wholefoods and imagining him at her table that did it. It was because he was powerful, she told herself. The most powerful person she had worked with to date.

In the audition, when she’d surprised him by making him laugh, he’d finally been charming. He didn’t think they’d make him have a co-star. Why would he need one? But for all his power, he was another pawn in the ratings game. When she started, he spun her questions back at her. But she had measured up. Especially during the making of the TV show. The art world was a savage and self-serving oligarchy with a few key players pulling all the strings. Keeble was one of them in New York. What mattered here was anyone who could make you famous. Gagosian, Zwirner, they all wanted Arnold Keeble to review their shows. They were inviting her too now. The TV series would be out in June and she knew it was good. There would be more invitations. Keeble might look old in comparison to her. She smiled at the thought, but not unkindly. She had always liked older men. Her father complex, no doubt.