The Museum of Modern Love(3)
He took the E train and got off at Fifth Avenue, crossed the street and walked into the Museum of Modern Art. With the membership Lydia bought them each year, he skipped the lengthy queue for tickets. The narrow corridor to the Burton exhibition was jammed with people. Instantly he was surrounded by the warmth of bodies, the gabble of voices. Within a few minutes the illustrations of stitched blue women, their wide-eyed panic and long-limbed emptiness, mingled with the odour and proximity of warm bodies, began to make Levin nauseous. He saw with relief an exit sign. Pushing open the door, he found himself in an empty corridor. He stopped, leaned against the wall and breathed.
He intended, at that moment, to go downstairs and sit in the sculpture garden to enjoy the sunshine. Then the murmur from the atrium drew him in.
IN THE ATRIUM OF MOMA, visitors were observing a woman in a long red dress sitting at a table. It was a blond wood table with blond wood chairs, as if it had come from IKEA. Opposite the woman in the red dress, a younger woman sat wearing a lightweight beige coat. The two women were gazing into each other’s eyes.
Levin noticed white tape on the floor marking out a square. People rimmed this square. Some were standing, others were sitting cross-legged, and all of them were watching the two women at its centre.
Levin heard a small girl ask, ‘Mom, is that lady plastic?’
‘No, of course she’s not,’ the mother replied in a hushed voice.
‘What is she, then?’ the girl asked. ‘Mom? Mom?’
The mother had no answer and her gaze did not leave the spectacle in front of her.
Levin could see the child’s point. The woman in the red dress was like plastic. Her skin looked as if the floodlights had bleached her to alabaster.
Suddenly, without any cue, the young woman got up and left the table. The woman in the long dress closed her eyes and bowed her head, but remained seated. After some moments a man sat down in the empty chair. The woman now raised her head and opened her eyes to look directly at him.
The man had a crumpled face with untidy grey hair and a short hooked nose. He looked small opposite the woman. The two of them gazed into each other’s eyes. More than gazing, Levin thought. Staring. The woman did not smile. She hardly even blinked. She was entirely still.
The man rearranged his feet and his hands twitched on his lap. But his head and eyes were very still as he looked back at the woman. He sat like that for maybe twenty minutes. Levin found himself absorbed by this spectacle, unwilling to leave. When the man finally left the chair, Levin watched him walk to the back of the atrium and lean his forehead against the wall. Levin wanted to go ask the man what had happened as he sat. How had it felt? But to do so, he realised, would be like asking a stranger what he prayed for.
By then another woman—middle-aged, broad-faced, tortoiseshell glasses—was sitting. Levin moved towards the black lettering on the wall that read: The Artist is Present—Marina Abramovi?. The text beneath was obscured by the crowd entering and exiting the room.
A professional photographer appeared to be documenting everyone who came and went from the table through a long lens mounted on a tripod. Levin nodded to him and the young man smiled briefly. He wore black pants and a black turtleneck, a three-day growth on his perfect jawline. When you lived in the Village you could be forgiven for thinking that cantilevered cheekbones and sculptured bodies were taking over the world.
The middle-aged woman sitting opposite the person Levin assumed was Marina Abramovi? had never been beautiful. She left after only a few minutes and the crowd took the opportunity to dissipate. Levin heard comments as people made their way to the stairs.
‘Is that all that happens? Does she just sit?’
‘Don’t you want to see the Picassos?’
‘Do you think there’s any chance we’ll get a table? My feet are killing me.’
‘Do you really want to try to get to M&M’s World today?’
‘Have you seen the Tim Burton? It’s so crowded.’
‘Is there a restroom on this floor?’
‘What time was she meant to be here?’
Levin returned to the side of the square where he could see both people in profile once more. He sat down on the floor. A young man now sat opposite the woman. He was strikingly handsome with luminous eyes, a wide mouth and shoulder-length curls, the face of an angel sent to visit dying children. Levin was interested to see if the woman would respond to this aesthetic but she didn’t, as far as he could see. She maintained the exact same gaze she’d been giving everyone else. She gazed gently and intently. Her body didn’t move. She sat very straight with her hands in her lap. From time to time her eyelids blinked but nothing else.
A hush descended on the atrium. It became evident that the young man was weeping. It wasn’t a dramatic gesture. Tears were running down his face while his glistening angel eyes continued to gaze at the woman. After some time, the woman began to weep in the same silent passive way. The weeping went on as if they could both see they must settle for losing something. Levin looked about and realised the atrium had quietly filled again and everyone was staring at the two people.
Levin thought there ought to be music. The woman in red was surrounded by the crowd and she was alone. It was utterly public but intensely private. A woman beside Levin pulled out her handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Catching his glance, she smiled self-consciously. Along the row of faces watching the performance, Levin saw that many eyes were wet with tears.