The Museum of Modern Love(34)
‘Sure. Yes. Fine.’
‘I’m kind of busy.’
‘Gramercy Tavern? There’s something I need to discuss with you.’
‘Dad, there’s nothing to—’
‘Please, Alice. I really need to see you.’
She sighed. ‘Oh, so you call after all this time, after all my messages, and you need to see me?’
‘Just a father wanting to have dinner with his daughter.’
There was another sigh.
‘Maybe Sunday.’
‘Seven o’clock?’
‘I guess so.’
‘See you then,’ said Levin, and then, though she was gone, he said, ‘Thank you.’
He pushed the boxes flat again and put them back in the closet. At any moment Yolanda would arrive. It suddenly occurred to Levin that he didn’t know how Yolanda was paid. How was she reimbursed for the food she bought each week? Ever since Lydia had left, she’d kept everything as he liked it. Organic Valley low-fat milk, Porto Rico’s French Brazilian Santos coffee. Amy’s sourdough. Ben & Jerry’s. And meals. Macaroni cheese, fajitas, roast pork with scalloped potatoes, seafood pie, lasagne. The cupboards were kept stocked with pasta and sauces. There were several cheeses in the fridge, cold cuts, relish. He prickled at the idea of her doing all this while he had neglected her wages. Not reimbursed her. It could well be a small fortune by now.
He penned a note. Hi Yolanda, do I owe you anything for these past few months? Please advise. He propped it against a cup on the kitchen bench. Then he added, I’m so sorry if I’ve neglected this. Another thing he had to take care of in Lydia’s absence. And the tax. There had been an email from their accountant. But Lydia did all that stuff. Couldn’t the accountants just do it for him?
He went out, walked down the street to Francois, and ate a rocket salad, a piece of seared salmon, fries. He listened through lunch to Zo? Keating’s album under headphones. It sounded as if she was playing her cello beside a lacquered screen of mother-of-pearl birds and snow-capped mountains. He could feel the wind off a long narrow lake. As she played a whole landscape came to life.
He arrived at MoMA just after 1.30. He thought that maybe if dinner went well, he and Alice might go together to see the retrospective on the sixth floor. He thought she might enjoy it. They could rebuild a little. It had been a very tough few months. It must be tough for her, seeing her mother like that. Did she go often to see Lydia? He guessed she did. He felt a stab of jealousy.
He looked about for Jane then remembered that she had gone back to Georgia. Suddenly, he missed her.
PEOPLE FLOCK TO RETROSPECTIVES—VAN GOGH at the National Gallery in London, Kandinsky at the Guggenheim. They flock to see the Mona Lisa, the statue of David. They flock to Art Basel and the Venice Biennale. But when did a city last cast its collective attention on a single work of one artist? In 1969 Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Sydney coastline. In 2005 they made seven thousand five hundred and three gates of saffron fabric in Central Park and more people walked among them than entered all of New York’s galleries in that single year.
Now, every day the crowds are increasing. The queue to sit with Marina Abramovi? begins to form at 7 am on the pavement outside MoMA. Since the show began on 9 March, more than three hundred and fifty thousand people have come to see this one work of art.
The artist is at her table. The man with the angel eyes is opposite her again. They have been sitting together, unmoving, eyes connecting, for almost half an hour. Marina can see a room with a floor of confetti made from notes and letters, receipts, journals, manuscripts, books—every shred of documentation she has amassed (and believe me there is an amassment—she throws nothing away, not even a receipt from the dentist). It is the room she imagines her dead body being laid in.
Seated at the side of the performance is Arky Levin in dark jeans and a blue patterned shirt. Further along is Brittika from Amsterdam, with her silken pink hair and trademark make-up. There are other students with hoodies and laptops, who will trade on this show for months if they manage to write something useful about it. There are the very famous, who are increasing in numbers at The Artist is Present. They are given preference at the head of the queue. Of course.
There are visitors from Brooklyn, Bombay, Berlin and Baghdad. Well, perhaps not Baghdad, because that is a war zone of broken buildings, dust, heat and not a bird to be heard. I have seen death scoop up tens of thousands of civilians in that war. The same civilians who once admired Van Gogh’s sunflowers, or Monet’s lilies. Perhaps they read the poems of Nazik Al-Malaika, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Oliver, Christina Rossetti. Perhaps they liked the music of Leonard Cohen and Kadim Al-Sahir. Or the writing of Mahmoud Saeed, Ernest Hemingway, Betool Khedairi, Toni Morrison. War seeks to eliminate commonality.
This is not a war zone. This is commonality. Marina’s friends come too. What do they make of this? And what of those who don’t come? Who can’t quite bear to see her in such pain? For they know her well enough to know the pain she is in. Can see it in the tremor of her eyelid, the tension in her fingers, the pallor of her skin, the glaze across her lucent brown irises.
Francesca Lang is the wife of Marina’s long-time agent, Dieter Lang. For the one artist who makes an agent rich, there are many who never will. Agents are like cats. Rarely do they get lucky and catch a bird, but it does not stop them being fascinated by flight. Marina has not made Dieter rich. He never thought she would. But he thought what she did was important.