The Museum of Modern Love(36)

‘It will be the making of her. You know that,’ Dieter said.

‘I see it happening right in front of us,’ Francesca agreed. ‘And you were pivotal. It was refining it, pushing her to make it simpler—it worked. It’s so utterly simple. The staircase, the theatre of those early ideas, it wouldn’t have been nearly so powerful. This is perfect. All that’s left is energy. It’s not really remarkable to think that people are being drawn to it. Or that those who sit are being profoundly affected.’

‘I have asked Colm to write something about his sitting.’

‘Good,’ said Francesca.

Francesca liked writers. She liked to feed them. She liked to feed anyone creative. She should have given the wall inside their door over to signatures and by now it would have been filled with people who had eaten at their table.

‘Antony Gormley is getting the usual attention,’ Dieter said.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Francesca. ‘I listened to the podcast.’

‘And?’

‘Oh, Arnold was saying the standard things about Gormley’s use of space and referencing the Mersey and London, and then Healayas Breen said this interesting thing. She said historically the artist’s role had been to stimulate us and arrest our visual senses with colour, texture, content—but that now YouTube gave us all that. So Gormley’s statues looking down on the city and Abramovi? at MoMA were two new considerations for what art might be into the future. Perhaps art was evolving into something to remind us of the power of reflection, even stillness.’

When Marina had done The House with the Ocean View in 2002, Dieter hadn’t been sure he could bear it. They had constructed three open rooms on the wall. The rooms were interlinked and a ladder rested against each room, but the steps were made of razor-sharp knife blades, making it impossible to ascend or descend. For twelve days Marina had lived up there in those three open rooms. One held a bed, one a shower and toilet, and the third a table and chair. For twelve days Marina had no food, nothing but water to drink and a metronome to keep her company.

Dieter had left the gallery each night and locked the doors, knowing Marina was still in there. If there was a fire, he had locked her in and she had no way out other than down those ladders of knives. In the morning, when he and the staff arrived, she would be there going through her rituals. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Each day she took three showers. Every day she changed the tunic and pants she wore for another of identical shape but a new colour. Sometimes she began a Serbian song and, as much as possible, she maintained eye contact with the people in the gallery. Establishing an energy dialogue, Marina had called it.

Some people came every day and sat for hours on the floor. Someone offered her an apple, placing it up on the platform. It stayed there until one of the staff removed it. When Francesca had visited The House with the Ocean View, the gallery had felt like a church. And now the atrium at MoMA did too.

‘Is she reading any of the reviews?’ she asked Dieter.

Dieter shook his head. ‘I tell myself that if I sit with her for a few minutes, that’s a few minutes in which nothing is wanted of her,’ he said.

Francesca held his hand. ‘On the last day she’ll stand up and it will be over. She’ll bathe in all the acknowledgement that will come to her and forget what it has cost her. The cost to her organs, her kidneys. Her mind. The hunger. When it’s a complete success—and it will be—she will forget it all. You know her. She will be in diva mode, glorious, radiant, and it will all be in the past. And then she’ll crash.’

When Francesca had met Dieter, he had been getting over a traumatic break-up.

‘You rescued me,’ he liked to tell her in those early years. Abducted his heart and never returned it. She knew he loved Marina. They both loved Marina. He must love Marina. But his heart was hers.

‘You have to remember that,’ Francesca continued. ‘To make sure her house is ready for her. It has to be stocked. Ready for her to have complete rest. In the end, this may take something from her that she can’t replace, but if it wasn’t so fraught with danger, and so hard, she would never choose it.’

Dieter’s eyes filled with tears. They sat there, side by side on the couch. Thirty-four years they had been married. Thirty-four years, four children, five grandchildren, Berlin to New York, and how did they stay this way, where she knew him so intimately that nothing was new, and yet he was still a mystery to himself?

And the reverse was true, Francesca thought. Perhaps that was the way of long marriage. As they got older, they could never lose track of themselves. They had the other to remind them.





WHEN LEVIN ARRIVED TO MEET Alice for their Sunday night meal, she was listening to something and reading what appeared to be a large illustrated medical textbook. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. He placed the earbud she handed him in his left ear.

‘Evanescence,’ said Alice. ‘Fallen. 2003. Hi.’

Levin nodded, listening to a wash of surging guitars and soaring vocals.

‘They’re making another album right now,’ she added, closing the book slowly as if it was hard to take her eyes from the page.

‘What else are you listening to?’

‘Hmmm . . . Horehound.’ She met his eyes with her own green ones. ‘So what’s up?’