The Museum of Modern Love(48)

Nobody might have come to The Artist is Present. The show could have opened and, after a few days, once the Abramovi? fans had come and gone, it might have wilted and died. People might have stood on the sidelines, frowned, scoffed and dismissed it. That was always the risk. The work might not have connected with anyone. Marina Abramovi? might have come all this way, from Belgrade to New York via forty years of art, to be alone at this table for three long months.

And then, for a long time, Brittika simply sat, and there was a luminescence that descended as if the skylight six floors above them was sending a cone of sunlight down into the atrium. Marina’s face looked as if it was made of stone as ancient as the face of the Sphinx, but now it was a man’s face, and now an opal.

At some point Brittika saw a small square package in the air between Marina and herself. The package floated towards her and she could see it was gently vibrating. Without moving, somehow Brittika was able to reach out and take the package between her fingers. It smelled of wool wash. She thought of her mother in a pool of lamplight practising her calligraphy. She saw her father hanging out washing. She felt the smallness of herself. She thought of how she would lie awake and talk to Jesus as a child and several times she was sure Jesus had talked back.

She unwrapped the gold leaf around the package and within it she saw her soul. It was dark and eternal like starlight but shaped like a small mochi ball. She slipped it into her mouth and swallowed it.

When she finally stood and left the chair, the room had become a place of strangers. She had forgotten what language she was meant to speak. She went out into the street.

Later, lying on the grass in Central Park and staring at clouds, she felt as if parts of herself had flown away, or come home.





‘HEALAYAS? IT’S ARKY.’

‘Arky? Hi! Are you okay?’

Her voice was the same as ever. Suddenly Levin didn’t know what he’d been afraid of, or why he hadn’t called her months ago.

‘I saw you sat with Marina Abramovi?,’ he said.

‘Yes, I have—twice now.’

‘Could we talk about it?’

‘Bien s?r. Will you come over?’

‘Umm . . .’

‘I could make something.’

‘Really? Thank you. I’d like that. Okay. What time?’

‘Anytime. Tonight? Just come over. I’ve really missed you.’

‘I thought you might like to do the vocals. On the new soundtrack I’m working on.’

‘Let’s talk about it.’

‘I’ll bring a few tracks.’

‘Okay. So does seven work?’

He looked at his watch, calculated the trip and his need to shower and shave. ‘Sure.’

‘à bient?t,’ she said.

Healayas lived on Sixth Avenue, a few blocks north of the park. New apartments were multiplying inside old civic buildings. Cafes were replacing locksmiths. A new movie theatre had opened. But Harlem had been making itself over for millions of years. Before white and black, there were Indians, and before Indians there had been mastodons and bison. Before that there had been dinosaurs and glaciers and before that a great inland sea just waiting for the Appalachian Mountains to rise up out of the ocean and make Manhattan Island.

Levin took the A train express to 125th and then walked. He’d finally unpacked his old vinyls and had come across some Morrissey, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon and several Leonard Cohen albums that Tom had given him years back. It had felt good to play music loud with the doors open onto the balcony and let the sound ripple out over the treetops on Washington Square.

Healayas’s apartment was at the top of a brownstone fenced with polished steel, interrupted only by a gate with a video keypad and a slot for mail. The owner had gutted the first two floors but Healayas’s apartment on the top floor remained unrenovated. Levin pressed the intercom. Healayas buzzed him in and he walked down the laneway and climbed the side stairs.

The door was open to the warm evening. She came towards him, embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks. ‘It’s good to see you, Arky. You don’t have to be quite so good at avoiding everyone, you know. We all miss you. I’m making gazpacho. I thought in this heat gazpacho followed by pasta with garlic prawns.’

She moved about the kitchen in cut-off blue jeans, a small red t-shirt, coloured leather ties on her wrists, her hair pinned back and falling between her shoulder blades in black ringlets. She was chopping garlic, parsley, grating lemon rind, tossing them together in a bowl, slicing bread.

Tom had met Healayas at a party in Aspen at Hunter S. Thompson’s place. Healayas was years younger, but that hadn’t stopped Tom. She had also had been with someone else at the time, but at the end of the holiday, she and Tom went back to Los Angeles together.

They had been a vivid couple. He knew Tom had asked her to marry him, and Healayas had not given him an answer. Once Tom had said to him that Healayas was Teflon. Everywhere they went, men slid off her. Did he mind? No, he said to Levin. He had to keep reassuring her that he wasn’t going anywhere. But he did. He used to say Leonard Cohen must have been thinking of her when he wrote:

I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark oh one by one she had to tell them

that her name was Joan of Arc.

I was in that army, yes, I stayed a little while; I want to thank you, Joan of Arc,