The Museum of Modern Love(55)

Endurance had become the role of everyone in the audience too. Perhaps, after fifty-four days, Marina had moved on from endurance into some other state. In March, Abramovi? had worn a dark blue dress. In April it became a bright red version of the same dress. Today was the first day of May. The long red dress had been replaced with an identical gown of pure white.

Brittika thought, She has become her own flag. The blue, red and white of the nation of Abramovi?.

The nation of Abramovi?, she observed, had drawn an army of believers. What they believed in was anyone’s guess, but they kept coming. The atrium was more crowded every day. Why did they cry? Did they find reassurance, awakening, mystery? Something was happening. It was there in the tears. The endless tears from the people who sat in that chair opposite Abramovi?.

Already Brittika had waited nine hours in the queue and still there were four people ahead of her. She had made new connections, traded emails and shared research, collected quotes, ideas, interviews and stories. Yesterday she had sat all day in the queue but missed out on sitting with Abramovi? by five people.

She’d interviewed Carlos, who had sat seventeen times. He thought sitting opposite Marina was like psychic housekeeping. Like cleaning out an old cupboard.

Brittika was sure they’d soon start limiting the time people could sit. There were rumblings from the queue once people sat longer than fifteen minutes. And the stampede up the stairs at 10.30 am had become dangerous. This morning someone had tried to create order from chaos by handing out numbers along the queue. She had received number twenty-six at 5 am. People had slept on the street outside MoMA. They had been hopping about in sleeping bags trying to warm up, laughing at the madness and the seriousness of their intent.

Brittika inserted her earphones again. She was listening to the Dirty Projectors’ ‘Stillness is the Move’. She smiled at the coincidence. Maybe stillness was the move. A young man in a red-and-white gingham shirt tapped her on the shoulder and she removed an earphone.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘I’ve seen you sit before,’ he said, squatting down beside her, ‘so I wanted to ask you: are you sacrificial in some way?’

‘In what context?’ He had lovely eyes. He didn’t look like a nut but it was New York.

‘Well, this waiting to sit with her, is it a sort of ritual?’

‘Wouldn’t sacrificial imply some kind of death?’ she asked. She could see his biceps beneath his shirtsleeves, the breadth of his chest.

‘I’m not implying it,’ he said, smiling, and it was a wide, white smile. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. Even waiting in the queue? There’s a death of expectation. And on the chair, it’s a death of personality. People are caught out.’

‘I’m not sure if we’re caught out,’ Brittika said.

‘But I saw your photo online. You looked surprised by what you saw. Even shocked.’

‘Are you an art student?’ she asked, flattered but still wary.

‘I’m a butcher,’ he said. ‘But I’ve come a few times. I don’t think I’ll get to sit but that’s okay.’

‘Are you really a butcher?’ she asked. Somehow this disappointed her. And then she considered that he was probably a millionaire butcher in that shirt. Some kind of New York inheritance.

‘Yeah, I am. Doesn’t it seem enough?’ he said.

‘No, it’s just . . .’

‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘Amsterdam,’ she said. ‘I’m just here for the show.’

‘I like your accent. So what have you noticed about New Yorkers?’

‘That they’re surprisingly patient. Because I really have only seen this show.’

He grinned. ‘Then let me tell you: we’re poets. Even the developers, the bureaucrats, and us butchers from Brooklyn. You just have to ask us how we feel about this city and we start getting lyrical. That’s the way we are here. New York is a much more romantic city than Paris.’

‘And you know Paris?’

‘I’ve watched the movies.’ He laughed. ‘And I might get there one day.’

He gestured to Abramovi?. ‘That’s why this show works here. I don’t think it would work in any other city nearly so well. It would need more. You know, multimedia or whatever. But it suits us. It gives us a little moment to remember we’re poets, even if we never write a word.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I gotta go.’

‘Nice to talk to you,’ she said, wishing he wouldn’t walk away. Ridiculously wanting to kiss him goodbye. ‘I’m Brittika,’ she said impulsively, holding out her hand.

‘Maybe I’ll see you again, Brittika.’

‘What’s your name?’ she asked in a rush.

He grinned. ‘Charlie.’

‘Are you coming back?’ she asked.

‘Will you be here?’

‘I will. I’m in New York now until the end.’

‘I hope I see you before then.’





IT WAS EARLY AFTERNOON AND Levin arrived to find the atrium crammed with people. Marina was in a long white dress and the table was gone. Now there were just two chairs facing one another. The intimacy of the situation was even more startling.

Levin watched as a slender woman in skinny jeans, a black sweater and pointy white suede boots rose from the chair. She had a striking wizened face and moved like a dancer. Levin felt he should recognise her. Then a child sat. When she left after ten minutes, she had the look of someone who has just performed an act of bravery and was relieved to have escaped uninjured.