The Museum of Modern Love(61)

What had she needed him for? The warm body in the bed? The familiar voice on the end of the phone when she rang from Buenos Aires or Madrid? Someone to complete the picture when she and Alice went out in public? School functions. Openings and award ceremonies. Sex?

No, it was much more than that. He wasn’t going to dismiss twenty-four years. ‘You are my music,’ she had said, as he played piano when she came home from work.

And she had been his. Kissing Lydia had resonated in every cell in his body. But somehow they had stopped kissing like that. Sometimes he was afraid of this confident woman he’d married. Sometimes he felt too small for her. There had been times, making love, when he had thought that if he kissed her, really kissed her, he’d disappear entirely.

Did she fantasise about other men when they made love? He was too afraid to ask. Had she been faithful to him? He didn’t know. Despite all the travelling, she always came home to him and wanted him.

Had he been unfaithful to her? Yes—twice. Years ago on a skiing trip to Aspen with Tom after he’d sniffed God knew what up his nose. It embarrassed him to think about it, all over and done in seconds. He couldn’t remember her face; only the brickwork under his fingers as he clung to the wall in a dark corner of the garden. Another time, a man he’d only just met had given him a blow job. It was an LA party that time, another night of powdered lubricant and a dark bathroom. He had been so young. He’d refused drugs after that. Never told Lydia about either event. Hidden it away and hoped he didn’t get Alzheimer’s and start confessing it one day.

He missed the warm languor of Lydia’s mouth and her tongue winding and weaving into and around him. He missed looking into her eyes and seeing her smile. He missed them finding together the place where flesh became heat and release. And soul, he thought, though he had never liked the word. What sounded religious, but wasn’t, was that he’d had faith in their marriage. He had never imagined the simple commitment to love Lydia would become so complicated.

If two people were holding on to a rock face and one of them lost faith, wasn’t it up to the other person to tell them everything was going to be alright? Maybe Lydia was on a rock face in the Hamptons. She had told him to climb the rope. Climb, Arky, climb! She wanted him to save himself. And he had. He had climbed up. But she was still down there. Maybe she was waiting for him. Maybe she was waiting for him to come back and haul her up. Or at least be there to say goodbye when she fell. Maybe she’d been holding on all this time, wondering when he’d put his head over the cliff and say, ‘I’m here. I’m back with help.’





IN THE DARKNESS, DANICA ABRAMOVI? perused the retrospective, observing the list of implements from the performance in Naples in 1972. Gun. Bullet. Blue paint. Comb. Bell. Whip. Pocket knife. Bandage. White paint. Scissors. Bread. Wine. Honey. Shoes. Chair. Metal spear. Box of razor blades. Coat. Sheet of white paper. Hat. Pen.

Seventy-two items in all.

Feather. Polaroid camera. Drinking glass. Mirror. Flowers. Matches.

And the instructions: There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.

When she had first heard of it, this shocking thing her daughter had done, giving the audience this opportunity to harm her, Danica had been devastated.

‘It’s too much. Why would you do this?’ she had asked Marina.

‘I have to understand.’

‘Understand what? Enough that already you nearly die inside the star, nearly burn to death here in Belgrade, but now you must nearly get yourself killed in Italy as well?’

‘I had to do it.’

‘You gave them knives, a loaded gun?’

‘I didn’t load the gun. The bullet was separate. They had to make the choice to put the bullet in the chamber.’

‘Hold a gun to my head! Pull the trigger. Let’s see what will happen?’ Danica had been shouting by then.

‘No.’ Marina had almost whispered it. Her head down. ‘That is not art! It is not art!’ Danica had shouted.

A lot of mothers have daughters they did not understand. How many times Danica had come upon her colleagues discussing the latest thing Marina had done. The talk died as she entered the room.

Once Marina had said, ‘The fear frees me. You taught me that.’ And she had put her head on Danica’s shoulder like a normal daughter and they had laughed.

But there was a war inside Marina. Later Danica had asked her, ‘Why make more violence, when there is enough coming in the world without you laying a table with such weapons?’

‘You see the people in the pictures,’ Marina had said. ‘Every one of them was forced to think. They were drawn into the actions of the group—like soldiers. You know all about that.’

‘You take orders. You comply.’

‘I gave them their orders. They did comply. They will not forget the room and who they were when they realised what they were capable of. There were men who came out of that room and knew themselves as vicious. Women who were sure they were not until they had the opportunity to urge the men on. And when it was over and I started to walk around, they ran away. They were embarrassed, frightened of me. Frightened of themselves. They can never pretend violence was something they would not participate in.’

Danica had shaken her head. ‘It’s not right, Marina. This life you are choosing. It shames me.’