The Museum of Modern Love(9)

Jane said, ‘Did you see the woman in the wheelchair sitting opposite Abramovi? yesterday?’

Levin nodded. He had seen that. A black woman. He had wondered how she got in and out of bed.

‘It struck me how the person who couldn’t leave was able to walk away, and the one who couldn’t walk couldn’t stay,’ Jane said. ‘People were saying how they thought that was the performance—a woman who was able to walk sitting opposite a woman who couldn’t. But then when she left, people got confused.’

‘Ah,’ said Levin.

‘I liked how they just took the chair away and wheeled her in,’ said Jane. ‘They didn’t make her sit on the chair.’

Levin hadn’t noticed that.

‘They did it for another man who was here too—the one with the big bushy eyebrows and the slightly crossed eyes? I think he’s an art critic. A friend of Marina’s.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Levin asked.

‘Oh, I’ve been talking to people. There are quite a few who come regularly. Some of them are here every day. Marina fans. Some of them are studying her. Trying to be performance artists or actors. There are lots of students.’

She indicated the young people about the square with their backpacks and scarves.

Behind them someone said, ‘Is it a staring competition?’

She smiled and Levin gave her a wry grin. He’d heard that comment at least once every day he’d come. Clearly Jane had too.

After a while Jane, her eyes not leaving the young girl sitting opposite Abramovi?, said quietly, ‘I do get annoyed that nearly everyone takes photographs although there are signs everywhere saying not to. The guards come and say, “No photography” and most people put the camera down, but quite a few, as soon as the guard turns his back, snap another one. It must be the teacher in me.’

‘What do you teach?’ Levin asked, more from politeness than curiosity.

‘Art. In middle school.’

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour passed and the gaze between the two women, didn’t falter. On the shores of the square people shifted slowly, quietly.

Jane said softly, ‘I am sure that what Abramovi? is saying to that young girl is grow, little butterfly, grow! Don’t you think she’s definitely growing bigger? But you can see it’s quite an effort, because inside she’s still all slumped and she doesn’t really want to be a butterfly, or whatever it is Abramovi? is suggesting.’

Levin thought that Abramovi? was definitely encouraging the young woman in some way, using her gaze, and the young woman sat up. Her shoulders straightened. Her head lifted. Her complexion seemed to glow. It was as if the girl knew, wholly, without any artifice, for the first time in her life, that she was beautiful. And strangely, as he looked at her, he saw that she was. He looked about the square and saw people smiling, as if they too could see this transformation taking place right in front of their eyes. Yet when he squinted, there were just two ordinary people sitting on wooden chairs at an ordinary wooden table, gazing into each other’s eyes.

‘It’s mighty curious,’ Jane murmured. ‘Do you know very much about her?’

‘No, nothing. You?’

‘A little. Have you been upstairs to the retrospective?’

‘No.’

‘She’s quite a collector. There are receipts, notes, letters. But all the art too. And the re-performers of course. People think we’re old-fashioned in the south—but the fuss New York has been making about those nudes . . .’ She laughed ‘It’s good. You must go up and see it.’

He nodded.

‘It gives this a different context. Her life’s been a progression. It’s led to this. It’s no different to any other artist—Matisse or Kandinsky. But she’s used her body. Pain seems to help her get where she wants to go. It’s hard to believe she’s sixty-three. Can you imagine how painful it must be to sit like that for a whole day, let alone day after day?’

‘Where does she want to go?’ Levin asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Jane said, almost whispering now. ‘But I do feel touched by something here. It’s hard to say just what. It makes me remember the sheep in the stained-glass windows when I was a child at church. They looked grateful to be sheep.’

It was how he had felt when Lydia had agreed to marry him. Grateful. ‘It’s good to hammer in your tent pegs, Levin,’ his grandfather had said. ‘Saves a lot of bother in life if you know who you’re going to see at the end of every day, who you’re going to make a family with. You need that. And she’s a wonderful girl.’

Levin saw Lydia lying very still and staring out the window. She wasn’t reading or listening to music. She simply lay there.

‘Not feeling well?’ he had asked her.

‘No,’ she had said in a quarter of her voice.

During those episodes when her illness claimed her, Lydia became someone else. Her face lost its animation, the light in her eyes dulled. Everything about her spoke of disappointment. He was certain he disappointed her; that she thought he ought to be a different man when she became ill. But his wasn’t a nine-to-five job. If a score was due, it was eighteen-hour days and more. He had to travel, too. There were studios and sessions booked, orchestras waiting, producers asking questions, an editor with a new cut.