She bought herself a caffè latte, and sat beneath the light flat board spires of Luxembourg’s very own Notre Dame Cathedral—not as grand looking as the one in Paris, but perfectly okay as far as cathedrals went, perfectly acceptable, they’d done a good job. She wondered whether she was tempting fate by coming here. She wondered if it would all disappear, and take her with it, and this time there’d be no going back, no reprieve discovery in the Pacific, no last minute returns, they’d all vanish forever and never be heard of again. Well, she thought to herself, we’ll see. And she decided that if she vanished, she’d just accept it. And if she didn’t, she’d go home, and get on with the rest of her life. Either way, she wouldn’t complain. She’d give herself, and Luxembourg, and their twin destinies, until she reached the end of her coffee. She sipped at it, without rush, and admired the architecture, and smiled, and enjoyed the day.
RESTORATION
The Curator said that it was the responsibility of every man, woman, and child to find themselves a job; that there was a grace and dignity to doing something constructive with the long days. The purity of a simple life, well led—everyone could see the appeal to that. But the problem was, there really just weren’t enough jobs to go around. This made a lot of people quite unhappy. Not so unhappy that they gnashed their teeth or rent their garments, it wasn’t unhappiness on a biblical scale—but you could see them, these poor souls who had nothing to do, there seemed to hang about them an ennui that could actually be smelt.
Some people said that it was patently unfair that there weren’t enough jobs. The Curator could create as many jobs as he wished, he could do anything, so this had to be a failing on his part, or something crueller. And other people admonished these doubters, they told them to have more faith. It was clearly a test. But they thought everything was a test, that was their explanation for everything.
Neither group of people liked to voice their opinions too loudly, though. You never knew when the Curator might be listening. The Curator had eyes and ears everywhere.
When the job at the gallery came up Andy applied for it, of course. Everyone applied for it, yes, man, woman and child—and though Andy hadn’t been there long enough yet to realize the importance of getting work, he still knew the value of joining a good long queue when he saw one. He obviously hadn’t expected to get the job. That he might was clearly absurd. And so when they told him he’d been selected he thought they were joking, that this was another part of the interview, that they were monitoring his response to success, maybe—and he decided that the response they were looking for was probably something enthusiastic, but not too enthusiastic—and he managed to pull off a rather cool unsmiling version of enthusiasm that he thought would fit the bill, then sat back in his chair waiting for the next question—only starting when they made him understand there really weren’t any more questions, that that was it, the job was his.
Andy didn’t know why he’d got the job. But he still had his own hair. Or, at least, most of it—and perhaps that’s what made him stand out from the other applicants. Certainly there were others he’d queued alongside who were far better qualified, and more intelligent too, who had even done revision so that they’d give good answers at the interview. When Andy had been quizzed he hadn’t known what to say, and he’d just nodded his head a lot, he fluttered at them his brown and quite unremarkable curls, unremarkable in all ways save for the fact he had so many of them; he showed them off for all they were worth, that’s what did him well in the end.
Andy hadn’t even been to an art gallery since he was a child. He’d been taken on a school trip. He’d been caught chewing gum, and had got into trouble; then he’d lagged behind the main party and got lost somewhere within the Post-Impressionists, the teacher had had to put out an announcement for him, he’d got into trouble for that too. He knew that the gallery here would be much bigger, because everything was bigger here—but he still boggled at the enormity of it as he walked through the revolving doors. There were no small exhibits here. A single work of art would take up an entire room, and the rooms were vast, as you walked into one you had to strain your eyes to find the exit at the far end—the picture would run right round all the walls, and extend right up to the ceiling a hundred feet in the air. Andy couldn’t stand back far enough from the art to take in the sheer scale of even a single picture; he always seemed to be pressed up close to the figures caught in the paintwork, he could honestly marvel at the extraordinary detail of each and every one of them. But seeing these figures in context, that was much more difficult. He read the plaque on the wall for one picture: “1776,” it said. And now he could see, yes, the Americans jubilantly declaring their independence, and the British all looking rather sinister and sulky in the background. He went into the next room, and presented there was 1916. And 1916 was a terrifying sight—the work took in the one and a half million soldiers dying in the trenches, in Flanders, at the Somme, and it seemed to Andy that every single one of these casualties was up there stuck onto the wall, shot or blown apart or drowning in mud. It was a dark picture, but yet it wasn’t all mud and blood—look, there’s Charlie Chaplin falling over at a skating rink, there’s Al Jolson singing, Fred Astaire dancing, there’s the world’s first golf tournament, that’d be fun for all.
Andy shuddered at the carnage in spite of himself—because, as he said out loud, it wasn’t really there, it wasn’t really real. And he couldn’t help it, he chuckled at Chaplin too, he grinned at all those golfers putting away to their hearts’ delight.
There was no one to be seen at the gallery. The rooms were crowded with so many people living and dying, but on the walls only, only in the art—there was no one looking at them, marvelling at what they’d stood for, marvelling at the brushwork even. There was a little shop near the main entrance that sold postcards. There was no one behind the cash register.
“What do you make of it?” asked the woman behind him.
He didn’t know where she’d sprung from, and for a moment he thought she must have popped out from one of the pictures, and the idea was so ludicrous that he nearly laughed. He stopped short, though, because she was frowning at him so seriously, he could see laughter wasn’t something the woman would appreciate, or even recognize, this was a woman who hadn’t heard laughter in a very long time. He presumed she was a woman. Surely? The voice was high, and there was a softness to the eyes, and to the lips, and there was some sagging on the torso that might once have been breasts—yes, he thought, definitely woman. Her head was completely smooth and hairless, and a little off green, it looked like a slightly mildewed egg.
Andy tried to think of something clever to say. Failed. “I don’t know.”
“Quite right,” said the woman. “What can you make of it? What can anyone make of anything, when it comes down to it?” She stuck out her hand. Andy took a chance that she wanted him to shake it; he did so; he was right. “You must be my new assistant. I don’t want an assistant, I can manage perfectly well on my own, I do not require assisting of any sort. But the Curator says different, and who am I to argue? The best thing we can do is to leave each other alone as much as possible, it’s a big place, I’m sure we’ll work it out. Do you know anything about art?”
“No.”
“About history?”
“No.”
“About the conservation and restoration of treasures more fragile and precious than mere words can describe?”
“No.”
“Good,” she said. “There’ll be so much less for you to unlearn.” And she gave at last the semblance of a smile. Her egg face relaxed as the smile took hold: the eyes grew big and yolky, the albumen cheeks seemed to ripple and contort as if they were being poached.
“How did you know,” said Andy, “that I was your new assistant?”
“Why else would you be here?”
She said she’d take him to her studio. She led him out of the First World War, back through the Reformati
on, through snatches and smatterings of the Dark Ages. She walked briskly, and Andy struggled to keep up—as it was, it was the best part of an hour before they reached the elevator. “I’ll never find my way through all this!” Andy had joked, and his new boss had simply said, “No, you won’t,” and they hadn’t talked again for a while.
She pulled the grille door to the elevator shut. “Going down,” she said, and pushed the lowest button on the panel. Nothing happened; she kicked at the elevator irritably, at last it began to move—and fast, faster, as if to make up for lost time. Andy was alarmed and tried to find something to hold on to, but there was only the woman, and that didn’t appeal, so he stuck his hands tight into his pockets instead. The woman did not seem remotely perturbed. “Now, you might think that the gallery upstairs is huge. Well, it is huge, I suppose, I’ve never been able to find an end to it. But only a small fraction of the collection is ever on display. Say, no more than two or three per cent. The rest of the art, the overwhelming majority of it, we keep below. We keep in the vaults. And it’s in the vaults that we care for this unseen art. We clean it, we protect it. We restore it to what it used to be. What’s up top,” she said, and she jerked a finger upwards, to somewhere Andy assumed must now be miles above their heads, “is not our concern anymore.”
Andy was still catching up with what she’d said fifty metres higher, his brain seemed to be falling at a slower rate than hers. “Just two or three per cent? Christ, how many paintings have you got?”
She glared at him. She thinned her once feminine lips, she showed teeth. “They’re not paintings,” she said. “Never call them paintings.”
“I’m sorry,” said Andy, and she held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then gave a single nod, and turned away, satisfied.
The elevator continued to fall.
“My name’s Andy,” said Andy, “you know, by the way.”
“I can’t remember that. I can’t be expected to remember all that.”
“Oh.”
“You’ve got lots of hair. I could call you Hairy. Except that won’t last long, the hair won’t last, it’ll just confuse me. Tell you what. I’ll call you ‘Assistant.’ That’ll be easy for both of us.”
“Fair enough,” said Andy. He’d been about to ask for her name. He now thought he wouldn’t bother.
And then he was surprised, because he felt something in his hand, and he looked down, and it was her hand—just for a moment, a little squeeze, and then it was gone. And she was doing that macabre poached smile at him. “Don’t worry, Assistant,” she said softly. “I used to call them paintings. I once thought they were just paintings too.”
“All right, Assistant. I’m giving you 1574 to practise on. 1574 is a very minor work. If you damage 1574, who’s going to care?” And she unrolled 1574 right in front of him, across the table of his new studio, across all the studio—she unrolled it ever onwards until 1574 spread about him and over him in all directions.
“Is this the original?”
“Who’d want to make a copy?”
What surprised Andy was that the archives down below were in such poor condition. The art was stacked everywhere in random order, although he was assured by his new boss there was a system—“It’s my system,” she said, “and that’s all you need to know.” Some of the years were in tatters, the months bulging off the frame, entire days lost beneath dirt. “You might suppose they’d be irreparable,” she told him. “1346 was in a terrible state when I started here, there was a crease in the August, running right through the battle of Crécy. But with diligence, and hard labour, and love, I was able to put it right.”
It was odd to hear her talk of love, that such a word could come out of a bald, ovoid face like hers. She seemed to think it was odd too, looked away. “But diligence and hard labour are probably the most important,” she added.
And although Andy had no affection for these works of art, had no reason to care, when she told him that the collection wasn’t complete he felt a pang of regret in his stomach for the loss. “Ideally,” she agreed, “the gallery is meant to house a full archive, from prehistory right up to 2038. But there are entire decades that have vanished without trace. Stolen, maybe, who knows? More likely destroyed. Some years were in such a state of disrepair there was nothing I could do with them, some years just decomposed before my eyes. 1971, for example, that was a botched job from the start, the materials were of inferior quality. It crumbled to dust so fast, before the spring of 1972 was out.”
“What does the Curator think of that?”
She sighed heavily through her nose, it came out as a scornful puff. “The Curator’s instructions are that I take responsibility for the entire collection, the whole of recorded history.” She shrugged. “But I can’t work miracles. That’s his job.”
And now here was Andy with his own year to take care of. He gave 1574 a good look. And his boss gave him a good look as he did so; she just folded her arms, watched him, said nothing. “It’s not too bad,” said Andy finally. “It’s not in as bad a condition as some of the others.”
“It’s in an appalling condition,” she said. “Oh, Assistant. You’ve been looking at all the wrong things, you don’t know what’s good and what’s shit, but never mind, never mind, I suppose you have to start somewhere. Look again. Now. The year is filthy, for a start. Look at it, it’s so dark. Do you think that 1574 was always this dark? Only if it had been under permanent rain clouds, and in fact, the weather was rather temperate by sixteenth century standards. Now, that’s not unusual, you have to expect the original colours to darken. Natural aging will do that—pigments fade and distort from the moment the events are lived, as soon as they’re set down on canvas. Rich greens resinate over time, they become dark browns, even blacks. The shine gets lost.
“But in this instance,” she went on, and prodded at 1574 with her finger, so disdainfully that Andy thought she’d punch a hole right through it, “it’s worse than that, because we can’t even begin to see how badly the pigments have been discoloured. They’re buried behind so much dirt and grease. And soot, actually, that’s my fault, I probably shouldn’t have stored it next to the Industrial Revolution. Dirt has clung to the year, and that’s not the fault of the year itself, but of the varnish painted over it. For centuries all the great works of art were varnished by the galleries, they thought it would better protect them. And some people even preferred the rather cheesy gloss it put on everything. But a lot of the varnishers were hacks—the varnish wasn’t compatible with the original oils of the year itself, it’d react to them. And that’s when you get smearing, and blurring, and dirt getting trapped within the year as if it’s always been there.
“And that’s just for starters! Look at the cracks. Dancing through the night sky of March 1574 there, do you see, they stand out so well in the moonlight. Now, I admit I like a bit of craquelure, I think it lends a little aged charm to an old master. But here, yes . . . these aren’t just cracks, they’re fissures, they’re causing the entire panel to split out in all directions. Pretty soon March won’t have thirty-one days in it, it’ll end up with thirty-two. And that’s all because of the oils drying, yes? The oils go on the canvas nice and wet, then they dry, the very months dry, the days within get brittle and flaky, the whole year contracts and moves within its frame.”
“And what can we do to stop that?” asked Andy.
She very nearly laughed. “Stop it? We can’t stop it! Oh, the arrogance of the man! Do you think any of the years here are in the same condition as when they were created? They’re dying from the moment the paint has dried, all the sheen and brightness fading, the colours becoming ever more dull, the very tinctures starting to blister and pop. These are precious things, these little slices of time we’ve been given—and from the moment a year’s over, from the moment they all start singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to usher in the new, the old one is already beginning to fall apart. The centuries that pass do untol
d damage to the centuries that have been. There’s no greater enemy to history than history itself, running right over it, scraping it hard, then crushing it flat. And some days I think that’s it, all I’m doing is kicking against the inevitable, I can do nothing to stop the decay of it all, all I can do is choose the method of decay it’ll face. And that’s on the good days, the ones where I fool myself I’m making the blindest bit of difference—on the others, and, are you listening, Assistant, there’ll be so many others, I feel like I’m surrounded by corpses and pretending I can stop the rot, and I can’t stop the rot, who are we to stop the rot, we’re working in a fucking morgue.”
“Oh,” said Andy. “That’s a shame.”
She blinked at him. Just once. Then pulled herself together.
“Frankly,” she said, “1574 is a dog’s breakfast. And that’s why I’m setting you on to it. You’re hardly likely to make it much worse. Off you go, then, 1574’s not getting any younger, chop-chop.”
Andy pointed out he had no idea where to start conserving and cleaning a year. As far as he knew, he was supposed to run it under a tap! He chuckled at that; she didn’t chuckle back. So he asked, very gently, whether he could watch her work for a while, to see how it was done.
She took him to her studio.
“This,” she said, and she tried to keep a nonchalance to her voice, “is my current project.” But Andy could see how she was smiling, she was just happy to be back in front of her work again—and then she gave up trying to disguise it, she turned round to him and beamed, she ushered him forward, invited him to look, invited him to see how well she’d done. She’d mounted a section of the year, the rest was rolled up neatly, and it seemed to Andy that she’d made an altar of that section, that it was a place of worship. “1660,” she said. “Most famous for the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England and Scotland, and I think that’s why the Curator will like this year especially, he’s very keen on the triumph of authority. But there’s so much more to 1660 than dynastic disputes, really—December the eighth, there’s Margaret Hughes as Desdemona, the very first actress on the English stage! And that’s Samuel Pepys, the diarist, September twenty-fifth, drinking his first ever cup of tea! All the little anecdotes that throw the main events into sharp relief, history can’t just be kings and thrones, if you’re not careful it becomes nothing but a series of assassins and wars and coups d’état, and the colour is just a single flat grey. And that’s not what we’re about, is it? We’ve got to find the other colours, Andy, we’ve got to find all the colours that might get forgotten, what we’re doing is important after all!” And she suddenly looked so young, and so innocent somehow, and Andy realized she’d bothered to remember his name.
They Do the Same Things Different There Page 3