Death in the Museum of Modern Art

by Alma Lazarevska

  ‘I will!’

  I don’t know whether I had already outgrown those tight little shoes by then, but I do remember that as I crossed the whole length of the room like a sleep-walker, I was rolling up the sleeve of one arm with my other hand.

  I stood before the needle with my thin, bare muscle whose pale skin was slightly goose-fleshed. ‘She’s an excellent pupil, but somehow absent...’ I once heard my mother telling my father what my teacher had said about me. Let that be the reason why, as I volunteered to have the first injection, I said nothing about the fact that my mother, forewarned, had told the teacher (it was all written in a little note hidden in my pocket) that I should not have the vaccination since I was a year younger than the rest of the class and I had an allergy.

  That was how I overcame my horror from the waiting-room with the yellow vinyl squares. The next day, I had an arm the muscle of which was like a long balloon pumped full of inner fire. How much it hurt, how long it lasted and how many reproaches I heard in my half-fever ... is no longer important, nor do I remember. I only know that after staying away for a long time, I stepped proudly into the classroom. Present! Not even seeking confirmation of my feelings in the face of my teacher, the colour of whose eyes I do not recall, but I remember the thick black fringe above them.

  ‘And so, ladies, who will be first?’

  Mrs Kristina Verček was standing between two couches. I was on the left-hand one, on the other was a young woman who had arrived two or three minutes after me, bringing the scent of an unfamiliar perfume into the room.

  The owner of the proud moustache stood between the two of us. In her right hand she was holding a moist cosmetic mask, waiting for us to decide whose face to place it on first.

  ‘I will!’

  The woman on the other couch could not know that this appropriation of the first place was more the result of a distant event than haste. But, when I looked round at her, she returned my glance with an expression of perfect understanding.

  We looked at each other the way fair and dark women look at each other, blond and dark-haired, the way women never look at one another if they represent a subvariant or sub-group. We looked at each other like women in a maternity ward, each with her own child inside her.

  I stepped out of Kristina Verček’s salon into a cool, violet evening, but my skin was glowing from the complete treatment. Behind me in the room was the mask and under it the face of the dark-haired woman. Her body was stretched out like a figure lying in a sarcophagus.

  Once again I became an irregular reader of Pearls of My Cosmetics. I never read the brochure that crowned the complete treatment and tripled the cost of a visit to the salon. I gave it to my colleague who returned from her long weekend like a butterfly, but without the promised gift. When the city was surrounded, she was driven out of her apartment on the other side of the iron ring. She arrived with nothing in her hands or pockets. She had only one, right, shoe. She had aged overnight. She was no longer a butterfly.

  I came across the face of the dark-haired woman once more.

  ‘Isn’t she still lying there, under the mask,’ I wondered, catching sight of her at the airport, just as my fight was announced.

  She was sitting with three men who were discussing something animatedly, looking in her direction the whole time. They were even leaning towards her across the table, but she did not respond with a typical woman’s gesture of moving away. Between her index and middle fingers she had an unlit cigarette. She was touching her upper lip with the tip of her thumb. Her chin was tucked into her neck, as though she was trying to see how far she could bend her head without moving her body. And she was smiling. As women do when they let men talk, talk, talk. Then they just sigh and say Please. She lowered her hand with the unlit cigarette and the tip of her thumb slipped gently from her moist upper lip.

  I am going down a long, glass tunnel. I clasp my bag to me. I turn round. A dark and a fair woman are looking at one another again. One is in a hurry. The other is sitting, smiling. Is there a Please and a sigh after this?

  I saw a photograph of this face, taken for a passport or identity card, in an obituary, a year after the city was surrounded.

  We look at one another. Now: one lady absent and one present!

  The obituary informed me that the young woman had passed away in Rome, after a brief, serious illness. There were three names listed as bereaved. As when someone dies in one of those rare, urban families that thin out over the years, waiting to gather again at last on the other side and for no one to be listed as bereaved.

  Three months later, the same face in another obituary. This time the photograph was like those taken out of a family album. There was someone’s hand on one shoulder. Her appearance was softer and gentler than in the first obituary. As though she was turning towards the hand that touched her shoulder.

  She smiled the way she had done that evening when our eyes met and there was a hand with a prepared mask between us.

  This time the obituary announced that her cremated remains, brought from Rome, had been placed in a grave in the city cemetery. Two names were listed as bereaved. Just two more and then they would all be together.

  He sometimes travels out of the besieged city. That requires a special pass. People travel by transporter-planes that fly to Ancona from where food and medical aid are flown to the besieged city from all over the world. In addition to food and medical aid, photographers and journalists come, and questionnaires like the one that asked How would you like to die?

  At the airport in Ancona he has to wait for hours for a place in the plane. But, there is plenty for him to see while he waits. He sees people coming and going, their purpose and lack of purpose.

  On the day when he had to wait ten hours for a fight into the besieged city, he saw a man who spent the whole time he was waiting sitting between two bags, with a strange-shaped box clasped in his lap.

  When, finally, the loudspeaker announced the fight and called out the names of ten of the hundred or so passengers who had registered, those two bags were among the first to reach the soldier checking passes and weighing luggage. In addition to his body weight, a passenger could take only a further thirty kilograms into the besieged city. The two bags did not weigh more than thirty kilograms, but the clearly bad-tempered soldier who weighed them wanted the strange-shaped box to be placed on the scales as well. A quiet, but acrimonious argument ensued, the soldier was increasingly insistent and increasingly bad-tempered and there was a hold-up, which meant that bad temper also began to spread through the other nine passengers in the queue. One stared fixedly at the box, and then whispered something anxiously to the passenger immediately next to him. Soon a soft whisper passed down the queue and came to an end in a strange silence. Only the soldier persisted in his original mood and soon the box found itself on the scales, squeezed between the two bags. With it the luggage weighed somewhat more than the permitted thirty kilograms. Before the triumphant expression on the soldier’s face had turned into a loud statement, the hand which had rested on the strange box for the whole ten hours of waiting had already opened the first bag and hurriedly taken from it a large can of pineapple and a long box holding ten packets of cigarettes. At last the weight was less than the allowance. Perhaps he hadn’t needed to remove the cigarettes? But the passenger was no longer looking at either the scales or the soldier. He grabbed his two bags, thrusting the strange shaped box into one of them.

  The strange box was travelling along the glass tunnel, which led to the aeroplane. The ashes of the young woman who had once lain on my right, in Kristina Verček’s cosmetic salon, were travelling to the besieged city. At the cost of a large can of pineapple! Or at the cost of ten packs of cigarettes.

  ‘It would be good to fall asleep like this,’ a woman’s voice had said that day, in the cosmetic salon. Mine or that woman’s? The dark or the fair woman? It was certainly not Kristina Verček’s voice. Hers had already passed from soprano through the phase of mature female alto an
d become baritone. But, nor could it have been mine. Because there was already a moist mask on my face and under it my lips were tightly closed.

  But, once you step into a room without windows, full of mysterious tinctures kept in attractively shaped glass jars, once you listen to an empty room and the constant hum behind the distant partitions, once you feel a slight shudder running from the nape of your neck down your spine while the layer of correcting fluid dries on the word that has already been written ... then anything is possible. It could be that the voice had after all come through my tightly closed lips and that it had not said fall asleep but die.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘What ... die?’

  ‘No ... must I answer that question?’

  ‘No. But you’ve already answered three questions as though you hadn’t.’

  ‘I don’t know, I can’t say I don’t understand the question ... here, have a look yourself.’

  ‘I know, I know ... let it be as I said: at Kristina Verček’s.’

  ‘This is meant for people abroad. They’ll read it. I’m afraid that even here no one, or hardly anyone, knows who that lady is ... what was it ... Verček? But, let’s see what can be done with that ... what it looks like ... What it means ..’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. You’re both inside and outside. Covered up and uncovered. And you don’t see anyone but others see you but that doesn’t bother you ... somehow ...’

  ‘Shall I put “in my sleep”?’

  ‘Maybe. What did you put yourself?’

  ‘In my sleep.’

  Was he repeating my question like an echo or was he confirming that that was what he had replied?

  ‘Fine, let it be “in my sleep”.’

  ‘Don’t say “let it be”. Later you’ll change your mind but the answer will already be at the printer’s, and a long way of, you won’t be able to grumble and plead ... and it’ll all be my fault.’

  ‘No, that’s just what I wanted to say ... in my sleep ... But couldn’t they have asked “when” you want and not “how” you want to die?’

  ‘They could have, if they had consulted you. But they didn’t! Come on, that’s enough, it’s late.’

  He wrote the answer beside the printed question. Folded the paper and wrapped it round my photograph, which had been lying on the little table between us. At last the photograph and the answers were in the pink envelope. He ran his hand over it when it was sealed, smoothing it, as though testing its thickness. He put it down beside the pen and burning candle.

  ‘Shall we blow it out? It’s nearly midnight.’

  ‘You go. I’ll be along in a minute. I’ll just ...’

  He is already in the bedroom. He has taken the Times Atlas of World History with him. Perhaps, by hurrying me up, he has elicited an unwanted reply? The envelope is already sealed.

  I bend my head towards my knees and look down my legs at my feet, resting on the floor this time, where there are no blue satin bows. Just warm fur slippers, which he brought me back from Ancona after that first terrible winter in the besieged city. The next day, as soon as he had left the house, I would look in the wardrobe for my unworn shoes, bought four years earlier.

  ***

  At roughly the time when we received two copies of the magazine with the photographs and the answers of a hundred inhabitants of the besieged city (my colleage-butterfly who had aged overnight called the magazine ... delectable … aaah … the coup of the season in the besieged city), I met Kristina Verček. She did not recognise me. But I recognised her.

  We passed each other and I suddenly turned round. Unfortunately, it is impossible to judge from someone’s back whether the face on its other side has ordinary whiskers, let alone a proud moustache. But, as the former owner of the proud moustache was coming towards me, for a fraction of a second, it had seemed to me that she had none. The bags under my eyes from that evening had remained. If that really had been Kristina Verček, it seemed that many months of living in the besieged city had bequeathed her rapid old age while depriving her of her proud moustache. Whether her voice was still modulated in three tones, I could not tell, as I watched her departing back.

  That day I had not put on the shoes I had bought because the shop assistant made me feel uncomfortable. But I had already begun to wear them.

  In the besieged city one walks over rubble and splinters. Shoes wear out quickly. Even those bought involuntarily are welcome.

  I did not meet the shop assistant with the stern twins behind her large spectacles. Or else I did not recognise her. But once, in the queue for water (one waits for water in long queues here), I heard a brief conversation between two women:

  ‘Are you working?’

  ‘No. Our shop has closed. I’m waiting.’

  Very few shops are open in the besieged city. On the whole, only those with bread or some left-over nonsense from the time when the city was not besieged. It would have been sad, however, if the person waiting was the one who had once said so impatiently:

  ‘Well, madam, have we decided? I have other customers waiting!’

  I sometimes leaf through the magazine in which I deposited my answers. Whenever I catch sight of my photograph it seems to me that I am about to step out of it. This impression may be verified in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A colleague of mine, the office entertainer, somehow got himself to Atlanta. He calls from time to time, when telephone connections with the besieged city are working. He has seen the magazine, although he still does not visit museums. Several dozen copies have made their way to all the important international news agencies. I asked him how I looked in the photograph.

  ‘Like someone with a “troublet”, like at 8.30 am ... and your jacket has one as well ...’

  He did not know that when I asked him how I looked in that photograph, what I had wanted to know was whether I was in it at all. And so he did not know why I had not flinched at his observation about the jacket in the pocket of which, when we worked in the same editorial board, he would often leave a scrap of paper with the message:

  ‘Three times too big? Am I right?’

  I did not ask him about the answers. I did not have to confirm them in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Both there and here, beside the question How would you like to die? lay my final answer In my sleep.

  The same hand that had written my answer had written as his own reply to the same question: I don’t know.

  One of the hundred inhabitants of the besieged city who had been asked had already died. She had died of a serious illness. In the besieged city serious illnesses develop rapidly. As though our life is a gramophone record turning at the wrong speed; too fast. Like a tape that someone impatient is playing speeded up.

  I checked in the magazine. There it said that she had wanted to die without a lengthy illness and with nice memories. Perhaps her serious illness had not lasted long. Although it is difficult in the case of a serious illness and a besieged city, to determine what is short and what long. One could hope that she had at least died with nice memories. Her face is still in the photograph, beside her answers. She does not look like a person intending to step out of it. An agreeable older lady, smiling proudly, her body wrapped in a smart fur coat.

  My friend the writer, who says that characters do not exist and explains to copy editors that one ‘easy’ is not the same as another ‘easy’, had answered the question How would you like to die? with the slightly longer word for ‘easily’ in our language. But, for an American, one ‘easy’ is the same as another. Hence a visitor to the Museum of Modern Art may read that my friend the writer wanted to die easily. He understands that, but the writer does not. That word introduces confusion into the writer’s answer. Can wishes of this kind be expressed in a foreign language, particularly one that does not distinguish one ‘easily’ from another?

  Maybe one should not answer such questionnaires any more, even with the promise of the appealing possibility that our face, photographed, wil
l be displayed to the gaze of the whole wide world. They do not encourage you to confess whom you love, they do not have the charming effect of children’s confessionals, and afterwards those answers lie like involuntarily purchased shoes in a wardrobe.

  The city is still besieged. The nights are often long and empty. Then I suffer from insomnia and the bags under my eyes are deep. He tells me that he thinks I elude sleep and not that sleep eludes me. On particularly empty, silent nights, I see a mask from under which the nice face of the dark woman reappears. She smiles. She says nothing. But I have already learned to read the invitation between the lines. I want to ask whose voice it was that evening that said it would be good to fall asleep.

  The mask changes into a layer of correcting fluid. The wiped out word peers out from underneath it. I am overwhelmed by the same horror as the little girl whose legs swung over the yellow vinyl squares, outside the door from behind which a terrible scream is heard. The scream is wiped out by silence and the horror in me becomes still greater.

  One morning, after such a night, I asked him:

  ‘How much would the ash weigh if my body was cremated?’

  ‘Have you got a less weighty question?’

  He pinched the lobe of my ear, kissed me on my lips and left me without an answer but with warmth, in my ear lobe, and the sharp taste of toothpaste on my lips.

  Besides, the hand I write with has healed. If any new questions should ever arrive, I shall write my answers myself. I’m writing all of this with my own hand. I have placed the Times Atlas of World History under the sheets of paper. It is night. Tonight, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the answer extorted from me keeps vigil.

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