artenol0416_sm_flipbook

emotional damage!”
“Could you have entered the exhibition and not
read the instructions?” a reporter interrupted, tearing
her from my shoulder.
Then an attendant approached.
“The law is on the side of the curators. You were
warned. There are signs everywhere. You’re not blind,
my dear!” The girl resumed weeping and her sobs
grew louder.
“Downstairs, on the first floor, there’s a team of
psychologists,” the attendant told me. “She should go
on down. They’ll speak with her, get her settled so she
can get home. Can you make it yourself?”
”Take me, please,” begged the girl and grabbed
me by the elbow.
“What else is there on the top floor?” I said, turning
to the reporter. To tell the truth, I wanted to be finished
with this exhibition. My nerves already were on edge.
“It’s interesting enough,” he mumbled. “Upstairs
they have some Russian artist’s mine field. His name’s
a bit hard to pronounce, but it’s great work. Then they
have predators. On the top floor, a window is open,
and you can jump from a springboard directly onto
the tramway. But no one has done it yet today.”
He grinned. Gnilovsky looked at him with undisguised
contempt.
The girl glanced helplessly from me to the reporter,
and then at Gnilovsky. Without help, it seemed, she
couldn’t budge.
“All right, we’ll take you down. That’s it,” Gnilovsky
said, taking her by the hand. “Let’s go down.
Where’s the exit?”
It turned out that the exit stairs were coated with
artificial ice. We somehow slipped our way to the
bottom, drenching our
clothes. I painfully
banged my shoulder
against the wall, but it
was nothing compared
with the
others’ trauma and
losses.
At the exit we were met by a medical team. Those
with broken bones were treated immediately. The
girl’s boyfriend, with a huge black eye, threw himself
on her and they shook with sobs.
“Do you need a psychotherapist or perhaps a
priest?” a kind-faced nurse asked as she hurriedly ran
over to me.
“Thank you. We’ve gotten used to modern art.”
“The museum gift shop sells beautiful catalogs,”
she shouted when we turned our backs to her.
Returning home on the tram, we heard the
screech of brakes and the blast of a collision. Two
cars had crashed at the corner near the bridge. A tin
can spun twice in the air. Our tram braked hard and
stopped. We had to continue on foot because, as the
conductor explained, someone had lost a leg and traffic
was blocked. After such a stimulating exhibition I
just didn’t have the strength to listen to the details.
Outside my building, right in front of my nose, a
brick fell on the sidewalk and smashed to bits.
“We were awfully lucky today,” Gnilovsky said as
we looked into each other’s eyes, nervously smiling.
“On Thursday, identification procedures commenced
for bodies recovered from the crash site of a
Moroccan airliner. Yesterday, blood relatives, 125 in
all, provided samples should DNA testing be required
... British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that
a ‘barbaric terrorist attack has been committed, which
it is now quite clear, was timed to coincide with the
opening of the G-8 summit,’” the radio sounded as we
went upstairs.
I pulled the cord from the outlet sharply, not
wanting to hear about any more catastrophes, and
I thought, looking at the newly-empty
plug socket: no way would fingers fit in
there after all.
n
Translated from Russian by Brendan Kiernan
and the author. From the book
This is art! (2006).
60
FALL 2016