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 <strong>sm</strong>ashed to bits. “We were awfully lucky today,” Gnilovsky said as we looked into each other’s eyes, nervously <strong>sm</strong>iling. “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
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