They Do the Same Things Different There (6 page)

And then:

The hair stopped falling, there was simply no hair left to fall. And then—Andy had to sweep it all up; it took him quite a while, there was an awful lot of it, and he resented the time he spent on doing that, this was work time, this was 1574 time. And then and then and then—he forgot he had ever had hair at all, he had no thoughts of hair, his head was an egg and it felt good and proper as an egg, 1574 was all he could think of now, 1574 was all there was, 1574 ran through him and over him and that’s what filled his skull now and all that was ever meant to: Huguenots, drunken sultans, the flora and fauna of the Juan Fernández Islands, 1574 for life, 1574 forever.

And then:

And then sometimes she would visit him and he’d have forgotten who she was, and sometimes he would visit her and she’d have forgotten who he was. But most times they remembered, and the memory came on them like a welcome rush. And they might even celebrate; they’d put their work aside, they’d get into the clapped out old elevator, pull the grille doors to, and ascend to the main gallery itself. And they’d walk through the exhibits on display, they’d turn the lights down low so it was more intimate, low enough that to see the art properly they’d have to squint a bit, as if even for just a little while it wasn’t the most important thing in the room; they’d walk through the centuries together, but not be overwhelmed by the centuries, they’d walk at such a gentle pace too, they were in no rush, they had all the time in the world; they’d walk hand in hand. And Andy thought they must look such a funny pair, really. Almost identical, really, bald and white and plain—she just a little shorter than him, he a little more flat chested than her. They must have looked funny, yes, but who was there to see? (Who was there to tell?)

He didn’t like it when he forgot her. So he wrote down on a piece of paper a reminder, so that whenever he felt lost or confused he could look at it and find new purpose. “Miriam,” he wrote. “She’s your boss. Works with you here at the gallery. Very good with the varnish. Works too hard, takes herself too seriously, not much of a sense of humour, but you know how to make her smile, just give it time. Not pretty, she looks like she’s been newly laid from a hen’s backside, but that doesn’t matter, she’s your friend. She’s the only one that knows you, even when she doesn’t know herself.”

One day Miriam came to find Andy, and he remembered who she was clearly, he remembered her at a glance without the aid of a memo. And he smiled and he got up and took her by the hand, and she said, “No, not today, Andy, this is business.” And she looked sad, and maybe a little frightened, and the bits of her face where she’d once had eyebrows seemed to bristle in spite of themselves.

She’d received a missive from the Curator. It had come in an envelope, bulging fat. She hadn’t yet opened it.

“I don’t see what’s to worry about necessarily,” said Andy. “Isn’t it good that he’s taking an interest?”

“This is only the third missive he’s ever sent me,” said Miriam. “The first one was to appoint me to this gallery, the second one was to appoint you to me. He doesn’t care what we get up to here.” She handed him the envelope. “This is bad. You read it.”

But it didn’t seem so bad, not at first. The Curator was very charming. He apologized profusely for giving Miriam and Andy so little attention. He’d been up to his eyes, there was so much to do, a whole universe of things under his thumb, and regretfully the arts just weren’t one of his main priorities. But he was going to change all that; he was quite certain that Miriam and Andy had been working so very hard, and he was proud of them, and grateful, and he’d be popping into the gallery any time now to inspect what they’d been up to. No need to worry about it, no need for this to be of any
especial
concern—no need for them to know either when his visit might be. Remember, it was all very informal; remember, he’d rather surprise them unawares; remember, remember—he had eyes and ears everywhere.

That he referred to them both as Miriam and Andy was a cause for some concern.

And he finished by adding a request. A very little request, attached as a P.S.

The Curator said there were two ways of looking at history. One, that it was all just random chance, there was no rhyme or reason to any of it. People lived, people died. Stuff happened in between. This seemed to the Curator rather a cynical interpretation of history, and not a little atheist, didn’t Miriam and Andy agree? The second was that there was a destiny to it all, an end resolution that had been determined from the beginning. The story of the world was like the story in a book, all the separate years just chapters building up to an inevitable climax—meaningless if read on their own, and rather unfulfilling too. The entire span of world history only made sense if it was considered within a context offered by that climax—and what a climax it’d been! 2038 really was the Curator’s absolute favourite, he had such great memories of it, really, he’d think back on it sometimes and just get lost in the daydream, it was great.

And that’s why the Curator wanted to see, in all the years preceding, some hint of the end year to come. He didn’t want them to interfere with the art they’d been conserving—no—but, if within that art they saw some little premonition of it, then that’d be good, wouldn’t it? Maybe they could
emphasize
his final triumph, they could pick out all the subtle suggestions throughout all time of his ineffable victory and highlight them somehow. The value of art, the Curator said, is that it reflects the world. What value then would any of these years have if they did not reflect their apotheosis? Their preservation would be worthless; no, worse, a lie; no, worse, treason itself. History had to have a pattern. And up to now, Miriam and Andy had been working to conceal that pattern—with diligence, he knew, and hard labour, and love, he could see there’d been lots of love. All that had to stop, right now.

And if they couldn’t find any premonitions to highlight, maybe they could just draw some in themselves from scratch?

Miriam said softly, “It goes against everything I’ve ever done here.”

Andy said nothing for a long while. He took her hand. She let him. He squeezed it. She squeezed it back. “But,” he then said, and she stopped squeezing, “but if it’s what the Curator wants,” and her hand went limp, “and since he owns all this art, really. . . .” and she took her hand away altogether.

“It’s vandalism,” she said. “I can’t do it, and I don’t care if it’s treason to refuse. You . . . you, Aidan, whatever your name is . . . you do what you like.”

She left him.

He studied 1574. He looked at it all over. He knew it so well, but it was like seeing it with fresh eyes now that he tried to find a part of it to sacrifice. He took out a pen. An ordinary modern biro, something that future conservationists could tell was wrong at a glance, something that wouldn’t stain the patina or bleed into the oils underneath. Andy wasn’t much of an artist, and so the demon he drew over the battle of Mookerheyde was little more than a stick figure. It looked stupid hovering there so fake above the soldiers and the bloodshed. He didn’t even know what a demon looked like, he’d never seen one, he’d imagined that Hell would have been full of the things but they’d always kept to themselves—and so his drawing of a demon was really just the first thing that came to mind. He gave it a little pitchfork. And fangs. And a smiley face.

He wondered if this would be enough to satisfy the Curator, and thought he better not chance it. He drew a second demon over Juan Fernández discovering his islands. The pitchfork was more pointy, the smile more of a leer.

He went to find Miriam. She was crying. He was crying too. And that’s why she forgave him.

“I don’t want you taken from me,” he said, and he held her. “Please.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a betrayal. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Then I’ll do it. Let me do all the betraying. I’ll betray enough for both of us.”

So they would walk the gallery again, hand in hand through the centuries. But this time, as they reached the end of a picture, Miriam would stop, she’d turn away, she’d close her eyes. And Andy would get out his pen, sometimes just a biro, sometimes a Sharpie if the year was robust enough to take it, and he’d draw in a demon or two. And he was surprised at how much easier it got, these acts of desecration; and his demons were bigger and more confident, sometimes they fitted in to the action superbly, sometimes (he thought secretly) they even improved it. He desecrated 1415, he desecrated 1963, he desecrated each and every one of the years representing the First World War. And it seemed to Andy that he was beginning to see the Curator’s point; he’d see there was something foreboding about these years, maybe there
was
something in the design of them all that forecast the apocalypse.

But she wouldn’t let him touch 1660. “It’s mine,” she said.

One night they reached the 1782 room. The Americans were in the throes of revolution, the French were chuntering on toward theirs. Andy thought 1782 had great potential; there were plenty of places where a demon or two would fit the bill. Miriam stood up close to the year. She reached out. She stroked it. When she pulled her hand away, Andy could see that her fingers had been brushing the image of a man in a top hat. His eyes were the most gorgeous blue, and around his mouth played the hint of a flirtatious smile.

Miriam took out the piece of paper from her pocket. She read it. She dropped it to the floor.

“It’s the man you loved, isn’t it?” said Andy.

“No.”

And she reached out again, stroked the face again. This time Andy could see it wasn’t done with affection, but with professional enquiry. “I must have worked on this,” she said. “Look at the man’s face. There was a rip here, from the neck, up to the forehead, look, it took out one of his eyes. I worked on this, I recognize my handiwork. I put his face back together.”

And now that he was looking closely, Andy could see she was quite right. The work had been subtle, and so delicately done, but an expert could see the threads that bound the cheek flaps together.

“What I’d written down, it wasn’t a memory,” said Miriam. “It was an instruction for repair. I never knew this man. I never loved him, and he never loved me. All I ever did was to stitch his face up.”

She ran.

By the time Andy caught up with her she was back at her studio. She was painting. Each stroke of her brush was so considered, was so small, you’d have thought that not a single one could have made the slightest difference—but their sum total was extraordinary. On the canvas she had created a demon. And the oils she’d chosen were perfect, they seemed to blend in with the background as if the demon had always been part of 1660; and its eyes bulged, and saliva was dripping from its mouth, its horns were caught in mid-quiver; it looked at the complacent folly of the seventeenth century with naked hunger. And it hung over the shoulders of King Charles II as he celebrated the restoration of the Crown, the spikes of its tail only an inch away from the Merry Monarch’s face, if Charles just turned his head a fraction to the right his eye would get punctured. And the demon’s presence seemed artistically
right
; it was an ironic comment upon fame and success and the paucity of Man’s achievements—yes, the King was on his throne, but time would move on, and the human race would fall, and nobody could stop it, or nobody
would
, at any rate; and all of this, even this little slice of long past history, all would be swept away.

“It’s beautiful,” said Andy. “At painting, you’re. Well. Really good.” It sounded quite inadequate. And had Andy not known better, he’d have thought the demon in the picture rolled its eyes.

“I know,” said Miriam. But she wouldn’t look at him.

They didn’t know when the Curator came to visit. Only that another missive was sent one day, and it said that his inspection had been carried out, and that he was well pleased with his subjects.

They hoped that would be the end of it. It wasn’t.