Little Hands Clapping (9 page)

Two weeks later she started work, and by her first coffee break she had got to know her colleagues and organised her desk, and begun to implement her plan. A press release was sent out, announcing that an art gallery was to be established inside the departure area. Everybody who read it found themselves thinking,
What a wonderful idea
.

She spent her days sending letters to various public galleries and private collectors with the intention of securing loans of paintings. Until these letters arrived none of the recipients had any idea that they would be interested in
helping to consolidate the already healthy reputation of Bremen International Airport
, or
showing the world that Bremen is more than just the home of Beck’s beer and the birthplace of Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff
, but something made them want to do their bit. Everybody who was able to responded with offers of loans, but even so they would only part with works that they wouldn’t miss. Across the land curators scratched their heads and said,
Well, we do have that early Mühlberg in storage, the one he painted before he really found his feet
, or,
We could send her that Rohlfs – the one he disowned because he didn’t deem it up to scratch
. In large private houses a typical conversation between husband and wife would find them agreeing that the faint sketches by Ernst Deger that had been hanging in their downstairs lavatory for some years had attracted very little comment from their guests, and that it would be nice to let other people enjoy them for a while.

As each piece arrived Lotte would see only the good in it, and her face would be a picture of delight. And so it was that the Concourse Gallery of Bremen International Airport amassed a collection of pieces of quite stultifying mediocrity.

At the press launch the critics found themselves smiling back at Lotte, and telling her how much they were enjoying the exhibition. In the moment this had not been a lie, but once they had returned to their apartments and switched on their computers they were unable to recall a single point of merit in anything they had seen, and they stared for hours at blank screens. They tried to write down their feelings, but every time they were about to begin, Lotte appeared in their minds’ eyes. Across the city, and farther afield, fingers froze on keyboards. They knew they couldn’t commend such an exhibition, that to do so would damage their reputations, possibly beyond repair, but at the same time even the hardest-nosed among them knew that they could never live with themselves knowing they had brought even a moment’s sadness to that smiling face.

Planned double-page spreads were abandoned, and mentions of the exhibition were relegated to short entries on listings pages, saying things like,
Bremen International Airport will be displaying various artworks inside its terminal building.
Lotte overlooked the bland neutrality of these pieces, and was delighted with the coverage. Once the ribbon had been cut by the mayor, people with time to spare before boarding would see the sign, and go in, and wonder what it was in these pictures that they were supposed to be looking at. And while they were doing this they would be watched by a pair of eyes belonging to an old man, his face a deathly grey.

The pieces, for all their absence of life, were old and unique, and some were the work of artists whose more successful efforts had afforded them some standing; as a result the exhibition had to be insured for a significant sum. After many phone calls, it had become apparent to Lotte that in order to keep the premiums at an affordable level the exhibition would have to be overseen at all times. Even though the paintings were to be hung behind glass screens, the companies still insisted that
a minimum of one human being (extant)
would be required to be on hand whenever the exhibition was open to the public. The airport was as secure as any other (every morning on the way to her office the pins in Lotte’s leg set off the metal detector and she smilingly yielded to the formality of the frisking), but even so it was impossible to find a policy, which did not include such a stipulation.

As the exhibition was being set up she had stood in the gallery as an insurance broker, immaculately suited and as tiny as a jockey, set about explaining the finer details of risk assessment. ‘There can be no underestimating the wiliness of the art thief,’ he had said, taking his silk handkerchief from his pocket and lightly dabbing his forehead. ‘They appear as if from nowhere, and then . . .’ The handkerchief disappeared. He opened his palms to show that he wasn’t concealing it there. Lotte was delighted. ‘And, Miss, as you know, this is an international airport, and at any moment there could be any number of Norwegians passing through, which puts under-guarded artworks at
enormous
risk of being whisked away in an audacious smash-and-grab raid.’ He pointed at his breast pocket and now the handkerchief was there, but the next moment it was gone again. Lotte laughed. ‘But the Norwegians are not the only ones we need to be wary of. Maniacs from anywhere – from as far afield as Angola, or Ireland, or from as close as this very city,’ he made a circular gesture, ‘could come here with Cuban heels and mischief in their minds.’ He walked to the far side of the room, and his affable manner was abruptly replaced by bug-eyes and bare teeth as he took off his shoe and with a blood-curdling howl ran forward and mimed a Cuban-heel attack on the glass that had been put in place to protect a painting of the staggeringly plain wife of a nineteenth-century textile merchant. His was a handmade Italian business shoe, and his demonstration was executed so faultlessly that at no point did it touch the glass, but he was so convincing that Lotte agreed with no further discussion that the insurance companies were right. Cameras would not be enough.

She decided this would be preferable anyway, because with somebody on duty at all times people would be able to ask questions about the pieces and receive informed replies. An advertisement for the positions of Gallery Attendant and Chief Gallery Attendant was placed in an appropriate periodical, and a small number of applications was received.

The first appointee, the Gallery Attendant, was a keen graduate of an arts administration course, who had been looking for a foothold in a competitive profession. The next, nominally the graduate’s superior, even though barring a very small amount of paperwork their day-to-day roles were identical, was a man who had come with several years of experience, having moved from a railway museum in Prüm. He was quite an old man, and his long, grey fingers hung like stalactites from the sleeves of his funereal jacket.

There was nothing to do but stand still. Normally the role of Gallery Attendant, or indeed that of Chief Gallery Attendant, will include answering questions about the pieces from the visitors or, more usually, directing them to the toilets, but here it was different. This being an airport, toilets were abundant and clearly signposted, and the works themselves invited little explanation, even the short paragraphs on the mounted cards seeming excessive under the circumstances. The keen graduate, exhausted by the procession of disappointed faces, soon found work elsewhere, and was replaced by another keen graduate, who also left at the first opportunity.

The old man, though, remained. Working in an unpopular museum or gallery was as close to getting paid for being unconscious as it was possible to get, and because of his exceptional language ability he never had any difficulty finding such a position. The owners always imagined their establishment being visited by people from around the world, and they were keen to employ a polyglot. They didn’t realise that he would go to great lengths to avoid conversation in every language in which he was fluent. Lotte too had been impressed by his gift, though it was only ever used when eavesdropping on visitors, most of whom would say little besides,
These paintings are certainly preferable to that modern rubbish
. But as the words came out these visitors began to wonder whether what they were saying was true. If all the old days had to offer was a painting of an unimaginably ordinary windmill then maybe there
was
something to modern art after all.

Lotte’s gallery had its own shop. Sometimes a restless traveller waiting for a delayed flight would drop in and, for a minute or two, look around. Baffled by the sight of its lacklustre ashtrays, ceramic pencil sharpeners, tea towels and place mats, they would go away without having felt any inclination to buy anything. For a long time the closest the shop came to making a sale had been when a flustered man had rushed in and picked up a mug. He didn’t look at the picture on it, but if he had done he would have seen a particularly nondescript landscape by Georg Friedrich Ackermann, one that on close inspection could be seen to be quite badly water damaged. Without even looking for the price, the man had handed over a credit card. The girl behind the counter looked at the till, then at the card, then back at the man.

‘Please hurry,’ he said. ‘My plane is boarding, and I need to buy this mug as a gift for my estranged daughter.’

The girl stared at the till. It had been so long since her training that she had forgotten which buttons she needed to press.

‘Please,’ said the man. His voice had begun to wobble. ‘My estranged daughter . . . She will be waiting for me . . . It is imperative . . .’

The girl looked once again at the card, then back at the till, and at the man before saying, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She handed the mug and the card to him, and whispered, ‘Just go.’

The man took the mug, stuffed the card back into his wallet and hurried towards his departure gate. The girl watched him rush away, wondering how things would go with his estranged daughter, what she would think about meeting her father after such a long time and being handed such a disappointing mug.

He had been their only customer until the day a woman had come in and bought at least one of everything, a woman whose build made it difficult to tell whether or not she was expecting a baby, even though she was five months pregnant with her third child, who would be a girl called Dagmar.

Before reaching the shop, Pavarotti’s wife had gone to the exhibition, where she had scrutinised each of the exhibits with genuine interest. When she got to the man standing in the corner, instead of shuffling past and deliberately avoiding eye contact as every previous visitor had done, she looked at him very closely, as if he too was on display.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what a wonderful little exhibition you have here.’

The old man accepted the praise with a nod.

‘I congratulate you.’

Indifferent to her approval, and waiting for her to go away, he felt no need to nod for a second time.

‘I suppose you are incredibly experienced in the field of curatorship and so forth?’

He nodded.

‘So tell me, where were you before you came here, to this splendid concourse gallery?’

The old man began to wonder whether there might be a reason beyond nosiness for this interrogation so, in as few words as possible, he replied. He told her he had come from a railway museum in Prüm. He didn’t mention that the museum had been a shambles, that it hadn’t even contained a train and that it had failed quite disastrously, the premises being sold off by creditors and converted into a restaurant called Pippin’s, themed around the story of Pippin the Hunchback.

‘And before that?’

He told her, in as few words as possible, about his time at the Wolfsburg Museum of Recent Local Architecture, the Bad Neustadt Handball Experience and the Regensburg Reformation World of Teddy Bears. He could have listed more, but chose not to. It was none of her business, and he was not yet sure whether she had anything to offer him.

The woman’s eyes narrowed in curiosity. ‘Why have you moved around such a lot?’

‘Because I have been wishing to gain the broadest possible experience in the field.’ This was the line he always gave at job interviews, and he was able to say it without thinking. He chose not to tell her that everywhere he had worked had closed, just as he knew this gallery would close. He had chosen these places carefully, knowing they were hopeless, that he wouldn’t be kept busy, and that he might even receive a pay-off when the inevitable end came.

The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Wonderful,’ she said, and she began to tell him, in considerable detail, about her own plans to open up a museum.

The old man had heard this all before, enthusiastic proprietors outlining ideas for projects which they saw as the centrepiece of a life’s work, oblivious to just how ridiculous they would be, and how unpopular. This woman’s dream, so passionately set forth, was the most ludicrous he had ever heard. ‘I am sure it will be a great success,’ he said, when, at last, she stopped to draw breath.

She told him that she would be looking for somebody to oversee it, somebody with a broad range of appropriate experience. ‘A chief attendant if you will.’ She thought for a moment. ‘No, let us say
a curator
.’

The old man said nothing.

‘Oh, you must forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am being indiscreet. Here you are in your current employment, and I am making what could almost be described as overtures to you. What an awful breach of protocol on my part.’

‘Not at all, madam.’ Now certain that these were indeed overtures, he began to wonder whether he should take up her offer. He was tired of the airport’s security procedures and the incessant drone of announcements, and he could sense the gallery’s imminent failure. He was sure he would soon be looking for a new position.

‘I was about to tell you the terms of employment, about how an apartment on the top floor would be included, and so on and so forth. How indiscreet of me. You have maintained your composure quite admirably throughout this rather awkward encounter.’ Her face burned, and the old man could see that her embarrassment was genuine. ‘I am so very sorry.’