Seiobo There Below (32 page)

The use of a general subject for this narrative proved deceptive, however, as the fact slowly but surely became manifest — it appeared to the keenest eyes on the first working day; for most, however, it was largely considered a settled matter by the third morning — that truly there was one among the number, one out of the twelve, who was absolutely unlike all the rest. His mere arrival itself had been excessively mysterious, or at least had proceeded very differently from that of the others, for he had not come by train and then by bus; for however unbelievable it seemed, the afternoon of the day of his arrival, perhaps around six o’clock or half-past six, he simply turned into the campground gates, like a person who had just arrived
on foot
; with nothing more than a curt nod when the organizers politely and with a particular deference inquired as to his name, and then began to question him more insistently as to how he had arrived, he replied only that someone had brought him to a bend in the road in a car; but as in the all-encompassing silence no one had heard the sound of any car at all that could have let him out at any “bend in the road,” the thought that he had come in a car but not all the way, only up to a certain bend in the road, only to be put out there, sounded fairly incredible, so that no one really quite believed him, or more accurately, no one knew how to interpret his words, so that there remained, already on that very first day, the only possible, the only rational — if all the same, the most absurd — variation: that he had traveled entirely on foot; that he had got up in Bucharest and set off on the journey: instead of boarding a train and subsequently the bus that came here, he had simply made the long, long trip to Lacul Sfânta Ana on foot — and who knew for how many weeks now! — turning in through the campground gates at six or six-thirty in the evening, and when the question was put to him as to whether the organizing committee had the honor of greeting Ion Grigorescu, he dispensed his reply with one curt nod.

If the credibility of the tale depended upon his shoes, then no one could have any doubts at all: perhaps originally brown in color, they were light summer loafers of artificial leather, with a little ornament stitched in at the toe, and now completely disintegrating around his feet. Both of the soles had separated, the heels were trodden entirely flat, and by the right toe, something had diagonally ripped the leather open, rendering visible the sock underneath. But it didn’t just depend upon his shoes, and so it remained a mystery until the very end: in any event, more than a few of the garments he was wearing stood out from the Western or Westernized dress of the others in that these items of apparel seemed to belong to an individual who had just stepped directly out of the late eighties of the Ceauşescu era, out of its deepest misery right into the present moment. The roomy trousers were made out of thick flannel-like material of nondescript hue, flapping limply at the ankles, yet even more painful was the cardigan, hopelessly swamp-green and loosely woven, worn over the plaid shirt and, despite the summer heat, buttoned right up to his chin.

He was thin, like a water bird, his shoulders stooped; bald-headed, in his frighteningly gaunt face two pure dark-brown eyes burned — two pure burning eyes, yet eyes not burning from an inner fire but merely reflecting back, like two still mirrors, that something is burning outside.

By the third day they all understood that for him the camp was not a camp, work was not work, summer was not summer, that for him there was neither swimming nor any of the pleasant restful joy of holiday-time, which tends to predominate at such gatherings. He asked for and received new footwear from the organizers (they found a pair of boots for him, hanging from a nail in the shed), which he wore the whole day long, going up and down the camp but never once leaving its confines, never ascending the peak, never descending the peak, never strolling around the lake, never even going for a walk on the wooden planks across the Mossland; he remained there inside, and when he happened to appear here or there, he walked around this way and that, looking to see what the others were doing, passing through all of the rooms in the main building, stopping to pause behind the backs of the painters, the printmakers, the sculptors, and deeply engrossed, observing how a given work was changing from day to day; he climbed up into the attic, went into the shed and the wooden hut, but never spoke to anyone, and never replied with even a single word to any of the questions, as if he were deaf and mute, or as if he didn’t understand what was wanted of him; perfectly wordless, indifferent, insensate, like a specter; and when they, all eleven of them, began to watch him, as Grigorescu was watching them — they came to the realization, which they discussed among themselves that evening around the fire (where Grigorescu was never seen to follow his companions, as he always went to sleep early) — the realization that yes, perhaps his arrival was strange, his shoes were odd and so was his cardigan, his sunken face, his gauntness, his eyes, all of it was completely so — but the most peculiar thing of all, they established, was what they hadn’t even noticed until now, yet it was the very strangest of all: that this illustrious creative figure, always active, was here, where everyone else was at work, yet idle, perfectly and totally idle.

He wasn’t doing anything: they were astonished at their realization, but even more at the fact that they hadn’t noticed it right at the beginning of the camp; already, if you cared to count, it was getting on to the sixth, the seventh, the eighth day; indeed some were preparing to put the finishing touches on their artworks already, and yet only now did the thing in its entirety appear to them.

What was he actually doing. 

Nothing, nothing at all.

From that point on, they began to watch him involuntarily, and on one occasion, perhaps the tenth day, they realized that at daybreak and throughout the mornings, when most of the others were asleep, there was a relatively long stretch of time during which Grigorescu, although commonly known to be an early riser, did not appear anywhere; a period of time when Grigorescu went nowhere; he was not by the log hut, nor by the shed, neither inside nor out: he simply wasn’t to be seen, as if he had become lost for a certain period of time.

Propelled by curiosity, on the evening of the twelfth day, a few of the participants decided to rise at dawn on the following day and try to investigate the matter. One of the painters, a Hungarian, took the responsibility of waking the others.

It was still dark when, having confirmed Grigorescu not to be in his room, they circled the main building, then went out through the main gate, came back again, went back to the wooden hut and the shed, only to find no trace of him anywhere. Puzzled, they looked at each other. From the lake, a gentle breeze arose, dawn was beginning to break, slowly they were able to make out each other; the silence was total. 

And then they became aware of a sound, barely audible and impossible to identify from where they stood. It came from a distance, from the most outlying part of the camp, or more precisely, from the other side of that invisible border where the two outhouses stood, which itself marked the boundary of the camp. Because, from that point on, although it was not marked, the terrain ceased to be an open courtyard; nature, from whose grasp it had been seized, still had yet to take the terrain back, yet no one expressed any interest in it: a kind of abandoned, uncivilized, and rather ghastly no-man’s land, upon which the campsite’s owners made no visible claim beyond its use as a dumping-ground for waste matter, from dilapidated refrigerators to everyday kitchen garbage, everything imaginable, so that with the passage of time tenacious, feral weed-growth, nearly impenetrable and almost head-high, covered the entire area; thorny, dark, and hostile vegetation, without use and indestructible.

From somewhere beyond, from a point in this undergrowth, they heard the sound filtering toward them.

They did not hesitate for long regarding the task that lay ahead: uttering not one word, they simply looked at each other, nodded silently, threw themselves into the thicket, breaking forward through it, toward something.

They had gone in very deep, a good distance from the buildings of the campsite, when they were able to identify the sound and establish that someone was digging.

They might have been near, for it was clearly audible to them by now, as the tool was pressed into the earth, the soil thrown up, hitting the horsetail grass with a thud, spreading out.

They had to turn to the right, and then make ten or fifteen steps forward, but they got there so quickly that, losing their balance, they almost went plunging downward: they were standing at the edge of an enormous pit, approximately three meters wide and five long, at the bottom of which they glimpsed Grigorescu as he worked, deliberately. The entire hole was so deep that his head was hardly visible, and in the course of his steady work, he had not at all heard their approach as they just stood at the edge of the giant pit, just looking at what was there below.

There below, in the middle of the pit, they saw a horse — life-sized, sculpted from earth — and first they only saw that, a horse made from earth; then that this life-size earth-hewn horse was holding its head up, sideways, baring its teeth and foaming at the mouth; it was galloping with horrific strength, racing, escaping somewhere; so that only at the very end did they take in that Grigorescu had eradicated the weeds from a large area and dug out this tremendous ditch, but in such a way that in the middle part he had stripped the earth away from the horse, running with its frothing ghastly fear; as if he had dug it out, freed it, made this life-sized animal visible as it ran in dreadful terror, running from something beneath the earth.

Aghast, they stood and watched Grigorescu, who continued to work completely unaware of their presence.

He has been digging for ten days, they thought to themselves by the side of the pit.

He has been digging at dawn and in the morning, all this time.

Below someone’s feet, the earth slipped, and Grigorescu looked up. He stopped for a moment, bowed his head, and continued to work.

The artists felt ill at ease. Someone has to say something, they thought.

It’s superb, Ion, said the French painter, in low tones.

Grigorescu stopped again, climbed up a ladder out of the pit, cleaned the spade of the earth clinging to it with a hoe lying ready for that purpose, wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, and then came toward them; with a slow, broad movement of his arm, he indicated the entire landscape.

There are still so many of them, he said in a faint voice.

He then lifted his spade, went down the ladder to the bottom of the pit, and continued to dig.

The rest of the artists stood there nodding for a bit, then finally headed back to the main building in silence.

Only the farewells remained now. The directors organized a large feast, and then it was the last evening; the next morning the camp gates were locked; there was a chartered bus, and some of those who had come from Bucharest or from Hungary by car also left the camp.

Grigorescu gave the boots back to the organizers, put on his own shoes again, and was with them for a while. Then a few kilometers on from the camp, at a bend in the road near a village, he suddenly asked the bus driver to stop, saying something to the effect that from here it would be better for him to go on alone. But no one understood clearly what he had said, as his voice was so inaudible.

The bus was swallowed up by the bend, Grigorescu turned to cross the road, and suddenly disappeared from the serpentine route downward. Only the land remained, the silent order of the mountains, the ground covered in fallen dead leaves in the enormous space, a boundless expanse — disguising, concealing, hiding, covering all that lies below the burning earth. 

233

WHERE YOU’LL BE LOOKING

Anywhere, just not at the Venus de Milo — this was written on their faces, he could really say that, this was written so unambiguously on his colleagues’ faces that he nearly found it amusing to sit among them during the weekly or monthly meetings for assignment of duties, to sit there among them, and in part to hold out without laughing, as no one wanted to be assigned there, in part because he, to the contrary, was just waiting for the departmental director to look up at him and to say again and again, so well, Monsieur Chaivagne, you shall stay in your accustomed place, you know, LXXIV, and then, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII on the first floor of the Sully in the hourly shift rotation, when of course the emphasis was on LXXIV, the Salle des 7 Cheminées, and at such times, when he heard that he was assigned there, not only was he filled with immeasurable satisfaction, but it was also gratifying how on each occasion he always sensed a kind of complicit recognition in the departmental director’s voice, a gratifying praise, some granting of distinction beyond words, that as for LXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII, since he was trustworthy, Monsieur Chaivagne was the man — this had been trembling in the voice of the departmental director for seven years now, ever since he, Monsieur Bruno Cordeau, had been named Director — he was the man who could be trusted with the Salle des 7 Cheminées, the present location of the work, with all the crazed tourists; and he did all of this — for which Chaivagne was especially grateful — without in the least mocking that which every older museum guard knew, of course, and which everyone regarded as a question of individual temperament, namely that he, Chaivagne, had a special relationship to the Venus de Milo, and because of that, for him, as he expressed it himself on several occasions during his first few years, the daily routine of eight hours was not work, but a blessing, such a gift as can never be repaid, that he would do anything to win, if it hadn’t fallen into his lap all by itself, having been hired at that time — thirty-two years ago — and found to be suitable for the task of tactfully yet decisively protecting it for the eight hours of the day, from ten in the morning until six in the evening, that had been determined as the museum’s opening hours; he’d been found suitable for the task of safeguarding it from the careless, the crazy, the ill-bred, and the loutish, as these were for the most part the four categories which Chaivagne was obligated to identify among a certain percentage of the museum’s visitors, a certain percentage, but not all of the museum’s visitors, because in contrast to the majority of his colleagues, he did not clump the problematic figures together with the merely inquisitive, the latter namely never did the kinds of things which he himself, given similar circumstances, would never have done, because well, how could one not be jostled or pushed forward a little, if one has already drifted into the desired room and is then in the presence of the great work, he, Chaivagne, deemed this to be an even very tolerable weakness, and he never even intervened; in general, he did not really wish to call attention to his presence, in the end he was not a military sentry, but a museum guard; not a prison warden, but a guardian of the work, so that accordingly he tried to remain as invisible as these particular circumstances permitted, because there was, during the course of the day — in particular surges, completely at random, but on the basis of Chaivagne’s three decades of experience, still arriving in certain predictable time-intervals — there was always a certain kind of “event,” as they termed it among themselves in the professional jargon, when one had to intervene, not conspicuously, albeit decisively, not disturbing the general, although fairly clamorous, rapture, but with an unequivocality that brooked no dissent, and it was not a question here of someone touching the cordon surrounding the work, and you have to dash over there immediately — he motioned to the younger, chiefly female colleagues, eagle-eyed and ready to leap into action, who were more inclined to wait for that moment when they could finally pounce upon an unruly child or adult — no it wasn’t about that, but when you sense that someone, perhaps a tourist who has forgotten himself, is about to step across this symbolic boundary by sheer accident, well then, in that case, the person in question must be unconditionally ushered out, not to speak of those instances when somebody not only creeps behind the cordon, but when you sense that they are headed toward the work, well, those are moments which one has to be able to feel, Chaivagne explained to the beginners and to the less experienced, the crazy, the obsessed, the nut-cases, the confused, the despoilers, in a word, those figures posing a real danger to the work must immediately — Chaivagne, who was not particularly stern, raised his index finger sternly to the younger colleagues, or to the women — those figures must immediately be removed not just from the room, but from the museum as well, there are ways of handling this; the security system is adequate, in the last few years in particular it has developed a great deal, but at the same time, in his opinion, the dangers must not be over-exaggerated, and for that reason, he considered with decided aversion those museums where the guards are authorized to stand, as it were, between the work and the visitor; here, of course, in the Louvre that did not pass muster at all, that was not admissible, and for that reason no one must ever forget that normality has its limits, and the Louvre operates within these limits, hence it should be thought of first and foremost as the most important museum in the world, which is open to everyone, and where it is the experience of a lifetime for every visitor to glimpse the inconceivable treasures of the Louvre face-to-face; the flood of tourists, the jostling and thronging crowds are just to be endured, it is part and parcel of the age we live in, such is the world, there are too many of us — Chaivagne expounded on his simple opinion of the world to his older colleagues — and in this world anyone can be a tourist; so that he did not consider himself to be one of those museum guards who hated tourists, it would be then as if he hated himself, no, this was not his standpoint, the fact that they come, they run around, they click their cameras, this must all be borne, well, my god, there are cameras, and there are circumstances that turn a person into a tourist, and in this situation a person is helpless, should he not then even look at the Venus de Milo? — isn’t that so? this is a difficult question already; Chaivagne looked around at his colleagues at such times, well, should they close the Louvre?! — and then no mortal being whatsoever, no one would ever see, all that is here, only here — from the classical Greeks to Hellenistic statuary — yes, this was his opinion, Chaivagne nodded at his own words, his opinion had been formed over many years, and that is why those who knew him considered him to be as gentle as a lamb, so mild in the face of the tourists’ wolf-like onslaught, that was already in and of itself perilous, well it was only Chaivagne who could neither be damaged by it nor induced to better judgment, for example, acknowledging that sometimes it was good to kick a Japanese tourist in the crowd there near the cordon, when no one was looking, but no, Chaivagne did not even react to such provocations, he just smiled — of course he always smiled just a little, his colleagues every morning recognized him from far away by that little indelible smile on his face, and not by how he parted his gray hair accurately in the middle with a damp comb, combing it closely across his skull, or his invariably ironed suit, but by this little smile, this was his token of defense, of which they only suspected — because Chaivagne did not reveal all — they suspected that it originated from the joy of being here again, which all the same seemed like pure absurdity to the colleagues, who just like all other Parisians hated coming into work, but the cause could not be anything else, they were obliged to state that this person was overjoyed if he was here, overjoyed if he could start work in the morning and take up his place, so he’s an imbecile, one or two of the more talkative museum guards noted, and with that they closed the discussion concerning this matter on that very day, because it was boring as well, one could not really talk about Chaivagne — the older guards in general didn’t even really talk about him — because Chaivagne was so much the same every day, every week, and thirty years ago he was exactly the same as today, yesterday, and he would be the same the day after tomorrow, Chaivagne did not change, they just brushed the matter aside, and there was something in it too; Chaivagne, too, just nodded, smiling if they taunted him ironically, saying you, Felix, you really don’t change, as if, with that little smile of his he wanted to convey that he felt the same way: but the reason why was that what he was guarding, the Venus de Milo, wasn’t changing either, just, well, they never talked about that, so that it could have gained ground and become a central theme if they ever discussed it, but, well, they discussed it only very infrequently, namely that Chaivagne and the Venus de Milo, those two, were living as if in some kind of symbiosis together, but here, at this point already, they were wrong, and they betrayed that they really knew nothing, but nothing at all about the essence of Chaivagne, because the situation was such, Chaivagne looked at them with that little smile of his, that there was the Venus de Milo, and beyond that there was nothing else at all, this was his, Chaivagne’s opinion, how could anyone even think that there could be any kind of connection between them, but even if there was, it was just that kind of one-sided connection, that is, an amazement, the intoxicating feeling of knowing that he could be here for the whole eight hours of the day, if among the colleagues it was agreed that for him there would be no two-hour shift rotations, here inside, because he belonged to the inner world of the Venus de Milo, namely he was one of the chosen of the Venus de Milo’s internal security, this was an uplifting feeling whenever it occurred to him — and it frequently occurred to him for more than thirty years — it continually flashed through his mind what a person as he could feel in an exceptional situation like this, and well, of course he didn’t talk to anyone about it, and not a single colleague ever really tried to discuss the topic with him, as that was not how they saw it, for them it was simply work from which their arches were going to fall in, their backs would become hunched, in consequence of which after a while it became habitual for them to keep unconsciously massaging their necks, as that gets worn out the most, well and of course the foot, not just the sole of the foot, that too, but the entire heel of the foot, the ankle, and the calf, and the waist, the entire spinal column, and so on, it’s difficult being a museum guard, and amid that difficulty, if there is even at the beginning some kind of sensitivity to one of the artworks, it usually is quickly dispersed by the fatigue that comes with the job, with the exception of Chaivagne; it was simply not possible to uncover in his case if he was particularly worn down by all that occurs to a person while standing — with the sole of the foot, the ankle, the spine, and the neck muscles — it wasn’t possible to state that his body did not ache, just that he somehow did not preoccupy himself with this, did it hurt, well yes it hurt, of course it hurt, a person, if he is a museum guard, is on his feet for nearly eight hours at a stretch, the breaks are measured in minutes, and that could never be enough for complete rejuvenation, eight hours on your feet, yes, it’s true, smiled Chaivagne, but at the same time it was eight hours in the inner world of the Venus de Milo; if someone asked, that is always what he answered, but nothing more, although as to why it was precisely this artwork that replenished his life to such a degree, and not the Mona Lisa, or Tutankhamen, and so on, he never spoke a word to anyone, because the answer was excessively simple, and no one would have been able to understand, because on the one side here was the Venus de Milo, on the other there was Chaivagne, who altogether could have said by way of explanation that it was because this was the greatest enchantment he had ever seen and ever could see, because among all the treasures of the Louvre, this ravished him the most, and that was all: it was due to the aura of the Venus de Milo; even if he had wanted to he could not produce more than that, the fact that this was the greatest of wonderments, at least to him, could hardly explain his peculiar life, which was in its entirety subordinated to the wonderment of the Venus de Milo, it would have sounded too simple, a blatant platitude, if he had tried to explain his extraordinary relationship with the Venus de Milo in this way, so he didn’t even say anything, he preferred to be silent instead, and to go on smiling, seeking, as it were, forgiveness that he could not really know more about himself than that, for if he were to relate what had happened to him when he was a youth, at the time of his first glimpse, even that would not have led anywhere, as he could not have said more than that he saw it, and his feet were rooted to the ground, and the Venus de Milo mesmerized him; since then nothing had changed, with no explanation; they had simply come in from the provinces, from a little village next to Lille, where he lived with his father, and his father brought him to the Louvre, and then a couple of years later he moved to Paris, applied for the position and was hired, his life story really altogether consisted only of that, namely, this would not have caught the attention of his colleagues, perhaps they wouldn’t even have believed that the whole thing was so simple, or that he would be so incapable of providing an explanation, so that, well, he remained silent; if from time to time someone tried to badger him about this strange devotion to the Venus de Milo, he just smiled but said nothing, preferring to stroll a little further on, and in the absence of an answer the secret remained as well, whereas he, Chaivagne, knew perfectly well that the secret was not within him, because inside of him — he acknowledged this at such times when at home — if he reflected upon it, there was absolutely nothing at all, he was completely empty; the Venus de Milo, however
was completion itself, inasmuch as a museum guard could be permitted already, from time to time, to fling around big words like these, so that the secret was only in the Venus de Milo, but why is it exactly the Venus de Milo — Monsieur Brancoveanu, a particularly friendly and very sophisticated colleague once asked — with whom you stand in the most confidential of relations, why not the Medici Venice, or one of the countless Cnidian Aphrodites, and there is also the Aphrodite of Ludovici, or the Venus of Capua, or the Capitoline Aphrodite, or the Venus of Barberini, or the Belvedere Venus, or the Kaufmann head, in the world there are innumerable Aphrodites and Venuses, each more beautiful than the next, but for you — Monsieur Brancoveanu looked questioningly at him — for you, this Venus of scandalously ill-repute stands above all else, you cannot seriously think so; but yes, he nodded gently, he did think so, in the most serious manner possible, although it would be difficult to state that the Venus de Milo stands