The boy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was the month of June and the past few days had seen the heat beating onto the gallery grounds. The room was airy and lit by the diffused light clamoring to come through the roller blinds. He uncrossed his legs, sank his bottom completely into the cushion of the high chair and perched his feet onto the leg rest. Despite the high chair, the boy was able to touch the ground with ease although most of the time, he perched them on the leg rest and sat on his hands.
Whenever there were viewers about, the boy would follow them around the gallery with his eyes, as he inevitably sat in on their conversations, or registered the way they stood while contemplating the paintings. He did a lot of counting on his own such as the number of visitors who stop in front of a particular painting in a day, the longest time someone has spent looking at a painting, the number of steps a person takes on average to move from one painting to another, the number of people who did not check their phones while in the room, the ratio of people who came to the gallery alone to those who came accompanied and so on. When there was no one about, he simply stared into space and entertained whatever thought floated into his mind. The thoughts were mostly random although he most frequently thought of his past and his future – what he was good at and what he would do with himself following the release of the national examinations results in a few months’ time.
On this particular day, not too long after he was found to be shifting uncomfortably in this seat, he entered into his accustomed state of reverie. The room fell into complete silence as its sole agent capable of sound began his brooding. Two pools of light lay by the window, once or twice diminished by a passing cloud. All this while, the spotlights on the paintings steadily held their strength. His thoughts were truncated by a series of soft thuds on the floor.
Two girls entered. They both wore t-shirt, denim shorts and canvas shoes. Their legs were long and toned. Their brown skin suggested that they had been soaking up the light outdoors. The boy noticed that one of them hung a camera from her wrist. He decided to keep a watchful eye on the duo lest one of them should use the flash on that camera when photographing the paintings. The girls walked haphazardly around the room, nearing whichever painting caught their attention. The girl with the camera stopped at length in front of a large painting of a swan. She beckoned to her companion who went and stood next to her. Her companion looked up at the painting. They started whispering to each other and giggled. The girl then set her camera in front of the painting and before she could press the shutter, the boy uttered, for the first time since his appointment, ‘er, no flash please.’ He had thought the three words would come out of his mouth in an authoritative manner, given the number of times he had rehearsed with his colleague. He was annoyed at himself for the additional ‘er’ and the pause after it, although it did not show on his face. The girls nodded at him and then giggled again. They returned to the painting of the swan that was still in its state of frenzy and the digital simulation of a shutter movement could be heard. Then they walked briskly into the next room.
Jan Asselijn, The Threatened Swan, 1650
The room fell silent again as it had been before the girls entered. The light had shifted a little although the room remained airy and the paintings continued soaking up more time to their years. The boy was surveying the room when he caught a blue shadow from the corner of his eye. A woman had entered the room. Her lips were painted a bright red and contrasted sharply against her fair complexion. Tall and slender, she wore a chiffon dress that covered her knees and flats with rubber shoes. The boy noticed that while the two girls made soft thuds on the ground with their canvas shoes, the woman’s footsteps were barely audible.
Not long after she entered, the room was redolent with the scent of her perfume. The boy sniffed the air eagerly, taking great care not to be noticed in his indulgence by the woman. An act she might construe as utterly perverse, he thought, slightly amused by himself. The woman, with her hands clasped, glanced around the room and found the boy sitting against the wall. She nodded at him and the boy felt his cheeks grow hot. He was by now thoroughly impressed by her demeanor.
The woman casually walked past a few paintings on the left wall before stopping in front of a small painting that measures less than a metre in height. The boy had followed the woman’s gait with his eyes until she turned the corner to head for the paintings on the left wall. He saw from the corner of his eyes that she had stopped in front of a still life painting. The boy resisted turning his head to admire the fine form of the woman. He realized that he did not want her to know that he was looking at her for he feared another encounter with the woman’s gaze even as he longed for it. He contented himself with watching the slender form of the woman from the corner of his eyes. From the corner of his eyes, he admired the hem of her dress bouncing against her fair legs.
When that became too tiring for him, for she simply stood at a spot that bordered the edge of his peripheral vision, he stared straight ahead at the phthalo green gap between two gilded frames in front of him. He took another whiff of the air and savored it throughout its passage into his lungs. In the gallery room, he was wont to reverie and this time was no different. She must be older than me, he thought to himself, probably 25, or 26 years old. Maybe 27. Is she a tourist? Or local? Why is she alone?
He was by then lightheaded with pleasure, not least due to the intoxicating effects of the perfume. He smiled to himself and glanced in her direction. The woman’s dress appeared to match the vibrant still life as the fruits and leaves peeped out from the outline of her fair figure. The boy did not know when the sense of foreboding overtook his pleasure. Given the size of the painting, none of the area within the gilded frame was supposed to be visible when a fully-grown human stood in front of it. The woman’s figure should obscure the whole painting such that from where the gallery sitter was, he should only see the figure of the woman against the phthalo green wall.
Suddenly he was conscious of the distance between the woman and the painting. Surely, she had gone far too close. She was standing more than a foot beyond the white tape that mandated the distance between viewer and exhibit. The boy gripped his pen tightly. He was unsure what to do. He should have simply looked in the direction of the woman and said, ‘excuse me’ as he had always done. However, that would be best executed at the moment of her transgression. The moment had since lapsed so long that he would have to explain the cause for uttering ‘excuse me’ so abruptly. His feet remain glued to the chair rest. It did not occur to him that he could have simply walked up to the woman and motioned for her to move away from the painting.
He watched in horror as her fingers hovered above the textured surface of fruits and flowers, eventually coming to rest just a little above the gilded frame. The boy imagined the drooped tulip quiver at her approaching caress. The room was completely silent as the tip of her fingers grazed the surface of the painting before finding more solid ground on the gilded frame.
Jan van Huysum, Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn, 1724
The woman had approached the painting cautiously. She was aware of the sole gallery sitter in the room, keeping a watchful eye on her. Yet she was sure that she could pull off a brief contiguity with the painting before he could notice. The first time she encountered the painting was a year ago. A number of tourists had crowded in front of the painting, a congregation she considered crass, even as she was wholeheartedly taken with the painting. She bid her time and realized that close to lunchtime, few people came into the gallery. Although the gallery held a number of historically important works, it was an understated gallery and the sitters employed appeared inattentive. She had also managed to find out from a friend that this museum had not thought to install proximity sensors. After all, there had not been a single accident since the inception of the current security system.
She took a sidelong glance at the sitter and realized that he was not looking at her. In fact, he seemed to be staring into space. She boldly stepped beyond the white line, her heart pounding as she anticipated the sitter to berate her. Nothing. The room remained silent and still. The woman took a deep breath and took another step towards the still life painting by Jan Van Huysum. Less than two inches away from the wall, she leaned her body forward and felt the cool of the wall against her chiffon dress. Her buxom pressed against the texture of the gilded frame. She rested two fingers on the painting. She felt blood draining from her fingers as they followed the pull of gravity and collected on her wrist. She could hardly move her wrist. She stood rooted to the spot, like a criminal found out as she waited for the sitter to yell at her, or for some security bell to intrude upon the silence of the gallery. Once again, there was nothing.
Her fingers inched forward and her tongue was parched. She felt the contours of the brushstrokes. Not all the brushstrokes were clearly defined. Most have been smoothed out. The contours of those strokes seemed to tremble under her graze. A few strokes overlaid one another while the sediment colors remain undisturbed at the deep bottom. The lines of her fingers scaled every ebb and fall of the surface they encountered. Upon contacting a particularly pronounced stroke, she paused and toyed with its crust. She felt a throbbing coursing through her arm. At length, she put her face to the painting and brushed against it. She opened her eyes. With one step, she resumed her position behind the white tape. She did not look straight at the painting and instead, stared at the phthalo green wall. She felt the uneven surface of the painting lingering on her cheek.
The boy was very pale. He felt sick, although he was unsure if he were sicker at what the woman had done or at what he had failed to do. The boy stared hard at the Van Huysum from where he was seated, attempting to check if any damage had come to the painting. There were none that he could see from 30 meters away. Although it was a ridiculous distance for him to be assessing the painting from, the boy thought that there was nothing that could move him from his seat. He was at a loss and any sensible movement on his part would require a decision to be made.
The scent of perfume grew stronger as the woman approached him. The boy’s face was by now red with anger. He imagined himself rearing his head up and bristling at her as she walked past. From the corner of his eye, he caught a blue shadow upon which he promptly raised his eyes to meet the woman’s. In that instant, she smiled at him – a smile beautiful in spite of its culpability. Feigned innocence! What a terrible woman! He felt lightness in his stomach as he thought so.
His eyes followed her around suspiciously as she remained in the gallery. She walked slowly, stopping from time to time to look at the paintings, all the while keeping a respectful distance from them. The scent of her perfume was still in the air and the boy found it inevitable to smell it even if he tried his best to repudiate it. From the corner of his eyes he caught another dark shadow. Yet, he did not dare to shift his gaze away from the woman. The shadow loomed larger as it moved towards him. It turned out that his colleague had come to relieve his duties.
For some reason, he felt that he could not look at his colleague in the eye and instead mumbled his thanks and walked off. He moved briskly through two other gallery rooms on his way to the lockers. He was crumbling inside and it did not help that the air in the two rooms seemed to press against him.
As the boy unlocked his locker, he breathed in deeply. The air, although slightly musty, seemed to clear his head. A colleague walked past and greeted him. He smiled in return – he was unable to utter a single word! There was hardly anyone in the room now as all those off their shift had gone for lunch. He sat on a nearby bench and attempted to rationalize the events that had transpired.
If only he had not been thoroughly distracted by the throes of pleasure. If only he had kept an eye on the woman. If only he had said something – anything to keep the woman away from the painting. The event should have been witnessed through the security cameras as it happened. If so, why had no guards come into the room to take the woman away? If they had witnessed the event on the cameras, would I lose my job? And after only two weeks into the job! He would rehearse again and again in his mind what he would do should such an occurrence happened again.
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