Chapter Six:
The exhibition opening was announced in Japanese before being repeated in English. After that, a brief interview was conducted by a selection of press officials with the Museum Director, where they discussed the long process of bringing Robert Chaff’s newest body of work to the public. Some general comments were made about the oppressive, often thoughtful but sometimes distressing, emotions that were brought on by an artist at the height of his career. The Director remarked that he had been a fan of Mr. Chaff for many years and that he considered the artist’s work to be a fundamental commentary on the isolation of individual consciousness.
Quinn listened to the exchange with only mild interest. There was little being said that she had not already read in journals documenting Chaff’s history, and she was far more interested and excited by the prospect of seeing his new work for the first time with her own eyes and not through the blinkers of the internet. Remy and Stevie whispered occasionally to one another about how the Director’s comments gave no real insight into the art itself, but Quinn did her best to ignore them. She considered the whole evening one necessary experience. She wanted to document every part of it in her mind so that she might relive it when she was trapped back on that great southern island.
Before long the announcement was made that they would be siphoned through the doors into the exhibition spaces in small groups so as to minimise crowding. A bar serving beer and wine was opened in the wide observation space that looked out over Tokyo and strict regulations were outlined regarding the responsible consumption of alcohol and that under no circumstances were food or drinks to be taken into the show.
Quinn took a moment to look through the delicate bag she was handed after her name was checked against her ticket. The bag was made of recycled paper, thin and dainty, the triangles that patterned its exterior reminded her of an artwork that had consisted of representations of the pyramids strewn across hundreds of landscapes and worlds, each one divided from the others by a transparent sheet of glass. Inside the bag was a thin catalogue of the show that she had chosen not to look through, a red, three dimensional triangle of wood, a triangular 6B grey-lead pencil, and a thin business-card sized notebook. When Stevie compared their two bags the girls noted that the notebooks were individually crafted, each containing its own imperfections – on some pages there were lines or words, but they noticed no repetition between the twenty pages of their books or the one Remy received. In addition, neither of the bags that Stevie or Remy collected had a wooden triangle in them. Quinn felt special because of the object. She felt childish about it but when the others weren’t looking she slipped the block and the notebook into her purse in case she put her bag down somewhere and someone else collected it.
Stevie and Remy were getting along well and she could imagine Stevie bringing the young man back to their hotel, or going back with him to his. When they had set out on their trip, Quinn had feared Stevie picking up some random guy, but Remy seemed genuinely nice and she was sick of getting in the way of Stevie having fun. She glanced at the two of them in the queue behind her, they were talking loudly about sumo wrestling and Remy was offering to take the two of them to a match in a few days if they were interested. Quinn interjected to say that she thought that would be fun and winked at Stevie who laughed, thanking her with her eyes.
Once they had passed through the doors, they were plunged into darkness. Stevie and Quinn quietly resolved to meet at the observation windows if they got separated. A pair of security guards were mitigating the flow of patrons, doing their best to move the attendees through the show quickly but without rushing anyone. They reiterated, in the near dark, that there were several exhibits that were ideally experienced in small numbers and that, as such, they would be asking patrons to wait in certain areas before advancing through the show.
Quinn thanked them in Japanese and lead Stevie and Remy along a series of illuminated lines into the first display space. They were greeted by a white glow as they rounded the corner. Stevie commented on the thirty to forty people staring, open-mouthed, in all directions. The room formed a kind of miniature star. A sphere in the centre of the space gave off diffuse white light that was countered by shifting surfaces all around them that started white before slowly changing to black the further from the light they were.
As the trio moved through the gallery, Quinn noticed that the walls, although appearing black, were actually densely painted with murals of people sun-baking – their figures and details finely expressed in tiny brushstrokes. Her eyes felt like sponges soaking up the room. She held her breath for a long moment, allowing her ears to fill with the murmurs of the other patrons. In a sudden shift of light the sphere at the centre of the room grew in size, its colour warming into a bright yellow that was quickly replaced by orange. The people painted all over the space came into sharp focus as the light became more intense, their skin glowing before seeming to burn. As the sphere turned red, patrons near the centre of the room were forced to step backwards – pushed outwards towards the fried figures relaxing on the beach of Robert Chaff’s mind. Gasps of surprise and awe rippled through the crowd. Quinn heard a thin voice ask if the star would ever stop growing and she couldn’t help smiling, preempting what she new in her heart was about to happen. Beneath the murmurs a thick noise began to drone, tingling at the edges of her hearing before resonating through the room and causing her hair to shiver. Across the space she saw a familiar figure watching her through the red glow, but before she had a chance to really think about him, the sound built into a sudden crescendo and a blast of white light rippled through the room – the star disappearing into a tiny glow, plunging the room back into near darkness.
She heard Remy comment to Stevie that he had never felt so much respect for the sun that they all took for granted. “It makes me feel silly to think that our star exists just to make me warm and tan my skin,” he scoffed, and the awe in his tone highlighted the respect he was trying to convey.
“He makes me wish I could live forever,” Stevie whispered in English. “Just so that I could see it all happen…” She trailed off before glancing sideways at Quinn with a look of apology and dismay. “Sorry… I…”
Quinn only smiled and squeezed her hand in return. “It reminds me of how beautifully insignificant I am.”
At that she let Stevie’s hand slide from hers and she started to make her way around the sphere to the small arch that lead into the next room.
They moved through the exhibition slowly and Remy and Stevie eventually started to hold hands, making quiet observations and discussing their opinions with the interest of near-strangers. The show was bigger than Quinn had hoped. Robert Chaff had made expert use of every corner of the museum. Vertical space was filled with information, colour, and light. Mobiles and murals hung and gently knocked against one another as the people moving through the spaces disturbed the air. She lost Stevie after awhile, falling behind to examine an intricately painted vista of Tokyo bearing tiny pyramids of colour amidst the densely packed buildings of the city.
Shortly afterwards, Quinn passed through another small arch and around a sweeping corner into a long thin room that was black. As she stepped into the space she noticed the light glowing around her, getting brighter as she walked until she reached a crossroad where the sound of a beating heart reverberated in her ears and the glow disappeared, plunging her back into darkness. She turned left and the glow returned to green, prompting her forwards into another small room. The end of the hall curved and she arrived in a space several metres squared – one end of which was filled with dirt. Bamboo shoots stretched upwards towards the ceiling, and Quinn stared for several seconds as she tried to discern whether they were real or not. Before the greenery was a man in a suit-jacket sitting on a simple bench, one hand holding a glass of some liquid.
Quinn was instantly angry. The fact that someone would so blatantly disregard the museum’s ‘no food or drink’ policy, and risk damaging any of Robert Chaff’s priceless art, overwhelmed her. At any other show she might not have said anything, but she couldn’t bear the thought of damage befalling any of the artist’s work and she sat down quietly beside the man to look at the bamboo and carefully phrase the words she wanted to say. With her eyes focused forward she tried to think of how she might broach the topic without sounding impossibly rude. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the man raise the glass to his lips and she cleared her throat loudly, clenching her teeth.
“The museum stated,” she began in Japanese, trying to hide her anger and make her words as clear as she could, “that under no circumstances should food or drink be taken into the show.”
Quinn didn’t turn her head. She continued to look at the brilliant green of the bamboo, her eyes aware that the man had frozen with the glass near his lips. When he didn’t speak or move, she finally turned to look at him only to find that he was staring at her in the dim green light – caucasian, comely, his dark hair flecked with grey – blue eyes, infinitely deep, searching her face. For a second she felt like an idiot, that maybe the man couldn’t speak Japanese and that she would have to repeat herself in English with him staring at her – those eyes going straight through her.
“You’re Quinn Bishop…” He said the words tentatively, like a question but with the intonation of a statement. His voice was soft and tinged with an accent – the kind of accent that was not quite from anywhere in particular because it was the product of so many places. His eyes suddenly widened, as though he’d just heard his own words and he turned back to the bamboo.
“I… How did you…?”
She was baffled.
He’d looked at her with recognition.
He’d said her name.
Did she know him from somewhere? He was so familiar. His face called out to a memory that she couldn’t quite grasp. Without answering, the man stood, knocking his glass on his knee which made her gasp, but thankfully nothing spilt. Her exclamation made him stop and he seemed to take a moment to compose himself before turning to look at her again.
“I’m sorry,” he apologised, standing beside her. She felt suddenly intimidated by him, the strange man who knew her name staring down at her bashfully.
Quinn rose to her feet taking a cautious step around the end of the seat, positioning it between them. “How? Who are you?” Her brow creased and she squinted at him, simultaneously trying to remember the man that had been staring at her in the sunroom. Inside her chest her heart fluttered, her mind racing to place the familiarity of his face. She felt light-headed, her bones seemingly creaking under the pressure of standing. She admonished her sick body, swore at it, pleaded with it for one beautiful evening without disruption, surrounded by the works of a mind that sang to her. On her heels, she swayed slightly, keeping her eyes fixed on the man.
A tentative hand extended between them.
“Robert Chaff.”
She bit her tongue and her eyes lolled in her head, momentarily untethered, and then he caught her as she fell.
