Last Chance, page 6
‘It’s Epstein!’ exclaimed Melanie.
‘Oh my gosh, you’re right!’ said Friday. ‘I didn’t recognise him without the Highcrest school uniform.’
‘Highcrest didn’t have a school uniform,’ said Melanie.
‘No, but Epstein had one,’ said Friday. ‘He always wore black jeans, black shirts and a black jacket.’
‘I wonder what he’s doing here,’ said Friday. ‘His father must still be in jail.’ Friday knew this because she had put Epstein’s father in jail when he was briefly her art teacher and she uncovered that he was running a massive contraband art racket.
The girls walked over. They didn’t even try talking to Ian. The other girls were demanding his complete attention.
‘Hello, Epstein,’ said Melanie. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
Epstein looked up and blushed.
‘Friday is ever so cross with you for stealing her boyfriend,’ said Melanie. ‘I assume you’re the boy on the third floor we’ve heard so much about.’
‘It wasn’t my idea,’ said Epstein. ‘Ian announced it without telling me. The girls on the second floor kept badgering him to go out with them. He needed an excuse not to.’
‘And the truth wouldn’t do?’ asked Melanie.
‘He showed them a photo of Friday and they didn’t believe him,’ said Epstein.
‘So are you doing this to break Friday’s heart in revenge for her putting your dad in jail?’ asked Melanie.
‘No,’ said Epstein. ‘For a start, Dad totally deserved to go to jail. Secondly, he made a deal with the authorities. He grassed out his buyers. He only served two months of his sentence.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed Friday. ‘He only got two months for embezzling millions of tax dollars?! I did eleven months and I didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes, but your thing was terrorism,’ said Melanie. ‘People take that more seriously than art crime.’
‘Art crime funds terrorism!’ argued Friday.
Kate hurried over. ‘Do you think you could keep your voice down?’ she whispered.
Friday looked about and realised there were several museum visitors staring at her and she had been talking loudly about how she had served time in jail for terrorism.
‘Um . . . and – scene!’ said Friday with a bow. ‘We’re rehearsing for a play.’
The tourists did not look like they believed her. But they did not look like they wanted to confront a possible child terrorist either. They shuffled away.
‘You are the worst liar ever in the history of the world,’ said Melanie.
‘I can’t be good at everything,’ said Friday. She turned back to Epstein. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Do you work for Interpol too?’ asked Melanie.
‘What?’ said Epstein.
Friday trod on Melanie’s foot. ‘Ow!’ said Melanie. There’s nothing like asking someone who doesn’t work for Interpol if they work for Interpol too to totally blow your cover.
‘Do you like working on interpolating art too?’ fabricated Friday. ‘We’re really looking forward to bringing our own interpretation to our sketches of the great masterworks on display.’
‘Um, okay,’ said Epstein, looking confused.
‘Gather round everyone,’ said Kate. ‘Professor Emmanuel from the Louvre curacy department is going to give you a talk on French sculpture.’
The students made their way over to the bespectacled man standing in front of a statue of Zeus. He looked pre-bored, and he was the one giving the lecture. The teenage students stood no chance. Professor Emmanuel cleared his throat and began talking in a dreary monotone about the provenance of the marble, and how they worked with geologists to narrow down the location of the quarry in Italy where it was mined.
‘Hello,’ Ian whispered in Friday’s ear. She shivered. She hadn’t realised he was so close.
‘Can you risk being seen talking to me?’ asked Friday. She wished she could sound cool, but she couldn’t do it. Her voice came across as peevish.
‘I think I can risk talking,’ said Ian. ‘But I can’t risk what I’d like to do.’
Friday glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t sure what he meant. She hated it when people didn’t say exactly what they were trying to say.
‘I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,’ said Ian. ‘Do you want to sneak behind a statue with me?’
Now Friday blushed. ‘I don’t think that’s appropriate.’
‘Achem,’ said the professor. ‘Blond boy at the back, would you like to share what is so interesting with the group?’
Friday closed her eyes and wished that she could be sucked down into the floor. She hoped desperately that Ian would not tell the truth. As a scientist she didn’t think she would literally die of embarrassment, but she was pretty sure her soul would wither up and disintegrate.
‘I was just saying I was impressed by the juxtaposition of the cold white marble with the wild passion of the subjects portrayed,’ said Ian. ‘So much emotion captured forever in pure hard stone.’
‘Well, yes . . . quite,’ said the professor. He turned and looked at the statues himself, as if checking if Ian was looking at the same thing as him.
Ian smiled at Friday.
Friday rolled her eyes.
Ian chuckled. They both tried to concentrate on the rest of the lecture.
Friday’s first impression of the Mona Lisa was that it was small. Although, not as small as everyone said. It was just an average-sized painting. It was also kind of dark. Not eye-catching at all compared to the colourful paintings by Titian on the other walls of the room, or the bold use of light in the Caravaggio out in the corridor. The Mona Lisa was just a small-to-medium sized dark painting of a woman wearing dark clothes.
The first indicator of its cultural significance was the huge crowd clutched around it. They all desperately wanted to elbow each other out of the way, but this was an art gallery, not a football match, so that was not really appropriate. There were also four security guards in the room and CCTV cameras at several points around the ceiling. So everyone had to follow standard art gallery etiquette. People behave in art galleries the way they do in libraries. They instinctively whisper and move slowly so as not to disturb anyone. Hip-checking a Japanese tourist so you could get a better selfie with a famous painting would not be okay.
The next sign that this painting was somehow special was the bulletproof glass. Really, when you think about it, it’s remarkable that the vast majority of great paintings in the world are just hung on walls in public galleries where anyone (that is, anyone who can afford the entrance fee) can walk right up to the fragile surface of a priceless masterpiece. Usually the only thing stopping a person from touching the five-hundred-year-old, delicate oil paint itself is social custom and a white line drawn on the floor, or perhaps a red velvet rope (barricades even an arthritic grandmother with a Zimmer frame could easily overcome).
The custodians of the Louvre collection had long since learned the error of their ways where the Mona Lisa was concerned. There was a sturdy balustrade to keep the crowds back and under the portrait itself there was a large wooden shelf. It looked like an altar in a cathedral. And the crowd behaved like they were in a cathedral. Except they were there to worship this one work of art.
Between the balustrade, the bench and the bulletproof glass, the crowd could not get too close. This wasn’t just protection for the painting, it was an attempt at fairness. If everyone had to stand back one point five metres, more people could see the Mona Lisa at the same time.
Even if you did want to try ducking under the balustrade, climbing over the bench and touching the bulletproof glass, there was the added disincentive of the security guards standing alongside the painting watching the crowd. There were over five thousand paintings on display at the Louvre Museum, but this was the only piece to have its own security team guarding it every moment that the gallery was open. If you came to see the Mona Lisa, there was always someone looking at you looking at the painting.
‘She’s a bit of an odd duck, isn’t she?’ said Melanie.
‘Who?’ asked Friday. She scanned the crowd, trying to guess who Melanie was referring to.
‘The Mona Lisa,’ said Melanie. ‘If you were at a party and she was there, looking like that, would you go and say hello?’
Friday had been looking at the security and the crowd. She hadn’t stopped to think about the painting in this way. As if the subject were actually a person. Although of course she had been five hundred years ago – a real living, breathing person with a life as complicated, if not more complicated, than anyone standing in that room. Lisa Gherardini had once been a woman who did all the usual everyday things, including attending parties.
‘I can’t answer that question,’ said Friday. ‘I don’t do small talk properly with anyone regardless of how they look.’
‘Do you think she had a lot of friends?’ said Melanie. ‘Her outfit isn’t very cheerful.’
‘She’s smiling,’ said Friday.
‘Only just,’ said Melanie. ‘Really, it’s odd that this is the most famous painting in the world.’
‘Well if this wasn’t, what would be?’ asked Friday.
‘Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh,’ said Melanie. ‘It’s much more cheerful.’
Friday shook her head. ‘People don’t want cheerfulness from the arts. That’s why the vast majority of theatre, literature, poetry and paintings are all miserable.’
Friday stared at the portrait. There was something about it. ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘this painting was considered avant-garde and shockingly cheerful because of that sort of half smile.’
‘If you look at it long enough,’ said Melanie, tilting her head to one side and squinting a bit, ‘I’m not convinced it even is a smile. It’s more of a not-quite frown.’
‘It’s also famous because it’s superbly done,’ said Friday. The textbook about da Vinci she’d read on the airplane went on about this in great depth. ‘The colours, the brush work, the expression – it’s all exceptional.’
‘I suppose so,’ conceded Melanie.
‘And the composition has lots of false-perspective mathematical stuff going on,’ said Friday. ‘If you look closely, you’ll see the background on the right side of her head doesn’t match with the background on the left side of her head. Not unless the painting is meant to depict some sort of geological cataclysm.’
‘Very odd,’ said Melanie as she leaned in to peer at the strangely deformed countryside.
‘Plus, da Vinci was a great master,’ added Friday. ‘Greater than all the other masters of the Renaissance and this is his greatest painting. That’s why it’s famous.’
‘Yes, but he couldn’t paint noses,’ said Melanie.
‘What?’ said Friday.
‘He couldn’t paint noses,’ said Melanie, pointing at the Mona Lisa. ‘You see one of his noses and you think, oh well, that must be what that one person, Lisa Gherardini, must have looked like. You don’t often see two da Vinci paintings side by side because he didn’t do a lot of paintings, and the few that survive are so valuable they’re spread all over the world. But when you see pictures of all his pictures next to each other in a book, you realise – he always did noses the same way, and they are always wrong. He doesn’t do the dent at the top of the nose where it meets the eyebrow.’
‘No way,’ said Friday, peering closer at the Mona Lisa. Her nose did look a little unusual.
Melanie leafed through their lecture notes and showed Friday several different images from different Leonardo da Vinci paintings. All of them – his pictures of Saint Anne, Saint Mary, Jesus, the twelve disciples – they all had the same misshaped noses.
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Friday. ‘You’re right!’
‘I know,’ said Melanie. ‘He invented the concept of the helicopter, drew the Vitruvian man, painted the Mona Lisa and yet – he couldn’t do noses.’
‘That’s very deflating,’ said Friday.
‘Not at all,’ said Melanie. ‘I think it makes him more human. Her hands are wrong too.’ Melanie pointed at the Mona Lisa’s hands. ‘Look, they’re all pudgy. Like a baby’s hands.’
‘Maybe she had a hand-swelling disease,’ said Friday, as she peered closer. ‘Disease was rife in the Renaissance.’
‘If she was that sick, she wouldn’t be smiling?’ asked Melanie.
‘Oh my gosh!’ exclaimed Friday, suddenly noticing something else. ‘She doesn’t have a clavicle either!’
‘A what?’ asked Melanie.
‘A collarbone,’ said Friday, pointing to the collarbone on her own neck. Melanie turned to compare it to the painting.
‘You’re right!’ said Melanie. ‘It’s like her bosom billowed out from her shoulders. It’s amazing this painting is famous at all when it has so many biological errors.’
‘Well, da Vinci was gay,’ said Friday. ‘Perhaps he didn’t get to look at many women’s bodies.’
‘But he would have seen women walking about in the street,’ said Melanie. ‘He must have noticed that they had collarbones and their noses had bridges.’
‘Apparently not,’ said Friday. They stood and stared at the Mona Lisa some more. ‘And yet, there is something about it, isn’t there? It’s dark and it’s just a picture of a woman. But something about it glows. Like it’s humming with magic and mystery.’
‘You’ve been in the art gallery too long,’ said Melanie. ‘You’re starting to talk in poetry.’
‘As a scientist, I can appreciate that there are things beyond my scientific understanding,’ said Friday. ‘Not many things, but some. The inexplicable allure of this painting is one of them.’
They continued to sketch as they stood at the back of the room. Sketching was proving to be an excellent excuse for standing in one spot, staring at everything in minute detail. If you behaved in exactly the same way without a sketchpad in your hands, someone would complain that you were a delinquent youth loitering about, or that you were staring at people and stalking them. But if you stand in an art gallery with a sketchbook and pencil, you can stare at whatever you like all day long. Friday made a mental note to make use of this tactic more often when she needed to do surveillance.
As Friday looked about, she noticed a sign on the wall. It was just inside the doorway and it said, ‘Beware of pickpockets’ in French and in English. And for people who couldn’t read either there were pictograms of someone having their wallet stolen.
‘That’s redundant,’ said Friday.
‘What?’ asked Melanie.
‘Pickpocketing,’ said Friday. ‘No-one carries money in their pockets anymore. People don’t even steal phones anymore. For a start, everyone already has one. And if you steal one you’re basically stealing a tracking device so the police or the owner can track you down.’
Friday went back to observing the security guards. She checked her watch and started timing how often, and for how long, their eyes swept back and forth across the crowd. How often they adjusted their position to alter their view. When new guards came in to relieve them of their duty. Whether their heads dropped as they started to nod off from the sheer boredom of it all. She made notes of all this for Bernie.
Friday was also able to watch the crowd. Even though there were new visitors flowing in and out of the room constantly, they mostly all did the same things. They stared at the painting for a couple of minutes. Then they seemed to feel awkward because there wasn’t anything else to do and they’d seen it now. So they’d get out their camera and take a photo. Then they’d take a photo of themselves with the painting.
Then they’d look again, then they’d slowly, sometimes haltingly, make their exit from the room. Having come all the way to Paris, made their way through the massive, confusing labyrinth of the Louvre, found this smallish dark but inexplicably famous painting of a woman with an anatomically incorrect nose – it didn’t seem right to be leaving again so soon, but there wasn’t really anything else to do.
There was a pretty girl close to the front of the crowd. She looked like an art student too. There must have been something charming about her, because in the time that Friday was watching she noticed three different tourists ask this girl to take a photo for them.
‘I’m not really sure what we’re meant to be doing here,’ said Friday.
‘I thought we were supposed to be observing,’ said Melanie.
‘But the mystery isn’t here,’ said Friday. ‘The mystery is wherever Uncle Bernie’s got to. The clues that need to be followed are about the letter. We can’t take the painting down from the wall and analyse it ourselves.’
‘We can analyse the people,’ said Melanie.
‘They’re just tourists,’ said Friday.
‘Nobody is just a tourist,’ said Melanie. ‘Everyone is on their own journey. They’re here because they’ve always longed to see the most famous painting in all the world, or because they’re on their honeymoon and their wife has dragged them here or because they really like taking close-up photos of people’s noses.’
‘What?’ said Friday.
‘I’m just saying for everyone here, being here, looking at the Mona Lisa is a significant day in their lives,’ said Melanie.
‘No, I mean, what was that bit about the noses?’ said Friday.
‘Oh, that girl. The one with the lovely smile and sparkly phone case. She keeps being asked to take photos for other people,’ said Melanie. ‘But before she takes a photo with their phone, she always snaps a picture with her own from a weird angle.’
‘She does?’ asked Friday.
‘Sure, we’ve seen her take photos for four different people,’ said Melanie. ‘And each time, as she reaches across to take their phone, she holds her own phone near their chest and taps the screen, so I assume that’s what she’s doing.’
‘Oh my gosh,’ said Friday. ‘She’s robbing them!’
‘What?’ said Melanie.
