Paradise Lost

Please be aware, this story contains references to the aftermath of natural disasters.

Now

​David Brevda paced the polished marble floor of his East 79th Street gallery. Huge sheets of paper, taped to the towering plate glass windows, shielded him and Marina Anderberg’s new works from the gawkers. She hadn’t yet arrived, and tonight, of all nights, he needed her in the flesh. He checked his phone, nothing. He could feel the ulcer gnawing away at his guts. Why did he do this to himself, he wondered.

​Gallery assistant, Pascal, stacked and restacked the brochures for the evening, printed under utmost secrecy and delivered by a security firm. He could feel David’s tension filling the space, so busied himself by going into the kitchen and rechecking that the serving staff knew the evening’s drill; smile, offer canapés and glasses of champagne, move on.

​David’s guest list read like the who’s who of the cream of New York’s artistic elite, plus a select coterie of deep pocketed buyers, the latter his preferred clique. Critics from the papers, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Cultured and other grifting journo’s looking to judge whether Anderberg’s first new gallery show in nearly twenty years was a turkey or not.

​David’s phone burbled in his hot palm, “Marina, honey, where the hell are you? The car was at the hotel an hour ago.”

​“I’m at the kitchen door. I couldn’t face the cameras.”

​David flapped his hands at Pascal, indicating he needed the rear entrance opened pronto, “Thank God, I thought you weren’t coming.” Phone in pocket, he marched as smartly as a man in Prada pumps could, to greet his elusive meal ticket. I hope she’s changed out of her boiler suit, he prayed, pushing past the huddled servers, opening his arms wide, brightest smile on show, hoping his eyes hid his sense of impending doom.

Five Weeks Earlier

​Marina walked the long stretch of sandy beach as she did most evenings, long acclimatised to the extreme humidity of a Thai wet season, unconcerned by the distant rumbling of thunder nearly drowned out by the waves pounding the shore. Funny, she reflected, after many years of living here, she’d never grown tired of the sound of the sea, nor the honey-coloured evening light as the sun dipped below the horizon. She reached the log, washed up years before, where she’d sit and watch and listen, and sketch sometimes. This evening she’d brought a sprig of jasmine for Matilda and placed it beside her on the log, kissing her fingertips and touching the place where she imagined her granddaughter may have sat, had she survived.

​High, dark clouds were gathering to the north of Nang Thong beach, the occasional sudden flash of lightning alerting Marina she needed to begin the walk back to her scooter if she was to avoid the incoming torrent. “Sleep well, my loves,” she said, feeling a spot or two of warm rain on her bare, tanned, wrinkled arms. Stopping for a moment in the remaining light, she watched a little crab at her feet, industriously and precisely building a small, decorative circle of light-colouredgrit around its hole in the darker sand. She thought of her studio home up in the hills behind the main town, where she’dspent her nights working on her huge canvases. Perhaps tonight, she thought, I can capture something.

Now

​“She looks like a fucking raisin,” David hissed through his teeth at Pascal, watching the upright, elderly and sun bronzed figure of Marina Anderberg scrutinise the positioning of her work. 

​“Perhaps she’s too old to care,” Pascal smirked, he couldn’t help poking the bear.

​“She’s the same age as me, and I care.” David said snarkily, “Hasn’t she heard of botox, or sun block even? Marina, honey, your thoughts?”

​Marina walked over to the two men, each nervously gripping flutes of fizz. Tonight, in a simple gold coloured wrap around shawl and a black cotton shift dress she looked, if not a work of art, then at least, arty. She also wore a concerned expression. 

​“You’ve done a wonderful job, David, thank you. One thing. The lighting. It’s still too much, tone it down.”

​“Marina, the buyers and critics need to see your work. It’s going to blow them away.” He gave her a warm hug, to which she stiffened and pulled away, half smiling behind her owlish spectacles.

​“We agreed to turn off the lights for a few moments when everyone has seen the paintings. It’s an important part of the experience. And the soundscape, you have it ready?”

​Pascal nodded, “It’s all ready to go. Just say when I need to press play.”

​Marina absent mindedly wandered away, looking up at the enormous white partitions, erected precisely to her instructions, creating a flow and energy for the visitors, allowing the narrative she’d created to unfold. She disliked gallery shows, and critic’s evenings more so. At her age she didn’t care about impressing anyone, winning people over, she’d done that back in the 70s and 80s and small victories were hard won. These days there were more important things to Marina Anderberg than selling art.

​David grasped her elbow, gently yet firmly, and led her towards the front doors, “Opening time, sweetheart, so smile and try to be pleasant at least. You want the music?”

​Marina clicked her fingers loudly, “Pascal, let it start.”

​The gallery was suddenly filled with the gentle sound of folk music; skilfully plucked guitars accompanying the high, plaintive voice of her ex-husband, musician, Mats Anderberg.

​Pascal unlocked both doors as four of the servers grasped a corner each of the window covers and tore them away, revealing a well-dressed, curious audience holding invitations. They filed in, wide eyed, out for blood.

Four Weeks Earlier

​Marina lay in a hammock on the porch of her long single storey home cum studio. She normally slept on a makeshift bed in the corner, near her rudimentary kitchen. The majority of the space was given over to racks and racks of different sized canvasses, easels, numerous tins and tubes of coloured paints. The room smelt of jasmine and turpentine.

​A gecko scuttled jerkily, clinging to a thick timber upright near Marina’s head. She watched it in the light of a paraffin lamp hanging overhead. The sky was clear and moonless, and she counted each shooting star’s fleetingexistence. She felt exhausted, wrung out. Mats had finally sent her the MPEG files for her New York show, but she hadn’t listened to anything. She was working on the sound installation to accompany the paintings she’d spent the best part of eight years completing.

​The gecko zipped behind the beam, and she sat up. In the distance was the low roar of the sea and even now, up here, it made her shudder. Clambering carefully from the hammock, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort, not warmth, she felt a presence. On moonless nights she often felt it, or them, she was never sure. Standing barefoot on the veranda she listened to what sounded like the sound of children playing.

​A bump made Marina jump, and she stepped back into the large single room, closing the door and turning the key. Sometimes they come on nights like this. Briefly she turned on the large light array to illuminate the space around her andlooked at the three largest paintings. One lay on its side, as if pushed. At times, she thought, she could believe they were coming to life.

Now

​“Mingle, for fuck’s sake,” David hissed at Pascal who was leafing through the glossy brochure, ‘Marina Anderberg –The Disappearing Sea’. There was definitely a buzz in the room and David had been collared by several critics who were both perplexed and complimentary in equal measure. Good press was all well and good, but he needed the buyers, he needed his commission, and he needed Marina to work the room. Personally, he wasn’t entirely sure about these new paintings. For an artist associated with the neo-expressionist movement, and a woman who’d navigated the boys club of the mid-80’s, her abstract ‘colourscapes’ were impressive in their scale, but the meaning behind them was obscure. Brevda knew it could go either way, and Marina Anderberg’s legacy isn’t what it was.

​“Anton, come and meet Marina,” David propelled Anton Petrov, art critic for art site ‘Shock and Awe’ and a contributory art curator at MOMA.

​Anton, with long, white, delicate fingers, lightly touched Marina’s wrinkled, brown, calloused hand, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Marina. I’ve been a huge supporter of your work since we met at SoCal several years ago.”

​Marina, showing no sign of recognising the pale, androgynous creature, proffered a smile as acknowledgement, hoping she’d be left in peace, but was out of luck.

​“Your new work is so intense, so violent and so, how can I say it, angry.” He pointed up at one of the larger canvases, “You use vivid colours, crimson in particular, slashed across a muddied background. Fractured white figures you scatter throughout each composition brings to mind broken bones, a charnel house. There are cities devoured by monsters, a tumbling kaleidoscope of everyday objects, cars and peopleall tossed as if in a crusher. How would you describe your intent?”

​Marina, and despite David Brevda’s persistent whining, had refused to disclose or discuss what lay behind the new collection. She didn’t want discursive interpretations, she wanted emotional responses. “Each painting represents my own struggles over the last twenty years. Chaos and disorder. Do you see pain?”

​Petrov looked shocked at the question, “It’s not immediate, no.” He gave Marina a smile suggesting he was composing a savage take-down he’d upload to his blog later.

​Marina turned to Pascal who was passing with empty glasses, “You may play the other piece. And dim the lights.”

Three Weeks Earlier

​The shipping crates from Brevda’s haulage supplier were loaded into several large covered lorries. It was a mammoth exercise and Marina felt a pang of guilt for the environmental impact of flying her paintings, and also a lurch in her stomach at the thought of travelling to New York. She hadn’t attended the opening of a collection since 2001, and now she was more used to appearing in retrospectives or reappraisals of sidelined women artists. 

Brevda had been Marina’s artistic representative for forty plus years, his gallery and reputation built largely on her peak value in the late 70s and the golden years of the 1980s. He had offices in Los Angeles and London too, so he’d done well off her. She owed him nothing, and still he constantly demanded something new, like a spoiled child. When she’d told him she had a collection of thirty or so pieces, some were exceptionally large canvases, she imagined cartoon-like dollar signs spinning in his eyes when he’d agreed to foot the bill to export the entire collection to his Manhattan space, sight unseen.

#

​As the final container was loaded, Marina closed up the studio and clambered onto her scooter, planning to call at Bang Niang market for some clothes to take away. She hadn’t bought anything other than coveralls and headscarves for years. The locals thought she was just another crazy European wandering around in rags, only a few neighbours knew who she really was, and why she’d remained.

Her thoughts went back to the previous night when at the beach they’d come again, and whilst she was used to sensing the children now and again, for them to demand her attention, reaching out with their cold hands and sodden clothing, she needed to get away from it. Had she disturbed them with her latest pictures? Probably, but that wasn’t what she intended. She had to find her way to manage her despair, devising coping strategies through her work.

​The evening was typically sultry, so after the market she sat with her purchases and a beer at the small café frequented by the taxi drivers and girls from the ‘Moo Moo’ cabaret bar. Marina checked her emails. There was a new one from Mats. She’d left it unopened all day, avoiding her reply, knowing he’d be asking if she’d see him in New York as he’d heard about the exhibition. He’d fly in from Gothenburg especiallyif she was up for it. It would be Martin’s birthday that week, or would have been. 

​Instead, she replied to Brevda’s questions about the display of the new artworks. He’d sent a proposed floorplan which she disliked and told him so, insisting she needed height and space, so he could remove other artist’s work for the entirety of her show. She had another demand, too, a powerful sound system, one capable of delivering a thunderous experience. She wanted to disorientate, unsettle and threaten everyone there.

​Finishing her beer, she saw the skittering shape of a small child in a pinafore dress dodging between the Tuk-Tuks and trucks, making her way towards the tall blue sign carrying the instructions for if the tsunami warning sounded. Heart in her mouth, Marina stood and raised her hand in warning, but the child was gone, disappeared behind the legs of tourists. “Don’t be so stupid,” she told herself, looking down at the table and seeing a single lotus flower beside her phone.

Now

​Several of the journalists had begun to stream the events at Brevda’s gallery, catching each other’s expressions as the immersive sounds shook them from their expensive haircuts to their Louboutin heels. It must have been a quiet news night, Marina later reflected, as the show began to trend wildly across social media. 

​First came the disorientation as the lights dimmed, leaving the gathering glancing about, startled. Then came the deep bass sounds, wave after wave pounding and punishing, champagne flutes and Villeroy and Boch plates rattling. Marina indicated to Pascal that she wanted him to increase the volume and turn off the lights completely. He did as she asked, despite David slapping him on the arm. Then came the voices, if you could call them that. Screams, exclamations of at first alarm, then panic, cries in English, German, Swedish, Dutch, Russian and Thai. The monstrous volume increasing as other noises joined the assault, of cracking logs, collapsing buildings and colliding objects being thrust upon and through each other. 

​Pascal turned on the lights suddenly when the crushing resonance of the soundtrack stopped. Everyone lookedstunned, some crying, some tapping furiously on phones. David Brevda glanced at Marina, who was standing, head down, before the largest of her works. He hoped the theatrics were over, he wished she’d told him it was really a multi-media installation. Quietly she began to speak.

​“Today would have been my son, Martin’s, forty eighth birthday. He died on December twenty-sixth, two thousand and four, in Thailand, where he was spending the Christmas Holidays. His wife, Sonya, and his three children, my only grandchildren, Simon, Robyn and Matilda, died with him. Over five thousand people perished in the Khao Lak areafollowing the huge Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. A tsunami, roared across the land, crushing and drowning as it came.

​“The noises you’ve just heard are from television and radio footage of the event, as the wave tore apart hotels, businesses, and lives. The desperate voices may even have included those of my own family. Around you, every aspect of my profound and unending grief is captured the only way I know how.

​“Each day I mourn their loss. I live in the hills behind the town, and have watched the local people rebuild their lives, watched as tourists return to this little slice of paradise. For nearly twenty years I have walked the beaches, in the wake of the savagery of nature, and I see the ghosts of who I lost. I offer flowers in their memory, my communion with the dead.

​“This is my last show, these are my last works. Thank you.”

​The hubbub erupted, David quickly shielding Marina from the immediate assault of everyone wanting to speak, commiserate, console and extract more from her. She had nothing left to give, and both David and Pascal bundled her into the offices at the back of the building. A tall, slender man, immaculately dressed with slicked back white hair stood quietly waiting.

​“Mats?” Marina gasped, holding out her wizened hands which he took.

​“I said I’d come. You put on quite a show.” His manner was kind, and calm. 

​Marina suddenly looked old, tired and broken. She straightened her spine and raised her chin, “Shall we go for dinner?”

Two Weeks Earlier

​Marina sat and watched the sunset from the beach, as she did most evenings. She let the thin, dry sand trickle between her fingers, contemplating the little sand crab pop in and out of its hole, decorating the entrance with tiny balls of grit, repeated each time the tide came. She sensed tonight she wasn’t alone, not because of the distracting shrieks of tourists caught unawares in the treacherous ocean, ignorant of its capriciousness. 

Across the driftwood where she sat, shadows lengthened. This was strange, given the sun’s position. With a resigned smile she held out five lotus blossoms, letting them catch the warm breeze. Damp hands held hers as she stood to go, a little cold finger tracing the line of paint on her wrist.

“I’m sorry I was too selfish and busy to come to you at Christmas. I’m sorry you bought those tickets, and you came instead of staying with Papa in Gothenburg. For so many things, I am deeply, truly sorry.”

When the shadows finally faded, she walked slowly back to the road where she’d parked her scooter. She lifted her helmet, and something fluttered out, landing at her feet. Wincing, as her back played her up these days, she reached for a folded sheet of paper. Opening it up she smiled. Another one for my little gallery, she thought, slipping the crudely daubed painting of five stick figures, two tall and three smaller, into her bib pocket, and headed home.