Please Don't Touch The Art

The last rays of sunlight sliced through the sweltering Bornean rainforest. The buzzsaw sound of cicadas, the flute-song of the barbet and the bark of an orangutan heralded the tropical dusk. Beth stumbled around in the swamp, hardly knowing which way to turn, or where to point her camera. So much to see, so little time.

“Madam, we should go”, said Awang, the local guide, looking around nervously, “it will be dark soon”.

“Just a couple more minutes, please”, said Beth, angling her camera lens into the mouth of the giant carrion flower.  The maroon and yellow arabesque seemed to draw Beth closer and closer, and…

“Madam, be careful!” Awang sprang from the massive buttress-root that he’d been sitting on, “we must go” he said, he demanded.

Heavy gray clouds, framed by massive Keruing trees, skidded across the barely visible sky; the forest canopy pressed downward, the palms leaned inwards, the jeweled orchids and fire-red gingers turned drab in the glooming grove. The mud sucked at their shoes, and roots entrapped their feet.  

“Awang, I’m perfectly fine” said Beth, though the fetid corpse flowers were starting to make her nauseous. She wanted to stay a while longer, but Awang insisted that they leave at once. The sun descended behind the hulking mass of Mount Kinabalu, shadow and light blurred in the steamy undergrowth.  

They trekked back down to Kampong Balabakan, the nearest village.

“You must not tell anyone, nor show anyone”, said Awang. The swamp was a secret place, a sacred place, occupied by the spirits of the forest.

“I promise not to tell”, said Beth.  

+++

Cold light reflected off the snowy field, illuminating the studio in the old barn. Six giant canvasses, primed brilliant white, hanging on white-washed walls, stared at her, accused her, demanded things of her. Beth Whitmore could delay no longer; it was time to start work. 

She spread the photos out on a desk, manipulated the images on her iPad; the compositions and color palettes came easily. The secrets of Kinabalu spilled from her, unfiltered and uncensored. A rare and strange prehistoric beauty, a heritage to be shared, celebrated, not concealed. The promise to Awang seemed a silly and distant thing. 

Beth arranged the brushes, tubes of paint, rags, and other instruments in neat rows on her work bench, waist high, within easy reach, the orderliness threatened only by Boris, her little black cat. She grabbed a two-inch brush and blocked out the shape of a huge pitcher plant on the first canvas, a giant Venus flytrap on a second… and a colossal inflorescent corpse plant, the Amorphophallus Titanum, grew skyward on the largest canvas, ten feet tall, six feet wide. 

Boris yawned and stretched out in the winter sunlight. Beth tickled his tummy.

+++

Blake Weir phoned Beth.  The paintings had already been placed with collectors, important collectors, sold, sight unseen. It was unprecedented. The corpse plant would hang in the lobby of the new Wexler contemporary art gallery in Miami.  It was a fabulous coup for Blake, the upstart Gallerist, and for Beth, the sparkly new insurgent in the world of art.

“I can sell the next hundred paintings too”, said Blake, “there’s insatiable appetite for works in the tradition of Kahlo and O’Keefe, exploring queer ecology …”

Beth hated the comparisons; they felt burdensome and horribly premature, but Blake knew his business.  

“When will you need the paintings?” she said, flatly, interrupting his practiced monologue.

Blake was taken aback. “I thought you’d be excited. You stand to make at least $200,000 from this one show, not to mention the exposure”, he said.

“Blake, I am so grateful for everything. It’s just that…” and then Beth went quiet; how could she possibly explain? “Things are a bit strange at the moment…. and I lost Boris”, she said.

“Boris? The cat?”, said Blake, “I’m so sorry. I know how much you loved that little fellow”.  

It wasn’t the only thing that Beth had lost. 

“I need you to collect the paintings… as soon as possible”, she said.

+++

It started when she began detailing the various plants, when she revealed their identities on the canvasses. It started with a tug and twist on the brush, a spasm that rendered a palm frond in a single stroke. Had her wrist cramped? 

The heel of her hand slipped into wet oil, smudging the paint into the impression of rotting tree bark; corruption and decay in one chance mishap. 

A brush slipped completely from her fingers. Had it dropped on the floor? Was it caught in a fold in her clothing? Had it pierced the canvas and fallen into the painting itself? 

Was it lying on the rainforest floor?

Beth needed a break.

Another brush disappeared, tubes of paint, her iPhone. Boris was lazing on a cushion in front of the pitcher plant…

Beth searched everywhere for the little cat; the house, the barn, she even searched the paintings…

The plants stiffened in her presence, as if poised to jump at her, grab and snap at her, impale her. They were sentinels waiting and watching. 

She needed them gone!

Beth was losing sleep, haunted nightly by a recurring nightmare in which camera-toting tourists trampled knee-deep through the Kinabalu swamp, and Boris, the little black cat, wailed, lost and lonely in the rainforest. Awang was always there at the end of the dream, disappointed.

+++

A tow-headed boy, six years old, sat cross-legged beneath a painting of aerial vines suspended from the mossy limbs of ancient fig trees. He was in a quiet corner of the gallery on Madison Avenue. Ignored by the adults, uninterested in the spooky flower paintings; he was playing a game of Angry Birds on his iPhone. He was on level two, and still had one life left.

A root, a tendril, something organic, crept from the painting, down the wall, behind his head, and looped around the back of his neck.

+++

“Oh, how sexy” said a little old lady in a croaky voice, “but how grotesque”, said her identical companion, dressed in matching sensible clothes. They were contemplating a deadly carpet of hinged lips, spiney teeth, in the center of which, a giant Venus flytrap, large enough to consume a small mammal, seemed to pulsate, raw and fleshy, inviting to the touch.  

+++

The opening-night crowd gathered in the gallery on Madison Avenue.

“Beth Whitmore’s Plant Life, a collection of paintings inspired by her recent trip to Borneo”, said Blake. “Queer, sensual, seductive, expressing strangeness and separation, fluidity and adaption, and some ancient wisdom in nature…” Blake entertained the upper east-siders with allusions to the challenges Beth had faced, he conveyed a sense of the struggle that lay at the heart of her creative process, but vaguely; Beth was a genius, an enigma, not fully understood and not fully understandable. It was an important part of the brand.

Beth stood behind Blake, gaunt and pale, playing the part of the grateful young artist, but she felt neither pride nor authorship in the paintings; they’d long since ceased to be her creations. They were independent, sentient things. 

The crowd was being tugged at, gravitating into clusters around the paintings. Closer and closer.  

++++

“Have you seen a small boy, my son?” said the blond-haired woman in the ankle length coat.  

The receptionist, Kelly, fresh out of college, was not entirely clear about her role at Blake Weir’s gallery. Mainly it consisted of sitting around looking pretty, which she did with an untroubled, vacant mind, dutifully rising to the demands of an occasional query or instruction when called upon. Yes, she’d seen the boy earlier, over there. Kelly pointed at the vines hanging down from the forest canopy, like ropes suspended from gallows. The mother seemed more annoyed than worried.  

+++

A giant yellow phallus emerging from a green and purple inflorescence, against a backdrop of the dank rainforest; ten feet high, the canvass stretched from floor to ceiling. The Titan Arum towered above Muriel Wexler, the famous socialite, all skin and bone and drippy jewelry.  

“Well, it’s very striking dear”, said Herb, her husband, a bald man with furrowed brow, “but must we have it on permanent display in the lobby?” Herb was troubled by the artwork, repelled by it. He was not a prude, but the painting felt just a little bit… lewd.

“Oh, the Miami crowd will just love it!” said Muriel, which he did not doubt knowing something of their lurid tastes. Muriel extended her skeletal, veiny hand out, fingers reaching toward the canvass, “apparently, they bloom only once every seven years, and they emit a terrible stench. Perhaps we can get a photo of the artist next to her painting?”  Muriel’s fingers brushed the yellow paintwork. The thrill of flesh against flesh pulsed through her body, she quivered.

“Excuse me, have you seen a little boy anywhere?” said a blond-haired lady in a long black coat. She seemed flustered. Herb hadn’t seen the boy. When he turned back to the painting, his wife had vanished.

+++

“My sister, I’m looking for my sister,” said the small mousy woman in the sensible clothing.  

Everybody is looking for someone, lamented Kelly, who recognized the elderly woman. She had an identical twin sister; they dressed in identical clothing, sensible clothing. They were the Adams Sisters. They often came into the gallery, croaking away like little toad-people.  Blake was always very nice to them; they lived in a penthouse on 79th Street, apparently.  

+++

Blake was troubled. His gallery seemed to be shrinking, the paintings were crowding inwards. Something was wrong, Beth had hinted at it, but she’d been so evasive. He discovered her standing in front of the gaping maw of the man-sized pitcher plant. The painting had charmed him with its saturated colors and exotic otherworldliness, but it now felt to him like the entrance to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. 

A dark object nestled in the hollow of the pitcher, a moving thing, the shadow of a small creature through the translucent membrane. Beth was awfully close to the canvas, leaning into the painting, leaning over the mouth of the pitcher. Beth suddenly went white as a sheet, her eyes rolled up into her head, she fainted in shock, and collapsed in a heap on the gallery floor. Blake rushed to her.

+++

“Have you seen…”

Kelly was getting tired of this. A man called Simon with very white teeth was standing in front of her. His boyfriend was missing. 

“How do you spell Tanza?” said Kelly, scribbling the boyfriend’s name into her notepad.

 This job was getting very intense and wasn’t much fun.

+++

Herb Wexler stared at the painting. A woman was wrapped in a sensuous embrace around the giant yellow protuberance, the face expressing a vaguely familiar ecstasy. The line that divided pornography from art suddenly seemed clearer to Herb. How had he not noticed this before? How strange the resemblance to his wife…

A woman screamed. It was the blond-haired woman in the long black coat, she was pointing at the painting in the corner of the gallery, opposite the reception desk. She was pointing at a wide-eyed, unblinking, terrified thing suspended beneath the rainforest canopy, caught in aerial roots like an insect suspended in a spider’s web. 

An Adams twin gawped in horror at a pair of legs and sensible shoes that poked from the clenched jaws of the Venus flytrap.

The shadow of Kinabalu fell over Madison Avenue. The forest canopy pressed overhead, insects buzzed, birds whistled and trilled, the stench of carrion wafted in the air, and from far away, from out of emerald darkness, the voice of souls and spirits, ancient and new, joined together in a cacophony of woes.

Kelly put on her coat, packed her small bag, abandoned the reception desk, and fled the gallery. She’d be home in New Jersey within the hour. They could take this job.

+++

Awang was not pleased to see Beth. 

Things had changed in Kampong Balabakan and on the slopes of Kinabalu. Sinister forces roamed the trails, foreign objects lay like trash in the undergrowth, and tormented souls babbled in the sacred swamp. A Kampong elder had seen a female orangutan dancing seductively in the grove of carrion plants. A young girl, senseless with fear, reported that she’d seen a small boy hanging from vines, helpless, in the sky. The villagers pointed accusing fingers at the young men foraging, at the old men hunting, at the tourist guides in their new polo shirts, at Awang. Someone had awakened the spirits of the Mountain; someone had wronged the dead.

Awang really wasn’t pleased to see Beth.

“But you must take me back up there, Awang” she insisted, she pleaded. “I promise, I will never say anything, do anything to betray your trust”. She was begging him.

Beth looked pale and sweaty, dark rings around sunken eyes, desperate.

Awang went into his small dwelling, a bright blue cinderblock hut with a rusting corrugated tin roof, and he returned with an odd assortment of objects in his outstretched hands. Mud-encrusted brushes, half empty tubes of oil paint, a battered and broken iPhone. He handed these things to Beth, “do you know about this?” he said.

She did. 

Awang seemed disgusted that she would care about these useless objects. “Is this what you are looking for?” he said. 

No, it wasn’t what she was looking for.

Mount Kinabalu loomed in the distance, vast, remote, and eternal, surrounded by impenetrable jungle. Beth glimpsed spirits in the trees, she smelt faint odors of death, she heard the simian chatter of the great apes. For a moment she thought she could hear the sad wailing of a small cat.