"Leakage"

The gate clanged to encourage haste. The gallery doors needed to be open, the windows to be shut, lights to be on, dimmers to be down, before people began arriving. And any rat nests or other scavengers seeking solitude needed to be pushed outdoors. Yet Kas stood a moment longer in quiet communion with the painting, the masterpiece, the link to antiquity that taught what people were once capable of.
          Not for the first time she wondered, why the glass? And why so small?
          And how long had it taken, why was it painted, who was it, was it a faithful likeness, had it been immediately considered genius and why or why not?
          She sighingly finished her duties, resigned to ignorance.
          Each hour she navigated a different wing, habituated eyes sliding over paintings so familiar they could no longer be felt without conscious effort, and each hour she circled back to the lobby to check in.
          It was busy, the cold driving visitors indoors for shelter. The manager, Ang, laughed and repeated to each new face, “We do a brisk business!” until both docents wanted to rip off their own ears. The doorman, Val, huddled in his rags inside the door today instead of out, his one good eye fixed on the trickle of visitors, clicking a counter to reconcile later with the day’s take. With each pass through the room, Val would call out, “Which wing?” and Kas would answer “Richelieu” or “Sully” depending on where she was in her rounds.
         Each day she navigated each hour and each wing, answering each query and laughing at each joke in an automated facsimile of response.

After the cold days of many visitors, there were the wet days of few, subterranean portions of the old building giving off a musty scent that drove people to other locales for their recreation.
         Places with less risk of poisoning by mold. Morning rounds now included a scan for water. On a Wednesday there came the annual once-in-a-century storm, and on Thursday Kas found the expected leakage.
          She raced to the lobby. “Ang! Leak!”
          “Damage?”
          “La Joconde.”
          “Yeah, ok,” said Ang, with a casual flick of ash. “Val, close up.”
          The doorman grunted and huffed his way to the gate he’d just opened and pushed out a group of elderly early birds. “Fuck, I already counted ’em,” he said, glaring at his clicker. “Kas!” She turned. “Remind me tonight: minus five!”
         Kas nodded and followed after Ang to survey the situation.
          Under the circumstances she expected more animation than the impressive sangfroid her manager normally displayed. But she was disappointed. He peered close but the thick glass confused his inspection so he simply lifted the pane off what turned out to be a flimsy hook. Once exposed, the damage was obvious; the Mona Lisa’s makeup appeared to be running, her eyeliner trailing in thin tracks down her cheeks while lipstick pooled slightly on chin and blond hair drooled into a soft golden haze on her forehead. The rosy skin had sagged down to the white dress to give her clothing the look of an unfortunate laundry load.
          “It’s not, not too bad, is it?” asked Kas. “We could restore the face a bit? Leave the gown as it is?” She shook. She didn’t remember losing her family, but imagined it had felt like this, her first conscious heartbreak.
          Ang turned the masterpiece upside down to see if gravity could reverse anything. Then he used the corner of his sleeve to dab at some of the more obvious lines, to absorb the misplaced pigment. The great lady looked even worse.
          He flicked his ash to buy some thinking time. “These acrylics are a bitch. Probably a goner.” He tucked the painting under an arm and shuffled off to the archives. “Tell Val we’ll open at eleven.”
         By ten, the docents were receiving instruction. “The answers don’t change,” said Ang.
         “I don’t understand,” said Kas.
         “Use the same answers.”
         “I don’t understand,” she repeated. So deep was her failure to comprehend that she couldn’t even articulate the problem.
         “What’s not to get? If someone says ‘What year is this from’ you answer ‘1503 to 1506.'” Her stupidity annoyed Mag, the other docent. This hubbub had interrupted his private time with the Venus de Milo.
         “But is it from 1503?” The painting in question had been pulled from storage and installed behind the glass and beneath a tarp sagging from the unstaunched leak. The woman in it had the familiar half smile, and was set against a distant mountain range. But her short dark hair and bright red clothing did not evoke the Renaissance, nor did the pose — one hand in her bikini bottoms, the other held to her mouth as if surprised, tip of tongue just visible.
         Ang sighed. Mag sighed. “Just use the same answers.”
          Val sighed, but in a different key.

“That is fantastic,” said the bride.
         “So lifelike, so realistic,” agreed her groom.
         “Excuse me?” They approached Kas, who arranged her eyebrows into an attentive triangle. “Is the Mona Lisa early or late Renaissance?”
         “The Mona Lisa,” replied Kas with care, “is from the earlier half of the period.”
         “I’d heard it was small,” said the woman. “But this seems tiny.”
         “Yes, this piece is about eight-by-eleven inches,” said Kas.
         “So,” barked the groom. “That’s done; what’s next?”
          “Statues. There’s one without arms, and one with wings.”
         “You choose. But let’s roll so we can be off the streets before dark.”
          The happy couple hurried to finish their honeymoon checklist before the streets became unsafe.
          By the time she was herding the last straggling patrons of the day out towards the lobby, Kas was exhausted and near tears.
          “Don’t let it bother you so much,” said Val.
          “We’re lying to them.”
          “They’re not hurting none.”
          “They’re missing so much and don’t even know it.”
         “Like what?” The eye gleamed beadily as Val waited, sucking on his tooth in hopes of finding any small shred of breakfast that remained tucked away in his gums. “Like what?” he pressed.
          Kas snorted. How to explain the spirituality of a Rembrandt? The colors of a Van Gogh? These manifestations of the soul must be felt. She studied the doorkeeper, all of fifty years if he was a day, yellowed skin, streaky grime embedded into the wrinkles, wiry hair completing it’s migration from atop to nasal. Any attempt to discuss Art as an exploration of our shared humanity was doomed to humiliate the pathetic old creature. He continued staring; she continued demurring, but the wreckage wouldn’t have it.
         “Please, continue. What are they missing?”
          “Ok,” she said, “for one thing, they’ll never see the work of a true master, the skill of it.”
         “The Lisa, she’s good. But once it’s been done, a forger can recreate the image perfectly. Same skill.”
          “But not the original.”
          “Ah, so, it’s not the skill they’re missing out on, just the originality.”
          “That’s right. The genius lies in the act of creation.”
          “Though,” he said, with the tiniest of smiles. It was a smile that hinted and insinuated and might have mocked, except his eye was fixed just slightly off her face, as if he addressed an audience seated somewhat behind and to the left of her. “The Lisa, you know, she was one of several very similar.”
          “That’s not true!”
         “Take the Isleworth Mona Lisa, for example.”
          “That’s not… is that true?”
          “True as true.”
          “Well, there’s also the symbolism.”
          “Like?”
          “There’s the…” Kas paused. The ice thinned beneath her, but at the last moment she remembered her docent training. “The fantasy landscape.”
          “Sure, ok, and what does it mean?”
          Again she balked. What does it mean.
          Val waited, serenity oozing from his pores to rise up and choke the sensitive, confident young woman clinging to cherished preconceptions for buoyancy as the ice cracked ominously.
         “I guess I don’t really know, but it means something.”
          “Sure it means something. But it’s lost, you see? It’s a dead language. The bridge, the road, no one knows, if anyone ever did.”
          “What bridge? There’s no bridge in the Mona Lisa. No road, either.”
          “My mistake,” said Val. And he laughed.
          They stood in silence, watching water pool in the courtyard, alive with oil swept from filthy air to create ironically beautiful swirls. The last patrons of the day maneuvered about the pools to exit, taking the same care to avoid touching the floor colors as they had with the artwork only minutes ago, and eyeing them with the same dispassionate interest. Context dictates value, thought Kas. Val was likely right and these visitors would never know the difference. Another small corner of her heart fragmented in sadness.
          “But anyway,” said Kas, tying off the conversation, “what if someone comes back, who saw it before and sees this fraud instead?”
          “Won’t happen.”
         It was true that Kas hadn’t noticed much, if any, repeat business in her year at the museum. Still. It was the principle of the thing.

The warm wet season vanished, absorbed into the dry hot one.
          The lobby became so stifling the staff was tempted to help the creeper vines along by ripping out some masonry, to widen the gaps the plants labored over and create more air flow. Kas was stopped only by knowing she’d feel differently when the cold season returned.
          Patrons were more languorous now, draped in heavy cloth to thwart the harmful sun and as a result moving slowly to avoid overheating. Once inside they shed the protective skins; the price of admission was worth such luxurious relief. Like the winter crowds, they would linger as long as possible to avoid a return to the elements.
          Another piece was swapped out, Venus and Cupid Discovered by a Satyr. Kas didn’t mind the loss so much this time — the piece wasn’t a favorite — but the choice of replacement caused some distress. Featuring another threesome, it displayed a discovery that was quite hands-on and rather graphic. She felt it violated the spirit of the original, not to mention Venus herself.
          It got her thinking, though, that two exchanges in under a year seemed like a trend they shouldn’t pursue. Ang listened to her concern while quietly lighting up, but only replied, “Everything’s fine.” Then he coughed. “These’ll kill me,” he said, laughing. “God knows what they’re putting in these days.”
          Kas agreed that cigarettes were stupid, since everything from banana peels to paint chips and industrial waste had been found rolled into papers and sold as tobacco. But she didn’t agree that everything was fine with the counterfeit works of art. It ate at her, preyed on her. It appeared she was witness to a new and troubling trend in cultural fraud; she was complicit in the defilement of history.
          “Hey,” she said, approaching the heap of rags with Val’s head and smell rising out the top.
          A hazel sheen twinkled awake and fixed onto her. He had known she’d be back. Had known she wouldn’t let it go. Took longer than he expected, but here she was, pretending nonchalance. “You seem to know a bit about art.”
          “Thank you.”
          “And you’ve been here a while, I guess.” “That I have.”
          She wanted to skirt the issue, but she also wanted to blow it wide. She wanted both the truth and the lie, and didn’t want to have to ask for either. But the eye and the tooth only gazed patiently. She ripped off the bandage. “How many replacements has Ang made?” There. She said it.
          “Hm. Ang. Ang.” Val mused a bit. “Yes, Ang’s made a lot of substitutions over his years here.” He sussed her out. What to say? What to show?
          “But not…” Kas hesitated. Is ignorance bliss? Is knowledge power? Or is everything bullshit? “Not everything? Not, for example, any Caravaggios?” She shuddered.
          Val leaned forward to scan this agonized young sprout. Darting eyes and lips aquiver while hands twisted like a concerned mother who wouldn’t shy from her child’s pain despite feeling it as her own. She’s one of the real ones. He’d waited so long. He decided. “Tell you what.” A hand emerged from his rags, bearing a book, cover long gone, wrapped in a plastic bag. “Decide for yourself.”
          “You malignant, puckered, testicle of a man!” Kas stormed the heap of detritus minding the gate. “Is this some joke?” She waved the book with enough violence to cause a draft that fluttered the old man’s remaining wisps. Watery gaze snaked up to meet outraged youth. “This book is a pack of lies.”
          “Maybe.”
          “Lies.”
          “Nice pictures though, huh?”
          Kas’ vehemence vanished, absorbed by the imperturbable fixture that was Val. She huffed away to do her rounds, determined to forget everything in the heretical text. The Parthenon Frieze was not made of marble. Van Gogh’s brushstrokes were not millimeters high, and did not lend a three dimensional texture to his work. The Nightwatch was not over two meters tall.
          Unless.
          Unless it was, and they did, and they were.
          Kas returned to the pile and helped him lock up for the night. They worked in silence. Val appreciated the process of enlightenment, in which the lies taught to youth were stripped away and replaced with the lies of adulthood. First there must be resistance, then mourning, followed by a spiritual emptying to make room for the incorporation of more. And finally, an eagerness.
          “Where did you get that book?”
          “My mother.”
          “Is it true?”
          “Is anything?”
          “Please.”
          Kas was just layering on the protective clothes needed for her journey home; heavy to keep warm, dark to keep hidden, waterproof to keep toxins without. A withered hand patted the urban armor, in solidarity with the pathos and audacity that is a soul moved by the arts. “Come with me.”
          Val led the young woman to the basement where he was allowed a dank storeroom in exchange for gatekeeping and other odd jobs. His hammock and belongings were strung up about his chamber as protection against rodents, amphibians, and floods; he rooted about to find a large crank-shaft that he brandished triumphantly, as well as a small squeeze-light that he handed to Kas.
          “My grip ain’t what it was. You do it.”
          She pumped the device to produce enough light to see them safely on their journey deeper into the forgotten byways where Val led them to a high-ceilinged room and inserted the shaft into a generator by the door.
          He grunted as he cranked, until wan radiance sprouted from the sconces, freeing easels and stacks of canvases from their black stasis. Kas moved slowly at first, gasping to see images from the book here, in the flesh. With growing urgency she flipped through the canvases, finding variations on every painting, drawing, etching from the hated book. Some indistinguishable from those in the tome, some mischievously modified, some ingeniously unique. Finding La Joconde, complete with bridge and road, she opened the book to compare minutely. Val drowsed by the door.
          “But if we have the real paintings…?”
          “Real? No, lord no. My mother taught me, from the book. That stack over there — copies. But we both liked better to experiment — that’s all in the taller stack.”
          Minutes ticked past, perhaps hours. The reflexive appreciation she’d felt for the so-called art upstairs was replaced by genuine awe over these unsung copies. The copy of Mona Lisa held her gaze, smiling patiently while she examined every blade of grass, every soft hair, amazed by the realistic unreality. The diaphanous veil, the dress pleats, the tiniest hint of cleavage — here was a woman, a living woman whose essence had been captured and transported to unearthly solitude. Kas wondered what it all meant, then wondered by she cared. Then she wondered, ashamed, how she could have been duped by the absurd caricatures of art lining the galleries above. And yet no one had noticed or cared.
          Kas returned the tired man to his room, deep in thought.
          “Your work is beautiful,” she said. “So why isn’t it upstairs, in the light, for all to see?”
          “Ang figures an image is an image; he puts up what he likes. And after all, these are just copies.”
          “They’re more valuable than that! You’re so talented.”
          “Same skill, perhaps, but not original. And that’s where genius lies.”
          He smiled as he said it, content to be at odds with universal judgement.

Mag’s turn to announce a crisis came early on a Tuesday as the weather was finally cooling, just in time to ring in the solstice. “Last night, closing up, we had an incident,” he said, but was unwilling to go into more detail. “Just let me show you.” Ang flicked ash, Val sighed and re-locked the door, and the team followed Mag.
          “I didn’t mean to,” said the blushing docent. The Venus de Milo was off her pillar, lying on the floor with one of her nipples lying beside her, as pink as her hair. “I think maybe I’ve — it’s been twisted too many times, maybe.”
          Ever practical, Ang tried to melt the nipple a bit with his cigarette and stick it back onto the ample breast whence it came, but the silicone proved too heat resistant. He rocked back on his heels, disappointed. This version was quite anatomically correct and a favorite of half the clientele. He tried again, denting the ample breast in his fervent desire to restore the form. Leaning into his work, a hand pressed her belly for balance and caused an unfortunate trickle of effluent to emerge from the statue’s most functional feature. Ang admitted defeat; Mag admitted nothing.
          A replacement was brought up. Slim, featureless, she had the advantage that her arms could be screwed right off, adding to the authenticity. Ang got her adjusted and upright before tacking on a finishing detail in the form of a painting tarp artfully draped about slim hips. He stood back in satisfaction; not too bad, though he said it himself. There was a simplicity about her that suggested age; she might even be the best version yet.
          The proud manager opened a new pack of cigarettes to relax and celebrate after his exertions. He gestured to the discarded, nippleless figure. “You want her?” Hell yes, Mag wanted her; he carted her off lovingly to the break room as Ang lit up. “Smoke?” he offered.
          “I’m dyin’ fast enough, thanks,” said Val.
          “Me either,” said Kas. “Aren’t you worried what’s in those things?”
          “I know, I know, smoker’s roulette.” Ang dragged deeply. “But allow a man his vices.”
          He was still smiling as his heart stopped from whatever counterfeit compound had made it’s way into that pack.
          “Shit,” said Val to the small, dead man at his feet. “The permit to operate is in his name.”

“Next of kin?” asked the administrator.
          “Not that we know of,” Val answered.
          “Spell that name for me again; I’ll run a search.”
          “Right, ok, that’s Kassian Dimitriadis,” said Val, “K, A, S…”
          Kas watched herself be erased as the search for family came up empty and she was declared dead.
          “And now,” said the administrator, “we’ll need an official signature.”
          Val eyed Kas, Kas eyed Val. The old man pushed her forward. “That’s you, Ang. Sign it so we can get back to work.”
          She sighed. She signed. “Ang Ho, Manager.”
          The body was removed too late in the day to re-open. They shut the doors and assembled for a brief, impromptu memorial. Mag brought his new friend, for whom he’d found a shirt and skirt ensemble that managed to stretch over her prodigious curves. She sat now, nestled into his lap as he absentmindedly stroked her remaining nipple and sipped the clean water they were enjoying to honor the dead.
          They each, except the doll, said a few words of praise for previous-Ang’s staid management style.
          As they parted for the night, Kas-now-Ang brought out The Book, to study and get ideas for further changes.
          Val smiled. This might be the best Ang yet.