It was that time of night when the security guards were making their last rounds, herding any visitors still in the gallery towards the exits. Alex sat on a bench in the middle of the Rothko Room, surrounded by the Seagram Murals, and continued her communion.
INDENTAt a mere glance, it was simply Black on Maroon, 1958. Her favourite. It showed a black frame, suggesting a window with two maroon panes of glass. Once she had looked she was caught, her eye drawn through the window, the maybe-window, to the exterior beyond. Or was it an interior? Alex tilted her head to one side as though performing some sleight of eye that would reveal everything to her. It’s wisteria she thought, not maroon. Lilac in places. There’s flashes of brown, a colour that doesn’t flash as a rule. So, sienna, then. Burnt sienna. That made her think of an argument she had with a primary school teacher about the particular shade of a crayon. She couldn’t remember the details, just the precise injustice and bewildering frustration of not being heard. Just because she was small.
INDENTAlex was often drawn to thoughts that made her angry in the Rothko Room. She looked up at the painting. It was full of fury. Murder. Rage is just fear in another form, she remembered.
No it isn’t. A voice.
The painting was originally called Two Openings in Black Over Wine which made her think of the murals’ birth. She felt they were born, rather than painted even though, if she got close enough, she could see the path of every brush stroke through the oil paint.
INDENTShe pictured all eight murals hanging together in an expensive restaurant in 1950s Manhattan. They hung high above the bleak orgy of all that wealth, ignored in the clamour of light conversation and the clatter of heavy cutlery. As she watched, the paintings hurled themselves down onto tables of unsuspecting diners engrossed in talk of stocks and shares, tearing through them like a steak knife through rare sirloin, until blood flooded the thick white tablecloths and poured on to the carpets.
INDENTEven though it was a commission, Rothko wouldn’t give them the murals in the end. He said they were the wrong mood. But Alex knew that wasn’t the truth of it.
Were the walls closing in? Perhaps it was the late hour or the distant sound of footsteps in another room. Perhaps the maybe-windows and possible-doors that floated around her, shivering in her perception, were beginning to slip free again. She was assailed by an image of Rothko lying in a pool of his own blood. Six feet by eight, the same as some of his murals. He had sliced into his arms, near the elbow. Not fluttered around his wrists like it was some game.
INDENTHe should have let us be, do what we were meant to do.
Alex could hear the voice again.
INDENTThat’s why.
The footsteps were coming closer. She would have to leave soon.
INDENTShe gave Black on Maroon, 1958 her complete attention, devoted herself to it. She saw Rothko’s fury and distress as it poured down his arm, his hand, into the paint and onto the canvas. His absolute disgust, no much more than that, his desire for destruction. She felt like it was devouring her, its hot breath on her face, the snap of jaws close by, the brush of death.
INDENTBut for all that, she thought, they are so beautiful.
INDENTAnd then she saw it. As if it had just appeared but it surely hadn’t. In the bottom right-hand corner, near the edge where the black paled, was a new rust-red smudge. As Alex got closer she saw that it was more of a smear. She could make out the brush strokes in the purple paint nearby but not in this red. It looked as if it had been made by fingers. Two blood-soaked fingers not raised in benediction, but beginning to grasp in desperation. As she stared at them she got the feeling that they were on the other side of the canvas. The inside.
INDENT‘We could be the last two people in the gallery,’ a voice said.
INDENTAlex, startled, looked around. This was a very different voice, it belonged to a man who was coming towards her. At first he was silhouetted against the light of the room beyond, but as he came closer she could see him, as hard and empty as the bubbles in his half-glass of champagne.
INDENT‘Were you at the donors’ event?’ he sat down on her bench.
INDENTAlex wanted to get out, get away, but a sense of anticipation, feverish, hummed from the walls, weighted her to the room. She sat on the other bench.
INDENT‘I don’t think they’d let you in dressed like that,’ he said. ‘Black tie.’
INDENTAlex tried to focus on the painting near the corner, Red on Maroon, which meant she could turn her head from this man and pretend he wasn’t there. Her last moments with the murals were being ruined and she wouldn’t be able to come back for days - maybe even weeks - she couldn’t think of when she could come back again - not at a time when it wouldn’t be busy.
INDENT‘I might buy one of these,’ he said. ‘I’m very much in the market for art, it’s such a great investment nowadays.’
INDENTAlex could feel the air cooling on her skin. A faint breeze.
INDENT‘You can’t buy one of these,’ she said. ‘They can’t be separated.’
INDENTYou know he can do just as he likes, said the other voice. People like him always can.
INDENT ‘I’d let them keep it here, of course’ the man said. ‘So I can have a small plaque somewhere saying I’ve benevolently lent it to them. Besides I don’t think I’d want one of these in the house.’
INDENT ‘You should put it in your dining room,’ Alex said. ‘I’m sure it’s big enough.’
INDENT ‘These were supposed to hang in a restaurant, you know. I’ve been to the very place. The steak. Was. Amazing.’
INDENTThere was a laugh then. It growled across the canvases, down the walls, over the floor and straight up Alex’s spine.
INDENT ‘Rothko said he wanted to ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ate there,’ Alex said.
INDENTf you thought you could get away with it, you’d kill him, the mural said.
INDENTAlex met the mural’s gaze; you could get away with it.
INDENTThe man was grinning at her. ‘I’m too drunk to decide,’ he said. ‘Which one shall I buy?’
INDENT‘They’re not for sale.’
INDENT‘Well this one I think’ he strode over to Black on Maroon, 1958 and leant towards it. ‘Maybe I’ll put it my bedroom. You could come and see it. I think you’re a little in love with it, you know, you keep looking at it. All secretively.’
INDENT‘His family won’t sell it,’ Alex said. He was so close to the mural she could feel him breathing on the canvas.
INDENT‘Oh, they would. It’s just a question of how much it would take,’ he turned toward her. ‘There’s always a number.’
It was a sound that Alex felt, rather than heard. It was a deep exhalation, a sigh of so-often-longed-for contentment. The paintings all around her were creeping down the walls, melting from their canvases. Quiet at first, thoughtful, but then Alex felt them straining, burning to act until it was too much to contain and the room seemed to explode.
INDENTVermillion burst across the floor as mauve clouded the air, the oil and powder separating. Pigment raced around the room, all the colour catching in her throat. She saw the black frames bursting outwards, speeding across the blank space between the emptying canvases, coming together like a pack of wolves or worse, their dark forms climbing towards the ceiling. Alex smelled iron and earth as burgundy howled around her head and lilac and violet scattered their bright ashes across the gallery.
INDENTThe soft shapes, the mist and the haze of it, seemed to harden. Edges formed, making teeth in the black and the grey, biting slices from the light. The dark knifed through the man, scarlet blooming over his white shirt. His glass fell from his fingers, taking an age to hit the floor. He tried to speak but his lips were taut with a terror that wouldn’t let them close around the words he needed. He raised a hand, a final plea. Then the pack descended, spinning him around as they snapped and severed until the flesh fell from him and his bones splintered in their jaws. His blood sprayed across the floor and speckled the walls.
And when Alex finally opened her eyes, it was all so still and so beautiful.