Little Hands Clapping

by Dan Rhodes

  As the exhibition was being set up she had stood in the gallery as an insurance broker, immaculately suited and as tiny as a jockey, set about explaining the finer details of risk assessment. ‘There can be no underestimating the wiliness of the art thief,’ he had said, taking his silk handkerchief from his pocket and lightly dabbing his forehead. ‘They appear as if from nowhere, and then . . .’ The handkerchief disappeared. He opened his palms to show that he wasn’t concealing it there. Lotte was delighted. ‘And, Miss, as you know, this is an international airport, and at any moment there could be any number of Norwegians passing through, which puts under-guarded artworks at enormous risk of being whisked away in an audacious smash-and-grab raid.’ He pointed at his breast pocket and now the handkerchief was there, but the next moment it was gone again. Lotte laughed. ‘But the Norwegians are not the only ones we need to be wary of. Maniacs from anywhere – from as far afield as Angola, or Ireland, or from as close as this very city,’ he made a circular gesture, ‘could come here with Cuban heels and mischief in their minds.’ He walked to the far side of the room, and his affable manner was abruptly replaced by bug-eyes and bare teeth as he took off his shoe and with a blood-curdling howl ran forward and mimed a Cuban-heel attack on the glass that had been put in place to protect a painting of the staggeringly plain wife of a nineteenth-century textile merchant. His was a handmade Italian business shoe, and his demonstration was executed so faultlessly that at no point did it touch the glass, but he was so convincing that Lotte agreed with no further discussion that the insurance companies were right. Cameras would not be enough.

  She decided this would be preferable anyway, because with somebody on duty at all times people would be able to ask questions about the pieces and receive informed replies. An advertisement for the positions of Gallery Attendant and Chief Gallery Attendant was placed in an appropriate periodical, and a small number of applications was received.

  The first appointee, the Gallery Attendant, was a keen graduate of an arts administration course, who had been looking for a foothold in a competitive profession. The next, nominally the graduate’s superior, even though barring a very small amount of paperwork their day-to-day roles were identical, was a man who had come with several years of experience, having moved from a railway museum in Prüm. He was quite an old man, and his long, grey fingers hung like stalactites from the sleeves of his funereal jacket.

  There was nothing to do but stand still. Normally the role of Gallery Attendant, or indeed that of Chief Gallery Attendant, will include answering questions about the pieces from the visitors or, more usually, directing them to the toilets, but here it was different. This being an airport, toilets were abundant and clearly signposted, and the works themselves invited little explanation, even the short paragraphs on the mounted cards seeming excessive under the circumstances. The keen graduate, exhausted by the procession of disappointed faces, soon found work elsewhere, and was replaced by another keen graduate, who also left at the first opportunity.

  The old man, though, remained. Working in an unpopular museum or gallery was as close to getting paid for being unconscious as it was possible to get, and because of his exceptional language ability he never had any difficulty finding such a position. The owners always imagined their establishment being visited by people from around the world, and they were keen to employ a polyglot. They didn’t realise that he would go to great lengths to avoid conversation in every language in which he was fluent. Lotte too had been impressed by his gift, though it was only ever used when eavesdropping on visitors, most of whom would say little besides, These paintings are certainly preferable to that modern rubbish. But as the words came out these visitors began to wonder whether what they were saying was true. If all the old days had to offer was a painting of an unimaginably ordinary windmill then maybe there was something to modern art after all.

  Lotte’s gallery had its own shop. Sometimes a restless traveller waiting for a delayed flight would drop in and, for a minute or two, look around. Baffled by the sight of its lacklustre ashtrays, ceramic pencil sharpeners, tea towels and place mats, they would go away without having felt any inclination to buy anything. For a long time the closest the shop came to making a sale had been when a flustered man had rushed in and picked up a mug. He didn’t look at the picture on it, but if he had done he would have seen a particularly nondescript landscape by Georg Friedrich Ackermann, one that on close inspection could be seen to be quite badly water damaged. Without even looking for the price, the man had handed over a credit card. The girl behind the counter looked at the till, then at the card, then back at the man.

  ‘Please hurry,’ he said. ‘My plane is boarding, and I need to buy this mug as a gift for my estranged daughter.’

  The girl stared at the till. It had been so long since her training that she had forgotten which buttons she needed to press.

  ‘Please,’ said the man. His voice had begun to wobble. ‘My estranged daughter . . . She will be waiting for me . . . It is imperative . . .’

  The girl looked once again at the card, then back at the till, and at the man before saying, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She handed the mug and the card to him, and whispered, ‘Just go.’

  The man took the mug, stuffed the card back into his wallet and hurried towards his departure gate. The girl watched him rush away, wondering how things would go with his estranged daughter, what she would think about meeting her father after such a long time and being handed such a disappointing mug.

  He had been their only customer until the day a woman had come in and bought at least one of everything, a woman whose build made it difficult to tell whether or not she was expecting a baby, even though she was five months pregnant with her third child, who would be a girl called Dagmar.

  Before reaching the shop, Pavarotti’s wife had gone to the exhibition, where she had scrutinised each of the exhibits with genuine interest. When she got to the man standing in the corner, instead of shuffling past and deliberately avoiding eye contact as every previous visitor had done, she looked at him very closely, as if he too was on display.

  ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what a wonderful little exhibition you have here.’

  The old man accepted the praise with a nod.

  ‘I congratulate you.’

  Indifferent to her approval, and waiting for her to go away, he felt no need to nod for a second time.

  ‘I suppose you are incredibly experienced in the field of curatorship and so forth?’

  He nodded.

  ‘So tell me, where were you before you came here, to this splendid concourse gallery?’

  The old man began to wonder whether there might be a reason beyond nosiness for this interrogation so, in as few words as possible, he replied. He told her he had come from a railway museum in Prüm. He didn’t mention that the museum had been a shambles, that it hadn’t even contained a train and that it had failed quite disastrously, the premises being sold off by creditors and converted into a restaurant called Pippin’s, themed around the story of Pippin the Hunchback.

  ‘And before that?’

  He told her, in as few words as possible, about his time at the Wolfsburg Museum of Recent Local Architecture, the Bad Neustadt Handball Experience and the Regensburg Reformation World of Teddy Bears. He could have listed more, but chose not to. It was none of her business, and he was not yet sure whether she had anything to offer him.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed in curiosity. ‘Why have you moved around such a lot?’

  ‘Because I have been wishing to gain the broadest possible experience in the field.’ This was the line he always gave at job interviews, and he was able to say it without thinking. He chose not to tell her that everywhere he had worked had closed, just as he knew this gallery would close. He had chosen these places carefully, knowing they were hopeless, that he wouldn’t be kept busy, and that he might even receive a pay-off when the inevitable end came.

  The woman’s eyes widened. ‘Wonderful,’ she said,
and she began to tell him, in considerable detail, about her own plans to open up a museum.

  The old man had heard this all before, enthusiastic proprietors outlining ideas for projects which they saw as the centrepiece of a life’s work, oblivious to just how ridiculous they would be, and how unpopular. This woman’s dream, so passionately set forth, was the most ludicrous he had ever heard. ‘I am sure it will be a great success,’ he said, when, at last, she stopped to draw breath.

  She told him that she would be looking for somebody to oversee it, somebody with a broad range of appropriate experience. ‘A chief attendant if you will.’ She thought for a moment. ‘No, let us say a curator.’

  The old man said nothing.

  ‘Oh, you must forgive me,’ she said. ‘I am being indiscreet. Here you are in your current employment, and I am making what could almost be described as overtures to you. What an awful breach of protocol on my part.’

  ‘Not at all, madam.’ Now certain that these were indeed overtures, he began to wonder whether he should take up her offer. He was tired of the airport’s security procedures and the incessant drone of announcements, and he could sense the gallery’s imminent failure. He was sure he would soon be looking for a new position.

  ‘I was about to tell you the terms of employment, about how an apartment on the top floor would be included, and so on and so forth. How indiscreet of me. You have maintained your composure quite admirably throughout this rather awkward encounter.’ Her face burned, and the old man could see that her embarrassment was genuine. ‘I am so very sorry.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He particularly liked the idea of the apartment. He disliked having to deal with landlords, and having to travel to and from work. ‘Perhaps you could give me your details, and at some point we could enter into an informal communication on the matter.’

  She took a card from her wallet, and pressed it into his hand before taking her leave. She went into the shop, and her eyes lit up. A few minutes later she walked away with three bulging bags.

  The girl behind the counter, who by this point had relearned how to work the till and had covered the cost of the flustered man’s mug from her own wages, picked up the telephone and called Lotte, who darted out from her office to look at the till roll.

  ‘This is wonderful,’ she said, her face even more ablaze with joy than usual. ‘Things are really starting to take off.’

  Things did not take off. The spree had come too late, and the following day all the gallery staff were called into a meeting where they found themselves confronted by somebody they had never seen before, a stern-looking man in incredibly dark glasses. A deep scar, running diagonally across his right cheek, gave the impression that he had once fought a tiger, and won. When they were all seated he told them that a decision had been made. The exhibition had not done as well as had been hoped, and it was going to be dismantled and replaced by a four-times-life-size waxwork of Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff. ‘The largest of its kind,’ he said.

  The airport’s senior management had known they would be unable to break bad news to Lotte, so they had hired this man, supposedly the toughest freelance firer in the business, to do the job for them. For his sake they had made him wear the glasses, which were completely opaque, so he would never know the face to which he was bringing such disappointment. He considered this insulting, but as they were paying him very well he had not protested. As he spoke his prepared lines he began, for the first time ever, to feel awful about what he was doing, and thankful that the young woman they had told him about was hidden from view. As he stared at the blackness in front of him he found himself wondering whether he was in the right job.

  Lotte’s face continued to radiate joy as she searched for the good in this situation – good which she knew would be there somewhere. The girl from the shop reached into her sleeve and pulled out an extraordinarily large handkerchief, almost a tablecloth, and began to cry, and the old man’s latest junior looked quietly at the floor, despondent at her career having hit such a low so early on. Lotte realised that her dream had come to nothing.

  ‘I have let everybody down,’ she said. Her eyes twitched, and a tear ran down her cheek, and for the first time in her life she put her head in her hands. ‘All you good people,’ she choked into her palms, ‘I have let you down.’

  The man had memorised his exit route, and without even giving them his scripted valediction – The airport wishes you every success in the future – he stood up and walked to the back of the room before anybody had a chance to see that Lotte’s tears had been infectious. As he passed her he caught a glimpse of her face through the gap in the side of his glasses, and this moment, just a fraction of a second, was enough to knock him off balance. He felt his legs buckle, and he miscounted his steps and walked into a stationery cupboard, where he remained. In the darkness he resolved to go straight home and call his brother, who had given him an open invitation to join his business making lavender bags deep in the countryside. At the time he had struggled to stop himself from turning crimson with fury and calling his brother all sorts of names, but now he could see it was the only option left to him, and he was grateful for it.

  As the sobs continued, the old man reached into his wallet, and with the tips of two long, grey fingers picked out the woman’s card. He had a call to make.

  To begin with, the press will have difficulty tracking down images of the old man, and it will be the photograph from his airport identification card that stares out from the front pages of newspapers. By this time Lotte, whose sunshine had quickly returned, will be two successful jobs down the line, and she will remember him with a shiver. ‘He was never very nice,’ she will say to her husband, who will not have heard her speak like this before. She will remember the time she had spent with him, and how she had always given him the benefit of the doubt, just as she had given so many people the benefit of the doubt. She will go to her computer and pull up the reference she had written, the one that had secured him the job. He was punctual, she reads. Reliable. A highly valued member of the team. A pleasure to work alongside. They read like the words of somebody who is not very bright, who sees the world only as it ought to be, and from that day something about her will change. There will be times when she will seem distracted, as if her mind is on something quite serious, and on occasion her brow will crease, as if she is trying to decipher a code. Sometimes she will look at a situation and not be able to find the good in it, and sometimes, just sometimes, she will even look at a person and not be able to find the good in them. She will be aware of this change, and feel grateful for it. She is going to be a mother, she tells herself. It’s time she grew up. Her husband will notice this shift, and he will be glad of it too: it had become quite exhausting being married to a ray of sunshine.

  When Lotte calls the police they take her details, and at the end of their short conversation she tells them they are welcome to get back in touch with her if there is anything else they need to know.

  They do not call. There is nothing else they need to know.

  VI

  Doctor Fröhlicher had always known that he would practise medicine for as long as he was able. Whenever he attended a fellow doctor’s retirement party he couldn’t help picturing the massed ranks of the unwell upon whom they were turning their back, and he knew he could never do the same. He was determined to remain at the forefront of the profession, and most evenings he would settle down in an armchair with a medical journal to read about all the latest advances. If things had turned out differently this would have been the time he spent with his wife and family, and by filling it this way he was able to reassure himself that Ute had not died in vain, that in her passing she had helped him to reach new heights as a general practitioner. Whenever he prescribed a medicine that he might otherwise not have known about, or referred somebody to a specialist whom he had read was in the vanguard of their field, it was as if they were working as a team, and when the patient left his consulting room he would close his eyes, and say,
‘Thank you, Ute.’

  He often imagined how she would have looked. In his mind’s eye she had a few lines on her face, and she wore reading glasses, but she was still slim and had kept her hair long, and she remained the most beautiful object he had ever seen. She would have calmed down by now too. There would have been none of her nonsense, not any more.

  For all his dedication, the doctor’s medical ambitions were hampered by a recurring problem. His patients felt duty-bound to lift his spirits, and on entering his consulting room they greeted him cheerfully, and engaged him in lively chatter about very little. When the small talk ran out and the time came for them to present their symptoms, they began to feel uneasy. The pain in their thumb that may or may not have been the onset of arthritis seemed too trivial to mention when compared with the agony this man went through every day; the small patch of darkening skin that had kept them awake with worry became insignificant in the presence of such forbearance. They declared that whatever it was that had been troubling them had suddenly got better. It is as if just being here in your consulting room has cured me, they said.

  He would ask them if they were sure, and they would insist that there was nothing wrong, that they had just been feeling a little under the weather but now they were fine. If he noticed that in spite of their protestations they looked ill, or anxious, he would insist on an examination, and he always found the root of the problem. This way he gained a reputation for being very thorough. Often, though, he took them at their word and let them go away, but never until they had assured him that they would make another appointment the moment they began to feel unwell again. Sometimes when the patient did finally return and admit their symptoms it would be too late, and all he could do was make sure that they were kept as comfortable as possible until the end.