Steinn has sat down, and Kristin is looking inquiringly at Hanna.
“I’m sorry,” says Hanna. “The view from here is always so beautiful.”
Steinn looks at Hanna silently, and she begins telling Kristin the whole story. Kristin leans back in her chair, giving Hanna her full attention; she doesn’t interrupt but waits patiently. When Hanna has finished Kristin looks her straight in the eye, and Hanna sees the glitter of steel.
“This is pure speculation,” says Kristin. She looks at them in turn. “It’s out of the question. We’re talking about a work of art worth millions. A national treasure. You both know how important Gudrun Johannsdottir is to us. We can’t prove this. What is to be gained by destroying this painting? And if it does prove to be a forgery, we’ve everything to lose. You both know the effect this will have on her other works of art we own. Are we to investigate them all?”
She shakes her head. Hanna realizes she will not be budged.
“The Icelandic fine arts market is only now finding its feet again after that forgery case sent it reeling. This would trigger more unease. And Elisabet wouldn’t want to bring charges—I know that for sure. She is quite an art connoisseur and she bought this piece herself. She wouldn’t want the press claiming that she’d bought a forgery.”
Hanna stares dumbfounded at Kristin.
“Hanna dear,” adds Kristin. “You must understand the position we’re in. It’s such a small world here, such a volatile one. We just can’t do this as things stand, not right now, you understand. We’ll keep the lid on it for a while, look into it more. I’m not saying no. I’m just suggesting not now. Let’s give it further consideration.”
Hanna is about to protest, but Kristin cuts in.
“I’ll give Elisabet a call and tell her that the investigation into her painting is taking longer than we anticipated. She’ll understand. Let’s shelve it for a while.”
Hanna perceives that Kristin is clearly as hard as iron. Despite her words about shelving it and careful consideration, Hanna has zero expectation that she will agree to removing the top layer from the painting later on. But there is evidently no point in trying to discuss the issue. They make ready to leave.
“We won’t discuss this any further,” says Steinn politely.
Kristin glances at her watch, and they say good-bye. They are in the doorway when Kristin calls, “Steinn? Have you got a moment?”
Steinn turns back. Hanna pauses.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, Hanna dear,” says Kristin, smiling warmly, like a totally different person, as if the discussion had not taken place. Hanna nods and walks down the corridor toward the stairs. Behind her she can hear Steinn’s voice as he goes back into Kristin’s office. He lowers his voice, and Hanna stops at the top stair straining to hear, but she cannot make anything out, just the sound of the door closing.
10
WORKSHOP FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS
The teenagers came escorted by a social worker and are now standing in a huddle in the Annexe. Uneasy, Hanna waits for Agusta; she has more confidence in her ability to relate to them. Agusta is no more than a few years older than the oldest ones. Hanna is only interested in one member of the group, but she doesn’t show it and avoids looking at Kari any more than the others. She recognized him immediately; he is by far the smallest. Brown-haired, with hazel eyes, darting like a skittish animal. She knows nothing about him other than that he’s thirteen, the police caught him along with the other youngsters for illegal graffitiing, and the child social work team is actively involved in his case.
Hanna has seen what these kids are capable of, the vandalism they have done, for example, on the statue she and Steinn visited. She also managed to have a picture sent to her of the piece Kari did on the wall where he was caught recently. She cannot forget that wall; it’s as if a slow explosion was taking place in the picture, at once full of pain and passion. Hanna hopes to be able to show Kari that you can give expression to such a powerful artistic urge in other ways, even though the destructive urge is as strong as the creative one. The photo of that wall showed her that there’s a powerful force within Kari and if he could learn to harness it he could do amazing things. Otherwise he will burn up in a flash, like a firework that leaves no trace other than smoke in the darkness.
Gudny proved to be more influential than Hanna had expected; it was only a few days after their lunchtime meeting in the restaurant that she got in touch with Hanna.
“I’ve sorted it for you,” she said. “The kids can come to you whenever you want. You just need to get in touch with Ingunn at Social Services and she will arrange for them to come over to you. Just name the day. You also need to talk to her about the bill, but keep it low, expenses only sort of thing.” Hanna agreed straightaway and thanked her, without having a clue what she was going to do with a group of teenagers for a whole Saturday. She has never worked with teenagers before, and she doesn’t know any Icelandic youngsters other than her relatives, whom she hardly ever sees. She’s only seen teenagers on the street from a distance, wandering neglected around the town, and she feels they must be cold the whole time.
Now here they are, five of them in total, and all looking like they’d rather be someplace else. Hanna suspects that this last-minute art workshop courtesy of the Reykjavik city authorities is a punishment rather than a reward. Three boys and two girls. Kari is like a mascot for this group, who are all older than him. The two girls are dressed in identical tight-legged jeans, whispering. Hanna guesses they are about fourteen or fifteen. The older boys have long hair with their pants hanging around their knees. None of them looks her in the eye. Kari is looking around, and Hanna notices he has seen a painting by a student at the Art Academy. The painting drips down the wall and onto the floor, a thread of red paint connecting the space. She is convinced he wants to look at it more but is holding himself back, probably determined not to show any reaction or interest, no matter what.
Hanna has introduced herself and has talked about famous graffiti artists like Banksy and Blek le Rat. They listened halfheartedly; one girl was constantly on her phone texting and undoubtedly hearing nothing of what Hanna was saying, but that doesn’t bother Hanna. It’s Kari she wants to get through to. It’s him she wants to save, to arouse his interest in art, get him off the streets like Tim Rollins did in his work with the Kids of Survival project back in the 1980s, kids from a poor part of New York. He showed that it was possible to reach out to kids through literature, music, and art, kids the schools had written off as hopeless.
But Hanna is no Tim Rollins, and she has no idea how to reach out to these youngsters who, at best, appear disinterested. She outlines for them what they are going to do that day. They’ll start by looking around the Annexe and the gallery, and then they can have a free hand in the small exhibition space on the upper floor, which is empty at present. Steinn has given his blessing for them to paint on the walls, but they’ll have wall paint and brushes rather than spray cans. The gallery would then be honored to display their work and they are welcome to come back and finish it if they don’t manage to today.
Hanna sighs with relief when she sees Agusta walking across the square outside; she takes over when Hanna has finished her talk. Hanna feels the group listens to Agusta better. It’s easy for her to talk on their level without it sounding contrived. Coming from her mouth words like the crew, doing a piece, writers, and taggers sound totally natural, as if she was one of them. Hanna leaves Agusta to guide the group through the works on display in the Annexe. The girls whisper to one another, and the boys talk in undertones. Kari looks out of the windows. Then Hanna takes over; they’ve had enough of being talked to about art. For them graffitiing isn’t art; in their eyes graffitiing is something that is banned, an exciting way to make their presence felt.
Hanna leads them up to the next floor, where paintings from the first half of the twentieth century are in a display entitled Initiators—portraits, still lifes, street scenes, and paintings of Reykjav
ik’s harbor. These paintings are accessible and easy to understand, but Hanna sees that the kids are bored; they want to leave and are simply waiting for the workshop to be over. It’s a Saturday and should be a day off. None of them wants to waste it indoors in a gallery. They have never heard of Thorvald Skulason or Gunnlaug Blondal, or Gudrun Johannsdottir either. Hanna gets no response from them, and there is clearly an unspoken agreement among them not to show any interest in anything to do with the gallery. Hanna sends Agusta a pleading look, but she just shrugs with an expression that says: Well, what did you expect? Hanna has no answer to that, and eventually she takes them down to the ground floor, where she hopes they will relate better to the exhibition of contemporary photographs.
On the stairs Hanna walks straight past Composition in Blue, but one of the older kids stops dead in his tracks.
“Hey! I saw this on TV last year. It cost fifteen mill.” They crowd around the painting.
“Fifteen million?” the others exclaim. “Wow, man!”
They look at one another, and suddenly Hanna has their undivided attention.
“The guy who painted this, is he dead?” Kari asks. Hanna confirms this with a nod, thinking to herself that if she and Steinn are right then the artist, whoever he is, is probably very comfortably off somewhere.
“Then who gets the money?” he asks.
Seizing the moment, Hanna explains to them how paintings are bought and sold and tells them how much some of the paintings in the gallery are worth, the most expensive ones she can remember. Now they show more interest; maybe art isn’t entirely dumb. Hanna keeps them focused by talking about the vast sums paid for works of art on the world market, and about artists who have become megarich like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons. She sees that Kari is listening. He probably lives on the breadline and dreams of living in luxury.
“We have one internationally famous artist,” says Hanna. “He’s almost as famous as Bjork. His works can cost tens or even hundreds of millions.” Hanna tells the kids about Olafur Eliasson, and while she talks she looks at Composition in Blue and is actually certain she is right. This is a forgery even though it doesn’t look it.
She knows Steinn has taken a sample. He said nothing about his discussion with Kristin after Hanna left, but she gets the feeling he hasn’t given up. Now they are just waiting for the results.
Agusta calls out and startles Hanna. She was lost in thought looking at the painting and the group has moved on down to the ground floor. The ice is now broken, and the youngsters relate better to the photographs than the paintings on the upper floor. They keep coming up with questions, mostly about how much they are worth but also about how artists work. Who gets to exhibit in the gallery, how they are chosen, and whether they get paid. They like the freedom that artists have, that they can get on with their work when they please and aren’t at someone’s beck and call. Hanna doesn’t disillusion them, and it’s also true to an extent. She sees no reason to quash their interest in art or their dreams of freedom by pointing out to them how few artists succeed in making a living out of their art, and that even fewer get international recognition. She memorizes their names, and when they go to eat in the cafeteria she carefully probes them about their graffitiing. She regrets it immediately. Their faces go blank; they look away and start texting again. Hanna sees Agusta look at her in amazement, and she knows she’s put her foot in it. She just doesn’t have the knack.
After lunch Hanna lets Agusta take the group up to the room they have at their disposal. Steinn has put plastic sheeting down on the floor. They can have one wall for themselves, and they can do whatever they like on it. Hanna has decided to leave Agusta on her own with them while they get started. She blames herself for not relating to them better than she did. She would love to talk to Kari, but she knows he would shrink back so it’s better to give him time. That’s why she remains in the cafeteria for a while. On the table in front of her there’s a printout of one of the first political murals in history, Allegory of Good Government and Bad Government, which are on the walls of the town hall in Sienna. She’d intended to show it to the youngsters.
At the request of the town councilors, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted the frescoes on the walls of their council room in the early part of the fourteenth century. They cover a number of square meters and show the effects of good government versus poor government on town and countryside. In the allegory of good government well-dressed people walk about on clean, tidy streets; the houses are in good repair; and there’s a plentiful harvest in the country. It goes without saying that the opposite is the case under bad government: houses are in disrepair, beggars and paupers are out on the streets, the countryside is neglected, and the harvest is poor. Hanna is wondering whether she should go up and show the pictures to the youngsters when Steinn suddenly appears.
“I thought you wanted to be up with the kids?” says Steinn, surprised. He’s still got his eye patch. Hanna looks at his good eye and shows him the pictures in the folder.
“I was going to show them these. But I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” She flicks through the pictures with him.
“Why not?” asks Steinn. “It might get them started; I don’t think they know what they’re meant to be doing up there.”
Hanna lets out a sigh; she needs to get a grip. Steinn is standing behind her and lays his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t move; she thinks of Frederico. Pulling herself together, she suddenly stands up and gathers up the pictures on the table.
Steinn smiles at her, and Hanna feels the attraction toward him. She’s not sure if Steinn feels the same way. It has occurred to her that maybe she should give Frederico a dose of his own medicine for what he did, but she doesn’t have the courage. Besides, she wants to keep her friendship with Steinn. A love affair at work is not what she needs. She takes her leave of Steinn and his inscrutable gaze and rushes up to the painting room.
Everything is quiet and calm. Agusta has slipped off, and the five youngsters are sitting on the floor. They’ve opened the paint cans but can’t agree on how they should paint the wall. Hanna says hello, and they fall silent and look at her, waiting. She feels she is interrupting them, but then she thinks about fencing and how it is important to take the initiative. Sitting down next to them, she spreads out the pictures of Good Government and Bad Government on the floor. None of them has been to Sienna, and Hanna tells them about the time she went there with Frederico and Heba some years ago.
“Walls encircle the old town center, which is up on a hill, surrounded by other hills.”
Hanna tells them about the afternoon they spent with their friends in the hills. There was a warm breeze, and the cherry trees in the orchard were laden with berries. The hills were green, and on the neighboring farm there was a foal in the meadow. Heba went with some of the children to collect water from the well.
“It was a glorious day,” says Hanna dreamily, picturing the grassy meadows and fruit trees, recalling the gentle peace that reigned over everything that day. She looks at Kari and sees that he is listening.
“The following day we drove into Sienna,” she says, “and parked the car right outside the city walls. Then we had to take seven escalators to get up to the old town center. We came out onto streets that are so narrow you can touch the houses on either side if you stretch your arms right out. A real horse race is held in the town center twice a year. Thousands of people come from all over the world to watch Il Palio. The town hall in Sienna is on this square, and that’s where you can find this fresco.
“Artists often want to express something in their art, maybe something in their environment that they’re dissatisfied with. Although that wasn’t the case with Lorenzetti here—he was commissioned to paint this.”
They examine the pictures and have a bit of a laugh at the primitive way the perspective on the buildings has been drawn and at the angels in midflight. But it also gives them a subject matter, and when one of the girls asks if she can paint an angel on the wall, Hanna
agrees enthusiastically, relieved that one of them wants to get involved. The girls begin drawing on the wall in chalk, and Hanna immediately sees that they can’t cope with the size of the wall. She goes to find Agusta.
With Steinn’s help they produce a computer and an overhead projector; now they can project whatever they want onto the wall and paint the outlines. They potter about with this for a good while; when the computer arrived it was like the kids came to life. They now try to come to an agreement about their subject matter, angels, buildings, and people. Hanna notices that Kari doesn’t get involved; he’s not interested, and the others don’t look to him. She wonders what his role is in the group. He sits with his back to the wall, his face expressionless, and Hanna risks sitting down next to him.
“What would you do if you had a whole wall to yourself?” she asks nonchalantly, as if to no one in particular, making sure to avoid eye contact.
She senses rather than sees him shrug his shoulders indifferently; he doesn’t look up but, shaking his head, replies coldly, “Dunno.”
Hanna sits quietly without saying another word, but Kari gets straight up and goes over to the others. Gradually they decide on the pictures and draw the outlines on the wall, outlines of American skyscrapers with angels flying over them. One of the boys takes it on himself to sketch out a skate park, and Hanna and Agusta advise them where best to start, how to work the background and work with colors on the wall. They’ve been contentedly doing this for some time when Hanna notices that Kari is no longer there but has silently slipped off without a word. She gets up and goes right down to the lobby. She is halfway down the stairs when she hears voices and shouting.
The Perfect Landscape Page 13
