The Perfect Landscape (17 page)

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 Reykjavik’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.

“Hey, you there!”

Hanna gets to the bottom just in time to see Kari aim a can of red paint and splatter it over the floor and up the wall by the entrance. Then he takes to his heels and is away. Hanna’s first thought is that it’s just as well it wasn’t a work of art that suffered the explosion of paint, and then she remembers the question that he shrugged off.

Kari is holding a spray can and spraying a gray wall in white paint. In his dream the wall is huge and so is he; he hears the hiss of the can and smells the glossy odor—he loves this smell. He covers the wall, the coarse gray concrete, with white spray that veils everything, hides every flaw; he is on a high, high on a white cloud. Behind him he hears someone gently calling his name, and when he turns around Banksy is standing there in a hoodie and a monkey mask. Kari knows it’s him; he sees his smiling eyes looking with satisfaction at the white covering Kari is bombing over the wall. Enveloped in the cool softness of the white cloud, Kari is bursting with joy and happiness; it is glorious and he wants to stay floating there forever. He looks Banksy in the eye; they are friends, fellow graffitists. Then Banksy lifts up both hands in a sign of peace and floats up into the air and disappears, vanishing into the white spray-paint.

Immediately Kari feels something hard under his chest, and a powerful smell of urine and vomit penetrate his senses. He is ice-cold, shivering, and feels sick. Someone is trying to
turn him on the hard concrete floor in the pool of mess, trying to get to his pockets. He lies motionless; underneath him the spray can is hurting him, but he doesn’t move. There’s nothing in his pockets, not even a cigarette, and he lies still until the foul-smelling person stops fumbling. No one from the crew is there; they have left. Kari doesn’t open his eyes but lies there on his stomach on the floor, trying to think of the white cloud again and the blissful feeling he had in his dream, but he knows it won’t come back, not until next time.