Fair Play Read Free Page A

these have hung here too long; you don’t even see them anymore. The best stuff you have, you don’t see anymore. And they kill each other because they’re badly hung. Look, here’s a thing of mine and here’s your drawing, and they clash. We need distance, it’s essential. And different periods need distance to set them apart—unless you’re just cramming them together for the shock effect! You simply have to feel it ... There should be an element of surprise when people’s eyes move across a wall covered with pictures. We don’t want to make it too easy for them. Let them catch their breath and look again because they can’t help it. Make them think, make them mad, even ... Now we’ll give our colleagues here better light. Why did you leave so much space right here?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Mari said. But she did know. Suddenly she knew very well that deep down she didn’t like the painter colleagues who had done these undeniably very fine works. Mari began paying attention. As she watched Jonna rehang the pictures, it seemed to her that lots of things, including their life together, fell into perspective and into place, a summary expressed in distance or selfevident clustering. The room had changed completely.
    When Jonna had taken her tape home with her, Mari marveled all evening at how easy it is in the end to understand the simplest things.

VIDEOMANIA
    T HEY LIVED at opposite ends of a large apartment building near the harbor, and between their studios lay the attic, an impersonal no-man’s-land of tall corridors with locked plank doors on either side. Mari liked wandering across the attic; it drew a necessary, neutral interval between their domains. She could pause on the way to listen to the rain on the metal roof, look out across the city as it lit its lights, or just linger for the pleasure of it.
    They never asked, “Were you able to work today?” Maybe they had, twenty or thirty years earlier, but they’d gradually learned not to. There are empty spaces that must be respected—those often long periods when a person can’t see the pictures or find the words and needs to be left alone.
    When Mari came in, Jonna was on a ladder building shelves in her front hall. Mari knew that when Jonna started putting up shelves she was approaching a period of work. Of course the hall would be far too narrow and cramped, but that was immaterial. The last time, it was shelves in the bedroom and the result had been a series of excellent woodcuts. She glanced into the bathroom as she passed, but Jonna had not yet put printing paper in to soak, not yet. Before Jonna could do her graphic work in peace, she always spent some time printing up sets of earlier, neglected works—a job that had been set aside so she could focus on new ideas. After all, a period of creative grace can be short. Suddenly, and without warning, the pictures disappear, or they’re chased away by some interference—someone or something that irretrievably cuts off the fragile desire to capture an observation, an insight.
    Mari went back to the hall and said she had bought milk and paper towels, two steaks, and a nailbrush, and it was raining.
    â€œGood,” Jonna said. She hadn’t heard. “Could you grab that other end for a second? Thanks. This is going to be a new shelf for videos. Nothing but videos. Did I mention Fassbinder’s on tonight? What do you think? Should I build it right out to the door?”
    â€œYes, do. What time?”
    â€œNine-twenty.”
    About eight they remembered Alma’s dinner. Jonna phoned her. “I’m sorry to call so late,” she said, “but you know, Fassbinder’s on this evening, and it’s the last time ... What? No, that won’t work; we have to be here to cut out the commercials ... Yes, it’s really too bad. But you know how I loathe those commercials; they can ruin the whole