The Unseen View

This is from a Trial by Fort Street HS.

The bombs fell, cutting off any exit from the city and throwing up a radioactive perimeter, creating a roughly circular zone, of which the Museum of Modern Art was the centre.

Since the raid had happened just on dawn the city was mostly unpopulated by the millions who would have poured into it for the working day. Now the baristas, stockbrokers, bankers, lawyers, consultants, traders, tourist touts, and politicians were all in the suburbs, asleep forever in their vaporized beds.

Harry had been asleep on the steps of the huge column in the middle of the square. A statue of a National Hero stood atop it, reminding everyone that if you fought in a pointless war, hectored others to lose their lives, and cultivated the right friends, Providence would reward you with a statue under which beggars slept. Or tried to. The police usually moved him on, but Harry felt that turning up each night affirmed the same values as those of the National Hero: perseverance, inconvenience, and individuality.

When the blast wave from the first bomb came it knocked flat almost everything outside the ring of the big square (which was actually a pentagon). The windows facing the square blew out and Harry was sent flying from the column’s sandstone base to the steps of the museum. When he regained consciousness he crawled up the stairs and hid behind a column. He put his head inside his anorak like a tortoise to avoid the fallout dust.

He stayed that way for a while, then looked out cautiously. The square was covered in a million shards of glass, like an ice rink. The National Hero and most of his column had toppled to the ground. There was an ionizing smell and Harry knew that a fall of heavy, globular, greasy drops loaded with fission products, would descend soon.

He rattled the locked double doors of the Museum but no one came. He skittered around the side of the building until he found a window, smashed it, and climbed in. Alarms which should have gone off had been fried by the electromagnetic pulse of the bombs, and the internal doors had unlocked themselves.

He wandered around the museum’s silent corridors for a while, enjoying the feeling of being indoors, unaccosted, and relatively safe. Places of public resort had closed shortly after the first round of conventional bombs struck cities in the north, so the only food in the place was souvenir chocolate bars and bags of mint humbugs. It was better than nothing, he thought, and there was still water in the taps.

Most of the exhibits had been removed to safety somewhere. Only the very large installations remained: a ball of red twine which filled an entire hall so completely that visitors had to squeeze through the entryway to get in. It was called The Red Thread of My Destiny, by Ai Hoxa. In another hall a bright yellow elevating work platform stood, its arm extended, the basket touching the central light fitting, which was a large and gaudy chandelier.

Eating a bar of chocolate, Harry studied it for a while, trying to discern some meaning. From technology to tastelessness? Adam’s mechanical finger stretched out to a 40-watt God? Eventually he let the basket down by the pneumatic switch at the base. Sellotaped to the controls were directions for an installation of three years ago. The machine had the museum’s name stencilled messily on the inside of the basket. It wasn’t an installation at all, he realized, just an empty exhibition space with some machinery.

He wandered through it to the next hall, in which a piece was still set up. A queen-sized bed, cover thrown back, the sheets rumpled and pillows askew as if someone had got up and left without making it. On the floor around the bed were plates with bits of food still stuck to them, women’s undergarments, books open and face down, postcards, receipts, a used condom, and bottles. A lot of bottles of booze in various states of consumption.

It looked like every urban single’s bed, transplanted to a vast white space.

The board said that it was called My Bed, and referred to a period of depression in the artist’s life following relationship difficulties. It had been shortlisted for the Turner Prize and purchased for over two million pounds.

Harry toed away the used condom with disgust and sat down on the bed. The mattress wasn’t bad, but not two million quid’s orth. He took his shoes off and placed them nearly beside a bottle of Absolut Vodka and a pair of ratty slippers, and swung his legs onto the bed. Remembering the condom he peeked dubiously beneath the covers, but it was just a soft sheety darkness, still faintly redolent of sweat and sleep.

He lay down, his head on the pillow of the great artist’s troubles. It was the first bed he’d lain on in … ten years? Certainly, the first ever queen-sized bed. He closed his eyes.

‘What are you doing?’

He sat up. A man in a black polo-neck and black trousers was staring at him through huge, perfectly circular white-framed spectacles. He was thin and sported a helmet of hair that needed a wash. He reminded Harry of someone – Andy Warhol, he thought. The Beatles or The Monkees. That kind of thing.

‘About to have a kip,’ Harry said neutrally. ‘I managed to make it inside.’

‘I work here,’ said Andy Warhol fussily. ‘And you’re not kipping on that. Get off it. It’s an exhibit.’ He came towards Harry, in a pair of patent leather shoes shining black as cockroaches, with extended toes. He clearly had not left the building for months. Or the shoes hadn’t.

Harry laughed. ‘It’s a bed. Not a great one, and it could do with a tidy. But I need a sleep and I’m not moving.’

Andy Warhol squeaked. ‘Just because the world appears to be ending doesn’t mean you can treat Art so cavalierly. It’s what we’re fighting for, for God’s sake.’

As if to punctuate the point, there was a popping noise from far away. Conventional cluster bombs taking out remaining inhabited areas. ‘Tell that to them out there,’ said Harry, lying back.

‘This is a Great Work!’ shouted Andy Warhol. ‘It’s not a bloody doss-house!’

Harry plumped the artist’s pillows of misery. It was a lot better than sleeping beneath the National Hero, but the pigeons were better company that the shiny-toed acolyte of Art.

Half an hour later he lay back on My Bed. Andy Warhol was now reposing within The Red Thread of My Destiny in the other hall. He would die the death he surely wanted, swaddled tightly – very tightly – by an all-encompassing Art. At last the big ball of wool contained something substantial. Harry could enjoy the bed, and the rest of the world could go to hell.

He closed his eyes and slept.