Treasures in Exile

By W. Peter Collins

I stood by the glass case that held Carla’s creations. Tall with a dark stained wood frame, the case stood impassively, like a sentry at the gate of self-expression. The figures inside were about the size of my hand, some made of clay, with eyes of lapis, plush- glazed coats and gilded boots. Others made of bits and pieces once lost, then found again. Aluminum legs, velvet skin, silk hats and chrome buckles, pulled from a trash bin, or the street. Cast-aways of every shape and color, works of disheveled charm. Across the room by the window Carla sat knitting. Next to her was a small wooden cabinet, bulging with colorful yarn.

“You’ve never exhibited these, have you Carla?”

“No,” she said without looking up.

“Do you ever invite anyone over to see them?”

“I invited you.” Carla looked up sharply. The look on her face rattled me. It was the same as when we were students at the Academy. Carla, Sean and me. Our work was on display in the studio where the class critiques were held. Splashes of paint littered the floor. Marks of charcoal and pastel streaked the walls. The other students took aim at our work with outstretched arms, righteous fingers and fired away.

“These colors are turgid.”

“That looks derivative.”

“This piece looks ponderous, like an idea was let loose and got lost looking for its own relevancy.”

I stood up. “Fuck you!” I yelled. “Fuck all of you.” I walked out and never saw any of them again. Carla and Sean, too, even though they were my best friends, my only friends, I never saw them again until Sean’s funeral yesterday. His sister tracked me down to tell me the news.

I drifted back to the present to see Carla’s hands, urgently whipping the needle around, transforming the thread, just as they did the clay, the glaze, and the objects they found so long ago.

“I’ve seen them before. Do you ever show them to anyone who’s never seen them?”

“Why would I do that?”

I walked close to the case. “Look at what you created,” I said loudly. My hand hit sharply on the case with a thwack. The Figures inside wobbled but held their places. With heads held high, they stood like actors on a stage that’s never seen, never losing their dignity and grace.

“These should be seen and celebrated, but you’ve locked them away.”
She stopped knitting and gazed at the case, eyebrows raised, head tilted slightly back, as if the sculptures were strangers to her.

“How could you give this up?” I held the case with both hands and leaned in, my breath fogged the glass.

“I got tired of asking somebody else’s questions.” Her voice sounded like automated voice recognition software, stiff, lifeless.

“What questions? And if they weren’t yours, whose were they?”

“Remember the group critiques? Where students took turns showing their work, while others asked questions, made comments.”

“Yeah, I hated those. It was like being in a room full of people with some strange disease and hoping it wasn’t contagious.”

“I’m surprised you remember them. You dropped out after the first one.”

She was right. I did. At the time I thought it was because I had no talent, and that the other students were merciless in making sure I was aware of that. Those things all got under my skin.

But there was something else. Sean and Carla started sleeping together. I became an electric typewriter in a world of computers, irrelevant.

“You just disappeared, like a ghost. I hated you for that.”

“Why did you invite me over if you hated me.”

“I thought I could forgive you, or maybe you’d apologize.”

“Can you?” I cut in.

“What?”

“Forgive me.”

“Can you apologize?”

Silence fell like a misty fog between us.

“Do you remember Professor Laslo?” she continued.

“Yeah, he reminded me of my dad. Nothing was ever good enough for him.”

“’Why are you here?’ That was Laslo’s question. At the time, I thought it was mine too.”

Carla’s voice was dry and brittle, like paper left out in the sun. She looked up from her knitting; her back stiffened.

“What was your answer?”

Carla’s lips began to move, then stopped. Waves of memories washed over me; her talking and me not listening, her showing me her sculptures and me being oblivious to the urgency I couldn’t see in her, or them, until now, after they’ve lived all this time, isolated in a glass case. The skin on my chest tightened. I struggled to breathe.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she said flatly.

“Did it matter then?”

“I thought it did. And if I couldn’t find an answer, that meant something was wrong with me.”

“What did you say to Laslo?”

“I said I didn’t know why I was there. I just needed to make art, even if I didn’t know what art was.”

“That sounds like an answer. What did Laslo say?”

Carla’s posture sagged. Her eyes narrowed. “He told me a lot of students had said those exact words. He asked if I wanted to exhibit my work; was I prepared to listen to people who enjoy saying you’re a lousy artist with nothing
original to say?”

Carla squirmed in her chair with fidgety hands that were no longer knitting.
“You were right,” she continued. “Laslo was a vector, passing viruses around. The other students, you, me, we all got infected.”

She put her knitting into the small wooden cabinet by the window and pulled out a key. The sound of the lock, quietly latching, dominated the room. She walked over to the glass case and caressed it with her hands for a moment.

“Once you get a virus, it never goes away. It either kills you or you learn to live with it.”

She reached for the handles and opened the large double doors. The musty smell of treasure flooded the room.

---