Two Candles
The new nurse had the idea to bring the children to the museum. They shuffle after her, holding cold hands, their shaved heads gleaming in lights angled to illuminate paintings. The museum is not so different from the hospital, she thinks. The same white walls. The same hoarded quiet. They pass the history paintings, the portraits, the landscapes, the scenes from daily life, the myriad crucifixions and resurrections, and pass in under the wing of modern art. There is a painting she needs them to see. Fifth floor. They cram into the elevator, look up at their skulls reflected in the brushed metal ceiling. The door opens. They’re running out of time. She promised to have them back to the hospital within an hour. There are pills to be taken, naps. She asks a guard where Gerhardt Richter’s candles are. Realizing that the nurse isn’t a teacher, that the kids aren’t students, he points, but she has seen them. They stand in a semicircle around them. What do they think, is this a painting or a photograph? They look at her the way they look at her when she gives them medicine sweetened with something false, as if they know she’s trying to deceive them. But then they shuffle closer, their wasted legs pressing against the rope, straining to see. It’s neither a painting nor a photograph, she says. These are candles. She wants them to believe her. So why does it disturb her so much when the little girl named Anne leans even farther forward and tries to blow them out?