Tom Ferguson was one of the oldest museum guards at the Met, and his seniority had gained him a place of honor and trust in the French Impressionist wing. No visitor to the Met would miss the museum's priceless collection of 19th century paintings, particularly those on view in the French wing.
For fifteen faithful years Tom stood there, easing the 9 to 5 ache in the small of his back. He envied the visitors who could sit on the wooden benches and enjoy the unique collection in comfort. Tom had lived with these paintings longer than the painters who painted them. In a sense they were his children and he guarded them like a father. He knew them well-the Renoirs, the Monets and the Cezannes. Yet in a greater sense he didn't know them at all, he couldn't tell you what to look for or why. He knew nothing about the painters who painted them. But a museum guard is not expected to be an art connoisseur, instead he is consulted for directions to the rest room or the elevator.
Over the years he developed a special affection for one painting in particular. It was the "Girl in the Green Shawl", a simple portrait done in a free style. The artist had painted her full face and her soft brown eyes stared frankly and boldly at him. That's what attracted Tom in the first place. Wherever he stood, her eyes seemed to follow him and watched him constantly. He grew used to it in time and was careful to keep out of sight when he had to do things he didn't want her to see. He would voicelessly excuse himself for a moment, and when he returned-even if from a different direction, she would be looking for him. Even when the gallery was crowded with people she preferred to look at Tom.
The girl in the green shawl was the first woman he ever knew who took notice of him-looked at him, and before long he fell in love with her. He would think of her in the evening-think of her hanging there in the dark gallery and wonder if she missed him. Who did she see in the dark? Did she wait as eagerly as he for the gallery to open again in the morning? He kept a framed reproduction of the painting on the wall of his apartment but it wasn't the same-it was more like keeping a picture of your wife in your wallet...a reminder, nothing more.
As the years went by the painting grew more precious and baffling to him. What were the events that caused the artist to paint her a hundred years ago? Was he drawn to her eyes as Tom was? What went on between them-were they lovers? He was jealous of anyone who admired her and even though her eyes never left his, he silently resented the people he had to share her with. He often wished he could take her home so they could be alone together. If he were an artist would he have painted her just like that? What must it have been like to be young and talented in those days? Maybe some of his pictures could have found their way to the impressionist gallery too. He knew every brush stroke on the girl in the green shawl.
Before the museum opened for visitors in the morning he would stand in front of the painting and talk to it. She would listen to every word and in his mind they would have an understanding that would last the whole day. He named her Colette. A nice French name he thought, and one that suited her well. At ten A. M. the museum would open its doors...the elevator would start to hum and the murmur of voices would bring him back to reality and another day of standing in the background and sharing Colette with the crowd.
It was in the spring of the sixteenth year of Tom's guardianship of the French Impressionist wing that he found himself at a quarter to ten on a Tuesday morning talking to the girl in the green shawl. It promised to be a busy day. Three classes of liberal arts majors from NYU would be bursting in at ten o'clock. Tom didn't welcome the competition...most of them would be her age and he was sure they would crowd around her. They would monopolize her attention and make the day a long and painful one.
So he made it a point to warn her and as if someone had opened a window, a chill wind blew across him. As he stared at the painting it seemed to grow clearer-became an open window through which he could see her in sharp detail, not as a painting but as the girl herself. The room in which she was sitting was suddenly filled with life. She was in a restaurant, and he found himself sitting at a table opposite her. He could see that the green shawl was not new nor was it as bright as it was in the picture-there was the smell of onions and sausage in the air, the sounds of boisterous talking in the background. Strange...was she painted in this noisy bistro? He had expected perfume and soft music.
Suddenly, she spoke to him and her voice was not what he expected, nasal...shrill and complaining. "What will you do without me in Provence, Thomas...take up with some local milkmaid I suppose? Why must you go to Provence to paint" she went on, "you can paint here, Paris is full of artists." She made a gesture of exasperation, "I don't know why you have to be an artist anyway, why can't you be a painter of ceilings and walls instead of an 'artiste', walls and ceilings, that's where the money is, you could buy me things-you'd be a richer man?"
This wasn't the Colette he had known for fifteen years...it was a strange woman who wanted him to stay here in Paris when all the really great painters were in the south of France. He only knew he had to go. "When I'm settled I'll send for you, you'll love Provence, the air is clean and the light is marvelous. I leave tomorrow Colette, let's not spend this last night arguing." He wanted to get out of that foul smelling restaurant and into the night air.
"So what do we do? You want a good time-no? One more night with Colette so you can take that memory with you to Provence! Another notch in your precious palette." To think that he could have loved her all these years-where was that part of her he had loved so long? Maybe she had a point, maybe she had the answer, maybe he didn't want her in Provence with him after all. They stood facing each other across the table like antagonists-she was much shorter than he thought she'd be. The waiter came over and tried to talk them into dessert, but the thought of eating something sweet in the sausage and onion filled air turned his stomach.
"Forty francs monsieur, come again soon." Forty francs, my God-he could have bought a half a dozen tubes of paint for that. Together they hurried from the restaurant and out into the street.
"Your room, I suppose" she said accusingly over her shoulder. Thomas didn't answer as they walked to his small apartment with little haste and less enthusiasm.
Thomas had never seen this room before, It was drafty and smelled of oil and turpentine. There were pictures on the walls, his pictures, some finished and others just started. They were awful and he couldn't imagine having painted any of them-no wonder he wanted to leave for the south of France. No wonder Colette had no faith in him as a painter, he'd be better off painting ceilings and walls in Paris than pictures like these. He was a fraud, a carnival painter painting pictures of pictures. Pictures he'd seen before. It was a rude awakening to Thomas.
As she approached the wrinkled, unmade bed Colette removed her shawl and the threadbare coat, the thought of making love to her was unbearable. "Make it a good one Thomas...you're not going to find anything like this in Provence." She stretched out on the bed, crossing her legs. He could see bruises on her thighs, hairy underarms and stretch marks on her hips.
"Was this love?" he wondered..."was this what he'd dreamed of for fifteen years?" He had never made love to a woman and in those lonely nights often thought how wonderful it would be with Colette. Now he was appalled with the reality of it. He couldn't, the fifteen year old memory was too precious to destroy. She stared impatiently at him and her eyes were harder and colder than those of the girl in the picture. She crossed her arms behind her head and said "What's the matter 'artiste'-you going to make love with your clothes on?"
He closed his eyes in anguish and when he opened them he found himself in front of the picture again. A group of a dozen or so young and noisy art students had just stepped out of the elevator with a stout elderly gentleman who seemed to be their teacher. "Stay with me-stay with me students, I want you to see the French Impressionist exhibit under strict supervision-you must see it in proper perspective, it becomes a jumble if you don't." They surrounded him noisily and started off for the Cezannes. "He was the beginning you see, he started it all. He is the bridge between the classics and the moderns. You will note his outlining in blue-he sketched out his painting in this way."
Tom backed off placing one foot behind the other. He was shaken. He was aware that he had just been transported into the past and back again, and that what he had seen there was disturbing and alien-unfriendly, not like he thought it would be. The teacher's voice droned on through the Monets and the Seurats and the group finally crowded around the 'Girl in the Green Shawl.' "This is a Dufy" he said, "a minor impressionist, but notice his treatment of the eyes. He has painted the pupils in such a way as to make the eyes focus on anyone who looks at the picture. It is a trick discovered by painters of the Renaissance and later. Wherever you stand, her eyes will follow you. The effect cannot be achieved in sculpture-in sculpture the subject, carved in stone, is three dimensional as you and I. It will focus its attention on wherever the sculptor wishes."
Tom knew very little about these fine points of art. But he did know he had loved Colette faithfully and truly for fifteen years and thought she loved him, and that in all that time they only had eyes for each other. Now he knew that she wasn't what she seemed to be, and that if the teacher was right, her eyes had looked just as wantonly at every casual visitor in the French Impressionist gallery.
He waited until the group had finished their tour of the gallery, and as they moved off to the Post Impressionist wing the girl in the green shawl hung there still looking at him, but with eyes that seemed to hold a hint of fear. "You bitch!" he whispered, "You little bitch, all these years-all the things we meant to each other. I was only one face in the crowd, wasn't I?" He approached her in the nearly deserted gallery and clenching his fists he muttered, "I was nothing to you-nothing-little innocent eyed Colette...butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." He reached up and lifted the picture from the wall. He reached up and lifted the picture from the wall. Holding it at arm's length, looking at it one last time he slammed it to the floor face down and drove his foot through the canvas. The taut canvas burst open and his foot went through to the floor.
There he stood, and looking around at the other paintings, he began to shout-"You're all the same...liars, all of you!" He limped clumsily like a man with one foot in a block of cement and had one hand on Cezanne's "Potato Eaters" when Ernie, the guard in the Renaissance Wing went to investigate.
"My God, Tom what are you doing!" He wrestled Tom to the floor and in doing so they damaged the picture even further. Tom slowly regained his senses, and with horror he realized what he had done. Colette's portrait was ruined and so was he.
"I was on my way to Provence...she wouldn't let me go. I must have gone mad I think. I loved her-trusted her. She was nothing but a slut. Ernie-I could tell you things...". His voice trailed off and Ernie tried to console him.
"She looked at you didn't she?", he said. "It's a trick they use Tom, these Goddam paintings...I've seen them too, I've got Madonnas looking at me all day long. Blessed Virgins and God knows what all. Sometimes they drag me back with them and they're not the virgins we think they are, they're somebody the painter picked up in the street-we have to live with these people and only we know who they are."
cHarry Buschman 1996