MoMA—who reminded me of what the art world was like and why I’d turned away from it. All these months had been mere housekeeping before the real guests arrived. Sirena didn’t need me at all.
I managed to smile a lot. Before she drifted back into Wonderland, I told the Sufi that she was beautiful, and she looked at me as though I’d spoken to her in Aramaic. I thanked Becca for the spring rolls, even though I’d eaten only one. As I gathered up my stuff, I discreetly swiped my Polaroids into my tote bag. Even glimpsing the fuzz of my chin and shoulder—my white bra strap—in the picture on top of the pile, I was washed with such shame that I felt sick. This amateur silliness. This self-indulgence. Who was I kidding? Had they flipped through them? Becca? Marlene? Heading out, I peered one last time through the gloom toward the distant field of light where Sana was preparing to twirl: she was lost to me. I could see nothing but a shimmering white blur.
10
The next afternoon, the people had vanished, and so too had their equipment. Sirena must have taken out the garbage, even, or had Becca do it, because there was no evidence at all of their presence—except, perhaps, that all the coffee cups were clean, which wasn’t normally the case.
“Nora!” she called as I came in, without looking up. “Come see!” She sat at her computer, and as I approached she set the video of Sana to play. “Langley sent this over just now. We can tinker, of course—but look!”
The colors were so bright—the Astroturf so green, the flowers so fully lilac, lemon, rose. And Sana, except for the lovely olivey bits of her—those hands! Those ears!—was pure, pure white. The video was completely silent, like a dream.
“What about the music?”
“No, no, you see—didn’t we discuss this? Maybe with Marlene—I’m sorry. Nowadays I can’t remember.”
“We didn’t discuss the music.”
“I want it to be silent. Completely silent. Ibn Tufail’s recluse on his desert island didn’t twirl to any music—didn’t know any music—but nature’s, or what he might have imagined in his own head. So I want it to be silent. But then my question is—and I have to decide so fast—whether also, in addition to the silence, we give them music to choose from.”
“I don’t get it.”
“So, I want each person to find, in my Wonderland, as much room as possible for her own Wonderland. You know this. For his own Wonderland, even. So what if you have no imagination, or if your dreams need help? So then, maybe, around the video room there are sets of headphones, yes?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe four—or five—maybe even seven.”
“Seven?”
“Because there are life’s seven stages, because there are seven photographs, seven veils, seven unveilings, because there are seven minutes of dancing, because seven is the most magical number there is.” She threw up her hands and then took a cigarette from an open pack on the table. They weren’t Skandar’s brand—she’d bought them on her own, for once.
“So there are seven sets of headphones. It seems like a lot. Kind of cluttered, maybe.”
Sirena shrugged. We were both watching Sana dancing on the screen. One hand was turned toward the sky, the other earthward. She moved her fingers as though they were petals in the breeze.
“So?”
“So each set is different music. Maybe not even all music. Yes, one is what Sana is actually dancing to, Omar Faruk Tekbilek. I must make sure I have the permission. But then one is surely birdsong—spring birdsong, a nightingale and a blackbird, maybe, together. Maybe one is something popular, contemporary—I’ll have to ask someone young. Maybe Maria will know? But no, she’ll listen to horrible music, for sure. And then there may be city sounds on another—New York traffic, for example.”
“That doesn’t seem so contemplative. Not exactly the sounds of enlightenment.”
“Not of itself, okay. But look at the video, look”—we both looked—“and imagine the sounds of horns and brakes and tires, the screech and racket of it. And suddenly her dancing, her prayer if you will, her resonance—suddenly the power of her Wonderland is even greater, do you see? Even more free. Because she can be transported there in her own mind, by her own thoughts, not only when the music, like Pavlov, tells her to be; or not only when the birds are singing, like in heaven; but even when the outside world is in total chaos”—she said “kah-os”—“and disarray.” She waved the cigarette at the screen and