Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes Page B

procession of disappointed faces, soon found work elsewhere, and was replaced by another keen graduate, who also left at the first opportunity.
    The old man, though, remained. Working in an unpopular museum or gallery was as close to getting paid for being unconscious as it was possible to get, and because of his exceptional language ability he never had any difficulty finding such a position. The owners always imagined their establishment being visited by people from around the world, and they were keen to employ a polyglot. They didn’t realise that he would go to great lengths to avoid conversation in every language in which he was fluent. Lotte too had been impressed by his gift, though it was only ever used when eavesdropping on visitors, most of whom would say little besides, These paintings are certainly preferable to that modern rubbish . But as the words came out these visitors began to wonder whether what they were saying was true. If all the old days had to offer was a painting of an unimaginably ordinary windmill then maybe there was something to modern art after all.
    Lotte’s gallery had its own shop. Sometimes a restless traveller waiting for a delayed flight would drop in and, for a minute or two, look around. Baffled by the sight of its lacklustre ashtrays, ceramic pencil sharpeners, tea towels and place mats, they would go away without having felt any inclination to buy anything. For a long time the closest the shop came to making a sale had been when a flustered man had rushed in and picked up a mug. He didn’t look at the picture on it, but if he had done he would have seen a particularly nondescript landscape by Georg Friedrich Ackermann, one that on close inspection could be seen to be quite badly water damaged. Without even looking for the price, the man had handed over a credit card. The girl behind the counter looked at the till, then at the card, then back at the man.
    ‘Please hurry,’ he said. ‘My plane is boarding, and I need to buy this mug as a gift for my estranged daughter.’
    The girl stared at the till. It had been so long since her training that she had forgotten which buttons she needed to press.
    ‘Please,’ said the man. His voice had begun to wobble. ‘My estranged daughter . . . She will be waiting for me . . . It is imperative . . .’
    The girl looked once again at the card, then back at the till, and at the man before saying, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She handed the mug and the card to him, and whispered, ‘Just go.’
    The man took the mug, stuffed the card back into his wallet and hurried towards his departure gate. The girl watched him rush away, wondering how things would go with his estranged daughter, what she would think about meeting her father after such a long time and being handed such a disappointing mug.
    He had been their only customer until the day a woman had come in and bought at least one of everything, a woman whose build made it difficult to tell whether or not she was expecting a baby, even though she was five months pregnant with her third child, who would be a girl called Dagmar.
    Before reaching the shop, Pavarotti’s wife had gone to the exhibition, where she had scrutinised each of the exhibits with genuine interest. When she got to the man standing in the corner, instead of shuffling past and deliberately avoiding eye contact as every previous visitor had done, she looked at him very closely, as if he too was on display.
    ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘what a wonderful little exhibition you have here.’
    The old man accepted the praise with a nod.
    ‘I congratulate you.’
    Indifferent to her approval, and waiting for her to go away, he felt no need to nod for a second time.
    ‘I suppose you are incredibly experienced in the field of curatorship and so forth?’
    He nodded.
    ‘So tell me, where were you before you came here, to this splendid concourse gallery?’
    The old man began to wonder whether there might be a reason beyond nosiness