The Submission - Amy Waldman [120]
“It’s like letting the public decide on tenure,” Leo, stalwart of academia, sniffed, as if his imagination encompassed no greater affront.
In the span of her reverie, the room had filled with jurors. Unhappy jurors, snapping at Paul for giving the public the final word.
“The man who lives to quote Edmund Burke turns out to be from the Thomas Paine school of how to run a public hearing,” said Ian, the historian.
Paul looked queasy. “I was trying to protect you,” he said. “You saw the tenor of that hearing. To have this decision rest on the thirteen individuals in this room—we, you, will be too easily targeted. Blamed for consequences you can’t predict. Better to let the voices we heard today—the loudest ones, the saddest, whatever you want—count for something, too.”
“The saddest, you said?” Ariana asked. “The most compelling speaker today was the Bangladeshi woman.” There were nods. “Let her decide.”
“Asma Anwar,” the mayor’s aide, Violet, said, consulting her notes.
“An authentic voice,” said Maria, the public art maven, huskily.
“What makes her voice more authentic than Frank Gallagher’s?” Claire broke in, prodded by the ache in her arm. The young woman’s speech, admittedly inspiring, had stung Claire with implicit rebuke, as if Jack Worth was lecturing her on Khan’s behalf all over again.
“Nothing, except that we’ve heard a lot from the Gallaghers and families like them. We never hear from people like this woman.”
“To have her up there in a headscarf, after these barbaric headscarf pullings—it was like some brilliant piece of performance art.” Elliott, the critic, gave a small, ecstatic sigh.
“Performance, maybe, but not art,” Claire said, then regretted the words. “Look, we need to figure out how to weigh all of the families’ competing views.”
“Competing views? You make it sound like there’s no right and wrong, Claire, just different feelings,” Ariana said. Her glance was vivisecting. “You were our conscience. I guess now Asma Anwar is. I move that we should affirm our support for Khan tonight.”
Claire had scaled to a longed-for view, only to find it vertiginous. Their backing of Khan, which she had sought so vigorously, now dizzied her. With a fierce gaze she urged Paul to remind the group that they weren’t meant to vote tonight, but rather to discuss the hearing and how to survey the public comments. But Paul, looking less like a chairman than like a barman sociably eavesdropping on an interesting conversation, said nothing.
“You didn’t even like the Garden,” Claire reminded Ariana.
“It’s not about like, it’s about the fate of art in a democracy,” Ariana said. “We all watched—well, not literally, because they did it in the dead of night—Serra’s Tilted Arc being carved up and carted away from Federal Plaza because ‘the public’ inveighed against it. Now they don’t like Khan’s religion or what his design might or might not mean. Empower the public in this way, and anything ugly or challenging or difficult or produced by a member of an out-of-favor group will be fair game.”
“So anything the public opposes is worth protecting?” Claire asked. No one answered, as if the question was beneath consideration. “This isn’t a work of art. It’s a memorial. It’s wrong to vote now. If we do, we lose all leverage to get Khan to explain or change the Garden.”
“Khan’s not obligated to explain anything. And I won’t ask him to change anything because of our speculations.”
“It’s not speculation—he said today it was Islamic.”
“No, he said it has Islamic influences.”
“Pre-Islamic, I think he was trying to say?” Maria interjected.
“Is that like pre-Columbian?” asked the critic.
Claire, in exasperation, turned to Maria. “You remember when I told you that with the Void, families wouldn’t want to go there?” Claire asked. “Now they’re saying that to me about the Garden. What am I supposed to do?”
“Tell them to get over it,” Maria said. Her crudeness shocked Claire. Her fingers, fidgeting with an unlit cigarette, sent tiny drifts of tobacco onto the table. “To be blunt, I’m tired of hearing about the families. You wouldn