The Submission - Amy Waldman [8]
“Nothing’s over unless we say it is, Claire.”
“Bob, you’re the lawyer. You’re supposed to be preventing that kind of stuff, not encouraging it. Our votes are on the record.”
“The record of our proceedings is a fungible thing, Claire, and you know it. Paul’s had the lady—what’s her name?—Costello do minutes only when there would be nothing spicy in them.”
“Bob, you voted for the Garden. That was the design you wanted.”
“Well, I’ll be honest here. I’ll be honest.” The governor’s man glared around the table, as if defying anyone to tell him not to be. “I’m not sure I want it with the name Mohammad attached to it. It doesn’t matter who he is. They’ll feel like they’ve won. All over the Muslim world they’ll be jumping up and down at our stupidity, our stupid tolerance.”
“Tolerance isn’t stupid,” Claire said in a schoolmarmish tone. “Prejudice is.”
Her color was high. She had to be recoiling. Paul’s own head throbbed: the aftereffects of the wine, the prelude to a storm.
“Look, I’m not pretending this isn’t a surprise,” she continued. “But, but … it will send a message, a good message, that in America, it doesn’t matter what your name is—and we don’t have much more here than a name—that your name is no bar to entering a competition like this, or to winning it.” She twisted her napkin as if trying to squeeze water from it.
“Yes, of course,” said Maria. “And every American has the right to create—it’s our birthright. We all understand that. We’re New Yorkers! But will the heartland? They’re much more narrow-minded. Trust me, I’m from there.”
“Perhaps we’re missing the point.” Ariana’s voice unfurled into the fray. There were a few nods, even though no one knew what the artist had to say. “It’s absolutely unconscionable to say he should be denied if he won. Imagine if Maya had been stripped of her commission.” Claire looked relieved—Ariana had pronounced—but Ariana wasn’t done. “I will say, however, that the circumstances are dramatically different this time. To somehow make a connection between Maya being Chinese American and Vietnam being an Asian war—it was absurd, a red herring raised by philistines who didn’t like her memorial. But this time, if this guy is a Muslim, it’s going to be much, much more sensitive, and rightly so, perhaps, until we know more about him, and—well, I’m just not sure the design’s strong enough to withstand that kind of resistance. Maya’s could. I wonder if we should reconsider our decision.”
“Now hold on—” Claire said.
“It’s true,” Violet interrupted. “This—this Mohammad hasn’t technically won the competition yet. I mean, there are safeguards built in, right, against criminals. Or terrorists.”
“Are you saying he’s a terrorist?”
“No, no, I’m not saying anything. Nothing at all. I’m just saying if he were, we wouldn’t let him build the memorial, would we?”
“Any more than if, say, Charles Manson submitted a design from prison, we would let him build it,” the critic said.
“This is hardly comparable to Charles Manson.”
“To some it might be,” said the historian. “Not to me, of course. But to some.”
“The bylaws say that if the designer selected is deemed ‘unsuitable,’ the jury has the right to select another finalist,” Paul said. This proviso he had insisted on himself, as a safety valve: he considered the memorial too important to risk an anonymous competition, especially one open to all. He would have preferred to solicit designs from noted artists and architects. History’s great monuments and memorials—from the Sistine Chapel to the St. Louis Arch—had been elite commissions, not left to, in Edmund Burke’s apt phrase, “warm and inexperienced enthusiasts.” Only in America did those enthusiasts reign, enthroned by politicians who feared nothing more than appearing undemocratic. Over Paul’s protests the decision had been made to provide a channel for the citizenry’s sluicing feelings, and the families of the dead had cheered this, eager for the outpouring of interest, of caring. Caring there was, to judge by the number of submissions, but Paul wondered what the families would have to say about