Chapter Text
For Karl, the beginning of a season also meant a new beginning. Everything had changed, would change as time went on, but so that you knew exactly what was happening. Even if you already knew roughly what to expect, each time was exciting and different from the last time. The smell, which changed with the change of the season, was familiar like meeting an old friend and still exciting as if you had to get to know him again because so much time had passed.
The beginning of spring brought him strength and helped him on his usually heavy legs. Everyone dealt with the change differently. Some welcomed the sun and the warmth with a radiant smile, while others just walked cautiously toward the change. In Karl's case, it was a good day. Matching the smell of the blooming plant life and the warm sun beating down on the streets, he had encountered a day today where his head didn't feel immensely heavy.
Perhaps it was also due to the circumstances of today because when Karl now struggled among the people from the subway station, he was once again aware of what a new world he was facing today. With the music that warbled from his headphones into his ears, the vast museum building rose up in front of him, just across the street.
At that moment, he was able to block out everything around him. He ignored the people pushing past him on the sidewalk and brushing his backpack with their shoulders. And he ignored the honking and the loud noises of the engines that the cars and motorcycles made on the streets.
As spring wind gently swept over the land and the blossoming cherry trees and trimmed bushes around it, the museum glowed. With its colorful meadows and peculiar outdated architectural style, the museum stood out strikingly in the meantime of the modern city. It was like a shining entrance to a new world. There he would encounter smells and objects from bygone times. Things that touched the hearts of the viewer even after decades or centuries. With a smile, he walked towards the entrance, on the way which he first had to overcome a wide stone staircase.
It was the first time that he entered this museum as an employee. Karl had already visited the museum several times, running around in the corridors for hours and getting lost when looking at the huge paintings. However, there had never been enough time for him to explore the whole museum. Perhaps, because it seemed so impossible due to its size, that would never be the case. Works of art were usually so littered with details and dedication that an information board next to them would not be enough to inform the viewer sufficiently.
Only the artist would probably be the person who would know best about it. The one who would understand every detail, every thought process behind it, and could explain it sufficiently to the viewer. But maybe that wasn't really the case, because only the work of art held the knowledge of its details, the feelings that concerned the artist at that moment, and the memory of each brush stroke on the canvas or each chisel stroke.
If only works of art could talk, Karl wondered, would they explain to the viewer every secret that lay behind their colorful facades or fine material?
Karl had been an art student for about a year and had been forced by his university to move to this city. It had been hard to leave his old home behind, but the experiences he had made since then had been priceless. The part-time jobs were time-consuming and tedious, but they had been enough to pay for his life in the big city. Now, however, with the start of a new semester, fees and his life, in general, had become more expensive.
For many moments he had thought it would not be possible to finance everything further, but then a small advertisement on the internet had attracted his interest. Due to past attempted burglaries, the local museum was looking for someone to guard it at night. After a bit, Karl had found out that this museum was plagued by break-ins at night. No one had any idea how exhibits could suddenly disappear, because no person had ever been spotted on the cameras.
Driven by a love of museums and a passion for art, Karl had applied and been hired without any interview. It seemed a little strange to him, but he had not questioned it. Today was his first day, so he had entered the museum a few hours before closing time. Admittedly it was not only because he wanted to be there early. He just wanted to walk around the museum again, or rather see the essential places when they were swamped with visitors.
Because as soon as they would dim the lights and the visitors were gone, everything here would change. Not the paintings, not the appearance, but the whole atmosphere that this museum radiated. Karl would be alone, surrounded by the art in which he found his only escape from this world. It became more and more difficult to find beauty in the world. It became much more tragic and ugly, but here in this place, even the most tragic and terrible works were of intangible beauty.
At 9 p.m., the last visitors had disappeared and complete silence had fallen for the first time. Except for the cleaners who would be gone in an hour at the latest, no one was here anymore. He would have the museum to himself for 7 hours three times a week. Armed only with a flashlight, he would stroll for hours through the corridors. He waited the remaining hour until the last person had left.
To the incomprehension of other people he had met in his life, he couldn't think of anything better in life right now.
He stayed quiet in his office, surrounded by flickering screens that showed every corner of the museum with their cameras in black and white before his eyes. Still, he could not see anything unusual in the museum, even if the darkness and silence developed a gloomy atmosphere. With a sigh, he slid around on his chair, looking into boring screens. With the flashlight turned off in his hands, he fidgeted with it.
He imagined how things would be in the coming months. How he would deal with this job. For hours he would be cut off from society. He could leave the phone in his office, use it only when he wanted to listen to music, and then he could be alone with himself all night. The isolated walls would cut him off from the noise of the big city, completely reaffirming the silence of being alone.
He could imagine himself walking among a huge archive being the last person on earth. He could study the works of art around him, as they captured the beauty of the human beings, and imagine himself being immersed in the midst of the works of art.
No one would be there to be disturbed by his behavior. He could stand close to the paintings, stand right in front of the statues and face them. He would prance along the paths through the museum, tracing the brushstrokes of the painters with his hands and memorizing the information panels as well as quoting them aloud as he roamed his paths.
His only task was just to prevent a break-in, and right at this moment full of peace and silence, it seemed like a piece of cake for Karl.
~~~
After a while, Karl had been unable to suppress the queasy feeling in his stomach. Of course, he was happy to spend his time alone in the dark museum, but something else worried him. The first time he had heard noises that had quickly died away, the art student had almost jumped to his feet. However, a glance at the surveillance cameras made him hesitate.
For there had been nothing visible on them. Every painting was in its rightful place, the statues had not shifted, and there were no people to be seen flitting through the field of view of those cameras. So perhaps it seemed to be due to his fatigue, he had surmised. Even though it could be rather impossible because Karl was used to staying up late. He loved the night because it promised a touch of solitude. Besides, for a time like 11 p.m., it wasn't really late.
Only after a brief moment of settled silence could he again hear a faint rumbling in the distance. Suspecting that there was a small chance Karl might not have been mistaken, after all, he tightened his grip on his flashlight and left his cell phone next to the security cameras as he slipped out the door.
In the entrance area, everything was deserted. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been through here earlier.
So maybe someone had entered through the windows or escape routes? With a gulping noise that sounded louder than normal in the silence of the large entrance area, he approached the exhibition rooms. They, too, were all locked.
But before Karl turned his key to open one of the large double doors of the first exhibition hall, he was sure he could hear voices coming from there. As quickly as he could, he pushed open the doors and glanced down the hallway, but the voices had laughingly disappeared around the next corner. Their feet drummed on the stone floor of the museum. But when Karl averted his gaze from the corridor to check on the artworks, his soul nearly leaped out of his body.
The first exhibition room was usually a hall filled with old paintings. Here the smell of visitors and coffee had disappeared and only an old smell of wood and dried paint filled the air. The smell weighed down the air and pressed gently on his shoulders, like a firm hug.
What was happening before his eyes, however, far surpassed the beauty that usually prevailed here.
Before he was a vast green landscape that took up the entire hall. The spectacle faded back into a variety of landscapes and color variegations, sometimes even into shaded daylight levels. For a moment, Karl wondered if something had been mixed into his drink. But even his brain could not have thought this up.
What was happening in front of him was definitely real. The colors, the landscapes of the paintings on the wall spread out from their frames, staining the wall with color like a thick swath of fog that stretched across it. Abstruse painted night skies mingled with realism on the ceiling, merging hand in hand. Above his head sparkled fictitious stars, created from acrylic and oil paints.
The fascination was deep in his bones, everything in his body screamed at him to stay and not leave the beauty that surrounded him right away. Despite the beauty, however, he heard more sounds in the distance. This time it was several voices, heavy pairs of feet drumming on the floor, and laughter being played from wall to wall like tennis balls. Reluctantly, Karl tore himself away from the sight, turning in a circle in the middle of the showroom to give himself one last look. Then he ran on.
The next rooms were no less overwhelming.
He traced the figures and their landscapes across the walls, awestruck at how the painters' emotions were reflected in their works on the wall, how figures are frozen in paint and brushstroke moved and whispered. Tears glistened in his eyes as he lost himself several times in the pretty world of art, ignoring the fact that he was still chasing someone or something.
Each time he reached a new room, he could just make out their silhouettes disappearing into the next room. He could hear the rumbling on the massive wooden staircases that led to other rooms full of paintings and how they laughed and teased him from above. Karl felt torn, but if he didn't catch the people chasing him through the museum as soon as possible, he wouldn't have any future time to discover this wonderful world.
While he ran, he usually risked glances. Between paintings sometimes busts or vases romped. They talked, murmured, or sang. The images on vases or porcelain danced and drank. He couldn't get enough of listening or watching them. Watching their paint glide across the walls, mixing with each other's and creating their own things.
With difficulty, he passed the stairs and stopped before a turnoff into smaller halls inside. Except for the whispering or the music of the paintings, nothing could be heard. For a moment Karl remained as quiet as a mouse, not daring to breathe, his heartbeat already too loud, threatening to leap out of his chest with its intensity.
A bang to his right made him jump. Like a hunting dog, Karl rushed through the open double doors and could just make out the number of people before they disappeared around the next bend. With a loud frustrated shout, he let the sound flow through the halls, vibrating between the walls, stifling the laughter of those in pursuit. With panting breath that couldn't keep up with his effort, he forced himself to keep lifting his legs.
On his first day as a security guard, he had not imagined leading a chase through the museum. At the same time, it still seemed as if all the paintings around him were coming to life.
Wait, he himself stopped his flow of thoughts. It was not only paintings but also busts and ceramics. Did this mean...that?
With a bang, the door to the next room slammed in front of him. Instantly the world around him became silent and only the heavy breathing from Karl's throat could be heard as he stood in front of a large wooden door. Only his flashlight provided light as he shone on the door in front of him, shoulders rising and falling. Patiently waiting for the voices to return, he tiptoed closer to the closed door.
It remained silent.
With a huff, he played with the flashlight in his hand for a moment and continued to think. The thieves, if they were thieves at all, would have escaped through the window by now. So he was either bracing himself to face a broken window and stolen objects on his first day, or something else much more unsettling.
For in front of him was one of the few exhibition rooms that contained statues. Beautiful people or bodies sculpted from stone with skin as soft and wrinkled as that of a real person. People were sculpted from stone with so much love, so much pain and loss in their facial expressions that they looked like a photo. As if the stone had been poured over a human being in his present form.
He didn't know what to do when, in fact, in just a few moments, living statues would be standing before him. Who like him lived, ran, laughed, and moved. Who breathed like him and their hearts beat.
To prepare himself to push down the door handle, Karl failed to do so as the door in front of him swung open. With eyes widened in shock, he looked at the faces of two men who were at the other end of the door inside the hall. The smaller one half hid behind the larger one and Karl was forced by his trance to look into the eyes of the black-haired larger one.
He didn't seem as surprised as Karl. Everything about his body seemed real. His eyes were slightly wetted, the tan in them shining in the flashlight's glow without doubt, and as if grays had faded from their bodies, their faces were full of color, flushed with blood, their eyes vivid, and their hair shimmered silkily in the light. The only indications that there were no real people in front of Karl were their clothes and their bodies.
Their flawless bodies, which had only a few breaks from time, were beautiful and dressed in cream-colored robes with golden embellishments. As if it could not have been formed by chance, but only by the hands of one who knows true beauty. Their bodies were formed by hands that had long since turned to dust. Left behind was the result of these hands, testifying to the skill, to the perfection of a man long gone.
Every chisel stroke and cut was attuned to symmetry and tactics. A perfect reflection of the person who had seen in them unsurpassable beauty. He was to be proved right, for the sight of the two figures filled with life and color stole the air from Karl's lungs and made his head befog all his senses.
"Did we break him, my dear?" a lovely voice in front of him suddenly brought him out of his stupor.
The statue, just a little behind the person standing in front of him had dared to speak and thus dared to come out of hiding a little. Now that he saw the two, in the light of his flashlight reflected from the walls before his eyes correctly, their faces and expressions recognized, he finally became aware of who exactly stood in front of him.
A work of art that consisted of two statues and expressed nothing but infinite love and longing for the other was named Sun and Moon. It was a beautiful statue at which Karl had stood several times between visitors hesitating before the stony people, suppressed to reach for their hands.
Now they stood in front of him. The two statues of the sun and the moon, which together formed a single work of art, which only together made sense, stood before him and examined him with worried and curious expressions.
They had come to life. Their bodies filled with color and movement and faces under whose skin muscles twitched and contorted. While the taller one smiled back at Karl, the other stood by with narrowed eyes and a defensive posture. Even though one of them was smiling, they both seemed unsettled. However, they were by no means hostile.
At the sight and realization, Karl couldn't help a shy smile from forming on his lips.
His love for art seemed as indestructible as ever at that moment.