The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

victims—what if all that’s left of you is your purse? What will it tell people who never met you? And then one day my own lipstick came uncapped and smashed all over my compact in my purse, and that’s when I saw what it should look like on canvas. But to say I was unsettled? You should tell me—you’ve seen the whole series in my studio before it went to Switzerland—did it feel unsettling to look at?”
    “That’s the amazing thing—it’s a radiant piece! It’s got this easy energy, like it emanates light—all your
Secrets
do, despite the chaos they portray. It’s as if you tamed death, domesticated it.” [The interviewer falters, unsettled a little by where the train of thought has carried her, and instantly hurries to explain herself.] “I don’t mean it in the way Hollywood horror flicks would have it; there’s not a whiff of fright in your work, but—How do I put it?...There’s your elegant composition; the warmth of your incredibly vivid, sun-drenched Southern-steppes palette; and your delicate ornamental touches, so sweet and so domestic—it all makes you forget that the whole series is about death, ruination. A piece like your
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would look fine in a living room—not just a museum!”
    “And you’d put it there? In your living room?” [The painter leans in, intently, in an upward motion, again like a cat about to leap into a tree, her gleaming eyes wide and expectant, and her lips parted slightly, ready to lap up the words that drop.] “Honestly—would you?”
    “Oh my God, are you kidding? I’d kill for it! Only I’m sorry, Vlada, who has the money for such luxury?” [The brunette giggles lightheartedly, electrified like a woman in a jewelry store, giddy at the mere chance to look, touch, even try things on.] “I certainly don’t make enough to afford a Matusevych.”
    [She says this with a clear note of pride—the kind of pride easily recognized by any first-generation career professional in a country where to identify specifically what you cannot afford (a BMW 6 Series, a Tiffany necklace, a Matusevych) is to draw a wide circle around scores of less-exclusive possessions that you can in fact afford, unlike the vast majority of your compatriots, and with the same naïve, neophyte pride of a global provincial dropping the name Vladyslava Matusevych, as meaningfully as the world’s art-loving bourgeois utter Picasso or Matisse—the pride of a teenager who feels at home among the grown-ups. The painter, however, is not flattered by this intonation—she appears to occupy a different store altogether.]
    “Thank you, Daryna,” she says simply. “This is very important for me, what you’ve just said. I’ll give you a painting, no worries, as a present. Not
Contents of a Purse
, of course, a different one, but from the same series, from
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. You’ll come over and choose one, okay?”
    [Even under the thick layer of makeup, one can see the interviewer’s face grow suddenly darker as she blushes with a breathless thrill—all the way past her ears.]
    “Don’t shoot this!” the brunette cries out, laughing. [She turns her entire body to the camera to block the shot. The sudden motion makes the silk Versace scarf wound carelessly around her bare neck slip and begin to slide off, and she pins it with both hands against her collarbones. This looks comical inthe frame—like an ingénue actress in her first role as a simple-hearted provincial maiden who’s just cried out in joy and clasped her hands to her bosom.]
    “Vovchyk,” she pleads. [The interviewer is now consciously playing the part, sensing she’s being adored.] “What did I say? Stop the camera right now! You monkeys, what are you thinking? I’ll cut it anyway—the last thing we need is to air a pronouncement like that, I’d never live it down, they’ll say Goshchynska takes kickbacks for her interviews!”
    [Men’s voices rise from behind the frame in a low mutter:]
    “Yeah, especially from politicians!”
    “Hey, she’ll take her men where she can get them!”
    “Ha-ha-ha!”
    [And that’s when the camera stops rolling—at last.]
    ***
    You’re a doll
,
Daryna Goshchynska, a stupid painted doll
, she tells herself, having found much to detest, if not altogether abhor, about her bubbly on-screen persona, having pressed the stop button on the control panel and lowered her head onto her arms in the darkness. You’re a good-looking woman to be sure; people look at you and think, she’s