[656 words]
LEFT PANEL
Life looked ahead long before it could remember. The better we could anticipate the future, the better our chances of survival. When memory evolved to help us avoid repeating old mistakes, it commandeered our visualisation neurons. Even now, a brain injury that affects our ability to think ahead impairs our memory. The past changes because the future does – each time we recall a memory we disturb it, store it again. It’s called the Janus hypothesis after the god of doors, of beginnings and endings.
CENTRAL PANEL
They’d had no children – not through choice but they were happy all the same. When she found out she was dying, the simple things – shopping, gardening, washing up – began to matter even more. After, he preserved those rituals because behind them were mysteries – how the everyday becomes special, how little details somehow coalesce into a person. He understood why she hadn’t wanted to look ahead, but she hadn’t wanted to reminisce either, which hurt him. His friends and family said he shouldn’t worship the past, that beginnings aren’t betrayals.
He was happy being an uncle rather than a father, watching life from a distance. He started cycling miles through country lanes to visit little museums, never wearing the Lycra his sister gave him. He was studying a Bruegel, wondering why it was in a market town museum, when a woman’s voice surprised him – “Just a copy of course. It’s like a Where’s Wally isn’t it?”
“It’s based on parables,” he replied, turning. She looked normal enough.
“Well, myths usually,” she said, “Didn’t want to get in trouble with the Church. That guy offering the apple there to the three old whores, that’s Paris.”
She was rather younger than him. Quite pretty really. Hair a bit wild. “The Greeks had all the best myths,” he said, “That’s why the Romans copied them.”
“The Romans were proud of Janus though – the Greeks had no equivalent.”
He’d forgotten what to do in these situations. The museum was too small to have a cafe. “I’m Pam,” she said, breaking the silence. She looked back at the painting. “It takes ages to notice all the little incidents, but they all add up. All life is there.”
RIGHT PANEL
Some people try to explain everything by evolution, by the past, using it to predict the future. They say that we like symmetry because in humans it’s a sign of good breeding stock. But surely such primitive ideas can’t explain the Mona Lisa let alone triptychs. They needn’t be understood from the centre. The side panels needn’t be opposites or even complementary. Theories are more sophisticated now, able to explain how madness survives because it shares genes with genius, and how adding a moustache to the Mona Lisa is art. Without the past to react against we wouldn’t know what art is for. Words become poetry not by copying but by being mistrusted.
BACK
When the sides of a triptych are folded in, closed like doors to protect the painting, a timeless, idyllic version of the main panel appears, that’s often undervalued, with children playing in the fields, peasants gathering reeds by the winding river and beyond, a walled city.
He’s washing up with his sister leaving Pam to watch TV with his sister’s husband and kids. He
hears them laughing together.
“Well,” he asks, “What do you think?”
“She’s great. Wacky. Fun. High time you dated again. We were worried about you.”
“They’re getting younger and prettier though aren’t they.”
“Oh come on. Fifty isn’t exactly jail-bait. If you’ve come to ask my permission, you have it. You
deserve it. Last year was awful for you.”
“She has a first in History from Cambridge.”
Sue drops the saucepan into the sink and hugs him. He feels the wetness soak through his tee-shirt. She whispers into his ear “Just give it time.”
“Am I interrupting anything?” asks Pam, standing in the doorway.
Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet “Moving Parts” (HappenStance) and a story collection “By all means” (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His prose has appeared in Forge, Stand, Unthology, Under the Radar, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/
