The Venice Biennale was located in several overlapping pavilions, so that visitors wandered through a long series of darkened rooms, searching as video installations crackled to life in unexpected corners. Faces projected on vinyl balls expanded and contracted, shrieking and giggling. Flowers blossomed and withered on the screens. A rush of Tokyo traffic sped by, claustrophobic and threatening. When Schuyler and Oliver had first arrived in Venice, Schuyler had been fired up with a wild, almost feverish, energy. She was relentless in her search, dogged and determined. But her enthusiasm had flagged when it became clear that finding her grandfather in Venice would not be as easy as she had assumed. She had come with nothing but a name—she didn’t even know what he would look like. Old? Young? Her grandmother had told her Lawrence was an exile, an outcast from the Blue Blood community. What if all those years of isolation had led to madness and insanity? Or worse, what if he was no longer alive? What if he had been taken by a Silver Blood? But now, after seeing the Professore’s room, she was filled with the same fierce hope as when she had first arrived. He is here. He is alive. I can feel it.
Schuyler drifted from one room to the next, scanning the dark places for a sign, a clue that would lead her to her grandfather. She thought most of the art was intriguing, if somewhat overwrought, with just a hint of pretension. What did it mean that a woman kept watering the same plant over and over again? Did it even matter? As she looked at the video, she realized she was the same as the woman, trapped in a Sisyphean task.
Oliver had already skipped ahead several installations. He took the same amount of time to study each piece— approximately ten seconds. Oliver claimed that that was all he needed to understand art. They were supposed to call each other if they found anything, although Oliver had pointed out that neither of them knew what Lawrence Van Alen actually looked like. Oliver was not as convinced as Schuyler that a visit to the Biennale would be fruitful, but he had held his tongue.
She stopped at the entrance to a room bathed in a crimson haze. A single light cut through the entire space, projecting a glowing orange equator through the expanse of red light. Schuyler walked inside and paused for a moment, admiring it.
“It’s an Olaf Eliasson,” a young man standing next to her explained. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? You can see the influence of Flavin.”
Schuyler nodded. They had studied Dan Flavin in Art Humanities, so she was familiar with the work. “But then again, doesn’t all fluorescent art come under the influence of Flavin?” she asked saucily.
There was an awkward silence, and Schuyler started to move away, but her companion spoke again. “Tell me. Why have you come to Italy?” the handsome Italian boy asked in perfectly accented English. “You are obviously not an art tourist, one of those with the big cameras and their cultural guidebooks in tow. I would bet you have not even seen the new Matthew Barney.”
“I am looking for someone,” Schuyler replied.
“At the Biennale?” he asked. “Do you know which venue?”
“There are others?” Schuyler asked.
“Of course, this is only the giardini; there is also the Arsenale and the corderie. The whole city of Venice transforms for the Biennale. You are going to have a hard time finding just one person. Almost a million people visit the Biennale— the garden itself has thirty pavilions.”
Schuyler’s heart sank. She had no idea the Biennale was such a vast and confusing collection of places. She had walked along the promenade, past other buildings before entering the Italian pavilion, but she had no idea what stretched beyond. The gardens were a vast landscape filled with buildings from every era, each one built by its host country. Each building had its own style and housed its own country’s art.
If what the boy was saying was true, going to the Biennale to look for the Professore was akin to searching for a needle in the middle of a haystack.
Useless.
Impossible.
A million people every year! Which meant there must be thousands upon thousands of people at the exhibit right now. With those odds, she might as well give up immediately.
Schuyler despaired. She would never find her grandfather now. Whoever he was, wherever he was, he did not want to be found. She wondered why she was even being so forthright with the boy, but she felt she had nothing to lose. There was something in his eyes that made her feel comfortable, safe.
“I am looking for someone they call the Professore. Lawrence Winslow Van Alen.”