“Is it art?” the devil on my shoulder asked as I stood in the museum. I was about to shrug, indicating not my lack of knowledge, but lack of opinion, but he was too heavy, with his furry legs crossed, tapping one cloven hoof against my collar bone and one finger against his cheek in thought. I scratched my right temple. “Well, is it?”
“It hardly seems anything at all,” I said to the devil, whose breath was tickling my ear.”
“Well, it has to be something, doesn’t it? They can’t have nothing hanging on the wall. It would imply a lack of something, when clearly there must be something in the place of nothing. It can’t be nothing at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing doesn’t exist. There can’t be an actual ‘nothing,’ because the moment there’s a nothing, it’s a something.”
“In short?”
“Everything exists.”
“You don’t,” I told the devil.
“I don’t?” he sounded offended.
“Well, not any more than the image on the wall does.”
“Then ask for a second opinion,” the devil suggested, turning his attention back to the empty wall in front of us and stroking his beard.
It seemed a fair enough suggestion. I turned my head and glanced at my right shoulder, but there was no angel there. I don’t know why there wasn’t, but there never had been. Not that I could remember, at the very least: my mother told me once that when I was an infant, I would always look to my right and giggle, as though engaged in private conversation of the most amusing sort. Perhaps the angel had been late for work one day, and thus been terminated; perhaps he had gotten lost on the school bus on that first day of kindergarten, stuffed in a bright plastic lunch-pail and forgotten; perhaps the cat had caught him when he had taken a dip in the goldfish tank. Whatever the reason, no angel occupied the seat above my right breast, leaving me with nothing more than an unfulfilled, very dull, dispirited demon.
There was no angel, but there was a custodian. I flagged him down, uncertain if he spoke English. To my surprised delight, he did, and so I played the devil to him, repeating the question:
“Is this art?”
The poor man looked confused, and wiped his hands on the leg of his uniform. “It’s a blank wall, sir. We painted over it just last week, a fresh coat of white. The frame on the wall is empty, waiting for the next exhibit.”
“Paint is paint,” the devil replied in a helpful tone. “What separates this white-washed wall from any of the other stains of colour?”
But I was not feeling charitable towards the devil, so I did not repeat the question, instead thanking the man and bidding him on his way.
I was athirst, and visited a coffee cart in the same great hall. “Put in extra sugar,” the devil urged me, and so I did, watching the white crystals swirl into the black liquid. And so I had a thought.
“It can’t be nothing,” I said.
“Beg pardon?” the devil asked; he was lying down lazily now, his tail swishing and flicking annoyingly against the hem of my sleeve.
“The white space on the wall.”
“Yes, the key word being space.”
“But black is the absence of colour, all colour. White is the combination.”
“Um…?”
“So, the white painting isn’t nothing. It’s everything.”
The devil sat up in surprise. “That’s crazy-talk.”
“I know I’m right,” I said through sips of coffee.
“Oh, you do? Anyone can be a critic, every couch, chair, and sofa gives one a home; only the rare, special people are worthy of offering a critique.”
I walked back across the crowded hall, to the undecorated section of wall that was ignored by passerby. The devil eyed me suspiciously as I stared. “What do you see?” I asked him.
He licked his devil-lips. “What do you?”
“Everything,” I said. My fingers had begun to itch. I bought the frame.
******
“Oh, what was the point of that?” the devil said as I hung the frame on the wall of my apartment, stepping back to make sure it was hung straight. “If it really is everything, you can’t hope to contain it. Move all of everything in its totality from place to place.”
“I don’t need to. It’s already here. I just wanted the frame,” I said.
The devil clicked his tongue. “And now what?”
“And now I bring it out.”
“Bring out?”
“I bring out the colours from hiding in white.”
The devil crossed his arms and pouted. He said nothing when I went out the door, nothing when I went to the local supply store to buy a brush and set of paints, and nothing as I handed the cashier the cheque, instead choosing simply to sit in a huff. Not for the first time I wondered what my angel would say, wherever he was.
Wherever? Ah.
The devil had thus far maintained his silence, but could not help but look curious as I touched finger to brush to paint to wall, and slowly but surely, an angel appeared.
“Are you special now?” the devil asked.
“Perhaps,” I said, honestly unsure. “Or perhaps, not especial, but whole.”
The devil sighed. “Criticism is one thing, critique another,” he said, exasperated. “But not even Jehovah himself is honest enough to do the most difficult thing in the universe—self-critique: ‘And it was very good.’”
And so it was:
On the first day, I painted the fire that would serve as his backdrop, Holy Ghost flame or hell-fire or some mixture of the two, I knew not. I only knew that red was the beginning of the spectrum.
On the second day, I painted the Vitruvian figure of the angel himself, gold emerging from the flames, burnished lighting cast in bronze.
On the third day, I changed my mind, and painted flesh tones over that.
On the fourth day, I painted his face, eyes the colour of lapis lazuli, and his lips a straight, black line. His nose came out rather larger than intended.
On the fifth day I painted stars in the sky around him, and on the sixth, I etched in the wings that bore him through them.
On the seventh day, I gave my angel a gift: I clothed him. Now there was no white left on the wall, all of it swallowed up by the many colours I had chosen, and so now I placed it there again, the everything on top of the something I had brought out from the everything, a white-robe for the angel on my shoulder.
I stepped back and turned to the devil. “Is it art?”
“You’re asking me?” he said, surprised. I turned my attention back to my work.
The stars, surrounding the angel, were growing brighter, descending into the foreground. Two other angels stepped forward, joining the first I had painted. They greeted each other warmly, talking quietly and staring out at us. The first cocked his head, looking me up and down from his place on the wall, and turned to the angel-friend on his side.
“Is it an artist?” the angel asked.
