Rats

Rats are more than background vermin in the theft of The Rendezvous at the Tunisian National Gallery: they turn the gallery’s waste and darkness into a parallel world of survival, one that mirrors Evan Michaels’s own concealment and precarious freedom. They appear as a nuisance to patrons, a possible alarm to the guards, and, for Evan, fellow scavengers whose small dramas briefly interrupt the calculations of the burglary.

First Signs in the Gallery

During his inspection of the main room, Evan lifts the lid of a trash can to measure it and look inside. Two large rats rush out from beneath it. The nearby patrons react with displeasure, while Evan is glad to see them. The difference in response establishes the rats as part of the gallery’s unpolished physical reality: an intrusion for visitors, but potentially useful company to someone planning to hide in its refuse.

The trash can matters before Evan occupies it. He has been assessing the room and its fixtures with the blueprint in mind, and the animals make the bin’s ordinary use suddenly visible. It is not merely a container to be inspected; it is a place where rats can enter and where a person may also fit. Later, after the remaining patrons leave, Evan slips his backpack through the sprung metal lid and checks inside to make sure there is room for him. The same opening that admits the rats becomes the entrance to his hiding place.

The Nighttime Invasion

As night falls, rats begin running along the gallery walls in quick, separate sorties. Over the next three guard circuits, their routes multiply until they crisscross the floor. Red dots on the motion detectors flash repeatedly, recording the animals’ nightly invasion. The guards do not respond to those signals. The rats therefore make visible a weakness in the gallery’s surveillance: movement is detected, but the repeated alerts do not distinguish an ordinary infestation from a human intruder.

Their activity also marks the passage of time while Evan waits inside the can. His body is cramped and stiff, and the long intervals between the guard’s circuits give his mind room to wander toward the fortune he expects from the theft. Below him, the rats continue their routes. The gallery’s security rhythm and the animals’ movements occupy the same darkened space, but only Evan understands that a different danger is about to emerge from it.

A Fellow Creature in the Trash

Before Evan acts, a young rat enters through a small hole at the bottom of the can. It scrambles from morsel to morsel, apparently unaware of the larger body above it. Evan concentrates on the sound of its teeth gnawing as he endures the ache in his knees and back. The animal also guards the hole, biting at unfamiliar noses that approach. Its defense of the entrance gives the waiting burglar an unexpectedly intimate view of a creature defending its small territory.

Evan laughs at the scene and imagines the two of them as rats earning a living in the trash. He wonders whether the young animal could know that it might grow too fat to escape and become trapped inside. This imagined future reflects the immediate circumstances without making the rat a simple symbol: both are confined in the bin, but Evan’s confinement is chosen and temporary, part of a plan to reach the painting and change his circumstances. The animal’s possible entrapment offers a darker counter-image to his anticipated escape.

Movement Through Darkness

When the guard approaches, the roaming rats scatter. Evan readies his supplies and pistol, then leaves the can after the guard passes. He moves around the back of the gallery toward the light from the foyer. Several rats, enlarged by their shadows, cross the illuminated breach along with him. Their presence does not make the crossing safe, but it places his stealth within a larger pattern of small bodies moving through the building while the guards watch television.

The rats continue to disturb the space as Evan lays out his tools and works at The Rendezvous. They scatter when he reaches for the weight used with the wire noose. Later, the low groan of the painting’s frame and the strains of his hands are barely audible above the collective footfalls of the rodents. They are not knowingly helping him, and the account does not suggest that they understand the theft. Instead, their incidental movement supplies cover and makes the gallery’s apparent stillness deceptive. For Evan, the rats’ ordinary, unsupervised life in the building becomes an accidental accompaniment to his own passage from concealment toward the painting.