At that point the hand pulling her hair back let go, and another one pressed down on the back of her neck forcing her head forward as though wanting to smash it into the computer screen. She found herself with her nose pressed up against the French and German subtitles. She fought back a sudden wave of nausea.
'Your second opportunity.' It was the woman again. 'Our colleague simply brought the brush close to your pupil ... Listen, and don't scream ... if you give the wrong answer again, she will draw a comma on your retina ... after she's done that, you'll be able to see a green crescent moon even in the light of day. A curious aesthetic effect, don't you agree? Stop snivelling and pay attention ... After this second session, you might as well keep your left retina in a jar. I can assure you, it will glow green in the night like one of those virgins of Lourdes ... So please, concentrate. The prize is your eyesight.'
'The same question again.' It was the man once more.
Since the hands clasping her shoulders and arms were still there, and the one on the back of her neck was still pressing her down, Briseida was convinced her cervical vertebra was about to crack apart like rotten wood. She decided that would be the best thing that could happen.
'I don't know, I swear, please, I don't know, I swear I've no idea, in Vienna, yes, in Vienna, but I don't really know, ‘ swear, I swear...!' Saliva, tears and words came pouring from her face as if her glands were secreting them: 'I've no idea where, it's true, I've no idea where, I swear it, please, please, please, plea
A bout of vomiting cut her off.
Seated at his portable computer in the MuseumsQuartier office, Lothar Bosch pressed a button on his mobile memory and called the number that appeared. He had a brief but forceful discussion with one of his men in Paris. Miss Wood had her back turned to him, and was staring out at the Vienna dawn through the glass wall. Bosch noticed she was smoking one of her disgusting ecological cigarettes, the mentholated green smoke formed halos on the window round her head.
'Mr Lothar Bosch, always a gentleman where ladies are concerned,' he heard her say.
'Don't you think we've scared her enough with that game of the optical brush?' Bosch snapped back, wounded by his colleague's cold irony. 'That's no way to start a conversation. We won't get anything out of her like that.'
Her eye was undamaged. They were quite kind to her, really. They had even let go of her so she could vomit more easily.
Briseida was sick as she used to be as a child: with one hand on her forehead, and the other clutching her stomach. That was how it always was with her. Strange moment this bilious déjà vu. According to her mother, she threw up like a cat. Her grandmother said it was because she didn't know how to be sick. The little kitten would suffer all her life because she did not know how to vomit properly. She didn't take after her father in that, especially after he had been boozing. Stan was also an expert in vomiting, it was easy, prolonged and abundant. The same was true of most of the fluids emanating from her Art Professor. The same could not be said of Luigi, her Aesthetics Professor, whose stomach was toughened by a diet of pizzas laced with chilli: he was stiff, repressed and impotent. By their vomit shall ye know them, not by their ejaculations. Sneezing, vomiting and death were the only three truly unforeseeable, uncontrollable and instantaneous reactions of the body. Semi-colon, fullstop; new paragraph, full stop, end of dictation about life: as a teacher at her Swiss school had once told her.
She stemmed her retching with a sip of cold water. God, what a state she had left Roger's dining-room carpet in. A man with such an aesthetic sense as Roger (could it be true he had played chess last night with twenty-four human pieces?) and just look what she had deposited on his carpet, it looked like radish juice all over his spotless Italian floor. Briseida was forced to separate her knees to avoid the pool, and in doing so opened her thighs. But since they were no longer holding her down, she could cover her sex with her hands. The Good Computer (or was it the Good Cop?) was waiting, a gold Montblanc pressed against the side of his head. The blonde and the soldiers had retreated to behind the chair, ready to swing into action at any moment. A Windows icon called 'Bad Cop' crouched in the opposite corner to Briseida's. But Good Cop had told her that, for the moment, Baddie wanted a rest.
'Feeling better?'
'Yes. Can I put some clothes on?' A moment's hesitation.
'This will soon be over, I promise you. Now tell me all you know about Oscar.'
She began to talk freely. A string of unemotional, technical terms about art (this helped her relax). She did not look at the screen as she spoke, nor at the floor (the vomit), but at a fruit bowl on the table behind the computer: green apples and pears as calming as an infusion.
'I met him at MoMA in New York last spring. He was looking after Bust, a Van Tysch etching. I suppose you know the work I'm talking about, but I can describe it for you ... it's a preparatory study for Deflowering. A twelve-year-old girl in a black-painted box with a slit at the top. The slit allows you to see only her face and shoulders, painted in faint greys on her skin primed with acids, like a human etching. To see the work, the public have to file in one by one, climb the two steps in front of the box, and stand only a hand's breadth away from her face. The girl stares out without ever blinking, her eyes painted coal black; her expression is almost... almost supernatural... it's an incredible work...'
'The sensation is like going into a confessional and finding that the priest has the features of your sins,' a Spanish critic had written about Bust, but Briseida left out that comment because she did not want to appear to be giving an art lecture. The work had made a huge impression during its American tour, especially because Deflowering had been banned by a censorship committee in the United States.
'Oscar was in charge of the security for Bust. One day he saw me waiting my turn at the end of a long line of people. I had gone to MoMA to study an Elmer Fludd on show in the next gallery, but I didn't want to leave without having a look at Van Tysch's etching. The previous weekend I had fallen badly playing basketball and was on crutches. When he saw me, Oscar came over and offered to take me to the front of the queue. He led me up and into the box. He was a real gentleman.'
'So you became friends?' asked the man.
'Yes, we began to see each other quite often.'
They started to go for long walks, which almost invariably ended up in Central Park. He loved trees, fields, all of nature. He was expert at photographing landscapes, and had all the equipment: a 35mm Reflex, two tripods, filters, zoom lens. He was very knowledgeable about light, atmosphere, and reflections on water, but had no real interest in any life forms bigger than insects. Oscar was green as a shoot, and perhaps as unripe.
'He took photos of me everywhere: by the ponds, the lakes, feeding the ducks ...'
'Did he ever talk about his job?'
'Not often. He said he had been a guard in the Brooke's chain before he was taken on by the Van Tysch Foundation in New York, based on Fifth Avenue. His boss was a woman called Ripstein. He earned a fortune, but lived on his own. And he said he hated the Foundation's aesthetic mania: that they forced him to wear a toupee for months, for example.'
'What did he say about that?'
'That if he was bald, or starting to lose his hair, that was nobody else's business. Why on earth had they told him to wear a toupee. "All the big bosses are bald, except for Stein, and nobody cares," he told me. "But the rest of us have to look good." And he said the Van Tysch Foundation was like a meal in a designer restaurant: bags of image, taste, very expensive, but when you left you still had room for a couple of hotdogs and a bag of French fries.'
'He told you that?'
'Yes.'
Was that a smile on the man's face, or simply a distorted image?
'He also said he could never consider the people he was looking after as works of art . . . to him, they were human beings, and he felt very sorry for some of them ... he told me about one in particular ... I don't remember her name ... a model who spent hours crouched
in a box, an original painted by Buncher, one of the 'Claustrophiles'. He said he had been her guard several times, and that she was an intelligent, pleasant young girl who used to write poems like Sappho of Lesbos in her free time ...'
'"But who the fuck is interested in that aspect of her?" Oscar would complain. "To the public, she's no more than a figure on show in a box for eight hours a day." "But it's a beautiful work, Oscar," I'd reply. "Don't you think the 'Claustrophiles' are beautiful? And what about Bust? A twelve-year-old girl shut into that dark cubicle ... when you think about it, you say: the poor girl, what a travesty. But when you get up close to her and see her grey-painted face, that expression of hers . . . My God, Oscar, that's art! I also feel sorry at shutting up a girl inside a box like that, but. .. what can we do if the result is so ... so beautiful?'"
Those were the kind of discussions we had. I ended up asking him: "So why do you carry on guarding paintings, Oscar?" He replied: "Because they pay me better than anywhere else." But what he really liked was to learn things about me. I told him about my family in Bogota, my studies ... he was pleased we might be able to see each other again this year in Amsterdam, because he was working in Europe ...'
'Did he say what kind of work?'
'Looking after paintings on the tour of Bruno van Tysch's 'Flowers' collection.
'Did he talk about that?'
'Not much ... he saw it as just another job. He told me he'd be in Europe a year, and that he'd be spending the first months between Amsterdam and Berlin ... he wanted me to talk about my research ... he was thrilled when I told him that Rembrandt collected things like dried crocodiles, families of shells, tribal necklaces and arrows ... and I was hoping he could get me a pass to visit Edenburg castle.'
'Why did you want to visit Edenburg?'
To see if it was true what they say about Van Tysch: that he collects empty spaces. People who have been inside Edenburg say there is no furniture or decoration, just bare rooms. I don't know whether it's true or not, but I thought it might make a good ... a good appendix to my thesis ...'
'You went on seeing Oscar in Amsterdam, didn't you?' the man asked.
'Just once. The rest were phone calls. He was constantly on the move with the collection, from Berlin to Hamburg, Hamburg to Cologne . . . He didn't have much time off.' Briseida rubbed her arms. She felt cold, but tried to keep her mind on the questions.
'What did he say on the phone?'
'He wanted to know how I was feeling. He wanted to see me. But I think that our relationship, if there ever was one, was finished.'
'What about when you met?'
'It was back in May. Oscar was in Vienna. He had been given a week off and called me. I was living in Leiden, and we arranged to meet in Amsterdam. He stayed in a small hotel off Dam square.'
'That was a bit of a rushed trip, wasn't it?'
'He was bored in Europe. All his friends were in the United States.'
'What did you do in Amsterdam?'
'We walked along the canals, ate in an Indonesian restaurant .. .' Briseida decided it was time to lose her patience. 'What more do you want me to tell you! I'm tired and nervous! Please...'
The Bad Cop's window turned into the woman in black glasses. Briseida nearly jumped out of her seat.
'And I supposed you fucked as well, didn't you? I mean, in between all those interesting conversations about art and landscape photography...'
No reply.
'Do you know what I'm talking about?' said the woman. 'The old whambang males and females get up to, sometimes the males on one side and the females on the other, sometimes together.'
Briseida decided this unknown woman was the most unpleasant person she had ever seen. Even at the distance of a computer screen from her, with her squashed, two-dimensional, luminous face, her head shrunken by the jibaros of software, the woman was unbearable.
'Did you fuck or not?'
'Yes.'
'Was it an investment, or on current account?' ‘I don't follow you.'
'I'm asking if you got anything in exchange, such as entrance tickets to Edenburg, or if you did it because you were fascinated by the lower half of Oscar's body.'
'Get lost.' The words poured out of Briseida effortlessly, fearlessly, like a pair of desperate lovers. 'Get lost, will you? Burn my eyes if you like, but get lost.'
She was expecting revenge, but to her surprise, nothing happened.
'Was there love? Between Oscar and you?' Briseida looked across at the green walls of Roger's apartment.
'I've no intention of responding to that question.'
This time there was a reaction, so quick that her eyes flitted from the green of the wall to the green brush in one movement. All of a sudden she found herself immobilised and open, like a woman giving birth for the first time. Thick gardening gloves smothered her face. Her jaw was held so firmly she could scarcely shout that yes she would answer, of course she'd answer all the questions they wanted to ask, please, please ... She heard a click, a tiny buzzing sound, and once again could feel her eye was intact.
'No! There was no love! I don't know! I don't know if he loved me!... I just thought of him as a friend!...' The soles of her feet felt wet and sticky. She realised she had trodden in her own vomit, but what did that matter now she was in tears, and that woman (an unmoving bust on the screen, splintered by her tears) was watching her cry. 'Please, let me go! ... I've told you all I know!...'
'Come on, admit it’ the woman said. 'There was an ulterior motive, wasn't there? Otherwise, what kind of attraction would you feel for a bald guy who had been forced to wear a toupee at work, and who talked to you about landscapes and Sappho of Lesbos? As far as I can see, you don't have problems with men: you only had to wiggle your ass a bit in Amsterdam for Roger Levin to notice and invite you to stay at his place. Isn't that right?'
It was a cruel way to describe what had happened. A week earlier, in Amsterdam, Briseida had gone to see the 'Pleasures' exhibition by Maurice Marchal. He was a painter who interested her because he collected fetishes and only painted men with erections. That afternoon, Roger Levin was also in the gallery by chance, as he explained to her later. He had gone to Amsterdam to try to interview the Foundation bosses to get information on the much-awaited launch of the 'Rembrandt' exhibition scheduled for 15 July. While he was there, he was thinking of buying a Marchal for a girlfriend of his. According to Roger, what first attracted him to Briseida was the dark mane of hair spreading across her pert buttocks. Briseida had bent down to get a closer look at one of the works, a muscular young man squatting with a perfectly vertical penis, painted Veronese green. Roger had made use of the symmetrical effect to come over and comment in English that her posture was exactly the same as the work of art. It was not a particularly smart comment, but it was a lot better than most of the chat-up lines she had heard. Levin had a pleasant, childish face and was wearing a suit with a waistcoat. His hair looked like a nursery of gelled snails. He was irresistible, even in the context they found themselves in, with more than a dozen painted, naked young men standing there with their penises in the air. But Roger's chief attraction was his father, whom he mentioned soon enough. Briseida knew that Gaston Levin was one of the most important dealers in France. With the same spontaneity that seemed to characterise everything he did, Roger suggested that Briseida might like to go back to Paris with him and stay for a few days at his chrome-plated home on the rive gauche. Why not? she thought. It was a unique opportunity for her to get a close look at a great family that dealt in works of art.
Luckily, the Bad Cop had vanished again.
'Did you not see Diaz again after Amsterdam?' the man went on.
'No. The last time he called was a fortnight ago ... on Sunday the eighteenth, I think ...' 'Did he have any news?'
'He wanted to ask me how you obtained a residency permit for a country in the European Union. He knew I'd got one thanks to the grant from my university.'
*Why was he interested in that?'
> 'He said he had recently met someone who had no papers, and he wanted to help them.'
Briseida sensed she had said something important to them. The tension of the man on the screen was well-nigh tangible.
'Did he say who this person was?'
'No. I think it was a woman, but I'm not sure.'
'Why do you think that?'
'That's the way Oscar is,' Briseida said with a smile. 'He loves helping ladies.'
'What were his exact words?'
'It's an immigrant, but they have no papers,' was what Oscar had said. 'Since you've been living in Europe for several months, I thought you might know how to get some kind of visa.' He hadn't wanted to give any further details, but Briseida was almost certain it was a woman he was talking about. And that had been all.
'Did you say you would call each other again?'