'You're not German, are you?' he asked over dessert.
'No.'
'North American?'
She shook her head.
'You don't have to tell me if you don't want to’ Marcus said. 'I won't then.'
'I couldn't give a damn where you're from.'
His lips were trembling. Hers looked as though they were carved in wood.
He settled the bill quickly, and they left. The punk on the desk at the motel seemed to have his key ready and waiting for him. His room was small and smelt of damp, but at that moment they could have been in the salons of the Residenz or a public lavatory for all he cared. He pushed Brenda into the darkness, then sought her mouth with his own. She wriggled out of his caresses, bent her knees and began to slide effortlessly down his body. Marcus groaned with pleasure when he realised what she intended to do.
It was not what he had been expecting. He had hoped to prolong things while she undressed, or while he undressed her, perhaps on the floor the way Kate Niemeyer liked it. The painter was one of his most stable recent relationships, and during her visits to Munich they had made love in his motel, her hotel or even occasionally in a museum, canvas and artist intertwined on the gallery floor. Brenda was in too much of a rush. Marcus was sure he would explode before he was even able to touch her.
'Wait’ he murmured anxiously. 'Wait a minute ...'
But what he was fearing did not happen. She knew when to pause or to increase the rhythm, and what areas to leave untouched. After the anxious start, Brenda's mouth slipped round his penis like a scorching leather sheath, while her hands grasped his buttocks and drew him towards her. My God, but the girl was a real suction pump. Kundalini, the serpent of sexual energy, raised her bicephalic head inside him and asked what was going on. Marcus groaned, clawed at the whitewashed wall, bit his lip in a moment of complete loss of control. When it was all over, the two of them were still in the same position: he was standing leaning his forehead against the wall, the unmistakable taste of his own blood in his mouth - his lips were cracked from the solvents he had used, and he had Bitten them raw - and she was on her knees, also tasting something belonging to Marcus.
This synchronisation of fluids in their mouths struck him as having a kind of artistic symmetry.
Brenda stood up, and Marcus switched on the lights.
'Christ,' he said. 'That was good.'
There was no reply. Friends, you can't imagine how silent this girl is. Brenda's eyes were staring at him without blinking: black round points in a circle of blue nothingness. There was no stain on her lips. Her features - perfect, etched - had a strangely detached air to them, seemingly so independent of all emotion and involvement that Marcus could find only one word to define them: symbol. All of a sudden Marcus thought of her as symbolic, a sort of archetype of his desire. He missed only one thing in her: some slight sign of individuality, of imperfection. Questions he could find no answer to flitted through his mind: was the individual better than the archetypical? Imperfection better than perfection? Emotional than intellectual? Natural than artistic? When he realised all these musings had been provoked by having his cock sucked by her, he could almost believe he understood the tragic destiny of mankind.
He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.
'Shall we sit down?'
Before she moved away, Marcus' fingers had finally managed fleetingly to touch her wonderful skin. He realised with a shock that this was the first time he had felt her naked flesh. Its texture was like a baby's, a little firmer than normal. A rather grown-up baby. On his fingertips there was a point (because that is what everything finally ends up as) of smooth oil, a viscous nothing. He did not think it was a skin cream: Brenda must have greasy skin, that was all. He had known several people like that: they always stayed young. The secret of eternal youth and of early death are one and the same: grease. Perhaps this simple, tiny reason is the origin of the sad fact that the only people who stay young«forever are those who die young.
Yet the world could not be such a bad place after all, if nature could produce beings like Brenda. Marcus promised himself he would enjoy every inch of her through that endless night.
He remembered he had a small bottle of Ballantine's. He busied himself preparing two whiskies. Brenda sat back in the only armchair in the room, and crossed her legs. She was sitting beside the bedside table where Marcus kept all his daily requirements: firming lotions, cosmetic creams, disposable lenses, sprays and hair dyes. Next to all these tubs lay a black mask. Brenda picked it up.
'Be careful with that, I need it tomorrow,' Marcus said. He was bringing over the whiskies when he suddenly came to a halt. 'Oh, shit... !'
He had just realised he had left his bag of paints (together with the catalogues and the feather headdress) in Rudolf's restaurant. Too late now to go and get them. Oh well, he told himself, Rudolf will keep then) for me.
Brenda put the mask back where she had found it.
'I thought you were only on show at the Max Ernst.'
Still half-thinking about the bag he had left behind, Marcus replied in an offhand way:
'No, I'm in a work by Gianfranco Gigli as well, but I'm only a substitute on Tuesdays. I'm due there tomorrow afternoon. In fact, it's mostly thanks to Gigli that I'm here in Munich. Like some more?'
'I'll have whatever you're having.'
Marcus liked her reply. He poured two large glassfuls. This was going to be a long night. Tomorrow morning I'll drop into the restaurant and pick up my bag, he thought. It's no problem.
'What gallery are you on show at for the Gigli?' Brenda wanted to know.
He was about to tell the usual lie (I go from one to another) but when he saw how untroubled she looked, he decided he had nothing to hide.
'None.'
'Have you been bought?'
"Yes, by a hotel,' he smiled (my big secret he thought, with a stab of shame). 'The Wunderbar, do you know it? It's one of the newest and most luxurious hotels here. And its main attraction is that the decorations are hyperdramatic works. That may be common enough nowadays, but when the hotel opened it was just about the only one of its kind in all Germany. I'm the painting in a suite. What do you think of that?'
'That's OK, if you're well paid.'
She was perfectly right. With that one comment, Brenda had shown him there was nothing to be ashamed of.
'I'm very well paid. And the truth is I don't in the least mind being in a hotel. I'm a professional painting, so it's all the same to me where I'm on show. The problem is the guests staying in the suite.' He twisted his mouth, then took a sip of whisky. 'How about if we change the conversation?'
'Fine.'
Brenda did not want anything, did not ask for anything, did not show the least curiosity. She was like a hermetically sealed box, and this completely disarmed Marcus.
'Well, I guess there's no harm in your knowing. But don't tell anyone - nobody would be interested anyway. Do you want to know who those guests are? ... It may sound ironic, but they're considered one of the greatest paintings in the history of art.' He had said the words with calculated disdain, dripping with irony. 'They are no less than the two figures in Monsters, by Bruno van Tysch.'
If he had been trying to provoke some reaction from the girl, he was disappointed. Brenda was as quiet and calm as ever, her legs crossed; the perfect gleam of her naked thighs, just like the shine of her shoes. Nature is more artistic than art when it imitates art, isn't it, Marcus?
Marcus was giving in to long-suppressed emotions. Now he had revealed the unpleasant side of his work to someone, there was no stopping him.
'Sometimes an odd thing happens to me, Brenda. I don't understand modern art. Can you believe it? That exhibition . . . "Monsters" ... I suppose you've seen it somewhere, or heard about it. It's on now at the Haus der Kunst. To me, one of the great mysteries in art is trying to figure out how the creator of "Flowers" could then devote himself to creating a collection like that . . . live snakes
in a girl's hair, a terminally ill patient, a cretin .. . and those two slimy criminals I am a painting for.' He paused, took another sip of his whisky. 'It's wrong for a work of art not to understand art, don't you think?' She smiled fleetingly with him, but then Marcus' face turned serious again. 'But it's not that. It's those two pigs. I only have to put up with them one day a week, but I find it harder and harder ... Just listening to them makes me want to ... to throw up ... I find it unbelievable that those two degenerates can be one of the greatest paintings of all time, whereas canvases like me end up having to act as ornaments in the rooms they stay in.'
The thought so outraged him that he raised the glass to his lips again, only to discover it was empty. Brenda was listening to him without moving a muscle. Marcus was slightly ashamed at having poured his heart out to a stranger (however hard it was for him to believe it, Brenda was still a stranger, after all). He looked down at his glass, then up at her.
'Well, we're not going to spoil a night like this by talking about work, are we?' he said. 'I've still got paint all over me. I'll have a shower and be back straightaway. Pour yourself some more whisky. Get comfortable.'
Brenda smiled faintly.
'I'll wait for you in bed.'
Under the shower, Marcus suddenly recalled what Brenda's eyes reminded him of: she had the same gaze as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Venus Verticordia. He had a framed copy of the Pre-Raphaelite painting hanging in the living room of his Berlin apartment. Holding an apple and an arrow, the goddess was staring straight at the viewer, one of her breasts uncovered, as if suggesting that love and desire can sometimes be dangerous. Marcus liked Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt and the other Pre-Raphaelites. He thought there was nothing to match the mystery and beauty of the women they had painted, the sacred aura they gave off. But as Marcus knew, or thought he did, art is less beautiful than life, even though he had rarely found such convincing proof of this assertion as Brenda. No Pre-Raphaelite could ever have invented Brenda, and that was the reason - he suspected - why life would always have the advantage over art in their race towards reality. Who knows? Perhaps for him it was not too late for life, even if it already was for art. Perhaps life was waiting somewhere: children, a partner, stability, the bourgeois nirvana were he could find eternal rest. Let's enjoy life, friends, for this one night at least.
He came out of the bathroom and picked up a towel. He had taken off the Niemeyer label - he would not need it the next day. He experienced another fierce erection. He felt, if anything, even more aroused than before, when they had rushed into the room. And the drink had not affected him either. He was sure he could keep going until dawn, and with a girl like Brenda, that should be no sacrifice.
The room was in darkness again, apart from the faint light from the neon signs outside that filtered through the blinds. In the flashing gloom Marcus could make out Brenda's shape, waiting for him in bed as promised. She had pulled the sheets up to her neck, and was staring at the ceiling. Venus Verticordia.
'Are you cold?' Marcus asked.
No reply. Brenda still did not move, staring up at a point in the darkness. This seemed like a strange way to start another love-making session, but by now Marcus was well accustomed to her odd behaviour. He went over to the bed and knelt on it.
'Do you want me to uncover you bit by bit, like a surprise package?' he smiled.
At that moment something happened that Marcus could not comprehend at first. Brenda's face trembled and turned, twisting itself at an impossible angle, like a shroud sliding off a corpse. Then it moved. It crawled towards Marcus' hand like a limp rat, a dying rodent. A second or two of panic, enough to provide Marcus with more than enough material for another of his anecdotes. Now I'll tell you about the day Brenda's face came off and started moving towards my hand. It zvas some sensation, let me tell you, friends. As though in a trance, Marcus stared at the deflated nose, lips and empty eyes scurrying across the pillow to his fingers. He drew back his hand as if he had been burnt, and gave a strangled scream of horror before he realised he was looking at some kind of mask made from a plastic material, probably silicone. The mass of blonde hair and its ponytail lay empty across the pillow, like a roof without walls.
I'm going to tell you about the day Brenda became a marble, a green pea, a nothing. I'll tell you about the horrible day when Brenda became a point in the microcosm.
He pulled back the sheets, and discovered that what he had first thought was the girl's body was nothing more than her clothing (jacket and skirt, even the shoes) twisted and screwed up. Like a schoolboy joke to make you believe someone was asleep in the bed.
But the mask ... The mask was what he could not understand.
He shuddered repeatedly, and his teeth chattered.
'Brenda ...' he called out in the darkness.
He heard the noise behind his back, but he was kneeling naked on the bed, and his reaction came too late.
2
Lines.
Her body was a sheaf of lines. Her hair for example: gentle curves down the nape of her neck. Or her eyes: ellipses containing circles. The concentric rotundity of her breasts. The faint line of her navel. Or the seagull print of her sex. She stroked herself. She raised her right hand to her neck, drew it down between her breasts and the tight knot of her stomach muscles. She embraced the curve of her biceps. As she touched herself, her body felt different. Life returned: soft surfaces she could press, change the shape of; outlines where her hand could pause, sweet labyrinths for fingers or insects. She recovered her own volume.
She felt like crying, as she had done when she said goodbye to Jorge. What could she see? A yellow mother-of-pearl skin. She guessed that any hypothetical tear, flowing down vertically from her eyelid to the corner of her mouth, would also trace a line. She was not sad, though she was not happy either. Her wish to cry came from a colourless feeling, a linear sentiment that the future would doubtless find a way of painting more clearly. She was at the beginning, at the starting line (the exact word for it), a twisted figure waiting in the world of geometry for an artist to select her and provide her with shading and definition. And then what? She would have to wait to find out.
Apart from that, her current state could be defined as gravity-free. The priming process had freed her of all ballast. She was barely aware of her own self. She was completely naked, and did not feel cold or even cool; she did not feel anything that might be called 'temperature'. Despite the discomforts of the journey, she still felt awake and energetic: she could have rested equally well doubled up on herself or standing on tiptoe. The mysterious combination of pills she had started to take on F&W's instructions had made her bodily needs almost vanish. It seemed wonderful to her not to be at the mercy of any of her inner organs. It was more than twelve hours since she had needed to go to the bathroom. She had not eaten - or felt like eating - anything solid since Saturday. She was neither nervous nor calm: she was merely waiting. Her whole state of mind was projected towards the future. For the first time in her life, she felt like a real canvas. Or not even that. Like a tool. A hammer, a fork or a revolver, she deduced, could understand her feelings better than another human being.
Her mind was clear and empty. Incredibly clear. For her, to think was like contemplating sand dunes in the desert. This too made her happy. It was not amnesia: she could remember everything, but none of her memories got in the way. They were there, in the library, lined up and within reach (if she wanted them, she could remember her parents, or Vicky, or Jorge) but she had no need to flick through her past to be alive. It was a tremendous sensation to feel she was someone else while still being herself.
The house was plunged in silence. She had no idea where they had taken her after the plane had landed at Schiphol. She guessed she must be somewhere not far from Amsterdam. The flight had lasted an hour or a little more, but an hour can be very long when you are blindfolded and unable to move. But time and Clara's body had got on well, and she had not experienced any discomfort.
She had been transported as artistic goods. This was the first time this had happened to her. Well, occasionally when she was in The Circle as an adolescent, she had been tied up with nylon string, had had her eyes blindfolded, been wrapped in padded paper and then put in a cardboard box. This was called the 'Annulling Test', intended to help the future canvas accept its condition as an object. But this was different: it was a real transfer. According to international law, any canvas that had been primed and given labels was considered artistic goods, even if it had not yet been painted. All the previous journeys she had made for work purposes had been as a person: she had been primed at her destination. This meant the artist saved on transport costs, any risk of damage, and on customs duties. Evasion of these payments by works of art who travelled as normal passengers and then were repainted in another country had not yet been classified as an offence: legislation was definitely needed. But Clara had been transported as artistic goods, with all the required paperwork.