She could not make out the shape of the ten-seater jet she climbed aboard at the end of the tunnel down which she had followed the uniformed man. Inside the cabin, a mechanic dressed in an orange overall was waiting for her. He never spoke to her by name. In fact, he hardly said anything at all (and besides, he did not speak Spanish). He led her with gloved hands (everyone used gloves to handle her once she had been primed) and helped her lie down on a padded couch with its back raised forty-five degrees and the word FRAGILE written in large letters on the leather. There was another lifted rail for her feet, which forced her to keep her knees bent. There was no need for her to take her top or miniskirt off. On the contrary: the workman wrapped her in another layer of plastic, this time a loose sleeveless tunic, and stuck warning labels in Dutch and English all over it. The only thing he removed were her shoes. She was strapped in her seat by eight elastic belts: one across her forehead, two under her arms, another round her waist, and a further four at her wrists and ankles. They were all amazingly soft. As he tightened them, the mechanic made sure they did not trap the labels on her right wrist and ankle. The only time he spoke was when he put her mask on.
'Protect eyes,' he said.
Those were the last words she heard until they landed.
There was a brief interval without darkness during the flight: the mask was lifted and she was offered a tall vertical line inserted in a hermetically sealed glass. She drank from it, though she was not thirsty. It was a fruit juice. She was able to see that outside, in the cabin and the rest of the world, night had fallen. While he held the glass up for her to drink, the mechanic also checked that none of the straps was too tight. He moved the labels around to avoid them chafing. Another man used a doctor's torch to check her stomach, and then they slightly loosened the central strap. She did not move (although she could have if she had wanted to) because she was not worried about having to stay in the same position the whole day if necessary. When they had finished all their adjustments, the two men put her mask back on.
She felt the landing as a foetus might experience being born on a fairground big wheel. It helped her understand there must be something intangible within us that gives us a sense of direction, of above and below, of acceleration and braking. The awareness that an arrow or a line might have. Inertia gripped her like a powerful dance partner, pushing her forward, then backwards. Then the violent rubber stamp of wheels on the ground.
'Careful.. . step .. . careful... step ...'
They held her arms as she descended the steps. A wave of Amsterdam night air greeted her. Holland caressed her legs, lifted the edges of her plastic shroud, stroked her stomach and hot back. She felt encouraged to be received in this way by an unabashed, cool Holland that smelt of gasoline and jet engines. A gust of wind made her neck label swing out to the left.
They came to a stop in a distant zone of Schiphol airport. Flashing lights were the only decoration. At the foot of the steps another mechanic was waiting with a transport trolley. They were called 'capsules', and Clara had seen them before, but never travelled in one. It consisted of another stretcher like the one on the plane, with the back raised, and a plastic cover with holes in for her to breathe, covered in more warning stickers. When they zipped the cover over her head, she could hear no more noise, but could still see out through the plastic. They had removed her mask, and she felt a lot more comfortable than she had in the plane (she could stretch her legs, for example) although this did not mean much to her. The mechanic walked round behind her and started to push the trolley.
They went towards a long, low building beyond which she could see the tall, cool lines of the control tower. A sign - Douane, Tarief - flashed electronically. Muscular figures in tunics, others showing bare flesh, necks bearing orange or bright blue tags, faces with no eyebrows, their skin primed and shiny, a rainbow of hair colours, others again with bald, gleaming heads, youngsters of both sexes, adolescents, little boys and girls, beautiful monsters waiting in the intermittent lights in the darkness, canonic but unfinished images, models not yet sketched (she was particularly struck by one ineffable shaven and primed work in a wheelchair who turned its head to stare after her like a drugged alien being), all of them waiting in line to go through the customs. Many of them had been brought here on luggage trolleys, often without guards, because they did not need any special transport requirements. Clara was fascinated at the amount of trafficking in works of art that obviously went on in Holland. There was nothing like it in Spain, where artistic immigration, like so many other kinds, was strictly controlled. How much could each of those works cost? Even the cheapest must be worth more than a thousand dollars.
Her capsule went straight into the building without having to queue. Inside it was like a hangar with conveyor belts and long customs tables. Employees in blue uniforms raised their arms and reeled off precise instructions. Everything was studied, regulated, listed, considered. They wheeled her to a desk. Forms were stamped, labels checked. Then she was taken into an adjacent room, where they unzipped her cover. As they did so, a mixture of male and female perfumes overwhelmed her sense of smell. A silent, smiling couple wearing surgical gloves that matched the colour of their suits and with blue tags in their lapels (she remembered this was what the Conservation department wore) were waiting for her. The room was an office: a desk, two exits, an open door. Someone shut the door, and to Clara it seemed that for a second she had gone deaf.
'How are you feeling? OK? My name is Brigitte Paulsen, and my colleague here is Martin van der Olde. Can you get up? Slowly, there's no need to rush.'
This sudden burst of musical Spanish surprised Clara at first.
She had thought they would treat her as they had until now, as simply art material. Then she understood her reception. They were part of Conservation, and in Conservation they always tried to make the works feel at ease. She swung her bare feet down to the floor - the primed toenails reflected the strip ceiling lights - and stood up without help or any difficulty. 'I'm fine, thank you.'
'Mr Paul Benoit, director of Conservation at the Bruno van Tysch Foundation, is sorry he cannot be here in person, and has instructed me to welcome you to Holland,' the woman said with a smile. 'Did you have a good trip?'
'Yes very good, thanks.'
'I little Spanish,' the blond man said, blushing slightly. 'Don't worry,' Clara reassured him.
'Do you need anything? Want anything? Want to say anything?'
'No, I'm fine at the moment, and there's nothing I need,' said Clara. 'Thanks all the same.'
'May I?' the woman took hold of the label round Clara's neck.
'Excuse me,' said the man, lifting her arm with his gloved left hand, and catching her wrist tag in his right.
'Sorry,' a third man she had not noticed until now said, as he knelt on the floor to grasp her ankle label.
It's comforting when they treat you like a human being occasionally, thought Clara. Everry being in the universe, as well as the majority of natural and artificial objects, likes being treated kindly, so Clara did not feel ashamed to think as she did. The parallel red claws of their laser beams sneaked out over the lines of the bar codes on her three labels. She kept her silent smile throughout their inspection, examining the woman closely. She decided she was pretty, but was wearing too dark a shade of make-up. She had also put too much rouge on: it looked as though she had been slapped hard on both cheeks.
Then they stripped her: they lifted her padded plastic tunic over her head, and removed the top and miniskirt. The ceiling lights rippled across her body like luminous eels.
'Are you feeling all right? Not nauseous at all? Tired?'
While the woman practised her Berlitz Spanish, she felt Clara's pulse with fingers as delicate as a pair of tweezers. In the pauses, Clara could hear echoes of questions in another language from a nearby room. Had more artistic goods arrived? Who could it be? She was dying to know.
The Conservation team changed instruments and started to examine her with
a sort of mobile phone that gave off a loud hum. She guessed they must be checking she was all of one piece. Armpits, ribs, buttocks, thighs, backs of her legs, stomach, pubis, face, hair, hands, feet, back, coccyx. They did not touch her with their instruments: these were like red-eyed crickets all chirruping on the same note a couple of centimetres from her skin. She helped them by raising her arms, opening her mouth, spreading her legs. She felt a sudden surge of panic: what would happen if they found something wrong? Would they send her back?
Another man had joined their group, but he stayed in the background, near the exit, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, as though waiting for the others to finish before it was his turn. He was a platinum blond with a firm jaw and reflecting glasses. He looked like a bad-tempered Aryan, and perhaps that is what he was. A mobile phone cable sprouted from his right ear. Clara saw the red tag in his lapel: he was a security guard. I should start recognising them: the dark blue label is Conservation, the red one is Security; Art is turquoise ...
'All done,' said the woman. 'In the name of the Bruno van Tysch Foundation, I wish you a happy stay in Holland. Please, if you have any doubt, any problem, or if there's anything you need, call us. You'll have a number you can call Conservation on. You can ring at any time of the day or night. Our colleagues will be delighted to help.'
'Thanks.'
'Now we'll leave you in the capable hands of the security people. I should warn you that Security will not speak to you, so don't waste time asking them questions. But you can always talk to us.'
'What about Art?'
These simple words had a surprising effect. The woman's eyes opened wide; the men turned towards Clara and gesticulated; even the guard appeared to smile. It was the woman who spoke.
'Art? ... Oh, Art does what it likes. Art has its own agenda, none of us knows what that is, and there's no way we could know.'
Clara recalled the long silences on the phone while she was being stretched, the clauses of the contract she had signed. ‘I understand,' she said.
'No, no,' the woman responded unexpectedly. 'You'll never understand.'
They gave her some plastic slippers which she hurriedly put on. So far she was not damaged, so why run any risk at the last moment? Then they put the plastic tunic back on. She realised they had not returned the top and miniskirt, but that was not important. The tunic moulded itself around her naked body. The security man set off and Clara followed him slowly, the plastic swishing as she walked along. They left by the back door. As they passed the next room, she thought she caught a swift glimpse of a naked old man with a primed body and yellow labels. His eyes were gleaming. Clara would have liked to pause for a moment and say hello to him, but the security man was striding off unconcerned. They soon came out into a silent private parking lot. The vehicle waiting had more than enough room for her. It was a dark-coloured van with a back door and two more up by the driver. There were no windows in the rear part, so that the canvas was protected from prying eyes. The back section had optional seating, but all of them had been removed except for one, to give her even more space. Clara could have stretched out on the floor easily without reaching the driver's seat, but instead she was strapped in by four seat belts that the driver snapped shut with his gloved hands. Clara found she was pinioned to the seat back.
The journey was as brief as a dream. Through the front windscreen she could make out green road signs: Amsterdam, Haarlem, Utrecht; arrows, lines; phosphorescent signs. The night was streaked with power pylons, or perhaps they were telegraph posts, which caught the van's speeding headlights. The security man drove in silence. Clara soon realised they were not heading for Amsterdam. The lights she had seen when they left Schiphol airport began to die away, which must mean they had turned off the main highway. Now they were in the countryside. A sudden cold sensation gripped her. For just a moment she was filled with an absurd thought. Could they be heading for Edenburg? Would the Maestro receive her that very night? But what if all this was a dream, and it was not Van Tysch who was going to paint her, as she had been imagining since she found out who had contracted her? She scolded herself for thinking this way. A good painting had no right to get emotional. She had too much experience for that. She was a twenty-four-year-old canvas, for goodness' sake. She had started out with The Circle and Brentano had painted her on three occasions. Eight years in the profession was too long for her to give in to her nerves, wasn't it? I'll try to stay calm. You must feel distant from everything that happens to you. What was it that Marisa Monfort always said? Be like an insect. Like someone who has forgotten their own name. A linen canvas plaited with white lines. Someone once told her memories are lines on white nothingness: we have to rub them out, we have to be different, we have to not he.
She had no idea how long it was before she began to notice the van was slowing down. The headlights picked out scrawny trees. A track. She caught sight of wheelbarrows, rakes, buckets, objects that reminded her of the garden tools which helped her father enjoy the summers in Alberca. The man from Security drew up outside a hedge. He got out, opened the gate, then drove the van inside. Soon afterwards he had parked and undone Clara's seat belts. As soon as she stepped down on to the gravel in her plastic slippers, she realised this could not be Edenburg. But it did not seem to be any other town either. The lights showed it was some kind of market garden. To the right and left, she could see the night was not invulnerable, there were signs of civilisation, a row of lines which perhaps betrayed the presence of houses or factories, or even some kind of airport or small village. It was cool, and the wind was tugging at the edges of her tunic. The moon was a curved, clipped length of wire. She sniffed the air: it smelt of woods and marsh. The smell of the earth became distinct in her mouth, as if she were tasting it. She pushed back a fleck of hair from her eyebrow-less face. At her feet, her shadow on the gravel was dark and twisted.
The man from Security waited for her, and then the two of them walked towards the house. It was a small, one-storey affair, with a porch and little else of note, as though it were waiting for her to arrive to start to exist. The crickets were tapping out their night-time morse code. I'm sure all this will be very nice in the morning, but at the moment it's a bit scary, Clara thought. As they climbed the few steps up to the front of the house, the sound of the man's shoes on the wooden boards reminded her of a horror movie she had seen years earlier with Gabi Ponce.
There was a glint of keys. The inside of the house smelt of bathroom fresheners. There was a small hallway, with a staircase on the right and, to the left, a closed door. Clara suddenly noticed that the light switches to all the rooms were in the hall. The man flicked them on, and light filled the house, revealing what appeared to be part of a living room on the far side of the staircase: white walls, cream doors, a full-length mirror on a mobile frame, and a floor of white wood. Clara later discovered the whole house had the same parquet. The black lines of the gaps and the white of the boards made the floor look like a sheet of paper for calligraphy or for a study of perspective foreshortening. The closed door on the left opened into a simple kitchen. The other half of the living room stretched to the back of the house, parallel to the kitchen. A sofa, a faded carpet (once a crimson colour?), a small chest of three drawers that had a telephone on it, and another full-length mirror, were all the furniture she could see. Placed opposite each other, the two mirrors suggested infinity. There was only one ornament on the walls: a framed, medium-sized photograph. It was a very odd one. It showed the head and shoulders of a man facing away from the camera, on a black background. His dark, well-cut hair and his jacket blended in so well with the surrounding shadows that only his ears, the half-moon of his neck and the shirt collar were visible. It reminded Clara of a Surrealist painting.
The bedroom was on the right. It was a big room, with a mattress on the floor and no other furniture. The mattress was a bright blue. A door led to the bathroom, already equipped for hyperdramatic needs. A couple of bathrobes were hanging on th
e back of the door.
The man had gone into all the rooms. Rather than showing her the house, he seemed to be inspecting it. Clara was looking at all the things in the bathroom when she saw a shadow over her shoulder. It was him. Without a word, he bent down and started to lift off the plastic tunic. She understood what he was trying to do, and raised her arms to help. The man finished removing the tunic, folded it up, and put it into a big bag. Then he bent down again and look off her slippers, which he stored in the same bag. Then he left the room, bag under his arm. She heard his footsteps across the floorboards, the door, the lock. She breathed in deeply as she heard the sound of the van engine fade into the distance. She left the bedroom and went to the front window just in time to see the pen of light drawing parallel lines across the darkness. Then everything was black again.
She was alone. She was naked. But she didn't feel at all bothered by this.
She went up to the front door and examined it. Locked. She tried the window and found it was locked too. She tried all the windows in the house as well as a back door she discovered in the living room, and found that none of them would open without keys. She preferred to think of it another way: she was not locked in, she was in storage. She was not alone, she was unique.