Art of Murder

Unique and stored in a locked house.

  She was a precious object.

  She went into the living room and looked for the phone. It was cordless. She picked it up. A dead silence. She saw a dark blue rectangle next to the receiver, a card with a number on it. She guessed it must be Conservation's details ('You can ring at any time of the day or night') but it would be useless if the phone was not working anyway. She followed the cable back and saw it was properly connected. She tried again, tapping in numbers haphazardly. The phone was dead. She dialled the number on the card. As her finger touched the last digit, she heard the call go through. So it worked in certain cases. She hung up. She immediately knew what was going on.

  You can ring us, but only us.

  Of course.

  She gazed around at the silence, the emptiness of the lined floor. The house was anonymous and naked, just like her. She ran her hands over the incredible smoothness of her primed thighs, the harsh rigidity of the labels attached to her body, and looked all around her. She needed to start from scratch, and that was where she was, at the start of everything, polished, smooth, reduced to a minimum, labelled.

  Having nothing better to do, she approached one of the mirrors.

  It was then that she discovered her body was nothing more than a sheaf of lines.

  Her father's scrawny, angular features bent over her, distorted by their proximity: the majestic nose, the big square glasses in which she could see the reflection of an oblong copy of herself. He spoke to her in a voice that seemed to come from a long-lost recording:

  'What a sad life, a sad life; the fact is, I've no idea why I was born. How I wish I had an objective, a goal in life like you do, that would help me understand why I was born, but above all why I vanished, daughter, it's so sad, why I had to leave when you were so young, when I did not know you properly. I'd like to know why I abandoned you so soon, why I can't live with you any more. Maybe all that, the bitter separation, is due to the fact that you have to be ready, because the cameras are waiting for you, the stage is set, the dialogue is written, and the lights . . . look how brilliant the lights are ... all for you, my beautiful daughter. And the faces watching you, staring at you: the director, the producer, the make-up artist . . . Come on, on to the set. I'm looking at you, watching over you, I'm not going to close my eyes. I have to look at you forever, daughter . . .'

  Her father poked out his tongue and anxiously licked his top lip. The tongue was a tiny line darting in and out...

  When Clara woke up she was on the verge of tears, or perhaps had already been crying: it is hard to tell if there are no actual tears to give the game away. She remembered her dream vividly, although she had no idea what it meant. She often dreamt of her father: he was a figure who was always part of her consciousness, someone who visited her with astonishing regularity. Uncle Pablo had once confessed he also dreamt of him. He put it down to the fact that his brother had died. 'Dead people always appear when we dream,' he used to tell her, adding that our only possibility of eternal life was to figure in other people's dreams.

  She was lying on the bedroom mattress in the bleary light of dawn. As she stood up, she was struck by the white plaster on the wall in front of her, and the lines on the floorboards. She was still naked apart from her labels, but neither the fact that she had no clothes, sheets or blankets to cover her, nor the three labels attached to her body, had been able to disturb her blissful sleep. She sat on the edge of the mattress with her feet on the floor and wondered what she should do next.

  It was then she heard voices.

  The sound came from the living room. There were at least two people, and they were speaking Dutch. They were laughing, shouting, from time to time. Perhaps the noise they had made coming into the house was what had woken her.

  She did not think they could be people from Conservation or Security. Perhaps they were workmen who had come to install something, or cleaners (how absurd). It could also be the first hyperdramatic rehearsal, an improvised scene they were putting on for her benefit. Or perhaps it was the artist himself, the painter who had contracted her, who had come with his group of assistants to examine the material for himself. Whoever it was, she needed to prepare herself.

  She went into the bathroom, urinated (her bladder was full to bursting, but she only now realised this), then washed herself carefully with wet paper towels. She rinsed her face with water, smoothed her hair (none of this was necessary: her face was already shiny clean, her hair looked perfect); for a few moments her mind wandered to thoughts of dresses, colours, accessories, ways of presenting herself to strangers, what the best combinations might be, until she suddenly remembered she was not in her own apartment, but somewhere in Holland, and that anyway she was a primed and labelled canvas and that she should appear exactly as she was to whoever had arrived at the house. She took a deep breath, walked across the bedroom, and opened the door.

  Two men were walking to and fro between the front door and the living room.

  The older of the two was struggling with a large canvas bag and did not see her as he went by. He had thinning hair, and wore a dirty T-shirt and jeans. He had long, hairy, almost ape-like arms. Behind thick glasses, his eyes looked like a pair of insects stuck in amber. But what caught Clara's attention was the turquoise-coloured label attached to a fold in his ‘I-shirt. Someone from Art, she thought with a shudder. He was the first member of that select circle she had ever met. She held her breath like a believer in the presence of one of the great patriarchs of her faith. So they were from the Art department of the Van Tysch Foundation, no less: assistants of the Maestro and Jacob Stein. They were not as she had imagined, with their ordinary-looking faces and rather ragged appearance, but still the sight of the label set her heart racing.

  The other man seemed very young. He had just left a bag on the carpet, and was now busy raising the blinds over the back windows, flooding the room with the dawn light. He said something in Dutch and turned round. As he did so, he discovered Clara standing in the doorway. He stood looking at her. She smiled faintly, but thought that to present herself would be inappropriate. At that moment, the older man also dropped his bag on the floor, and saw her too.

  'Well, well, well,' the younger man said in Spanish, taking a few steps towards her.

  He was tall and tanned, with a crewcut of black hair. Clara liked his face: thick but well-defined eyebrows, sideburns curled like commas, a moustache and beard straight out of a Three Musketeers film. He was wearing African necklaces, earrings, bracelets and leather wristbands. The badges on his jacket were a compendium of slogans in Dutch. Beside him, the older man looked like the hunchback servant of a diabolical professor. The contrast between them could not have been greater.

  They said something in Dutch, pointing at Clara. She stood quietly and calmly in the doorway, making no attempt to cover her naked body.

  Once they had finished their brief dialogue, the younger one put his hand in his jeans pocket and took something out. It was a pair of pliers, with sharp, curved edges. He came over to Clara, smiling. Instinctively, she took a step backwards.

  'The very first thing we do with anything we are going to prepare,' he said in a singsong Spanish with a South American accent, lifting the pliers to Clara's neck, 'is to get rid of the labels.'

  Snip, snip, snip, and the three yellow pieces of cardboard fell at her feet.

  She tensed her stomach muscles so that Gerardo could paint the eighth vertical line next to her navel. Gerardo wore rubber gloves and had a felt tip hanging round his neck which he used to write the number of the colour on her skin. She hardly felt him press as he wrote. Now he was using the felt-tip to draw an arabesque, a butterfly's wings under the eighth line: 8. Then he took off his gloves and started the timer.

  The entire morning had been spent in the same routine. Clara was lying on her back on the chest of drawers, hands behind her neck and her legs dangling over the edge. She felt a little confused. She had always thought that the technique the Fou
ndation's artists used must be more impulsive even than that of Bassan or Vicky, and yet here were the two men painstakingly testing colours all over her body. Gerardo was the one who painted her: he prised the lid off a tin, smeared some on his forefinger, drew a line on her stomach, then wrote the number under the line. After every three or four lines, he set up the timer and left her alone while he waited for the different colours - all of them shades of pink - to dry. Then he came back, opened another tin, and began the whole process all over again.

  They had not told her their names: she had read them on their turquoise-coloured labels, next to their photos. The young one was Gerardo Williams. The older man, Justus Uhl. Clara supposed they were assistants of the main artist. Gerardo spoke Spanish very well, despite a certain Anglo-Saxon accent. She thought he could be Colombian, or maybe Peruvian. Uhl never spoke directly to her, and his way of looking at her and dealing with her was considerably more curt than Gerardo's.

  On the windowpane, between her body and the sun, an insect was buzzing against the glass: its shadow made a line, a trait, across her absolute nudity.

  The timer went off, and Gerardo returned.

  'Once we've decided on the exact tone, we'll make tests on your whole body,' he said, choosing another tin and lifting the lid. 'We'll use a porous body stocking, it's quicker. Have you ever used one before?'

  'Yes.'

  'Oh,' he said with a smile. ‘I was forgetting you're an expert.'

  'I'm no expert, but I've been working for several years as ...'

  'Don't talk ... wait a moment. Stretch out more. With your hands held together above your head, as though you were an arrow. Like this.'

  She could feel his cold finger sliding down her stomach. Then the timer again. If she closed her eyes, she could guess the number by the sensations on her skin: a curl, a line, a gap. As he was writing, his hand sometimes brushed her sex.

  'You're from Madrid, aren't you?' Gerardo asked, busy prising open the lid of another tin of paint. She nodded. 'I've never been to Madrid, believe it or not. In Spain I only know Barcelona. Someday I must go to Madrid.'

  'Where are you from?'

  'Me? From here and there. I've lived in New York, Paris, and now Amsterdam ...'

  'You speak very good Spanish.'

  From her stiff position on the chest of drawers she could see his eyebrow arch modestly. He loves being praised, she thought. Tm very good at everything, darling.' To Clara, it did not sound like a joke. ‘I can see that.'

  'Well, the truth of the matter is that my father is Puerto Rican ... this blasted tin won't open. It's shy.'

  She smiled. Could there be any tin capable of resisting D'Artagnan? she thought. She watched him frown, flush with effort, grimace. His biceps were inflating like balloons.

  'Uf, that's it.' As he was scraping out a sample with his finger (flesh pink like all the others, it was hard to tell the difference) he spoke to her again. 'Have you been to Amsterdam before?'

  'Yes.' She recalled a trip she had made years earlier with Gabi Ponce, an adventure with rucksacks and worn-out trainers. 'I saw several works by Van Tysch in the Stedelijk.'

  She could feel the cold line of paint: the first of a new row under her navel.

  'Do you like Van Tysch?' Gerardo asked.

  He still had his finger on her stomach. Was that an ironic gleam in his dark eyes? she wondered.

  'He fascinates me. I think he's a genius.'

  'Stay still for a minute. That's it... all done. I'll leave you for a bit while these dry, OK? ... It's a beautiful day outside. Do you know where we are? In one of the cottages the Foundation uses for working on canvases. It's south of Amsterdam near a town called Woerden, not far from Gouda. Yes that's right, Gouda. Mmm . . . the cheese. Do you know this area?' - Clara shook her head. 'Further to the south there are some really pretty lakes.' He stared out of the window, then said something that really surprised her. 'Down there among the trees there's a fantastic landscape. You'd look wonderful posed there, among the trees, painted in flesh and light-pink tones.' He pointed to a spot Clara could not see from her horizontal position.

  'Are you going to paint me?'

  She liked his broad smile when she said that. His mouth was perhaps a little too big, but his smile showed how pleased he was.

  'No darling, I'm only an assistant, as my label says. Justus is an assistant as well, but a senior one. We're only in the background of the photo. And we don't even appear with the important people at press conferences ...'

  'Is Van Tysch going to paint me?'

  Gerardo stripped off the gloves and threw them into a bag. Clara could not see his face as he replied.

  'All in good time, darling. Patience is a virtue in works of art.'

  At that moment, something happened. Uhl arrived and started shouting furiously at Gerardo. His annoyance was clear.

  The younger man flushed and stepped back. Clara could see it was Uhl who was in charge, and that perhaps he had criticised his assistant for talking too much to her - she was only a canvas, after all. Then Uhl turned round and stared at Clara's body stretched out on the chest. Clara gazed back at him uneasily. She hated the way those distant eyes scrutinised her from the far end of the tunnel of his glasses. She watched as he raised a finger like a knife and brought it down over her stomach. She told herself she would not move an inch unless they told her to. She tensed her muscles and waited. What's he going to do now?

  She could feel Uhl's rough finger as it brushed her primed skin. He was not wearing gloves, and was the first person to touch her with his bare hands. The finger drew a line down her stomach. Clara was unsure whether this had any real purpose or was simply a way of distracting himself while he thought. She felt the finger travelling round her sex and could not avoid flinching. The finger was drawing invisible lines. The sensation did not so much excite her as lay siege to her excitement. She held in her stomach muscles and stayed as rigid as possible. The finger moved up her body, and drew a horizontal eight - or the symbol of infinity - around her breasts. Then it carried on up to her neck, her chin. She could hardly breathe. It reached her mouth, separated her lips. Clara helped by opening her jaw. The intruder felt for her tongue. And then, as if it had discovered all it needed, it withdrew.

  They left her on her own. She could hear them chatting unconcernedly out on the porch.

  What did Uhl's exploration of her body mean? Was it a way of judging the texture of her skin? She did not think so. She had felt quite uncomfortable during his examination.

  When the timer went off, Gerardo appeared in her line of vision once more. He was wearing a fresh pair of gloves, and picked up another tin of paint.

  'Justus is the boss,' he whispered. 'He's a bit special, but you'll get used to him. Which one is it now? Oh yes, shade 36.'

  At midday they called her to eat. A plastic tray like an airline one was on the kitchen table. On it was a chicken and salad sandwich, a yogurt, an Aroxen juice, and half a litre of mineral water. She ate alone - the other two had their meal out on the porch. She was barefoot and naked, with a palisade of twenty-five, flesh-coloured and numbered lines painted on her stomach. After a rapid visit to the bathroom, the afternoon went on with no breaks. They painted another forty lines, this time on her back. The calendar of a shipwrecked sailor. The last of them climbed the curve of her buttocks. They left, came back to study the effect, occasionally took photos. Clara tried to convince herself that all this was a preamble, that the following day things would be different. She could not allow herself to admit that her first day of work for the Foundation was disappointing.

  At a certain point, it began to grow dark. She still hadn't seen the landscape around the house.

  'Don't have a shower tonight or put anything on over the lines,' Gerardo warned her. 'Lie down on your back on the mattress with the timer beside you. It will go off every two hours. Each time it does, turn over, just like a Spanish omelette.'

  'Aha, OK.'

  'We'll be back early tom
orrow morning.' 'Aha.'

  Tour dinner is in the kitchen. And remember: when you hear the timer, over you go.' He gestured with his hands. 'Like an omelette.' 'That's right.'

  Gerardo's eyes shone as he smiled at her. Uhl's voice called to him, and he hastily left the room.

  It happened in the middle of the night, the second time the alarm went off.

  Face down on the mattress, Clara woke from her light sleep. As she turned over, her eyes still unfocused, she realised the colour of the darkness was changing.

  It was very rapid, no more than the blinking of an eye. She turned her head to look out of the bedroom window on her left. All she could see were shadows, the outlines of trees and branches, yet she was sure that an instant before those shadows had been different. She leaned up, pressing her elbows into the mattress. Held her breath. Listened intently. Was that footsteps she could hear, near the window? It was hard to know, because the wind was whipping the tree branches.