'Listen, I'm really sorry for what happened out there, OK?' Gerardo said after a pause.
'No, no, on the contrary,' she hurriedly replied. ‘I was silly. I'm sorry I got like that.'
They were sitting diagonally opposite each other, and had to turn their heads (Gerardo to the left, Clara to the right) to look at each other when they spoke. They listened to the reply staring at the window, the tiny rectangle of blue sky, the shadows of the clouds.
'Anyway, I wanted to tell you not to worry. If the Maestro has it in for anyone, it'll be me. You are the canvas and can't be blamed for anything, OK?'
'We'll let's be optimistic, shall we?' she replied. 'Perhaps Van Tysch is coming just to supervise the sketching. There's less than a fortnight to the opening.'
'Yes, perhaps you're right. Are you nervous?'
'A bit.'
They smiled at each other, then fell silent again.
'I've only seen him a couple of times,' said Gerardo after another pause. 'And then only at a distance.'
'You mean you've never spoken to him?'
'Never. Seriously, I'm not joking. The Maestro never talks to the assistants because he has no need to. The visible head of the Foundation is Mr Fuschus-Galismus ... I mean Jacob Stein. He's the one who calls you, contracts you, talks to you, gives you orders .. . Van Tysch has ideas and writes them down. His assistants pass them on to us, and as technical assistants it's our job to carry them out, that's all. Van Tysch is a very odd person. I imagine all geniuses are. You know his life story, don't you?'
"Yes, I've read a few things.'
In fact, Clara had devoured every single one of the painter's biographies, and knew all the few confirmed details about him.
'His life is like a fairy story, isn't it?' said Gerardo. 'Out of the blue, a North American millionaire goes wild about him, and leaves him his entire fortune. It's incredible.' He leant back, head in hands and stared at the landscape outside the window. 'Do you know how many houses Van Tysch has now? Approximately six, except they're not houses, but palaces: a castle in Scotland, some kind of monastery in Corfu . .. but do you know, they say he never visits them?'
'What does he want them for then?'
'No idea. I suppose he likes having them. He lives in Edenburg, the castle where his father worked as a restorer. People who've been there tell so many stories it's hard to know what to believe. They claim, for example, that there's no furniture, and that Van Tysch eats and sleeps on the floor.' 'That seems a bit far-fetched.'
Gerardo was about to respond when they heard a noise. A van had pulled up by the front hedge. Clara's heart started pumping, her whole body became tense. But Gerardo reassured her.
'No, it's not him.'
But it must have been someone Gerardo and Uhl knew, because they both went out to the front to greet them. A black man with a cap and a black leather jacket got out of the van. After him appeared an older, bearded man and a girl with long black hair. The girl was very short, so the hair came down to the back of her legs. Both of them were barefoot, and their legs were stained with mud and red paint, or perhaps it was blood. They had orange labels round their necks, wrists and ankles, and they looked tired. Clara recalled that orange meant they were preparatory sketches, people who trained and prepared the final sketches. The black man was young and slim, with a beard like Gerardo's. His boots were caked in mud. A few moments later, they all said goodbye, and the black man and his tired, dirty models climbed back into the van and drove off.
That was another assistant friend of ours,' Gerardo explained when he came back into the kitchen. 'He's working at a nearby farm with those preparatory sketches, but he had some news he wanted to tell us. It seems they've withdrawn the "Flowers" exhibition from the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna.'
'Why?'
'Nobody can understand it. Conservation says the canvases needed a rest, and they preferred to cut the length of time they were on show in the MuseumsQuartier in favour of elsewhere. But our friend says they're doing the same with "Monsters" in the Haus der Kunst at Munich. I've no idea what's going on. No, don't look sad like that. They're going ahead with "Rembrandt".'
By the afternoon there was still no sign of Van Tysch, and Clara could hardly bear it. Her anxiety was humanising her, stealing her existence as an object from her and turning her back into a person, into a nervous young woman who wanted to bite her fingernails. She knew that to be so anxious was dangerous. She had to ward off this enemy, because the painter could arrive at any moment, and she had to be there waiting for him shiny and calm, ready for whatever Van Tysch might want to use her as.
She decided to do press-ups. She shut herself in the bedroom, took off her robe, and lay flat on the floor with her legs slightly apart. Pushing on her hands and toes, she began a series of rapid press-ups combined with deep breathing. At first, the effect was merely to make her heart beat faster, but as she continued, up down, up down, straining her arm and leg tendons, feeling the muscles in her limbs, she eventually managed to forget herself and the situation she was in, and surrendered to the exhausting sensation of being a body, a tool.
Time went by. She did not realise someone had come into the room until they were almost on top of her.
'Hey'
She raised her head quickly. It was Gerardo. 'What is it?' she asked nervously.
'Calm down, there's nothing new. I just thought it might be better if we painted your hair so that the Maestro can tell us what he thinks of the colour.'
He did the painting in the bathroom. Clara sat astride a chair with her legs stretched out and a towel wrapped round her body. Gerardo used a cap soaked in a mahogany-red colour and a fixing spray.
'The butterfly emerging from its chrysalis,' he said, removing the cap gently. He began to put in the paint with his gloved hands. 'Isn't that what you said yesterday, when I asked you why you wanted to be a masterpiece? You said you didn't know, "but then a caterpillar doesn't know why it wants to be a butterfly". I told you it seemed to me a nice but false answer. You're no caterpillar, are you? You're a very attractive woman, even if at this very moment, with no features, primed, and your hair this red mahogany colour, you do look rather like a plastic doll who hasn't been painted yet. But underneath all the plastic, it's you who is the true work of art.'
Clara said nothing. She stared up at Gerardo's face over her shoulder.
'Shut your eyes ... I'm going to use the spray ... here goes ...' She could feel the mist of liquid on her hair. Gerardo went on:' I can understand you're upset with me, sweetheart. But do you know something? If last night's situation happened again, I'd do exactly the same all over again ... I can only go so far. I am not, and never will be, a great master of painting people .... good, the colour's looking fine ... wait, don't say anything . . . Justus could have made it, but he doesn't have the ambition. I'm incapable of scaring or hurting a girl I like, even for the sake of creating a great work of art. For me, all of hyperdrama becomes . . . you know what? ... it becomes hypercomedy. I know I'm a bit of a clown, my mother always told me so. That's right... now we have to wait a few minutes .. .'
She listened to all of this in silence. When she opened her eyes again, Gerardo had disappeared from her field of vision. The strong smell of the hairspray filled her nostrils. Then Gerardo's hands reappeared. This time they were holding a small pot of ochre paint and a fine paintbrush.
'For me there's a frontier,' he said, dipping the brush in the paint and leaning over Clara's face. 'A frontier, sweetheart, that art will never be able to cross. The frontier of emotions. On one side there are people. On the other, art. Nothing in the world can cross that frontier.'
'He's painting eyebrows on me,' she thought. She stiffened, wondering whether she ought to tell him that perhaps the Maestro did not want her to have features, but in the end she said nothing. She could feel the cold curves of the brush on her forehead.
Gerardo's hand was steady as he drew the precise firm lines of the curves, and pointed the wet dip of the b
rush down towards her eyes. She shut them, and felt something like a bird's caress: tremulous beating, then the start of the delicate fringe of her eyelashes, the frame of her gaze.
‘I believe in art, sweetheart, but I believe much more in emotions. I cannot betray myself. I prefer a thousand times a mediocre work of art to the contempt of someone I like . . .
Someone I have begun to .. . respect and to get to know ... Don't move...'
Eyebrows. Small drops of brown lashes. The faintest of touches at the corner of her eyes. Clara was about to speak, but Gerardo stopped her with a gesture.
'Silence, please. The artist is about to put the final touches to his creation.'
A line curving neatly upwards from the left side of her mouth.
'I reckon the world wouldn't be so perverse if everyone thought the same as me ... the lips are always really difficult... why have they got such a strange shape? It must be so they can tell lies.'
The line moved on downwards. To Clara it felt as though a bird were walking around the edge of her mouth.
‘I like it,' said Gerardo, standing back to get a good look at her. 'Definitely, I like it. You've turned out very beautiful. Wait, then you can see yourself.'
He picked something up from the washstand. It was a small round mirror. He came back to her.
'Ready?'
Clara nodded. Gerardo was holding up the mirror as if he was a priest with a consecrated host, and put it in front of her face.
She looked at herself.
A face with features looked back at her.
Gentle waves beneath her forehead, elliptic waves, a symmetry of ochre curves. She raised her unexpected eyebrows, amazed at her newly born way of expressing astonishment. She blinked, and felt the caress of eyelashes darting like sparrows around the language of her eyes, eyes which had never been silenced, only deprived for some time of their appearance, but now once again shone full of light. She smiled and lifted the corners of her mouth to demonstrate that a slit cut into a face could never, ever be a smile; that a real smile was what Gerardo had painted on her: a mass of shapes relaxing, a distorted volume moving at the same moment as the eyes fulfil their mission and the eyelids close. It was wonderful to have features once again.
Gerardo held up the mirror with her face floating in it like a precious gift.
'At last I can see you smile,' he said, very serious. 'And hard work it was, sweetheart. But finally you're smiling at me.'
Clara was impressed by his seriousness. She thought that perhaps she had misjudged him from the start. It was like seeing him for the first time. As if there were something inside Gerardo that was much wiser, more mature than he himself or the words he spoke. For a moment she thought that Gerardo's face had also been painted, delineated like hers, but with more indistinct shadows. It was a fleeting vision, but for that split second she thought the secret of life consisted in getting beyond the features drawn, and reaching the people who lay behind them.
She had no idea how long she sat like that, in front of the mirror he was holding up for her, looking at it and at herself. All at once she heard his voice again. But the mirror was no longer there, and Gerardo was leaning over her. His face was taut and nervous.
'Clara ... Clara, he's here ... I heard his car... Listen to me ... Do everything he asks you to .. . don't quarrel with his way of working, do you hear? ... Above all, above all, don't argue with him ... And don't be surprised whatever he asks ... he's a very strange man ... he likes to confuse his canvases ... Be careful with him. Very careful.'
At that moment they heard Uhl's voice calling them. Words in frantic Dutch, the sound of doors. They ran to the living room, but there was no one there. The front door was open, and they could hear a conversation out on the porch. They went out together, then Clara came to an abrupt halt.
There was a man with his back to her, talking to Uhl. His silhouette stood out against the evening sky: an austere, black shadow.
Uhl saw Clara and gestured to her. He was very pale. 'Let me introduce you ... to Mr Bruno van Tysch.' Then the man turned slowly to face her.
Third Step
The Finishing Touches
Now we have to define the figures: to give them a look, an identity. Not until the figures have been fully delineated in this way can we say that the work is finished.
BRUNO VAN TYSCH Treatise on Hyperdramatic Art
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master- that's all'
LEWIS CARROLL Through the Looking Glass
The figure seated behind the desk is a mature, thickset man. He is wearing an immaculate dark-blue suit with a red label attached to the top jacket pocket. He is sitting at the centre of a V-shaped desk, with three framed photos on one side of it. The light streaming in through two high windows behind him emphasises his bald patch, surrounded by tufts of white. There is a certain nobility to his features: blue eyes, aquiline nose, thin lips, and wrinkles that show the inevitable passage of time but give him a distinguished look. He appears to be listening closely to what he is being told, but if we observe him more closely, perhaps he is only pretending to concentrate. He is tired and worried, and cannot really take in what he is hearing, so he is barely following it. His head aches. And on top of all this, it's Monday. Monday 3 July, 2006.
'What's the matter, Lothar? You seem lost in space.'
Alfred van Hoore (the man speaking) and his colleague Rita van Dorn were studying him wide-eyed. At that moment (or until the moment Bosch went into his trance) they had been discussing the best distribution of security agents among the guests at the press viewing of the 'Rembrandt' collection on 13 July. Van Hoore thought extra protection was needed for Jacob Wrestling With the Angel, the only work from the collection due to be shown that day. The two agents on each side of the work were not enough - in Van Hoore's view - to prevent someone in the front row from leaping on to the plinth with a sharp instrument and damaging Paula Kircher or Johann van Allen, the two canvases who made up Jacob. He was arguing for another two agents to be placed in the centre, because an attack from there could not be repelled in time from the sides. And then there were the long-distance threats. He showed Bosch a computer simulation in which a supposed terrorist threw an object at the work from any point in the room. Van Hoore was young and loved simulations; he designed them himself. He had learned to programme them when he was coordinating security for exhibitions in the Middle East. Bosch thought Van Hoore would have liked to have been a film director: he moved the computer figures around as if they were actors, dressed them up and gave them human gestures. It was during the computer simulation that Bosch had got lost. He could not bear these silly cartoons.
'Perhaps it's because I'm tired,' he said as an excuse, drumming his fingers on the desk. 'But I do think you're making an interesting case, Alfred.'
Van Hoore's freckled face flushed.
'I'm glad,' he said. 'My reasoning is very simple: if we let Visual Security take care of the guests nobody will try anything. Any supposed terrorist would get away from them as quickly as possible. We need some of our people to form another group, which I have called Secret Visual Security. They would not wear uniforms or credentials, and would send alarm signals to the SWAT teams ...'
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel was the first original from the 'Rembrandt' collection to be presented to the public. This meant there could not be too much protection. Nobody had seen the work as yet, but it was known that the figures were Paula Kircher (Angel) and Johann van Allen (Jacob) and that it was based on the Rembrandt painting of the same name. The models would be wearing few clothes, and their billionaire bodies - personally signed by Van Tysch - would be dangerously exposed during the four-hour presentation to the press. The Foundation's Security and Conservation departments were desperately concerned.
'I wonder,' said Rita, 'why we can't change half of Visual Security into a SWAT team in
a crisis.'
Bosch was about to say something, but Van Hoore got in first.
'It's the same story as ever, Rita. Visual Security is not disguised and therefore forms part of the Foundation's official personnel. That in turn means it has to wear uniforms. But under the men's suits, specially designed by Nellie Siegel, there's scarcely enough room for a bullet-proof vest. And the women agents couldn't wear vests, or even electric stunners.'
'What the agents wear shouldn't affect their ability to protect the works,' Rita complained.
Bosch shut his eyes, wishing this also meant he would be unable to hear. The last thing he needed at this point was an argument between his assistants. His head was still throbbing.
The Foundadon is just as worried about appearance as security, Rita,' Van Hoore retorted. Unlike Bosch, he was quite happy to have an argument. 'There are no two ways about it. If there have to be ten people standing in a corner keeping an eye on everything, they ought to stand out. If possible, they should even all have the same colour hair. 'Symmetry, fiischus, symmetry,' he added, in a passable imitation of Stein's arrogant voice.