Art of Murder

  But what? Clara wondered. What was there above and beyond Rembrandt? Unintentionally, almost unconsciously, she looked up. She saw darkness curled around a shadowy light, a light so dim she was not sure if her eyes were inventing it, as weak as the light from a remembered image, or a dream. A shapeless mass of shadow.

  Uhl interrupted her thoughts with a sentence behind her back. Gerardo laughed and answered him.

  'Justus says he'd love to know Spanish so he could understand what we're talking about. I told him we're talking about God and Rembrandt. Ah, look ... on that wall is where they're going to put Christ on the Cross, and further on . . .'

  Clara could feel fingers touching her own. She let herself be led to the guide rope. The feeble glow from the lights helped her make out the contours of a fabulous garden.

  'This is where Susanna will be. Can you see the steps at the edge of the water in the pool? The water won't be real, it'll be painted, like everything else. The lighting will be from above, and the main colours will be ochre and gold. What do you reckon?'

  'That it's going to be incredible.'

  She heard Gerardo laugh, and felt his arm going round her shoulders.

  'You're the incredible one,' he murmured. 'You're the most beautiful canvas I've ever worked on . ..'

  She did not want to pause to consider what he might mean by that. Over the past few days she had hardly spoken to him in her breaks and yet, however strange it might seem, she had felt closer to him than ever. She remembered the evening a fortnight earlier when Van Tysch had appeared, and Gerardo had painted her features, and the way he had looked at her while he was holding up the mirror. In some unfathomable way, she thought, both of them had helped recreate her, give her new life. But whereas Van Tysch had solely painted Susanna, Gerardo had also helped define Clara, to sketch a new, still diffuse Clara, still dark and undefined. At that moment, she did not feel she had the strength to consider all that this discovery implied.

  They emerged from the far end of the horseshoe, out through Van Tysch's dark back, and stood blinking in the daylight. It was not a sunny day, far from it: the sun was having difficulty breaking through a grey veil of clouds covering the sky. But compared to the sublime pitch-black darkness they had just left, Clara felt she was looking at a blindingly hot summer's day. The temperature was perfect, despite an unsettling wind.

  'It's almost noon’ said Gerardo. 'We should go to the Atelier in the Plantage district to get you ready and have the Maestro sign you.' As he gazed at her, an inscrutable smile stretched his cheeks. 'Are you ready for eternity?'

  She said she was.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow was the day.

  She could feel the sheets rub against her labels, and the signature like a child's hand on her ankle: something that neither hurt nor pleased her, but was simply there.

  'Tomorrow I'll begin eternal life.'

  After the signing session, she had been taken to her hotel. There was a security guard keeping watch on her, even in her room, because now she was an immortal work of art. And they have to prevent at all costs any immortal work dying, she thought, smiling to herself.

  It had happened around five in the afternoon. Gerardo and Uhl had taken her to the Old Atelier, the sprawling complex of buildings the Foundation used in the Plantage district. There they had painted her in one of the cabins with two-way mirrors in the basement. They had let her dry, then put on a padded dress and led her to the signing room. Nearly all the 'Rembrandt' works were there. Clara saw some incredible sights: two models hanging by their ankles next to a constructed ox carcass, a regiment of bloody riders; a wonderful dream mixing Dutch Puritan clothes and the nakedness of mythological flesh. She saw Gustavo Onfretti nailed to a cross, and Kirsten Kirstenman stretched out on an operating table. She met for the first time the two old men of Susanna; one of them gaunt, with a penetrating gaze, the other as solid as a wardrobe. She recognised the first of them immediately, despite the paint obscuring his face: he was the old man she had seen being checked in the room next to hers at Schiphol airport. Both of them were wearing flowing robes, and the tones of their faces denoted lasciviousness and liver problems. She hardly had time to speak to them, because she had to be placed in position on the podium: naked, crouching at the feet of the First Elder, completely Susanna, completely defenceless.

  A long time went by before Van Tysch and his assistants appeared. Clara thought Gerardo and Uhl were among them. Perhaps also there was the black assistant she had seen getting out of a van a fortnight earlier. Curled up on the ground, she saw a procession of women's calves, and barefoot men and women go past: probably sketch models. Then the dark tubes of Van Tysch's black trousers. Phrases in Dutch. Van Tysch's voice. Other voices. The sound of implements. Someone had switched on a bright light and was shining it on her. Then the buzz of the electric tattoo needle.

  Clara had been signed on many occasions. She was well aware of the physical sensation when a painter signed part of her body with any kind of delicate instrument. But this was completely different. It was like the first time. To be a Van Tysch original was different. She felt as though she had reached an end, had been finished. At twenty-four, she was complete. But beyond this ecstatic feeling of being finished, who would understand her? Who could go with her in her journey into darkness? Who would help make her transition to the sublime an easy, quick one? All at once, in the split second before the tattoo needle touched her, she stopped thinking and wishing. She felt a kind of empty dark sensation inside herself, as if she had stepped outside her body and had switched off the light. Now I'm thinking like an insect: she remembered Marisa Monfort's advice when she was priming her memories. Now I'm a real work of art.

  Something was tickling her left ankle. She could feel the needle circling round as it drew 'BvT' on her bone. Of course she did not even look at Van Tysch while he was doing this. She knew he wasn't looking at her either.

  And now in the hotel, on that first night, she was waiting.

  Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow she would be on show for the first time.

  When at last she fell asleep, she dreamt that she was once again outside the door to the attic in the Alberca house, except that she wasn't an eight-year-old girl, but a twenty-four-year-old woman who had been signed on the ankle by Van Tysch.

  Even so, she was desperate to get into the attic. 'Because I haven't seen the horrible yet. I'm a Van Tysch painting, but I still haven't seen the horrible.' She went up to the door and yanked it open. Someone stopped her with a hand on her arm. She turned, and saw her father. He looked terrified. He was shouting something as he tried to prevent her going into the room. Gerardo was standing next to him, shouting as well. It was as though they wanted to save her from a mortal danger.

  But she struggled free from all the hands keeping her back, and ran towards the dark depths.

  6

  Because in the depths there is only darkness.

  April Wood opened her eyes. At first she could not remember where she was or what she was doing there. She raised her head and saw she was in a broad bed in the middle of a darkened room. She slowly realised this must be the Vermeer Hotel, and that she had arrived in Amsterdam to watch the Maestro signing his works at the Old Atelier. In theory, the session was private, but Foundation staff could attend if they so wished. Wood wanted to see the finished works in their poses, to get to know them as well as the Artist doubtless did. As soon as the signing was over, she had come back to the hotel and gone to bed, so doped up with sleeping pills she had not even taken off her clothes. She was still wearing the tight black suit with a silver thread she had gone to the Atelier in. She glanced at her watch: 20.05 on Friday 14 July, 2006. Less than twenty-four hours to the opening of 'Rembrandt'.

  There was a big mirror on the far wall of the room. She got up and considered herself in it. She looked dreadful. She remembered she had almost fallen unconscious. The imprint of her head still hollowed the pillow.

  She unzipped her suit, stepped out of it and
threw her clothes on the floor. The bathroom was wall-to-wall marble. She pressed the light switch and turned on the shower. As a warm jet of water sprayed over her body, she mentally went over what she knew. What did it amount to? A lot of opinions, and thirteen terrible possibilities.

  After talking to Hirum Oslo on Tuesday, she had called several other critics from London. She had given them all the same excuse, except for Oslo (why did you tell him the truth, she wondered): that she had to draw up a list with the most valuable, intimate and personal works by Van Tysch in order to place the security people properly. So far, none of the critics had refused to give their opinion. The Maestro, on the other hand, had refused to see her. April could not object: he was her boss, and his only obligation was to pay her. 'He's very tired,' said Stein, to whom she had spoken the previous afternoon in the Atelier. 'After Saturday, he's going to shut himself away in Edenburg. He doesn't want anyone to see him.' Stein himself seemed exhausted. 'We've reached the end,' he had told Miss Wood. 'The end of a creative act is always sad.'

  Miss Wood stepped nimbly out of the shower. The huge hotel towels were like bearskins. As she wrapped herself in one, she glanced down at the electronic weighing scales at her feet. She forced herself to avoid the temptation. It was not too much effort: the temptation was there like a dull ache, an uncomfortable sensation lodged somewhere in her brain. But Miss Wood knew that if she gave in over small things like that, she would immediately be defeated by much bigger ones. She did not want to know what she weighed: or rather, she did, but she was not going to find out. She knew she had put on weight, she could feel it in the outline of her hips and waist, but she had decided to diet and only have fruit juice with vitamins. And to concentrate even harder on her work.

  She took a deep breath, left the bathroom, sat down on the bed still draped in the towel, and breathed in deeply one, two, three more times. So long as she was wrapped in the towel, there was no need for her to look at herself in the mirror. She was fat as a pig, a real sight, but the towel preserved her dignity. Of course, she could always get dressed, that is, to try to reach the wardrobe where her clothes were, and disguise the revolting mass of blubber in a blouse and trousers. She preferred not to think of what might happen if she could not fit into her trousers, if the zip could not overcome the rolls of fat.

  Several minutes went by before she could feel her anxiety subsiding. She went over to the chest of drawers, opened her briefcase, and took out the file she had printed out the day before with the list of critics and the photos Bosch had sent her from Amsterdam detailing the exact position of each of the works in the Tunnel. Her hands were trembling as she laid them out on the bed, and sat in front of them like a Red Indian outside his wigwam, still enveloped in her towel.

  The list was very striking. Some critics had voted for more than one painting. She had added up the total score in points. It was like a competition, she thought, but the prize for the winning work would be ten slashes from a portable canvas cutter.

  Christ on the Cross 19

  The Syndics 17

  The Anatomy Lesson 14

  Bethsabe 12

  The Night Watch 11

  The Jewish Bride 10

  The Feast of Belshazzar 7

  The Slaughtered Ox 2

  Young Girl Leaning on a Windowsill 1

  Titus 1

  Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 1

  Susanna Surprised by the Elders 1

  Danae 0

  For the moment, it was the Christ in the lead. But The Syndics, with the figures of Tanagorsky, Kalima and Buncher, was close behind. Hirum Oslo had called her on Wednesday with his vote: Christ on the Cross.

  The Christ and The Syndics. One of them was in danger. Usually the great art critics did not make mistakes. Or did they? Could art be made into an objective science? Wasn't it the same as trying to determine what a poet might have meant by a strophe written in the distant past? What if she took the risk and prepared a trap with the Christ and The Syndics, only to find that the Artist destroyed Titus or Jacob Wrestling with the Angel? What if Danae, the only painting no expert had linked to Van Tysch's life, was the chosen one? How far can any critic know what lies hidden in the soul of an artist he has studied and admires? How far can the painter himself know? What about the Artist? How much did he know about Van Tysch? Miss Wood knew straightaway that if the Artist knew the painter better than anyone else, then her plan would fail.

  If you let yourself be defeated by small things, you'll immediately lose out in big ones. She had no intention of letting that happen.

  She put the papers back in her briefcase, crossed in front of the mirror with eyes closed, unwrapped the towel next to the wardrobe, and chose her clothes carefully. Everything must be perfect, and it will be perfect.

  She had said the magic words. Would she need the magic oath as well? As a little girl, these rituals had been very effective. Whenever her father posed her against a wall, with flowers in her hair, her mouth and nipples painted, and a piece of cloth covering her pubis, so that he could take photos of her, Miss Wood swore the magic oath. It had a specific aim; it was like an offering to the iron god of her willpower. And often the oath had worked. I swear I'm going to keep up this pose, to stand still like this and stay here in the sun without moving a muscle.

  She could not put the blame on her father for all she had suffered. When it came down to it, he had only wanted life to be better for both of them. How can someone be guilty for wanting what everybody in the world wants? Now her father was dying in a London hospital. She had gone to see him for the last time a few hours before she took the plane to Amsterdam. Of course, sunk as he was in the layers of his illness, he had not recognised her. April Wood had stood there observing him through her dark glasses. She had wanted to share with him this tiny slice of his death. You're not guilty of anything, Poppy, she had decided. Nobody is guilty, thought Miss Wood, the small portion of guilt that is ours is more than paid for in this life, which is hell enough.

  The existence of heaven might be a question of faith, but there was no possible discussion about hell. No one could be an atheist about hell, because hell existed, it was here, this was it. There's nothing more, Poppy, and you've paid all your debts. That was her prayer at his bedside. Then she left.

  Robert Wood had been an ambitious person, but to April Wood the difference between 'ambitious' and 'successful' lay entirely in the fact that the former had failed. Her father had been a failure. Nobody could have foreseen this failure when he left England and set himself up in Rome, first of all as an assistant at an international art dealer's, and then as a private dealer himself. For several years, things had gone very well for him, thanks to the growing boom in Italian hyperdramatism. My God, artists like Ferrucioli, Brentano, Mazzini or Savro owed everything to him. Signor Wood had spotted the importance of works such as Genevieve and Jessica painted by the young Ferrucioli, and had earned him huge sums of money. He had sensed that human artefacts would be a force to be reckoned with long before his less perceptive colleagues. And unlike other hypocrites, he had not closed his eyes and pretended to be scandalised by child or adolescent art. He had even defended Brentano's early work, his most extreme, toughest creations, and dismissed as 'whitened sepulchres' those who protested at the real scenes of girls whipped and imprisoned in iron cages, because he knew those very same people were the ones who bought 'stained' art clandestinely. Italian art owed a great deal to Robert Wood, but none of the artists had returned him the favour. That was something April Wood could not forgive.

  For a few years, everything had gone well: her father had grown rich, had bought a wonderful villa near Tivoli, he had a wife who loved him, and a daughter who was growing more fascinatingly beautiful every day in front of his eyes.

  When exactly had things started to go wrong? When had her father started to nose-dive, and to take his family with him? It was hard to tell. She had still been a little girl. Her mother had been the first to leave. April preferred to stay - a
mong other reasons, because her mother hated her. It was as if she also blamed her for her husband's failure. Following the divorce, Robert Wood had found himself on his own. Who now remembered the signor who had stirred the awareness and the wallets of the Italian collectors? But his beautiful only child did not abandon him. Could she possibly blame him for trying to convert her into art?

  It's true though, there was one small detail you didn't take into account, Poppy: I was very young, and didn't understand. I was only twelve or thirteen. You should have explained things better. Told me, for example, that you wanted to do it for my sake, not just so you could sell me to a great painter, but for my own sake, to make me into something great, something eternal, something that in some way would immortalise you.

  One day a second-rate artist visited them. She had been told she must obey this painter's instructions so that the photos he took would be attractive, and then important painters would want to use her. The man took her into the garden and began to sketch her while her father was photographing her from the porch. Over the next six hours, April was put into more than thirty different poses. Her father forbade her from eating or drinking anything during sessions like these: maybe he was right, because works of art were not allowed to eat or drink when they were posing, but it was very hard on her. She was exhausted, and perhaps for that reason could not quite get it right, or perhaps the painter wanted her to make even more effort: the fact is, they started an argument and her father came out. 'I'm doing it properly!' she shouted at him. Then she saw him take his belt off. April can still remember he did not hit her with all his strength, but she was naked, and was only twelve, so the blow was ferocious. She ran off wailing. Her father called her back: 'Come here.' Trembling, she came back to him, only to receive another blow. All this took place while the painter looked on calmly.