Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

In mid-afternoon there was another break. Gerardo told her there was a juice and an infusion in the kitchen. She did not feel like either, but Gerardo insisted quite forcefully. She, of course, made no attempt to put the robe on again. She went into the kitchen and found the juice, but the sachet of herbs was on the edge of the saucer, and the cup was empty. She filled it with mineral water and put it in the microwave. She did not feel at all cold or uncomfortable standing there completely naked, only rather strange: she was used to wearing some protection when she had a break and her body was painted, so the order to remain nude still surprised her. While the microwave hummed in the background, she looked at the landscape she could see out of the triangular gap in the curtains: she caught sight of tree trunks, a hedge in the distance, a path. It looked as though they were very isolated.

The microwave pinged. Clara opened the door and reached for the steaming cup. At that moment, a shadow flitted past her.

It was Uhl. He was wiping his hands on a rag, and did not even look at her as he came in. She turned the other way as well. She put the cup in its saucer and tore the sachet open. Uhl was moving around behind her. She had no idea what he was up to. She guessed he had come to get something out of the fridge, but did not hear the door. She became edgy as the silence continued. She was about to turn round to see what Uhl was doing, when all of a sudden she felt a hand between her thighs.

She started, and turned her head. She saw Uhl's eyes deep in his glasses only an inch from her face. Almost at once, his other hand gripped the back of her neck and forced her to go on looking to the front. She heard his hoarse Spanish: 'Don't move.'

She decided to obey without asking anything. The situation did not surprise her too much. In theory, she was a canvas. In theory, he was a painter. In theory, the painter could touch the canvas he was working on at any time and in any way he felt inclined to. She had no idea what kind of work they might be doing: perhaps even the fact of seizing her so brutally in the kitchen was part of it.

She breathed in to relax herself, and stayed with her hands on the edge of the sink. The fingers were feeling the inside of her left thigh very slowly, but because she was covered in oil paint, the sensation she got was not one of fingers touching her. She did not for example feel the warmth or cold of someone else's skin, or the extra sensations she might get from being stroked: it was simply the presence of two or three blunt objects moving over her flesh. They could just as well have been paint brushes.

The hand continued to climb; the other one was still gripping her left shoulder roughly. Clara tried to distance herself from those fingers which were not fingers or human flesh, but jointed rubber tubes climbing – still very calmly and gently – up the most sensitive part of her thigh. She wanted to believe it all had an artistic purpose. She knew the boundary was very difficult to establish: Vicky, for example, was constantly crossing it in both directions. The other humiliating possibility – that Uhl was abusing his position – would have led her to violently reject it. But so far she did not want to imagine this was the case.

So she stayed as still as she could, controlling her breathing, even though she knew what was the final and obvious destination of those fingers. The blue of the window, which she looked at steadily, hurt her eyes. He's in charge. He's a very strange man, but he's in charge. Could Gerardo have been preparing her for something he knew was going to happen?

The fingers spread out over her sex. Clara clenched her muscles. The fingers brushed lightly against the lips, but hesitated, as though waiting for some kind of reaction. But Clara had made up her mind not to move, to do nothing. She stood still, her legs slightly open (a triangle), her back to the painter. She held her breath, and all at once felt the fingers move away. The hand on her shoulder also disappeared. She turned her head, wondering what he would do next. Uhl was simply staring at her. His thick glasses and prominent forehead made him look like some monstrous insect. He was panting. His eyes were wild. A moment later, he left the kitchen. She heard him talking to Gerardo in the living room. She waited a few seconds, finished preparing her drink still looking towards the door, and drank it as though it were a bitter medicine. Then she did a few simple relaxation exercises.

When Gerardo called her back to work, she felt a lot more composed.

Nothing else happened that afternoon. Uhl did not touch her again, and Gerardo only gave her brusque orders. But while she was posing motionless and covered in paint, her mind was racing. Why did Uhl behave the way he did? Was he trying to abuse her, to frighten her, to stretch her the way Brentano did?

The only way for an artwork to behave in this confused, almost dreamlike world of body painting was to stay stretched and develop strategies for not surrendering, if things got any worse.

She was sure this was exactly what would happen, and soon.

She thought she would not sleep that night, but she immediately fell into an exhausted stupor.

She had no idea at what moment she felt once again that someone was watching her.

Lying naked, face down on the equally bare mattress, her mind slipped in and out of sleep. At a certain moment, the window, lit by the pale chalk of moonlight, suddenly darkened in shadow. But the shadow also made a noise in the grass.

She sat up as gracefully as a gazelle. There was no one outside the window.

Yet an instant before, a fraction of a second before there was no one, the rectangle had been filled with a silhouette. She was sure it was a man.

She sat craning her neck in the darkness until a crazy wail made her shudder with fright. Her heart in her mouth, she recognised the sound as coming from the timer. She groped along the floor like a blind woman until she found it next to the mattress, and switched it off. She did not know why it had been on, because Gerardo had told her there was no need to use it that night. Her heart was pumping the blood through her veins. The beating felt like bubbles bursting in her temples. The house was one vast silence. Yet she experienced exactly the same feeling as she had the night before. And if she strained to listen, she thought she could hear the rustle of grass in the distance.

Whatever the truth, and even taking the best interpretation into account (that for example it was a Foundation security guard, as Gerardo had said), that mysterious presence disturbed her far more than anything else. She swung her legs off the mattress and took several deep breaths. After Uhl and Gerardo had left she had taken a shower to wash the paint from her hair and body. Without oil paint all over her, the terror felt more real, more immediate, less absorbing.

She waited a few moments, and could no longer hear the rustling of footsteps in the grass. Perhaps the man had left, or perhaps he wanted to be sure she had gone back to sleep. She was far too nervous to think at all calmly. But she knew several breathing exercises that would soothe her like a balm in only a few minutes. She began with the easiest, still trying to locate the exact source of her fear.

One of the things that had always terrified her most was the possibility that a stranger might come into her room at night. Jorge laughed whenever she woke him up in the early hours to tell him she had heard a noise. Fine. Just face up to your fear and you'll conquer it.

She got up and walked across to the dark living room. Her breathing exercises had given her a false sense of calm that made her movements stiff. She had had an idea: she would call Conservation and ask for help, or at least advice. That was all she had to do. Just go over to the phone, dial the only number available to her, and talk to Conservation. After all, she was valuable material, and she was scared. She ran the risk of being damaged. Conservation had to help.