Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

The sun began to cross the window, and brushed at her feet. As it climbed her shins, her primed skin sparkled. Occasionally she was startled by the noise of an engine or the fleeting passage of a vehicle on the lane outside. But calm soon returned.

A short while later, the kitchen door opened and Gerardo came in. He had taken his jacket off, and his sleeveless T-shirt with the Foundation logo showed off his biceps. He was fiddling nervously with the turquoise-coloured label with his name and photo on it. He opened the fridge, appeared to think better of it, closed it without taking anything out, and sat down opposite her at the far end of the table. Poor thing, thought Clara from her personal nirvana, infinitely compassionate.

'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…'