Jose Somoza - Art of Murder

Tes, now. Tell me what you're thinking. Tell me exactly what you're thinking right now.'

She started to speak, almost without the words needing to pass through her brain.

'I am thinking that I've never felt this way with any painter before. That I have surrendered to you. That my body does what you tell it to almost before you even say it. And I'm thinking my mind has to surrender, too. That's what I was thinking when you asked me what had happened.'

When she finished it was as though a weight had been lifted. She thought about it. She found she had nothing more to confess. She remained silent like a soldier waiting for orders.

Van Tysch took off his glasses. He looked bored. He muttered a few words in Dutch, then took a handkerchief and a small bottle out of his pocket. Somewhere in the heavens a plane roared by. The sun was in its dying moments.

'Let's get rid of those features,' he said, wetting a corner of the handkerchief in the liquid and approaching her once more.

She did not move a muscle. Van Tysch's finger inside the handkerchief rubbed roughly at her face. As it came down towards her eyes, Clara forced herself to keep them open, because he had not told her she could close them. Distant images of Gerardo reached her like remote echoes. She had felt good when he painted her face, but now she was pleased Van Tysch was going to rub it all out. It had been yet another act of clumsiness by Gerardo, like a child scribbling in the corner of a canvas Rembrandt was considering using. She was amazed Van Tysch had not protested.

When he had finished, Van Tysch put his glasses back on. For a moment, she thought he was not satisfied. Then she saw him put away the bottle and the handkerchief.

'Why are you scared someone might break into your house at night?'

'I don't know. It's true, I've no idea. I don't think anything like that has ever happened to me.'

'I saw the night-time footage we took of you, and I was surprised at the terror on your face when my assistants came near the window. I thought we might be able to fix an expression like that. To paint it, I mean. And perhaps I will. But I'm after something better than that. ..'

Clara did not say a word. She just went on staring at him. Behind his head, the sky was going dark. 'What did you feel when your father died?'

‘I felt pretty bad. It was just before Christmas. I remember it was a very sad Christmas. Over the next year I gradually began to feel better.' 'Why did you blink?'

‘I don't know. Maybe it was your breath. When you speak, you breathe on my face. Do you want me to try not to blink?' 'What did you feel when your father died?' 'Very sad. I cried a lot.'

'Why do you get so excited if someone breaks into your house at night?'

'Because… excited? No, it doesn't excite me. It frightens me.' 'You're not being sincere.'

This took her by surprise. She responded with the first thing that came into her head. 'No. Yes.'

'Why are you not being sincere?' ‘I don't know. I'm frightened.' 'Of me?'

‘I don't know. Of me.' 'Are you excited now?' 'No. A little, perhaps.'

'Why do you always reply in two contradictory ways?' 'Because I want to be sincere. To say everything that occurs to me.'

Van Tysch seemed vaguely annoyed. He took some paper out of his jacket pocket, unfolded it and did something extraordinary. He flung it in her face.

It struck her and floated to the plastic ground. As it fell, Clara could see it was a crumpled catalogue of Girl in Front of a Looking Glass by Alex Bassan. The catalogue contained a close-up photo of her face.

‘I saw that photo when I was looking for a canvas for one of my "Rembrandts". I was immediately taken with the luminous quality of your gaze,' Van Tysch said. ‘I gave orders for you to be given a contract, I had you stretched and primed and paid a fortune for you to be brought from Madrid as artistic material. I thought that shining light would be ideal for my work, and that I could paint you a lot better than that fellow. So why can't I? I haven't found it in any of the footage we took of you in the farm. I thought it must be related to your nighttime fears, and ordered my assistants to make the leap into the void with you in the early hours of this morning. But I don't think it has anything to do with the tension of a moment, so I decided to come here personally. Just now when I was approaching you I thought I could catch a glimpse of it for a tenth of a second. I asked you what had happened. But I don't think that it has anything to do with you. I think it exists independently of you. It appears and disappears like some shy animal. Why? Why do your eyes suddenly light up like that?'

Before she could reply, Van Tysch started speaking in a very different voice. It was an icy whisper, a galvanic current.

'I've grown tired of asking you questions to make it appear and try to fix it in your gaze, all you do is give idiotic replies so I can't find what I want anywhere. You behave like a pretty little girl with an eye on her opportunity. A beautiful body asking to be painted. You think you're very beautiful and you want to be noticed. You want to be made into something wonderful. You think you're a professional canvas, but you've no idea what it means to be a canvas, and you'll die without ever finding out. The video tapes from the farm have shown me that as a canvas, you're absolutely mediocre. The only thing that interests me in you is what you have in your eyes. There are things within us that are greater than we are, but even so are still minute. For example, your father's tumour. Tiny things that are more important than our lives. Frightening things. They are what art is made from. Occasionally, they come out: that's what we call "purging" them. It's as though we were vomiting. To me, you are less than your vomit. It's your vomit I want. Do you know why?'

She said nothing. She was pleased somehow that she had no tears, because above all she wanted to cry.

Tell me. Do you know why I want it?' Van Tysch repeated the question in an offhand way. 'No,' she murmured.

'Because it's mine. It's inside you, but it's mine.' He jabbed at his chest with his forefinger. 'That glow that sometimes appears in your eyes belongs to me. I was the one who first saw it, and so it's mine.'

He stepped back, turned round, walked away a few paces. Clara could hear him fiddling with something. When he came back, she saw he was holding a pipe he had just filled. 'So here we'll stay, just the two of us, until I see it appear.'

He brought a match flame down over the pipe bowl. The darkness around them grew deeper and deeper. He tossed the match to the ground and put it out with his foot.

'One of the advantages of a non-flammable plastic wood,' he said.

It was this strange joke, precisely this wretched joke inserted into his frozen monologue, which seemed to her the worst insult of all. She had to use all her strength to avoid saying or doing anything, to keep looking at him evenly.

‘I’m going to chase that little shining animal in your eyes out of its hiding place,' said Van Tysch. 'And when I see it come out, I'll catch it. The rest is of no interest to me.' Then after another moment, he added: 'The rest is only you.'

Clara did not know how many hours she had been standing immobile on the plastic grass, with the night air on her smooth naked body. A cold north wind had sprung up. The sky was completely overcast. A slow, deep-rooted chill that seemed to come from within her body, was boring into her willpower like a drill. But she suspected that her suffering did not come from her physical discomfort but from him.

Van Tysch came and went. Occasionally he walked up to her and studied her face in the growing darkness. Then he would scowl and move away again. Once he left the wood altogether. He was away for some time, and when he came back he was carrying what looked like fruit. He leaned back against a plastic tree and began to eat, ignoring her completely. Standing there without moving, she saw him in the distance as a dark stain with long legs, a huge, skinny spider. Then she saw him lie down on the grass and fold his arms. It looked as if he were having a nap. Clara felt hungry, cold, and had a tremendous desire to relax her pose, but none of that mattered to her at that moment. She was trying above all to hold on to her willpower.