Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man

But when he touches her, his skin is soft and warm, and his hands are the hands of a man. And when he lays her down there is no thrashing tail, no soft underbelly, like the belly of a dog; no loaded jaw against her neck. He has been transfigured; becoming human, with smooth legs, and muscles in his arms. He lifts her skirt gently above her waist, but he does not open her abdomen with the blade of a horned thumb, nor is there the pinch and tug of her liver being taken. There is dripping on her forehead, two, three anointments, and salt on her mouth that she tastes with her tongue. She says to herself, ‘I am washed clean in the blood of the lamb. I am washed clean in the blood of the lamb. Heavenly Father.’ Her mouth is carefully opened, and the braids of her hair coiled inside. He pushes her chin so that she will bite down on the dry cords. He is breathing harder as he pulls the skirt higher, above her head, arranging it around the contours of her face, like a veil. He begins to remove her underclothes and she stirs, tries to shift away, but he secures her wrists. He is patient. There is rustling, the clinking of a belt, and then the force comes, to her back and hips and up inside her. She cries out but the sound is muffled. She bites her hair, coughs as it touches her throat. There is a red piercing, and a flame licking into her. It is like the pain of the mystics, the pain of St Theresa. She is being opened like the heart of the beloved. She is being burned alive.

The Bestia does not howl loudly in the tomb and break her apart, but groans and chokes, and the pressure lifts. His shoes scrape against the floor. The wetness spills. She is thinking, now I know who you are. Does he hear her think it? Is he afraid? He is holding her down. He is pushing against her chest and it is hard for her to breathe. He is tightening the skirt across her face and she cannot spit out the braids, the hair is in her throat. Small fireworks detonate inside her skull. Her legs kick. Her eyes feel as if they will break like yolks. The fit throwing her body up will snap her ligaments and break her spine, but she cannot stop it. There is one last flash in her head, and then she calms, and her feet still. She can smell the bitterness of candlewicks blowing out, a hundred thousand candles being extinguished all at once. Then she is falling away, falling down through the stone mausoleum, down among the roots of the hillside, past the two-headed worms and the blue-black beetles, down into the darkness.

Above, the swallows are also at rest. They have swung in among the great brown girders of the viaduct and are roosting along its iron belts. When a train from the city rattles the metal joists, they will spill out like a bag of dirt shaken from a balcony, performing great spinning arcs in the air before returning once more to the black vaults once the carriages have passed.

Annette is dreaming. She is dreaming about walking the road home. As she walks down the steps, the ice in her eyes begins to melt. She is beginning to see again. There are colours and depths, and edges are slowly emerging. As she looks out over the town, she can see everything at once, in all directions. The courtyard of Castrabecco, and the summer theatre, the narrow citadel, and the tower of San Lorenzo. Citizens and children. On the tables are figs baked with polenta and roasted lemons, uncorked wine and pecorino. In the alleyways, old women are sitting in the shade, their legs crossed at the ankles, holding canes in their hands or kneading dough. Laundry flaps on the lines between buildings. At San Lorenzo Father Mencaroni is unfastening his belt and removing the wafers left on the plate, eating them one by one. Annette sees her mother weeping over the photograph of her papa, while the television hums and crackles, rearranging particles to make another world. At the gardens, Uncle Marcello is conducting a ceremony; he is naming his beautiful new lily Rosaria. Beyond the citadel, the green water of the lake is languid. Underneath its surface, fish doze between reeds, oblivious to the lures of the fishermen, and the eels are asleep under stones.

Annette can see all this, and see past it. She can see beyond the solid world of bricks and chair legs and telegraph poles, through the heavy substance of the houses and the bodies of the trees, and behind each is a little glow, a bright twitching ember. An emerald shines next to the cypress, a pearl translucence shimmers in the clouds. The spirals of the iron gates contain the orange spirit of the foundry. In the old town, cats are curled on the hot tiles, their sleek golden essences beside them. In the long meadow grass, Maurizio holds up a magazine picture of a naked woman to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. Tommaso rides his bike along the unmade road towards the cimitero di campagna. He passes a man running whose face he will not be able to remember. Her brothers each have a heart in which love blooms like a red flower. Annette sees everything twinned with light, everything immaculate.

For a while the two of them carried on in secret, and they carried on being part of a strange freewheeling threesome. He was caught between obsession and friendship, and both were impossible to walk away from. Regardless of the guilt, of which there was plenty, he loved their company, and loved their lessons: Ivan’s in craft and composition, Raymie’s in slippery reversals and dog styles. He loved the nights out in town, the long drives on new motorways. He felt that everything was coming to him, that he was part of things. He was in the scene. He was eating up life. It tasted rich and bloody.

The European exhibitions were the best, unquestionably. The work smelled serious, of paint that would take aeons to dry. There was still some old code of integrity at work on the continent. The wine at the viewings was better. Gatherings were more civilised. Even Dyas would shave with more care, so as not to leave red blotches on his chin, and he would pack a linen jacket and shirt instead of travelling with just the clothes he’d pulled from the washing line. Raymie would flex her Italian and French, which were surprisingly good. Dyas adored the middle-aged female agents who directed the shows. ‘Have you noticed,’ he would comment, ‘they always seem to know where the light switches are. It’s very impressive.’ In the warehouse bays of the museums there was no hint of cheap packaging, no suggestion of discount carriers. Carpenters had been employed to crate the paintings separately, sheathing each one like an artichoke.

The Italian exhibition at the National was their last. Peter was sick with something and Raymie was making a fuss, saying they shouldn’t go, while he was delirious (though the night before she’d still managed to get him to turn himself loose in her, in the bathroom of the Why Not). He’d palmed a double dose of aspirin, curled up on the back seat of the Sunbeam and fallen asleep, leaving them to bicker in the front. By the time they’d reached the city his temperature was in the low hundreds. He’d woken up alone, parked on a back street somewhere in Soho, the upholstery slippery with perspiration. Some kids were peering in at him, making V signs and fart noises under their armpits. He’d hauled himself out of the car, taken a painful leak in the gutter, and made his way to Trafalgar.

At the ancillary door, after an altercation with the security guard, he’d been let through. Inside the gallery, Dyas was in polite conversation with a small dark-haired man in a three-piece suit, and Raymie was standing to the side, casting her eye over a portrait. Dyas gestured for him to come over. The room was wobbling. He picked up his dead feet. ‘Ah,’ said the dark-haired man, as he approached, glancing over Peter, ‘this is the student of great renown. He looks the part, no? Molto bohemian.’ Peter realised he was sporting two different shoes and had failed to tuck in his shirt effectively. The man in the suit took hold of his elbow. ‘Come with me. I’m going to show you something as a special favour. Ivan has told me you are an admirer and have written to our great master. Come, signore.’