Art of Murder (25 page)

'I'm staying at a motel in Schwabing. It's not a great place, but on the ground floor there's a wonderful vegetarian restaurant.' 'Fine,' said Brenda.

Marcus hailed a taxi, even though he usually took the metro in Odeonsplatz. The restaurant was small and packed at that time of night, but Rudolf, the owner and main chef, smiled when he saw Marcus and led them over to a quiet table. There would always be a table for Mr Weiss, and a bottle of wine of course -
Marcus was delighted to be received so warmly in front of Brenda. He ordered vegetable strudels and some delicious seasonal asparagus. Throughout most of the meal he talked to her about his love of Zen, meditation and vegetarian food, and of how all this had helped him become a painting. He admitted his was a
prê
t-
à
-porter
Buddhism, a tool, something to help him put up with life, but at the same time he doubted whether there was anyone in this twenty-first century who had more profound beliefs he had. He also told her stories about painters and models, which led to those mysterious, perfect lips of hers relaxing still further. But as the evening wore on, he found himself running out of things to say. This hardly ever happened to him. His friends thought of him as a good talker, and he had an excellent memory for his stories.
Now
I'll tell you about a girl called Brenda I met in Munich.
If only Sieglinde could see me now
...
All at once he realised he was crazy with desire for Brenda. This annoyed him, because he knew she had been sent to hook him, and here he was not only taking the bait but savouring it as he did so. And yet he had to admit that her friends, whoever they might be, had made a good choice: Brenda was the most tempting woman he had met in a long while. Her passivity, her way of staying mysterious while suggesting the door was half-open, only inflamed his passion still further.
Listen, I'll tell you what she was like.
He tried to conceal his feelings - he did not want her to know she had achieved her goal so quickly. But could she really not tell? Wasn't that a mocking gleam he could detect in the midnight blue points of her eyes?

'You're not German, are you?' he asked over dessert.

'No.'

'North American?'

She shook her head.

'You don't have to tell me if you don't want to
’
Marcus said. 'I won't then.'

'I couldn't give a damn where you're from.'

His lips were trembling. Hers looked as though they were carved in wood.

He settled the bill quickly, and they left. The punk on the desk at the motel seemed to have his key ready and waiting for him. His room was small and smelt of damp, but at that moment they could have been in the salons of the Residenz or a public lavatory for all he cared. He pushed Brenda into the darkness, then sought her mouth with his own. She wriggled out of his caresses, bent her knees and began to slide effortlessly down his body. Marcus groaned with pleasure when he realised what she intended to do.

It was not what he had been expecting. He had hoped to prolong things while she undressed, or while he undressed her, perhaps on the floor the way Kate Niemeyer liked it. The painter was one of his most stable recent relationships, and during her visits to Munich they had made love in his motel, her hotel or even occasionally in a museum, canvas and artist intertwined on the gallery floor. Brenda was in too much of a rush. Marcus was sure he would explode before he was even able to touch her.

'Wait
’
he murmured anxiously. 'Wait a minute
...'

But what he was fearing did not happen. She knew when to pause or to increase the rhythm, and what areas to leave untouched. After the anxious start, Brenda's mouth slipped round his penis like a scorching leather sheath, while her hands grasped his buttocks and drew him towards her. My God, but the girl was a real suction pump. Kundalini, the serpent of sexual energy, raised her bicephalic head inside him and asked what was going on. Marcus groaned, clawed at the whitewashed wall, bit his lip in a moment of complete loss of control. When it was all over, the two of them were still in the same position: he was standing leaning his forehead against the wall, the unmistakable taste of his own blood in his mouth - his lips were cracked from the solvents he had used, and he had Bitten them raw - and she was on her knees, also tasting something belonging to Marcus.

This synchronisation of fluids in their mouths struck him as having a kind of artistic symmetry.

Brenda stood up, and Marcus switched on the lights.

'Christ,' he said. 'That was good.'

There was no reply.
Friends, you can't imagine how silent this girl is.
Brenda's eyes were staring at him without blinking: black round points in a circle of blue nothingness. There was no stain on her lips. Her features - perfect, etched - had a strangely detached air to them, seemingly so independent of all emotion and involvement that Marcus could find only one word to define them: symbol. All of a sudden Marcus thought of her as symbolic, a sort of archetype of his desire. He missed only one thing in her: some slight sign of individuality, of imperfection. Questions he could find no answer to flitted through his mind: was the individual better than the archetypical? Imperfection better than perfection? Emotional than intellectual? Natural than artistic? When he realised all these musings had been provoked by having his cock sucked by her, he could almost believe he understood the tragic destiny of mankind.

He tried to kiss her again, but she turned her head away.

'Shall we sit down?'

Before she moved away, Marcus' fingers had finally managed fleetingly to touch her wonderful skin. He realised with a shock that this was the first time he had felt her naked flesh. Its texture was like a baby's, a little firmer than normal. A rather grown-up baby. On his fingertips there was a point (because that is what everything finally ends up as) of smooth oil, a viscous nothing. He did not think it was a skin cream: Brenda must have greasy skin, that was all. He had known several people like that: they always stayed young. The secret of eternal youth and of early death are one and the same: grease. Perhaps this simple, tiny reason is the origin of the sad fact that the only people who stay young«forever are those who die young.

Yet the world could not be such a bad place after all, if nature could produce beings like Brenda. Marcus promised himself he would enjoy every inch of her through that endless night.

He remembered he had a small bottle of Ballantine's. He busied himself preparing two whiskies. Brenda sat back in the only armchair in the room, and crossed her legs. She was sitting beside the bedside table where Marcus kept all his daily requirements: firming lotions, cosmetic creams, disposable lenses, sprays and hair dyes. Next to all these tubs lay a black mask. Brenda picked it up.

'Be careful with that, I need it tomorrow,' Marcus said. He was bringing over the whiskies when he suddenly came to a halt. 'Oh, shit
...
!'

He had just realised he had left his bag of paints (together with the catalogues and the feather headdress) in Rudolf's restaurant. Too late now to go and get them. Oh well, he told himself, Rudolf will keep then) for me.

Brenda put the mask back where she had found it.

'I thought you were only on show at the Max Ernst.'

Still half-thinking about the bag he had left behind, Marcus replied in an offhand way:

'No, I'm in a work by Gianfranco Gigli as well, but I'm only a substitute on Tuesdays. I'm due there tomorrow afternoon. In fact, it's mostly thanks to Gigli that I'm here in Munich. Like some more?'

'I'll have whatever you're having.'

Marcus liked her reply. He poured two large glassfuls. This was going to be a long night. Tomorrow morning I'll drop into the restaurant and pick up my bag, he thought. It's no problem.

'What gallery are you on show at for the Gigli?' Brenda wanted to know.

He was about to tell the usual lie (I go from one to another) but when he saw how untroubled she looked, he decided he had nothing to hide.

'None.'

'Have you been bought?'

"Yes,
by a hotel,' he smiled (my big secret he thought, with a stab of shame). 'The Wunderbar, do you know it? It's one of the newest and most luxurious hotels here. And its main attraction is that the decorations are hyperdramatic works. That may be common enou
gh nowadays, but when
the hotel opened it was just about the only one of its kind in all Germany. I'm the painting in a suite. What do you think of that?'

'That's OK, if you're well paid.'

She was perfectly right. With that one comment, Brenda had shown him there was nothing to be ashamed of.

'I'm very well paid. And the truth is I don't in the least mind being in a hotel. I'm a professional painting, so it's all the same to me where I'm on show. The problem is the guests staying in the suite.' He twisted his mouth, then took a sip of whisky. 'How about if we change the conversation?'

'Fine.'

Brenda did not want anything, did not ask for anything, did not show the least curiosity. She was like a hermetically sealed box, and this completely disarmed Marcus.

'Well, I guess there's no harm in your knowing. But don't tell anyone - nobody would be interested anyway. Do you want to know who those guests are?
...
It may sound ironic, but they're considered one of the greatest paintings in the history of art.' He had said the words with calculated disdain, dripping with irony. 'They are no less than the two figures in
Monsters,
by Bruno van Tysch.'

If he had been trying to provoke some reaction from the girl, he was disappointed. Brenda was as quiet and calm as ever, her legs crossed; the perfect gleam of her naked thighs, just like the shine of her shoes. Nature is more artistic than art when it imitates art, isn't it, Marcus?

Marcus was giving in to long-suppressed emotions. Now he had revealed the unpleasant side of his work to someone, there was no stopping him.

'Sometimes an odd thing happens to me, Brenda. I don't understand modern art. Can you believe it? That exhibition . . . "Monsters"
...
I suppose you've seen it somewhere, or heard about it. It's on now at the Haus der Kunst. To me, one of the great mysteries in art is trying to figure out how the creator of "Flowers" could then devote himself to creating a collection like that . . . live snakes in a girl's hair, a terminally ill patient, a cretin
..
. and those two slimy criminals I am a painting for.' He paused, took another sip of his whisky. 'It's wrong for a work of art not to understand art, don't you think?' She smiled fleetingly with him, but then Marcus' face turned serious again. 'But it's not that. It's those two pigs. I only have to put up with them one day a week, but I find it harder and harder
...
Just listening to them makes me want to
...
to throw up
...
I find it unbelievable that those two degenerates can be one of the greatest paintings of all time, whereas canvases like me end up having to act as ornaments in the rooms they stay in.'

The thought so outraged him that he raised the glass to his lips again, only to discover it was empty. Brenda was listening to him without moving a muscle. Marcus was slightly ashamed at having poured his heart out to a stranger (however hard it was for him to believe it, Brenda was still a stranger, after all). He looked down at his glass, then up at her.

'Well, we're not going to spoil a night like this by talking about work, are we?' he said. 'I've still got paint all over me. I'll have a shower and be back straightaway. Pour yourself some more whisky. Get comfortable.'

Brenda smiled faintly.

'I'll wait for you in bed.'

Under the shower, Marcus suddenly recalled what Brenda's eyes reminded him of: she had the same gaze as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's
Venus Verticordia.
He had a framed copy of the Pre-Raphaelite painting hanging in the living room of his Berlin apartment. Holding an apple and an arrow, the goddess was staring straight at the viewer, one of her breasts uncovered, as if suggesting that love and desire can sometimes be dangerous. Marcus liked Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Holman Hunt and the other Pre-Raphaelites. He thought there was nothing to match the mystery and beauty of the women they had painted, the sacred aura they gave off. But as Marcus knew, or thought he did, art is less beautiful than life, even though he had rarely found such convincing proof of this assertion as Brenda. No Pre-Raphaelite could ever have invented Brenda, and that was the reason - he suspected - why life would always have the advantage over art in their race towards reality. Who knows? Perhaps for him it was not too late for life, even if it already was for art. Perhaps life was waiting somewhere: children, a partner, stability, the bourgeois nirvana were he could find eternal rest.
Let's enjoy life, friends, for this one night at least.