Art of Murder (26 page)

He came out of the bathroom and picked up a towel. He had taken off the Niemeyer label - he would not need it the next day. He experienced another fierce erection. He felt, if anything, even more aroused than before, when they had rushed into the room. And the drink had not affected him either. He was sure he could keep going until dawn, and with a girl like Brenda, that should be no sacrifice.

The room was in darkness again, apart from the faint light from the neon signs outside that filtered through the blinds. In the flashing gloom Marcus could make out Brenda's shape, waiting for him in bed as promised. She had pulled the sheets up to her neck, and was staring at the ceiling.
Venus Verticordia.

'Are you cold?' Marcus asked.

No reply. Brenda still did not move, staring up at a point in the darkness. This seemed like a strange way to start another love-making session, but by now Marcus was well accustomed to her odd behaviour. He went over to the bed and knelt on it.

'Do you want me to uncover you bit by bit, like a surprise package?' he smiled.

At that moment something happened that Marcus could not comprehend at first. Brenda's face trembled and turned, twisting itself at an impossible angle, like a shroud sliding off a corpse. Then
it moved.
It crawled towards Marcus' hand like a limp rat, a dying rodent. A second or two of panic, enough to provide Marcus with more than enough material for another of his anecdotes.
Now I'll tell you about the day Brenda's face came off and started moving towards my hand. It zvas some sensation, let me tell you, friends.
As though in a trance, Marcus stared at the deflated nose, lips and empty eyes scurrying across the pillow to his fingers. He drew back his hand as if he had been burnt, and gave a strangled scream of horror before he realised he was looking at some kind of mask made from a plastic material, probably silicone. The mass of blonde hair and its ponytail lay empty across the pillow, like a roof without walls.

I'm going to tell you about the day Brenda became a marble, a green pea, a nothing. I'll tell you about the horrible day when Brenda became a point in the microcosm.

He pulled back the sheets, and discovered that what he had first thought was the girl's body was nothing more than her clothing (jacket and skirt, even the shoes) twisted and screwed up. Like a schoolboy joke to make you believe someone was asleep in the bed.

But the mask
...
The mask
was what he could not understand.

He shuddered repeatedly, and his teeth chattered.

'Brenda
...'
he called out in the darkness.

He heard the noise behind his back, but he was kneeling naked on the bed, and his reaction came too late.

2

Lines.

Her body was a sheaf of lines. Her hair for example: gentle curves down the nape of her neck. Or her eyes: ellipses containing circles. The concentric rotundity of her breasts. The faint line of her navel. Or the seagull print of her sex. She stroked herself. She raised her right hand to her neck, drew it down between her breasts and the tight knot of her stomach muscles. She embraced the curve of her biceps. As she touched herself, her body felt different. Life returned: soft surfaces she could press, change the shape of; outlines where her hand could pause, sweet labyrinths for fingers or insects. She recovered her own volume.

She felt like crying, as she had done when she said goodbye to Jorge. What could she see? A yellow mother-of-pearl skin. She guessed that any hypothetical tear, flowing down vertically from her eyelid to the corner of her mouth, would also trace a line. She was not sad, though she was not happy either. Her wish to cry came from a colourless feeling, a linear sentiment that the future would doubtless find a way of painting more clearly. She was at the beginning, at the starting
line
(the exact word for it), a twisted figure waiting in the world of geometry for an artist to select her and provide her with shading and definition. And then what? She would have to wait to find out.

Apart from that, her current state could be defined as gravity
-
free. The priming process had freed her of all ballast. She was barely aware of her own self. She was completely naked, and did not feel cold or even cool; she did not feel anything that might be called 'temperature'. Despite the discomforts of the journey, she still felt awake and energetic: she could have rested equally well doubled up on herself or standing on tiptoe. The mysterious combination of pills she had started to take on F&W's instructions had made her bodily needs almost vanish. It seemed wonderful to her not to be at the mercy of any of her inner organs. It was more than twelve hours since she had needed to go to the bathroom. She had not eaten - or felt like eating - anything solid since Saturday. She was neither nervous nor calm: she was merely
waiting.
Her whole state of mind was projected towards the future. For the first time in her life, she felt like a real canvas. Or not even that. Like a tool. A hammer, a fork or a revolver, she deduced, could understand her feelings better than another human being.

Her mind was clear and empty. Incredibly clear. For her, to think was like contemplating sand dunes in the desert. This too made her happy. It was not amnesia: she could remember everything, but none of her memories got in the way. They were there, in the library, lined up and within reach (if she wanted them, she could remember her parents, or Vicky, or Jorge) but she had no need to flick through her past to be alive. It was a tremendous sensation to feel she was someone else while still being herself.

The house was plunged in silence. She had no idea where they had taken her after the plane had landed at Schiphol. She guessed she must be somewhere not far from Amsterdam. The flight had lasted an hour or a little more, but an hour can be very long when you are blindfolded and unable to move. But time and Clara's body had got on well, and she had not experienced any discomfort.

She had been transported as artistic goods. This was the first time this had happened to her. Well, occasionally when she was in
The Circle
as an adolescent, she had been tied up with nylon string, had had her eyes blindfolded, been wrapped in padded paper and then put in a cardboard box. This was called the 'Annulling Test', intended to help the future canvas accept its condition as an object. But this was different: it was a real transfer. According to international law, any canvas that had been primed and given labels was considered artistic goods, even if it had not yet been painted. All the previous journeys she had made for work purposes had been as a person: she had been primed at her destination. This meant the artist saved on transport costs, any risk of damage, and on customs duties. Evasion of these payments by works of art who travelled as normal passengers and then were repainted in another country had not yet been classified as an offence: legislation was definitely needed. But Clara had been transported as artistic goods, with all the required paperwork.

She could not make out the shape of the ten-seater jet she climbed aboard at the end of the tunnel down which she had followed the uniformed man. Inside the cabin, a mechanic dressed in an orange overall was waiting for her. He never spoke to her by name. In fact, he hardly said anything at all (and besides, he did not speak Spanish). He led her with gloved hands (everyone used gloves to handle her once she had been primed) and helped her lie down on a padded couch with its back raised forty-five degrees and the word FRAGILE written in large letters on the leather. There was another lifted rail for her feet, which forced her to keep her knees bent. There was no need for her to take her top or miniskirt off. On the contrary: the workman wrapped her in another layer of plastic, this time a loose sleeveless tunic, and stuck warning labels in Dutch and English all over it. The only thing he removed were her shoes. She was strapped in her seat by eight elastic belts: one across her forehead, two under her arms, another round her waist, and a further four at her wrists and ankles. They were all amazingly soft. As he tightened them, the mechanic made sure they did not trap the labels on her right wrist and ankle. The only time he spoke was when he put her mask on.

'Protect eyes,' he said.

Those were the last words she heard until they landed.

There was a brief interval without darkness during the flight: the mask was lifted and she was offered a tall vertical line inserted in a hermetically sealed glass. She drank from it, though she was not thirsty. It was a fruit juice. She was able to see that outside, in the cabin and the rest of the world, night had fallen. While he held the glass up for her to drink, the mechanic also checked that none of the straps was too tight. He moved the labels around to avoid them chafing. Another man used a doctor's torch to check her stomach, and then they slightly loosened the central strap. She did not move (although she could have if she had wanted to) because she was not worried about having to stay in the same position the whole day if necessary. When they had finished all their adjustments, the two men put her mask back on.

She felt the landing as a foetus might experience being born on a fairground big wheel. It helped her understand there must be something intangible within us that gives us a sense of direction, of above and below, of acceleration and braking. The awareness that an arrow or a line might have. Inertia gripped her like a powerful dance partner, pushing her forward, then backwards. Then the violent rubber stamp of wheels on the ground.

'Careful
..
. step
..
. careful
...
step
...'

They held her arms as she descended the steps. A wave of Amsterdam night air greeted her. Holland caressed her legs, lifted the edges of her plastic shroud, stroked her stomach and hot back. She felt encouraged to be received in this way by an unabashed, cool Holland that smelt of gasoline and jet engines. A gust of wind made her neck label swing out to the left.

They came to a stop in a distant zone of Schiphol airport. Flashing lights were the only decoration. At the foot of the steps another mechanic was
waiting with a transport trolley
. They were called 'capsules', and Clara had seen them before, but never travelled in one. It consisted of another stretcher like the one on the plane, with the back raised, and a plastic cover with holes in for her to breathe, covered in more warning stickers. When they zipped the cover over her head, she could hear no more noise, but could still see out through the plastic. They had removed her mask, and she felt a lot more comfortable than she had in the plane (she could stretch her legs, for example) although this did not mean much to her. The mechanic walked round behind her and started to push the trolley.

They went towards a long, low building beyond which she could see the tall, cool lines of the control tower. A sign -
Douane, Tarie
f
-
flashed electronically. Muscular figures in tunics, others showing bare flesh, necks bearing orange or bright blue tags, faces with no eyebrows, their skin primed and shiny, a rainbow of hair colours, others again with bald, gleaming heads, youngsters of both sexes, adolescents, little boys and girls, beautiful monsters waiting in the intermittent lights in the darkness, canonic but unfinished images, models not yet sketched (she was particularly struck by one ineffable shaven and primed work in a wheelchair who turned its head to stare after her like a drugged alien being), all of them waiting in line to go through the customs. Many of them had been brought here on luggage trolleys, often without guards, because they did not need any special transport requirements. Clara was fascinated at the amount of trafficking in works of art that obviously went on in Holland. There was nothing like it in Spain, where artistic immigration, like so many other kinds, was strictly controlled. How much could each of those works cost? Even the cheapest must be worth more than a thousand dollars.

Her capsule went straight into the building without having to queue. Inside it was like a hangar with conveyor belts and long customs tables. Employees in blue uniforms raised their arms and reeled off precise instructions. Everything was studied, regulated, listed, considered. They wheeled her to a desk. Forms were stamped, labels checked. Then she was taken into an adjacent room, where they unzipped her cover. As they did so, a mixture of male and female perfumes overwhelmed her sense of smell. A silent, smiling couple wearing surgical gloves that matched the colour of their suits and with blue tags in their lapels (she remembered this was what the Conservation department wore) were waiting for her. The room was an office: a desk, two exits, an open door. Someone shut the door, and to Clara it seemed that for a second she had gone deaf.

'How are you feeling? OK? My name is Brigitte Paulsen, and my colleague here is Martin van der Olde. Can you get up? Slowly, there's no need to rush.'

This sudden burst of musical Spanish surprised Clara at first.

She had thought they would treat her as they had until now, as simply art material. Then she understood her reception. They were part of Conservation, and in Conservation they always tried to make the works feel at ease. She swung her bare feet down to the floor - the primed toenails reflected the strip ceiling lights - and stood up without help or any difficulty. 'I'm fine, thank you.'