Art of Murder (32 page)

Things are art just because, because artists say they are and the public agrees. Hubertus recalled a work by Donna Meltzer entitled
Clock,
which was attached to the wall and moved round by the hour, except that the artist had decided that it would lose ten minutes a day, and by the end of a fortnight would come to a complete stop. Paintings do not always have to do the same thing. Some evolve according to a pre-established plan their creator has devised. So this one? It had changed. It must have fresh instructions. What was the symbolism behind that? Our mechanised society (which would explain the strange appliances it was laying on the bar)? The symbol of authority (a pistol)? The mass media (a portable recorder and a miniature video camera)? Violence (a set of sharp instruments)? Maybe it was all of those. Whatever Gigli wanted. After all, he was the painter and the only one who
...

Suddenly, he remembered that Gianfranco Gigli had been dead for over two years.

A heroin overdose - they had told him so in the hotel when they showed him the painting.

deliziaaa aaaal cooooooooor .
.
. ah-ah-ah-ah-aanaaaaaahh
hh
...

Hubertus stood quite still, hands on the marble edge of the pool and his body covered to the waist by water. Trails of it trickled like ants down his head and upper body. He looked like a wax mountain starting to melt. Could a work of art alter itself after the death of its creator? If so, was the result a posthumous work or a fake? Strange questions.

Then all at once Hubertus stopped worrying about what the Gigli figure was doing (Who cares what it's up to?) and felt a brutal rush of happiness. The sensation shot through three trillion molecules of body fat and produced a whirlwind in his mind similar to a powerful orgasm. He was overjoyed at being part of such a complex world, an existence that only rarely (if ever) could be explained or described in words, the secret, unending golden well-spring, the select circle they all belonged to - the Gigli painting, Van Tysch, the Foundation, the twins themselves and a few other chosen ones (well OK, let's leave the sad Gigli figure out of it, because it has to renew itself to stay up-to-date), the marvellous life which allowed them to indulge their fantasies and to become the stuff of fantasies for others. Even the fact of being so enormously fat was an advantage in this world. To be as monstrous as a monster, Hubertus understood, could go beyond the limits of everyday reality and become a symbol, the
res
of art, an archetype, philosophy and meditation, theories and debates. Bless you, world. Bless you, world. Bless your power and possibilities. Bless all your secrets as well.

The Gigli painting appeared to have finally completed its preparations, whatever they were. It turned round calmly and headed off for another point, another destination inexorably chosen by a dead artist. Hubertus watched it expectantly. Where? Oh, to where are you directing your harmonic footsteps, divine, radiant creature? Hubertus Walden asked himself.

Overcome with planetary harmony, it took him a moment to realise that the work was heading for him.

When he was a child, Arnoldus was attacked by a tiger.

Infallible, precise, powerful, deadly. A black tiger with glinting eyes born of his dreams. It was his nightmare, his childhood terror. He would cry out and wake up Hubertus, and then inevitably the tiger would turn into his father's belt as it flew through the air and lashed his naked behind over and over again. CI didn't mean to cry out, papa, please believe me, I couldn't help it.') The only thing their father hated was when they shouted. 'Do whatever you like, just don't shout,' he always told them: it was his constant obsession.

Unlike his brother, Arnoldus did not believe he had been compensated for his past. He thought that life was a commerce owned by someone different every day, which never pays you back if you have overpaid. It was true they were immensely rich now. They were considered a work of art of incalculable value. Mr Robertson, who might well become their new papa, loved them: Arno knew that Mr Robertson would never think of thrashing him with his belt if he heard him cry out in the middle of the night, while the bitter saliva of his worst nightmare slid down his chin. Now they were adored, respected and admired as great works of art. But could this new life give them the happy childhood they had not had? Was the worldwide reknown they now enjoyed retroactive? Could it transform their bad memories into good ones? No, it did not even change ways of behaviour. As an adult, Arnoldus still did not raise his voice. The tiger was dead, and so was his father, but life never gives anything back.

Listening to his brother splashing in the pool, Arnoldus wrapped a towel round his massive waist and began a belly dance in front of the mirror. Given the part of his anatomy involved, these dances were for Arno something more than a mere pastime: they became a kind of subtle attempt to understand the universe. The low, pseudo-Egyptian whistle that accompanied them came from his own lips, and he clicked his fingers as he gyrated.
Oh, dulce huri? me complaceras esta noche?
Looking at his porcelain fingers - he thinks as he sways his belly first one way, then the other - no one would suspect the presence of the huge bag of foul intestines hanging from its centre, that hungry anaconda curled up in a sack, that thick ship's rope covered in lard. How was it possible to be so fat? My God, what have you done to me? His mother told him she screamed (or was it his father?) when she saw them come into the world, when she saw their fantastic beauty, those creatures born with more flesh than her flesh. 'Aaagh!' Mrs Walden had cried. Their father (so she said) was equally horrified, and scolded her:

'Don't shout, Emma. Yes, they are monstrous, but don't shout, please. Above all, don't
shout
...'

Arnoldus Walden's vast pan-anatomy waddled its way down the lengthy corridor between bathroom and living room. He was still absorbed in his thoughts. He could no longer hear his brother's splashes. Did that mean that Platinum Blond had arrived? Had his brother broken his promise and started without him? Oh Hubertus, despicable being, the worst of all, vulgar, vile. Perverse mammoth, cruel bear. His brother loved to blame him for everything, and to claim he was responsible for all the good that happened to them. Arnoldus woke up every day trying to change. Trying to be more friendly, more human, more obedient
(seriously, please, believe me)
but, when he looked round at his brother, hatred oozed from his pores like flames from a ball soaked in alcohol. Having to stare at this reflection of himself disgusted him so much that he sometimes felt like smashing the mirror. Oh, yes: it was Hubertus who turned him into a
horrendous
being. Hubertus who pushed him down towards the abyss, forced him to dream of atrocities.

Take Helga Blanchard and her son, for example. Arnoldus had tried time and again to explain to Hubert that they had never done that family any harm. They had not even met Helga and her sweet son: it had all been a false memory planted in their minds by Van Tysch, a shadowy colour added to their bodies. 'Something like original sin,' was Arnoldus' way of explaining it. The shadow of an offence they had never committed, and which by that very token they would never be able to forget, because there is nothing more indestructible than things imagined. Perhaps they were not even guilty of the crimes they had done penance for in jail. After all, painting is itself deception: you think you can touch that fruit bowl, that bunch of grapes or the nymph's swelling breast, but when you stretch out your fingers you are brought up short, you realise that what looked like spheres are only circles, what looked like volume is a flat surface, the fingers' desperate desire to
squeeze and fondle is left unas
suaged. Arnoldus had a suspicion that the two of them were one of the Dutch painter's most successful illusions. Come to me, monstrous canvases, and I'll make you into an optical illusion.

The Maestro had been so clever in painting that terrible lie on their minds that his brother Hubertus had been completely taken in. Hubert really believed they had done it. Worse still: he believed that Arnoldus was the one deceived! 'You want to blindfold yourself with that explanation so you can forget what we did, Arno,' he used to tell him. And he added: 'But we
really
did what we did. Do you want me to refresh your memory?
...'
It was so unpleasant that Arnoldus no longer even tried to argue about it. What use was there trying to tell Hubert he was the one
mistaken,
that they had never committed such an atrocity, that it was all the product of Van Tysch's sublime art?

He looked down at the signature on his right ankle: BvT. A new worry had been preoccupying him for some time. Could Van Tysch be responsible for the hatred, the ferocious antipathy he felt towards Hubertus? Had he tried to awaken the Cain within him so that he could paint it? Be that as it may, the

Maestro was not very concerned about them any more. He had lost interest in them. It was said he was about to sell them.

Perhaps it was best to forget about Van Tysch and even about Hubertus, and to enjoy himself while he could.

He opened the door and entered the living room.

'Here I am, Hubert. I hope you haven't—'

He stopped in his tracks. There was no one in the pool. In fact, the whole room looked deserted.

Tut, tut, this isn't very polite of you, Hubert.' Arnoldus looked all round him. The suite was like an endless basilica: columns, a domed ceiling; stone walls; indirect light; a long sacrificial altar in the shape of a bar counter
...

It took him a second to spot the trail of liquid just to his right, a small trace of a darker colour on the fitted carpet, a trail of water from the pool, some god or other's zigzagging piss on the floor. Twisting his massive neck, Arnoldus followed it. At the end of the trail, belly in the air (a perfect sphere), lay his brother.

And standing next to his brother was a slight, masked creature: the black tiger of his infant terrors, his lithe, devouring nightmare.

When it leapt on him, Arnoldus - like an obedient child - did not cry out.

4

An isosceles triangle of light. Legs apart.

Time for a break,' said Gerardo. 'Afterwards we'll try another effect.'

Clara closed her legs and the triangle disappeared. She was standing with her back to the two men, facing the window, her hair a flaming red, her body edged in rays of sunlight. She was painted in pink and ochre tones, with highlights of ivory and pearl. Her spine, the perfect 'V of her lumbar region and the fleshy cross of her buttocks were a natural earth colour. Gerardo and Uhl had chosen these tints after careful study of the lines they had painted on her skin. They gave her a porous swimsuit and a colour cap, which she put on in the bathroom. Her primed skin and hair absorbed the colours perfectly, there was no need for varnish or fixing agents. Gerardo warned her that all the colours were provisional, and that they could all be modified over the next few days. So were the colour of her eyes - brilliant emerald green - that he had painted with a corneal spray, and the deeper pink lip outline he had drawn on her face. Finally, with gloved hands he swept her wet hair up into a small bun. When he threw the gloves into the wastepaper basket, they spattered the floor with drops of fake blood. 'You're done,' he said.

Clara left the bathroom and walked towards the living room, trailing the smell of oil paint in her wake. The first thing she did was to examine herself in the mirror. She could see the figure they were aiming at beyond the sketch: a young girl by Manet, tall, slender, red-headed, and with muscles clearly distinguishable from one another, but not violently so: as if drawn by an expert. In the sunlight, her hair was a shiny haemorrhage. She liked what they had done. She wished this was not just a sketch, that the unknown work they were painting with her would be exactly the same.

They had set up a video camera on a tripod and a powerful photographic studio spot, but to begin with they filmed her adopting different positions in natural light. It must be a beautiful day outside, Clara thought, as she stared at the open window in front of her, but in the room, with its cream walls and parallel lines of the floor, everything was bathed in a bright glow, as if she were inside a prism. She longed to have some free time to be able to explore outside.

'Your food is in the kitchen,' Gerardo told her.

She walked carefully back to the bathroom in order not to crack the paint on her body, and put on one of the robes hanging on the door. She usually liked to wear something when she had been painted so she would not spoil it while she ate or rested.

In the kitchen, a surprise was waiting for her. Her food tray was in the same place as the previous day, but this time Gerardo was sitting opposite her. He was taking the top off a pizza he had heated in the microwave. So it seemed they were going to eat together. She wondered where Uhl was, and why he had not joined them. She guessed there must be serious disagreements between the two men. Throughout the morning, this had been obvious from their raised voices, terse orders, and long periods of uncomfortable silence. It seemed obvious to her that Gerardo gave in to his older colleague, either because he admired him, or perhaps simply because Uhl was a rung higher on the Foundation ladder than he was. Clara decided it was best to be discreet.