Art of Murder (74 page)

For a while there were sounds. Then silence reigned.

She had received an avalanche of phone calls: above all from Jorge, desperate at first but calmer when he could talk to her. When was she thinking of coming back? I don't know, Jorge, we'll see. I want to see you. Weil see. All of a sudden she realised she did not miss him. To her, Jorge was like the voice of the past: undeniable, but finished with. She also got calls from Yoli Ribo, Alexandra Jimenez, Adolfo Bermejo, Xavi Gonfrell and Ernesto Salvatierra. Calls from painters and canvases. One of the most affectionate was from Alex Bassan. They were all delighted she was fine and had been signed by Van Tysch. One night she heard her brother's voice. So even her brother was interested in the painting's welfare! Without completely abandoning his natural reserve of a lawyer outside court, Jose Manuel talked of their mother, of how much they missed her, of how she had told them nothing. 'We didn't know anything about all this,' he said. 'We only heard about it thanks to Jorge Atienza.' How was she? Fine. Would she be back soon? Yes. They wanted to see her. She wanted to see them, too. When it came down to it, it occurred to her, life and art are based on the same thing: going and seeing.

And Vicky? Vicky did not call her.

She suspected she would have to be the one to take the first step, now that the painter had become so important.

Vicky was going to hold a retrospective for the Foundation: Stein had announced it at a press conference. Among the twelve works on show were two for which Clara had been the original:
Instant
and
The Strawberry.
Stein had also said that Vicky Lledo was one of the great exponents of orthodox modern hyper-dramatism, and that the Van Tysch Foundation, 'now that the Maestro was missing', would strongly support the work of this young artist.

The news had made a great impact on her, to the extent that for some time she did not know what to feel. Eventually she decided she was pleased for Vicky, but then concluded that she felt this way because she did not love her enough to feel sorry for her.

'Both of us immortal, as we wanted. Good.'

After the calls dried up, she switched off the television, too. The news was always the same, and she knew it by heart. Nor did she allow herself the consolation of the many jazz records that Conservation
had given her to help pass the ti
me. She felt fine as she was, submerged in her own silence. Or her own noise.

Because life had a noise of its own, she suddenly realised. She could feel life returning to her just as one hears a different wave travelling to shore. They had decided to remove her priming, rub out the signature, and send her home. They would let her rest for a while and then, if necessary, would call on her to show
Susanna
again. She would, of course, keep the money, that would not change. They stopped her F&W tablets, and soon afterwards she realised that a human being is something that wants things. Art stays still and content with itself, but life demands continuous satisfaction. After that they stripped off her priming. When she got back to her hospital bed and looked at herself in the mirror, there could be no doubt about it: she was Clara Reyes again. Her blonde hair, her skin with its open pores, old scars, the graphism of her life, her smells, the shapes from her past. She still had no body hair, of course, but this was an image she had come to accept. Her unprimed face recovered its old expressions, so different from the yellow monster that had so astonished Jorge. She was no longer painted, had no labels. It was not easy living without labels or paint, but she would have to get used to it.

And on the Friday afternoon, after having lunch and sleeping a lengthy siesta, she heard a gentle knocking at her door.

Gerardo smiled as he came in.

'So this is what you look like without any paint on, sweetheart. The truth is I prefer you this way. The natural look, you might say'

She smiled back at him. She was sitting on her bed in pyjamas, her hair a mess, her eyes still full of sleep. She let herself be wrapped in Gerardo's arms, and discovered his presence made her very happy.

‘I
heard you were getdng out today, and I wanted to come and see you,' Gerardo explained. 'Justus would have liked to come, too, but he suggested I come as an "advance party".' He laughed and his eyes shone, but he quickly became serious again. He had heard about the madman's attack and had been trying to see her ever since, even though he been told many times that she was fine. 'How are you really?' he asked.

'1 don't know,' she replied frankly.
‘I
suppose I'm fine.'

She felt as though she had been asleep and had woken up in hospital. She felt empty. I've been dreaming, she thought. But what happens when everything you are and have been forms part of the same dream?

They had time before they had to go to the airport. Did she want to say goodbye to anywhere in particular? he wanted to know. Clara looked at the newspapers crumpled on her bed. She had read that this Friday 21 July, 2006, they would finish dismantling the Tunnel.

'I'd like to go to the Museumplein to see how they're demolishing the Tunnel,' she said.

'No problem.'

Night had fallen, and stars were beginning to appear above the quiet waters of the canals. It was a splendid summer night. The moon shone brightly, trying to reach its own perfection. Gerardo drove with Clara towards the Museumplein.

‘I
was thinking,' said Gerardo, breaking the intense silence, 'that I might tra
vel to Madrid soon. I'd like to
finish a painting I've left half completed,' he added with a smile.

Later on, she came to think of this as the exact moment when she realised
Susanna
had left her body completely. There in the dark seat of Gerardo's car, she touched her legs, her arms, her face, and was sure of it.
Susann
a
had been rubbed out. From underneath, for good or ill, had emerged Clara Reyes. The event - she thought - had something of a frustrated attempt at divorce about it.

Gerardo was talking to her.

'I'd like
...'

He was making a series of sincere confessions which she could scarcely hear. But she understood that now she was Clara once more, she would have to get used to hearing sincere confessions again. Because
Susanna
was drifting off into the starry night sky.
Susanna
was floating through the immense tunnel of night, further and further away, increasingly indifferent. Welcome to the world, Clara. Welcome to reality.

The work in the Museumplein was being carried out calmly and skilfully. Several workmen undid each curtain panel: first one wall, then the other, finally the roof. They were advancing along the whole length of the horseshoe. They were not even stopping for the night: Amsterdam had to greet the new day without the Tunnel, dawn had to rise over the naked square, dotted with its usual statues and gardens.

Gerardo parked nearby, and they walked along looking upwards, like freshly arrived tourists.

'What do you feel?' he asked her. She was staring at the huge dismantling effort.

'I don't know. Hold me tight.'

As they renewed their walk, she thought of a reply.

'It's as if I'm breathing for the first time,' she said.

They walked on. Clara looked back over her shoulder.

At that moment they were undoing one of the roof panels. The immense square fell with the sound of distant waves, dragging its darkness with it. The clear moonlight effortlessly glided into the empty shade.

Author's Note

Everything has been done in art. A novelist's imagination could never compete with the infinite ways and kinds of experimentation the reader can discover as soon as they enter the fantastic universe that is contemporary art. In spite of this, hyperdrama-dsm does not exist, although various tendencies, such as
body art,
use the human body as the basis for their works. Art-shocks, 'stained' art,
animarts
and human artefacts are also fictional creations, although
performances
and
events
are terms known to all followers of modern art. The business of buying and selling painted human beings is not, as yet, a common phenomenon. I have no idea whether that situation will change in the future, but I tend to think that if someone discovers how to make money out of it, it will not be moral considerations that prevent this human market from flourishing in the same or even more spectacular fashion as in my novel.

Many other things are fictitious in this work, in addition to the characters. Some of the public buildings such as the Obberlund in Munich or the Ateliers in Amsterdam, private galleries like the GS or the Max Ernst, and the Wunderbar and Vermeer hotels, are all imaginary. Any coincidence between these names and places existing in real life is purely accidental. The museums mentioned are real, although the cultural centre in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier is I believe still under construction. Perhaps it will have been completed by the time this novel comes out. Of course, the hyperdramatic works exhibited in these galleries are fictitious and absolutely no connection of any kind should be made between the characteristics of the works and the real institutions mentioned in the novel.

Certain works in the bibliography I consulted are too important not to mention. The classic
Story of Art
by Ernest Gombrich (Phaidon, 1995) and the no less classic
Art Materials and Techniques
by Ralph Mayer (Tursen-Hermann Blume, 1993) became my bedside reading. Among the infinite number of books on Rembrandt, good choices were
Rembrandt's Eyes
by Simon Schama (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1999) and
Rembrandt
by Emmanuel Starcky (Portland House, 1990). On contemporary art, I found
XXth Century Art
by Ruhrberg, Schneckenburger et al. (Taschen, 1999) and
Art at the Turn of the Millennium
by Riemschneider and Grosenick, eds (Taschen, 1999) unbeatable. The two verses by Rilke quoted at the beginning and end are from the first elegy in his
Duino Elegies.
All the Carroll extracts are from his
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.
The ellipses indicate words left out.

There are gaps no books can fill. Among the persons who helped me improve the novel with their advice or information, two merit special mention. Antonio Escudero Nafs, a good friend and an extraordinary painter, explained some of the most basic aspects of his art to me, and the equally talented painter 'Scipona' stoically put up with my questions about openings, gallery owners and dealers, and gave me invaluable help. In the end, however, my novel was not about inanimate canvases as they thought, but about human paintings, which obliged me to take great liberties with the information they gave me. All the errors my work may contain about the complex world of art are therefore due entirely to my own negligence or to the liberties I have taken.

J.C.S. Madrid, 2001