were dedicated to creating and being created, to becoming transformed.
It was the oddest yet most beautiful profession in the world. She had ventured into it that same summer she had returned from Ibiza, and had never regretted her decision.
At Talia's she had found out that Eliseo Sandoval, the man who had painted By the Pool, lived and worked in Madrid with other colleagues, in a chalet near Torrejon. A few weeks later, she went there, alone and scared. The first thing she found was that she was not the only one taking this step, and that HD art was more popular in Spain than she had imagined. The house was teeming with painters and adolescents who aspired to becoming works of art. Eliseo, a young Venezuelan artist with the looks of a boxer and a fascinating cleft chin, charged a few euros to give rough-and-ready classes to underage models. He did this in secret and with no hope of selling any of the works, because HD with minors had not yet been made legal. Clara dipped into her scant savings and began to attend every weekend. Among other things, she got accustomed to being on show naked, both inside and outside the house, on her own or with others present. And was able to spend hours with paint on her skin. And the basics of hyper-drama: the games, rehearsals, the different kinds of expression.
Her brother got wind of these visits, and the conflicts and prohibitions began. Clara discovered that Jose Manuel wanted to replace her dead father as her guardian. But she would not permit it. She threatened to leave home, and, when the situation became unbearable, did so.
At sixteen she started to work with The Circle, an international society of fringe artists who prepared young people for great painters. She got her body tattooed, dyed her hair red, perforated her nose, ears, nipples and navel with studs and was able to study with Wedekind, Cuinet and Ferrucioli. At eighteen she was living with Gabi Ponce, an up-and-coming painter she'd met in Barcelona: her first love, her first artist. By the age of twenty she was getting calls from Alex Bassan, Xavier Gonfrell and Gutierrez Reguero to create original art works. Then it was the turn of the really well-known ones: Georges Chalboux painted a spirit with her body, Gilberto Brentano turned her into a mare, and Vicky brought out expressions in her face she never thought she was capable of.
Until now though, she had never been painted by a genius.
But, she wondered, what would happen if nobody replied, what would happen if they stretched her to an unreasonable extent, tried to take the situation to its limit, what would happen if…?
The night had turned a deep midnight blue. The breeze that had refreshed her earlier now chilled her to the bone.
She had counted to a hundred, then another hundred, then another. In the end, she had given up counting. She did not dare hang up, because the more time passed the more important (and difficult) whatever might be behind this seemed to her. The most important and difficult, the toughest and most risky.
She contemplated the silence, the sparse light, the kingdom of cats. She saw how the early hours in the city passed by, as if she were staring at the imperceptible movement of the hands of a watch.
What would happen, she wondered, if they did not speak to her? When, at what precise moment would it be necessary to conclude that the game was over? Who would yield first in this completely unequal test of strength?
All at once she heard the woman's voice. Her ear had been pressed against the receiver for so long the sound hurt, just like when a blind person is suddenly brought into the light again. The voice was short and sharp. It mentioned a place: plaza Desiderio Gaos, no number. Just a name: Friedman. A time: nine o'clock precisely, the next morning. Then the phone went dead.
Clara wanted to remain in the same pose, holding the receiver up to her ear, for a few moments longer. Then she grimaced and returned to life and its inconveniences. That was in the early hours of Thursday 22 June, 2006.
The attic. The house in Alberca. Father.
The sun was shining brightly in the garden. It was a wonderful sight: the grass, the orange trees, her father's blue check shirt, his straw hat and thick square glasses. Manuel Reyes was short-sighted, almost obstinately so, or at least resigned to the fact, and was someone who did not mind having to wear such heavy, outdated, tortoise- shell contraptions. He insisted that his glasses added a weight of authority to the detailed descriptions he gave tourists of the paintings in the Prado museum. That was his job: to show people round the galleries, explaining with quiet erudition all the secrets of Las Lanzas and Las Meninas, his favourite works. Father was pruning the orange trees while her brother Jose Manuel practised at his easel in the garage – he wanted to be a painter, but Father advised him to study for a career instead – and Clara waited in her room to go to Mass with her mother. That was when she heard the sound.
In a house like her home, where there were so many, one more was unimportant. But this particular one had intrigued her. Her eyebrows raised in a questioning V. She left her room to discover who or what had made it.
The attic. Its door was ajar. Perhaps her mother had gone in to put something away and had not shut it properly afterwards.
The attic was a forbidden room. Their mother never let them go in there for fear that all the accumulated junk might fall on them. But Clara and Jose Manuel thought something terrible must be hidden in there. They both agreed on that, and only differed as to what that meant. For her brother, it was something bad; for Clara, it could be good or bad, but above all, it was attractive. Like a sweet, which could taste horrible but still look tempting. If something dreadful had appeared in front of them, Jose Manuel would have recoiled in horror, whereas Clara would have approached it fascinated, as stealthily as a child at Christmas. Horror would have provoked this contradictory movement: something truly horrible would have sent Jose Manuel running, whereas Clara would have been drawn to it like a possessed woman, as calmly and naturally as a stone dropping into the dark depths of a well.
Now, at last, the horror was calling out to her. She might have shouted to her mother – she could hear her busy in the kitchen -or run down into the garden to seek her father's protection, or gone down still further to the garage to ask her brother for help. But her mind was made up.
Trembling as she had never trembled before, not even on the day of her first communion, she pushed open the ancient door, and immediately breathed in a swirl of bluish dust. She was forced to step back, coughing and spluttering, which rather took the edge off her adventure. There was so much dust and such a horrible smell, like things fermenting, that Clara feared she would not be able to stand it. And worse still she would get her best Sunday dress filthy.
But, what the heck, it takes a sacrifice to confront horror, she thought. Horror does not grow on trees, within easy reach. It's hard work finding it, as her father always said about money.
She took two or three deep breaths outside the room, then went in again. She took a few timid steps into the evil-smelling darkness, blinking to get used to the unknown. She stumbled over bodies tied up with string, and realised they were old coats. Piles of cardboard boxes. A buckled chess board. A doll with no clothes and empty eye sockets, propped on a shelf. Cobwebs and blue shadows. All of this took Clara by surprise, but did not frighten her. She had been expecting to find this kind of thing.
She was on the verge of feeling completely defrauded when all of a sudden she saw it. Horror.
It was to her left. A slight movement, a shadow lit by the brightness outside the room. She turned to face it, strangely calm. Her sense of terror had grown to such a pitch she felt about to scream. This must mean she had at last discovered true horror and was face to face with it.
It was a little girl. A girl who lived in the attic. She was wearing a navy-blue Lacoste dress, and had lank, neatly combed hair. Her skin shone like marble. She looked like a corpse, but she was moving. Her mouth opened and shut. She was blinking continuously. And she was staring at Clara.
Her flesh crawled with terror. Her heart pounded violently inside her chest until it was almost choking her. It was an eternal moment, and yet a fleeting but definitive fraction of a second, like the moment of death.
In some inexplicable but powerful way, she realised in that split second that the girl in the attic was the most dreadful sight she had ever seen, or would ever see. It was not only horrible, but unbearable.
And yet, at the same time her happiness knew no bounds. At last she was face to face with horror. And that horror was a girl her own age. They could be friends and play together.
It was then it dawned on her that the Lacoste dress was the one her mother had helped her into that Sunday, that the girl's haircut was just like hers, that her features were the exactly the same, that the mirror was huge, with a frame hidden by the darkness.
'You got scared over nothing,' her mother told her, running up when she heard her cry out, and folding her into her arms.
Dawn was painting the deep indigo of the roof a lighter blue. Clara blinked, and the images of her dream
