wonderful experience for Clara. That same year, Vicky painted her in another five works, the early ones with another woman, then on her own: The Kiss. Double or Quits, Sweet Nothings, and The Black Dress. Outside work, Vicky's obsession with Clara knew no bounds: she called her in the morning, at night, cried on her shoulder, revealed intimate secrets about how cold her father was (he was a surgeon) or her mother's (a university professor) lack of interest in her career as a painter. Some days she considered herself 'a crappy daddy's girl'; on others she was the unfortunate victim of a 'marriage of snobs'. But all that was forgotten as soon as she began to work. In bed she might be a vulnerable soul, but with her hands covered in paint she became a firebird who could draw wonderful things on a woman's body. But Vicky the human being and Vicky the artist were not in watertight compartments. While Vicky the human being fell in love with the models for her works of art, Vicky the artist used that love to paint them. It was characteristic of her, but Clara could not fathom out which came first: her temperament or her way of working.
2004 was the year of Vicky, for Clara at least: a rushing torrent she either had to escape from or let herself be carried away by. Vicky was one of those people who, like candles, consume themselves the more light they give off. The worst of it was her jealousy. Especially since at that time, there was no reason for it. Clara had left Gabi Ponce, her first love as well as her first painter, and was living alone in the loft in Augusto Figueroa. She was no longer seeing either Alexandra or Sofia Lundel, two women friends she had occasionally shared a bed with. And she had not yet met Jorge Atienza. Yet Vicky was capable not only of inventing feelings but motives as well. One night she created a scandal in a restaurant where they were dining because an Italian woman painter had asked Clara to work in an art-shock together with three other female canvases. Vicky told her not to accept, and when Clara refused she threw her cutlery on the floor and attacked the maitre, who, like a good shepherd looking after his flock, had come over attentively. A few hours later, she called Clara to make up: 'I was drunk, forgive me.' Then, without warning, it was Vicky the artist who took over: ‘I wanted to tell you that your face today in the restaurant… My God, you were so pale when I shouted at you… Clara, please let me use that pallor… Those eyes of yours when you were staring at me today…'
She was inspired. She finished her new painting in three weeks. It was Clara, painted in ivory white with cerulean shadows, lying face down on a velvet cloak, exactly the same material as the suit she was wearing that first afternoon they met, with her face the natural shade of her disgust. Vicky was thinking of calling the work Sweet Nothings. During the hyperdramatic rehearsal they played out the scene in the restaurant as they remembered it. The painter wanted to recapture the fleeting paleness of Clara's cheeks, but Clara was uneasy about mixing art and real life. In the end, Vicky got angry again and started to insult her. All of a sudden she stopped in the middle of her insults and clasped Clara's face in her hands. 'That's it! You've gone pale again! That's exactly what I'm looking for!' she shouted, beside herself. Vicky the artist was back in control.
One day, Clara complained about the way she abused real emotions to paint with. Vicky gave a strange smile.
'I'd do anything for art, sweetie,' she told her. 'Anything. I couldn't care less about anything but art: not emotions or justice, or pity, family health, love or money… Well…' she hesitated, 'perhaps money is an exception. Art is money.'
Sweet Nothings was bought by a Madrid collector at double its list price. Clara was on show in his house for a whole month. Early in 2005, Vicky tried to kill herself with a heroin overdose.
This was not Clara's fault, but that of her new love, Elena Valero, who Clara had worked with on Instant. The day they were taking her into the intensive care unit in La Paz, it was announced that the Van Tysch Foundation had awarded her their Max Kalima prize for the totality of her work. Groggy from the effects of her oxygen mask, Vicky heard the news from a nurse. When she recovered, she declared she had also rediscovered her emotional stability. Although she was planning another work with Clara for the end of the year, she no longer phoned her as often. Then after Strawberry they had not seen each other again. Clara was unsure what she felt about her: was she in love with Vicky, or was it admiration for her talent? The truth was that although she wanted to, she could not forget her. Sometimes she pictured herself lying on the velvet cloak in the Sweet Nothings collector's room, one knee drawn up under her stomach, with the heel pointing down to her sex, her eyes shut and face livid with that 'pallor the colour of disgust' that Vicky had managed to produce in her. Perhaps this was all the painter had left her when she disappeared from her life: the feel of velvet, and her bloodless cheeks.
So she pulled the velvet suit out of the cupboard and threw it on the bed. Then she found another beige jersey and trousers, which reminded her more of Jorge because she had worn them during the early days of her relationship with him.
She hesitated for a while, looking at the two sets of clothing as if judging them (Vicky or Jorge? Jorge or Vicky?), before finally condemning Vicky Lledo to destruction. She would be too hot during the journey, but that did not matter.
It was almost three in the afternoon when she realised she should eat something. She threw together a salad and a couple of sandwiches, and polished them off with a bottle of mineral water.
Then as she still had some time left, she decided to prepare herself for what was to come. Rummaging in her medicine cabinet, she chose a couple of muscle toner tablets and a pill that would hold back her period, and swallowed them with the last of the bottled water. She took off her bathrobe, went into the kitchen for a salt cellar, an airline passenger's mask that she found in one of the drawers, and several weights. She started exercising in a very different way from her usual routine on the mat. She stood motionless on tiptoe, with salt on her tongue. She walked around her apartment with the mask on. She rolled herself into a ball, placing a weight on the highest part of her body. The exercises were designed to curb her will without breaking it, to help her see herself as a blind object, something that could be used, transformed. She had become used to this kind of preparation since her days with The Circle. It was the only way she had been able to bear the work Brentano did with her.
At a quarter to four she pulled the flesh-coloured jersey over her head, put on the velvet jacket and trousers, and chose a pair of sandals from the dim and distant past. She considered herself in the mirror. None of what she was wearing really suited her: she looked like a beautiful young girl disguised as a hippy, which was exactly the effect she wanted to create.
The remaining details, which she had not thought of, caused her the most problems. What should she do with her house keys? She could not take them with her. Jorge had a set, but she did not want to have to depend on him to get in when she returned, whenever that might be. She did not trust her neighbours, and the building had no porter.
She decided simply to do nothing. It seemed logical to her to shut the door behind her and be unable to get in again. She called for a taxi, calculated how much it would cost her, and put the money in her jacket pocket. It was then she found the keyring.
She realised she had put the suit on without checking the pockets. Old clothes are the graveyard of memory. In one of the jacket pockets she dug out her father's keyring. For a long time, she had used it with the kind of blind devotion we show to objects that once belonged to the dead. When it snapped, she had to transfer her keys to a new ring. She could not recall why it was in this particular pocket, or why she had not thrown it away. Perhaps because of its sentimental value. The thought amused her.
The keyring had a chess queen on it, a present from the club where Manuel Reyes played. Her father was passionate about chess, and her brother had inherited his love of this sober pas-rime. It was a black queen. Clara could hear her father saying,
‘This is Reyes' queen. They gave me the black one because it's on the losing side.'
She considered whether to save it, but put it back in her pocket. 'I'm sorry, your majesty, but if that's where you were, that's where you'll stay.'
So, dressed in Vicky's suit, wearing her adolescent sandals, and with the weight of her father's keyring in her pocket, Clara left her apartment and shut the door behind her.
As she reached the street, she felt a strong sensation. It was so intense she had to look all round to make sure it was a mistake. She was convinced she was being watched. Perhaps she was wrong.
This was the afternoon of 22 June, 2006. The sun was shining the colour of pink flesh.
6
