sum of money. 'But can an HD work last that long?'
'All you would need are twenty-four thousand substitutes, one a year. But I would go down in history as the original model.'
What about a million years? A million people, Jorge calculated. Just with the inhabitants of Madrid, at a rate of one person per year, the work could last as long as the life of mankind on Earth, including his anthropoid ancestors. Of course, it would take many generations, but what are three or four million people? All at once it seemed to him he was no longer looking at Clara: he was staring at eternity.
'That's incredible.'
'I'm a bit scared,' she confessed. Then she added, with a shy smile: 'Only a bit, but the highest quality' Impulsively, Jorge held out his arms.
'No’ she protested, stepping back. 'Don't embrace me. You could damage me. I feel like crying, but I don't want to. And anyway, they told me I don't have any tears or sweat any more. I've hardly even got any saliva. That's the effect of being primed.' 'But do you feel all right?'
‘I feel wonderful, ready for anything, Jorge, anything. Right now I'd be able to do anything with my body, anything a painter might ask of me.'
Jorge had no wish to enquire just what that meant. At that moment, a man in a dark-blue pilot's uniform came in. He was tall, attractive, with a sensual mouth, and had slackened his tie. 'Plane now’ he said with a strong Spanish accent.
Clara looked at Jorge. He would have liked to say something earth-shattering, but he was not much good at moments like these. 'When will I see you again?' was all he could think of. ‘I don't know. Once I've been painted, I suppose.'
They stood looking at each other for a second or two, and Clara suddenly realised she was crying. She could not tell for certain when it had begun, because there were, in fact, no tears, but the rest of the mechanism continued to function: the lump in the throat, heavy eyelids, irritated sensation in the eyes, butterflies in the stomach. She told herself the artist would have to add the teardrops if he wanted them – perhaps he could paint them on her cheeks, or imitate them with tiny crystal shards, like in some statues of the Virgin. Then she controlled herself. She did not want to get emotional. A canvas should always remain calm.
She walked away from Jorge without looking back. She followed the other man down a metallic corridor throbbing with the roar of aeroplanes. With each step she took, the label banged against her ankle.
It was a sudden flash. Perhaps it was his sixth sense ('You inherited it from your father') which raised the alarm as he saw her disappear through the door. Clara should not be going, she should not accept the job. Clara was in danger.
Jorge hesitated for a moment, thinking he should call her back, but his absurd premonition vanished as quickly and calmly as she had done. He soon forgot it.
She had never felt such a combination of fear and happiness. Both the feelings were there, distinct and contradictory: an immense fear and an ecstatic sense of joy. She remembered her mother had said something similar about the way she felt as she went into church on her wedding day. She smiled at the memory as she followed the man in pilot's uniform down the deafening passageway. She imagined there were people on both sides watching her as she glided in a silky gauze towards an altar decorated with golden or yellow objects just like her: tabernacle, chalices, the cross. Gold, yellow, gold.
8
Black.
The backdrop is coal black, the floor a smoky black. Rising from the floor is a metal chair like a bar stool. Annek Hollech is sitting on the stool swinging one of her bare feet. All she is wearing is a black T-shirt with the Foundation's logo on it, and the three labels at her neck, wrist and ankle. Her slender thighs, bare almost to her groin, are like a pair of open scissors with the light glinting on them. Her auburn hair has a tendency to fall like a curtain across her eyebrow-less face, a shadowy face as pure as fresh clay. The fingers of her right hand play with her hair, pulling it back, combing it, stroking a handful.
'Do you really think that?' asked the man from somewhere invisible. A nod of the head.
‘Perhaps you're confusing a lack of time with a lack of interest. You know the Maestro is fully occupied with finishing the works in homage to Rembrandt for 15 July.'
'It's not his work.' Now she was playing with the bottom edge of her T-shirt. 'It's that he doesn't want to see me any more. We paintings all realise that. Eva has noticed it too.'
‘You mean your friend Eva van Snell has also noticed that the Maestro has apparently lost interest in you?' A nod of the head.
'Annek, we know from experience that paintings with an owner feel better, more protected. And Eva has been bought at the moment. Isn't that what's worrying you? The fact that you haven't been bought yet? Do you remember when we sold you as Confessions, Door Ajar, and Summer? Didn't you feel good with Mr Wallberg?' That was different.' Why?'
She blushed, but the priming prevented her cheeks changing colour.
'Because the Maestro used to say that he had never done anything like Deflowering. When he called me to Edenburg to start the sketches, he told me he wanted to paint a childhood memory with me. I thought that was so nice. Mr Wallberg loved me, but the Maestro had created me. Senor Wallberg is the best owner I've had, but it's different… the Maestro tried so hard with me…' 'You mean with the hyperdramatic work.'
'Yes. He took me to the Edenburg woods… while we were there, he saw an expression on my face… something he liked… he said it was incredible… that I was… was like one of his own memories…'
The left foot was tracing slow circles over the black carpet: a graceful needle turning on a vinyl record. As it moved round, the ankle label caught the light.
'I don't mind not being bought. I'd just like… him not to suffer because of me… I've done everything he asked of me. Everything. I know it's selfish of me to think he owes me something in return, because when he painted me in Deflowering he… he gave me. .. the best thing in the world, I know, it's just that…' 'Tell me,' the man encouraged her. As she raised her head, Annek's green eyes shone.
'I'd like… I'd like to tell him… that I can't avoid… I can't avoid growing up… It's not my fault… I'd like my body to be different…' She choked with emotion. 'It's not my fault…'
At that moment, something incredible happened. Annek's body split down the middle, like a flower, from head to toe. The chair she was on also collapsed in two. Through the centre of the two halves appeared a middle- aged man in a dark suit, bald head with a fringe of white hair. He came to an abrupt halt, and spoke: 'Oh, I'm sorry. You were on the video-scanner. I didn't know.'
Lothar Bosch stepped to one side, and Annek's three-dimensional figure came together again in pure silence, just as water flows back around the void when a finger is withdrawn from it. Miss Wood pressed the pause button, and the adolescent hung immobile in the centre of the room.
‘I’d already finished,' Miss Wood said with a yawn. 'It's all much of a muchness.'
She pressed the rewind, and Annek started a strange Saint Vitus' dance. Miss Wood took off her virtual reality visor and left it on the table, dismissing the apparition. The table was a half-crescent moon built out of the wall. It was the only wooden-coloured piece of furniture in this small audio-visual room in the MuseumsQuartier. Everything else was black, including the stiletto-like chair legs. Miss Wood was seated in one of them, her pink cardigan and suit gleaming in the dark. Next to her lay a pile of virtual reality tapes. On the wall to her left, cameras and loudspeakers stuck out like gargoyles.
Bosch, wearing an elegant grey suit in which the red label shone like a wedding carnation in his lapel, sat in a chair opposite her and pulled out his reading glasses. 'How long have you been here?' he asked.
He was concerned about her. They had been in Vienna for five days including this Monday 26 June, working non-stop. They had suites in the Ambassador, but only used them to sleep in. And no matter how early Bosch appeared at the MuseumsQuartier, she was already there, working away. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that Wood probably did not go to sleep at night either.
'For a while’ she said. 'I still had to check a few interviews Support had done, and my father always told me
