Gerardo in the living room. She waited a few seconds, finished preparing her drink still looking towards the door, and drank it as though it were a bitter medicine. Then she did a few simple relaxation exercises.
When Gerardo called her back to work, she felt a lot more composed.
Nothing else happened that afternoon. Uhl did not touch her again, and Gerardo only gave her brusque orders. But while she was posing motionless and covered in paint, her mind was racing. Why did Uhl behave the way he did? Was he trying to abuse her, to frighten her, to stretch her the way Brentano did?
The only way for an artwork to behave in this confused, almost dreamlike world of body painting was to stay stretched and develop strategies for not surrendering, if things got any worse.
She was sure this was exactly what would happen, and soon.
She thought she would not sleep that night, but she immediately fell into an exhausted stupor.
She had no idea at what moment she felt once again that someone was watching her.
Lying naked, face down on the equally bare mattress, her mind slipped in and out of sleep. At a certain moment, the window, lit by the pale chalk of moonlight, suddenly darkened in shadow. But the shadow also made a noise in the grass.
She sat up as gracefully as a gazelle. There was no one outside the window.
Yet an instant before, a fraction of a second before there was no one, the rectangle had been filled with a silhouette. She was sure it was a man.
She sat craning her neck in the darkness until a crazy wail made her shudder with fright. Her heart in her mouth, she recognised the sound as coming from the timer. She groped along the floor like a blind woman until she found it next to the mattress, and switched it off. She did not know why it had been on, because Gerardo had told her there was no need to use it that night. Her heart was pumping the blood through her veins. The beating felt like bubbles bursting in her temples. The house was one vast silence. Yet she experienced exactly the same feeling as she had the night before. And if she strained to listen, she thought she could hear the rustle of grass in the distance.
Whatever the truth, and even taking the best interpretation into account (that for example it was a Foundation security guard, as Gerardo had said), that mysterious presence disturbed her far more than anything else. She swung her legs off the mattress and took several deep breaths. After Uhl and Gerardo had left she had taken a shower to wash the paint from her hair and body. Without oil paint all over her, the terror felt more real, more immediate, less absorbing.
She waited a few moments, and could no longer hear the rustling of footsteps in the grass. Perhaps the man had left, or perhaps he wanted to be sure she had gone back to sleep. She was far too nervous to think at all calmly. But she knew several breathing exercises that would soothe her like a balm in only a few minutes. She began with the easiest, still trying to locate the exact source of her fear.
One of the things that had always terrified her most was the possibility that a stranger might come into her room at night. Jorge laughed whenever she woke him up in the early hours to tell him she had heard a noise. Fine. Just face up to your fear and you'll conquer it.
She got up and walked across to the dark living room. Her breathing exercises had given her a false sense of calm that made her movements stiff. She had had an idea: she would call Conservation and ask for help, or at least advice. That was all she had to do. Just go over to the phone, dial the only number available to her, and talk to Conservation. After all, she was valuable material, and she was scared. She ran the risk of being damaged. Conservation had to help.
She remembered that the lights to the house were all in the entrance hall. She walked quickly out of the living room, into the dark hall and up the three steps to the front door. She flicked on and off the switches like someone firing rapid rounds against a hidden enemy. But she did not see anything strange. The full-length mirrors impassively reflected all the usual shapes. The tripod and the studio spot were exactly where Uhl and Gerardo had left them. The photograph of the man facing away from the camera was still there, and he still had his back to her (‘‘ would have been very different if he were looking towards you now, wouldn't it?). Beyond them, the three black windows in the living room and the back door looked exactly the same: they were shut and appeared protective.
She ran her primed tongue over her primed lips. She did not want to look at herself in the mirrors because she did not want to see a face with no eyebrows or lashes, only two eyes and a mouth (three dots opening into a terrifying triangle) beneath a cap of fine blonde hair. She was not in a sweat (there were no drops sliding down her skin or converting her brow into a gentle kind of polder, like those scattered throughout Holland), and she had no saliva to swallow, but both of those sensations were present, as punctual as stopwatches: the effort of her sweat, and the invisible agony of the lump in her throat. The sense of terror was still inside her, jagged and quivering. All the paint in the universe could do nothing to hide that.
Calm down. You're going to go over to the phone and dial. Afterwards you can close the blinds, one after the other. Then you'll be able to get back to sleep.
She edged like a sleepwalker towards a shrinking telephone, a telephone at the far end of a vanishing point. She did not want to look towards the windows as she was approaching it. For precisely that reason, she looked at them. All she could see were dark panes of glass that reflected her naked, yellow-hued body. The thought flashed through her that if she did see any kind of figure appear at one of those rectangles, she would go into a coma, become cataleptic, would turn into a vegetable and spend the rest of her days drooling in some asylum or other. It was as fleeting an instant as that of feeling giddy, a fraction of time no watch could measure. Horror had unbuttoned his mac in front of her and flashed his sex at her. There. The blinking of an eye. Then the feeling passed. And she had not seen anything at the window.
She reached the phone, picked up the navy-blue card and began very carefully to dial the number. Now she was standing directly in front of one of the windows. Beyond the wall of branches and wind, the trees and the night arched over everything. She must be completely visible to anyone watching from outside. Let him watch all he wants, thought Clara, just so long as he doesn't come any nearer.
'Good evening, Miss Reyes,' a young man's voice said into her earpiece. He spoke perfect Spanish. His voice was as reassuring as a Gouda cheese or a pair of clogs. 'How can we be of assistance?'
There's someone prowling round the house,' she blurted out. 'Round the house?' 'Outside the house, I mean.' A moment's silence. 'Are you sure?'
'Yes, I saw him. I've just… I've just seen him. Someone looking in at the bedroom window.'
'Is he still there?' 'No, no. I mean, I don't think…' Another moment's silence. 'Miss Reyes, that's completely impossible.'
She heard a creaking sound behind her. She was so concerned about looking at the windows she had forgotten (My God!) about looking behind her.
'Miss Reyes…?'
She turned round slowly as if in a dream. Or like a hanged man swinging round after being kicked in the side. She turned round in slow motion, on a carousel ride that presented her with distant images of the room (the man facing the other way, and so on…)
'Hello… are you still there…?' 'Yes.'
Nothing there. The room was empty. But for that split second, she had filled it with nightmares.
‘I thought you'd hung up,' the voice from Conservation said. 'I'll explain why what you said can't happen. All the farms around you belong to the Foundation, and access to them is limited. The entrances are guarded day and night by security staff, so that…'
'But I have just seen a man at the window,' Clara interrupted him. Another silence. Her heart was beating wildly.
'Do you know what I think?' the man replied, his voice changing as if the explanation had just become crystal clear to him. 'That it's very likely you're right, and you did see someone. I'll explain. Sometimes, especially when there's new material, the guards do go up to the houses to make sure everything is all right. And Security has been a bit worried about the safety of our canvases recently. So don't worry: it's one of our men. Just to make sure, here's what I'll do. I'll call Security and ask them to confirm they're patrolling the area. They'll take all the necessary steps. And please, don't leave the telephone. I'll call you to tell you what they say.'
She found the silence that descended as she waited for him to phone her back much easier to bear. She was beginning to feel sleepy again when it began to ring. The voice was as reassuring as before.
'Miss Reyes? It's all sorted out. They've confirmed to me in Security that it is one of their men. They say they're sorry, and promise not to disturb you again…' 'Thank you.'
