'Do you think that would worry him? Do you know any painter who would refuse to exhibit his works because they might be destroyed? Galisinus, we painters always create for eternity, so we're not worried whether our works last twenty centuries, twenty years, or only twenty minutes.' Miss Wood studied the patterns on the carpet in silence.
'I'm not going to say a word to the Maestro’ Stein went on. 'All my life I've acted as a buffer between him and reality. My own works are nothing compared to his, but I'm happy just to have helped him create them, by keeping him away from all the problems, by doing all the dirty work myself… My best work has been, and continues to be, the fact that the maestro can go on painting. He's a man ruled by the dictates of his own genius. An ineffable being, galismus, as strange as an astrophysical phenomenon – sometimes terrible, at others gentle. But if ever, at any moment, anywhere in the world, there has been a genius, then that person is Bruno van Tysch. The rest of us can only hope to obey and protect him. Your duty, Miss Wood, is to protect him. Mine is to obey him… ah! galismus, what a wonderful glow. Neve, look at the colour of the skin on your legs now, with the sunlight slanting in on them… it's lovely, isn't it? A touch of arilamide yellow dissolved in pale pink, varnish on top and you'd be perfect. Fuschus, I wonder why no one has thought of painting canvases for the interior of stretch limousines. We could use underage models. We've designed and sold all kinds of ornaments and objects for lots of places, but…'
Tostpone the exhibition, Mr Stein, or there'll be another work destroyed,' Miss Wood insisted, without raising her voice.
But all Stein did was study her in silence for a long moment. Then he smiled and shook his head, as if he had seen something unbelievable in her face.
Tind the man responsible’ he said, 'whoever he may be. Find the Artist, seize him, bring him back between your jaws, and everything will be all right. Or let Rip van Winkle do it for you. But don't try to put limits on art, fuschus. You're not an artist, April, you're just a hunting dog. Don't forget it.'
'Rip van Winkle won't be able to do a thing, Mr Stein’ Miss Wood said. 'There's something you don't know.'
She paused and looked round. Stein understood exactly what her attitude meant.
'You can say what you like in front of Neve. She's like my eyes and ears.'
‘I’d prefer there not to be so many eyes and ears present, even if they are yours, Mr Stein.'
The limousine had pulled up at the airport entrance. Another car was waiting at the roadside to take Miss Wood back into the city. Stein waved his hand, and his secretary left the vehicle and shut the door. Wood looked up towards the chauffeur: the glass partition meant he could hear nothing.
'This is something no one else knows – neither the authorities in Munich, nor the members of the crisis cabinet, not even Lothar Bosch. But I want you to hear it. Perhaps it'll make you change your mind.' She fixed her cold blue gaze on Stein. 'Yesterday, as soon as we heard about Monsters being destroyed, I called Marthe Schimmel to see if she could tell me anything. She said the Walden twins had asked her to provide a young man for Tuesday night. You know that in Conservation they like to keep them happy. They were demanding a platinum blond. Schimmel was desperately trying to find a suitable candidate when she received a call cancelling their request. It was a voice she did not know, but he repeated the private number of Conservation in Amsterdam, and said he was one of Benoit's assistants. He told Marthe that the boy was no longer needed. Marthe thought of telling Benoit about this, but I told her not to. I called Benoit's assistants in Amsterdam one by one, and then his secretary. Finally I called Benoit himself. Neither Benoit nor any of his assistants ever gave that order, Mr Stein.'
Wood was staring Stein directly in the eye, without blinking. Stein stared back at her equally unmoved. There was a silence, then she went on:
'It cannot have been the criminal who made that call, because at that moment he was disguised as the Gigli work. That leaves only one possibility. Someone prepared things for him from inside so that there would be no problems destroying the work of art. It must have been someone high up, at least sufficiently senior to have access to Conservation's private codes. That's why I'm begging you to postpone the 'Rembrandt' inauguration. If you don't, the Artist is bound to destroy another work.
A plane had just taken off, and was soaring through the blue sky like a mother-of-pearl eagle. Stein studied it, then turned to look at Miss Wood once more. A gleam of anxiety, almost fear, veiled the chilly depths of the Head of Security's eyes.
'However incredible it may seem, Mr Stein, one of us is helping that madman.'
6
When Clara awoke on that 28 June, Gerardo and Uhl had already arrived. She thought she could tell from their faces that this was going to be a very special session. They left their bags on the floor and Gerardo said:
'We're not going to try out colours on you today. We want to draw polygons.'
Polygons was the name for the posture exercises designed to test the canvas' physical capabilities. Clara ate a frugal breakfast and took the pills recommended by F amp;W to improve her muscle tone and reduce her bodily needs as much as possible. Gerardo warned her she had a difficult day ahead of her. 'Let's get on with it then,' she said.
They had brought a leather backless chair. Uhl carried it in from the van and put it in the living room. They moved the carpet and the sofa out of the way and began the exercises. They bent her over backwards, coccyx on the seat; they lifted one leg and then the other, stretched them both out, then bent them double. They chose a posture they liked and set the timer.
Staying immobile is above all a matter of not paying attention to anything. We always receive warnings, signals of increasing discomfort. The brain tightens the thongs on its own rack. Discomfort becomes pain, pain becomes an obsession. The way to resist (as is taught in art academies) is based on classifying all that copious information and keeping it at bay, without rejecting it, but without considering it as something that is happening. What, in fact, is happening is that the back is bent or the calf muscles are contracting. Beyond these events, there are only sensations: discomfort, cramps, a tangled rush of stimuli and thoughts, a flood of shards of broken glass. Given proper training, the canvas learns to control this enormous flow, to keep it at a distance, to watch it grow without having to change the pose.
Immersed in the effort of contortion, her head on the floor next to her hands, staring at the wall with her legs stretched upwards and her buttocks on the chair, Clara felt as though she were a nutshell about to crack and give way to something else. She knew of nothing better than an uncomfortable position like this to force her out of her own humanity. Her mind was stripped of memories, fears, complicated thoughts, and concentrated entirely on the masonry of her muscles. It was wonderful to cease to be Clara and become an object with scarcely any sense of pain.
It was so slight that at first she hardly noticed it.
As he was changing the position of her legs in the air, Uhl stroked her buttocks unnecessarily. He did it gently, avoiding any brusque or obvious fondling. He simply slid his hand down her tensed left thigh and cupped her rounded gluteus muscles. But hardly had he squeezed them than he took his hand away. Another confused length of time later, and Clara felt rough fingers on her right thigh. She blinked, raised her head and saw Uhl's hand descending towards her groin. Uhl was not looking at her as he touched her. She did not move, and once again Uhl moved his hand away almost immediately.
The incursion was more obvious the third time, when, after moving both her legs to a different position, Uhl felt clumsily for her sex. Startled, Clara doubled up and curled into a ball. 'Pose,' Uhl ordered, in an annoyed tone of voice. Clara merely stared at him. 'Pose.'
From where she lay curled up, Uhl looked a threatening figure. But Clara was not really afraid. Something about the painter's attitude turned what had happened into something perfectly staged, gave it all the proper artistic touch. She decided to obey. Despite her protesting tendons (there is nothing harder than losing a difficult position and having to get back into it without any warming up), she got back on to the chair, lifted her legs in the air, and lay immobile with her head and arms on the floor. She thought Uhl was going to return to the attack, but all he did was stare at her for a while and then move away.
Clara knew that Uhl could be pretending to molest her for hyperdramatic reasons. The brushstrokes were so well done though, that despite all her experience as a canvas she found it impossible to tell where the real Uhl
