ended and the artist began. Besides, his pretence might equally well mean the molesting was real on the sidelines. Uhl could have received instructions from the main painter, but Clara had no idea how far he might be abusing his privileged situation. It was almost impossible to establish limits, because between a painter's gesture and a caress there are endless, unfathomable gradations.
The timer went off. The two assistants came back into the room and changed the sketch. They made her stand up, and took the leather chair away. Then they laid her out face down and tried different positions once more: head raised, right arm stretched out, left one pointing backwards, left leg in the air. The pose reminded her of someone swimming. They pulled on her extremities until her joints protested. It was obvious they wanted to sketch her stretched. A simple contraction was not enough: they wanted to emphasise the movements. When they were satisfied with the firm outline of her extended limbs, they set the timer again and left her on the floor.
It happened at some moment while she was in this new pose. She could hear his footsteps crossing the room and saw him kneeling beside her. Her position meant that her left breast and her sex were exposed: Uhl's hands took possession of both of them.
The gesture was so brutal Clara could not stop herself abandoning the pose and protecting her body. At that point something happened that took her breath away.
Uhl grasped her arms violently and spread them apart with unexpected, unnecessary force. She cried out in pain. It was the first time he had been violent towards her. In fact, it was the first time anyone had used violence against her since she had been primed. She was so surprised she could neither speak nor defend herself. The painter bent even closer, and buried his mouth in her neck, still pinioning her arms. She could feel his saliva, his tongue like a freshly caught octopus flung at her throat, his panting breath at her jugular. 'Are you crazy?' she groaned. 'Let go of me!'
Uhl did not seem to hear her. The frame of his glasses twisted under Clara's chin as his mouth slid down towards her breasts. She stopped struggling for a moment.
All at once, just as she had given up fighting him, Uhl came to a halt, sighed deeply, straightened up and released her wrists. He was breathing even more heavily than she was, and his face was all red. He pushed his glasses back on properly, and smoothed the hair at the nape of his neck. It was as if a sudden sense of shame had prevented him going any further. Clara was still on the floor, rubbing her wrists. For a few seconds they just looked at each other, getting their breath back. Then Uhl got up and left.
Clara thought she now had some idea what was going on: it had been her sudden passivity that had inhibited Uhl, as it had done on the previous occasions.
In itself, this did not change anything. It could have been a human rather than an artistic reaction: perhaps Uhl had not dared take things any further, or perhaps he was one of those men who only gets pleasure when they meet resistance. Yet Clara wanted to believe that the brushstroke meant he had to stop as soon as she no longer resisted. She filed the information away for use at a later date.
The new assault did not catch her unawares. They had sketched her as a table: face up, hands and feet on the floor, head thrown back and legs wide apart. At a certain moment, Uhl came towards her. She looked him in the eye and realised that it was all going to start again. This time she decided to resist. She abandoned her pose and stood up. 'Leave me alone, will you?'
Without warning, those long arms of his, as hairy as strands of hemp rope or brush bristles, grabbed her and forced her back towards the floor. Uhl's mouth opened and sought out hers. Disgusted, she turned her face aside and pushed against his chest with her elbows. Uhl resisted without much effort. Clara tried again, but met only a brick wall. It was true she had been weakened by all the exercises she had been put through, but still it was obvious that Uhl was amazingly strong. The painter clamped her cheeks in one of his hairy paws and forced her mouth towards his, then slid his tongue over her primed, lipless mouth. Clara gathered her strength and struck out with both knees. This time she was more successful: she pushed Uhl aside and rolled over to protect herself. 'Stay still,' she heard.
The painter threw himself at her again, but Clara easily avoided him and kicked out a second time. She did not want to hurt him, but she was keen to see what would happen if she did not yield. By now she knew – or suspected – that Uhl was using a very simple method to paint her: he added a further degree of violence if her response was violent, but became gentler if her behaviour was submissive. When she yielded, he took the brush away. Clara wanted to find out exactly where this journey to absolute darkness that the painter was apparently proposing would lead them.
All at once everything took on the uncontrollable rhythm of a desperate struggle. Uhl seized her by both arms, she kicked out, Uhl's glasses clattered to the floor with a strangely disagreeable sound. He raised his hand as if about to hit her. Then she was really afraid. He could damage me, she thought. It was not the possibility of being hit that frightened her. She had been struck by the public or other canvases in some art-shocks, but that had always been planned by the artist, and agreed with her beforehand. What frightened her was the lack of control. He's getting more and more nervous, he could really hurt me and ruin my priming.
This thought led her to relax. Uhl threw himself on her, and started licking her chin and throat with his tongue. But then he stopped once more.
Clara was still lying breathless on the floor, while Uhl struggled to his feet. They looked like two athletes at the end of some violent exercise. She stared him in the eye, but could make out nothing in his face apart from his weak gaze hidden deep behind the lenses of glasses that Uhl had just put back on with a neat gesture. A few moments later, the painter stepped back, and left the room, heading for the front porch.
Things had taken such a spectacular turn that when it was time for lunch, Clara scarcely wanted to eat. She did not want to have to break off from the sketches to immerse herself again in cold routine. She forced herself to do so, because she knew it was necessary to pause for a moment in this frenetic escalation. Before eating she went to the bathroom and washed, getting rid of all traces of Uhl from her mouth and neck. She stared at her reflection in the mirror. There were no marks apart from a slight redness on her wrists. Primed skin was much tougher than normal skin, so that Uhl would have had to paint her much more violently to leave lasting traces. She smiled, and her face took on the mischievous look that Bassan liked so much. I've found you out: you use force if I do. You want to sketch me as aggressive, she told herself. Her eyes were smarting, but she knew this was from having to keep them open all the time she was in the poses. She rinsed them with saline solution.
She ate lunch naked with Gerardo sitting opposite her. Uhl was somewhere unknown. Gerardo had already finished and observed her quietly. 'Did you see the man at the window again?' he asked.
For a moment she did not understand what he was talking about.
'Yes, but I called Conservation. They told me they were security guards, so I felt reassured. I slept very well for the rest of the night.'
'So it was as I said: guards.' 'Aha.'
They fell silent. She finished her sandwich and began to spread cheese on a slice of bread. All her muscles ached, but that did not bother her. She felt refreshingly angry, as effervescent as a fizzy drink shaken for hours. From time to time she glanced at the door to see if Uhl was coming in. She remembered his breath, and his violence. And also how everything came to a halt when she yielded. But what would have happened if she had not yielded? How far would his brushstrokes have gone, what remote shade of darkness might they have reached? That was what obsessed her. What would happen if next time she decided not to surrender at all, not to yield for anything? The possibilities were staggering. 'How did you get on this morning?'
Gerardo's question made her blink. The last thing she needed at that moment was banal conversation. 'Fine,' she said.
He put his elbows on the table, leaned over to her, and adopted a serious tone. 'Listen, there's something I have to tell you.'
They stared at each other in silence. Clara chewed her food quietly, waiting. 'Justus is annoyed.' She said nothing. Her heart started beating faster.
'And it's not good if Justus gets annoyed, because if that happens, you and I are out on the street, right?' 'What do you mean?' she asked, innocently.
Gerardo appeared to be searching for the right words. He stared down at his hands on the tablecloth.
'We… we have some rules regarding young female canvases, if you follow me. And the canvases have to respect them. I don't like talking about this, but sometimes as in your case it becomes necessary – it seems you don't get it at all, do you?' 'What am I supposed to get?'
'That you are in a privileged position. You are a canvas contracted by the Van Tysch Foundation, which is
