labels round their necks, wrists and ankles, and they looked tired. Clara recalled that orange meant they were preparatory sketches, people who trained and prepared the final sketches. The black man was young and slim, with a beard like Gerardo's. His boots were caked in mud. A few moments later, they all said goodbye, and the black man and his tired, dirty models climbed back into the van and drove off.
That was another assistant friend of ours,' Gerardo explained when he came back into the kitchen. 'He's working at a nearby farm with those preparatory sketches, but he had some news he wanted to tell us. It seems they've withdrawn the 'Flowers' exhibition from the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna.' 'Why?'
'Nobody can understand it. Conservation says the canvases needed a rest, and they preferred to cut the length of time they were on show in the MuseumsQuartier in favour of elsewhere. But our friend says they're doing the same with 'Monsters' in the Haus der Kunst at Munich. I've no idea what's going on. No, don't look sad like that. They're going ahead with 'Rembrandt'.'
By the afternoon there was still no sign of Van Tysch, and Clara could hardly bear it. Her anxiety was humanising her, stealing her existence as an object from her and turning her back into a person, into a nervous young woman who wanted to bite her fingernails. She knew that to be so anxious was dangerous. She had to ward off this enemy, because the painter could arrive at any moment, and she had to be there waiting for him shiny and calm, ready for whatever Van Tysch might want to use her as.
She decided to do press-ups. She shut herself in the bedroom, took off her robe, and lay flat on the floor with her legs slightly apart. Pushing on her hands and toes, she began a series of rapid press-ups combined with deep breathing. At first, the effect was merely to make her heart beat faster, but as she continued, up down, up down, straining her arm and leg tendons, feeling the muscles in her limbs, she eventually managed to forget herself and the situation she was in, and surrendered to the exhausting sensation of being a body, a tool.
Time went by. She did not realise someone had come into the room until they were almost on top of her.
'Hey' She raised her head quickly. It was Gerardo. 'What is it?' she asked nervously.
'Calm down, there's nothing new. I just thought it might be better if we painted your hair so that the Maestro can tell us what he thinks of the colour.'
He did the painting in the bathroom. Clara sat astride a chair with her legs stretched out and a towel wrapped round her body. Gerardo used a cap soaked in a mahogany-red colour and a fixing spray.
'The butterfly emerging from its chrysalis,' he said, removing the cap gently. He began to put in the paint with his gloved hands. 'Isn't that what you said yesterday, when I asked you why you wanted to be a masterpiece? You said you didn't know, 'but then a caterpillar doesn't know why it wants to be a butterfly'. I told you it seemed to me a nice but false answer. You're no caterpillar, are you? You're a very attractive woman, even if at this very moment, with no features, primed, and your hair this red mahogany colour, you do look rather like a plastic doll who hasn't been painted yet. But underneath all the plastic, it's you who is the true work of art.'
Clara said nothing. She stared up at Gerardo's face over her shoulder.
'Shut your eyes… I'm going to use the spray… here goes…' She could feel the mist of liquid on her hair. Gerardo went on:' I can understand you're upset with me, sweetheart. But do you know something? If last night's situation happened again, I'd do exactly the same all over again… I can only go so far. I am not, and never will be, a great master of painting people… good, the colour's looking fine… wait, don't say anything… Justus could have made it, but he doesn't have the ambition. I'm incapable of scaring or hurting a girl I like, even for the sake of creating a great work of art. For me, all of hyperdrama becomes… you know what?… it becomes hypercomedy. I know I'm a bit of a clown, my mother always told me so. That's right… now we have to wait a few minutes…'
She listened to all of this in silence. When she opened her eyes again, Gerardo had disappeared from her field of vision. The strong smell of the hairspray filled her nostrils. Then Gerardo's hands reappeared. This time they were holding a small pot of ochre paint and a fine paintbrush.
'For me there's a frontier,' he said, dipping the brush in the paint and leaning over Clara's face. 'A frontier, sweetheart, that art will never be able to cross. The frontier of emotions. On one side there are people. On the other, art. Nothing in the world can cross that frontier.'
'He's painting eyebrows on me,' she thought. She stiffened, wondering whether she ought to tell him that perhaps the Maestro did not want her to have features, but in the end she said nothing. She could feel the cold curves of the brush on her forehead.
Gerardo's hand was steady as he drew the precise firm lines of the curves, and pointed the wet dip of the brush down towards her eyes. She shut them, and felt something like a bird's caress: tremulous beating, then the start of the delicate fringe of her eyelashes, the frame of her gaze.
‘I believe in art, sweetheart, but I believe much more in emotions. I cannot betray myself. I prefer a thousand times a mediocre work of art to the contempt of someone I like…
Someone I have begun to… respect and to get to know… Don't move…'
Eyebrows. Small drops of brown lashes. The faintest of touches at the corner of her eyes. Clara was about to speak, but Gerardo stopped her with a gesture.
'Silence, please. The artist is about to put the final touches to his creation.' A line curving neatly upwards from the left side of her mouth.
'I reckon the world wouldn't be so perverse if everyone thought the same as me… the lips are always really difficult… why have they got such a strange shape? It must be so they can tell lies.'
The line moved on downwards. To Clara it felt as though a bird were walking around the edge of her mouth.
‘I like it,' said Gerardo, standing back to get a good look at her. 'Definitely, I like it. You've turned out very beautiful. Wait, then you can see yourself.'
He picked something up from the washstand. It was a small round mirror. He came back to her. 'Ready?'
Clara nodded. Gerardo was holding up the mirror as if he was a priest with a consecrated host, and put it in front of her face. She looked at herself. A face with features looked back at her.
Gentle waves beneath her forehead, elliptic waves, a symmetry of ochre curves. She raised her unexpected eyebrows, amazed at her newly born way of expressing astonishment. She blinked, and felt the caress of eyelashes darting like sparrows around the language of her eyes, eyes which had never been silenced, only deprived for some time of their appearance, but now once again shone full of light. She smiled and lifted the corners of her mouth to demonstrate that a slit cut into a face could never, ever be a smile; that a real smile was what Gerardo had painted on her: a mass of shapes relaxing, a distorted volume moving at the same moment as the eyes fulfil their mission and the eyelids close. It was wonderful to have features once again.
Gerardo held up the mirror with her face floating in it like a precious gift.
'At last I can see you smile,' he said, very serious. 'And hard work it was, sweetheart. But finally you're smiling at me.'
Clara was impressed by his seriousness. She thought that perhaps she had misjudged him from the start. It was like seeing him for the first time. As if there were something inside Gerardo that was much wiser, more mature than he himself or the words he spoke. For a moment she thought that Gerardo's face had also been painted, delineated like hers, but with more indistinct shadows. It was a fleeting vision, but for that split second she thought the secret of life consisted in getting beyond the features drawn, and reaching the people who lay behind them.
She had no idea how long she sat like that, in front of the mirror he was holding up for her, looking at it and at herself. All at once she heard his voice again. But the mirror was no longer there, and Gerardo was leaning over her. His face was taut and nervous.
'Clara… Clara, he's here… I heard his car… Listen to me
… Do everything he asks you to… don't quarrel with his way of working, do you hear?… Above all, above all, don't argue with him
… And don't be surprised whatever he asks… he's a very strange man… he likes to confuse his canvases… Be careful with him. Very careful.'
At that moment they heard Uhl's voice calling them. Words in frantic Dutch, the sound of doors. They ran to the living room, but there was no one there. The front door was open, and they could hear a conversation out on the porch. They went out together, then Clara came to an abrupt halt.
There was a man with his back to her, talking to Uhl. His silhouette stood out against the evening sky: an
