Europe was doing what it always did in these cases: protecting humanity's creations, the inheritance humanity passed on to itself down the generations. In comparison to this inheritance, humanity itself was disposable. A consecrated work of art was worth far more than a few miserable individuals, even if they happened to be a majority. Bosch was well aware of this from his days as a provo: what was sacred, even if only for a minority, was always more numerous than the majority, precisely because it was accepted by everyone.
Or almost everyone. Perhaps the people interrogated by Rip van Winkle had different views, thought Bosch. But nobody had listened to them.
'By the way,' Sorensen said, 'tomorrow we have a meeting with Rip. In The Hague. Did you two know about it?'
Bosch and Warfell knew about it. The meeting had been announced in the latest report. Apparently, Rip van Winkle had produced some fresh results, and wanted to discuss them face to face. Sorensen and Warfell were of the opinion this meant the Artist had already been caught. Bosch was not so optimistic.
At midday, close to lunchtime, Nikki appeared in Bosch's office. She was holding up her hand and making a W sign. Bosch almost leapt from his seat, until he realised this did not mean 'victory', but 'two'. Well, that's a kind of victory anyway, he thought enthusiastically. Yesterday there were four.
'We've managed to eliminate another two suspects’ Nikki announced. 'Do you remember I told you Laviatov spent time in jail for theft? Well, he's given up being a canvas now and is trying to establish himself with a hyperdramatic gallery in Kiev. I've talked to him and some of his employees, and they confirmed his alibi. He hasn't been out of the city in weeks. And we've had confirmation that Fourier committed suicide six months ago after a failed relationship with one of his previous owners. The company that sold him kept it quiet so as not to scare the other canvases. So we're left with only two without alibis.'
She spread out her sheets of paper on the desk. Two photos, two people, two names. One face framed by long chestnut curls, with a piercing blue gaze. The other almost child-like, featureless, shaven-headed.
'The first is called Lije’ Nikki explained. 'He or she is about twenty, but we're not sure which sex. He's worked mostly in Japan with artists such as Higashi, but he's not Japanese. He specialises in transgender works and art- shocks. We know more about the other one. His name is Postumo Baldi, he was born in Naples in 1986, so he is twenty as well, and male. He's the son of a failed painter and a former ornament, who are now divorced. There is evidence that the mother took part in marginal art-shocks, and that she used her son with her from a very early age. Baldi also specialised in transgender work. In 2000, Van Tysch chose him as the original for Figure XIII, one of the few transgender pieces the Maestro has done. Since then, he's been in art-shocks and portraits.'
Bosch stared at the two photographs as though hypnotised. If Miss Wood's intuition was correct, and if the computer screening process had not let anything slip through, one of these two was the Artist.
'Just think,' Nikki said with a smile, 'Lije could be in Holland as we speak. In fact, he might even be in Amsterdam.' 'What?'
'That's right. His trail disappears after he took part clandestinely in two art-shocks at Extreme, a place for illegal works in the red-light district. That was in December last year.' 'I've heard of Extreme’ said Bosch.
The owners haven't been very forthcoming. They say they have no idea what became of Lije after that, and they refused to give any information to the team of interviewers we sent to talk to them. I'm thinking of sending Romberg's people to pull their teeth out, if you authorise it.'
Bosch was staring at Lije's expressionless features, unable to make up his mind whether they belonged to a man or a woman. 'What about Baldi?'
'We lost trace of him in France. The last work he definitely took part in was a transgender piece by Jan van Obber for the dealer Jenny Thoreau, but he didn't even fulfil his contract. He walked out and vanished off the map.' Bosch thought for a moment. 'It's up to you,' Nikki said, raising her blonde eyebrows.
'Van Obber lives in Delft, doesn't he? Call him and fix an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. I have to go to The Hague in the morning, so I could visit Delft on the way back. Tell him no more than that we're looking for Postumo Baldi. And send Romberg's men to Extreme.'
After Nikki left his office, Bosch still sat contemplating the two faces, these two anonymous youths whose smooth features stared back at him from the photos. 'One of these two is the Artist,' he thought. 'If April is right – and she always is – one of them is him.'
5
Light is the very last touch. Gerardo and Uhl are installing it in the farm living room. They have been at it since early in the morning, because the equipment is very delicate. The chiaroscuro lamps have been specially created for the exhibition by a Russian physicist. Clara stares at the strange fittings: metal bars from which protrude arms with bulbs on the end. They look to her like steel racks. 'You're going to see something incredible,' said Gerardo. They closed the blinds. In the dense darkness, Uhl flicked a switch and the lamps gave off a golden glow. It was light, but it did not illuminate. It seemed to paint the air a golden colour rather than to reveal objects. Thanks to the flashing speed of electricity, the entire room had become a seventeenth-century oil painting. A minimalist still life by Franz Hals; pret-a-porter Rubens; postmodern Vermeer. Standing opposite her, the only figure in this domestic tenebrist canvas, Gerardo was smiling.
'It's as if we were inside a Rembrandt picture, isn't it? Come on, you're the protagonist.'
Barefoot and naked, Clara walked towards the light. It was a friendly, tempting light, the dream of a suicidal moth: she could stare at it endlessly without it harming her eyes. There were gasps of admiration.
'You're a perfect work of art,' Gerardo praised her. 'You don't even need painting. Do you want to see yourself? Look.'
There was the sound of wood scraping along the floor, and she could see one of the mirrors being brought over. She caught her breath.
Somehow, in some way, she knew this was what she had been searching for all her life.
Her silhouette stood out from the darkness of a classical painting as if painted with golden brushstrokes. Her face and half the curtain of her hair were incrusted with amber. Clara blinked at her gleaming breasts, the lavish crown of her sex, the outline of her legs. As she moved, she sparkled like a diamond under the light, and became a different kind of work. Each of her gestures painted a thousand different canvases of herself.
‘I wouldn't mind having you at home under these lights,' she heard Gerardo say in the darkness. 'Naked Woman on a Black Background.'
She could hardly hear him. It seemed to her that everything she had dreamt of ever since she had discovered Eliseo Sandoval's artwork in her friend Talia's house, everything she had scarcely dared say or admit to herself when she decided to become a canvas, was here now in the reflection of her body under the chiaroscuro lights. She understood she had always been her own dream.
*
That morning the poses were easier. It was what Gerardo called 'filling in'. They had already chosen the exact colours: a deep red for her hair, drawn up in a bun; mother-of-pearl mixed with pink and yellow for the skin; a fine ochre line for the eyebrows; chestnut eyes with a tinge of crystal; her lips outlined in flesh tints; the areolas of her breasts a matt brown colour. After she had showered, washed and returned to her original primed colours, Clara felt better. She was exhausted, but she had reached the end of a long journey. The previous fortnight had been full of harsh poses, colour experiments, efforts to concentrate, and then the masterly brushstrokes Van Tysch had used to define her expression as she stared into the mirror, the slow passage of time. Only the final detail was left.
'The signature,' Gerardo said. 'The Maestro will sign the works in the rehearsal room at the Old Atelier this afternoon. And you will all pass into eternity,' he added with a smile.
Uhl drove the van. They turned on to the motorway and soon saw Amsterdam in the distance. The sight of that city, which had always seemed to Clara like a pretty doll's house, lifted her hypnotised spirits. They crossed several bridges and headed for the Museumsplein along narrow, tidy streets, accompanied by never-ending streams of bicycles and the clanking procession of trams. They spied the impressive bulk of the Rijksmuseum. Beyond it, in the pearly-grey midday light, they could see a huge mass of dense shadows. The sun's rays filtering through the clouds gave the massive structure an opalescent sheen. It was as though a tidal wave of oil were sweeping over
