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 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 quite something, believe me. But that could vanish at any moment. I already told you, Justus is a senior assistant. In other words, he's a painter of some importance here in the Foundation. You have to be aware of that. I'm not telling you this to scare you, but so that you understand… and do whatever is necessary, OK?' 'But I don't understand a thing.' He puffed, and sat back in his seat.
'Then you really must be dumb. I'm warning you: Justus could throw you out on the spot if he wanted to.' 'And what am I supposed to do to prevent that?'
'You know perfectly well. Don't pretend to be stupid. He likes you a lot. You'll see.' This fascinating exchange did not make sense to her. She guessed this might be due to Gerardo's clumsiness, his rough, unconvincing way of doing things, the way he tried too hard to control his voice, his timid approach as if he were a kid playing at being the tough guy. For Clara, the most exciting thing was that Gerardo could be telling the truth. There was no way to be certain that all this was the farce it seemed on the surface.
'Are you threatening me?' Clara asked. Gerardo raised an eyebrow.
'I'm simply trying to tell you that Justus is the boss, after him comes me, and that you are at our complete and absolute disposition. And that if you want to be painted by a maestro from the Foundation, the best thing is for you not to upset the assistants, got it?'
A vibration, a shudder of pure art ran through her body. For the first time she felt a certain apprehension at Gerardo's words, and she liked the feeling. She had been painted with another fine brushstroke, and the fact that she was completely naked added the appropriate dark tone. She crossed her ankles, stirred in her seat, and muttered as she looked away from him:
'All right.' 'I hope you'll be more friendly to Justus from now on, OK?' She nodded. 'I didn't hear your reply,' he said.
This new pressure from the brush pleased her as well. She hastened to respond. 'Yes, all right.'
Gerardo rolled his eyes back and stared at her in a very odd way. Neither of them said anything more.
She tried 'being more friendly' during the afternoon session. They had posed her on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer. Time went by. As she was standing up, she could see herself in the mirrors. One of them only reflected half her anatomy, a split silhouette, a chaos of lines and volume. They left her like that for quite a while until Uhl suddenly came up behind her.
Right from the start, she returned his kiss, more ardently than he had begun it with. Her tongue darted in Uhl's dark mouth, she clasped him in her arms and pressed her naked body against his clothes.
It was like being stung by a bee. The painter tore himself from her and left the room. He did not approach her again all afternoon.
So, if I yield, everything stops, she reasoned. And if I don't yield?'
This second option scared her a lot. She decided she would try it.
She was excited, but that night she collapsed into bed like a dead weight. She suspected it was because of all the pills she was taking. When she awoke, she presumed it was Thursday 29 June. She felt ready for a fresh assault. She could not remember anything that had happened during the night: it was as though she had passed out. She had gone to sleep with the blinds drawn again, and if any security guard had come near to the house, she had not been aware of it. And besides, she was beginning to forget her nocturnal fears, because the daytime ones were taking all her attention.
That morning they sketched her standing up, bending over backwards. They were difficult poses, and the timer settings seemed to her eternal. It was midday before she managed to really control her trembling limbs, and the pain in her vertebrae became nothing more than the passage of time. To her surprise, Uhl had not bothered her again. She wondered if the way she had given in to him the previous afternoon had brought things to a complete stop.
After lunch, Gerardo invited her for a walk. This surprised her a little, but she decided to accept because she wanted to get some fresh air. She put on a robe and a pair of padded plastic sandals, and the two of them walked down the gravel path to the front hedge. Then they went out on to the road.
As she had thought, the scenery was very pretty by daylight. To the right and left there were more gardens, hedges and red-roofed houses. In the distance there was a small wood, and before it the main road their van had travelled along. Clara was delighted to see the unmistakable outline of several windmills on the horizon. The scene was like a typical postcard from Holland.
'All these houses belong to the Foundation,' explained Gerardo. 'It's here we make sketches of most of our models. We prefer these surroundings because we can be on our own. Before all the sketches were done in the Old Atelier, in the Plantage district of Amsterdam. Now though we make the sketches here, and if necessary we do the shading in the Atelier.'
Gerardo was behaving as though he felt liberated. He rested his hand gently on her shoulder whenever he wanted to point something out, and smiled wonderfully. It was as if the work atmosphere inside the house was even more exhausting for him than for her. They walked along the roadside listening to the soundtrack of a civilised countryside: birdsong mixed with the distant rumble of machinery. Every so often, a plane ploughed the sky with its brief roar. The muscles of Clara's back ached a little. She thought it was probably due to the difficult poses she had been put in that morning. She was worried, because she did not want anything to go wrong at the sketching stage. She was thinking all this when Gerardo spoke again.
'This is a rest period. An official rest, I mean. Do you understand?'
'Aha.' 'You can talk freely.' 'Fine.'
She understood perfectly. Some painters she had worked with used phrases like this to emphasise that the hyperdramatic work had been interrupted. Sometimes with human canvases it was necessary to make a clear distinction between reality and the blurred outlines of art. Gerardo was trying to tell her that from this moment on, he was he, and she was she. He was saying that he had left his brushwork behind and that he wanted to go for a walk and chat for a while. After that, everything would begin again.
But Clara was confused by the decision. Breaks were common practice in every HD painting session, but it was important to determine exactly when they were taking place, because otherwise the entire painterly construction could be destroyed in an instant. And this moment did not seem very suitable. The previous day, the same young man she was now out strolling with had told her threateningly that she should accept the sexual harassment of his colleague. That had been an especially intense piece of brushwork, but it was also extremely fragile, a subtle outline that could be ruined if it were not allowed to dry. She wanted to believe Gerardo knew what he was doing. And this rest period might well be make-believe, too.
After a short silence, Gerardo looked at her intently. They both smiled.
'You're a very good canvas, sweetheart. I'm talking from experience. First-class material!'
'Thanks, but I see myself as fairly ordinary,' lied Clara. 'No, no; you're very good. Justus thinks the same.' 'You two aren't so bad either.'
She was feeling increasingly uneasy. She would have preferred to go back to the house at once and resume the hyperdramatic tension. This idle conversation with one of the technical assistants frightened her. She refused to believe that Gerardo wanted to have the kind of boring exchange such as: What do you like doing, and what do you enjoy? She could only put up with Jorge talking that way, but Jorge was her everyday life, not art.
Stay cool, she told herself. Let him take the reins. He's a Foundation painter, a professional. He's not going to make any false moves with a canvas.
'Justus is better than me,' Gerardo went on. 'Seriously, sweetheart: he's an extraordinary painter. I've been an assistant for two years now. Before I was training to be a craftsman. Justus had just been made a senior. We became friends, and it was he who recommended me for this job. I've been very lucky, they don't take on just anybody. And I never liked painting ornaments. What I'm into are works of art.' Aha.'
'But what I'd like most of all is to become an independent professional painter. To have my own studio and canvases. Canvases like you: good, expensive ones.' Clara laughed out loud. I have lots of ideas, especially for outdoor works. I'd love to be able to devote myself to making outdoor works for collectors in hot countries.' 'So why don't you? It's a good market.'
'You need money to set up a studio like that, sweetheart. But one day I'll do it, believe me. For the moment, I'm happy. I'm earning lots of money. Not everyone gets to be a technical assistant in the Van Tysch Foundation.'
Clara was no longer irritated by Gerardo's smug tone. She saw it as part of his overall commonness. What she did find increasingly hard to take was this conversation. All she wanted to do was to get back to the house and go on with the sketching. Not even the delightful countryside and the fresh air could lift her spirits. 'What about you?' he asked. He was smiling at her. 'Me?'
'Yes. What is it you want? What's your greatest aim in life?' It did not take her a second to think of a reply. 'To have a great painter create a masterpiece with me.' Gerardo smiled again.
'You're a beautiful work already – you don't need anyone to paint you.'
'Thanks, but I was talking about masterpieces, not simply something pretty. A work of genius.'
'You'd like someone to create a work of genius with you, even if it was ugly?' 'Aha.' 'I thought you liked being pretty'
'I'm a canvas, not a catwalk model,' she said, more sharply than she had intended.
'Of course, nobody's denying that,' Gerardo said. The two of them fell silent, then he turned towards her again. 'Forgive me for asking, but might I know why? I mean, why are you so keen for someone to paint a great work with you?'
‘I don't know’ she said sincerely. She had stopped to look at the roadside flowers. A comparison occurred to her. 'I guess a caterpillar has no idea why it wants to become a butterfly either.' Gerardo thought about it.
'What you've just said is very pretty, but not strictly true. Because a caterpillar is destined to become a butterfly whether it wants to or not. But that's not true of works of art. We have to make believe.' 'That's true’ she admitted.
'Have you ever thought of leaving the profession? Of just being yourself?' ‘I am myself.' Gerardo turned to look at the trees along the roadside. 'Come on. I want to show you something.'
All this is a trick, thought Clara. A trap to darken my colour. Perhaps Uhl is hiding somewhere, and now…
They crossed the ditch and walked into the wood. He held her hand as they descended a steep slope. They reached a polygonal clearing hemmed in by trees with shiny leaves and dark chestnut trunks that looked as if they had been varnished. There was a strange, unexpected smell in the air, which somehow reminded Clara of that of newly made dolls. And then an odd noise: an artificial tinkling, like the breeze might make as it stirred the glass of a baroque chandelier. For a moment, Clara looked all round, trying to discover where this strange noise came from. Then she went closer to one of the trees and understood. She was fascinated.
'We call this part the Plastic Bos, the "plastic wood"‘ Gerardo explained. 'The trees, flowers and grass are all artificial. The sound you can hear is made by the leaves on the trees when the wind catches them: they're made of a very fragile material that makes them sound like slivers of glass. We use this place to sketch outdoor pieces the whole year round. It means we don't have to depend on nature. Winter and summer are exactly the same: the trees and the grass here are still green’ 'It's incredible.' 'I'd call it horrible,' he replied. 'Horrible?' 'Yes. These trees, this plastic grass… I can't bear it.'
Clara looked down at her feet: the carpet of thick, pointed artificial grass looked very soft. She took off a sandal and tested it with her bare foot. It was soft and springy. 'Can I sit down?' she asked.
'Of course, make yourself at home. Get comfortable.' They sat down together. The grass was an army of tiny, elegant soldiers. Nothing in the clearing jarred. Clara stroked the grass and closed her eyes: it was like sliding your hand through a fur coat. She felt happy. Gerardo on the other hand seemed increasingly sad.
'Nothing will make the birds settle here, you know. They realise at once that it's all a trompe-l’oeil and fly off at once to real trees. And they're right, dammit: trees should be trees, and people, people.'
'In real life, of course: but art is different.'
'Art is part of life, sweetheart, not the other way round,' Gerardo replied. 'Do you know what I'd like to do? To paint something in the natural-humanist style of the French school. But I don't, because hyperdramatism sells better and gives more money. And I want to earn lots of money' He threw open his arms and exclaimed: 'Lots and lots of money so I can say to hell with all the plastic woods in the world!'
'I think this place is beautiful.' 'Are you serious?' 'Aha.' He looked at her curiously.
'What an incredible woman you are. I've worked with a lot of canvases, sweetheart, but none of them was as formidable as you.'
'Formidable?'
'Yes. I mean… as determined to be a complete canvas, from head to toe. Tell me something. What do you do when you stop working? Do you have friends? Are you going out with someone?'
'Yes, I'm going out with someone. And I have male and female friends.'
'Anyone special?'
Clara was gently combing the grass. She merely smiled. 'Don't you like me asking you these things?' Gerardo wanted to know.
'No, it's all right. There is someone, but we don't live together, and he's not really my "boyfriend". He's a friend I feel attracted to.'
She smiled again, trying to imagine Jorge as her boyfriend. She had never thought of him that way. She went on to wonder exactly what Jorge was for her, what else they shared apart from their night-time moments. All at once, she realised that she used him as a spectator. She liked Jorge to know every detail of what happened to her in the strange world of her profession. She tried not to hide anything from him, not even its most vulgar aspects, or what Jorge considered as vulgar: everything she did with the public during the art-shocks for example, or her work for The Circle or Brentano. Jorge was taken aback at this, and she enjoyed watching his face at those moments. Jorge was her public, her astonished spectator. She needed constantly to leave him with his mouth open.
'So when you're not a canvas, you lead a normal life,' Gerardo said. 'Yes, pretty normal. What about you?'
‘I dedicate myself to work. I have a few friends here in Holland, but above all, I dedicate myself to work. And I'm not going out with anyone at the moment. I did have a Dutch girlfriend a while back, but we split up.'
After that there was a silence. She was still convinced Gerardo was a skilful painter, but now she was almost certain this was a real break. What did he mean by talking to her sincerely? There could be no sincerity between a painter and a canvas, and both of them knew that. In the case of artists such as Bassan or Chalboux, who were followers of the natural-humanist school, the sincerity was forced, another brushstroke, a sort of 'now we're going to be sincere', a technique along with all the others. Yet here was Gerardo apparently wanting to talk to her as if she was someone he had met on a train or bus. It was absurd.
'Look, I'm sorry, but isn't it getting rather late?' she said. 'Shouldn't we be getting back?' Gerardo looked her up and down. 'You're right,' he finally admitted. 'Let's go back.'
Then suddenly as they were getting up, he spoke to her in a different, urgent whisper.
'Listen, I wanted… I wanted you to know something. You're doing very well, sweetheart. You've understood the response right from the start. But keep on doing the same thing, whatever happens, got it? Don't forget, the key is to yield.'
Clara listened to him in disbelief. It seemed incredible to her that he was revealing the artist's secrets to her. She felt as though in the middle of a gripping drama one of the actors had turned to her, winked, and said: Don't worry, it's only a play. For a moment she thought it might have been a hidden brushstroke, but she could see from Gerardo's face that he was genuinely concerned. Concerned about her! The key is to yield. No doubt about it, he was referring to her reaction to Uhl: he was encouraging her to continue on the correct – or at least the safest – path. If you continue to yield the way you did yesterday afternoon, he was saying, Uhl will stop. Gerardo was not painting her: he was revealing secrets, the solution to the mysteries. He was the unfortunate friend who tells you the end of the film.
Clara felt as though he had deliberately tipped an inkpot over a sketch he had only just begun. Why on earth had he done it?
The poses continued all afternoon in complete silence. Uhl did not bother her again, but she had already forgotten him. She thought that Gerardo's slip was the worst mistake she had ever come across in her entire professional life: not even poor Gabi Ponce, who was not exactly subtle when it came to hyperdramatism, had been so crass. Even though she had suspected that Uhl's harassment was not for real, it was one thing to suspect it, another to know it for sure. With a single sweep of his brush, Gerardo had ruined the careful landscape of threats that Uhl and he had been painstakingly creating around her. Now any return to that make-believe was impossible: the hyperdramatism as such had disappeared. From now on there could only be theatre.
Later on, as she was going to bed, her anger subsided. She decided that Gerardo must be a novice. The refinements of pure hyperdramatism were obviously way beyond him. What most surprised her was that a painter like him had been given a position of such responsibility. Apprentices should not be allowed to sketch on originals, she thought. That should be reserved for experienced artists. Maybe all was not lost though. Perhaps Gerardo's clumsiness, the huge stain he had tipped over her, could be cleaned up thanks to Uhl's exquisite artwork. It could be that Uhl would find some way of increasing the pressure and making it part of the painting process again.
She was sure she would be frightened again. As she fell asleep, this was her last wish.
When she woke up, everything was still incredibly dark. She had no way of knowing what time it was, even whether it was still night-time or not, because before she had gone to sleep she had closed the house shutters. She guessed it must still be night, because she could not hear any birdsong. She drew her hand across her face, then turned over, confident she could get back to sleep. She was about to do so when she noticed it. She sat bolt upright on the mattress, terrified.
The distinct sound of floorboards creaking. In the living room. It had possibly been something similar that had awakened her. Footsteps.
She was all ears, listening. All her tiredness and aching muscles disappeared as if by magic. She could hardly breathe. She quickly tried a relaxation exercise, but it did not work.
There was someone in the living room, by God.
She swung her feet on to the floor. Her brain was a whirling maelstrom of thoughts.
'Hello?' she called out in a quaking, horrified voice.
She waited without moving for several minutes, ready to confront the dreadful possibility that the intruder might burst in at any moment and fling himself on her. The silence all around her made her think she might have been mistaken. But her imagination – that strange diamond, that polygon with a thousand faces – sent fleeting sensations of terror to her mind, tiny inventions like slivers of pure ice. It's the man facing the other way: he's stepped out of the photo and now he's coming for you. But he's walking backwards. You'll see him walk into the room backwards, heading straight for you, guided by your smell. It's your father, in his huge square glasses, coming to tell you that…' She made a great effort to dismiss these recurring nightmares from her mind.
'Is there anybody there?' she heard herself say again.
She waited another prudent moment, her eyes fixed on the closed bedroom door. She remembered that all the light switches were in the hall. She had no way of lighting her room without leaving it and walking in the dark to the front wall. She did not have the courage to do it. Maybe it's a guard, she thought. But what was a security guard doing entering the farm at night and creeping about the living room?
The silence continued. Her heartbeats too. The silence and the heartbeats stubbornly measured their own rhythms. She decided she must have been wrong. There are many reasons wooden floorboards creak. In Alberca she had become accustomed to chance and its shocks: a sudden breeze bringing dead curtains back to life, the creaking sound of a rocking chair, a mirror suddenly disguised in darkness. All of this must be a false alarm raised by her weary brain. She could get up calmly, walk past the living room and switch the house lights on, just as she had done the night before. She took a deep breath and put her hands on the mattress.
At that moment the door opened and her attacker swept into the room like a hurricane.