Art of Murder

by Jose Carlos Somoza

  The only things that matter are the cunt and the prick,' he suddenly declared to a weary Clara. 'And I'm telling you that as a brain expert.'

  He also insisted that concentration was impossible.

  'We can only concentrate by letting our attention wander. I know you canvases are taught differently in the academy, but I couldn't give a fuck about the methods you learn in academies. Just look at children while they're playing. They're completely concentrated on what they're doing. Why? Because they're making an effort to concentrate or because they're playing? Shit, it's obvious: they are concentrating because they are absorbed, because they're enjoying themselves. It's absurd for you to concentrate on quiescence. What you should be doing is enjoying yourself.'

  This was his favourite word: 'Enjoy,' he kept saying as he submitted her to yet another mental test.

  Marisa Monfort, middle-aged, with dyed hair and eyes buried in mascara, received the last remains of Clara on the seventh floor. Her office was gloomy, and she did not look happy either.

  The backs of her hands were tattooed with two snakes, cut up into segments by innumerable yellow bangles. She pressed fingers to her temples as she spoke, as though pressing two bells. 'I'm the memory woman, my girl’ she said. 'The habits anchored in our ego that get in the way of hyperdramatic art so much.' She made Clara come into her office three times, and analysed her gestures. She was concerned by her excessive tendency to repeat the same thing. Fortunately, she did not discover any of the faults 'which ruin good material': a nervous tic, nail biting, a niggling nervous cough, other defence mechanisms. She bombarded her with imaginary situations. Showed her obscene or terrible photos. Praised her for not feeling ashamed. But she was damning over Clara's squeamishness over illegal behaviour.

  'My child: to be a great work of art you have to overcome all obstacles,' Marisa Monfort reproached her in a voice like an oracle. 'You've no idea of the world you are entering. Being a masterpiece has something .. . inhuman about it. You have to be a lot less involved. Imagine it's a science-fiction film: art is like a being from another planet which manifests itself through us. We may paint pictures or compose music, but neither the picture nor the music belongs to us, because they are not human things. Art uses us, my child, it uses us in order to exist, but it's like an alien being. That's what you've got to think: you're not human when you are a painting. Think of yourself as an insect. A very odd insect. Think of yourself as an insect capable of flying, sucking flowers, being fecundated by a male proboscis, poisoning a child with your sting .. . Go on, think of yourself as that insect right now.'

  Clara tried, but found it impossible to understand what the insect might be thinking.

  'When you discover what the insect is thinking,' Marisa Monfort said, 'then you'll be a great work of art.'

  On the eighth floor was the priming workshop. It was decorated with blown-up photos of F&W's past triumphs: an aquatic work by Nina Soldelli, the fabulous Kirsten Kirstenman standing in someone's salon, the amazing flame-haired female figure of Mavalaki, an outside piece by Ferrucioli on a cliff top. All of them had been primed by F&W. It was here that Clara finally received Friedman's icy verdict: they accepted her, with reservations. She was good material, but would have to improve. A woman with a South American accent (Clara recognised the voice - it was the woman who had stretched her on the telephone) handed her the contract. Four sheets of turquoise paper, with the letterhead 'The Bruno van Tysch Foundation, Department of Art'. Clara was so overjoyed, she could scarcely believe her eyes. The contract was for one year. The fee (five million euros) was to be paid in two instalments: half had already been put into her bank account, the rest would follow at the end. She would also receive a percentage of the sale price of the work, and of the monthly rent. There was also a comprehensive insurance and two appendices. One of these stated she would work exclusively for the Foundation; the other a commitment that she would not allow herself to be used as a fake. A third appendix required her to leave everything in the hands of the Department of Art. Art could do what it liked with her, because Art was Art. Only Art knew what it was going to do with her, but whatever that might be, she would have to accept it. The painter contracting her was from the Foundation, but she would not discover his identity until the work began. Clara signed the four sheets.

  'That's crazy’ Jorge scolded her.

  'You haven't the slightest idea of how this scene operates. Everything is kept a complete secret. Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Rubens and other great masters had their professional secrets, didn't they? The way they made their colours, their choice of canvas... well, modern painters have secrets, too. It stops others copying their ideas.'

  'What did you do after signing?'

  'I was free until the final priming session.'

  That had been on Saturday. It took all day. A haircut, shower in cleaning acids, then creams applied to her body using huge rotating brushes like in a carwash, the removal of scars and other marks (including Alex Bassan's signature), the shaping and moulding of her muscles and joints with flexing agents and more creams; then the dyeing of her skin, hair, eyes, holes and cavities with the white-coloured base, followed by a thin layer of yellow paint. And finally, the labels, which showed only her name, the Foundation's logo, and a mysterious bar code.

  It was Sunday 25 June, 2006, and the priming was finished. Clara was dressed in the padded top and miniskirt, driven to Barajas airport, and stored in the room. They asked her if there was anyone she wanted to say goodbye to. She chose Jorge, who was just back from a radiology congress and had heard her message.

  'So there you are,' she concluded. Jorge interpreted all this from his point of view. 'Five million euros is a lot of money. You'll have no more worries.'

  'You're forgetting the percentage on the sale and rent. If they make a masterpiece out of me, I can easily treble my earnings.' 'Goodness me.'

  Clara's golden eyes opened wide as she smiled: two Jorges were reflected in the yellow irises. 'Art is money,' she whispered.

  He stared this glowing golden apparition up and down. 'She hasn't even been painted yet, and she's already worth a fortune.' In the silence, all they could hear was the muffled distant sound of the airport's loudspeakers.

  'Twenty-four thousand years,' said Jorge in a tone which made it sound as though it were negotiable, like a sum of money. 'But can an HD work last that long?'

  'All you would need are twenty-four thousand substitutes, one a year. But I would go down in history as the original model.'

  What about a million years? A million people, Jorge calculated. Just with the inhabitants of Madrid, at a rate of one person per year, the work could last as long as the life of mankind on Earth, including his anthropoid ancestors. Of course, it would take many generations, but what are three or four million people? All at once it seemed to him he was no longer looking at Clara: he was staring at eternity.

  'That's incredible.'

  'I'm a bit scared,' she confessed. Then she added, with a shy smile: 'Only a bit, but the highest quality' Impulsively, Jorge held out his arms.

  'No’ she protested, stepping back. 'Don't embrace me. You could damage me. I feel like crying, but I don't want to. And anyway, they told me I don't have any tears or sweat any more. I've hardly even got any saliva. That's the effect of being primed.'

  'But do you feel all right?'

  ‘I feel wonderful, ready for anything, Jorge, anything. Right now I'd be able to do anything with my body, anything a painter might ask of me.'

  Jorge had no wish to enquire just what that meant. At that moment, a man in a dark-blue pilot's uniform came in. He was tall, attractive, with a sensual mouth, and had slackened his tie.

  'Plane now’ he said with a strong Spanish accent.

  Clara looked at Jorge. He would have liked to say something earth-shattering, but he was not much good at moments like these.

  'When will I see you again?' was all he could think of.

  ‘I don't know. Once I've been painted, I
suppose.'

  They stood looking at each other for a second or two, and Clara suddenly realised she was crying. She could not tell for certain when it had begun, because there were, in fact, no tears, but the rest of the mechanism continued to function: the lump in the throat, heavy eyelids, irritated sensation in the eyes, butterflies in the stomach. She told herself the artist would have to add the teardrops if he wanted them - perhaps he could paint them on her cheeks, or imitate them with tiny crystal shards, like in some statues of the Virgin. Then she controlled herself. She did not want to get emotional. A canvas should always remain calm.

  She walked away from Jorge without looking back. She followed the other man down a metallic corridor throbbing with the roar of aeroplanes. With each step she took, the label banged against her ankle.

  It was a sudden flash. Perhaps it was his sixth sense ('You inherited it from your father') which raised the alarm as he saw her disappear through the door. Clara should not be going, she should not accept the job. Clara was in danger.

  Jorge hesitated for a moment, thinking he should call her back, but his absurd premonition vanished as quickly and calmly as she had done.

  He soon forgot it.

  She had never felt such a combination of fear and happiness. Both the feelings were there, distinct and contradictory: an immense fear and an ecstatic sense of joy. She remembered her mother had said something similar about the way she felt as she went into church on her wedding day. She smiled at the memory as she followed the man in pilot's uniform down the deafening passageway. She imagined there were people on both sides watching her as she glided in a silky gauze towards an altar decorated with golden or yellow objects just like her: tabernacle, chalices, the cross. Gold, yellow, gold.

  8

  Black.

  The backdrop is coal black, the floor a smoky black. Rising from the floor is a metal chair like a bar stool. Annek Hollech is sitting on the stool swinging one of her bare feet. All she is wearing is a black T-shirt with the Foundation's logo on it, and the three labels at her neck, wrist and ankle. Her slender thighs, bare almost to her groin, are like a pair of open scissors with the light glinting on them. Her auburn hair has a tendency to fall like a curtain across her eyebrow-less face, a shadowy face as pure as fresh clay. The fingers of her right hand play with her hair, pulling it back, combing it, stroking a handful.

  'Do you really think that?' asked the man from somewhere invisible.

  A nod of the head.

  ‘Perhaps you're confusing a lack of time with a lack of interest. You know the Maestro is fully occupied with finishing the works in homage to Rembrandt for 15 July.'

  'It's not his work.' Now she was playing with the bottom edge of her T-shirt. 'It's that he doesn't want to see me any more. We paintings all realise that. Eva has noticed it too.'

  ‘You mean your friend Eva van Snell has also noticed that the Maestro has apparently lost interest in you?'

  A nod of the head.

  'Annek, we know from experience that paintings with an owner feel better, more protected. And Eva has been bought at the moment. Isn't that what's worrying you? The fact that you haven't been bought yet? Do you remember when we sold you as Confessions, Door Ajar, and Summer? Didn't you feel good with Mr Wallberg?'

  That was different.'

  Why?'

  She blushed, but the priming prevented her cheeks changing colour.

  'Because the Maestro used to say that he had never done anything like Deflowering. When he called me to Edenburg to start the sketches, he told me he wanted to paint a childhood memory with me. I thought that was so nice. Mr Wallberg loved me, but the Maestro had created me. Senor Wallberg is the best owner I've had, but it's different ... the Maestro tried so hard with me...'

  'You mean with the hyperdramatic work.'

  'Yes. He took me to the Edenburg woods ... while we were there, he saw an expression on my face... something he liked ... he said it was incredible ... that I was . . . was like one of his own memories ...'

  The left foot was tracing slow circles over the black carpet: a graceful needle turning on a vinyl record. As it moved round, the ankle label caught the light.

  'I don't mind not being bought. I'd just like ... him not to suffer because of me ... I've done everything he asked of me. Everything. I know it's selfish of me to think he owes me something in return, because when he painted me in Deflowering he ... he gave me . . . the best thing in the world, I know, it's just that...'

  'Tell me,' the man encouraged her.

  As she raised her head, Annek's green eyes shone.

  'I'd like ... I'd like to tell him .. . that I can't avoid ... I can't avoid growing up ... It's not my fault... I'd like my body to be different...' She choked with emotion. 'It's not my fault...'

  At that moment, something incredible happened. Annek's body split down the middle, like a flower, from head to toe. The chair she was on also collapsed in two. Through the centre of the two halves appeared a middle-aged man in a dark suit, bald head with a fringe of white hair. He came to an abrupt halt, and spoke:

  'Oh, I'm sorry. You were on the video-scanner. I didn't know.'

  Lothar Bosch stepped to one side, and Annek's three-dimensional figure came together again in pure silence, just as water flows back around the void when a finger is withdrawn from it. Miss Wood pressed the pause button, and the adolescent hung immobile in the centre of the room.

  ‘I’d already finished,' Miss Wood said with a yawn. 'It's all much of a muchness.'

  She pressed the rewind, and Annek started a strange Saint Vitus' dance. Miss Wood took off her virtual reality visor and left it on the table, dismissing the apparition. The table was a half-crescent moon built out of the wall. It was the only wooden-coloured piece of furniture in this small audio-visual room in the MuseumsQuartier. Everything else was black, including the stiletto-like chair legs. Miss Wood was seated in one of them, her pink cardigan and suit gleaming in the dark. Next to her lay a pile of virtual reality tapes. On the wall to her left, cameras and loudspeakers stuck out like gargoyles.

  Bosch, wearing an elegant grey suit in which the red label shone like a wedding carnation in his lapel, sat in a chair opposite her and pulled out his reading glasses.

  'How long have you been here?' he asked.

  He was concerned about her. They had been in Vienna for five days including this Monday 26 June, working non-stop. They had suites in the Ambassador, but only used them to sleep in. And no matter how early Bosch appeared at the MuseumsQuartier, she was already there, working away. The thought suddenly crossed his mind that Wood probably did not go to sleep at night either.

  'For a while’ she said. 'I still had to check a few interviews Support had done, and my father always told me never to leave work undone.'

  'Good advice,' Bosch agreed. 'But be careful not to overdo the virtual reality visors. They can damage your eyesight.'

  As Miss Wood sat back in her chair, the cardigan opened like a pair of wings, and Bosch was treated to a wave of perfume. The mounds of her breasts pushed against the pink dress. Embarrassed, Bosch lowered his eyes. He liked everything about this woman: the sudden smell of her perfume, her tiny, cutglass body, even the extremely slender legs of hers, and the knees peeping over the top of the desk. And the sombre gravity of her voice, which he was now listening to.

  'Don't worry, I have been taking walks. There is something soothing about Vienna at dawn on a Monday morning. And I've realised something: people here buy a lot of bread, don't they? I've seen several men with a baguette under their arm, like in Paris. I almost thought they were deliberately parading the bread under my nose.'

  'In fact, they're Braun's men keeping an eye on you.'

  Her smile told him his joke had hit the mark. It was dangerous to talk about food with Miss Wood.

  ‘I wouldn't be surprised’ she said, 'although they'd do better to keep an eye on other things. Our bird has flown, hasn't he?'

  'Completely. Yesterday was Sunday, so I
couldn't talk to Braun, but my friends in CID tell me no one has been arrested. And don't go thinking the other news is any better.'

  'Go on anyway.' Miss Wood rubbed her eyes. 'God, I'd kill for a decent cup of coffee. A cup of black, black coffee, a good Viennese schwarzer, hot and strong.'

  'An ornament is serving the people in Art this morning. I told her to pass by here.'

  'You're a perfect gentleman, Lothar.'

  Bosch felt naked. Luckily, his flaming cheeks soon died down. At fifty-five, there's no fuel that can produce a lasting blush, he thought to himself. Old blood is too thin.