Art of Murder
Page 55
And on the Friday afternoon, after having lunch and sleeping a lengthy siesta, she heard a gentle knocking at her door.
Gerardo smiled as he came in.
'So this is what you look like without any paint on, sweetheart. The truth is I prefer you this way. The natural look, you might say'
She smiled back at him. She was sitting on her bed in pyjamas, her hair a mess, her eyes still full of sleep. She let herself be wrapped in Gerardo's arms, and discovered his presence made her very happy.
‘I heard you were getdng out today, and I wanted to come and see you,' Gerardo explained. 'Justus would have liked to come, too, but he suggested I come as an "advance party".' He laughed and his eyes shone, but he quickly became serious again. He had heard about the madman's attack and had been trying to see her ever since, even though he been told many times that she was fine. 'How are you really?' he asked.
'1 don't know,' she replied frankly. ‘I suppose I'm fine.'
She felt as though she had been asleep and had woken up in hospital. She felt empty. I've been dreaming, she thought. But what happens when everything you are and have been forms part of the same dream?
They had time before they had to go to the airport. Did she want to say goodbye to anywhere in particular? he wanted to know. Clara looked at the newspapers crumpled on her bed. She had read that this Friday 21 July, 2006, they would finish dismantling the Tunnel.
'I'd like to go to the Museumplein to see how they're demolishing the Tunnel,' she said.
'No problem.'
Night had fallen, and stars were beginning to appear above the quiet waters of the canals. It was a splendid summer night. The moon shone brightly, trying to reach its own perfection. Gerardo drove with Clara towards the Museumplein.
‘I was thinking,' said Gerardo, breaking the intense silence, 'that I might travel to Madrid soon. I'd like to finish a painting I've left half completed,' he added with a smile.
Later on, she came to think of this as the exact moment when she realised Susanna had left her body completely. There in the dark seat of Gerardo's car, she touched her legs, her arms, her face, and was sure of it. Susanna had been rubbed out. From underneath, for good or ill, had emerged Clara Reyes. The event - she thought - had something of a frustrated attempt at divorce about it.
Gerardo was talking to her.
'I'd like ...'
He was making a series of sincere confessions which she could scarcely hear. But she understood that now she was Clara once more, she would have to get used to hearing sincere confessions again. Because Susanna was drifting off into the starry night sky. Susanna was floating through the immense tunnel of night, further and further away, increasingly indifferent. Welcome to the world, Clara. Welcome to reality.
The work in the Museumplein was being carried out calmly and skilfully. Several workmen undid each curtain panel: first one wall, then the other, finally the roof. They were advancing along the whole length of the horseshoe. They were not even stopping for the night: Amsterdam had to greet the new day without the Tunnel, dawn had to rise over the naked square, dotted with its usual statues and gardens.
Gerardo parked nearby, and they walked along looking upwards, like freshly arrived tourists.
'What do you feel?' he asked her. She was staring at the huge dismantling effort.
'I don't know. Hold me tight.'
As they renewed their walk, she thought of a reply.
'It's as if I'm breathing for the first time,' she said.
They walked on. Clara looked back over her shoulder.
At that moment they were undoing one of the roof panels. The immense square fell with the sound of distant waves, dragging its darkness with it. The clear moonlight effortlessly glided into the empty shade.
Author's Note
Everything has been done in art. A novelist's imagination could never compete with the infinite ways and kinds of experimentation the reader can discover as soon as they enter the fantastic universe that is contemporary art. In spite of this, hyperdrama-dsm does not exist, although various tendencies, such as body art, use the human body as the basis for their works. Art-shocks, 'stained' art, animarts and human artefacts are also fictional creations, although performances and events are terms known to all followers of modern art. The business of buying and selling painted human beings is not, as yet, a common phenomenon. I have no idea whether that situation will change in the future, but I tend to think that if someone discovers how to make money out of it, it will not be moral considerations that prevent this human market from flourishing in the same or even more spectacular fashion as in my novel.
Many other things are fictitious in this work, in addition to the characters. Some of the public buildings such as the Obberlund in Munich or the Ateliers in Amsterdam, private galleries like the GS or the Max Ernst, and the Wunderbar and Vermeer hotels, are all imaginary. Any coincidence between these names and places existing in real life is purely accidental. The museums mentioned are real, although the cultural centre in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier is I believe still under construction. Perhaps it will have been completed by the time this novel comes out. Of course, the hyperdramatic works exhibited in these galleries are fictitious and absolutely no connection of any kind should be made between the characteristics of the works and the real institutions mentioned in the novel.
Certain works in the bibliography I consulted are too important not to mention. The classic Story of Art by Ernest Gombrich (Phaidon, 1995) and the no less classic Art Materials and Techniques by Ralph Mayer (Tursen-Hermann Blume, 1993) became my bedside reading. Among the infinite number of books on Rembrandt, good choices were Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1999) and Rembrandt by Emmanuel Starcky (Portland House, 1990). On contemporary art, I found XXth Century Art by Ruhrberg, Schneckenburger et al. (Taschen, 1999) and Art at the Turn of the Millennium by Riemschneider and Grosenick, eds (Taschen, 1999) unbeatable. The two verses by Rilke quoted at the beginning and end are from the first elegy in his Duino Elegies. All the Carroll extracts are from his Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. The ellipses indicate words left out.
There are gaps no books can fill. Among the persons who helped me improve the novel with their advice or information, two merit special mention. Antonio Escudero Nafs, a good friend and an extraordinary painter, explained some of the most basic aspects of his art to me, and the equally talented painter 'Scipona' stoically put up with my questions about openings, gallery owners and dealers, and gave me invaluable help. In the end, however, my novel was not about inanimate canvases as they thought, but about human paintings, which obliged me to take great liberties with the information they gave me. All the errors my work may contain about the complex world of art are therefore due entirely to my own negligence or to the liberties I have taken.
J.C.S. Madrid, 2001