Art of Murder (48 page)

Van Tysch came up to her, took hold of her chin, and tilted it as if he were examining a jewel in the light. Then he stepped back again, leaving her head leaning over to the right. The sun's rays were garlanding the tree branches. The atmosphere in the plastic wood was damp, like a prism, so that the sunlight refracted in drops of pure colour.

She thought he was studying her pose, but she could not be sure.

'My mother was Spanish,' was his next comment.

These brusque changes of topic were apparently normal in any dialogue with him. They did not bother Clara.

'Yes, I know,' she said. 'And you speak very good Spanish.'

Once again she realised how stupid her praise must sound. But Van Tysch went on as if he had not heard her:

‘I
never knew her. When she died, my father tore up all her photos, so I never even saw her. Or rather, I only saw her in the drawings he made of her. They were watercolours. My father was a good painter. So I saw my mother for the first time thanks to his paintings, which means I'm not sure he didn't make her more beautiful than in real life. And to me she looked very, very, very beautiful.' He had pronounced the three 'verys' slowly, making a different sound each time, as if trying to discover hidden meanings in the word by pronouncing it differently each time. 'But perhaps it was all due to my father's art. I've no idea whether the watercolours were better or worse than the original, I've never known or had any wish to know. I did not know my mother, and that's that. Later on I came to understand that is normal. I mean it's normal
not to know.'

He paused and came up to her again. He moved Clara's head in the opposite direction, but then appeared to change his mind and pushed it back to the original position. He stepped away, then drew near again. He put a hand on the back of her head and bent it forwards. He put on the reading glasses hanging round his neck and studied something. Then he took off his glasses and walked away once more.

'Your father must have died young, too,' he said.

'My father?'

'Yes, your father.'

'He died at the age of forty-two of a brain tumour. I was nine at the time.'

'So you didn't know him either. You've seen images of him, but you never really knew him.'

‘Y
es, I did a little. By the age of nine I already had some idea about him.'

'We always have some idea about things we don't know,' Van Tysch replied, 'but that doesn't mean we know them any better.

You and I don't know each other, but we have already formed an idea of one another. And you don't know yourself, but you've already formed an idea about yourself.' Clara nodded. Van Tysch went on.

'Nothing around us, nothing we know or do not know, is either completely known or unknown. It's so easy to invent extremes. It's the same with light. Did you know there's no such thing as
total
darkness, even for a blind person? Darkness is full of presences: shapes, smells, thoughts
...
And take a look at this summer evening light. Would you say it was pure? Take a good look. I'm not just talking about the shadows. Look
between the cracks
of the light. Can you see the tiny specks of darkness? Light is embroidered on a very dark canvas, but that's hard to see. We have to mature. As we do so, we come to understand that truth is an intermediate point. It's as if our eyes accustomed us to life. We understand that day and night, and life and death, too, perhaps, are merely different points in the play of light and shade. We discover that truth, the only truth worthy of the name, is shade.'

After a pause, as though he had been thinking about what he had just said, he repeated:

'The only truth is shade. That's why everything is so terrible. That's why life is so unbearable and terrible. That's why everything is so dreadful.'

Clara could not hear any emotion in his words. It was as if he were talking aloud as he worked. Van Tysch's mind was spinning in a void.

'Take off your robe.'

'Yes.'

As she was doing so, he asked her:

'What did you feel when your father died?'

Clara was folding her robe over a tree branch. The air enfolded her naked, primed body like a caress of pure water. The question brought her to a halt. She looked at Van Tysch:

'What did I feel when my father died?'

'Yes. What did you feel?'

'Not a lot. I mean
...
I don't think I felt it as badly as my mother and brother. They knew him better, so it was worse for them.'

'Did you see him die?'

‘N
o. He died in hospital. He was at home when he had a crisis, a fit. He was taken to hospital, and I wasn't allowed to see him.'

Van Tysch went on staring at her. The sun had moved round and lit part of his face.

'Have you dreamed of him since?'

'Occasionally'

'What sort of dreams?'

‘I
dream of
...
of his face. His face appears, he says strange things to me, then he disappears.'

A bird sang and then fell silent. Van Tysch screwed up his eyes to look at her.

'Walk over there,' he said. He pointed towards the shade under a fake tree.

The plastic grass bent docilely under her bare feet. Van Tysch raised his right arm.

There is fine.'

She stopped. Van Tysch had put his glasses on again, and was coming over. He had not touched her: all he had done was to
outline
her with his curt orders, but already she felt changed, as if her body were different, better
drawn
than ever before. She was convinced her body would do whatever he asked of it without waiting for her brain to agree. And she was determined she would lay her mind at his feet as well. All of it. Completely. Whatever he said, whatever he wished. Without limit.

'What happened?' Van Tysch asked.

'When?'

'Just now.'

'Now?'

Tes, now. Tell me what you're thinking. Tell me
exactly
what you're thinking right now.'

She started to speak, almost without the words needing to pass through her brain.

'I am thinking that I've never felt this way with any painter before. That I have surrendered to you. That my body does what you tell it to almost before you even say it. And I'm thinking my mind has to surrender, too. That's what I was thinking when you asked me what had happened.'

When she finished it was as though a weight had been lifted. She thought about it. She found she had nothing more to confess. She remained silent like a soldier waiting for orders.

Van Tysch took off his glasses. He looked bored. He muttered a few words in Dutch, then took a handkerchief and a small bottle out of his pocket. Somewhere in the heavens a plane roared by. The sun was in its dying moments.

'Let's get rid of those features,' he said, wetting a corner of the handkerchief in the liquid and approaching her once more.

She did not move a muscle. Van Tysch's finger inside the handkerchief rubbed roughly at her face. As it came down towards her eyes, Clara forced herself to keep them open, because he had not told her she could close them. Distant images of Gerardo reached her like remote echoes. She had felt good when he painted her face, but now she was pleased Van Tysch was going to rub it all out. It had been yet another act of clumsiness by Gerardo, like a child scribbling in the corner of a canvas Rembrandt was considering using. She was amazed Van Tysch had not protested.

When he had finished, Van Tysch put his glasses back on. For a moment, she thought he was not satisfied. Then she saw him put away the bottle and the handkerchief.

'Why are you scared someone might break into your house at night?'

'I don't know. It's true, I've no idea. I don't think anything like that has ever happened to me.'

'I saw the night-time footage we took of you, and I was surprised at the terror on your face when my assistants came near the window. I thought we might be able to fix an expression like that. To paint it, I mean. And perhaps I will. But I'm after something better than that. . .'

Clara did not say a word. She just went on staring at him. Behind his head, the sky was going dark.

'What did you feel when your father died?'

‘I
felt pretty bad. It was just before Christmas. I remember it was a very sad Christmas. Over the next year I gradually began to feel better.'

'Why did you blink?'

‘I
don't know. Maybe it was your breath. When you speak, you breathe on my face. Do you want me to try not to blink?' 'What did you feel when your father died?' 'Very sad. I cried a lot.'

'Why do you get so excited if someone breaks into your house at night?'

'Because
...
excited? No, it doesn't excite me. It frightens me.' 'You're not being sincere.'

This took her by surprise. She responded with the first thing that came into her head. 'No. Yes.'

'Why are you not being sincere?'
‘I
don't know. I'm frightened.' 'Of me?'

‘I
don't know. Of me.
' 'Are you excited now?' 'No. A
little, perhaps.'

'Why do you always reply in two contradictory ways?' 'Because I want to be sincere. To say everything that occurs to me.'

Van Tysch seemed vaguely annoyed. He took some paper out of his jacket pocket, unfolded it and did something extraordinary. He flung it in her face.

It struck her and floated to the plastic ground. As it fell, Clara could see it was a crumpled catalogue of
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass
by Alex Bassan. The catalogue contained a close-up photo of her face.

‘I
saw that photo when I was looking for a canvas for one of my "Rembrandts". I was immediately taken with the luminous quality of your gaze,' Van Tysch said.
‘I
gave orders for you to be given a contract, I had you stretched and primed and paid a fortune for you to be brought from Madrid as artistic material. I thought that shining light would be ideal for my work, and that I could paint you a lot better than that fellow. So why can't I? I haven't found it in any of the footage we took of you in the farm. I thought it must be related to your nig
ht
time fears, and ordered my assistants to make the leap into the void with you in the early hours of this morning. But I don't think it has anything to do with the tension of a moment, so I decided to come here personally. Just now when I was approaching you I thought I could catch a glimpse of it for a tenth of a second. I asked you what had happened. But I don't think that it has anything to do with you. I think it exists independently of you. It appears and disappears like some shy animal. Why? Why do your eyes suddenly light up like that?'

Before she could reply, Van Tysch started speaking in a very different voice. It was an icy whisper, a galvanic current.

'I've grown tired of asking you questions to make it appear and try to fix it in your gaze, all you do is give idiotic replies so I can't find what I want anywhere. You behave like a pretty little girl with an eye on her opportunity. A beautiful body asking to be painted. You think you're very beautiful and you want to be noticed. You want to be made into something wonderful. You think you're a professional canvas, but you've no idea what it means to be a canvas, and you'll die without ever finding out. The video tapes from the farm have shown me that as a canvas, you're absolutely mediocre. The only thing that interests me in you is what you have in your eyes. There are things within us that are greater than we are, but even so are still minute. For example, your father's tumour. Tiny things that are more important than our lives. Frightening things. They are what art is made from. Occasionally, they come out: that's what we call "purging" them. It's as though we were vomiting. To me, you are less than your vomit. It's
your vomit
I want. Do you know why?'

She said nothing. She was pleased somehow that she had no tears, because above all she wanted to cry.

Tell me. Do you know why I want it?' Van Tysch repeated the question in an offhand way.

'No,' she murmured.

'Because it's
mine.
It's inside you, but it's mine.' He jabbed at his chest with his forefinger. 'That glow that sometimes appears in your eyes
belongs to me.
I was the one who first saw it, and so it's mine.'

He stepped back, turned round, walked away a few paces. Clara could hear him fiddling with something. When he came back, she saw he was holding a pipe he had just filled.