The Portrait (17 page)
We rushed him to Heraklion by helicopter. They were able to save him, pumping his stomach and patching him up in the nick of time. That was eighteen months ago. An overdose. I found out while I was filming; he was lying there like a sleeping god ⦠I didn't even smell the vomit next to the bed. I was just spellbound by â Christ almighty, he was so beautiful. I know what you want to say. But you wouldn't have accepted the job if I'd told you it was suicide, attempted suicide, at that moment, on the video, there, in Loutro â¦
Why did you want his portrait?
Creator asked the question, but knew the answer.
It was for him. Your
thing
. It would be â¦
Was he dozing off again?
It would be as if he was loved. Do you understand? If I was dead, who would there be to tell him that? If he got to see your thing, one day, as I knew that only you could paint it, then he would know how â¦
Specht raised his hand to his forehead and pinched his brow.
How much I loved him. How lovely he is. How lovely.
He cleared his throat, but stayed hoarse.
It was as if he chose me, that one time, in the compound, on the lawn.
Papa, he said. In French. He wanted to trust me. And really, Felix, later I even convinced myself ⦠that it wasn't inconceivable, Singer trusting life and one day taking over, not the business, but the things I found most beautiful. He loved beauty â he soaked up the most beautiful things as if it's true, that beauty really is salvation. You wouldn't believe it, but I started to dream of a window with Specht & Son on it and, inside, all of the things he found most beautiful from my collection â all the things he'd pointed out as touching him.
He ran his fingers over the light stubble on his chin, as if his hand was trying to feel that he was still alive.
Your Jeanine. That touched him.
My Jeanine? Creator was confused. That's here.
I know. But there's a postcard of it â Ms Dupuis sent it to me once, after writing a piece about my collection, to thank me.
Ah, Jeanine, Creator said.
His breathing was suddenly very calm.
Strange. Later I read that interview with you, the one in
Palazzo
. I must have felt touched because of that Piet`a. What innocence, I thought. Who, today, still has the courage to paint innocence �
His voice rasped; he tried to clear his throat, but lacked the strength.
I'm finished, Felix, today or tomorrow. I'd just been told the day before I saw the interview with you in
Palazzo
. Ms Dupuis's.
Now he really did seem to fall asleep. Creator cleared his throat.
It touched me, Specht said. Really. It touched me more than I can say. That being your great wish â to paint a Piet`a. You had even bought a huge canvas for it. Two by one twenty. For a Piet`a. And when I came in here â¦
He pointed with a trembling finger.
It was right there, wasn't it?
Specht sought Creator's eyes. Creator evidently understood him, because he walked over to the wheelchair and turned it to face the inside wall, where I had stood for all the world to see, with the charcoal line that broke off twenty centimetres to the right of my middle. From his perspective, left. In the meantime I had become two snippets in a sweating breast pocket, but once again I felt the way Specht's piercing gaze had smouldered in my linen.
How was he? asked Specht. How did he turn out, my son â did he turn out?
Creator had already bawled his eyes out once that day, so that didn't happen again now. He fought against tears that didn't come. He sighed. I think it was the deepest sigh of his life.
Stijn, Creator said.
Stijn?
He's alive and he's called Stijn, Creator said.
And he raised his hand to his breast pocket and pulled me out.
Here, he said to Specht. I didn't keep to the agreement.
It was pitch-black in the studio when Specht finally got me in his hands.
Creator walked over to one of the floor lamps that was still standing there.
Floor lamps? Lidewij would later ask.
That's a long story, Creator said quickly.
He switched on the lamp.
Singer, Specht whispered. My boy.
He couldn't keep his hands still. I felt myself constantly becoming two parts that kept trembling back together, until he let go of me and I was lying on his lap.
You made him younger than in the video. As I'd hoped. Exactly as I'd hoped.
He thought for a moment and said, Don't blame Ms Dupuis â she only believed her own eyes. What else could she do? She only has eyes of her own, and that's what she believed with, when she found Singer's site. She didn't know what she was doing.
He fixed his gaze on me again, and I forgot that I was torn. I forgot that I was minuscule. I even forgot that I was no longer a canvas.
You're lovely, you're so terribly lovely. There's never been anyone lovelier in the whole world.
We stayed sitting there like that, Specht and I. For minutes. Specht with his son on his lap. Me with the man who wanted to be a father bent over me. It could be my imagination, but I felt how he, without touching me, moved his fingertip over me, from top to bottom, over the tear, from left to right, from my toes to my head. And when, after an eternity, Specht looked up from me, he said to Creator, Make him. Paint him again, as he is. He's alive. One day he'll come to see himself.
