She could hear the art critics praising the work. A few criticisms as well. Not of her, of course, but of the work. Yet it was her they were staring at: her thighs, her buttocks, her breasts, her unmoving face. And the looking glass as well. There was one exception. At a certain point out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a silhouette coming close to her, and mouthing an obscenity into her left ear. She was used to this, and did not even blink. Often in hyperdramatic exhibitions some crazy person got in who was not in the least bit interested in the work, but in the naked woman on show. To judge by his breath, this guy was drunk. He stood right next to her for quite a while, staring at her. Clara was concerned he might try to touch her, because there were no security guards anywhere. But a few moments later he moved off. If he had tried anything, she would have been forced to abandon her state of quiescence and give him a verbal warning. If he had continued to pester her despite this, she would have had no problem kneeing him in the balls. It wouldn't have been the first time she had stopped being a work of art to defend herself from a troublesome spectator. HD art aroused a mixture of passions, and the female paintings who had no protection soon learned the lesson.
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass
would fit easily into any reasonably spacious living room. Her percentage from the sale and rental, together with the money she had already received for her work with the painter, would have lasted her the whole summer. But nobody wanted to buy her.
'Clara.'
She breathed in sharply when she heard Gertrude's voice on the stairs.
'Clara, it's half past one. I'm going to close the gallery.'
It was always an effort to emerge from her state of quiescence and step back into the world of real objects. She twisted her head from side to side, swallowed several times, blinked (two cameos of her face were imprinted by light and time on her retinas), stretched her arms and stamped her feet on the floor. One of her legs had gone to sleep. She massaged her neck. The oil paint tugged uncomfortably at her skin.
'And there are two gentlemen to see you,' Gertrude added. 'They're in my office.'
Clara stopped sketching and looked at the gallery owner. Gertrude was at the foot of the stairs. As usual, her green eyes and scarlet lips gave nothing away. She was no longer young, and was as tall and white as Mont Blanc; so white she almost glistened. If she had fallen into snow, all you would have seen of her would have been a pair of almond-shaped emeralds and a stain of red lipstick. She liked wearing white tunics, and talked as if she were interrogating a prisoner of war under torture.
‘I
'm German, but I've lived in Madrid for several years,' she told Clara when they met. She pronounced 'Madrid' like a robot from a B-movie. 'GS are my initials.' She went on to tell her her surname, but Clara couldn't remember it. 'Pleased to meet you,' Clara had replied, and was rewarded with a smile. Bassan said she was a successful gallery owner and had a select clientele of hyperdramatic art collectors, but Clara hadn't been able to discover if this was true or not. What she had found was that Gertrude was rude and disdainful towards the paintings. Perhaps she was a little more pleasant with the painters. On top of that, she was a cleanliness freak. She did not allow Clara to use the bathroom to wash or make up after work. She said she had no wish to see paint anywhere else apart from on the skin of her paintings. On Clara's first day she showed her a small space at the back of the upstairs office and said that all the works got on just fine in there. Each day before work Clara had to go into this wretched cubicle and put on the porous swimsuit and the hair-dyeing cap, soaked in the colours Bassan had prepared, and wait for almost an hour until they had dried on her skin. Then she took off the swimsuit and cap and emerged naked and gleaming white, walked down to the basement and took up the pose and expression the painter had chosen for her. When the gallery closed, she was forced to make her way home with her body still painted under her tracksuit and wearing a ridiculous beret to hide her white hair; all she could scrape off was the paint on her face. It was no fun driving with her skin stiffened with oil paint.
'Two gentlemen?' Clara had to clear her throat to get the words out. 'What do they want?'
'How should I know? They're waiting in my office.'
'But did they come down to see the work?' Often she was unaware of how many visitors there had been.
'Not today, that's for sure. They asked for Clara Reyes. They didn't mention any work of art.'
As Clara mulled this over, Gertrude went on:
'I suppose you're not going to want to see them like that. You can put on one of the robes from the loft. But don't touch anything. I don't want any paint marks in my office.'
The two men were standing waiting for her, looking at glossy catalogues of other works she had been. She recognised
Tenderness
by Vicky,
Horizontal III
by Gutierrez Reguero, and
The Wolf, in the Meantime, Is Dying of Hunger
by Georges Chalboux. The illustrations showed her naked or half-naked body painted in a variety of colours. There were also a few
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass
catalogues. One of the men was throwing the catalogues on to the table after showing them to his companion, as if he were counting them. They were dressed in expensive suits and looked foreign. When she realised this, Clara's heart skipped a beat: if they had come a long way, perhaps that meant they were really interested in her. Hey, slow down a bit, you've no idea what they're going to propose, she told herself.
They offered her a chair. As she sat down, her robe opened over her knees like a petal, and one leg painted titanium white and white lead was revealed halfway up to her thigh. She crossed her hands under her chest and sat there like a patient child.
'Well?' she said.
The men did not sit down. Only one of them spoke. His Spanish was full of errors, but was easily understandable. Clara could not place his accent.
'Are you Clara Reyes?'
'Aha’
The man took something out of a briefcase: it was the resume Clara usually sent out to the most important artists in Europe and America. Her heart beat faster still.
'Twenty-four years old,' the man read out loud, 'one hundred and sixty-five centimetres tall, bust eighty-five, waist fifty-five, hips eighty-eight, blonde hair; light blue eyes tinged with green, depilated, no skin blemishes, firm and well-toned, primed four times
...
is that correct?'
'Correct.'
The man went on reading.
'Studied HD art and canvas techniques with Cuinet in Barcelona, and adolescent art in Frankfurt with Wedekind. Also in Florence with Ferrucioli. Is that correct?'
'Well, I was only with Ferrucioli for one week.'
She didn't want to hide anything, because that always led to difficult questions later on.
'You've been painted by both Spanish and foreign artists. Do you speak English?'
'Aha. Perfectly.'
'You've done interior works and open-air ones. Which are you better at?'
'Both. I can be an interior work or a seasonal outdoor one, or even be outside permanently, depending on the clothes and the time of year, of course. Although I can pose permanently outside with adequate protec—'
'We've seen other works you've done,' the man interrupted. 'We like you.'
'Thanks. But haven't you been downstairs to see
Girl in Front of a Looking Glass?
It's a really impressive Bassan, and I'm not just saying that because I'm the work, but—'
'You have also done mobile works of both sorts:
performances
and
reunions,'
the man cut in again. 'Were they interactive?'
'Aha. They were sometimes, yes.'
'Were you ever bought?'
'Almost always.'
'Good.' The man smiled and peered down at the sheets of paper as if there was something there that amused him. 'This resume is for promotional purposes. I'd like to hear your private one.'
'What do you mean by that?'
'I mean your whole professional career, and what you can't put in a promotion leaflet. For example: have you ever been an ornament, a mobile, a utensil?'
'I've never been a human artefact,' Clara replied.
It was true, although she had no idea whether the man believed her or not. But her own words sounded rather haughty to her, so she quickly added:
'Human ornaments have not really caught on yet in Spain.'
'Art-shocks?'
She hesitated before replying. She straightened up in her chair - her painted buttocks making a swishing sound - and told herself to stay on her guard.
'I'm sorry, but where are these questions leading?'
'We want to know what demands we can make of you,' the man responded calmly.
'I should warn you, I won't do anything illegal.'
She waited for a reaction that did not come. She hastened to add:
'Well, it would depend on the circumstances. But first of all I want you to tell me what you're going to do, where you're going to do it, and which artist is thinking of contracting me.'
'Your answer first, please.'
She decided there was nothing to lose by telling the truth. She was not a minor; the two art-shocks she had been bought in that year were not the hardest of thei
r kind, and had been put on only
in private for an adult audience. But it was also true that on both occasions elements had crept in that perhaps went beyond the limits of what was permitted. For example, in
625
+
50 lines
by Adolfo Bermejo, one of the human canvases chopped the head off a live cat and squirted its blood on Clara's back. Was that illegal? She wasn't sure, but the question had been a general one, so she could respond in general terms, too.
'Yes, I've done art-shocks.'
'Porno ones?'
'Never,' she said firmly.
'But you've worked with Gilberto Brentano, I believe.'
‘I
did two or three art-shocks with Brentano last year, but none of them was porno.'
'Have you ever belonged to any group providing underage material for works of art?'
‘I
worked with
The Circle
for a few months.'
'How old were you?'
'Sixteen.'
'What did you do there?'
'The usual. They painted my hair red,
‘I
had to wear lots of rings, and I took part in a few murals like
Redhair Road.'
'Was that your first artistic experience?' 'Aha.'
'As far as I can see,' the man said, 'you like tough, risky art. But you don't seem the tough, risk-taking type. You look quite soft to me.'
For some unknown reason, Clara liked the man's cold disdain. A smile stretched the oil paint on her face.
‘I
am soft. It's when I'm painted that I toughen up.'
The man showed no sign of taking this as a joke. He said:
'We've come to propose something tough and risky. The toughest and most risky thing you've ever done in your life as a canvas, the most important and the most difficult. We want to be sure you're up to it.'
All of a sudden she realised her mouth was as dry as her paint-covered skin beneath the gown. Her heart was pounding. The man's words excited her. Clara loved extremes, the dark zone the other side of the frontier. If she was told: 'Don't go,' her body stirred and went, just for the simple pleasure of disobeying.
If something frightened her, she might try to keep it at a distance, but she never lost sight of it. She detested the instructions vulgar artists gave her, but if a painter she admired asked her to do something crazy, whatever it might be, she liked to obey without question. And that 'whatever it might be' recognised few limits. She was obsessed with discovering how far she would allow herself to go if the ideal situation occurred. She felt she was still a long way from her ceiling - or her floor, for that matter.
That sounds good,' she said.
After a few moments, the man went on:
'Naturally, you'll have to drop everything else for a considerable length of time.'
‘I
can drop everything if the offer is worth it.'
'The offer
is
worth it.'
'And I'm simply supposed to believe that?'
'Neither of us wants to rush into this, do we?' The man put his hand in his inside pocket. A black leather wallet. A turquoise-coloured card. 'Call this number. You have until tomorrow evening, Thursday.'