The Portrait (11 page)

She interrupted herself.

Wow, she said.

Evidently she was now in the studio, in a darker spot, because through my veil I couldn't make her out at all.

I always turn everything around to face the wall, Creator said.

Except that, she said.

She meant me. I heard her walking towards me.

Is this the same canvas as —

Why didn't Creator say anything?

So you didn't turn it into a Piet`a after all, she said teasingly. She laughed. Then it would have been upright, wouldn't it?

Presumably, Creator nodded.

Hmmm, she said. Do I get to see it? It's been quite a while since I saw a Vincent.

I had the impression she didn't believe Creator when he mumbled that I wasn't finished yet.

It's a bit black over Bill's mother's, Creator said.

What?

It's an expression — it means it's going to pour.

He was trying to distract her. I knew that technique of his well; he talked like that sometimes when he had sitters, too.

A silence fell.

Your wife, isn't she here?

She's gone away for the week.

Creator was thinking, as if he'd been asked something else as well.

She's gone to her aunt's. Aunt Drea, her mother's sister.

Why did he turn his evasion into an outright lie?

Now it was apparently Minke's turn to change the subject.

And that, what's that going to be?

She had turned her back on me and meant the newcomer.

That's not a canvas, Creator said.

I can see that, she said.

I snapped it up at an auction.

I could tell from the way he was standing that he had pulled the newcomer back from the wall.

Wow, Minke said. Why don't you turn it around?

If you help, Creator said.

They were now standing on either side of the newcomer. He must have been unusually heavy, because they had to strain to lift him up. First they put him on his side, so that he was horizontal, then they turned him around.

It cost next to nothing, Creator said, panting. Because of the — what do you call it? — flaking.

He gestured.

Through the veil I couldn't see what the newcomer represented. He was horizontal, after all! And there could be someone painted on him. A reclining figure — but I could only see my own, flimsy apple-green.

I had been prepared for many things, but not Creator allowing a thing by somebody else into his studio.

But that's not what you're here for, Creator said. What would you like me to tell you?

He was standing at the oak table, which, thanks to one of the lamps, was relatively brightly lit, and gestured for Minke to sit down.

Glass of wine?

D'you have white?

Creator walked out of the sunroom. Minke jumped up and strode over to me. She lifted the veil on my right — at my feet, in other words — and kept lifting it until she saw the spot twenty centimetres to the right of my middle. I tried to make out her expression through the veil, but her face was hidden behind a fold. The only detail I caught a glimpse of was her platinum-blonde hair — although I remembered it as copper red. In that same instant she let go of me and hurried back to the table. Creator came in with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

She doesn't know that, right this moment, Lidewij is in hospital, I thought; she doesn't even know that Lidewij is expecting a baby. God knows what else Creator is keeping her in the dark about as well.

I think there might be some nuts somewhere, he said.

He sounded nervous.

No, thanks, she said. And to hide her agitation she decided to go straight to the point.

Do you mind if I smoke?

I was the only one who heard that she was out of breath.

Creator got up and took a small box from under the easel.

Use this for the ash.

She had seen my feet. My legs, my knees, my thighs, my waist. She had been unable to restrain a short, sharp sigh, like a gasp. And she had dropped the veil, as if it had burnt her fingers. She lit a cigarette.

It's about Valery, she said. I'm working on a major portrait of him. For the newspaper. Quite revealing. Sensational facts. There are a few things I'm trying to find out. I already know most of it. And it suddenly occurred to me: as far as I know, you're the last person he saw.

Specht, Creator said hesitantly. I noticed he was being cautious. From the direction of his voice, I could tell that he had looked at me for a moment.

You know some other Valery? Minke laughed.

I thought, She laughs like a man, with that husky voice of hers.

The paper's going to publish it, my article, the moment he's dead. That's why I'm under so much pressure now.

Dead?

Creator gasped, seemingly for the same breath as me.

Didn't you know?

And she told the astonished Creator what she knew. Incurable disease, a cancer that had been proliferating for years — that was why he went through phases of being completely bald. And now, after more than a year of intensive treatment, he had, according to her best sources, lost consciousness and was dying, if he wasn't already dead. That was why he'd come to Rotterdam from Antibes; he was at the Erasmus Medical Centre. It really was a question of hours; she knew that for a fact.

After an extended silence, Creator asked, When was the last time
you
saw him then?

I think it was a couple of weeks after he came here.

Specht, here?

I could feel Creator's brain racing. Since the telephone call from the Bald Man, as he called him, so long ago now, he had realised that
the agreement
was not a game.

What are you playing dumb for? Valery was here — he told me that himself.

Himself?

I was sure Creator was thinking the same thing as me: Minke is trying to test me.

She scowled. What difference does it make? He'll be dead either today or tomorrow. And then you'll get an avalanche of obituaries and articles. And facts. And you, according to my best sources, are the last person he met with.

No. That would be you then, Creator said.

Okay, me then.

A silence fell.

Brilliant wine, she said.

I heard the glasses being refilled — this time by Minke, I think.

I don't know what you're being so ridiculously secretive about, Minke said. There's no law against seeing Specht.

Creator cleared his throat. Only now did I notice that he, too, had taken the news very badly. He could hardly speak.

Did he know he was dying?

For more than a year now, Minke said.

So that was it, I thought; that was what we saw. The beads of sweat, the failing voice, the distraught emptiness appearing in his eyes every now and then … when Specht was here commissioning Creator, he knew that he was carrying out his last acts … mercy, spare me … and those three sessions, when he tried to conjure Singer up before Creator's eyes … perhaps they were his last great effort …

I didn't know, Creator said. I had no idea.
Pas du tout
.

And he said, God, how could I be so blind?

He kept finding it hard to grasp what he had just heard from Minke.

You'll be saving a life.

What?

Nothing, Creator said, nothing.

He was bewildered. Never before had I felt so strongly that I was going through the same thing as him. I, too, was bewildered.

Minke stubbed out her cigarette. What's that noise?

It's started raining, Creator said. As promised.

A broad rustling had started up in the garden.

The commission, I thought. The commission. It was Specht who commissioned me! He was going to pick me up and see me! Then and only then would I know who I am now that I'm Singer.
Who
will I belong to if I can't belong to the man who commissioned me?

What did he come here for?

Valery?

I don't know why you're being so ridiculously cautious, Minke said. What difference does it make now? Any moment now, we're liable to hear he's dead, and you're one of the last people who saw him. Why be so difficult?

Minke had stood up. I heard her walking towards me. Creator had stood up as well, abruptly. A glass of wine fell to the floor, shattering. I smelt the sour smell.

Don't, Creator said.

I think he stopped her hand just as it was about to lift my veil.

There was more between them than just the tension between someone who wanted to see something and someone who wanted to stop them.

You can see him, Creator said. One condition: not a soul finds out.

Why not? Minke had giggled for a moment, because of the word
soul
.

Not a soul, Creator repeated. I promised.

He was the one who pulled back the veil.

Do you promise, you haven't seen this?

Did he see her nod?

For a moment, we exchanged glances, Creator and I. His was imploring; the blood had drained from his face. Then he turned and started clearing away the glass.

Minke was standing to my left, near my head. In this light, her eyes looked brown, but I knew they were green.

The thing I had grown more or less accustomed to happened: her gaze lingered on my face for just a moment before it was drawn to my middle. Where it became a stare.

But this wasn't what struck me, even if I had seen at a glance that her long hair really had turned blonde and her arms were bare, in a tight, tomato-red, shoulderless top, with a shoelace-like band around her long neck.

It wasn't the sight of Minke that struck me like a bolt of lightning. It was the newcomer, directly opposite me. Now that the green veil had been pulled aside I could finally, finally see him. And he was enormous — a life-sized reclining nude, stretched out from head to toe on a background of satin-green folds. There was hardly any light on him, but I still noticed that my gaze was drawn not to his face but to his middle. There had to be something to see there, but there was some trick of the light … there was
no light
, or so it seemed, in that spot, because of the lamps, which Creator had set up wrongly. No matter how hard I looked, it was like gazing into a hole.

Wow, Minke said.

She had moved right over in front of me. She took two solemn steps towards me. Now she was blocking the newcomer; I tried to look around her, but could only see his feet.

A single thought filled my mind: He's seen me.

The other has seen me.

It was as if Singer was getting warm from his feet to the top of his head, a glow spreading over his entire body.

This could be blushing.

The rustling in the garden had grown deeper, heavier, a curtain of sound closing us off from the outside world.

I believe that if I had been a person I would have now felt like vomiting. From excitement. Let me look, was all I thought; let me see what I just missed out on seeing. I didn't get a proper look; give me another chance, then I'll see what I forgot to see — how he looks at me, the expression in the other's eyes when I am looking.

And there was something else I thought.

How alone he is, I thought. How can someone be so terribly alone?

Somehow I knew that, in thinking this, I was thinking something that only people can think.

But Minke was standing between us, and Creator, whose hands smelt of wine, had come over to stand next to her, and outside the rain rustled.

Creator had lit a cigarette, which he now inserted between Minke's lips.

How did you manage that?

She stretched out a hand, with the cigarette, and pointed at my middle.

Creator smiled.

She hesitated, If you hadn't said it was a boy …

Did I say that?

You said
he
. That's what you said.
He
.

Minke licked her lips without thinking and brushed her hair back with a few long swipes of her free hand. Creator had laid his left hand on the back of her neck, under her hair. She took him by the wrist with her free hand, brushing me with her elbow, just above my face.

You're still a lefty, she said.

Yep, he said.

They looked.

Who is he?

Does it matter?

Say who I am, I thought. Tell Minke that I am your commission, that you accepted me.

You will be saving a life.