The Portrait (12 page)

Those six words had always baffled me and now, as Creator drew his gaze away from me and moved his mouth towards Minke's hair, to her ear, I could only think one thing. I thought, Don't let go of me now.

Promise, Creator whispered, with his mouth against her hair. Promise you won't tell anyone about it.

She, too, looked away from me now, although keeping her grip on his wrist, and turned her face to his. She was taller than him, I saw that now: she bent her legs a little.

Whether it was her mouth seeking his or his seeking hers, I don't know.

Hi, Creator said, hardly pulling back from her at all.

So you still taste of that, he said. Of Gauloises.

She laughed briefly and asked, Where were we?

She threw the cigarette on the floor. Creator stubbed it out with the toe of his shoe.

I hadn't seen it this close up before, the incomprehensible thing called touch, two mouths together. I was pretty sure that what was happening between them now was different from what had happened between Lidewij and Creator more than six months ago; this was more breathless, more panicky too, as if they were suddenly pursued by God knows who or what, as if any interruption of the touching and gestures that followed one after the other in a kind of hectic flood could cause a lull that would be as fatal to them as a thorn to a bubble. For a moment, Creator pulled back from Minke's mouth — I saw that his was redder than before — and said, He's dead.

With her mouth still seeking his, Minke asked, Who?

Him, Creator said, gesturing at me with his chin. When I painted him he was dead.

He spoke slowly. He sounded somehow triumphant. As if saying
dead
would make Minke move even closer to him.

What's he called? she asked, as his mouth covered hers again.

To my left, not far from the sliding door, a drop fell. I had heard it a few times earlier; there's a leak there.

Creator hadn't answered.

For a moment, it seemed as if Minke was about to disentangle herself, but she stopped the pushing movement — that was a decision, I saw that very clearly — and Creator grabbed the bottom hem of her top and peeled it up over her belly, her stomach, her breasts, her throat, her face, her long arms — a lightning movement she made possible by going down on her knees with arms raised. While Creator strode away from her to the mattress, which he dragged over to the middle of the room, exactly between me and the newcomer, she unhooked her bra, pushed down her skirt, and stepped out of her knickers. Red pumps, black nylon stockings, a shoelace around her neck: it was as if she'd been studying the cover of one of Creator's videos. It was also as if she knew what the two of them had to do. How can I put it, I had the impression I was seeing something that had already taken place, something they were staging. Creator had lain down on his back on the mattress, with his head to the newcomer and his feet, still in his shoes, to me. He had slid his jeans and underpants down to his knees and held his head up to look at her while she, with her back to me, walked towards him.

To my left, the drops fell every other second, but Creator didn't do what he did otherwise; he didn't slide a bucket under the leak.

Where were we?

Here, Minke said. In front of the mirror.

She was now standing at Creator's feet.

I'm not free, remember. You always ask how much it costs.

How much does it cost?

They sounded like a couple of kids working out the rules of a game.

That depends.

On what?

On what you want, you know that.

And what do I want?

You know very well what you want.

And how much is that going to cost me?

Minke took a breath and gestured backwards, meaning me.

What do you say to … something like what you got for him.

She laughed, kicked off her pumps, and knelt down beside him.

Is that all? I could see that Creator was doing his best not to touch her.

You haven't changed a bit, she said. For God's sake, what have we been doing in the meantime?

If I had kept paying attention I would have undoubtedly understood exactly what they meant, where they had been, exactly what the game they were playing meant — once, and when, and now, at this actual moment — but it was as if a black haze had descended before my eyes. Absurd imagery for an Extra Fine Quadruple Universal Primed but, for quite a while, it really was as if I had been struck blind.

Here. In front of the mirror.

Those were Minke's words.

Mirror.

In. Front. Of. The. Mirror.

That was the newcomer.

He was me.

That, him, there, on the other side of the room, directly opposite me — he wasn't looking at me. He was me. He was exactly who I was. This was it, that looking
in
.

Between him and me, Minke straddled Creator's thighs, blocking my view of my middle. I understood perfectly well what
that
meant: she was sitting opposite herself, she too was now looking
in —
and I imagined her expression as more or less the same as Fiona's weighing-up look, On Fire — while making careful little movements with her hands down under her belly, as if stroking a small animal. I also realised that Creator was looking at her, just as she was looking at herself in the mirror. At least, my gaze grazed the side of Minke's waist and caught a glimpse of Creator's face, which was lost in looking at hers. I knew this expression: it was his discriminating look, the one that kept people at a distance. He was trying with all his might to keep watching and not disappear into bliss, and Minke was trying to do that, too, while watching her reflection from a distance, even while lowering her torso very firmly onto the part of Creator I had only seen once before — the time he'd left his mobile phone on the easel and got an unexpected call while watching the videos from the black bag.

I hardly saw any of this because I was trying to see myself, my face that was staring at me to the right of Minke's ribs, out of the semi-darkness of the mirror, which, as I now realised, really was swathed in mist — it was sown with golden-brown flakes — and, no matter how I try, I will not be able to describe my expression. Every time I felt I had composed myself enough to finally see it, restlessness overwhelmed me again. Close your eyes, I thought. Don't see this. Listen to the drops instead, to the dark rain rustling outside. This isn't meant for human eyes — we aren't made to see what we are. Somehow or other I knew that this, finally, was my own expression — that Creator had wanted to capture me like this,
so not yet knowing what I was seeing
. He had laid me down on a womb of the greenest satin and outside, on Crete's warmest pebble beach, he had imagined children's voices, he had filled me with Tijn, with the memory of looking away and not wanting to see, of realising yet being unaware. Creator had wanted to capture me in that last solitary moment in which we look up from our innocence because we want to know who we are in the eyes of the world.

Minke's movements had grown more intense; she had planted her hands on Creator's shoulders. They didn't make a single noise, at least not with their voices — all I heard was the flapping splash of their bodies and the drops and the rain.

Look, Creator said. Look as long as you can.

Had Minke stopped looking?

She interrupted her movement, swung her hair back, and turned around without raising her haunches off Creator.

Now she was sitting opposite me.

Who is he, Felix?

She was looking at me from straight ahead, and her eyes glided over my entire surface, from toes to thighs to stomach to face.

Singer, Creator groaned. Valery's son.

She froze.

I am sure that, for an instant, I saw her smile. As if her face — grown glassy and hard from all that looking, with lips squeezed tight — had melted for a moment. It was perhaps the smallest imaginable change in her face, and yet it immediately made her indescribably sad.

Don't stop, for God's sake, Creator said.

He tried to keep the rhythm going with thrusting movements, but Minke grew more and more immobile.

Creator thrust on, as if trying to keep time to the drops.

What did you say he was called?

What difference does it make?

Singer, she said. You called him Singer.

And to herself she said, voicelessly — I read her lips —
Slave
.

She had pulled away from Creator. He took his penis in his left hand and kept moving in the same rhythm.

Valery's son, she said. That's what you said. Valery's son.

And she whispered, Oh God, the deceit, the deceit. He buys a slave and calls him his son.

Her voice had turned shrill.

How much did you get for him?

Only now did I see that Creator, while accelerating his movements, was looking at me and contracting strangely from neck to knees, as if trying to bunch his body into a fist. He groaned. I think at the word
slave
. His groan was the first cry of pleasure to come from his throat since it started, there on the mattress, and something sprayed out of his penis, which, it seemed to me, had turned an unnatural purple. Something milky and fluffy oozed up — a substance that was, more than anything, helplessly impotent.

Creator fell backwards, both hands covering his penis.

You don't talk about that, do you? No, you never talk about money.

She still hadn't looked back.

How did he die?

Creator tried to pull her towards him by her ankle, but she stepped free of his grip. She was now avoiding my eyes; that was plain to see.

I don't know, Creator said. It was as if he had hardly heard a word of what she had just said. He was panting.

What do you mean, you don't know?

Minke's voice had got louder, shriller.

You said he was dead — you said that yourself. You must know how he died.

No, Creator said. Come on, please.

He had stood up.

God knows where he got him from. Now she was shouting, still looking at me. As if she didn't want to know what had happened behind her.

She shouted and sounded derisive.

I thought he only got them from Morocco.

I don't know what you mean, Creator said. He was his son.

Minke laughed out loud. Jeering, she sounded even hoarser and shriller.

You're not going to tell me you believed him — you're not that naïve.

Creator didn't answer. He had released his penis and closed his knees.

Whose son? For years, Valery has lived as lonely as a …

She searched for a comparison.

As a wolf, she said.

She gestured at me.

How many paintings like this do you think he's had made over the years? … Always the latest boy. Always an artist he
actually
considered beneath him. Always the boy who was suddenly that little bit too old to get him going. But hell, this really was the last one, I presume.

Her voice had grown tight with contempt.

Defend me, I thought. Creator, why don't you defend me? Why don't you scream at her that I'm the only one, the son, the child who found and received Specht's protection in the compound next to the swimming pool in Sierra Leone? Tell her about Tijn, about Lidewij, about the baby that's on its way, about all the hours when you only wanted one thing — painting someone to life, making a person, making Singer, becoming a creator.

But Creator held his tongue, like someone who knows he stinks.

She gestured at her throat.

It's a question of hours, over there at the Erasmus Medical Centre.

She strode through the room to gather up her clothes, and started dressing.

Perverts, she said — not to Creator in particular, by the sound of it.

I was the only one who had noticed that it had stopped raining and that only dripping was audible.

What got into me? I've made a horrible mistake.

She gave a grim smile.

You going to stick to it — him being dead? You going to keep wallowing in those crocodile tears?

Creator looked confused. A truth seemed to be dawning on him. Once again, I seemed to catch on faster than he did.

I'm not dead, I thought. Surely not, surely not.

I, Singer, lying here opposite my reflection, draped over a satin sheet, I am still alive.

Nobody's going to believe you, Minke said. That he was dead when you painted him. That's not even possible — you only work from life, real Cindys, that's what you work from … you yourself put it so beautifully: It's only possible from life.

She stepped into her pumps. She sounded scornful.