Mr. Gwyn (16 page)

“Are you sure that Mr. Gwyn didn't show up for nine days?” Rebecca asked.

“My daughter says so.”

Rebecca stared at him in a questioning manner.

“Yes, I know,” he said. “But in this case I'm inclined to believe her.”

Rebecca said that she would check and would be in touch as soon as possible. She was uneasy, but she didn't let him see it.

Before leaving, Mr. Trawley managed to ask if by any chance Rebecca had an idea of how it had gone in the studio. What he wanted to ask in reality was if his daughter had behaved decently.

“I don't know,” said Rebecca. “Mr. Gwyn doesn't talk much about what happens there, it's not his style.”

“I understand.”

“What I guessed is that your daughter isn't an easy subject, so to speak.”

“No, she isn't,” said Mr. Trawley.

He paused.

“At times she can be extremely unpleasant, or excessively attractive,” he added.

Rebecca thought that she would like to be a girl of whom something like that could be said.

“I'll let you know, Mr. Trawley. I'm sure that everything will be all right.”

Mr. Trawley said he didn't doubt it.

The next day a long article about the portraits appeared in the
Guardian
. It was more detailed that the one in the tabloid and went so far as to mention the name of Jasper Gwyn. There was also a second small article about him, with an account of his career.

Rebecca hurried to look for Jasper Gwyn. She didn't find him
at home, nor was a tour of the neighborhood Laundromats of any use. He seemed to have disappeared.

55

Nothing happened for five days. Then Rebecca received from Jasper Gwyn a thick envelope containing the portrait of the girl, wrapped with the usual meticulous care, and a note of a few lines. He said that it would be impossible for him to be in touch for a while. He counted on the fact that in the meantime Rebecca would look after everything. He would have to delay the next portrait: he wasn't sure he could return to work for a couple of months. He thanked her and signed off with a big hug. He made no reference to the article in the
Guardian
.

For the entire day Rebecca had to politely refuse the many telephone calls that, from all over, arrived from people wanting to know more about the story of Jasper Gwyn. She didn't like being left alone at such a delicate moment, but on the other hand she knew Jasper Gwyn well enough to recognize a behavior that it would be useless to try to correct. She did what she had to do, as well as she could, and before evening she telephoned Mr. Trawley to tell him that the portrait was ready. Then she unplugged the phone, took the girl's portrait, and opened it. It was a thing that she never did. She had made it a rule to hand over the portraits without even glancing at them. It would have been the right moment to read them, she had always thought. But that evening everything was different. There was in the air something that resembled the breaking of a spell, and
suspending the usual actions seemed to her reasonable, maybe even right. So she opened the portrait of the girl and began to read it.

It was four pages. She stopped at the first, then put the pages back in order and closed the folder.

56

The girl arrived in the morning, by herself. She sat down facing Rebecca. She had long blond hair, straight and fine, that hung down on the sides of her face. Only at times, with a movement of her head, did she fully reveal her features, which were angular but dominated by two enchanting dark eyes. She was thin, and she displayed her own body with no signs of nervousness: she seemed to have chosen a kind of refined stillness as a rule of her being. She wore a jacket open over a purple T-shirt through which her small, shapely breasts could be imagined. Rebecca noticed her hands, which were pale and covered by tiny wounds.

“Your portrait,” she said, handing her the folder.

The girl left it on the table.

“Are you Rebecca?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Jasper Gwyn talks about you a lot.”

“It's hard for me to believe that. Mr. Gwyn isn't the type to talk much about something.”

“Yes, but about you he does.”

Rebecca made a vague gesture and smiled.

“Well,” she said.

Then she handed the girl a piece of paper to sign. To settle the bill she had made an arrangement with the father.

The girl signed without reading it. She gave back the pen. She gestured toward the portrait.

“Did you read it?”

“No,” Rebecca lied. “I never do.”

“How stupid.”

“What?”

“I would.”

“You know, I'm old enough to decide myself what's best to do and what isn't.”

“Yes, you're grown-up. You're old.”

“It's possible. Now I have a lot to do, if you don't mind.”

“Jasper Gwyn says that you're a very unhappy woman.”

Then Rebecca looked at her for the first time unwarily. She saw that she had an odious way of being charming.

“Even Mr. Gwyn is wrong every so often,” she said.

The girl made the movement with her head that revealed her face for a moment.

“Are you in love with him?”

Rebecca looked at her and didn't answer.

“No, that wasn't the question I wanted to ask,” the girl corrected herself. “Have you made love with him?”

Rebecca thought of getting up and showing the girl to the door. It was obviously the only thing to do. But she also felt that if there was a way of penetrating the strange things that were happening, right in front of her she had the only possible path, however odious.

“No,” she said. “I haven't made love with him.”

“I have,” said the girl. “Are you interested in knowing how he does it?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Violently. But then all of a sudden tenderly. He likes to touch himself. He never speaks. He never closes his eyes. He's very handsome when he comes.”

She said it without taking her gaze from Rebecca's eyes.

“Do you want to read the portrait with me?” she asked.

Rebecca shook her head no.

“I don't think I want to know anything else about you, girl.”

“You don't know anything about me.”

“There, perfect.”

For a moment the girl seemed distracted by something she had seen on the table. Then she looked up again at Rebecca.

“We did it for two days, almost without sleeping,” she said. “There in the studio. Then he left and never returned. A coward.”

“If you don't have any other venom to spit out, our conversation is over.”

“Yes, only one more thing.”

“Hurry up.”

“Would you do me a favor?”

Rebecca looked at her, dismayed. The girl again made that movement that revealed her face for a moment.

“When you see him tell him I'm sorry about that thing in the newspapers, I didn't think it would be such a mess.”

“If you wanted to hurt him you've succeeded.”

“No, I didn't want that. It was something else.”

“What?”

“I don't know… I wanted to
touch him
, but I don't think you can understand.”

Rebecca thought with irritation that she understood very well. She also thought of the sentence that condemns those—they are many—who aren't capable of touching without hurting, and instinctively her eyes sought those hands and the little wounds. She felt the shadow of a distant compassion and understood immediately what had subdued Jasper Gwyn, in the studio, with that girl.

“The key,” she said.

The girl looked in her purse and placed the key on the table. She looked at her for a moment.

“I don't want the portrait,” she said. “Throw it away.”

She left the door open behind her—she walked at a slight angle, as if she had to fit into a narrow space and were doing so in order to flee everything in existence.

57

It took Rebecca some time to recover her thoughts. She ignored the duties that she should have performed, she cancelled all her appointments, she left on the table, without opening them, the newspapers she had bought. It annoyed her to see that her hands were trembling—it was even hard to know if it was rage or some form of fear. The telephone rang and she didn't answer. She picked up her things and left.

On the way home, she sat down in a tranquil place, on the steps of a church, at the edge of a small garden, and forced herself to
remember the girl's words. She tried to understand what, each time, they had shattered. Many things: some that she knew were delicate but also solid, the way simple illusions are not. Oddly, she thought of Jasper Gwyn before she thought of herself, like someone who, getting up from a fall, checks to be sure that his glasses aren't smashed, or his watch—the most fragile things. It was an effort to figure out how much that girl had wounded him. Certainly she had violated a boundary that up to that moment Jasper Gwyn had chosen as an unbreakable rule of his curious work. But it was also possible that so much attention given to placing limits and restrictions concealed in him the inner desire to go beyond every rule, even just once, and at whatever price—as if to get to the end of a particular path. Therefore it was hard to say if the girl had been a mortal blow or the end toward which all his portraits had been directed. Who knows. Certainly those nine days without setting foot in the studio made one think of a man who was frightened rather than of one who had arrived—and the fact that he remained hidden, calm but determined. Wounded animals move like that. She thought of the studio, of the eighteen Catherine de Médicis, of the music of David Barber. What a pity, she said to herself. What an immense pity if it should all end here.

She went home, walking slowly, and only then did it occur to her to think of herself, to check her own wounds. Although it disgusted her to admit it, that girl had taught her something that was humiliating, and that had to do with courage, or shamelessness, who knows. She tried to remember the moments when she, too, had been truly close to Jasper Gwyn, outrageously close, and in the end asked herself what she had done wrong at those moments, or what she hadn't understood. She went back in memory to the darkness of the studio,
the last night, and recalled the nothing that remained between them, incredulous that she had been unable to span it. But even more she thought of the morning when Tom died, her running to Jasper Gwyn and what followed. She recalled their fear, and the wish to stay shut up there, together, stronger than anything else. She recalled her own movements in the kitchen, her bare feet, the telephone that rang as they went on talking, in low voices. The alcohol drunk, the old records, the book covers, confusion in the bathroom. And how easy it had been to lie beside him, and sleep. Then the difficult dawn, and the frightened gaze of Jasper Gwyn. She who understood and left.

How much more precise the sharp gesture of that girl had been.

What an odious lesson.

She looked at herself and wondered if everything couldn't be explained simply by her body, unsuitable and wrong. But there was no answer. Only a sadness that for a long time she hadn't wanted to face.

At home, later, she saw in the mirror that she was beautiful—and alive.

For days, therefore, she did the only thing that seemed to her appropriate—waiting. She followed coldly the increasing number of newspaper stories that took up the odd case of Jasper Gwyn, and confined herself to filing them away, in chronological order. She answered the telephone, noting diligently all the requests and assuring callers that soon she would be able to be more useful. She wasn't afraid, she knew that she had only to wait. She did it for eleven days. Then, one morning, a large package arrived in the office, accompanied by a letter and a book.

In the package were all the portraits, each in its folder. In the
letter Jasper Gwyn explained that they were the copies he had made for himself: he begged her to keep them in a safe place, and not to make them public in any way. He added a detailed list of things to do: give back the studio to John Septimus Hill, get rid of the furniture and the fixtures, clear out the office, cancel the e-mail they had used for work, make herself unavailable to journalists who might try to get in touch with her. He specified that he had personally taken care of settling all the outstanding bills, and reassured Rebecca that what she was owed would reach her as soon as possible, including a significant bonus. He was sure she wouldn't have any problems.

He thanked her warmly, and he was anxious to say yet again that he could not have wished for a colleague more precise, discreet, and pleasant. He realized that a warmer farewell might have been hoped for in every way, but he had to confess, with regret, that he couldn't do better.

The rest of the letter was written by hand. It said: