The Portrait (6 page)

When Creator saw the video recording, he knew immediately that Singer would be lying down — and I resigned myself to my fate. I was
horizontal
now to stay, but didn't really care, almost blinded as I was by the concentration in Creator's eyes when he came to stand before me now and then, without touching me with a single finger. By that time, he had studied Singer at length, projected larger than life on a white wall. He continually skipped forward a few images, for hours at a time, as if each jump might provide the one glimpse of Singer that would definitively put him to work. And then he tore himself away from the projection and looked at me with a sated expression, as if trying to project what he had seen onto me. Once he even aimed the video projector at me, which had an alarming effect, not just because of the intense heat of the light, but also because I felt like I was moving, even though Singer himself was only sleeping on me. It was a foolish experiment; Creator concluded that soon enough, but it made me realise that I could count myself very lucky not to have come into the world as a film screen. I couldn't do it — exist inasmuch as light moved over me. You'd have to be some kind of saint for that.

It was a sun-drenched scene, the one Creator was basing the portrait on. When the video was playing, you heard children's voices through the open window behind the venetians. That was Loutro beach, Specht said; the ship's horn you can hear is the ferry to Chora Sfakion. It moored three times a day right in front of our house.

Paradise, Creator said, and Specht gave a vague smile.

Creator tried to ask how long exactly before Singer's death the video had been made.

Sometimes Creator got the impression that the sight of the dead boy was too much for Specht to bear: beads of sweat would start running down his temples again, and his white-knuckled hand would clench his stick.

Creator pointed at Singer's upper arms, his visible shoulder, and his thigh — there was something glittering there, beach sand, streaks of white gold.

Yes, I see it now, too, Specht said. I never noticed it.

Skin, Creator said. A painting is actually just a skin applied to a skin.

It was clear that Specht was doing his utmost to make Creator forget that his subject was dead, and Creator got better and better at playing along. They soon stopped talking about the boy in the past tense.

That is the grand purpose of our enterprise, Specht said. If I succeed in making Singer live for you, it will be as if you have painted him from life. Then how could he be dead?

You see, he said on another occasion, if you succeed in making people believe you painted from life, then I have succeeded in making him live for you.

He also said, This way, no one's dead.

There was no mention of the circumstances in which Singer had died. The less you think of his end, the more alive it will be. As alive as a Felix Vincent, Specht said.

The only thing he told Creator was that it was an accident.

A stupid accident.

On Crete?

The movement of Specht's left hand over the knob of his walking stick was a clear indication that Creator should not pursue this line of questioning.

On another occasion, he asked whether Singer had been born without a thumb.

You don't miss a thing, do you?

Here, too, Specht refused to be drawn. Creator got the impression that he knew very little about Singer's life before he was eight, when he moved from Sierra Leone to Antibes. When he was taken there. Singer spoke a bit of French by then, African French, and must have spoken the language of the tribe he came from, but Specht was never, so he said, able to find out which tribe that was. And in the South of France, Singer's French became more and more French.

Creator asked about Singer's voice.

While sketching, he had become increasingly aware of how important the voice of the person he was painting was to him under normal circumstances. He couldn't say just what difference it made to the painting itself, but it was somehow key to his concentration. More than anything else, the voice played a major role when he was working on a painting after the sitter had returned home. It was then that he really heard the accent — whether it was loud or quiet, the way the speaker interrupted their own sentences and paused. As if painting was Creator's way of carrying out an imaginary conversation with someone.

Specht asked whether he had played with dolls when he was a child.

That might explain it, Creator chuckled in reply. Maybe that was when I learnt it, doing portraits. And he told Specht that he had been an only child and, for as far back as he could remember, had drawn one special face, very crude, but that was Tulix. That was what he called the face, and he used to talk to it, until he was eight or nine at least.

No, Specht said during that same conversation, we don't know whether Singer had a brother or a sister. I wonder if he ever really was a child at play in his whole life.

One day, Creator also told Specht about the blind woman he once painted, at her husband's request. At the end of the story, which didn't really have a point, other than that Creator had to keep the conversation going throughout the sitting to keep the woman from turning away from him, Specht asked, Why are you telling me this?

Because it ended up as one of my worst things, even more dismal than Cindy. That's one of the reasons this, this thing of Singer, is so difficult now. Because he doesn't look back. Do you understand? I'm starting to see him before me. I think I know exactly how I'm going to arrange him as well, how I'm going to put him on the canvas, but …

Creator hesitated, I believe because he now realised what was so difficult about the commission.

The blind woman had no idea, he told Specht. Do you understand? She didn't realise I was searching for something, she wasn't trying to hide anything, she couldn't see how I was looking at her — and that's why I, in turn, didn't actually see anything. Nothing particularly paintable, I mean.

Specht nodded seriously.

You'll find something, he said. Really, I am absolutely convinced of that. Suddenly you'll have it, and Singer will become your masterpiece. All the things that make it difficult will make it different from everything you've done up to now.

Specht was silent for a few seconds while Creator advanced the video. I didn't have a good view of Specht, but I heard him give a whispered cry, between a sigh and a groan. Creator must have heard it, too. It was as if he moaned,
Mercy
or,
Spare me
. They weren't really words you could make out. Creator was moved. Later, he told Lidewij that he now knew that pictures could be fatal.

He broke out into a cold sweat, he said. I thought his heart was breaking.

He's not playing around, Lidewij said. This is deadly serious. But it will be the most beautiful thing you've ever done.

My masterpiece, according to Specht. He knows how to butter me up.

Those were the kind of things they were saying even before the imprimatura had been applied.

Creator added, after a long silence, that it was only now that he understood why he had become a painter. And he told Lidewij that the thing would be horizontal, with Singer as an awakening sleeper, head to toe.

So it'll be a nude, Lidewij said.

Creator didn't answer — because this, as I now realised, was the question.

Lidewij never got to see the video of Singer motionless — I didn't, either, at that stage. They were ridiculously strict about things like that, Creator and Lidewij. Even before entering his studio for the very first time, she had told him that she never wanted to see any of his work that wasn't finished. Not a sketch, not a scribble, nothing. If I get drawn into the process of thinking about what you're making, there'll be no end to it. I have enough on my plate with who you are. She kept to this resolution with ritual determination. She can enter Creator's studio and stop in front of the thing he's working on without noticing anything about the painting at all. And Creator knows it: he has got completely out of the habit of thinking that she, when standing there, sees anything of his work. It is only when a painting has been completed, and it's time for the client to come and pick it up, that Creator asks Lidewij
to finish the thing off
. That's what he calls it. For him, her first look at what he has made is as decisive as his own signature — which he generally adds immediately afterwards.

So it'll be a nude.

Creator understood the ramifications of Lidewij's suggestion perfectly. Singer, nude — it was almost inevitable, and yet it had to be decided. During his sittings with Specht, Creator had realised more and more clearly that the only correct name for the expression he always sought, the one that got him started on each new portrait, was the
naked expression
. Specht had said as much as well, in the beginning, before asking him to call him Valery. I admire the shyness of your work. Gesturing at Jeanine.

If, with Singer, it was not possible to find that expression — that special, shy vulnerability — then surely his entire self needed to be naked.

Specht didn't interrupt while Creator proposed it during the last sitting. He described the enormity of it: two metres wide, one metre twenty high, a sea of sea-green sheets and pillows, the angled light of evening falling through an invisible window on the right … and Specht smiled.

This was what he had secretly hoped for, he said. Something more than a portrait, but he hadn't wanted to suggest it himself.

A twelve-year-old nude?

Creator nodded.

That will take courage, Specht said. A twelve-year-old nude.

Creator gave him a questioning look.

Nothing is as difficult as innocence, Specht said. Or as rare. Nothing as scandalous, either.

It seemed to me, at that moment, as if Creator was overcome by a strange sensation of Specht and Lidewij conspiring together to put him to work — their reactions to his intentions, although entirely independent of each other, seemed motivated by such similar thinking. Sometimes he even felt as if the commission wasn't just coming from Specht, but from Lidewij, too. As if it wasn't just about Singer, who had really existed and could be seen on videos and photographs, but also about someone who did
not yet
exist.

He'll be on a green background, Creator said at one stage. A sea of folds.

A sea, Specht said. He got used to the idea.

Or do you mean a womb?

Creator realised that, for the first time in his life, he, the photographic realist, was going to do something fundamentally different from working from life. Instead of capturing something that he had seen, as if in a flash, he had to start on someone who was fundamentally elsewhere.

Creator didn't put it like that, of course. Words like
fundamentally elsewhere
never passed his lips. He described the unknown territory Singer would take him into by saying that if he didn't pull it off,
his arse would be showing.

A womb, that's the word, Creator said. A womb of sea-green folds.

When Specht said goodbye after the third session, Creator was, if I'm not mistaken, almost as feverish as when he came to pick me up from Van Schendel's. Before saying goodbye, Specht had asked, unnecessarily, So I take it you really have accepted this commission?

Creator, equally unnecessarily, assented.

They were again sitting at the large table.

All I can do now is wish you strength, Specht said.

Specht stuck a hand in his inside pocket and left it dangling there awkwardly for a long time, as if making a tremendously difficult decision.

Perhaps this will be of some use to you, he said, pulling out a Polaroid.

His long, bony hand trembled and flapped as if he had lost control of his muscles. He let go of his stick to help his right hand with his left. The stick fell clattering to the floor. Creator leapt forward to pick it up.

For a moment, the studio was full of fluttering consternation, as if a gust of wind had torn through it.

When Creator sat down again, the Polaroid was in front of him. Specht watched closely, studying his expression.

Creator could not suppress a sigh of disappointment. For a moment, he had hoped to finally catch Singer's eye. But the Polaroid revealed little more than the video. The same bed, the same pose: Singer with his eyes shut. The only difference was that the fold of sheet that covered Singer's genitals on the video had now been slid a few inches to the left, but without making Singer fundamentally any more naked — Creator saw that immediately.

Thanks, he said. Every little bit helps.

Specht cleared his throat. Clearly, he found it difficult to speak.

When will my son be ready?

Without thinking, Creator said, Easter.

Easter was a couple of months away. He seldom allowed so much time.

Specht seemed fully recovered. He looked at his watch, and asked whether it would be all right for him to pick Singer up on Holy Saturday.

Creator glanced at the calendar. Is that what it's called? Holy Saturday?