Tomorrow the same time? asked Hubert. And please be sure to wear something different.
When Gillian arrived in the studio the next morning, the previous day’s sketches were taped up on the wall. Again, Hubert helped her out of her coat. She wore a tightly fitting short skirt, sleeveless top, and dark stockings.
He had decided on a pose overnight. He set Gillian in an uncomfortable straight-backed cane chair and asked her to cross her arms. He took her right hand and put it on her left knee, and put the left on her right thigh.
Sit up straight, he said. How does that feel?
Not comfortable, said Gillian. Any chance of a cushion?
Hubert shook his head. We mustn’t let you be too comfortable, otherwise you’ll get that self-satisfied look on your face again.
This position feels stupid, said Gillian. I’d never sit like this.
So much the better, he said. Before he began, he set an egg timer for forty-five minutes. When it goes off, we can have a break, he said.
He went up to Gillian again and tweaked her clothes. He hardly spoke while drawing, but his facial expression changed continually, sometimes he looked angry, then suddenly he brightened. He drew his eyebrows together, looked intensely focused for a while, then relaxed again. Gillian looked out the window, where there was a huge mound of gravel, presumably spoils from some sort of dig. Behind it was a wooded slope. The sky was overcast. In spite of the uncomfortable position, Gillian’s thoughts started to wander, as though the cramped attitude evoked certain memories. She thought about her early days at drama school, her strickenness when the teacher had criticized her. You’re acting — that was his refrain — be yourself, show yourself. Only when she was completely exhausted, despairing and close to tears, did the teacher sometimes say, now that was the real you. Just for a moment.
Gillian was jolted out of her memories when Hubert asked her to please concentrate.
What does that mean? She asked. I thought as far as you’re concerned I might as well be a milk jug or a bowl of fruit.
A jug doesn’t look out the window, he said. You’re dissolving.
When the egg timer rang, they took a short break. Gillian went to the bathroom, which was at the other end of the passageway. It was dirty, and even though the window was open and it was freezing cold in the tiny space, the stink was sickening. When she returned to the studio, Hubert had replaced the board with a prepared canvas and was in the process of mixing colors and getting brushes lined up. She walked up and down the room, stretching her legs.
All ready? he asked finally and wound the egg timer again.
She sat down. He adjusted her attitude and ran his hand over her hair to smooth it. Gillian settled down to watch Hubert paint. He had the brush out, and to judge by his sweeping movements he was painting the outlines.
It comes and goes, he said. Painting from photographs is definitely easier. Then he stopped talking; a little later he swore. It’s not possible to render a three-dimensional object on a flat canvas.
By the object do you mean me? asked Gillian.
I don’t even know what makes people try, he said, ignoring her. I only know I can’t paint what I see. It would be better just to look at people instead of painting pictures of them.
So why do you do it?
He groaned.
Gillian imagined a museum with empty walls. People walked through the rooms, stopped in front of one another, took a step back, circled and scrutinized each other.
Hubert snapped his fingers. Hello? Anyone home?
The worst were the first few minutes after each break. Each time Gillian would think she couldn’t possibly hold her pose for another forty-five minutes. Her mouth was dry, she needed to clear her throat, somewhere she had an itch that she would give anything to scratch. As time passed, she got used to sitting still. She still felt the pain in her back and bottom, but it had become part of her. She became stiller, stopped wondering what she would look like in the picture and who would get to see it. The painting would exist independently of her, it wasn’t a copy, not a depiction. Every snapshot would contain more of her than this painting. The next time the egg timer went off, she walked around next to Hubert and looked at what he had done.
If you want, she said, you can paint me naked.
For two days Gillian had been going around with the proofs of the second book by a rising young novelist. She had taken the train out to Hubert’s studio and had read another dozen pages. When she looked down at her cell phone during one of the breaks, she saw that her editor had sent her a text, asking if the book was worth devoting a slot to, and if she had an idea for how to do it. It wasn’t easy for books to get coverage, you couldn’t get interesting images out of writers. Think outside the box, the series editor said every time, I don’t want to see another shot of a moody author tramping through autumn leaves. Gillian wrote back to say she wasn’t far enough along yet, but she’d know by tomorrow. After dinner, she went on reading the proofs and wondering how the young author could be produced for television. She was glad of the distraction. At eleven Matthias came into her office and said he was going to bed. By midnight she had roughed out a concept for a film, no walk in the woods but a retelling of the novel with some archive footage, and a brief interview with the author on the difficulties of a second novel, and a couple of clips from a reading, with comments from readers. That should stand a chance in the editorial meeting. She went to the bathroom and got undressed. She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time. She turned and looked over her shoulder.
Normally, Thursdays weren’t too strenuous, but Gillian spent almost the whole morning editing a piece. In the afternoon it was okayed, and she made a couple of phone calls to advance the concept she wanted to present in the editorial meeting tomorrow. She still hadn’t gotten to the end of the book. It was an eccentric story with lots of humorous inserts, but even so — or maybe just because — she was bored by it. If you asked her, most literary publications were superfluous anyway. Perhaps it was her fault, but it was more and more unusual for her to be caught up in a book. When writers complained that they were never invited to be on the program, she often felt tempted to say, write better books.
She was already thinking of canceling the proposal, but when she met her boss by the coffee machine he said he was looking forward to hearing from her. She went home at three. She read a bit more of the proofs, but she couldn’t concentrate. She had told Matthias at breakfast that she was going to see Dagmar that evening.
When she set off a little before six, it was raining gently, and it felt colder than in the morning. She looked at the other passengers in the streetcar and tried to imagine them naked. Old women, businesspeople, mothers who had collected their little ones from day care — all naked. A young, smartly dressed businessman whose upper body was densely haired, a man with such a big belly that you couldn’t see his penis, a big-breasted woman, a young woman with thin reddish pubic hair and a genital piercing. Pleats of skin, wrinkles, light and dark skin, spots, freckles, and moles. Gillian felt reminded of medieval pictures of the Day of Judgment, tiny little people doubled over with pain and guilt. She tried to remember the name of the painter who had persuaded hundreds of people to take off their clothes for him and all lie down on the ground.