The sun outside was so dazzling that Hubert could see nothing at all when he walked into the lobby. The large room was full of old armchairs, in the middle was a bar, but there was no one around at all. At a desk behind reception, he finally saw a woman sitting at a computer. Hubert cleared his throat, and she got up. She walked up to the desk, parroting a greeting. She called Hubert “du” and explained that that was normal here, even before he could say what he had come for. The restaurant would open at six, she said, at the moment all the guests were out. But he could get coffee and cake here. Hubert thanked her and sat down in a leather armchair in a corner. After a while a young man dressed as a pirate came out and took his order. When the waiter brought his coffee, Hubert asked him about the costume and learned that there was a pirate-themed dinner tonight.
It’s all in your weekly program, said the waiter.
I’m not staying at the hotel, said Hubert, and the waiter laughed as though he’d made a joke.
When Hubert returned to the cultural center a little before four, he saw a large heavyset man waiting in front of the building, with a camera and an enormous telephoto lens. He put out his hand and said he was from the local paper. He was a little early, but perhaps they could get the photos out of the way. While he took his pictures, he asked a few questions, from which Hubert guessed that the man had no idea who he was or what he was doing here. The answers seemed not to interest him either, presumably he just wanted Hubert’s face to be in motion.
My colleague will be here in a minute to interview you, he said, after shooting off two dozen pictures.
Hubert sat down on one of the stone benches in the arcade, and the photographer sat opposite him. They sat there and waited in silence. After about a quarter of an hour, a tiny car drove up, and a black-haired young woman got out. Even as she approached the two men, she was apologizing for being late.
Tamara, she said and held out her hand to Hubert. Then she hugged the photographer. Hubert couldn’t say if she’d kissed him on the mouth or not. The photographer went away. Tamara unpacked a small recording device and set it in front of her on the table. Then she winked at Hubert.
What may we expect from you? Are you still painting naked ladies?
Hubert hesitated.
Tamara said Arno had told her he wanted to develop his new show here in situ, but if he thought he would find models in the village he had another think coming. Because here everyone knew everyone else, and nobody was about to get her kit off for him. Suddenly her voice had an aggressive undertone. Hubert imagined her naked, with that expression on her face. He said he didn’t yet know what the exhibition was going to contain. Tamara said he hadn’t left himself very much time.
I know that, he said, irritated.
Then he remembered what she was there for and said he hoped to find inspiration here. The only driver for his work was desire, a kind of hunger for reality, for presence, and also for intimacy, as opposed to publicity. In a very wide sense, he was interested in transcendence.
Tamara looked as though she didn’t believe a word of it. Do I have to warn the local women about you, or not? she asked.
He shook his head. I haven’t painted any nudes for years.
She asked him a couple more standard questions about his life, his work at the college, and his plans for the future, then she got up, and so did Hubert.
Well, see you at the opening, if not before, she said, gave him her card, and got into her car.
The entrance to the cultural center was north facing and already in shade. The air was cold. Hubert went in to get a jacket and then he drove into the village and took a look around. The center of the village looked impressively unspoiled, there were many old buildings decorated with artful graffiti, some were festooned with Romansh proverbs, one had a sundial. The whole area must have been prosperous once, he thought, the boxy concrete hotels you found in other touristy places were completely absent.
After Hubert had wandered around for a while, he took a seat on a bench in a big square and watched the passersby. He thought about the exhibition. The village was lovely, the landscape was lovely, even the weather was lovely. He had grown up in a village himself, what was there to say about it? He should have known there was just as little for him here as there was at home.
The shadows had gotten longer, and when they stretched to cover the bench he was sitting on, Hubert felt the cold. He walked into the nearest restaurant, ordered a cup of tea, and checked his e-mails. Astrid had written, and so had Nina and a couple of the other students. The college invited him to a meeting and sent him the minutes for another. His gallerist asked him how he was getting on in the mountains and wrote to say he was looking forward to the opening. He asked Hubert to book him a room for the time.
Hubert answered evasively. By the time he was finished it was seven o’clock, and he ordered something to eat. The restaurant was almost empty, a few men were sitting at a round table drinking beer and arguing noisily about local politics. Shortly before nine, Hubert left the restaurant. He had drunk too much to drive, really.
The hotel was brightly lit. When Hubert parked his car, he heard voices and laughter from the grounds, and music. There were no lights on in the cultural center, the door was locked, and the building looked discouraging. Hubert groped for a light switch. In the kitchen he found half a bottle of grappa. He took it up to his room, set up the slide projector, and looked at the photographs of women he had taken back in the day. He didn’t mean to work with the slides, presumably he had just brought them with him because they were part of the last sensible thing he had done. He projected the photos on a wall. He hadn’t looked at them for years, in his memory they had been more interesting than they were. He was surprised at the impertinence with which he had proceeded, he must have been completely convinced by his work. Almost more surprising was that his self-assuredness and enthusiasm had been so contagious that he had found women who agreed to take part. In one of the photographs there was a small black-haired woman, a postwoman, whom he had run into at the end of her shift. She wedged a bottle of Prosecco between her thighs and fiddled with the cork. In the next picture she was reaching for glasses on a high shelf, in the third she was pouring wine into one of them and laughing because the bubbles overflowed the glass. Then there were two out-of-focus shots of her walking down the corridor, and one of her turning back the corner of her bed. That was the one and only time that Hubert had slept with one of his models. He had never used the photographs.
In the next slide tray there were photos of a woman of sixty or so, knitting, in a third a young woman breast-feeding her naked baby. She had struck an attitude and after the session asked him for copies of the pictures, which he had never sent her. These pictures had been useless as well. Hubert went through all his trays, pictures of more than forty women. Most of them he could just about remember, but in some of the latter trays he had the sense that he had never seen the pictures before. One sequence was taken in dim light, the pictures were slightly out of focus, and the face of the woman was never completely visible, sometimes she hid it behind her long hair, most of the time she was trying to avoid the camera anyway. Hubert couldn’t quite remember her story, she was leaning across a table and seemed to be tidying up or looking at something. The room she was in seemed anonymous, other than the table there were no pieces of furniture or other objects to be seen. The pictures radiated a deep quiet, as though the model had been all alone in the room.