In Hamburg it was raining. Gillian took a taxi from the airport to the author’s apartment. The film team was already there, and the author was getting annoyed because the cameraman wanted to rearrange his living room. He also refused makeup, even though he had probably worn it hundreds of times. Gillian explained that it was to allow him to look his most natural. He seemed at least to like her, and over time he unwound, and even started flirting with her a bit. They filmed him sitting at his desk and in front of his bookshelves, out walking along the waterfront, in a smart café he would never dream of going to, as he explained. Gillian asked him to write something down for her, but it turned out he had nothing to write on. She lent him her black Moleskine, and he scribbled something in there. Then they trooped back to his house to film the interview. Gillian sat beside the camera. When she opened the notebook to review her questions, she saw what he had written: This engenders such a clichéd view of the writer: television is the pits. She didn’t flinch and asked her first question.
The author seemed offended that he was getting more critical attention, and more readers, for his autobiography than for his ambitious experimental oeuvre.
Even though this book is just as fictitious, he said.
And what is reality?
If it’s reality you want, I suggest you look out the window.
Then why write?
He looked at her with a pitying smile. For professional reasons, a colleague of mine used to say. And another said it was lust, greed, and vanity that motivated him. In my own case, it’s presumably …
The soundman said he had picked up a noise in the background, could he possibly repeat the last few sentences, but this the author refused to do.
That’s the thing with reality, he said, you can’t repeat it to order, you can’t correct it. Perhaps we should read more books.
Would you do something else if you had your time again? Gillian asked.
The writer was suddenly angry and said he was tired, and gave monosyllabic replies to her remaining questions. At the end of four hours, Gillian said goodbye. She would manage to knock her material into a four-minute feature, but it would have even less to do with reality than the three hundred and fifty pages of the autobiography (not really) under discussion.
While in Hamburg, she didn’t check Miss Julie’s e-mail. She no longer felt comfortable with her part in the correspondence.
When she got home four days later, though, she did. Hubert had written to her twice, once immediately, moments after she had turned off her own computer, and then the next day. In the first he offered a detailed description of how he would kiss her. He had assembled a pretty accurate picture of her, and wrote about her cropped hair and slender waist. In the second e-mail he apologized for the first. He said he had allowed himself to be carried away and was sorry. Gillian didn’t know which of the e-mails to be more upset about. She decided she would meet Hubert. She wrote that she didn’t want him to paint her or kiss her, but she would agree to have a drink with him. As a venue she suggested a café in an outer suburb where she had once met a curator. She looked at the time.
I’ll be there at seven tonight, she wrote. You’ll have no trouble recognizing me. Yrs, Julie. Hubert’s reply came quickly, and was friendly but reserved.
Normally Matthias didn’t get home till late. Gillian scribbled a message on a Post-it, she had to go back to the office, she couldn’t say when she’d be back. She spent a long time wondering what to wear, and in the end decided on the most unspectacular things she could think of, a pair of tan cords and a white T-shirt with lace trim. She knotted a gray sweater over her shoulders. She didn’t put on any makeup, even though she didn’t normally set foot outdoors without at least a dab of powder and some mascara.
Gillian was early. There was no one in the café except two women and a young couple who were preoccupied with themselves. The women looked at her curiously, perhaps they recognized her. She took a table at the back and ordered a mint tea.
Hubert turned up shortly after six. When he spotted Gillian, he seemed relieved. He walked up to her table and smiled.
Oh, it’s you, I might have guessed.
Gillian hadn’t got up, he held out his hand to her. He seemed less sure of himself than in the TV studio, at any rate Gillian liked him much better. Hubert didn’t say anything, and Gillian didn’t know what to say either. In the end he asked her why she called herself Miss Julie.
After the Strindberg play, said Gillian. It was a part I played once. In my drama school graduation show.
The waitress came over. Hubert smiled at her and ordered a beer. When she came back with it, he took it from her with a little pleasantry and had a sip right away. The waitress walked away, you could tell by her walk that she knew Hubert was looking at her.
Do you like her then?
He apologized. I can’t help seeing a potential picture in every face.
I had the sense it was more her bottom you were looking at, said Gillian. What do you see in my face?
He looked at her attentively. I don’t know, he said. I always watch your program.
Really?
Your face is too familiar to me.
Then look at it more closely, said Gillian. She liked it when Hubert was looking at her with his keen, appraising look.
Your complexion isn’t as clear as it seemed to be in the studio, he said finally, that must be the makeup. Your nose is a bit shiny. And you have unusually heavy eyebrows for a woman.
Gillian winced. I could have done without the detail.
I like the little hairs on your neck, said Hubert, and the mobility of your features. The way you sometimes open your eyes very wide. Are you nearsighted?
A little bit.
Hubert asked her why she wanted to see him. Gillian shrugged.
They were silent again, but it wasn’t the disagreeable silence of two people who have nothing to say to one another. Gillian’s cell phone went off. She looked down at the display and declined the call.
Will you show me your pictures?
Sure, he said, and went over to the bar to pay.
Although it was only late September, autumn was already very much in the air. It was almost dark outside, and distinctly chilly.
I’ve got my car in the car park, said Gillian.
Hubert gave her directions. During the drive, he asked her what she did in her free time. A bit of exercise, swimming, jogging, said Gillian. And I read a lot. What about you? She hadn’t had a conversation like this in a very long time, and it made her smile. In a minute you’ll be asking me about my taste in music.
The drive took less than a quarter of an hour. Hubert’s studio was in an old textile works on the edge of the city. To the south was a dark wooded chain of hills, the slopes in the north were not so high. The valley drew in here, and it was dotted with ugly industrial buildings. The main building in the textile works was a wreck, its roof stove in, the windows boarded up. The walls were propped by a heavy steel scaffold to keep them from collapsing.
They crossed the yard to a side building. The sky was still bright, and there was a thin sliver of new moon. As Hubert and Gillian approached the building, a security light came on. Hubert unlocked the graffitied metal door, switched on a light, and led Gillian down a narrow corridor past a number of doors. His studio was at the back, a big, almost empty room with a paint-spotted linoleum floor. The walls were in an uncertain yellowish color, in some places you could see gray marks where shelves had been once. On the ceiling there were halogen bulbs that bathed the room in a chill, garish light. On one side of the studio were tall windows, the blinds were down. Along one wall were metal shelving units full of bottles and tubes, brushes, stacks of books, and sketch pads. There was a sofa, a couple of old kitchen chairs, a mattress in a corner. On top of a small fridge was a single hot plate, with a beat-up aluminum saucepan on it. Side by side along one wall leaned three evidently recent pictures like those in the exhibition, one was still unfinished. Next to them were the backs of half a dozen canvases, protected by clear plastic sheeting. A large empty easel stood in the middle of the room. Hubert took a couple of folders from the shelf and laid them on a table improvised from two wooden blocks and a length of chipboard. He opened them one after the other and quickly flicked through sketches, begun and completed drawings, as if that wasn’t the purpose of their being there. Rooms, bodies, body parts, sometimes he turned one of the drawings around and looked at it as if for the very first time. He said a few words, perhaps he was talking to himself. The last folder he pushed aside unopened. Gillian saw the name Astrid marked on it. Then Hubert went over to the canvases that were propped against the wall, pulled off the plastic, and turned them faceup onto the floor, one after the other. Gillian stood next to him.