The order was not necessary. All Briseida could move was her mouth and her right eyelid. Something was forcing open her left eyelid to the point where she was on the verge of tears. It smelt of imitation leather: a glove. Leather vultures had seized her wrists, knees, ankles, throat, and hair. She wanted to say something in English, but all that came out was mangled Spanish. But she had to speak English. English is vital in situations like this, when you are being tortured by a foreigner. OK, Johnson family at holidays. Mary Johnson is in the kitchen. Where's Mary Johnson? Then, along the left-hand side of her optic nerve there appeared a spectacular universe of such a kitsch green and red colour it reminded her of a phosphorescent buddha she had seen in a street market. Or the postcards by Pierre amp; Gilles she used to send her parents from Europe. She thought she was going blind.
At that point the hand pulling her hair back let go, and another one pressed down on the back of her neck forcing her head forward as though wanting to smash it into the computer screen. She found herself with her nose pressed up against the French and German subtitles. She fought back a sudden wave of nausea.
'Your second opportunity.' It was the woman again. 'Our colleague simply brought the brush close to your pupil… Listen, and don't scream… if you give the wrong answer again, she will draw a comma on your retina… after she's done that, you'll be able to see a green crescent moon even in the light of day. A curious aesthetic effect, don't you agree? Stop snivelling and pay attention… After this second session, you might as well keep your left retina in a jar. I can assure you, it will glow green in the night like one of those virgins of Lourdes… So please, concentrate. The prize is your eyesight.' 'The same question again.' It was the man once more.
Since the hands clasping her shoulders and arms were still there, and the one on the back of her neck was still pressing her down, Briseida was convinced her cervical vertebra was about to crack apart like rotten wood. She decided that would be the best thing that could happen.
'I don't know, I swear, please, I don't know, I swear I've no idea, in Vienna, yes, in Vienna, but I don't really know, ‘ swear, I swear…!' Saliva, tears and words came pouring from her face as if her glands were secreting them: 'I've no idea where, it's true, I've no idea where, I swear it, please, please, please, plea A bout of vomiting cut her off.
Seated at his portable computer in the MuseumsQuartier office, Lothar Bosch pressed a button on his mobile memory and called the number that appeared. He had a brief but forceful discussion with one of his men in Paris. Miss Wood had her back turned to him, and was staring out at the Vienna dawn through the glass wall. Bosch noticed she was smoking one of her disgusting ecological cigarettes, the mentholated green smoke formed halos on the window round her head.
'Mr Lothar Bosch, always a gentleman where ladies are concerned,' he heard her say.
'Don't you think we've scared her enough with that game of the optical brush?' Bosch snapped back, wounded by his colleague's cold irony. 'That's no way to start a conversation. We won't get anything out of her like that.'
Her eye was undamaged. They were quite kind to her, really. They had even let go of her so she could vomit more easily.
Briseida was sick as she used to be as a child: with one hand on her forehead, and the other clutching her stomach. That was how it always was with her. Strange moment this bilious deja vu. According to her mother, she threw up like a cat. Her grandmother said it was because she didn't know how to be sick. The little kitten would suffer all her life because she did not know how to vomit properly. She didn't take after her father in that, especially after he had been boozing. Stan was also an expert in vomiting, it was easy, prolonged and abundant. The same was true of most of the fluids emanating from her Art Professor. The same could not be said of Luigi, her Aesthetics Professor, whose stomach was toughened by a diet of pizzas laced with chilli: he was stiff, repressed and impotent. By their vomit shall ye know them, not by their ejaculations. Sneezing, vomiting and death were the only three truly unforeseeable, uncontrollable and instantaneous reactions of the body. Semi-colon, fullstop; new paragraph, full stop, end of dictation about life: as a teacher at her Swiss school had once told her.
She stemmed her retching with a sip of cold water. God, what a state she had left Roger's dining-room carpet in. A man with such an aesthetic sense as Roger (could it be true he had played chess last night with twenty-four human pieces?) and just look what she had deposited on his carpet, it looked like radish juice all over his spotless Italian floor. Briseida was forced to separate her knees to avoid the pool, and in doing so opened her thighs. But since they were no longer holding her down, she could cover her sex with her hands. The Good Computer (or was it the Good Cop?) was waiting, a gold Montblanc pressed against the side of his head. The blonde and the soldiers had retreated to behind the chair, ready to swing into action at any moment. A Windows icon called 'Bad Cop' crouched in the opposite corner to Briseida's. But Good Cop had told her that, for the moment, Baddie wanted a rest. 'Feeling better?'
'Yes. Can I put some clothes on?' A moment's hesitation.
'This will soon be over, I promise you. Now tell me all you know about Oscar.'
She began to talk freely. A string of unemotional, technical terms about art (this helped her relax). She did not look at the screen as she spoke, nor at the floor (the vomit), but at a fruit bowl on the table behind the computer: green apples and pears as calming as an infusion.
'I met him at MoMA in New York last spring. He was looking after Bust, a Van Tysch etching. I suppose you know the work I'm talking about, but I can describe it for you… it's a preparatory study for Deflowering. A twelve-year-old girl in a black-painted box with a slit at the top. The slit allows you to see only her face and shoulders, painted in faint greys on her skin primed with acids, like a human etching. To see the work, the public have to file in one by one, climb the two steps in front of the box, and stand only a hand's breadth away from her face. The girl stares out without ever blinking, her eyes painted coal black; her expression is almost… almost supernatural… it's an incredible work…'
'The sensation is like going into a confessional and finding that the priest has the features of your sins,' a Spanish critic had written about Bust, but Briseida left out that comment because she did not want to appear to be giving an art lecture. The work had made a huge impression during its American tour, especially because Deflowering had been banned by a censorship committee in the United States.
'Oscar was in charge of the security for Bust. One day he saw me waiting my turn at the end of a long line of people. I had gone to MoMA to study an Elmer Fludd on show in the next gallery, but I didn't want to leave without having a look at Van Tysch's etching. The previous weekend I had fallen badly playing basketball and was on crutches. When he saw me, Oscar came over and offered to take me to the front of the queue. He led me up and into the box. He was a real gentleman.' 'So you became friends?' asked the man. 'Yes, we began to see each other quite often.'