All Days Are Night (6 page)

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.

Most of my newer stuff is in the exhibition, of course, he said, all I’ve got here are a couple of older pictures.

All were of the same woman in various positions.

Who is she? asked Gillian.

He didn’t reply. They were both silent now. When she wanted a little more time, Gillian placed her hand on his
to delay it. It felt like they were peering through the skylight of a strange apartment.

Very nice, said Gillian, when Hubert propped the pile back against the wall. Her phone rang again. She switched it off without looking at the display. Hubert coughed nervously and took a step away from her.

Are you interested in seeing the photographs as well? he asked.

She nodded.

He said he couldn’t offer her much in the way of refreshment. Beer, a glass of wine, tap water.

Beer is fine, she said, and sat down in an old armchair into which she disappeared. Hubert took a couple of cans of Czech lager out of the fridge and poured them carefully into two large glasses with gold rims. He looked concentrated, as though it were a very demanding task. He brought her one of the glasses, took a chair himself and moved it to about ten feet from Gillian. As he sat down, he took a sip of beer and then set the glass on the floor next to him.

She said again that she liked the paintings, but he seemed not to want to talk about them. He made minimal replies to her questions and took sips of beer in between. Finally he got up and fetched an old slide projector from the corner of the room and perched it on a wobbly old barstool. He switched off the overhead lights, moved his chair closer to Gillian’s armchair, and pushed the first slide tray into the projector.

Without a word, Hubert went through the photographs, one tray after the other. There were hundreds of nudes, women ironing, dusting, reading, making coffee.
There were dozens of shots of each woman. To begin with there was an amused expression on many of the faces, later on they looked more serious and stopped staring into the camera.

Gillian got up, went over to the window, and sat down on the window seat. Hubert didn’t notice. She saw his silhouette and the images of the naked women on the wall. She imagined his face, pale in the reflection of the slides, his cold, critical gaze. She felt reminded of a photograph of a cinema audience she had seen once, incomplete faces with staring eyes and mouths opened in laughter. That was always how she had pictured her viewers.

In the next tray were pictures of a small woman with wide hips and large, pendulous breasts. She had short blond hair and hairy armpits. Both her posture and her facial expression had something theatrical about them. She hung washing on a low rack in a tiny bathroom, baby things and men’s socks. She took a book from a shelf, hunkered down on the floor, and swept up with a dustpan and brush, maybe crumbs from biscuits she had given her child. The apartment was cluttered and untidy. In the last pictures, the woman looked close to tears.

She looks terribly lonely, said Gillian. Do you have any idea what you put these women through?

They agree to take part, said Hubert, switching the trays. Even in their nakedness they try not to reveal themselves. They hide behind their movements, their smiles, their way of exhibiting themselves.

Gillian was surprised that she didn’t seem to get used to nakedness, as in the sauna or the shower at the gym. The more pictures she saw, the stranger the bodies became
to her. A big mole, a fold of skin, pubic hair shaved back to a narrow strip, everything acquired exaggerated significance. The bodies fell apart, looked disproportionate, ungainly, ill made.

Is it like that for you as well? she asked.

You’re starting to see them, said Hubert. That’s the way I paint them, detail by detail, surface after surface. Even when I’m taking the photographs, I try not to be overly present. That’s why I use a camera with a big viewfinder. When the models look into the camera, they see only their own reflection in the lens.

He had clicked rapidly through some pictures of a young, gangling woman, then stopped at one where she was looking at herself in a mirror. The woman’s arms were hanging down, and her stomach was slightly protuberant. Her gaze looked critical, as though dissatisfied with what she was seeing.

Could perhaps do something with that one, he said, although mirrors are tricky.

What good is it for the woman, if she never sees the picture? asked Gillian.

Nothing, said Hubert. She’s just the model. I’m not a portraitist.

And why do they take part?

I’ve no idea, he said. Maybe they have a need to be recognized in some way. He switched off the projector. Are you tired?

Gillian nodded.

I’m going to stay here awhile longer. Shall I walk you back to your car?

Yes, please, said Gillian.

It took her a while to find the way home. It was ten, later than she’d supposed, but traffic was still heavy. She felt disappointed, and annoyed with herself for being disappointed. He could at least have asked her to sit for him. The thought had a strange attraction.

While she was waiting at a light, she switched her phone back on. She got three text message signals. At the next light, she read them. Two were from Matthias, the third was from Hubert. She deleted them all without answering.

Gillian woke early. She was in pain again, but she didn’t want to take any more pills. She stepped out onto the balcony in her dressing gown to smoke a cigarette. It was raining, and a strong, cold wind was blowing. She could hear some birds, but not as many as usual. The thought of birds sheltering from the rain, cowering in shrubbery somewhere, feathers ruffled and heads tucked in, moved her in a sentimental way. It got sneakily brighter, but the sky remained gray and the rain kept falling.

The fear set in quite unexpectedly. It seemed to come from outside, but it had nothing to do with Matthias’s death or the accident, more the rain, the gray skies, and the shapelessness of the beginning day. Fear is the possibility of freedom, a sentence she had read once long ago and without ever understanding it, never forgotten. She still didn’t understand it, but it seemed to describe exactly what she felt. In front of the building was a sandbox, a dismal parody of a children’s playground, under a gray cover. The clattering of the rain on the polyethylene was
very close and loud as the voices of the solo birds against the city’s backing track. It was odd that rain always seemed to take Gillian back to her childhood, as though it had only ever rained then. She was ten or twelve, it was early morning, and she was on her way to school. She could hear the sounds of the rain on her hood, the drips splashed her face.

Gillian, she spoke her name out loud. She thought of the girl who had just graduated from drama school and had got her first engagement at an obscure provincial theater. She had played a dwarf in a Christmas pantomime, a serving girl in a comedy, and Rebecca Gibbs in
Our Town.
She told George about the letter Jane Crofut got from the preacher when she was ill. The envelope was addressed to Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America, Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God. You don’t say, said George, who never got anything. And still the mailman had delivered the letter. Each time she said that sentence, it brought tears to her eyes.

It was a time when everything seemed possible, but freedom unsettled and scared her. She didn’t suffer from stage fright, oddly, she never had, but a sort of fear that was worse after the show was over. Her boyfriend had been taken on at another theater, but they had never bothered to break up. They telephoned less, and then stopped entirely. Gillian was left to her own devices, she lived over a pizzeria in a little apartment where it was always too warm. She had no friends outside the theater, and none in it really either.

It took her a while to discover that she wasn’t a good actress and never would be. She played women who gave themselves, who loved unconditionally, who sacrificed themselves, but she couldn’t take any of the roles quite seriously. A part of her always watched herself acting. I can’t regret, or flee, or stay, or live — or die! The little miss marched resolutely out the door, but the audience surely realized she wasn’t going to the barn to hang herself, but to the dressing room to take off her makeup.