Thursday 9th November 2017
The forensic officers arrived at ten o´clock. There were four of them, wearing white jump suits with hoods pulled over their heads, gloves and white rubber boots.
Oñé asked if he could accompany them and they refused to allow him.
They stayed for six hours.
Thursday 16th November 2017
The police asked for samples of my blood and that of Gabriela for DNA purposes. I made arrangements for Gabriela to contact the Local Police. I took Oñé with me to the Police Station as samples of blood were extracted from my arm, swabs taken from my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
Oñé thought that it was exciting and asked if he could provide samples. To my surprise the officers said yes, and with my permission, extracted his DNA samples.
Thursday 23rd November 2017
I received a call from Pep Serrano saying that there was a match with my DNA on Cupid’s arrow but not for either Gabriela or Oñé. There was evidence of a second sample of DNA. They did not have a match for it and would hold the evidence on file, pending further investigation.
There was no evidence to link Ishmael with the arrow. There was the unsolved issue of unidentified DNA from the blood on the tip of the arrow. Investigations were continuing.
18
PABLO PICASSO
“Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.”
Wednesday 27th December 2017
I took my journal out from the usual place in the bedroom, out of Oñé’s sight. He had once interrupted me and seen me place it in the drawer beside the bed. I told him that I was recording ideas for new paintings and exhibitions as they often escaped my mind if I didn’t write them down.
I was in a more reflective mood. I wrote:
“I never had a child of my own. I wanted to work out what life was about before I would think of bringing a child into the world. And I never found a woman I loved enough. I would have wanted a woman with a sharp mind who criticised me and kept me in control.
“The women I met were more interested in my money and fame than helping me find the meaning of life. They took a lot from me, including trying to ruin my reputation. You know the way the world has become so politically correct. These women wanted my money and were happy to spend it. Yet they sold their version of stories to the press about how I had sexually tormented them. I don’t remember it that way. My memories were of the enjoyment of pure mutual lust – certainly not of a love for any one of them. How many of them were there? If I go back through my bank account statements I can tell you by the money I threw at them. I suppose it’s no more than others spend on high class prostitutes. I kid myself that I have never slept with a prostitute. Of course I did. I called them girlfriends. Why did they leave me? In most cases it was because that they had found someone with more money.
“Oñé convinced me that it had been the right decision never to bring a child into the world. Our interchanges with one another do not make me feel better – rather, worse. What is strange is that it seems to me that he is now clamping onto me like a father figure. He even seems to like me. It is a sickening feeling to be liked. I am more comfortable with being hated.”
Sophia is arriving this afternoon. I feel anxious about how I can handle the visit. I now know about ‘the incident’. Should I tell her, or will that be a betrayal of Oñé? Although she did tell me that Oñé would help me understand what had happened with Ishmael. Maybe she would be disappointed if he hadn’t revealed to me what happened with ‘the incident’.
Oñé has been painting. I decided not to look at the painting until it is finished, although he kept tugging at my jumper and asking me to have a look. I shook my head. Now I have learned to do that with gentleness and a soft look in my eyes. There is half of me that is genuine about this gentle communication. The other half of me that wished that Oñé wasn’t here and that his mother was not arriving to spend the New Year. She phoned me to say that her treatment was going well but that I shouldn’t be shocked by how she looks. I can’t imagine her looking anything other than beautiful. I don’t know how many times she apologised to Oñé for not being able to arrive for his birthday on Christmas Eve. That day she had to receive chemotherapy. It made her quite sick and she didn’t want Oñé to see her like that. I am aware that she could die at any time. That thought makes me aware of how precious and fragile life is. I know now how little sensitivity I must have to have been able to kill twice. I could blame those murders on being gifted as a Painter. Do I not need to be filled with passionate emotion to paint? Do I not need intense rage within me to murder?
While my mother Monica reads Butler’s ‘Lives of Saints’ for inspiration about the highest unselfish motivations of humankind, I read about the lives of artists, writers and musicians who have sunk into levels of depravity worse than or as bad as mine.
My favourite was Caravaggio from the sixteenth century who lived two lives like me. In one he moved within a refined society, attending soirees and being a protégé of a cardinal. In the other, he mixed with what others called ‘the low life’ of Rome where he was ill-tempered and constantly in trouble – slandering his rivals, hitting waiters, carrying a sword with him in the hope of picking a fight. Eventually he did murder a man in a fight, forcing him to flee Rome. However, he continued to work and his painting of ‘David with the Head of Goliath’ shows, I think for me, remorse for his murder of an innocent man.
In the same century Benvenuto Cellini who was a goldsmith and a sculptor, painter and writer, killed repeatedly without any sense of apparent regret. He stabbed to death his brother’s murderer with a long, twisted dagger which he drove down through the man’s shoulder.
If I choose a writer, I might think of William S Burroughs who killed his wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken rage and who claimed that he would never have become a writer if he had not killed her. He proclaimed that he wrote as a form of sorcery to protect him from what he thought was possession by an evil entity.
Maybe there is hope for me. I do have remorse. I write this journal to exorcise my demons. I continue to paint but no matter how wonderfully my art is improving, I have already asked you to burn them – burn those paintings – that is the only way to end for ever the life of the exorcised soul. You may keep this journal. Let others read it as a cautionary tale of the nature of genius and the fall from greatness.
I am determined not to kill again. Yet I am not sure if I am strong enough. I understand that once I have the taste for killing – I have crossed a line. It is like losing your virginity. You can’t go back to a state of innocence. I yearn for pleasure again. I know that sounds dreadful. I have decided to be honest in this journal. So I can tell you that I have also felt regret after illicit pleasure. I have learned that pleasure contains violence. Why was I created in that way? I don’t know. Maybe we are all the same.
I can continue with my research. The nineteenth century painter, Richard Dadd, murdered his father. The composer Carlo Gesualdo ran a sword through his wife. Then there was the insanity of Francisco Goya evident in his paintings, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin with his multiple suicide attempts, Edvard Munch with his inner demons evident in the ‘Scream’ and Agnes Martin with her psychotic breaks and schizophrenia who managed to ‘recover’ (if you could call it that) in the tranquillity of New Mexico with the help of a Zen Buddhist practice.
I’ve read that there are those – even my namesake Saint Augustine – who managed to go beyond desire and therefore beyond the world of infinite dissatisfaction. I cannot imagine achieving that state myself. I feel that I am learning to have patience with myself. I am learning to understand what I like and don’t like and not to act out liking or not liking. With Oñé I am learning by observing him.
At times being with Oñé, I feel a power bursting through Oñé which frightens me. He seems too intelligent for his age. I keep searching for his imperfection. Every time he is good, I feel him pushin
g me beyond what I can endure. He is gentle at times in a way that I have not yet learned. He forgives me when I shout at him or even worse when I throw one of his paintings in the rubbish saying, “You can do better than this, you little freak of nature.”
I search for his imperfection. I think that I have found it.
He likes to discover the weak points and vulnerabilities in others. Then he hurts them by touching them with his mind. He reminds me of a child I knew at school who liked to pull the wings of a fly and watch it struggle to become air born.
I wondered if Oñé had learnt to survive in Iraq by discovering the weaknesses in others. For example on Christmas Day, I knew that I should have bought him a present. In fact two presents. He told me that Ishmael had left him on his birthday which was Christmas Eve. I didn’t buy either a birthday present or a present for Christmas Day. We didn’t celebrate his birthday with a special dinner on Christmas Eve which is also the day when Mallorcan families share a special meal together. Instead, I made him a cup of hot chocolate and gave him a piece of ‘ensaimada’ – a lard based local delicacy, with options to have it filled with apricots or figs. I chose for him instead a cream-filled cake. He thanked me profusely as he drank his chocolate. He didn’t mention anything about his birthday, even though I had heard him talk about it on the phone with Sophia.
I took him out for a walk up the Barranc on Christmas Day. As I pulled on my slashed jeans, struggling to button the waist, I realised that I was piling on more and more weight while taking care of this child. It led me to ruminate on how his presence had changed my world. When I say ruminate, I mean that these thoughts about him have become compulsive. He even appears in my dreams and I have a nervous, trembling feeling in my body when I look at his smiling face.
It’s as though I’m waiting for something horrific which he is going to do to me and I don’t know what that might be. Being an artist or a Painter as I like to call myself means I am familiar with the workings of my mind. They are the containers for my inspiration with all of its coarseness or finesse. I know about projection and denial. I enjoy seeing how I can turn another person into a version of my shadow self – my darkness – which I don’t want to work on removing because I enjoy it. I know that I see myself in him.
As for the small irritations, for instance, since he arrived, I find myself eating more. I have to make him meals – three meals a day. Alone, I eat when I feel like it. That might be typically only a cheese and tomato sandwich in the evening. Now I have to think of his breakfast, his lunch his cena. Enough. I feel like a fattened pig. He is fattening me for some party at which I will be the pig roast.
Sophia is arriving today. A bed is ready for her in Ishmael’s room. It is untouched since Pep Serrano and José Miguel saw it. I never found out who made the bed and raked the fire. It must have been me and I forgot that I did it. It must be the stress of murdering Ishmael.
Thinking of Sophia’s arrival, I looked at the empty drawers. Would Sophia not think it strange that I had thrown out all of Ishmael’s clothes? If he had left suddenly for a ‘Walkabout’ the house would still be filled with his presence – clothes, books, aftershave, and hair gel. I didn’t know what to do. I was fairly sure that Sophia would not remember what she had packed in his small rucksack when he left Malmo. She hadn’t seen him in three years. Nevertheless, she would expect some sign of his presence in the room, some evidence which insinuated that I anticipated his return. I had thrown them out the day after I had murdered him.
Today, I rushed down to the Calle de la Luna and bought a few shirts, two pairs of trousers, aftershave, and hair gel. I cut the labels off the clothes and crumpled them a little to make them look worn. Then I remembered that Ishmael would have left them perfectly ironed, and as Oñé continued with his painting, I ironed them all again. Although I thought that Sophia would say that Ishmael would never leave a crease in his shirt. I breathed a sigh of relief as I looked at the bedroom. I thought that I could smell Ishmael’s presence but maybe that only came from the vase of dark red roses which I had placed beside Sophia’s bed.
I opened the drawers to check that everything looked OK. My heart fluttered as I realised that I had thrown out all of Ishmael’s underwear. It was too late to do anything about it. I threw myself onto the bed, looked at my watch. I had to leave for the airport in one hour.
Oñé walked into the bedroom. He coughed to encourage me to open my eyes. I was singing a Cat Stevens song – not out aloud but in my head – about a hard-headed woman. God knows why I started thinking of that song. I had never met a hard-headed woman. I dropped that thought and shouted at Oñé, “You need to get ready. We have to collect Sophia.”
“I’ve finished the painting. Will you look at it now?”
I rolled onto my stomach without looking at him and breathed into the pillow. “We have to collect your mother.”
I turned my head to see him standing with the sheet over his head. He had decided not to change it for the apron which he discovered in the drawer. He told me that he would use the sheet with is splashes of paint as an installation. I had to confess that made me laugh. The dots of cerise, dark blue and rose with the smudge marks of where he had wiped his hands indeed did look like one of my installations. It only needed a little outlining of form which I was sure Oñé was capable of skilfully doing.
I found his silent attentive stare irritating. He then spoke: “We have an hour. You have time to look at it. You promised me you would when I finished. It is now finished.”
I pushed my head into the pillow. “How do you know that it’s finished? I never know.”
Oñé’s voice penetrated my ears and caused a wave of nausea to move through me. “If you don’t know when it is finished you can’t be a real painter can you? Maybe you need to face up to that.”
I knew he was saying painter with a small ‘p’. He was implying that I was only capable of splashing paint onto a wall. I jumped out of bed with a raging anger moving through me. It was a wave of emotion that started in my stomach and moved to my head where it took on swirling intensity which confused me. I shouted at him: “Let’s see your fuckin’ painting then, you little smartass.”
I couldn’t believe that I had said that in such an angry tone of voice. I had tried so hard to control my anger with Oñé. I knew that it was my problem, not his. I had to work on it. Having Oñé in the house was a step too far for me at times – too much, too soon. I should have started with having a little dog that loved me unconditionally, licked my face and was always pleased to see me or a cat that jumped on my lap and allowed me to pet it.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him, filled with genuine remorse at my anger outburst. He closed his eyes which surprised me. He took a few deep breaths.
“You are not like Ishmael. He loved to look at my paintings. Even though I was only seven, he encouraged me. It felt good to be around him. I learned from him. I haven’t learnt anything from you, other than remembering not to be angry with my mother. Do you want to have a look or not? It’s up to you.”
I slid onto the edge of the bed and bent down pretending to tie my bootlaces in an attempt to regain composure. Without looking up, I whispered, “Of course I would like to see it. Are you pleased with it?”
Oñe spoke confidently back. “An artist can never comment on his own work. It speaks for itself.”
I heard his tiny feet press softly onto the wood tiled bedroom floor as if he were wearing thick socks. I thumped on the floor behind him. He ran across the pebbled path. I wondered whether he was attempting to escape from me or whether he wanted to show me how much older I was and how much less fit. I took a few deep breaths to prepare me for what I would see in the Studio.
Inside Oñe removed the cover from his canvas. The cover was a piece of plastic which I had retrieved earlier from the garden. I didn’t want to give him Egyptian cotton or silk with which I covered my paintings. That would have given him the idea that he was a painter like Vermeer, that he was s
omeone who deserved to be noticed, masterly in his treatment of light. In thinking of Vermeer I shuddered at my own hypocrisy. Vermeer was a genius. I was not. Vermeer had eleven children. I had not even had one. Vermeer had made no money in his lifetime. I am a millionaire. I remembered what Catherine Bolnes – Vermeer’s wife – had said about Vermeer, ‘He lapsed into such decay and decadence … as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day and a half he went from being healthy to being dead’.
Why did I remember that? Because I had felt since the arrival of Ishmael that I had indeed fallen into some kind of a frenzy, which hadn’t improved with Oñé’s arrival.
I watched him fold the plastic cover into four and place it neatly on the ground.
He had originally insisted on a large canvas, which he had now divided into three. I was shocked by what I saw.
I was a key character in each of the three parts of the triptych. The first part – ‘Descent into Hell’ – had a black background. I was portrayed as standing on my head or falling into darkness. My arms were out-stretched as if diving. At my feet were three small flames. I looked more closely and could see that the background was not entirely black as I had first thought but filled with perhaps a hundred tiny faces each one with slightly different shades of emotion including fear, disgust, hatred, anger and horror. Their eyes strained to follow my descent.
My face twisted as I looked at the painting and felt that in the Studio, with Oñé looking at me, I was showing with my eyes and lips, the terror Oñé had exquisitely captured on canvas. I turned my gaze to the centre of the triptych which Oñé had told me was called ‘Judgement’. It depicted a large fish with my face, swimming in a sea of knives, broken hearts, moving towards a tunnel which had a dark entrance and an exit with shooting stars like fireworks bursting into the sea and turning it into a vibrant turquoise.
The Painter Page 15