by Sarah Hall
In a few minutes you will know. You will know the consequences of your actions, the result of your programme to fulfil yourself, the primitive attempt to establish your presence. Here you are, waiting for a sign, waiting to know something more about yourself. What you already know is this: you reside at a privileged set of coordinates. You have a partner who loves you, employment, a house. You have parents, talents, a salary, a vote, and firing synapses. Hitherto your body has not let you down–breasts, cervix, eyes, ovaries, cerebral functions, immune system, lungs, and heart: nothing has yet malfunctioned, no dire failure has occurred, beyond the gentle degradation of ageing. If you choose to, you will live. And in your hands might be another life.
When you came home from the gallery an hour ago you thought about telling Nathan everything. You thought about telling him that you are no longer you, the woman he knew and trusted, that you are a different person now, capable of the worst possible damage. You thought about confessing, telling him about Tom and your dark obsession, the hotel rooms, the test kit in your bag, everything.
You took out your key, opened the flat door. Nathan was home, of course. Hiya, love. He came out of the kitchen holding a glass of wine. Not staying late tonight then? He passed you the glass stem, kissed your cheek. You have this. I’ll make dinner. You shrugged off your coat, sat on the couch. You looked around the place. Everything was familiar, the Victorian fire with its trivets and tiles, the flax-green walls, bookcases, furniture, your photographs, hanging in meaningful series, all of which you had chosen, all of which you could leave.
The door of the second bedroom was open. Sitting on the corner of the table was your Leica, and a folder of contact sheets for an overdue commission. Steam was coming from the kitchen, the smell of garlic. You put your bag on the couch beside you, took a sip of wine, reached for the remote and turned on the television. On one channel was a film set in the Australian outback. An aboriginal woman had had her child stolen; she was beating her head with a rock. On another was a programme about trepanning; people were drilling into their foreheads, blazing in towards the tender frontal lobes. They thought it would bring them wisdom. The hundred sexiest music videos. A hospital drama, someone’s hand about to be amputated. You can’t do it, you can’t do it to me, the patient was screaming.
You kept pressing the arrow key on the remote, passing up through the channels until you reached those that were blank. In the corner of the screen was the word scrambled. You wondered if this was what Nicki saw behind her eyelids-a dark visor, a projection of nothing. You wondered how her life feels. Like an endless intermission perhaps, a continuation of those forty-five airless minutes on the moor, lying in the winter snow. The nurse once told you her muscles are so wasted that if she woke she would not be able to use them. Imagine a moth carrying a tractor on its back, she had said to you. You turned off the television and thought of Nicki’s hair, kept glossy by solutions of proteins and minerals dripped down into her, and by the brushing and brushing of her family.
You thought about going for a run. You imagined the cool twilight slipping past you on the heath, the city rotating under your soles. You drank your wine quickly, stood up, and went into the spare room. The phone was flashing red. The console told you there were three new messages. You picked up the rangefinder, dusted it off. Inside the heavy case you knew Danny would be sitting outside the railway station surrounded by birds. His arms would be stretched along the back of the bench. He would be smiling. You shut your eyes and thought about his first bike, the one he’d had when he was a kid, the one with the long handlebars that had rattled over potholes on the farm roads and flung him off into the thistles when he hit a ditch on the moor. You thought about him laughing, even as he lay there getting stung. Danny.
Nathan called from the kitchen. You’ve got a few minutes, I’m just about to put the pasta on. You took the film cartridge out of the bottom of the camera, worked the casing open and drew the thin plastic strip out into the light. You laid it on the studio table, where it re-curled, set the Leica down next to it and went back into the lounge. You took the paper pharmacy packet out of your bag and locked yourself in the bathroom.
You hold the plastic device in your hands. It weighs almost nothing. The floor tiles are small and cold. In the bathroom mirror your reflection is returning your gaze. London is outside the window. The streetlights are coming on, making the sky orange, and the traffic is continual, planes and helicopters passing overhead. Either side of this building, millions of people live, and millions die. The world can accommodate your situation, as it accommodates all situations. And your body will keep explaining to you how it all works, this original experiment, this lifelong gift. Your body will keep describing how, for the time being at least, there is no escape from this particular vessel. These are your atoms. This is your consciousness. These are your experiences–your successes and mistakes. This is your first and final chance, your one and only biography. This is the existential container, the bowl of your life’s soup, wherein something can be made sense of, wherein there is a cure, wherein you are.
You look down. In the window of the test there is a faint blue line. You watch it grow stronger and darker. Outside the bathroom door, Nathan calls softly. Susan? Susan?
Yes, you say. I’m here.
How to Paint a Dead Man
We shall next speak about the way to paint a dead man, that is, the face, the breast, and wherever in any part the nude may show. It is the same on panel as on wall: except that on a wall it is not necessary to lay in all over with terre-verte; it is enough if it is laid in the transition between the shadow and the flesh colours. But on a panel lay it in as usual, as you were taught for a coloured or live face; and shade it with the same verdaccio, as usual. And do not apply any pink at all, because a dead person has no colour; but take a little light ochre, and step up three values of flesh colour with it, just with white lead, and tempered as usual; laying each of these flesh colours in its place, blending them nicely into each other, both on the face and on the body. And likewise, when you have got them almost covered, make another still lighter flesh colour from this light one, until you get the major accents of the reliefs up to straight white lead. And mark out all the outlines with dark sinoper and a little black, tempered; and this will be called ‘sanguine’. And manage the hair in the same way, but not so that it looks alive, but dead, with several grades of verdaccio. And just as I showed you various types and styles for beards on the wall, so on panel you do them in the same way; and so do every bone of a Christian, or of rational creatures; do them with these flesh colours aforesaid.
The Craftsman’s Handbook by Cennino d’Andrea Cennini
Translated by Daniel V. Thompson, Jr.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following people for invaluable help with research: Simon Webb, Diego Mencaroni, Paul Farley, Dana Prescott, Philip Robinson, Teana Newman, Lani Irwin, Alan Feltus, Tobias Feltus, Joseph Feltus, Dr Richard Thwaites, Dr Sarah Laing, Dr Charles Fernyhough, Neil Rollinson, Anthony Hall and Jonathan Hall.
Thanks to the following people for editorial advice, critical reading, and general feedback: Jacob Polley, Lee Brackstone, Clare Conville, Jennifer Pooley, Lisa Baker, Helen Francis, Jane Kotapish, Damon Galgut, Rebecca Morales, Christobel Kent, and Elizabeth Hall.
I am indebted to all those at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the staff, friends, and fellows, for the extraordinary gift of a residency in Umbria in 2007. Grazie!
Lastly, thanks to Peter, on the hill.
About the Author
Sarah Hall is the author of Haweswater, The Electric Michelangelo, and Daughters of the North.
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Praise for
HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN
“For much of her new novel, Sarah Hall appears to be practicing a kind of literary verdaccio; going beneath the skin, delicately exploring the more sable recesses of her character
s’ minds…. One is left with the impression of having studied an image, brimful with radiant objects, above a verdaccio undercoat.”
—Tom Bailey, The Times Literary Supplement
“Hall’s writing manages to combine acute sensitivity and daring…. Visceral and engaging…the emotional lives of her characters are skillfully realized in this bright weave of disparate voices—for whom art is at once a way of seeing and a way of life.”
—The Times (London)
“[Hall’s] latest novel, even more than ever, reads as though it was an absolute thrill to write…. A maddeningly enticing read…. An amazing feat of literary engineering.”
—The Independent on Sunday
“A stylish novel, as replete with ideas as it is technically ambitious…. There is no denying the confidence of her style and her emotional intelligence.”
—The Guardian
“Invigorating…. This deeply sensual novel is what you rarely find—an intelligent page-turner which, perversely, you also want to read slowly to savor Hall’s luscious way of looking at the world.”
—The Sunday Telegraph
“Sarah Hall’s writing is powerful as well as delicate, and How to Paint a Dead Man affords the deepest pleasures fiction has to offer. She weaves together the four strands of the story with supreme conviction, beauty, and emotional intelligence. To read it is to become a staunch admirer.”
—Nadeem Aslam
“Sex, death, art: the materials with which Sarah Hall works are potent indeed. And, given a lyrical style so beautifully worked and savorsome you can taste it, this novel could have overwhelmed. Hall’s book, however, slips cleverly between four separate narratives, allowing space for echoes to sound and tension to build…. Each narrative is a suggestive, almost tactile construct, with Hall’s talent evident on every page.”
—The Daily Mail
“A fiction preoccupied both with the act of looking and with the way that perception creates, as well as records, reality…. Sarah Hall writes a fine, vivid prose of exceptional poetic intensity and…luminous beauty.”
—The Daily Telegraph
“Elegantly entwining four separate but interconnected lives—from a dying painter to a young woman having a dangerous affair—it’s a moving read.”
—Elle (UK)
“Elegant and poetic…captivating.”
—Eithne Farry, Marie Claire (four stars)
“Sarah Hall is a huge talent…. A beautiful, powerful book of love, lust, death, passion, art, desperation, and loss. She writes her characters brilliantly…. I wish I had more space to enthuse.”
—The Bookseller (Bookseller’s Choice)
“A brilliantly written study of small and large artistic triumphs.”
—Harriet Compston, Tatler
“ [Hall] has the linguistic energy and daring to conjure a novel out of the intensity of experience…. She describes [it] with the precise acuity of a startled imagination…. How to Paint a Dead Man is her finest novel yet.”
—Cumberland News
ALSO BY SARAH HALL
Daughters of the North
The Electric Michelangelo
Haweswater
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover illustration by Dan-Ah Kim
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN. Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Hall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-187355-3
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