All Days Are Night by Peter Stamm Read Free Book Online Page B

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 histo 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.