I’ve been sacked. It happened this morning. The chief executive summoned me to his office and said he was sorry but the minister had decided to relieve me of my post. He said the scandal had gone too far, and he couldn’t brush it under the carpet. I tried to defend myself, but realized it was hopeless. There was no way he was going to reverse his decision. He dismissed me, my tears welled up and I went to the bathroom for a good cry.
It’s unfair. Anyone could have made the same error. And I mean anyone. In fact, nobody noticed the day the exhibition opened. Or the day after. A week went by before the mistake was spotted. Because it was a mistake, and a bad one at that.
I wasn’t to blame for what happened. No way. And the proof is that the police who arrested me in the first instance let me go scot-free after a couple of days. It was obvious I’d done everything in good faith and that it had simply been one big gaffe. Maybe I was a little naive – “incompetent” was the word the Minister of Culture actually used – but naivety and incompetence are hardly crimes. I reckon everyone has a right to make mistakes. What really pisses me off is that I won’t find another job in the art world for a good long time as a result of this ridiculous business.
They say that at the end of the day it was my responsibility and that’s why they’re giving me the push, but it’s obvious they need a scapegoat. They’re a bunch of chauvinist pigs. They gave me the option of resigning rather than being sacked. I accepted, naturally.
There was only one day to go until the inauguration of the exhibition and I was nervous, as you can imagine. If you have ever curated an exhibition, you’ll know what I mean. I’d just started in my post as director of the MUAA and it was the first big exhibition I had organized by myself. I was nervous, but also very excited, and so happy, I can tell you. A mere twenty-six years old and here I was about to enter the city’s art scene through the front door, because it’s no mean feat to be Director of the Museum of Ultra-Avant-Garde Art. Absolutely not. Quite a few people would kill for a position like it, and though I knew every step I made would be scrutinized under a magnifying glass to see whether I triumphed or made a cock-up of things, I was convinced the exhibition would be a success and that I’d get my fair share of congratulations. And that was how it turned out. The launch was first-rate and the artworks and canapés mesmerized those invited in equal measure. They all said Eudald Mataplana was a great artist, and the catering firm I contracted belonged to a girlfriend I trusted completely. If you’re going to do something, then do it well, I say.
As I told the police, I didn’t choose the subject of the exhibition, let alone the pieces that were exhibited. The museum had been negotiating for two years with the artist’s agent and I’d only just taken up my post as director. The tragic disappearance of my predecessor, who according to the official version died of a sudden heart attack, and according to the off-the-record account from an overdose of blue pills, was a real stroke of luck. One of the openings for an art history graduate is a post directing a museum or gallery; the deceased was an uncle of mine, and that coincidence really smoothed the path for me. When Uncle died, I’d already been working with him for a year and a half, and Daddy immediately rang the Minister to remind him of a thing or two. Obviously these posts aren’t hereditary, but Daddy likes to see some return on the money he pays out every election time. Besides, competition for any decent post is so fierce nowadays it’s hardly a mortal sin for a father to give his daughter a helping hand. Blood is thicker than water, and Daddy has so many contacts it would be criminal not to take advantage of one occasionally.
My uncle was an old friend and great admirer of Eudald Mataplana, and that explains why he decided to curate the exhibition himself. To tell the truth, I wasn’t at all familiar with his work and I’d never met him personally, because contemporary art isn’t my strong point and all my meetings had been with his agent.
I had a panic attack the day before the exhibition opened when I realized there weren’t forty works, as stated in the agreement signed by the museum, but forty-one.
“What the hell’s that doing there?” I asked, put out, when I saw the piece in the main room.
“We don’t know where to put it,” the installers replied, deadpan.
I took another look at the sculpture and thought hard. I didn’t think I’d ever seen it before. After thoroughly reviewing my list, I concluded that the piece wasn’t part of the selection made for our exhibition. It was an extra. But there it was, and, what’s more, it was no small item. I reflected for a while, then decided to ring the artist and seek his advice.
Eudald Mataplana wasn’t answering his house phone or his mobile. “Typical bloody artist, out on the tiles till late and then sleeping it off in the morning!” I raged enviously. I left a message on his answering machine, not thinking for one moment that he’d ever hear it, and pondered what to do next. I knew it was a waste of time to try to speak to his agent, because he’d be flying over an ocean at that point. And Uncle was dead, so I didn’t know who I could turn to. I started to feel nervous. It wasn’t yet midday and I had to reach a decision on whether to send the item back to the artist’s studio (I’d have to phone the moving firm, talk to the insurance company, change the budget …) or discreetly shift it down into the basement. The item wasn’t in the catalogue, and it put me on the spot.
“What do I do now?” I asked my secretary in a fit of despair. “I’ve got an appointment at the hairdresser’s and then at the beautician’s. We launch the show tomorrow and I’ve still got to fetch the dress that they’re adjusting —”
“If they’ve sent it, it means they want it in the exhibition,” she said in her very matter-of-fact way. “Find a place for it and don’t worry so much. After all, it’s only one more sculpture.”
And that’s just what I did. I told the installers to erect a dais in the centre of the main room, the only free space left for a work of that size, and told them to put it right there. The title for the work wasn’t a problem, as the names were all virtually the same: Still Life No. 1, Still Life No. 2, Still Life No. 3 … I printed out a label on my computer with the title Still Life No. 41 and placed it in front of the piece that really took your breath away.
Eudald Mataplana cultivated an oneiric-deconstructionist hyperrealism, with baroque touches that he injected with a high emotional charge. Or, to put it in plain English, he spent his time creating realistic sculptures on shocking themes to jolt his public out of their aesthetic comfort zones and provoke repulsion. I don’t know why he did it, or why his work was so successful. The fact is, all his sculptures had as their leitmotifs degeneration, sickness and death in their most macabre forms: cats and dogs that had been run over, rotten fruit and withered flowers, battered children, women undergoing chemotherapy, decrepit elderly people, worm-infested skeletons … And to rub it in, the guy added odours to his sculptures, so his withered flowers stank of withered flowers, his sick women of hospitals and his old people of urine and excrement. They were subtle smells (you had to get up close to catch a whiff), but I found them all highly unpleasant, preferring to contemplate his works from afar.
My special interest, to be frank, is the Renaissance, and to be precise, the painting and sculpture of the Quattrocento: Donatello, Botticelli, Piero della Francesca … artists who have gone out of fashion. I’ve no real enthusiasm for modern art. I can’t really see the point. Nonetheless, it was inevitable the contacts my uncle had with avant-garde artists would channel my career far away from my beloved Italians. Getting a post at the MUAA was a way to get noticed on the art scene and boost my CV, and one can’t reject an opportunity like that when it comes served on a silver platter. Clearly I’m not a total illiterate in terms of contemporary art, and I don’t want to justify my actions by pleading ignorance, but the avant-garde sensibility is so heterogeneous there’s no way to categorize it or decide what criteria to use in its appreciation. If Uncle said Eudald Mataplana was good, I believed him. If his work wowed the viewing public, then even better.
I looked spectacular on the day of the launch. I’d lost four kilos and wore a cerise silk bodycon dress that had cost a bomb and sparked a lot of comment. The chief executive came, as did the Minister of Culture, the President of the Parliament and the mayor. Eudald Mataplana didn’t, but his absence was no surprise because Eudald was a bit of an idiot and it was just like him to do that kind of thing. Some artists move heaven and earth to secure an interview or appear on TV, while others play hard to get and attract interviews that way, because they never normally grant them and claim they have a phobia when it comes to TV studios. Eudald Mataplana was one such artist: he organized a party and went AWOL; an exhibition of his work took place and he didn’t bother to put in an appearance. In the end, everyone described him as a prickly character with a fondness for enfant terrible antics, and journalists frequently came to blows trying to get a statement, interview or photo out of him. The gossips said it was all part of a strategy dreamed up by his agent, but how could you tell? In this country, envy is the mother of all rumours.
Still Life No. 41 was the piece that received by far the most praise. Everyone agreed that the sculpture of a male corpse in the foetal position was easily the most accomplished. The critics praised it to the skies – what a masterpiece! what sensibility! – and it reduced the viewing public to silence. It was certainly the subtlest of all the exhibits, because the figure was clothed from head to foot and its eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. Nevertheless, the consensus was that the expression of grief glimpsed behind those glasses (by the way, they were fabulously expensive Armanis) was incredibly moving. Eudald Mataplana thus succeeded in rekindling his status as a cult figure for the country’s most sophisticated elites.
As the days went by, big crowds came to see the exhibition. At times there were even long queues. We also began to notice that, with each day, the smell got stronger and stronger in the room where Still Life No. 41 was on display, and that the sculpture’s face and hands were changing shape and colour. Initially they were a marble white like the corpse depicted by Rembrandt in his Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, but then they gradually turned a repugnant green and few people dared to look at them for long. After day three, the sculpture began to swell and stuck out its tongue. Everybody thought that was hilarious.
We thought, reasonably enough, that Eudald Mataplana had done it on purpose and that the strong smell and changes to the figure were the result of his absolute mastery of the raw materials; nobody, absolutely nobody, had anything but outright praise for the artist’s audacity and technical prowess.
“Madame Director,” said Sadurní, tapping on the door and walking into my office, “there is a gentleman here who would like to speak to you.”
Sadurní is one of the museum security guards who were on duty that day.
“A gentleman?”
“A visitor. He says it’s important and that if you won’t see him he’ll go straight to the police.”
“If I must,” I said with a deep sigh. “Tell him to come in. But you stay near the door, right, Sadurní?”
Most of the loonies who slip into museums are harmless enough, but one can’t be too careful. When the man walked into my office, I asked him to leave the door ajar on the pretext that my air conditioning wasn’t working. He introduced himself and said he was a doctor.
“What the hell do you think you are doing displaying that decomposing corpse in the main room?” he blasted.
I smiled at him. A pity I was on the verge of marriage, because the guy was gorgeous and I could have done with a little fling to break my boring routine. Anyway, the anecdote about the doctor who’d been fooled by the incomparable art of Eudald Mataplana would be good publicity for the exhibition, and I began mentally drawing up a press release describing our encounter.
“Don’t worry,” I replied, still smiling. “It’s only a sculpture. And it’s extremely well made.”
“It is not a sculpture,” the doctor replied solemnly. “It is a dead man.”
“You are quite wrong, it is a sculpture,” I assured him. “No need to worry.”
“Sculptures do not suppurate liquids. Nor do they create a stink. And nor do they attract insects.”
“Oh, that’s all the invention of an artist who is simply a genius.”
“Now, miss, I’m the doctor here, and —”
“Would you mind telling me what your field is?” I asked, showing that I was beginning to lose my temper. I was actually delighted by his wrong-headedness and already relishing the pleasure I would derive from telling the story to my friends over cocktails that night.
“I am a psychiatrist. But I can assure you I recognize a dead man when I see one.”
I smiled yet again. I’d always thought psychiatrists were fascinating. And I had never yet dated one.
“I quite understand if the sculpture has upset you. If you like, we could go for a coffee and talk about it … I’m Fefa, by the way,” I added, holding my hand out to shake his.
“Please follow me,” he insisted in an authoritarian tone. “You must see this for yourself.”
At that moment in stepped Sadurní, who’d inevitably been listening to our exchange.
“I’m sorry, Madame Director. Forgive me for meddling in something that’s none of my business, but I do think you should go and have a look. The room really stinks.”
I sighed. All right, I’d see this joke through to the bitter end, then I’d have more material for my press release and more to gossip about with my friends. I got up from my extremely uncomfortable designer chair and accompanied them.
The museum had had no visitors that day. As soon as I entered the main room, I understood why.
“My God, it really does stink to high heaven…! And where have all these flies come from?”
“Corpses attract insects. And you’re lucky you’ve got air conditioning!” the doctor replied, giving me a good, hard look up and down.
“I don’t believe it. It can’t be true,” I said, shuddering.
“Take a close look. What do you see?”
“It’s green … and black in some places. And the skin is covered in blebs …”
“I’m no expert,” he said, straightening his glasses and staring surreptitiously down my cleavage, “but I would estimate that this man has been dead at least a week. Take a look – his epidermis has separated from his dermis and the gases have caused his stomach to expand. That’s why he’s so inflated.”
“I think he’s vomited too …” I mumbled.
“Miss, that’s the fluid created by his decomposing internal organs that are then expelled through the nose and mouth.”
“My God!” I exclaimed, jumping backwards. “There are maggots everywhere …!”
I don’t remember any more, because I fainted at that point.
The police took less than a minute to identify the corpse, which carried an ID card: it was Eudald Mataplana. As his head was completely shaven and he was wearing sunglasses, no one had recognized him. No one had missed him either, which didn’t mean very much because he was a man with few friends – you know, who you’d call real friends.
After finding no traces of blood, the police first concluded he must have had a massive heart attack. Their second theory was that it was a case of self-immolation: he’d been out of his mind and decided to poison himself so that he could become one of his own exhibits. Their thinking had some logic to it, but both theories were wrong. When the autopsy was carried out, the pathologist discovered a tiny hole in his shirt and a small wound in his thorax.
“The police believe it was murder,” I announced at the press conference I called, to which I wore a white dress and a very fetching pink foulard. “The assassin stuck a thin, cylindrical pin through the ribs and across the pericardium, perforating the heart. As the wound was so tiny, his own blood plugged it as it dried, and that’s why there was no blood,” I explained, putting on a brave face as I read word for word the notes I’d cribbed from my secretary, who’d had a fling with the pathologist and snaffled a copy of the autopsy report for me. I added, absolutely confident that everyone would understand my mistake: “I think it was quite reasonable for me not to realize it wasn’t a sculpture, don’t you agree?”
Well, no, they didn’t, and the next day the newspapers crucified me. It was evident I’d been under pressure with the launch, got my knickers in a twist and made a big error of judgement. I should have sent the item down to the basement. But it was too late now to put that right.
They’re now saying it was one of his students. The girl had got tired of Eudald Mataplana taking every opportunity to feel her up, and, in a rage, had stuck into him one of the steel pins she was attaching to Still Life No. 17, a life-sized sculpture of a sick woman weaving while sitting in a wheelchair. They found traces of blood on the pin, and the installers immediately identified the girl who’d helped them mount the work. She’s currently in the slammer.
I really couldn’t care less about the student, Eudald Mataplana, his sculptures or the whole fucking show. All I know is that I’m out of work and that Daddy’s calls haven’t helped this time because of all the fallout from the scandal hitting the headlines. Mummy says I should forget it, as my hands are already full with the preparations for my wedding and Cancún honeymoon, but then she belongs to another generation and doesn’t understand it’s hardly the done thing any more not to work outside the home. I’m not awfully enthusiastic about having to clock in every morning, but we modern women, even if we belong to the upper classes, have to work, or at least go through the motions of working. Daddy says I shouldn’t worry, that as soon as things calm down he’ll pick up his telephone again. I’m going to think of it as paid holidays, because I gather I have a right to unemployment benefit, even though I technically resigned.
As Daddy says to console me, I’m young and have a whole lifetime in front of me. When I get back from Cancún, we’ll see how things are. For the moment, I have a coffee date with that psychiatrist, whose name is Lluís and who is awfully nice. And, you know, if I’m bored when I get back from honeymoon and can’t find my kind of work, I can always go into politics. Become an MP or something of the sort. Who knows, I am renowned for my drive and might make Secretary of State. Or Minister of Culture … Yes, it would be great to be a minister of something. Though I’m not sure … If I were a minister, I’d have to live in Madrid. And it’s very cold in Madrid in winter, and very hot in summer … And they don’t have a beach … Or a Port Olímpic. Or ski slopes nearby. And Mummy would be terribly distraught if I upped and went to live that far away …!