A decade had gone by, and now the Makeup Artist was on the point of achieving his greatest dream. It was Thursday, January 13th, and everything was cold and dull. What a path he had traveled in such a short time! He’d gone further, been stronger than all his predecessors. For him there was no question of hunting butterflies or collecting. No; it was to the ultimate dream, the supreme art, and it alone, that he had dedicated his life.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, God had ordained, and no one had listened to him. So what was he afraid of, this holy man with his white beard, his seven-pointed halo, and his benedictory hands? This numb old man on his cotton clouds? What could his son have to fear, sitting on rainbows, illuminated by his dazzling mandorla, his cross-bearing glory? Now he, the mortal, the “so ugly”; he knew. By reproducing His image he would finally have a face, and he would be the first one to unmask Him, to be able to ask him all the questions his human yearning desired.
At around two A.M., alongside his work on the Christ Pantocrator, he started smoothing down the photo of the little Modiano girl, with her braids and her sublime forehead, onto a panel of wood.
The Makeup Artist utilized his murders in two major ways. One used the computer, the most modern of technologies; the other, the ancient art of the icon as Ralph Bennet had taught it to him. Though all the victims’ portraits were digitized, only the most interesting photos earned the right to the second activity.
An icon wasn’t painted, but written. It wasn’t the fruit of imagination but rather a work of copying, respecting models and schemas. In the beginning it was this soothing, almost scholarly aspect of it that he had loved.
Everything began with the choice of wood. He had a special affection for ash and purple beech, but since those varieties were too hard to work with he often ended up using maple, larch, or even linden or poplar, which were even softer. This time, his choice had fallen on a plank of willow.
He had prepared the mount yesterday, spending the whole day smoothing it with sandpaper and a polishing cube, always with the grain of the fibers. He had patiently polished away all the rough places, using liquid wood before impregnating the mount with a dispersion adhesive mixed with vodka and seminal fluid, according to Bennet’s recipe. It was dark by the time he had laid down three intertwining coats of thin primer and gesso powder. He had a little secret to speed up the drying process, so he hardly had to wait at all between coats. If he started at five in the morning he could be done preparing the mount before midnight the next day. He was very proud of this quickness; only a couple of years ago it would have taken him two weeks to finish the job. The last step in the preparation process was damp-polishing with a half-water, half-alcohol mixture and a polishing cube wrapped in abrasive paper. After that, his technique broke with tradition a bit. He didn’t draw his model, but applied it directly to the mount, a photograph he had taken and developed on special matte paper that was almost as thin as cigarette paper.
This time, without really realizing it, he had worked all night. The sun was rising and yet he didn’t feel the slightest bit tired. He stopped for just half an hour to drink some Chinese tea and wolf down a baguette. Then, glancing absently out the window at the activity in the street, he took his place again, smiling widely, in front of the wooden plank he used as both workbench and drawing board.
At the very beginning of his iconostasis project, he had only depicted Blachernitissa or Kazanskaya, the mother of God. But lately he’d changed his theme. Now Christ Pantocrator was his preferred subject.
To recreate the features, he used pigments and egg tempera paint to add the beard required by the iconic representation directly to the photos. He especially favored burnt-Sienna earth and black from charred animal bones; brightness effects were created with light ochre. He dressed the bodies in traditional costumes: red madder dalmatics and crimson himations; chromium oxide green mantles. To finish, he redrew the eyebrows and refined the nose, which was never elongated or fine enough in mortals.
That same day, he made up a woman’s face to create an almost perfect representation of the son of God. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Like a broken record of a canticle, a mantra, this phrase echoed endlessly in his head while he painted. Today, as always, it resonated within him, and he did absolutely nothing to make it stop.
The square was filled with the sound of children, like the flapping of wings. It was 4:20 in the afternoon, a cursed time of day for Mallock.
At the same moment as the Makeup Artist left his lair to prepare his gilding compound of marl, rabbit-skin glue, and pore sealer, to be spread on before the gold leaf was applied, Mallock stood up from his desk, ready to pick Thomas up from school. He had never managed to break himself of this ingrained habit, which never failed to sharpen his grief. Of course, he had never really tried very hard to break it, either. The pain was the only tangible connection he still had to his son.
He sat back down heavily, while out there, standing in a little apartment with blue balconies, a psychopath snipped pieces of gold leaf with a pair of silver scissors.
After applying the primer, he spread on the yellow adhesive and then the red gilding base made of Armenian bole, an ochreous clay with a high iron oxide content, in three successive layers. Then he went down to relieve his mother in the store. He didn’t mind playing shopkeeper too much.
When she came back from running errands he went quickly upstairs again, the traditional “Thank you, sweetheart” floating after him.
It was six o’clock and the mount was perfect. Not too dry—because then the leaf wouldn’t stick—and not too damp, otherwise the gold would sink. He moved on to the final procedure, which consisted of running a boar’s-hair paintbrush, bizarrely called a “dog,” over the surface.
Once these time-consuming preparations were finally finished it was time for the magic moment, the one he loved above anything else. With his left hand, he picked up the gilding cushion on which he had placed the cut-off sheets of gold leaf. Lighter than butterfly wings, they seemed like they had a life of their own, like they could fly. He laid the first one on the cushion, turned it over, and blew on it to flatten it. Then he cut it with his gilding knife. Before applying it, he rubbed his palette over his cheek to charge it with static electricity and placed it carefully on the still-damp part of the object. Using a special gilding brush called an appuyeux,15 he delicately tamped the gold leaf down to get rid of any residual moisture, and then started the process over again with another leaf.
Next it was time for the hook-shaped burnishing agates. He applied himself to the task, startled as always by the velvety, sensual touch of the agate against the still-wrinkled gold leaves.
The gold began to gleam.
Before his eyes, thanks to his dedicated perseverance, the halo appeared at last, glowing in the already shadow-filled room. It was at these moments that he would have liked to call the world in to see. Show it that, if this mandorla around the lord shone miraculously in the darkness of this winter evening, it was because of him. Maybe then people would understand that he was right to do what he did. Maybe then he would even be loved and admired like he deserved to be.
But this weakness never lasted more than a fraction of a second. He preferred to remain misunderstood. It was what he enjoyed. Feeling different from everyone else, monstrously unique, with the solitude and the horror draped around him like a cloak.