The Winner Stands Alone Page 19

  He keeps walking, sure of one thing: someone must have witnessed the murder. But how would that someone describe him? A man with grayish hair, wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a black jacket. That possible witness would help the police make an Identi-Kit picture, a process that would not only take time, but lead them to the conclusion that there are tens or maybe thousands of men who look just like him.

  Ever since he tried to give himself up to that policeman and was sent back to his hotel, he has felt sure that no one would be able to interrupt his mission. The doubts he feels now are of a different nature: is Ewa worth the sacrifices he's offering up to the universe? When he arrived in Cannes, he had felt sure she was; now, though, something else is filling his soul: the spirit of the little street vendor with her dark eyebrows and innocent smile.

  "We are all part of the divine spark," she seems to be saying. "We all have a purpose in creation and that purpose is called Love. That love, however, shouldn't be concentrated in just one person, it should be scattered throughout the world, waiting to be discovered. Wake up to that love. What is gone cannot return. What is about to arrive needs to be recognized."

  He struggles against the idea that perhaps we only discover that a plan is wrong when we take it to its ultimate consequences, or when all-merciful God leads us in another direction.

  He looks at his watch: he still has another twelve hours in Cannes, time enough before he gets on the plane with the woman he loves and goes back to...

  ...goes back to what? To his work in Moscow after everything he has experienced, suffered, thought, planned? Or to find rebirth through his victims and choose absolute freedom and discover the person he didn't know he was, and from then on do all the things he had dreamed of doing when he was still with Ewa?

  4:34 P.M.

  Jasmine is sitting staring out at the sea while she smokes a cigarette and thinks of nothing. At such moments, she feels a deep connection with the infinite, as if it were not she who was there, but something more powerful, something capable of extraordinary things.

  SHE REMEMBERS AN OLD STORY she once read.

  Nasrudin appeared at court wearing a magnificent turban and asking for money for charity.

  "You come here asking for money and yet you're wearing an extremely expensive turban on your head. How much did that extraordinary thing cost?" asked the sultan.

  "It was a gift from someone very rich. And it's worth, I believe, five hundred gold coins," replied the wise Sufi.

  The sultan's minister muttered: "That's impossible. No turban could possibly be worth that much."

  Nasrudin insisted:

  "I didn't come here only to beg, I also came to do business. I know that only a true sovereign would be capable of buying this turban for six hundred gold coins so that I could give the surplus to the poor."

  The sultan was flattered and paid what Nasrudin asked. On the way out, Nasrudin said to the minister:

  "You may know the value of a turban, but I know how far a man's vanity will take him."

  And that's what the world around her is like. She has nothing against her profession, she doesn't judge people by their desires, but she knows what's really important in life and wants to keep her feet on the ground, even though there are temptations at every turn.

  Someone opens the door and says there's just half an hour before the show begins. The worst part of the day, the long period of tedium that precedes any fashion show, is coming to an end. The other girls put down their iPods and their phones; the makeup artists do any necessary retouching; the hairdressers comb back into place any stray locks.

  Jasmine sits in front of the dressing room mirror and lets them get on with their work.

  "Don't be nervous just because it's Cannes," says the makeup artist.

  "I'm not nervous."

  Why should she be? On the contrary, whenever she steps onto a catwalk, she feels a kind of ecstasy, a surge of adrenaline. The makeup artist seems in a mood to talk, and tells her about the many celebrity wrinkles she has smoothed, suggests a new face cream, says she's tired of her job, asks if Jasmine has a spare ticket to a party that night. Jasmine listens to all this with infinite patience. In her mind she's back in the streets of Antwerp on the day she decided to get in touch with the two photographers who had approached her earlier. She had met with a slight initial difficulty, but it had all worked out in the end.

  As it would today and as it had then, when--along with her mother, who, eager for her daughter to recover from her depression as quickly as possible, had agreed to go with her--she rang the bell of the first photographer, the one who had stopped her in the street. The door opened to reveal a small room with a transparent table covered in photographic negatives, another table, on which sat a computer, and a kind of drawing board piled with papers. With the photographer was a woman of about forty, who looked at her long and hard, before smiling and introducing herself as the events coordinator. Then the four of them sat down.

  "I'm sure your daughter has a great future as a model," said the woman.

  "Oh, I'm just here to keep her company," said Jasmine's mother. "If you have anything to say, speak directly to her."

  The woman, slightly taken aback, paused for a few seconds, then picked up a card and started noting down details and measurements, saying:

  "Of course, Cristina isn't a good name for a model. It's too ordinary. The first thing we need to do is to change that."

  "There's another reason why Cristina isn't a good name," Jasmine was thinking. Because it belonged to a girl who had ceased to exist when she witnessed a murder and denied what her eyes now refused to forget. When she decided to change everything, she began with the name she'd been called ever since she was a child. She needed to change everything, absolutely everything. She had her answer ready.

  "My professional name is Jasmine Tiger--a combination of sweetness and danger."

  The woman seemed to like the name.

  "A career in modeling isn't an easy one, and you're lucky to have been picked out to take the first step. Obviously, there are a lot of things to sort out, but we're here to help you get to where you want to be. We take photos of you and send them to the appropriate agencies. You'll also need a composite."

  She waited for Cristina to ask: "What's a composite?" But no question came. Again the woman was temporarily thrown.

  "A composite, as I'm sure you know, is a sheet of paper with, on the one side, your best photo and your measurements, and, on the other, more photos in different poses, for example, in a bikini, dressed as a student, perhaps one of just your face, another that shows you wearing more makeup, so that they won't necessarily exclude you if they want someone older. Your bust..."

  Another pause.

  "...your bust is perhaps a little large for a model."

  She turned to the photographer.

  "We need to disguise that. Make a note."

  The photographer duly made a note. Cristina--who was rapidly becoming Jasmine Tiger--was thinking: "But when they meet me, they'll see I've got a bigger bust than they were expecting!"

  The woman picked up a handsome leather briefcase and took out a list.

  "We'll need to call a makeup artist and a hairdresser. You haven't any experience on a catwalk, have you?"

  "None."

  "Well, you don't stride down a catwalk as if you were walking down the street. If you did, you'd stumble because you'd be moving too fast or else trip over your high heels. You have to place one foot in front of the other, like a cat. You mustn't smile too much either. Even more important is posture."

  She ticked off three things on the list.

  "And you'll have to hire some clothes."

  Another tick.

  "And I think that's all for now."

  She again put her hand inside the elegant briefcase and took out a calculator. She went down the list, tapped in a few numbers, then added them up. No one else in the room dared utter a word.

  "That will be around two thousand euros, I
think. We won't include the photos because Yasser"--she turned to the photographer--"is very expensive, but he's prepared to do the work for free, as long as you give him permission to use the material. We can have the makeup artist and the hairdresser here tomorrow morning and I'll get in touch with the people who run the course to see if there's a vacancy. I'm sure there will be, just as I'm sure that by investing in yourself, you're creating new possibilities for your future and will soon recover any initial expenses."

  "Are you saying I have to pay?"

  Again the "events coordinator" seemed taken aback. Usually, the girls who came to see her were so mad keen to realize the dream of a whole generation--being considered one of the sexiest women in the world--that they never asked indelicate questions like that.

  "Listen, Cristina..."

  "Jasmine. The moment I walked through that door, I became Jasmine."

  The photographer's mobile phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and moved away to the far end of the room, which had, until then, been in darkness. When he drew one of the curtains, Jasmine saw a wall draped with a black cloth, tripods mounted with flashes, boxes with blinking lights, and several spotlights suspended from the ceiling.

  "Listen, Jasmine, there are thousands and millions of people who would like to be in your position. You were chosen by one of Antwerp's finest photographers, you'll have the help of the best professionals, and I will personally manage your career. On the other hand, as with everything else in life, you have to believe that you're going to succeed and, for that to happen, you need to invest money. I know you're beautiful enough to enjoy great success as a model, but that isn't enough in this highly competitive world. You have to be the best, and that costs money, at least to begin with."

  "But if you think I have all those qualities, why don't you invest your money in me?"

  "I will later on. At the moment, we need to know just how committed you are. I want to be sure that you really do want to be a professional model or if you're just another young woman excited by the possibility of traveling, seeing the world, and finding a rich husband."

  The woman's tone of voice had grown severe. The photographer returned from the studio end of the room.

  "It's the makeup artist. She wants to know what time she should arrive tomorrow."

  "If the money's essential, I can probably..." Jasmine's mother began to say, but Jasmine had got up and was walking over to the door, without shaking hands with either the woman or the photographer.

  "Thank you very much, but I don't have that kind of money, and even if I did, I would spend it on something else."

  "But it's your future!"

  "Precisely. It's my future, not yours."

  JASMINE BURST INTO TEARS AFTERWARD. First, she had gone to that expensive boutique where they'd not only been rude to her, but implied that she was lying when she said she'd met the owner. Then, just when she thought she was about to start a new life and had discovered the perfect new name for herself, she learned that it would cost her two thousand euros just to take the first step!

  Mother and daughter made their way home in silence. Jasmine's mobile rang several times, but she just glanced at the number and put the phone back in her pocket.

  "Why don't you answer it? We've got another appointment this afternoon, haven't we?"

  "Because we don't have two thousand euros."

  Her mother grasped Jasmine's shoulders. She knew what a fragile state her daughter was in and had to do something.

  "Yes, we do. I've worked every day since your father died, and we do have two thousand euros. We have more than that if you need it. Cleaners earn good money here in Europe because no one here wants to clean up other people's messes. Besides, we're talking about your future. We can't go home now."

  The phone rang again. Jasmine became Cristina again and did as her mother asked. The woman she had the appointment with that afternoon was ringing to apologize and explain that another commitment meant that she would be a couple of hours late for their meeting.

  "That's all right," said Cristina. "But before you waste any more time, I'd like to know how much it's going to cost me."

  "How much it's going to cost?"

  "Yes. I've just had a meeting with another photographer and he and his colleague were going to charge me two thousand euros for the photos, the makeup..."

  The woman at the other end laughed.

  "No, it won't cost you anything. That's an old trick. We can talk about it when we meet."

  HER STUDIO WAS SIMILAR TO the one they'd visited that morning, but the conversation they had was completely different. She asked Cristina why she looked so much sadder than when they'd first met; she clearly still remembered their initial encounter. Cristina told her what had happened with the other photographer, and the woman explained that it was common practice and one that the authorities were trying to clamp down on. At that very moment, in many places around the world, relatively pretty girls were being invited to reveal "the full potential of their beauty" and paying through the nose for the privilege. On the pretext of looking for new talent, agencies would rent rooms in luxury hotels, fill them with photographic equipment, promise the would-be models at least one fashion show a year or their money back, charge a fortune for any photos they took, call in failed professionals to act as makeup artists and hairdressers, suggest enrollment in particular modeling schools, and then, quite often, disappear without a trace. The studio Cristina had visited was, in fact, a genuine one, but she'd been quite right to reject their offer.

  "They're appealing to people's vanity, and there's nothing necessarily wrong in that, as long as the person involved knows what they're getting into. It's not something that only happens in the world of fashion either, it goes on in other areas too: writers publishing their own books, painters sponsoring their own exhibitions, film directors who go into debt in order to buy their place in the sun with one of the big studios, girls your age who leave home and go to the big city to work as waitresses, hoping to be discovered one day by a producer who'll propel them to stardom."

  No, they wouldn't take any photos now. She needed to get to know Cristina better; pressing the camera button was the last stage in a long process that began with uncovering your subject's soul. They arranged to meet the following day to talk more.

  "You need to choose a name."

  "It's Jasmine Tiger."

  Yes, her love of life had returned.

  THE PHOTOGRAPHER INVITED HER TO spend the weekend at her beach house near the Dutch border, and they spent eight hours a day experimenting with the camera.

  She expected Jasmine to reveal on her face a whole range of emotions suggested by words such as "fire," "seduction," "water." Jasmine had to try and show both sides of her soul, good and bad. She had to look down, straight ahead, to the side, to stare off into space. She had to imagine seagulls and demons. She had to imagine she'd been attacked by a group of older men and left in the restroom in a bar, having been raped by one or more of them; she had to be sinner and saint, perverse and innocent.

  Some photos were taken out in the open, and even though her body was freezing, she was able to react to each stimulus, to obey each suggestion. They also used a small studio set up in one of the rooms so that the photographer could play around with different types of music and lighting. Jasmine would do her own makeup, while the photographer did her hair.

  "Am I any good?" Jasmine would ask. "Why are you spending so much time on me?"

  But all the photographer would say was: "We'll talk about that later," and then spend the rest of the evening looking at the work they'd done that day, thinking and making notes, but never commenting on whether she was pleased or disappointed with the results.

  Not until Monday morning did Jasmine (for Cristina was definitively dead by then) get an opinion. They were waiting at Brussels station for the connection to Antwerp when the photographer suddenly said:

  "You're the best model I've ever worked with."

  "You're j
oking."

  The woman looked at her in surprise, then said:

  "No, really, you are. I've been working in this field for twenty years now; I've taken photographs of countless people; I've worked with professional models and film actors, all of them highly experienced, but none of them had your ability to express emotion. And do you know what that's called? Talent. In certain professions, talent is quite easy to measure: managing directors who can turn around a business on the verge of bankruptcy and make it a going concern again; sportsmen who break records; artists whose work lives on for at least two generations; so how can I be so sure about you as a model? Because I'm a professional. You've managed to show your angels and your demons through the lens of a camera, and that's not easy. I'm not talking about young people who like to dress up as vampires and go to Goth parties; I'm not talking about girls who put on an innocent air to try to arouse the pedophile in men. I'm talking about real demons and real angels."

  The station was full of people walking back and forth. Jasmine looked at the train timetable and suggested they go outside. She was dying for a cigarette, and smoking was forbidden within the station precinct. She was wondering whether she should say what was going on inside her just then.

  "It may be that I do have talent, but if I do, there's only one reason I was able to show that talent. You know, during all the time we've spent together, you've never said anything about your private life and never asked about mine. Do you want me to help you with your luggage, by the way? Photography's basically a profession for men, isn't it? There's always so much equipment to lug around."

  The woman laughed.

  "There's nothing much to say, really, except that I adore my work. I'm thirty-eight, divorced, no kids, but with enough good contacts to be able to earn a comfortable living, but not to live in any great luxury. There's something else I must add to what I said: if everything goes to plan you must never ever behave like someone who depends on her profession to survive, even if it's true. If you don't follow my advice, you'll be easily manipulated by the system. Obviously, I'll use your photos and earn money with them, but from now on, I'd suggest you get yourself a professional agent."