The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter Page B

took great effort for Lorena to keep them closed and look relaxed. She could force them shut, but then it would be obvious she was awake. She didn’t want that.
    She wished he was one of those men who was gone by the time she woke. Sometimes that was insulting, but it was often quite nice actually. You were saved from finding out what they looked like sober, in the cold light of day.
    But this one here wanted more from her than he’d had so far. She didn’t know exactly what, but he wanted more; she was sure of that.
    He had called to arrange delivery of the Ungaro blouse, then brought it personally. Stood at the door holding a Spotlight bag in one hand, two bottles of cold champagne in the other, covered in condensation. She could hardly not invite him in.
    One look at her apartment—a tiny studio with a kitchenette in the recess next to the bathroom, cardboard boxes everywhere, most of them open because she was living out of them—and he knew: “Congratulations. I was very impressed.”
    She washed two glasses, not exactly champagne flutes, and they drank the Veuve Clicquot, not exactly her preferred brand, while it was still cold. She didn’t have ice, and her tiny fridge was already feeling the strain.
    He was funny. He described exactly how she had caused the dress to disappear, and parodied her performance with Weynfeldt. He was good-looking in a conventional kind of way, with just the right dash of insolence, and she didn’t have to pretend anything with him.
    It wasn’t hard for him to get her into bed. It was the only thing to sit on.
    â€œI have a date in an hour,” she told him first.
    â€œWith him?” he asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œStand him up.”
    â€œI’ll give him a quick call to cancel.”
    â€œI’ve watched him: you’ve got him eating out of your hand.”
    â€œThat’s why I need to call, to keep him interested.”
    â€œWrong. Don’t call, to keep him interested.”

13
    T HE SKI SLOPES ABOVE THE GRAND HOTELS AND APARTMENT buildings were a muddy green, aside from a few scraps of snow in the shaded dips. But the lake was frozen, and the sky clear. A city of tents had been built behind the grandstand, white plastic pavilions with pointed gables, looking to Weynfeldt like a faintly oriental version of the plastic summerhouses which had sprung up in gardens and on roof terraces in his country in recent years.
    Ever since he could remember, Adrian Weynfeldt had been at home in the Engadin. He had spent all his winter vacations and much of his summers up here, and had attended an international boarding school nearby for several years as a teenager.
    The landscape had always been so familiar to him, he never perceived it as especially beautiful. It was only when he saw it through the eyes of Giovanni Segantini that it revealed its beauty to him. His father had owned several Segantinis. Adrian had seen the paintings hundreds of times, but he was twelve or thirteen before he identified one of the landscapes—the view from his hotel room on vacation. Even then it was only after a casual remark from his father that he recognized it. It looked so different, even though every detail was represented.
    After that he began to imagine how the things he saw would look painted—first the landscapes, then the interiors, the people and the still lives—by Segantini, later by other painters from his father’s collection.
    Beginning as a game, it gradually became a mania, and became Weynfeldt’s way of seeing the world. When he finished high school he started art school, but soon accepted that no amount of enthusiasm could make up for a lack of talent. And so he had to content himself with being an art historian.
    The image in front of him now couldn’t be salvaged even by asking how Segantini would have painted it. He was seated on a plastic chair upholstered with white fake fur, under artificial palms with the