Time lost its structure within the walls of the loft. The days dissolved into a continuous gradient of gray light that filtered through the dirty skylights and washed over the concrete floor. Berlin outside ceased to be a city of stone and history and became nothing more than a variable of ambient humidity that I had to monitor on the digital hygrometer. I did not leave the apartment for supplies because I had stocked enough solvents and freeze-dried food to survive a siege. My existence narrowed down to the square meter of the work table and the microscopic landscape of the canvas. The painting was a country I was invading slowly, millimeter by millimeter, armed with cotton swabs and chemical agents.
I sat on the ergonomic stool that was supposed to support my lumbar spine but only made my back ache with a dull throb. The silence in the room was heavy and gelatinous. It was not a true silence because the building itself was alive with thermal expansion and the settling of old foundations. The only rhythmic sound was the dripping tap in the kitchenette ten meters away. It was a slow and irregular impact of water against stainless steel that echoed like a hammer striking an anvil in a cavern. I had tried to fix it with a wrench three days ago. The washer was intact, yet the water continued to bleed from the pipe. I accepted it as a torture device designed to test my focus.
Restoration is a philosophical problem disguised as a technical one. We tell ourselves that we are saving the artwork, but that is a lie we sell to museums and collectors who fear mortality. Every time I dipped a swab into the solvent mixture of isooctane and ethanol, I was making an executive decision about reality. I was stripping away the varnish of time to reveal a version of the truth that I preferred. This layer of grime I removed was history. It was the smoke from coal fires in 19th-century drawing rooms and the exhaled breath of a dozen owners. By removing it, I was erasing the evidence of the painting's survival. I was not a savior. I was a revisionist who sterilized the past to make it palatable for the present.
The face in the mirror remained obscured by the white cloud of mold, but I was working on the periphery now. I was cleaning the dark background behind the seated woman. The chemistry was delicate. If the solvent was too strong, it would eat through the varnish and dissolve the glazes of the paint layer itself. I worked in a trance state where my breathing synced with the circular motion of the cotton tip. My eyes burned from the fumes despite the ventilation hood humming above me. The toxicity was part of the ritual. The chemicals entered my bloodstream through my lungs and settled in the fat of my brain.
I looked down at my hand holding the bamboo skewer. The skin on my knuckles appeared pale and waxy under the harsh LED magnification. For a second, the visual input disconnected from my proprioception. I could feel the wood of the tool between my fingers, but my eyes told me that my hand was becoming translucent. I could see the weave of the green cutting mat through the flesh of my thumb. It was a trick of the light and fatigue. I blinked hard and rubbed my eyes with the heel of my palm until stars exploded in my vision. When I looked back, my hand was solid again. It was just the sleep deprivation manifesting as a sensory error. I had not slept more than two hours in the last three cycles.
The buzzer sounded again. It was the same long, intrusive press that ignored social conventions. I knew who it was before I even stood up. My legs felt heavy, as if the gravity in the room had increased while I was sitting. I walked to the door and the motion felt like wading through deep water. The air in the loft was thick with the smell of acetone and stale coffee. I unlocked the bolts and the metal felt freezing against my skin.
Mara stood in the hallway. She looked exactly as she had during her first visit, wearing the same red coat that absorbed the dim light of the corridor. She did not carry an umbrella, yet she was dry despite the sound of the rain hammering against the roof. Her presence was a disruption to the sterile ecosystem I had cultivated. She walked past me without waiting for an invitation and the air displaced by her movement felt colder than the draft from the hallway.
"You look terrible," she said. She stood by the table and looked down at the painting without touching it. "You have not been eating."
"I am fasting," I lied. I walked to the kitchenette to put distance between us. "Digestion takes energy away from the brain. I need absolute clarity for this section of the canvas."
"And the sleep?" she asked. "Is sleep also a distraction?"
"Dreams are a distraction," I said. I filled the electric kettle with water. The tap dripped again, a sharp plink that made my eyelid twitch. "When I sleep, I lose the momentum. The chemicals dry. The solvent evaporation rate changes with the temperature drop at night. I have to maintain a constant environment."
I took two cups from the shelf. They were white porcelain, clean and cold. I placed a bag of Earl Grey in each one. The routine of making tea was a grounding exercise. It was a sequence of actions that had a predictable outcome, unlike the painting on the table. I poured the boiling water and watched the brown clouds diffuse through the liquid. The aroma of bergamot momentarily masked the chemical stench of the studio.
I carried the cups to the work area. Mara had pulled up a chair and was sitting close to the painting. She was studying the obscured face in the mirror with an intensity that unsettled me. I placed the cup near her hand. She did not look at it.
"You are removing the history," she said. Her voice was low. "You are stripping away the years to find the moment of creation. It is a violent act."
"It is necessary," I said. I took a sip of my tea. It was scalding hot and burned my tongue, but the pain was a welcome anchor to reality. "The varnish has oxidized. It is blinding the image. You cannot see what is there if you are looking through a cataract of yellowed resin."
"Or perhaps the varnish was hiding something that was meant to stay hidden," she said. She turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were dark voids that seemed to swallow the reflection of the studio lights. "You know about hiding things, Henrik. You know how to put layers over the truth."
My hand froze halfway to my mouth. The liquid in my cup rippled. She was referencing the Dürer. She had to be. But that file was sealed. The museum in Munich had every reason to keep it quiet. If the art world knew that a twenty-four-year-old intern had repainted a sixteenth-century hand, the provenance of the piece would collapse. I lowered the cup slowly to the table.
"I do not know what you are implying," I said. My voice sounded hollow in the large room. "I am a conservator. I preserve what exists."
"You create what you think should exist," she said. "You have an arrogance, Henrik. You believe your hand is equal to the masters. You believe you can step into the timeline and correct their mistakes. That is why I brought this to you. Because you are not afraid to lie to the canvas."
"I am not lying," I said. I felt a surge of defensive anger. "I am interpreting the surviving data. If the paint is gone, I have to deduce what was there. It is logic. It is geometry and anatomy."
"Is it?" she asked. She leaned back. "Or is it just vanity? You want to see yourself in the work. You want to leave a mark that will outlast your own rotting body."
I stood up. The conversation was veering into territories I did not want to explore. My head was throbbing with a pressure that started at the base of my skull. The sound of the dripping tap seemed to accelerate, matching the beat of my heart. Plip. Plip. Plip.
"The work requires concentration," I said. "I cannot work if I am being interrogated. You hired me for my hands, not my confession."
Mara smiled. It was a thin expression that did not reach her eyes. She stood up smoothly, her coat rustling like dry leaves. She did not touch the tea I had made for her.
"Finish it, Henrik," she said. "Strip it all away. But be careful what you find when the last layer is gone. The mirror does not always reflect what is in front of it."
She walked to the door. I did not follow her this time. I watched her leave from where I stood. The bolt clicked shut behind her, but I did not hear her footsteps in the hallway. The silence rushed back into the room, filling the vacuum she left.
I looked at the table. The cup of tea I had placed for her sat there. Steam was still rising from it in a thin, lazy spiral. I reached out to take the cup to the sink. The ceramic was cold. I frowned. I had poured the boiling water three minutes ago. The cup should have been hot to the touch. I placed my palm against the side. It was stone cold. I looked at the rim. There was no moisture, no lipstick, no sign that lips had ever hovered near it. The surface of the liquid was perfectly still, undisturbed by a sip.
A shiver ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of the loft. I dumped the tea into the sink. The brown liquid swirled down the drain, joining the rhythmic drip of the leaking tap. I gripped the edge of the counter. My reflection in the stainless steel faucet was distorted and elongated. I looked like a monster. I needed to work. Work was the only cure for this paranoia.
I returned to the table and turned up the intensity of the lights. The brightness was blinding. I picked up the scalpel. I needed to remove a stubborn patch of overpaint near the cheek of the reflection. It was a crude addition by a previous restorer, a clumsy attempt to hide damage. I had to scrape it off to reach the original layer.
My hand hovered over the canvas. The tremor started in my wrist. It was subtle at first, a vibration that traveled down the extensor tendons. I tried to lock my elbow. I held my breath. The blade descended. I focused on the microscopic boundary between the false paint and the true paint.
The room tilted. It was a sudden, vestibular shift as if the floor had dropped ten centimeters. My hand jerked.
The scalpel bit into the canvas. It was a sickening sound, a sharp tear that cut through the silence. I pulled back, gasping for air. A scratch, five millimeters long, marred the cheek of the reflection. I had cut through the paint layer and exposed the raw linen beneath. I had wounded the artwork.
"No," I whispered. The word was a dry croak. "No, no, no."
Panic flooded my system. It was cold and electric. I had to fix it. I had to hide it before the damage became permanent. I grabbed a palette knife and a tube of crimson lake and lead white. I mixed them frantically on the glass palette. I did not measure the ratios. I just needed to cover the wound. I needed to seal the breach.
I loaded a fine brush with the mixture. My hand was shaking violently now. I steadied it with my other hand. I touched the brush to the scratch.
The paint touched the canvas and something impossible happened. The mixture did not adhere. It beaded up like water on oil. Then, it began to smoke. A faint wisp of gray vapor rose from the point of contact. The red pigment turned black and then liquid. It began to run down the canvas, defying the viscosity of the oil. It looked like the painting was bleeding. The dark fluid oozed from the scratch I had made, pulsating with a rhythm that matched the dripping tap.
I dropped the brush. It clattered onto the floor. I backed away, my heels scraping against the concrete. The bleeding did not stop. The dark stain spread across the face in the mirror, consuming the features I had been trying to save. The room began to spin. The gray light from the windows stretched and warped. The walls of the loft seemed to breathe in and out.
The sound of the dripping tap became a roar. It was the sound of a clock ticking down to zero. The floor rushed up to meet me. The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was the painting on the table, the red wound widening like a mouth opening to scream.