I go over to the duck and bite into its neck again, trying to extract whatever might remain of its blood, but it’s dry, apart from something pinkish that isn’t blood. I lick around the wound on its neck, getting a little blood from its feathers, and then scratch the dried droplets off the mirror and lick my fingers, sucking on my nails. There’s nothing else left.

I sit down on a chair by the table. My painting is still there, propped up against the wall. Now—after having talked about art all evening, and after hearing about Anju’s works, and her upcoming profile in frieze—I think it looks amateur. It lacks confidence and a sense of being planned in any way at all. The puppet has slid down from the sitting position I left her in and is lying on the table, looking up at the ceiling. I take her and put her on my hand. “Hey, Lydia,” I say. Then I make her little hands take the book on puppetry I stole from the gallery. She pulls it out and the other books fall over. She drags it to me, and opens it to the first page.

Chapter 6

6

I have been painting all night. I went over the blue with a dark brown. In the middle, there’s now a dark knot of black and bright, electric-blue paint. Among the black I added little stars in white: tiny dots made with the point of my smallest brush. And, then, in the center of the knot, I added two, deep red eyes, a nose, long and crooked, and a tiny crack of a mouth: the puppet’s face. Amid the mess of paint that is her clothes, a muddy mix of color, I have painted two hands—two beautiful hands, as beautiful as I could make them: human hands, golden and elegant, modeled after my own. In one, I have let her hold a paintbrush.