Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco

had been done with attention and balance, in the same way a copyist could have arranged paper and pen on the table, put on the cloth oversleeves, chosen the ink, sure of recognizing the most appropriate shade of blue. He thought that he wasn’t wrong: it was a magnificent profession. For a moment the idea of a rusting iron nameplate on the door crossed his mind. JASPER GWYN. COPYIST .
    â€œIt’s surprising how pointless it all is in the absence of a model,” observed the woman in the rain scarf. “Or did I not see it?” she added, looking around with the air of one who is looking for the sauce aisle in the supermarket.
    â€œNo, no model, for now,” said Jasper Gwyn.
    â€œI imagine there’s not exactly a line out the door.”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œDo you have an idea of how to resolve it, or are you going to put it off until the lease expires?”
    Every so often the old woman’s tones reverted to those of a schoolmistress. That gruff way of caring about something.
    â€œNo, I have a plan,” answered Jasper Gwyn.
    â€œLet’s hear it.”
    Jasper Gwyn had thought about it at length. It was evident that he would have to hire someone, the first time, to test himself. But he would have to choose carefully, because a model who was too difficult would discourage him pointlessly, and one too easy wouldn’t push him to find what he was looking for. Nor was it easy to imagine what might be the right degree of acquaintance for that first experiment. A friend, so to speak, would make the job much easier, but would falsify the experiment, because he would already know too many things about him, and it wouldn’t be possible to look athim as at an unfamiliar landscape. On the other hand, to choose a perfect stranger, as logic would suggest, implied a whole series of embarrassments that Jasper Gwyn would prefer to spare himself, at least that first time. Apart from the difficulty of explaining the thing, of understanding the type of work they were to do together, there was that question of nudity—awkward. Instinctively, Jasper Gwyn felt that nudity was an indisputable condition. He imagined it as a kind of necessary goad. It would move everything beyond a certain limit, and without that uncomfortable dislocation he felt that no field would open up, no infinite prospect. So he had to resign himself. The model had to be nude. But Jasper Gwyn was a reserved man, and appreciated shyness. He had no familiarity with bodies and in his life had worked only with sounds and thoughts. The mechanism of a piano was the most physical thing he had had the opportunity to master. If he thought of a nude model, before him, what he felt was only a profound embarrassment and an inevitable bewilderment. So the choice of the first model was delicate, and the idea of choosing a perfect stranger imprudent.
    Finally, just to simplify things somewhat, Jasper Gwyn had decided to exclude the idea of a man. He couldn’t do it. It was a matter not of homophobia but of simply being unused to it. There was no need to complicate life too much, in that first experiment: to learn to look at a male body was something that, for the moment, he preferred to put off. A woman would definitely be better, he wouldn’t be starting from zero. The choice of a woman, however, had implications that Jasper Gwyn was perfectly aware of. He added the variable of desire. He would like to start with a body that would be beautiful to discover, look at, spy on. But it was clear that makinga portrait was an act that had to be sheltered from pure and simple desire, or that, at most, might start off from desire and then would let it, in some way, wane. Making a portrait had to be a matter of distant intimacies. And so too much beauty would have been out of place. Too little, on the other hand, would be a pointless affliction. What Jasper Gwyn sought was a woman who would be beautiful to look at but not so beautiful