NEW EVENTS

The Painter of Battles by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

In brief: Faulques always began his days with a swim in the sea. 150 strokes out, and 150 strokes back – then coffee. His painting was coming on well, and the pain, when it came, could be coped with. His day was punctuated by the tourist boat as usual – he could hear the attractive voice of the guide over the PA as the boat passed along the bottom of the cliff. He watched it some days and wondered what she looked like as she told the tourists of his tower, once long abandoned, but now the home of a ‘well-known painter’ who was decorating the interior with a mural. The ‘well-known’ bit was flattering, but surely as a war photographer rather than a painter. He should go down to the quay and meet her – maybe he would one day – but the painting needed to be finished.

The cracks worried him. The new plaster was developing deep cracks already, coursing through the painting, changing its nature. Perhaps it fitted with the plan – when the mural was finished, the tower would be abandoned again, and time would decide its fate. The cracks were part of its future.

One of the many good things about the tower was how difficult it was to get to. You could only drive halfway up the hill, and had to walk the rest – quite a hike. So it was unusual and surprising when Faulques glanced out of the window later and saw a man looking at him from the pines. Faulques was annoyed by the interruption, but the stranger persisted; surely Faulques remembered him? The photograph had earned Faulques money and fame – how could he forget his face? Then he slowly remembered – the Croatians falling back, the exhausted men passing him and Olvido. His random choosing of a face to photograph – the exhausted eyes – not so tired now – but those same eyes.

That had been three days before his last photograph of Olvido on the Borovo Naselje road. A photograph no one but he had ever seen, nor would ever see. He’d thought he would survive both war and women, but that had been before he’d met the unique and captivating Olvido.

He’d seen too many things – and he was trying to put it all together in his painting. The painting could show more than his photographs – ‘say’ more than his photographs – couldn’t it?

But his visitor is on a mission. Had Faulques any idea what his photographs could do? He pressed the shutter release and moved on as discreetly as possible. But his photographs could have a resonance far beyond his imagination. And this resonance had caught up with him now in the form of this ex-soldier, whose world had been torn apart by Faulques’ camera. Would Faulques have time to finish his painting?

About the author

Arturo Pérez-Reverte was born in 1951 in Cartagena, Spain. After working on oil tankers in the 1970s, he worked as a war reporter for twenty-one years before turning his hand to fiction. His novels have been translated into twenty-eight languages, and in 2002 he was elected a member of the Spanish Royal Academy. He lives near Madrid.

For discussion

  • ‘The more we observe, the less meaning it all has and the more forsaken we feel.’ Do you think our twenty-four-hour news society has grown insensitive to the images of war?
  • ‘All symmetry encases cruelty.’ What do you understand to be the geometry of war as seen by Faulques?
  • ‘But nothing comes out of you that you don’t have inside, Faulques believed.’ Is this true?
  • ‘The photograph reminded a painting of what it should never do.’ What is that, do you think?
  • ‘Your painting is filled with riddles, I think. With enigmas.’
    ‘All good ones are.’ Are they?
  • ‘The true modern work of art is ephemeral, or it isn’t art.’ Why does Olvido think this? Does Faulques agree with her?
  • ‘Ignorant, all of them, of the fact that to invent a technical object was also to invent its specific undoing.’ How so?
  • ‘Centuries of accumulated traps weigh heavily on the words “art” and “artist”.’ Did the novel enhance your understanding of art?
  • ‘Truth is in things, not in people, she said.’ Why does Olvido think this? Is it true?
  • ‘Now he knew that no photograph is inert, or passive.’ Do you agree?
  • Was the point of the mural not to finish it?

Suggested further reading

Imagined Battles: Reflections of War in European Art by Peter Paret
Slightly Out of Focus by Robert Capa
Glass Warriors: The Camera at War by Duncan Anderson
Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia by Chuck Sudetic
Unreasonable Behaviour by Don McCullin