The journalist nods. ‘That scenario, well, it’s the stuff of pure fantasy, isn’t it? Did you realise you were appealing to a male audience when you took these?’
‘Male, female. I want to appeal to all audiences, obviously. Especially the one here tonight.’
I wave my arm around the assembled throng and again they laugh kindly. One or two cast suspicious glances at the journalist and I wonder if he’s trying to wrongfoot me for some reason. Gustav has his head down and is writing something on a pad of paper.
I plough on. ‘I studied the work of Helmut Newton, and I think you can see his sado-masochistic mannerisms expressed here, however subconsciously.’ I flatten my hand on my leg and stroke it absently. ‘These women are alone with their masochism. Their impure fantasies. But it’s also a penance. They’re obeying orders.’
‘Would you say,’ interrupts another woman, ‘that such depictions are bordering on the pornographic, no matter how tastefully shot?’
‘That depends on whether you think something occurring naturally in life counts as porn. I’d say it’s a heightened and corrupted version of reality.’
‘Even so. Those little whips they seem to be using, the flagellation,’ coughs the woman, taking a noisy sip from her glass. ‘How did you get such intimate pictures of such secluded, holy women?’
‘If you’ve visited Venice you’ll know that the nature of the place makes every nook and cranny there seem hidden and secretive, but I only stumbled on that convent by mistake when I got lost one evening. I followed this nun who seemed to be in a hurry, I wanted to ask her the way, but she disappeared through this little gate. I learned later that you can get inside the convent from the canal, too, but only if you have a gondola handy. And by then I had all the shots I needed.’
‘Adventurous as well as talented,’ someone else piped up. ‘I can see you come alive when you talk about your travels.’
‘My travels last year are what kept me alive.’
Across the river the inky black clouds scud across the sky.
‘This was an enclosed order of nuns, you say?’
‘There was no speaking to each other in there, let alone the outside world. Apparently once a year or so, they talk to outsiders through a grille.’
‘So you never asked for permission to enter the convent, or spoke to anyone?’
‘God, no. They would have chucked me out. It’s a silent order, but they are still very – active.’
The journalist is biting his pen. The others are standing about like deer in the fens, waiting for more.
‘Active? So what made you think there was a photo op in there?’
‘The first thing I witnessed, hiding behind a pillar obviously, was a prostration.’
Several pairs of eyebrows rise questioningly.
‘I think the nun I followed was a novice. One of the reasons I was able to get in so easily was that the entire community was gathered in the chapel to watch this initiation ceremony. Or penance. I couldn’t linger too obviously to find out. No wonder the young nun was in such a rush. She must have been making her initial vows, or she could have been confessing to some heinous sin. Either way they were whipping her.’
Mouths drop open. Crystal is standing next to Gustav, her eyes wide with undisguised admiration. Gustav glances up at me, then back at what he’s writing. Annoyance flares at me. Why isn’t he paying attention?
‘It was hard to see at first because they had this heavy incense pouring out of a large silver basket swinging back and forth on a silver chain. It made my eyes stream and I had to stop myself sneezing. Anyway, it was a beautiful vaulted chapel and in all these pews were rows of nuns, standing so still I thought they were statues. Then this young nun came out, there she is in that picture.’
All heads turn back to the pictures hanging there, at the soft-focus pictures of my favourite nun in her cell.
‘She came in, dressed in a kind of thick linen nightdress. She lay down on the floor, flat on her face, and spread her arms and legs out like a star. The nuns were all singing, fingers telling their rosaries, and singing some sort of Gregorian chant. Some of them were stretching their arms up to the ceiling, others were stretching their arms out sideways as if to embrace something.
‘I’ll never look at The Sound of Music in the same way again!’
I allow a space for some light relief. I glance at Gustav who nods his head for me to carry on.
‘Some lay down on the floor, too, but it was this new one who was the centre of attention, and then the Mother Superior – it was obviously her, she was astonishingly beautiful, but very tall and terrifying-looking, with an enormous crucifix hanging on her chest – she came and stood over the girl brandishing this long black whip. It was all pretty alarming. I wondered if I should step in, you know, I was worried it was some kind of black magic, not holy at all, but something awful might have happened to me if they discovered an interloper.
‘I wonder what …’
I let the question hang in the air, remembering how my heart pounded with fear that night. How sick and dizzy I felt with that incense clouding the air in that chapel, how the chanting of the nuns grew louder in my ears. The sweat trickling down my back, gathering in my armpits, prickling in my hair. The stifling heat of Venice in summer. The stink of the canals penetrating even into that hallowed space. The sheen of sweat on everyone’s skin.
‘The Mother Superior planted her feet on either side of the little nun and folded her dress right up over her bottom so that I could see she was wearing these Victorian-type white bloomers.’
The journalist groans and snaps his biro in half. ‘Pretty barbaric.’
‘You and I might think so. But we all know that there are some people who do this for a living. For pleasure. And for these nuns it’s an initiation process. Routine. The girl’s face was shining with happiness. What do they call it when the saints in those paintings and statues look as if they are having an orgasm? Ecstasy.’
There is a really hearty laugh around the gallery.
‘Did they hit her with these horrible whips?’
‘You’re obsessed,’ someone else laughs at the questioner.
‘I can answer that if you want me to?’
Everyone nods and cheers. Gustav is shaking his head in amused disbelief, still looking down at his pad. It’s all so flattering. I’m tempted to confess what really happened inside me, the dark flowering of fascination when I watched those nuns. But I mustn’t get carried away. I haven’t the nerve to reveal now, at my first ever public show, how the shock of the public flagellation in the chapel turned to a twisted pleasure when I crept upstairs and saw the sisters continuing it in private. The swish and bite of those whips on snowy white skin. The answering bite and swish inside me as I hid watching in the shadows and my body tightened with anguished recognition.
I rouse myself. All those faces are so expectant now. Crystal’s thin eyebrows are crescents of surprise. Gustav is looking at me from under lowered brows as if he’s never seen me before.
‘Well, the Reverend Mother stepped forward. She had to push up her sleeves and it was a shock to see human limbs under there, she could have been a robot, but yes, she whipped the girl’s bottom. It was so loud. So sharp. The acoustics in there are designed for singing and praying, not punishment. So discordant in a quiet, holy place. I saw the girl’s fingers clawing at the polished wooden floor, but she wasn’t trying to get away. She kind of flinched under the blows and even though she wasn’t supposed to make a sound I could see her lips mouthing “I’m a sinner, cleanse me Mother, please cleanse me.”’