Nowhere People

Catarina goes into what is supposed to be a bedroom, her bedroom. The nails and drawing-pins from her last street intervention have been on the bed for more than a week along with scraps of green plastic and two kinds of sticky tape: masking and double-sided. (She sleeps on the leather sofa in the library, and the bedroom is a mix of bedroom, walk-in closet, study, meeting room, video-editing room and office for her Foundation, especially when she needs to use the Mac to write up projects with other partners; the cleaner is allowed to gather up whatever’s on the floor, hoover, tidy the clothes in the wardrobe, but never to touch the bed, the bookshelves or the desk.) She undresses, puts on an oversized jumper that goes all the way down to her knees. She takes the burgundy-coloured bag hanging on the clothes rail. She scatters berets, wigs and masks across the bed, picks out one of the masks, a kind of Spirit mask, puts it on. She looks at the disarray. It’s the first time in weeks that she has been able to go in there without being overtaken by a mad desire to turn back the hours, the days. She gets the digital video camera that happens by good fortune to be in plain view. As soon as she can, she will ask the cleaner to clean everything and change the sheets and the curtains and leave the windows open and allow the sun, which is strong there in the mornings, come in. She runs to the living room. ‘Sing for me,’ and she takes off the jumper. He begins his chant, and she dances dressed only in the mask and her underwear.