Part 9 (1/2)
Next morning McGore woke up earlier than usual. With his bare, hairy feet, with toenails like black pearls, he groped for his slippers, and softly padded along the corridor to the door of his wife's room. They had had no conjugal relations for more than a year, but he nevertheless visited her every morning and watched with powerless excitement while she did her hair, jerking her head energetically as the comb chirruped through the chestnut wing of the taut tresses. Today, entering her room at this early hour, he found the bed made and a sheet of paper pinned to the headboard. McGore produced from the pocket of his dressing gown an enormous eyegla.s.s case and, without putting on the gla.s.ses but simply holding them up to his eyes, leaned over the pillow and read the minute, familiar writing on the pinned note. When he had finished he meticulously replaced his gla.s.ses in their case, unpinned and folded the sheet, stood lost in thought for an instant, and then shuffled resolutely out of the room. In the corridor he collided with the manservant, who glanced at him with alarm.
”What, is the Colonel up already?” asked McGore.
The manservant answered hurriedly, ”Yes, sir. The Colonel is in the picture gallery. I'm afraid, sir, that he's very cross. I was sent to wake up the young gentleman.”
Without waiting to hear him out, wrapping his mouse-colored robe around him as he went, McGore set off quickly for the gallery. Also in his dressing gown, from beneath which protruded the folds of his striped pajama bottoms, the Colonel was pacing to and fro along the wall. His mustache bristled and his crimson-flushed countenance was terrifying to behold. Seeing McGore, he stopped, and, after some preliminary lip-chewing, roared, ”Here, have a good look!”
McGore, to whom the Colonel's ire mattered little, nevertheless inadvertently looked where his hand was pointing and saw something truly incredible. On the Luciani canvas, next to the Venetian girl, an additional figure had appeared. It was an excellent, if hastily executed, portrait of Simpson. Gaunt, his black jacket strongly highlighted by the lighter background, his feet turned oddly outward, he extended his hands as if in supplication, and his pallid face was distorted by a pitiful, frantic expression.
”Like it?” the Colonel inquired furiously. ”No worse than Bastiano himself, is it? The vile brat! That's his revenge for my kindhearted advice. Just wait ...”
The waiter came in, distraught.
”Mr. Frank is not in his room, sir. And his things are gone. Mr. Simpson has disappeared too, sir. He must have gone out for a stroll, sir, seeing as how it's such a fine morning.”
”To h.e.l.l with the morning!” thundered the Colonel. ”This very instant, I want-”
”May I be so bold as to inform you,” meekly added the waiter, ”that the chauffeur was just here and said the new motor car had disappeared from the garage.”
”Colonel,” McGore said softly, ”I think I can explain what's happened.”
He glanced at the waiter, who tiptoed out.
”Now then,” went on McGore in a bored tone, ”your supposition that it was indeed your son who painted in that figure is doubtless right. But, in addition, I gather from a note that was left for me that he departed at daybreak with my wife.”
The Colonel was a gentleman and an Englishman. He immediately felt that to vent one's anger in front of a man whose wife had just run off was improper. Therefore, he went over to a window, swallowed half his anger and blew the other half outdoors, smoothed his mustache, and, regaining his calm, addressed McGore.
”Allow me, my dear friend,” he said courteously, ”to a.s.sure you of my sincerest, deepest sympathy, rather than dwell on the wrath I feel toward the perpetrator of your calamity. Nevertheless, while I understand the state you are in, I must-I am obliged, my friend-to ask an immediate favor of you. Your art will rescue my honor. Today I am expecting young Lord Northwick from London, the owner, as you know, of another painting by the same del Piombo.”
McGore nodded. ”I'll bring the necessary implements, Colonel.”
He was back in a couple of minutes, still in his dressing gown, carrying a wooden case. He opened it immediately, produced a bottle of ammonia, a roll of cotton wool, rags, sc.r.a.pers, and went to work. As he sc.r.a.ped and rubbed Simpson's dark figure and white face from the varnish he did not give a thought to what he was doing, and what he was thinking about should not arouse the curiosity of a reader respectful of another's grief. In half an hour Simpson's portrait was completely gone, and the slightly damp paints of which he had consisted remained on McGore's rags.
”Remarkable,” said the Colonel. ”Remarkable. Poor Simpson has disappeared without a trace.”
On occasion some chance remark sets off very important thoughts. This is what happened now to McGore who, as he was gathering his instruments, suddenly stopped short with a shocked tremor.
How strange, he thought, how very strange. Is it possible that-He looked at the rags with the paint sticking to them, and abruptly, with an odd frown, wadded them together and tossed them out the window by which he had been working. Then he ran his palm across his forehead with a frightened glance at the Colonel-who, interpreting his agitation differently, was trying not to look at him-and, with uncharacteristic haste, went out of the hall straight into the garden.
There, beneath the window, between the wall and the rhododendrons, the gardener stood scratching the top of his head over a man in black lying facedown on the lawn. McGore quickly approached.
Moving his arm, the man turned over. Then, with a fl.u.s.tered smirk, he got up.
”Simpson, for heaven's sake, what's happened?” asked McGore, peering into his pale countenance.
Simpson gave another laugh.
”I'm awfully sorry.... It's so silly.... I went out for a stroll last night and fell right asleep, here on the gra.s.s. Ow, I'm all aches and pains.... I had a monstrous dream.... What time is it?”
Left alone, the gardener gave a disapproving shake of his head as he looked at the matted lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of five fingers. He stuck the lemon in his pocket and went to fetch the stone roller he had left on the tennis court.
10.
Thus the dry, wrinkled fruit the gardener happened to find remains the only riddle of this whole tale. The chauffeur, dispatched to the station, returned with the black car and a note Frank had inserted into the leather pouch above the seat.
The Colonel read it aloud to McGore: ”Dear Father,” wrote Frank, ”I have fulfilled two of your wishes. You did not want any romances going on in your house, so I am leaving, and taking with me the woman without whom I cannot live. You also wanted to see a sample of my art. That is why I made you a portrait of my former friend, whom you can tell for me, by the way, that informers only make me laugh. I painted him at night, from memory, so if the resemblance is imperfect it is from lack of time, poor light, and my understandable haste. Your new car runs fine. I am leaving it for you at the station garage.”
”Splendid,” hissed the Colonel. ”Except I'd be very curious to know what money you're going to live on.”
McGore, paling like a fetus in alcohol, cleared his throat and said, ”There is no reason to conceal the truth from you, Colonel. Luciani never painted your Veneziana. It is nothing more than a magnificent imitation.”
The Colonel slowly rose.
”It was done by your son,” went on McGore, and suddenly the corners of his mouth began to tremble and drop. ”In Rome. I procured the canvas and paints for him. He seduced me with his talent. Half the sum you paid went to him. Oh, dear G.o.d ...”
The Colonel's jaw muscles contracted as he looked at the dirty handkerchief with which McGore was wiping his eyes and realized the poor fellow was not joking.
Then he turned and looked at la Veneziana. Her forehead glowed against the dark background, her long fingers glowed more gently, the lynx fur was slipping bewitchingly from her shoulder, and there was a secretly mocking smile at the corner of her lips.
”I'm proud of my son,” calmly said the Colonel.
BACHMANN.
THERE was a fleeting mention in the newspapers not long ago that the once famous pianist and composer Bachmann had died, forgotten by the world, in the Swiss hamlet of Marival, at the St. Angelica Home. This brought to my mind the story about a woman who loved him. It was told me by the impresario Sack. Here it is.
Mme. Perov met Bachmann some ten years before his death. In those days the golden throb of the deep and demented music he played was already being preserved on wax, as well as being heard live in the world's most famous concert halls. Well, one evening-one of those limpid-blue autumn evenings when one feels more afraid of old age than of death-Mme. Perov received a note from a friend. It read, ”I want to show you Bachmann. He will be at my house after the concert tonight. Do come.”
I imagine with particular clarity how she put on a black, decollete dress, flicked perfume onto her neck and shoulders, took her fan and her turquoise k.n.o.bbed cane, cast a parting glance at herself in the tri-fold depths of a tall mirror, and sunk into a reverie that lasted all the way to her friend's house. She knew that she was plain and too thin, and that her skin was pale to the point of sickliness; yet this faded woman, with the face of a madonna that had not quite come out, was attractive thanks to the very things she was ashamed of: the pallor of her complexion, and a barely perceptible limp, which obliged her to carry a cane. Her husband, an energetic and astute businessman, was away on a trip. Sack did not know him personally.
When Mme. Perov entered the smallish, violet-lighted drawing room where her friend, a stout, noisy lady with an amethyst diadem, was fluttering heavily from guest to guest, her attention was immediately attracted by a tall man with a clean-shaven, lightly powdered face who stood leaning his elbow on the case of the piano, and entertaining with some story three ladies grouped around him. The tails of his dress coat had a substantial-looking, particularly thick silk lining, and, as he talked, he kept tossing back his dark, glossy hair, at the same time inflating the wings of his nose, which was very white and had a rather elegant hump. There was something about his entire figure benevolent, brilliant, and disagreeable.
”The acoustics were terrible!” he was saying, with a twitch of his shoulder, ”and everybody in the audience had a cold. You know how it is: let one person clear his throat, and right away several others join in, and off we go.” He smiled, throwing back his hair. ”Like dogs at night exchanging barks in a village!”
Mme. Perov approached, leaning slightly on her cane, and said the first thing that came into her head: ”You must be tired after your concert, Mr. Bachmann?”
He bowed, very flattered.