Vladimir Nabokov. La Veneziana
© Copyright 1924 by Vladimir Nabokov
© Copyright by Dmitry Nabokov, english translation
1
In front of the red-hued castle, amid luxuriant elms,
there was a vividly green grass court. Early that morning the
gardener had smoothed it with a stone roller, extirpated a
couple of daisies, redrawn the lines on the lawn with liquid
chalk, and tightly strung a resilient new net between the
posts. From a nearby village the butler had brought a carton
within which reposed a dozen balls, white as snow, fuzzy to the
touch, still light, still virgin, each wrapped like a precious
fruit in its own sheet of transparent paper.
It was about five in the afternoon. The ripe sunshine
dozed here and there on the grass and the tree trunks, filtered
through the leaves, and placidly bathed the court, which had
now come alive. There were four players: the Colonel himself
(the castle's proprietor), Mrs. McGore, the host's son Frank,
and Simpson, a college friend of his.
A person's motions while playing, like his handwriting in
quieter moments, tell a good deal about him. Judging by the
Colonel's blunt, stiff strokes, by the tense expression on his
fleshy face that looked as if it had just spat out the massive
gray mustache towering above his lip; by the fact that, in
spite of the heat, he did not unbutton his shirt collar; and by
the way he served, legs firmly planted apart like two white
poles, one might conclude, firstly, that he had never been a
good player, and, secondly, that he was a staid, old-fashioned,
stubborn man, subject to occasional outbursts of seething
anger. In fact, having hit the ball into the rhododendrons, he
would exhale a terse oath through his teeth, or goggle his
fishlike eyes at his racquet as if he could not forgive it for
such a humiliating miss. Simpson, his partner by chance, a
skinny blond youth with meek but mad eyes that fluttered and
glinted behind his pince-nez like limp light-blue butterflies,
was trying to play as best he could, although the Colonel, of
course, never expressed his vexation when the loss of a point
was the other's fault. But no matter how hard Simpson tried, no
matter how he leaped about, none of his shots were successful.
He felt as if he were coming apart at the seams, as if it were
his timidity that kept him from hitting accurately, and that,
instead of an instrument of play, meticulously and ingeniously
assembled out of resonant, amber catgut strung on a superbly
calculated frame, he was holding a clumsy dry log from which
the ball would rebound with a painful crack, ending up in the
net or in the bushes, and even 'managing to knock the straw hat
off the circular pate of Mr. McGore, who was standing beside
the court and watching with no great interest as his young wife
Maureen and the lightfooted, nimble Frank defeated their
perspiring opponents.
If McGore, an old connoisseur of art, and restorer,
reframer, and recanvaser of even older paintings, who regarded
the world as a rather poor study daubed with unstable paints on
a flimsy canvas, had been the kind of curious and impartial
spectator it is sometimes so expedient to attract, he might
have concluded that tall, dark-haired, cheerful Maureen lived
with the same carefree manner with which she played, and that
Frank carried over into life as well his ability to return the
most difficult shot with graceful ease. But, just as
handwriting can often fool a fortune-teller by its superficial
simplicity, the game of this white-clad couple in truth
revealed nothing more than that Maureen played weak, soft,
listless, female tennis, while Frank tried not to whack the
ball too hard, recalling that he was not in a university
tournament but in his father's park. He moved effortlessly
toward the ball, and the long stroke gave a sense of physical
fulfillment: every motion tends to describe a full circle, and
even though, at its midpoint, it is transformed into the ball's
linear flight, its invisible continuation is nevertheless
instantaneously perceived by the hand and runs up the muscles
all the way to the shoulder, and it is precisely this prolonged
internal scintilla that makes the stroke fulfilling. With a
phlegmatic smile on his clean-shaven, suntanned face, his bared
flawless teeth flashing, Frank would rise on his toes and,
without visible effort, swing his naked forearm. That ample arc
contained an electric kind of force and the ball would rebound
with a particularly taut and accurate ring from his racquet's
strings.
He had arrived that morning with his friend to vacation at
his father's, and had found Mr. and Mrs. McGore whom he already
knew and who had been visiting at the castle for more than a
month; the Colonel, inflamed by a noble passion for paintings,
willingly forgave McGore his foreign origin, his unsociable
nature, and his lack of humor in exchange for the assistance
this famous art expert gave him and for the magnificent,
priceless canvases he procured. Especially magnificent was the
Colonel's most recent acquisition, the portrait of a woman by
Luciani, sold to him by McGore for a most n. "I'm dying for
some tea." Everyone moved into the shadow of a giant elm, where
the butler sumptuous sum.
Today, McGore, at the insistence of his wife who was
familiar with the Colonel's punctiliousness, had put on a pale
summer suit instead of the frock coat he usually wore, but he
still did not pass his host's muster: his shirt was starched
and had pearl buttons, which was, of course, inappropriate.
Also not very appropriate were his reddish-yellow half-boots
and the absence of the trouser cuffs the late king had
instantaneously made fashionable when he once had to traverse
some puddles to cross the road; nor did the old straw hat with
a gnawed-looking rim from behind which poked McGore's gray
curls appear especially elegant. He had a somewhat simian face,
with a protuberant mouth, a long gap between nose and lip, and
a whole complex system of wrinkles, so that one could probably
read his face as if it were a palm. As he watched the ball
flying back and forth across the net, his little greenish eyes
darted right, left, right, and paused to blink lazily when the
ball's flight was interrupted. The vivid white of three pairs
of flannels and one short, cheerful skirt contrasted
beautifully in the brilliant sunlight with the apple-hued
verdure, but, as we have already remarked, Mr. McGore
considered life's Creator only a second-rate imitator of the
masters whom he had been studying for forty years.
Meanwhile Frank and Maureen, having won five straight
games, were about to win the sixth. Frank, who was serving,
tossed the ball high with his left hand, leaned far back as if
he were about to fall over, then immediately lunged forward
with a broad arching motion, his glossy racquet giving a
glancing blow to the ball, which shot across the net and
bounced like white lightning past Simpson, who gave it a
helpless sidewise look. "That's it," said the Colonel.
Simpson felt greatly relieved. He was too ashamed of his
inept strokes to be capable of enthusiasm for the game, and
this shame was intensified by the extraordinary attraction he
felt for Maureen. All the players bowed to each other as was
the custom, and Maureen gave a sidelong smile as she adjusted
the strap on her bared shoulder. Her husband was applauding
with an air of indifference.
"We must have a game of singles," remarked the Colonel,
slapping his son on the back with gusto as the latter, baring
his teeth, pulled on his white, crimson-striped club blazer
with a violet emblem on one side.
"Tea!" said Maureen. "I'm dying for some tea." Everyone
moved into the shadow of a giant elm, where the butler and the
black-and-white maid had set up a portable table. There was tea
dark as Munich beer, sandwiches consisting of cucumber slices
on rectangles of crustless bread, a swarthy cake pocked with
black raisins, and large strawberries with cream. There were
also several earthenware bottles of ginger ale.
"In my days,'" began the Colonel, lowering himself with
ponderous relish into a folding canvas chair, "we preferred
real, full-blooded English sports: rugby, cricket, hunting.
There is something foreign about today's games, something
skinny-legged. I am a staunch advocate of manly holds, juicy
meat, an evening bottle of port--which does not prevent me,"
concluded the Colonel, as he smoothed his large mustache with a
little brush, "from enjoying robust old paintings that have the
luster of that same hearty wine."
"By the way, Colonel, the Veneziana has been
hung,'" said McGore in his dreary voice, laying his hat on the
lawn by his chair and rubbing the crown of his head, naked as a
knee, around which still curled thick, dirty gray locks. "I
picked the best-lighted spot in the gallery. They have rigged a
lamp over it. I'd like you to have a look."
The Colonel fixed his glistening eyes in turn on his son,
on the embarrassed Simpson, and on Maureen, who was laughing
and grimacing from the hot tea.
"My dear Simpson," .he exclaimed emphatically, pouncing on
his chosen prey, "you haven't seen it yet! Pardon me for
tearing you away from your sandwich, my friend, but I feel
obligated to show you my new painting. The connoisseurs are
going crazy over it. Come on. Of course I don't dare ask
Frank."
Frank made a jovial bow. "You're right. Father. Paintings
perturb me."
"We'll be right back, Mrs. McGore," said the Colonel as he
got up. "Careful, you're going to step on the bottle," he
addressed Simpson, who had also risen. "Prepare to be showered
with beauty."
The three of them headed for the house across the softly
sunlit lawn. Narrowing his eyes, Frank looked after them,
looked down at McGore's hat abandoned on the grass by the chair
(it exhibited to God, to the blue heavens, to the sun, its
whitish underside with a dark greasy spot in the center, on the
imprint of a Viennese hat shop), and then, turning toward
Maureen, said a few words that will doubtless surprise the
unperceptive reader. Maureen was sitting in a low armchair,
covered with trembling ringlets of sunlight, pressing the gilt
meshwork of the racquet to her forehead, and her face
immediately became older and more severe when Frank said, "Now
then, Maureen. It's time for us to make a decision. . . ."
2
McGore and the Colonel, like two guards, led Simpson into
a cool, spacious hall, where paintings glistened on the walls
and there was no furniture other than an oval table of glossy
black wood standing in the center, all four of its legs
reflected in the mirrorlike walnut-yellow of the parquet.
Having conducted their prisoner to a large canvas in an opaque
gilded frame, the Colonel and McGore stopped, the former with
his hands in his pockets, the latter pensively picking some dry
gray pollenlike matter out of his nostril and scattering it
with a light rolling rub of his fingers.
The painting was very fine indeed. Luciani had portrayed
the Venetian beauty in half-profile, standing against a warm,
black background. Rose-tinted cloth revealed her prominent,
dark-hued neck, with extraordinarily tender folds beneath the
ear, and the gray lynx fur with which her cherry-red mantlet
was trimmed was slipping off her left shoulder. With the
elongated fingers of her right hand spread in pairs, she seemed
to have been on the point of adjusting the falling fur but to
have frozen motionless, her hazel, uniformly dark eyes gazing
fixedly, languidly from the canvas. Her left hand, with white
ripples of cambric encircling the wrist, was holding a basket
of yellow fruit; the narrow crown of her headdress glowed atop
her dark-chestnut hair. On the left the black was interrupted
by a large right-angled opening straight into the twilight air
and the bluish-green chasm of the cloudy evening.
Yet it was not those details of stupendous umbral
interplay, nor the dark-hued warmth of the entire painting,
that struck Simpson. It was something else. Tilting his head
slightly to one side and blushing instantly, he said, "God, how
she resembles--"
"My wife," finished McGore in a bored voice, scattering
his dry pollen.
"It's incredibly good,'" whispered Simpson, tilting his
head the other way, "incredibly . . ."
"Sebastiano Luciani," said the Colonel, complacently
narrowing his eyes, "was born at the end of the fifteenth
century in Venice and died in the mid-sixteenth in Rome. His
teachers were Bellini and Giorgione and his rivals Michelangelo
and Raffaello. As you can see, he synthesized in his work the
power of the former and the tenderness of the latter. It's true
he was not overly fond of Santi, and here it was not just a
matter of professional vanity--legend has it that our artist
was taken with a Roman lady called Margherita, known
subsequently as la Fornarina." Fifteen years before his death
he took monastic vows upon receiving from Clement VII a simple
and profitable appointment. Ever since then he has been known
as Fra Sebastiano del Piombo. Piombo means lead,' for
his duties consisted of applying enormous lead seals to the
fiery papal bulls. A dissolute monk, he was fond of carousing
and composed indifferent sonnets. But what a master. . . ."
The Colonel gave Simpson a quick glance, noting with
satisfaction the impression the painting had made on his
speechless guest.
It should again be emphasized, however, that Simpson,
unaccustomed as he was to the contemplation of artwork, of
course could not fully appreciate the mastery of Sebastiano del
Piombo, and the one thing that fascinated him--apart, of
course, from the purely physiological effect of the splendid
colors on his optic nerves--was the resemblance he had
immediately noticed, even though he was seeing Maureen for the
first time. And the remarkable thing was that the Veneziana's
face--the sleek forehead, bathed, as it were, in the recondite
gloss of some olivaster moon, the totally dark eyes, the
placidly expectant expression of her gently joined
lips--clarified for him the real beauty of that other Maureen
who kept laughing, narrowing her eyes, shifting her pupils in a
constant struggle with the sunlight whose bright maculae glided
across her white frock as she separated the rustling leaves
with her racquet in search of a ball that had rolled into
hiding.
Taking advantage of the liberty that an English host
allows his guests, Simpson did not return to the tea table, but
set off across the garden, rounding the star-shaped flower
beds, and soon losing his way amid the checkerboard shadows of
an avenue in the park, with its smell of fern and decaying
leaves. The enormous trees were so old that their branches had
had to be propped up by rusted braces, and they hunched over
massively like dilapidated giants on iron crutches.
"God, what a stunning painting," Simpson whispered again.
He walked unhurriedly, waving his racquet, stooped, his rubber
soles lightly slapping. One must picture him clearly: gaunt,
reddish-haired, clad in rumpled white trousers and a baggy gray
jacket with half-belt; and also take careful note of the
lightweight, rimless pince-nez on his pockmarked buttonlike
nose, his weak, slightly mad eyes, and the freckles on his
convex forehead, his cheekbones, and his neck, red from the
summer sun.
He was in his second year at university, lived modestly,
and diligently attended lectures on theology. He and Frank
became friends not only because fate had assigned them the same
apartment (consisting of two bedrooms and a common parlor),
but, above all, like most weak-willed, bashful, secretly
rapturous people, he involuntarily clung to someone in whom
everything was vivid and firm--teeth, muscles, the physical
strength of the soul, which is willpower. For his part, Frank,
the pride of his college, who rowed in a racing scull and flew
across the field with a leather watermelon under his arm, who
knew how to land a punch on the very tip of the chin where
there is the same kind of funny bone as in the elbow, a punch
that would put an adversary to sleep--this extraordinary,
universally liked Frank found something very flattering to his
vanity in his friendship with the weak, awkward Simpson.
Simpson, incidentally, was privy to something odd that Frank
concealed from his other chums, who knew him only as a fine
athlete and an exuberant chap, paying no attention whatever to
occasional rumors that Frank was exceptionally good at drawing
but showed his drawings to no one. He never spoke about art,
was ever ready to sing and swig and carouse, yet suddenly a
strange gloom would come over him and he would not leave his
room or let anyone in, and only his roommate, lowly Simpson,
would see what he was up to. What Frank created during these
two or three days of ill-humored isolation he either hid or
destroyed, and then, as if having paid an agonizing tribute to
his vice, he would again become his merry, uncomplicated self.
Only once did he bring this up with Simpson.
"You see," he said, wrinkling his limpid forehead and
forcefully knocking the ashes from his pipe, "I feel that there
is something about art, and painting in particular, that is
effeminate, morbid, unworthy of a strong man. I try to struggle
with this demon because I know how it can ruin people. If I
yield to it completely, then, instead of a peaceful, ordered
existence with finite distress and finite delights, with those
precise rules without which any game loses its appeal, I shall
be doomed to constant chaos, tumult, God knows what. I'll be
tormented to my dying day, I shall become like one of those
wretches I've run into in Chelsea, those vain, long-haired
fools in velvet jackets-- harried, weak, enamored only of their
sticky palettes. . . ."
But the demon must have been very potent. At the end of
the winter semester, without a word to his father (thereby
hurting him deeply), Frank went off in third class to Italy, to
return a month later directly to the university, suntanned and
joyous, as if he had rid himself once and for all of the murky
fever of creation.
Then, with the advent of summer vacation, he invited
Simpson for a stay at his father's and Simpson accepted in a
burst of gratitude, for he was thinking with horror of the
usual return home to his peaceful northern town where some
shocking crime occurred every month, and to his parson father,
a gentle, harmless, but totally insane man who devoted more
attention to his harp and his chamber metaphysics than to his
flock.
The contemplation of beauty, whether it be a uniquely
tinted sunset, a radiant face, or a work of art, makes us
glance back unwittingly at our personal past and juxtapose
ourselves and our inner being with the utterly unattainable
beauty revealed to us. That is why Simpson, in front of whom
the long-dead Venetian girl had just risen in her cambric and
velvet, now reminisced, as he ambled along the violet dirt of
the lane, soundless at this evening hour; he reminisced about
his friendship with Frank, about his father's harp, about his
own cramped, cheerless youth. The resonant forest stillness was
complemented now and then by the crackle of a branch touched
one knew not by whom. A red squirrel scurried down a tree
trunk, ran across to a neighboring trunk with its bushy tail
erect, and darted up again. In the soft flow of sunlight
between two tongues of foliage midges circled like golden dust,
and a bumblebee, entangled in the heavy lacework of a fern,
already buzzed with a more reserved, evening tone.
Simpson sat down on a bench spattered with the white
traces of dried bird droppings, and hunched over, propping his
sharp elbows on his knees. He sensed the onset of an auditory
hallucination that had afflicted him since childhood. When in a
meadow, or, as now, in a quiet, already duskening wood, he
would involuntarily begin to wonder if, through this silence,
he might perhaps hear the entire, enormous world traversing
space with a melodious whistle, the bustle of distant cities,
the pounding of sea waves, the singing of telegraph wires above
the deserts. Gradually his hearing, guided by his thoughts,
began to detect those sounds in earnest. He could hear the
chugging of a train, even though the tracks might have been
dozens of miles away; then the clanging and screeching of
wheels and--as his recondite hearing grew ever more acute--the
passengers' voices, their coughs and laughter, the rustling of
their newspapers, and, finally, plunging totally into his
acoustic mirage, he clearly distinguished their heartbeat, and
the rolling crescendo of that beat, that drone, that clangor,
deafened Simpson. He opened his eyes with a shudder and
realized that the pounding was that of his own heart.
"Lugano, Como, Venice . . . ," he murmured as he sat on
the bench under a soundless hazelnut tree, and right away he
heard the subdued plashing of sunny towns, and then, closer,
the tinkling of bells, the whistle of pigeon wings, a
high-pitched laugh akin to the laugh of Maureen, and the
ceaseless shuffling of unseen passersby. He wanted to halt his
hearing there, but his hearing, like a torrent, rushed ever
deeper. Another instant and, unable now to halt his
extraordinary plunge, he was hearing not only their footfalls
but their hearts. Millions of hearts were swelling and
thundering, and Simpson, coming fully to his senses, realized
that all those sounds, all those hearts were
concentrated in the frenzied beat of his own.
He raised his head. A light wind, like the motion of a
silk cape, passed along the avenue. The sun's rays were a
gentle yellow.
He rose with a feeble smile and, forgetting his racquet on
the bench, went toward the house. It was time to dress for
dinner.
3
"It's hot with this fur on, though! No, Colonel, it's only
cat. It's true my Venetian rival wore something more expensive.
But the color is the same, isn't it? A perfect likeness, in
short.'"
"If I dared I'd coat you with varnish, and send Luciani's
canvas up to the attic," courteously countered the Colonel,
who, in spite of his strict principles, was not averse to
challenging a lady as attractive as Maureen to a flirtations
verbal duel. "I would split with laughter," she parried.
"I fear, Mrs. McGore, that we make a terribly poor
background for you," said Frank, with a broad, boyish grin. "We
are crude, complacent anachronisms. Now if your husband were to
don a coat of armor--"
"Fiddlesticks," said McGore. "The impression of antiquity
can be evoked as easily as the impression of color by pressing
one's upper eyelid. On occasion I allow myself the luxury of
imagining today's world, our machines, our fashions, as they
will appear to our descendants four or five hundred years
hence. I assure you that I feel as ancient as a Renaissance
monk."
"Have some more wine, my dear Simpson," offered the
Colonel. Bashful, quiet Simpson, who was seated between McGore
and his wife, had put his large fork to work prematurely,
during the second course when he should have used the small
one, so that he had only the small fork and a large knife for
the meat course, and now, as he manipulated them, one of his
hands had a kind of limp. When the main course was brought
around the second time, he helped himself out of nervousness,
then noticed he was the only one eating and everyone was
waiting impatiently for him to finish. He got so flustered that
he pushed away his still-full plate, nearly knocked over his
glass, and began slowly reddening. He had already come ablaze
several times during dinner, not because he actually had
something to be ashamed about, but because he thought how he
might blush for no reason, and then the pink blood colored his
cheeks, his forehead, even his neck, and it was no more
possible to halt that blind, agonizing, hot flush than to
confine the emerging sun behind its cloud. At the first such
onset he deliberately dropped his napkin, but, when he raised
his head, he was a fearful sight: at any moment his starched
collar would catch fire too. Another time he tried to suppress
the onslaught of the hot, silent wave by addressing a question
to Maureen--whether or not she liked playing lawn tennis--but
Maureen, alas, did not hear him, asked him what he had said,
whereupon, as he repeated his foolish phrase, Simpson instantly
blushed to the point of tears and Maureen, out of charity,
turned away and started on some other topic.
The fact that he was sitting next to her, sensing the
warmth of her cheek and of her shoulder, from which, as in the
painting, the gray fur was slipping, and that she seemed about
to pull it up, but stopped at Simpson's question, extending and
twining her slender, elongated fingers, filled him with such
languor that there was a moist sparkle in his eyes from the
crystal blaze of the wineglasses, and he kept imagining that
the circular table was an illuminated island, slowly revolving,
floating somewhere, gently carrying off those seated around it.
Through the open French windows one could see, in the distance,
the skittle shapes of the terrace balustrade, and the breath of
the blue night air was stifling. Maureen's nostrils inhaled
this air; her soft, totally dark eyes remained unsmiling as
they glided from face to face, even when a smile would faintly
raise a corner of her tender, unpainted lips. Her face remained
within a somewhat swarthy shadow, and only her forehead was
bathed by the levigate light. She said fatuous, funny things.
Everyone laughed, and the wine gave the Colonel a nice flush.
McGore, who was peeling an apple, encircled it with his palm
like a monkey, his small-face with its halo of gray hair
wrinkled from the effort, and the silver knife tightly clutched
in his dark, hairy fist detached endless spirals of red and
yellow peel. Frank's face was not visible to Simpson, since
between them stood a bouquet of flaming, fleshy dahlias in a
sparkling vase.
After supper, which ended with port and coffee, the
Colonel, Maureen, and Frank sat down to play bridge, with a
dummy since the other two did not play. The old restorer went
out, bandy-legged, onto the darkened balcony and Simpson
followed, feeling Maureen's warmth recede behind him.
McGore eased himself with a grunt into a wicker chair near
the balustrade and offered Simpson a cigar. Simpson perched
sideways on the railing and lit up awkwardly, narrowing his
eyes and inflating his cheeks.
"I guess you liked that old rake del Piombo's Venetian
lass," said McGore, releasing a rosy puff of smoke into the
dark.
"Very much," replied Simpson, and added, "Of course, I
don't know anything about pictures--"
"All the same, you liked it," nodded McGore. "Splendid.
That's the first step toward understanding. I, for one, have
dedicated my whole life to this."
"She looks absolutely real," Simpson said pensively. "It's
enough to make one believe mysterious tales about portraits
coming to life. I read somewhere that some king descended from
a canvas, and, as soon as--"
McGore dissolved in a subdued, brittle laugh. "That's
nonsense, of course. But another phenomenon does occur--the
inverse, so to speak."
Simpson glanced at him. In the dark of the night his
starched shirt-front bulged like a whitish hump, and the flame
of his cigar, like a ruby pinecone, illumined his small,
wrinkled face from below. He had had a lot of wine and was,
apparently, in the mood to talk.
"Here is what happens," McGore continued unhurriedly.
"Instead of inviting a painted figure to step out of its frame,
imagine someone managing to step into the picture himself.
Makes you laugh, doesn't it? And yet I've done it many a time.
I have had the good fortune of visiting all the art museums of
Europe, from The Hague to Petersburg and from London to Madrid.
When I found a painting I particularly liked, I would stand
directly in front of it and concentrate all my willpower on one
thought: to enter it. It was an eerie sensation, of course. I
felt like the apostle about to step off his bark onto the
water's surface. But what bliss ensued! Let us say I was facing
a Flemish canvas, with the Holy Family in the foreground,
against a smooth, limpid, landscape. You know, with a road
zigzagging like a white snake, and green hills. Then, finally,
I would take the plunge. I broke free from real life and
entered the painting. A miraculous sensation! The coolness, the
placid air permeated with wax and incense. I became a living
part of the painting and everything around me came alive. The
pilgrims' silhouettes on the road began to move. The Virgin
Mary was saying something in a rapid Flemish patter. The wind
rippled through the conventional flowers. The clouds were
gliding. . . . But the delight did not last long. I would get
the feeling that I was softly congealing, cohering with the
canvas, merging into a film of oil color. Then I would shut my
eyes tight, yank with all my strength, and leap out. There was
a gentle plop, as when you pull your foot out of the mud. I
would open my eyes, and find myself lying on the floor beneath
a splendid but lifeless painting."
Simpson listened with attention and embarrassment. When
McGore paused, he gave a barely perceptible start and looked
around. Everything was as before. Below, the garden breathed
the darkness, one could see the dimly lit dining room through
the glass door, and, in the distance, through another open
doorway, a bright corner of the parlor with three figures
playing cards. What strange things McGore was saying! .. .
"You understand, don't you,'" he continued, shaking off
some scaly ash, "that in another instant the painting would
have sucked me in forever. I would have vanished into its
depths and lived on in its landscape, or else, grown weak with
terror, and lacking the strength either to return to the real
world or to penetrate the new dimension, I would have jelled
into a figure painted on the canvas, like the anachronism Frank
was talking about. Yet, despite the danger, I have yielded to
temptation time after time. . . . Oh, my friend, I've fallen in
love with Madonnas! I remember my first infatuation--a Madonna
with an azure corona, by the delicate Raffaello. . . . Beyond
her, at a distance, two men stood by a column, calmly chatting.
I eavesdropped on their conversation--they were discussing the
worth of some dagger. . . . But the most enchanting Madonna of
all comes from the brush of Bernardo Luini. All his creations
contain the quiet and the delicacy of the lake on whose shore
he was born, Lago Maggiore. The most delicate of masters. His
name even yielded a new adjective, luinesco. His best
Madonna has long, caressingly lowered eyes, and her apparel has
light-blue, rose-red, misty-orange tints. A gaseous, rippling
haze encircles her brow, and that of her reddish-haired infant.
He raises a pale apple toward her, she looks at it lowering her
gentle, elongated eyes . . . Luinesque eyes . . . God, how I
kissed them. . . ."
McGore fell silent and a dreamy smile tinged his thin
lips, lighted by the cigar's flame. Simpson held his breath
and, as before, felt he was slowly gliding off into the night.
"Complications did occur," McGore went on after clearing
his throat. "I got an ache in my kidneys after a goblet of
strong cider that a plump Rubens bacchante once served me, and
I caught such a chill on the foggy, yellow skating rink of one
of the Dutchmen that I went on coughing and bringing up phlegm
for a whole month. That's the kind of thing that
can happen, Mr. Simpson."
McGore's chair creaked as he rose and straightened his
waistcoat. "Got carried away," he remarked dryly. "Time for
bed. God knows how long they'll go on slapping their cards
about. I'm off--good night."
He crossed the dining room and the parlor, nodding to the
players as he went, and disappeared in the shadows beyond.
Simpson was left alone on his balustrade. His ears rang with
McGore's high-pitched voice. The magnificent starry night
reached to the very balcony, and the enormous velvety shapes of
the black trees were motionless. Through the French window,
beyond a band of darkness, he could see the pink-hued parlor
lamp, the table, the players' faces rouged by the light. He saw
the Colonel rise. Frank followed suit. From afar, as if over
the telephone, came the Colonel's voice. "I'm an old man, I
turn in early. Good night, Mrs. McGore."
And Maureen's laughing voice: "I'll go in a minute too. Or
else my husband will be cross with me. . . ."
Simpson heard the door close in the distance behind the
Colonel. Then an extraordinary thing happened. From his vantage
point in the darkness he saw Maureen and Frank, now alone far
off in that lacuna of mellow light, slip into each other's
arms, he saw Maureen fling back her head and bend it back
farther and farther beneath Frank's violent and prolonged kiss.
Then, catching up her fallen fur and giving Frank's hair a
ruffle, she disappeared into the distance with a muffled slam
of the door. Frank smoothed his hair with a smile, thrust his
hands in his pockets, and, whistling softly, crossed the dining
room on his way to the balcony. Simpson was so flabbergasted
that he froze still, his fingers clutching the railing, and
gazed with horror as the starched shirtfront and the dark
shoulder approached through the glistening glass. When he came
out onto the balcony and saw his friend's silhouette in the
dark, Frank gave a slight shudder and bit his lip.
Simpson awkwardly crawled off the railing. His legs were
trembling. He made a heroic effort: "Marvelous night. McGore
and I have bejen chatting out here."
Frank said calmly, "He lies a lot, that McGore. On the
other hand, when he gets going he's worth a listen." "Yes, it's
very curious. . . ." lamely concurred Simpson. "The Big
Dipper," said Frank and yawned with his mouth closed. Then, in
an even voice, he added, "Of course I know that you are a
perfect gentleman, Simpson."
4
Next morning a warm drizzle came pattering, shimmering,
stretching in thin threads across the dark background of the
forest's depths. Only three people came down for
breakfast--first the Colonel and listless, wan Simpson; then
Frank, fresh, bathed, shaved to a high gloss, with an innocent
smile on his overly thin lips.
The Colonel was markedly out of spirits. The night before,
during the bridge game, he had noticed something. Bending down
hastily to retrieve a dropped card, he had seen Frank's knee
pressed against Maureen's. This must be stopped immediately.
For some time already the Colonel had had an inkling that
something was not right. No wonder Frank had rushed off to
Rome, where the McGores always went in the spring. His son was
free to do as he liked, but to stand for something like this
here, at home, in the ancestral castle--no, the most stringent
measures must be taken immediately.
The Colonel's displeasure had a disastrous effect on
Simpson., He had the impression that his presence was a burden
to his host, and was at a loss for a subject of conversation.
Only Frank was placidly jovial as always, and, his teeth
asparkle, munched with gusto on hot toast spread with orange
marmalade.
When they had finished their coffee, the Colonel lit his
pipe and rose.
"Didn't you want to take a look at the new car, Frank?
Let's walk over to the garage. Nothing to do in this rain
anyway."
Then, sensing that poor Simpson had remained mentally
suspended in midair, the Colonel added, "I've got a few good
books here, my dear Simpson. Help yourself if you wish."
Simpson came to with a start and pulled some bulky red
volume down from the shelf. It turned out to be the
Veterinary Herald for 1895.
"I need to have a little talk with you," began the Colonel
when he and Frank had tugged on their crackling raincoats and
walked out into a mist of rain.
Frank gave his father a rapid glance.
"How shall I put it," he pondered, puffing on his pipe.
"Listen, Frank," he said, taking the plunge--and the wet gravel
crunched more succulently under his soles--"it has come to my
attention, it doesn't matter how, or, to put it more simply, I
have noticed . . . Dammit, Frank, what I mean is, what kind of
relations do you have with McGore's wife?"
Frank replied quietly and coolly, "I'd rather not discuss
that with you, Father," meanwhile thinking angrily to himself:
what a scoundrel--he did rat on me!
"Obviously I cannot demand--" began the Colonel, and
stopped short. At tennis, after the first bad shot, he still
managed to control himself.
"Might be a good idea to fix this footbridge," remarked
Frank, hitting a rotten timber with his heel.
"To hell with the bridge!" said the Colonel. This was his
second miss, and the veins swelled on his forehead in an irate
vee.
The chauffeur, who had been banging around with some
buckets by the garage gates, yanked off his checkered cap upon
seeing his master. He was a short, stocky man with a cropped
yellow mustache.
"Morning, sir," he said amiably and pushed open one of the
gates with his shoulder. In the petrol-and-leather-scented
penumbra glimmered an enormous, black, brand-new Rolls-Royce.
"And now let us take a walk in the park," said the Colonel
in a toneless voice when Frank had had his fill of examining
cylinders and levers.
The first thing that happened in the park was that a
large, cold drop of water fell from a branch, inside the
Colonel's collar. And actually it was this drop that made the
cup overflow. After a masticating movement of his lips, as
though rehearsing the words, he abruptly thundered: "I warn
you, Frank, in my house I shall not stand for any adventures of
the French-novel genre. Furthermore, McGore is my friend--can
you understand that or not?"
Frank picked up the racquet Simpson had forgotten on the
bench the previous day. The damp had turned it into a figure
eight. Rotten racquet, Frank thought with revulsion. His
father's words were pounding ponderously past: "I shall not
stand for it," he was saying. "If you cannot behave properly,
then leave. I am displeased with you, Frank, I am terribly
displeased with you. There is something about you that I don't
understand. At university you do poorly at your studies. In
Italy God knows what you were up to. They tell me you paint. I
suppose I'm not worthy of being shown your daubings. Yes,
daubings. I can imagine. . . . A genius indeed! For you
doubtless consider yourself a genius, or, even better, a
futurist. And now we have these love affairs to boot. . . . In
short, unless--"
Here the Colonel noticed that Frank was whistling softly
and non-chalantly through his teeth. The Colonel stopped and
goggled his eyes.
Frank flung the twisted racquet into the bushes like a
boomerang, smiled, and said, "This is all poppycock, Father. I
read in a book on the Afghanistan war about what you did there
and what you were decorated for. It was absolutely foolish,
featherbrained, suicidal, but it was an exploit. That is what
counts. While your disquisitions are poppycock. Good day."
And the Colonel remained standing alone in the middle of
the lane, frozen in wonderment and wrath.
5
The distinctive feature of everything extant is its
monotony. We partake of food at predetermined hours because the
planets, like trains that are never late, depart and arrive at
predetermined times. The average person cannot imagine life
without such a strictly established timetable. But a playful
and sacrilegious mind will find much to amuse it imagining how
people would exist if the day lasted ten hours today,
eighty-five tomorrow, and after tomorrow a few minutes. One can
say a priori that, in England, such uncertainty with regard to
the exact duration of the coming day would lead first of all to
an extraordinary proliferation of betting and sundry other
gambling arrangements. One could lose his entire fortune
because a day lasted a few more hours than he had supposed on
the eve. The planets would become like racehorses, and what
excitement would be aroused by some sorrel Mars as it tackled
the final celestial hurdle! Astronomers would assume
book-makers' functions, the god Apollo would be depicted in a
flaming jockey cap, and the world would merrily go mad.
Unfortunately, however, that is not the way things are.
Exactitude is always grim, and our calendars, where the world's
existence is calculated in advance, are like the schedule of
some inexorable examination. Of course there is something
soothing and insouciant about this regimen devised by a cosmic
Frederick Taylor. Yet how splendidly, how radiantly the world's
monotony is interrupted now and then by the book of a genius, a
comet, a crime, or even simply by a single sleepless night. Our
laws, though--our pulse, our digestion are firmly linked to the
harmonious motion of the stars, and any attempt to disturb this
regularity is punished, at worst by beheading, at best by a
headache. Then again, the world was unquestionably created with
good intentions and it is no one's fault if it sometimes grows
boring, if the music of the spheres reminds some of us of the
endless repetitions of a hurdy-gurdy.
Simpson was particularly conscious of this monotony. He
found it somehow terrifying that today, too, breakfast would be
followed by lunch, tea by supper, with inviolable regularity.
He wanted to scream at the thought that things would continue
like that all his life, he wanted to struggle like someone who
has awakened in his coffin. The drizzle was still shimmering
outside the window, and having to stay indoors made his ears
ring as they do when you have a fever. McGore spent the whole
day in the workshop that had been set up for him in one of the
castle's towers. He was busy restoring the varnish of a small,
dark picture painted on wood. The workshop smelted of glue,
turpentine, and garlic, which is used for removing greasy spots
from paintings. On a small carpenter's bench near the press
sparkled retorts containing hydrochloric acid and alcohol;
scattered about lay scraps of flannel, nostriled sponges,
assorted scrapers. McGore was wearing an old dressing gown,
glasses, a shirt with no starched collar, and a stud nearly the
size of a doorbell button protruding right under his Adam's
apple; his neck was thin, gray, and covered with senile
excrescences, and a black skullcap covered his bald spot. With
a delicate rotary rubbing of his fingers already familiar to
the reader, he was sprinkling a pinch of ground tar, carefully
rubbing it into the painting so that the old, yellowed varnish,
abraded by the powdery particles, itself turned into dry dust.
The castle's other denizens sat in the parlor. The Colonel
had angrily unfolded a giant newspaper and, as he gradually
cooled down, was reading aloud an emphatically conservative
article. Then Maureen and Frank got involved in a game of
Ping-Pong. The little celluloid ball, with its crackly,
melancholy ring, flew back and forth across the green net
intersecting the long table, and of course Frank played
masterfully, moving only his wrist as he nimbly flicked the
thin wooden paddle left and right.
Simpson traversed all the rooms, biting his lips and
adjusting his pince-nez. Eventually he reached the gallery.
Pale as death, carefully closing behind him the heavy, silent
door, he tiptoed up to Fra Bastiano del Piombo's
Veneziana. She greeted him with her familiar opaque
gaze, and her long fingers paused on their way to her fur wrap,
to the slipping crimson folds. Caressed by a whiff of honeyed
darkness, he glanced into the depths of the window that
interrupted the black background. Sand-tinted clouds stretched
across the greenish blue; toward them rose dark, fractured
cliffs amid which wound a pale-hued trail, while lower down
there were indistinct wooden huts, and, in one of them, Simpson
thought he saw a point of light flicker for an instant. As he
peered through this ethereal window, he sensed that the
Venetian lady was smiling, but his swift glance failed to catch
that smile; only the shaded right corner of her gently joined
lips was slightly raised. At that moment something within him
deliciously gave way, and he yielded totally to the picture's
warm enchantment. One must bear in mind that he was a man of
morbidly rapturous temperament, that he had no idea of life's
realities, and that, for him, impressionability took the place
of intellect. A cold tremor, like a quick dry hand, brushed his
back, and he realized immediately what he must do. However,
when he looked around and saw the sheen of parquet, the table,
and the blind white gloss of the paintings where the drizzly
light pouring through the window fell on them, he had a feeling
of shame and fear. And, in spite of another momentary surge of
the previous enchantment, he already knew that he could hardly
carry out what, a minute ago, he could have done unthinkingly.
Fixing his eyes on the Veneziana's face, he backed away
from her and suddenly flung his arms apart. His coccyx banged
painfully on something. He looked around and saw the black
table behind him. Trying to think about nothing, he climbed
onto it, stood up fully erect facing the Venetian lady, and
once again, with an upward sweep of his arms, prepared to fly
to her.
"Astonishing way to admire a painting. Invented it
yourself, did you?"
It was Frank. He was standing, legs apart, in the doorway
and gazing at Simpson with icy derision.
With a wild glint of pince-nez lenses in his direction,
Simpson staggered awkwardly, like an alarmed lunatic. Then he
hunched over, flushed hotly, and clambered clumsily to the
floor.
Frank's face wrinkled with acute revulsion as he silently
left the room. Simpson lunged after him.
"Please, I beg you, don't tell anyone. . . ." Without
turning or stopping, Frank gave a squeamish shrug.
6
Toward evening the rain unexpectedly ceased. Someone,
remembering, had turned off the taps. A humid orange sunset
came aquiver amid the boughs, broadened, was reflected in all
the puddles simultaneously. Dour little McGore was dislodged
from his tower by force.
He smelled of turpentine, and had burned his hand with a
hot iron. He reluctantly pulled on his black coat, turned up
the collar, and went out with the others for a stroll. Only
Simpson stayed home, on the pretext that he absolutely mu
st answer a letter brought by the evening post. Actually
no answer was required, since it was from the university
milkman and demanded immediate payment of a bill for two
shillings and ninepence.
For a long time Simpson sat in the advancing twilight,
leaning back aimlessly in the leather armchair. Then, with a
shudder, he realized he was falling asleep, and started
thinking how he could get away from the castle as quickly as
possible. The simplest way would be to say his father was ill:
like many bashful people, Simpson was capable of lying without
batting an eyelash. Yet it was difficult for him to leave.
Something dark and delicious held him back. How attractive the
dark rocks looked in the fenestral chasm. . . . What a joy it
would be to embrace her shoulder, take from her left hand the
basket with its yellow fruit, to walk off peacefully with her
along that pale path into the penumbra of the Venetian evening.
. . .
Once again he caught himself falling asleep. He got up and
washed his hands. From downstairs sounded the spherical,
dignified dinner gong.
Thus from constellation to constellation, from meal to
meal, proceeds the world, and so does this tale. But its
monotony will now be broken by an incredible miracle, an
unheard-of adventure. Of course neither McGore, who had again
painstakingly freed of glossy red ribbons the faceted nudity of
an apple, nor the Colonel, once more agreeably flushed after
four glasses of port (not to mention two of white Burgundy) had
any way of knowing what woes the morrow would bring. Dinner was
followed by the invariable game of bridge, during which the
Colonel noticed with pleasure that Frank and Maureen did not
even glance at each other. McGore went off to work; Simpson
seated himself in a corner and opened a portfolio of prints,
glancing only a couple of times from his corner at the players,
having marveled in passing that Frank was so cold toward him,
while Maureen seemed to have faded somehow, to have yielded her
place to another. . . . How insignificant these thoughts were
compared to the sublime anticipation, the enormous excitement
that he now tried to outwit by examining indistinct
lithographs.
When they were parting company, and Maureen nodded to him
with a good-night smile, he absently, unabashedly, smiled back.
7
That night, sometime after one o'clock, the old watchman,
who had once worked as groom for the Colonel's father, was, as
usual, taking a short walk along the park lanes. He knew
perfectly well that his duty was purely perfunctory, since the
location was exceptionally peaceful. He invariably turned in at
eight, the alarm would go off with a clatter at one, and the
watchman (a giant of an old fellow with venerable gray
side-whiskers, which, incidentally, the gardener's children
liked to tug) would awaken, light up his pipe, and clamber out
into the night. Having once made the rounds of the dark,
tranquil park, he would return to his small room, immediately
undress, and, clad only in an imperishable undershirt that went
very well with his whiskers, go back to bed and sleep through
till morning.
That night, however, the old watchman noticed something
that was not to his liking. He noticed from the park that one
window of the castle was feebly illuminated. He knew with
absolute precision that it was a window of the hall where the
precious paintings were hung. Since he was an exceptionally
cowardly old chap, he decided to pretend to himself that he had
not noticed that strange light. But his conscientiousness got
the upper hand, and he calmly determined that, while it was his
duty to ascertain that there were no thieves in the park, he
had no obligation to chase thieves within the house. And having
thus determined, the old man went back to his quarters with a
clear conscience--he lived in a little brick house by the
garage--and straightaway fell into a dead man's sleep, which
would have been impervious even to the roar of the new black
car, had someone started it up in jest, deliberately opening
the muffler cutout.
Thus the pleasant, innocuous old fellow, like some
guardian angel, momentarily traverses this narrative and
rapidly vanishes into the misty domains whence he was evoked by
a whim of the pen.
8
But something really did happen in the castle. Simpson
awoke exactly at midnight. He had just fallen asleep and, as
sometimes happens, the very act of falling asleep was what woke
him. Propping himself on one arm, he looked into the darkness.
His heart was thumping rapidly because he sensed that Maureen
had entered his room. Just now, in his momentary dream, he had
been talking to her, helping her climb the waxen path between
black cliffs with their occasional glossy, oil-paint fissures.
Now and then a dulcet breeze made the narrow white headdress
quiver gently, like a sheet of thin paper, on her dark hair.
With a stifled exclamation Simpson felt for the switch.
The light came in a spurt. There was no one in the room. He
felt an acute sting of disappointment and lapsed into thought,
shaking his head like a drunk. Then, moving drowsily, he rose
from the bed and started to dress, listlessly smacking his
lips. He was guided by a vague sensation that he must dress
severely and smartly. So it was with a kind of somnolent
meticulousness that he buttoned his low waistcoat on his belly,
tied the black bow of his tie, and for a long time pinched with
two fingers at a nonexistent little worm on the satin lapel of
his jacket. Vaguely recollecting that the simplest way into the
gallery was from outdoors, he slipped out like a silent breeze
through the French window into the dark, humid garden. Looking
as if they had been doused with mercury, black bushes glistened
in the starlight. Somewhere an owl was hooting. With a light,
quick step Simpson walked across the lawn, amid gray bushes,
rounding the massive house. For a moment he was sobered by the
night's freshness and the intensely shining stars. He stopped,
bent over, and then collapsed like an empty suit of clothes
onto the grass in the narrow interstice between flower bed and
castle wall. A wave of drowsiness came over him, and he tried
to shake it off with a jerk of his shoulder. He had to hurry.
She was waiting. He thought he heard her insistent whisper. . .
.
He was unaware of how he had got up, gone indoors, and
switched on the lights, bathing Luciani's canvas in a warm
sheen. The Venetian girl stood half-facing him, alive and
three-dimensional. Her dark eyes gazed into his without the
sparkle, the rosy fabric of her blouse set off with an
unhabitual warmth the dark-hued beauty of her neck and the
delicate creases under her ear. A gently mocking smile was
frozen at the right corner of her expectantly joined lips. Her
long fingers, spread in twos, stretched toward her shoulder,
from which the fur and velvet were about to fall.
And Simpson, with a profound sigh, moved toward her and
effort-lessly entered the painting. A marvelous freshness
immediately made his head spin. There was a scent of myrtle and
of wax, with a very faint whiff of lemon. He was standing in a
bare black room of some kind, by a window that opened on
evening, and at his very side stood a real, Venetian,
Maureen--tall, gorgeous, all aglow from within. He realized
that the miracle had happened, and slowly moved toward her.
With a sidewise smile la Veneziana gently adjusted her fur and,
lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small lemon.
Without taking his eyes off her now playfully mobile eyes, he
accepted the yellow fruit from her hand, and, as soon as he
felt its firm, roughish coolness and the dry warmth of her long
fingers, an incredible bliss came to a boil within him and
began deliciously burbling. Then, with a start, he looked
behind him toward the window. There, along a pale path amid
some rocks, walked blue silhouettes with hoods and small
lanterns. Simpson looked about the room in which he was
standing, but without any awareness of a floor beneath his
feet. In the distance, instead of a fourth wall, a far,
familiar hall glimmered like water, with the black island of a
table at its center. It was then that a sudden terror made him
compress the cold little lemon. The enchantment had dissolved.
He tried looking to his left at the girl but was unable to turn
his neck. He was mired like a fly in honey--he gave a jerk and
got stuck, feeling his blood and flesh and clothing turning
into paint, growing into the varnish, drying on the canvas. He
had become part of the painting, depicted in a ridiculous pose
next to the Veneziana, and, directly in front of him, even more
distinct than before, stretched the hall, filled with live,
terrestrial air that, henceforth, he would not breathe.
9
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 eyeglass case and, without putting on
the glasses 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 glasses
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 in-advertently 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 hell 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
assure 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--1 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, scrapers, and went to work. As he scraped
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 respect-fill 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
flustered 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
grass. 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 God . . ."
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.
