A Masterpiece of Revenge (7 page)

Staggering into the bedroom, I collapsed onto my bed and fell into a troubled sleep.

I dreamt I was in the street, looking around wildly for a phone booth so that I could call Jean-Louis. When I found one, and tried feverishly to dial his number, the buttons cracked and crumbled to the ground like rotten teeth. I got down on all fours and tried to pick them up and stick them back on, but they kept slipping between my fingers. Finally, just when I thought I'd done it, another one was missing. When I found it, and began desperately to push it, it dissolved into marshmallow beneath my finger.

I awoke with a start, sweating profusely yet chilled to the bone. I cast my eyes around the room, expecting to see some horrific sight. I heard someone groan. It was me — I had groaned. Tears were streaming down my cheeks.

I went to the window and opened it wide. Morning was dawning, beautiful but chill. Paris was still there, spread out against the crystal and cloudless sky.

For a second I was prepared to find solace in this view, when a crow suddenly swooped down and landed on the ledge of my balcony A bad sign, this angular, ungainly bird, this harbinger of evil tidings and unanswerable questions.

I realized, with the clarity of the growing dawn, that I would have to watch myself carefully, or else fall deeply, irrevocably perhaps, into paranoia.

A
nguish. Hate. Rage. Fear. Confusion. Most of all, confusion. On the dawn of this new day, where was I to start?

There was always my work, my professional evaluations — those page proofs, which my publisher expected me to finish going over by mid-October. That left me with barely two weeks to reread what had taken me years of painstaking work.

The book was called
The Last Works of the Greatest Painters, or. The Magnificent Trembling of Age
. The subtitle was from Chateaubriand, who, while discussing
The Deluge
, one of Poussin's final works, was reminded of “something letting go.” The paintings, he said, showed “the hand of an old man.”

Poussin was well acquainted with tremors of the hand. He wrote about them in his last letters, in which he complains of “the infirmity of my trembling hand, which will no longer do my bidding.''

He was suffering from Parkinson's disease. How I had tried to find the right way to express his tragic struggle for control.

An artist's final work very often marks the advent of something new. My book argued that only at the end of his life was Poussin finally beginning to express his true self. This is precisely what Corot suggested on the eve of his own death: “I perceive things as I never have before,” he wrote. “Suddenly it seems to me that not until now have I known how to paint the sky.”

Themistocles and countless others have often said that man takes his leave of life when he is finally and truly ready to do so.

There was nothing ennobling about the shaking of my own hand, however. As I read over the proofs I was shocked at what I found. My reflections about these twilight works now appeared as confused as the words I was spewing out to express them. Rather than holding to a central theme, I was spinning my rhetorical wheels. It seemed to me, as I reread the pages, that they were crammed with febrile, flighty metaphors.

My eyesight had also changed. I looked at things differently. Studying the various reproductions scattered across my desk, all I could see were dark and evil omens. In van Gogh's
Church at Auvers
, a wonderful painting, my eyes focused on the crows with wings black as night.

In
The Deluge
, my eyes riveted on the drowning man, seen extending his arm helplessly and hopelessly toward a sky streaked with lightning. Then on the shipwreck, the black rocks, the bolt of lightning splitting the darkened sky.

Death, in everything and everywhere.

I was descending into madness. What was there to stop me? That silly list of suspects? Adalbert, Calmette, Silberman. I repeated them over and over like mantras.

Adalbert. Where would I find him? At an auction, of course.

Putting on my coat, I hurried to Drouot's, Paris's premier auction house. I knew I would find him there. On that particular Monday, they were selling one of the thousands upon thousands of “authentic” Corots floating about in the world.

He was indeed there, in the company of a German client. He looked nervous. The sale had put him into a full sweat. He clearly knew the thing was a fake. That tic he had of shrugging one shoulder was more pronounced than usual.

How flabby his cheeks looked. I'd never noticed that before, and I found it slightly revolting. He hurried toward me, his hand extended in greeting. A descriptive adjective for the man came to mind: “servile.” He was one of the most unctuously servile and cowardly men I had ever met.

I became aware that I had become suspicious and ungenerous. Perhaps the time had come for me to let this side of my character speak for me. Perhaps it would lead me out of this mess.

We chatted for a few minutes, then he was called away. Nothing he said raised any suspicions. He seemed his normal, servile self. He didn't even mention the matter of the Dürer.

Frustrated, I went home. I had barely closed the door when the phone rang. It was Calmette, my banker and second suspect. A strange coincidence, I thought, his calling at that particular moment. We rarely talked.

“Charles old man, so sorry to bother you, but I wanted to let you know that the fluctuations in interest rates will do a little temporary damage to your financial portfolio.”

What a moment to discuss this! This was Calmette through and through. As if I could have cared in the slightest about long-term interest rates!

“Your overseas investments have experienced rather heavy losses. The Asian market, you know. But this is not the moment to think of selling them.”

I found his commiseration a little oily. He was enjoying giving me bad news. I could tell he was goading me because I had lost a little money.

“My dear Michel,” I said in as cavalier a manner as I could manage, “this is of no importance whatsoever. I foresee no need for liquidity in the coming months.”

My reaction seemed to deflate him a little. He explained that it would nonetheless be wise to stay in the Asian market. Things were bound to look up.

Asian markets. What did I care? But when he told me that he himself had just returned from Japan, where he had opened a branch office, I listened carefully. Calmette was many things, but he was no liar. I believed he really had just returned from Japan.

This meant that he could not have sent the photographs.

Then, after hanging up the phone, I remembered there used to be a dealer in postcards who made extra money by offering to have letters or cards sent from anywhere in the world — making the recipient believe that the sender had actually been there.

No, that was a ridiculous idea. I had to take Calmette off the list.

I decided to search out my third suspect, Silberman, so I went down to the street to hail a cab and promptly tripped on the sidewalk. If I hadn't managed to grab hold of a lamppost I would certainly have fallen and might have broken my leg.

What a silly, stupid thing to do. My son was in danger and needed me. Were something to happen to me, were I immobilized for some reason, or became sick, I wouldn't be able to face the crisis ahead. I reminded myself that I was after all sixty-two years old, no longer a young man. Life at that age is contingent. Several of my friends were already buried in Pére-Lachaise cemetery, final resting place for so many luminaries. The strain on my heart and my nerves these last few weeks was severe. I was feeling decidedly fragile.

Hobbling on one leg, I hailed a cab and collapsed into the backseat. My ankle had begun to swell and was throbbing with pain. Probably sprained. Another sign that the world was against me.

By this point I had begun seeing signs everywhere. Every nerve and hair was alert to them, miniature antennae alive to the slightest sound, the faintest odor. The smallest things unnerved me: a chair sticking out, a dripping faucet, the shape of a cloud.

I felt the constant urge to check and recheck everything: the oven gas, the chain on my front door, the window locks, my wallet. I did this without thinking. I was also fretting ceaselessly about my appearance, like some insecure teenager worried whether his zipper is up. I suppose my mind was trying to distract me from greater worries.

When I walked into Silberman's gallery, my first reaction was that the world had gone mad, stark, raving, and completely mad. The paintings hanging on the walls were brutal and shocking. Huge clashes of colors, scenes of flagellation and sadistic devastation, bodies writhing in agony.

It took me a moment to see what they actually were: modern depictions of Saint Sebastian's martyrdom. How, I wondered, could anyone massacre color to quite that extent?

The gallery's owner, Richard Dompierre, stood in the middle of these so-called works of art, barking orders and clapping his hands. The pathetic old queen.

“Ah, Charles! My dear, dear friend,” he cried, nearly melting into my arms when I asked for news of Silberman.

Distraught, Dompierre told me that Silberman had spent the last three weeks in jail. He stood accused of fraud, knowingly trying to sell a forgery. It was all a monstrous frame-up perpetrated by enemies and competitors. By locking up his closest friend and business associate they were trying to put him, Dompierre, out of business.

Calmette and Silberman had alibis. I was back to Adalbert.

I briefly offered Dompierre my sympathies and hobbled out of the gallery feeling depressed. How ridiculous all my suspicions were. They were getting me nowhere. I was a pathetic old fool unable to help his own son. All I was good for was pontificating.

Good heavens. I would be late for my weekly lecture at the College.

When I reached the lecture hall, the eyes of fifty restless students trained on me — young, leering, vibrant faces. What had I to teach them? I was suddenly seized with the desire to fling up my hands and run away. Couldn't they see I wasn't who they thought I was? What was the point of chatting on about art? It was so pointless and so silly

Nonetheless, my lecture that day was — I must say — quite brilliant. I discussed the symbolic rites and rituals frequently involved in artistic creation. My anxieties must have given me a nervous energy, for my remarks sparkled. Afterward, curiously, I felt a little better. So did my ankle.

Back home, I did three very small things that helped reestablish order in my life, restore a semblance of peace: I cleaned up a bit, opened the curtains to let in some light, and put on a Vivaldi concerto. The best medicine of all was when Jean-Louis called, sounding as happy and full of life as ever. For a moment my fears dissolved.

The next morning, when I went down to get the mail, they returned in full force. With each step, my heart tightened. I looked with terror at the little pile of mail in my box, like a sick old man staring at a letter containing his test results.

It was there of course. The envelope. Postmarked Oslo.

I attempted to control my breathing. I climbed the stairs slowly and deliberately, and opened the door to my apartment without haste. Then I sat in my chair and calmly slit open the letter, as if it were a mailing from a charitable society. All this took an enormous effort of will.

I drew out the photograph of Jean-Louis. He was captured jogging through some beautiful countryside. You could see the sea far off in the distance, in the middle distance were towering trees, and, on the left-hand side, some large rocks. The photo had the composition of a painting, I noted. It was slightly overexposed.

I was forcing myself to maintain my composure, when something in the picture made me cry out in rage and fear.

On Jean-Louis's forehead, exactly between his eyes, was a small point of red light, perfectly round and precise. My God. A laser sight from a high-powered rifle, the sort that can kill from two hundred yards away. That was what made that sort of light. Practically every Hollywood action film these days featured them.

Part of me knew that this idea was crazy, but the supposition was enough to unhinge me. The word “laser” echoed over and over in my brain, followed by images of… of— I couldn't bear it — images of horror. A voice was telling me something.

“Terrible forces are at work here.”

A voice? Whose voice? Where? I was inside my apartment. Was somebody else also inside? I ran down the hall into the kitchen, then into my bedroom. I was dimly aware that I was throwing open drawers in my dresser — looking for what I now have no idea — then collapsed in a heap on my bed and broke down in sobs.

I was a complete mess, a creature of hysteria and madness, alternating moans and prayers and incoherent cries of anguish. I implored God, I implored my invisible enemy. Had I known who my tormentor was I would have run to him and prostrated myself. I, Charles Vermeille!

For weeks I had been caught in the black magic of despair. Nothing made sense but everything was ominous, and fanatically, terribly meaningful. I grasped at straws. It was all like Kafka, or Emile Zola.

Emile Zola. My apartment building was located on rue Vineuse, which was the setting Zola had chosen for that grim melodrama,
A Page of Love
. The novel is about a good woman whose heart is supposedly taken over by “evil.”

It all starts with the death of her child. Suddenly this had deep resonance in my soul.

I ran to my library to find a copy of that dreary little book. It had been years since I'd read it, but I was sure I had one somewhere. I found it.

One never reads the same book twice. That is a simple and profound truth. It is not the words that have changed, but the person reading them. I had hardly remarked on the novel the first time I read it. On that day, however, every sentence seemed a reflection of my predicament. That poor woman! She falls in love with a married man, and for this she must endure horrific punishment. The child must die.