Days Like Today (16 page)

The Madonna of New Beginnings,
Stratis thought:
holding a
microwave and a concrete mixer
. Or was she talking about his continued longing for Julia?

‘If there’s only one,’ he told her, ‘you can’t replace it.’

‘You actually like this thing?’

‘Well, it isn’t very good, but the eyes are nice.’

Nina stiffened to attention, like a jealous woman who hears another woman’s looks praised by the man she loves. She pushed her head forward to examine the picture. Stratis stepped back. He’d already seen more than enough to know that inch for inch, and line for line, the sketch was copied from his grandfather’s icon.

Nina wanted to go on somewhere for a cup of coffee or a meal or maybe a film. As they walked to the subway entrance,
she made sure of his interest by saying that she’d seen Julia recently, with the new boyfriend. ‘I don’t think he’s anything to worry about,’ she told him. ‘That won’t last.’

How long did it last with me?
he thought. And was there still a chance that she’d come back? If the situation had been reversed, he wouldn’t have gone back. He’d never return to someone he’d left. Apparently, other people did. He’d finally accepted the fact that she’d gone, but he still couldn’t believe that she preferred the total loser she was going out with now.

Nina said, ‘I think it’s her way of getting to know people. A way of being democratic. She had this very sheltered upbringing and she wants to know about the world. For a man, that’s easy. But for some women – the only way you ever get to know a cross-section of society is to sleep around.’

He shouldn’t listen. She wanted him herself; she’d speak against Julia in order to put herself in a better light. And maybe she’d already been telling him lies. He was so eager to hear any news, even to hear Julia’s name spoken, that he’d accept all information, true or made up. He’d never understood stories in the papers about men who set out to pursue women after being rejected, and who would then kidnap them or shoot them. Now he understood completely.

‘I have an aunt,’ he said, ‘who tells me that sometimes “young people”, as she puts it, use their sexuality to go slumming: to see how the other half loves.’

‘Slumming? I don’t see the connection.’

‘You attach yourself to the person without really having
to enter the life, but that’s the way you find out about it.’

‘I still don’t see it,’ Nina said. ‘Slumming?’

‘Isn’t that what you were saying? Anyway, it’s just a theory. She has a lot of them.’

*

Later that day he began to feel unsure about the similarity of his grandfather’s icon to the sketch in the show. He went into the old man’s study – a thing no one else would dream of doing, and which he’d never done without permission except for that once in his childhood. His heart began to beat loudly and heavily, all the way up to his throat, as he pulled aside the curtain and looked at the painting. But, while he studied it, he forgot what the sketch had been like.

The next day he went back to the gallery. Standing in front of the sketch again, he felt the same, odd sense of recognition. But now he had to laugh at the thought that – unless he could see the two together – he was never going to be able to tell for sure how closely his grandfather’s icon resembled the picture on the paper.

Going out of the ground-level forecourt, he noticed a man sitting on the stairs to the building’s side door. The man looked like a beggar: he was old and emaciated and he wore a frayed suit, a stained shirt and a battered, antiquated hat; Stratis thought at first that he had stopped to rest before attempting the main staircase in the warm, sunny weather.

As he came closer, he saw that the man had propped a shabby briefcase against the steps and a little sign that said,
LOST
, underneath which was pasted a copy of the museum sketch: the one of the stolen icon.

When he got right up to the man, he was able to read what had been printed below the sketch:
Please help to relieve the
suffering of our people until the Virgin returns to the island
. Next to the briefcase was a stack of photocopies of the picture.

‘How much?’ Stratis asked.

The old man held up a finger, his grave demeanor making the motion seem like a warning. Stratis gave him a dollar and took one of the copies. Then, on impulse, he added a five-dollar bill.

He moved on, deciding that it was such a good day to be outdoors – despite the traffic and the crowds – that he’d walk back to his grandfather’s house.

The picture-seller or beggar, or whatever he was, must have been close behind him, following an impulse of his own; or perhaps he’d read beyond the young man’s gesture of sympathy to a deeper interest that could be tapped. At any rate, the next morning, there he was on the front steps of the house.

Stratis spoke to him and was answered in a Greek that was difficult to understand. Greek changed to halting, broken English that described the painting and installation of the icon in the sixteenth century, and the events leading up to its theft. That part of the speech must have been memorized as, immediately afterwards, the man reverted to his own language: he held up one of his photocopies and he kept touching the face of the Madonna as he talked. Stratis nodded. He handed over some more money but, as the
words became more emotional and at the same time entirely unintelligible, he imitated one of his grandfather’s gestures – the one that meant ‘No more’ – and walked away down the street.

On his return early that afternoon the man was still there, wanting to talk. Stratis turned his face away.

He knocked on the study door as soon as his grandfather had finished his afternoon nap. He took the catalogue with him, and the piece of paper, which he opened up so that the sketch showed. He tapped his finger on a corner of it.

‘That old man outside says it was stolen.’

‘They aren’t the same,’ his grandfather told him. ‘Even if they look alike, they aren’t. Maybe mine was stolen once upon a time, but it isn’t stolen now. It belongs to me. I bought it in good faith.’

‘He says it was taken out of the church.’

‘It was probably sold by a priest or one of the monks. To get money for wine. They drink up all the wine and then they need more.’

‘It’s your island, isn’t it? And you’ve never been back.’

‘There’s nothing to go back for. It was always one of those places out of the Dark Ages and it’s even worse now. The people are like animals: they stare, they grunt; no thought ever enters their heads.’

‘That’s because they’re poor. That’s what poverty does to people.’

‘They aren’t poor. You don’t know what poverty is. Look at the poverty of the past and what all those people created in spite of it.’

‘Only a few did the creating. They were the ones with the money.’

‘No. They got the money because they deserved to have it. The others were all busy staring into the distance and grunting. It’s the same nowadays: they’ve got food and clothes and a roof over their heads and all the time in the world. So, what do they do with it? They go to those disco places. And when they’re not doing that, they’ve got the earphones on. You see their heads bobbing and their feet stamping. That isn’t music. What is that? It’s a constant rhythm over and over. No melody, no change. It’s a masturbation for the ears. That’s what they all need – some simple pattern that they can keep repeating. Then they’re happy. It’s like hypnotizing a chicken. And as if that isn’t enough, they take drugs.’

‘He says the picture was stolen out of the church by a choirboy.’

‘I bought that icon in Athens, in good faith. I don’t have the receipt because I lost it in the war. You think I was worrying about a piece of paper when we lost houses and people? And countries?’

‘You were right here in town during the war.’

‘The first war. I fought in the first war on the Albanian frontier. And after that we had the influenza: the Asian flu. We thought it came from the east but they’re saying now that it was like the Spanish flu. You could go down the streets in Athens and they were deserted. Everybody had it. The only reason I escaped was that I’d had malaria in the army. If you’d had malaria, you didn’t catch it.’

‘Grandfather, this man says that they’ve prayed for over seventy years to get their picture back. The luck of the island depends on it.’

‘Oh, really? Was that island so lucky in the days when they had it? Don’t forget what my name means.’

‘“The one who walks straight.”’

‘And your name too. That means you should have your head screwed on right, not that you should listen to lies and fables. I remember that church, all falling down, all rotting. And the priests in their long hair, like a bunch of dirty old women with beards. They could tell anybody what to do, because God told them, you know. I think it’s a good thing that somebody took that painting away. It’s another story like the Elgin marbles; what would they be now if the British hadn’t put them in the museum? The Turks used the Acropolis as a powder magazine: they could all have blown up. And that painting – that icon would be just shreds by now. But anyway, it isn’t the same one. I remember what it looked like and it isn’t the same.’

‘It looks exactly like the sketch. Here, I’ll show you.’

‘No. All those things were done to a standard. They kept on with the same face and pose for centuries. The experts say they can tell one from the other, if you want to believe them. But I don’t think so.’

‘You could have an expert look at yours.’

‘What for? I know what it is. Even if it’s a copy, I like it. And it isn’t insured. Nobody knows that it’s here. Some professor of art walks into this house and by the end of the week everybody has a note in a book that says these paintings can
be found at this address. How do things get stolen? Because stupid people insure them and any crook can get a job in one of those companies, where he can look up the list of what you’ve got that’s worth stealing.’

‘Everything else you’ve got is insured.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this, Stratis. It doesn’t concern you or anybody else. So don’t go telling everybody what’s in your grandfather’s house, OK? You hear what I’m telling you?’

‘OK, OK. Of course I wouldn’t. I just feel sorry for that island, where everything’s going wrong. And that old man outside –’

‘That old man is a sneaky old crook who sees another Greek with a big house. You forget him. I’ve known these people all my life. They’re not worth wiping your feet on.’

‘But I’ve got a photocopy of the sketch. We could compare them right now.’

‘I told you, all those damn Christ pictures look alike.’

‘It isn’t Christ. It’s the Madonna.’

‘Same difference. And it’s all lies, anyway.’

‘Not for the people who believe.’

‘What are you talking about? An icon doesn’t mean anything. It’s a representation of meaning. You know: a picture. The real thing … the real thing can’t be shown. It isn’t visible. A religious picture simply represents. Everything used to be that way once. Now people want to have a painting for what it is.’ He gestured towards the little Daumier and the Hobbema that Stratis had never appreciated until
one day he’d looked at it again and began to like it, as if he’d never seen it before.

‘But he’s here. And he’s here about the icon – as far as I can figure out. How did he know what yours looks like?’

‘He doesn’t. That thing on the paper isn’t mine. It’s the one in the show.’

‘He wouldn’t know about that one, either. How could he get a sketch of the icon at the gallery?’

‘Easy You say the story about the lost picture was in the papers before this show opened? Well, he paid the price of admission once: saw that sketch, drew his own copy of it on some paper that looked the same size, and made a hundred photostats. Then he sells them with this line he’s got about collecting for the island. Oh, he’s collecting, all right.’

‘It belongs to the monastery there,’ Stratis said. ‘The whole island has had bad luck since it was taken away.’ He didn’t dare to repeat the word ‘stolen’.

‘You wait till you’ve worked for twenty years. Then you’ll know the value of things.’

‘But Grandfather, don’t you agree that a religious work of art is different from other kinds? I mean, it isn’t just a lot of nice colors, like one of those French pictures of lily-pads. To the people who believe in the religion, it has a special meaning above and beyond the way it looks.’

The old man continued to regard him with a kindly expression. Then he laughed. He waved his hand several times, as if he were an overfed diner, disdaining additional offerings. The subject was closed.

Stratis threw up his hands, saying, ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether it was stolen or not. The important thing is to put it back.’

‘I have never,’ his grandfather said, ‘never stolen anything in my life.’

‘Aunt Lydia and Uncle Maurice would agree with me.’

‘Your Aunt Lydia would send this entire family to Park Burnett if she thought she could raise some cash by selling us. Nothing is sacred to her except her gallbladder and her collection of Italian shoes. And as for your Uncle Maurice –’

‘But the people who live on that island –’

‘Enough,’ the old man murmured. He pointed to the door.

‘It should go back to the island,’ Stratis said.

His grandfather rocked slowly to his feet and stood, balancing himself against the front of the desk. He leaned forward. ‘Don’t tell me what I should do,’ he said.

‘Their need is so great.’

‘No one’s need is as great as mine,’ his grandfather said emphatically. ‘You will not speak of this again, Stratis.’

‘Can’t you see –?’

‘Out!’ the old man shouted.

Stratis bowed his head. He could feel his grandfather’s anger, as if it were heat or noise, still coming across the desk at him. He sighed. He shrugged. He looked up and muttered, ‘All right,’ as if agreeing that he’d lost the attempt to convince. He stood up, turned around and left the room.

When he went out for the evening, the beggar was still there, and when he came back.