Mr. Gwyn (19 page)

Nor was Doc wrong in saying that the book was a beautiful book. The other two parts flowed so smoothly that Rebecca ended up reading them, forgetting for long stretches the real reason that she was doing it. The book consisted mainly of dialogues, and there were two principal characters, the same ones in each part, but there was something paradoxical and surprising about it. At the end she regretted that Akash Narayan had wasted all that time as a music teacher, when he could write like this. Provided she believed that he truly existed, obviously.

Rebecca got up to make coffee. She looked at the time, and saw that she still had a good bit of the evening. She got out Jasper Gwyn's portraits and put them on the table.

All right, she said to herself. To summarize: Rode doesn't exist, it's Jasper Gwyn who writes her books. Same goes for Akash Narayan. And so far we've got it, she thought. Why he put my portrait in Klarisa Rode's book I can imagine: because he loved me (she smiled at this thought). Now let's see if we can discover why the hell he put the other portrait in
Three Times at Dawn
. And that portrait in particular. Who is this shit who deserved a gift as nice as mine? she wondered. She was beginning to enjoy herself.

The problem was that there was nothing in the portraits entrusted to her by Jasper Gwyn that could be traced back with certainty to one of the clients who had paid to have them done. Not a name, not a date, nothing. Besides, the simple but singular technique with which they had been executed made it difficult to recognize the person who had inspired them, unless you had a profound familiarity with him. In other words, it looked like an impossible job.

Rebecca began to proceed by elimination. She had read a page of the portrait of the girl, and she was gratified to be able to say that the one in
Three Times at Dawn
wasn't hers. The portrait of Tom she thought she had recognized, and if she had doubts Mallory had removed them: so that, too, could be eliminated (a pity, she thought, it was the only case that would not trouble her). So nine remained.

She took a piece of paper and listed them in a column.

Mr. Trawley

The forty-year-old with the mania about India (
Aha, she thought
.)

The former hostess

The boy who painted

The actor

The two who had just gotten married

The doctor

The woman with her four Verlaine poems

The queen's tailor

End

She set aside the folders with her portrait, Tom's, and the girl's. Then she opened the others and arranged them on the table.

And now let's see if I can get somewhere.

She tried to come up with hypotheses, and several times she moved the open folders on the table, trying to match them with the people on the list. It was head-splitting, and for that reason it was some time before Rebecca noticed a detail that she should have noticed long ago, and which left her bewildered. The characters were nine but the portraits ten.

She checked three times, but there was no doubt.

Jasper Gwyn had sent her one extra portrait.

Impossible, she thought. She had made the arrangements, one by one, for those portraits, she had followed them from the beginning to the end, and it was unthinkable that for all the time they had worked together Jasper Gwyn had managed to make one that she knew nothing about.

That portrait shouldn't have existed.

She counted again.

No, there really were ten.

Where did this tenth come from? And who the hell was it?

She understood suddenly, with the blazing speed with which
we understand, long afterward, things that have been in front of us forever, had we only known how to look.

She picked up the portrait that was in
Three Times at Dawn
and began to re-read it.

How could I not have thought of this before?, she asked herself.

The hotel lobby, shit.

She continued to read, avidly, as if swallowed by the words.

Hell, it's him, exactly, she thought.

Then she looked up and realized that all the portraits made by Jasper Gwyn would remain hidden, as he had wished, but that two would be hidden in a singular fashion, wandering through the world sewn secretly into the pages of two books. One she knew well, and it was hers. The other she had just recognized, and it was the portrait that any painter sooner or later attempts—a self-portrait. From a distance, it seemed to her, they looked at each other, a handbreadth above the others. Now yes, she thought—now it's the way I never stopped imagining it.

She got up and looked for something to do. Something simple. She began to straighten up the books that were lying around, all over the house. She merely placed them on top of one another, but in small piles, from the biggest to the smallest. Meanwhile she thought of the delayed sweetness of Jasper Gwyn, turning it over in her mind, in the pleasure of observing it from every side. She did it in the light of a strange happiness that she had never felt before, yet which she seemed to have carried with her for years, waiting. It seemed impossible that, in all that time, she could have done anything except guard it and hide it. What we are capable of, she thought. Growing up, loving, having children, growing old—and all this while we are
elsewhere, in the long time of an answer that doesn't arrive, or of a gesture that doesn't end. How many paths, and at what a different pace we retrace them, in what seems a single journey.

When Robert came home, passably drunk, she was still awake, but sitting on the sofa. Scattered on the table were all those folders.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, I think so.”

66

Then she could have done many things, and one certainly: discover where Jasper Gwyn was hiding. It wouldn't be difficult to track him down, by going to Rode's publisher or the publisher of
Three Times at Dawn
. Surely in exchange for silence they would give her an address, or something.

Yet for several days she lived her normal life, only allowing herself from time to time some secret thoughts. Every so often she lost herself in imagining a scene of arriving in some ridiculous place, and sitting in front of a house, to wait. She imagined never returning. Many times she wrote and rewrote in her mind a short letter, handwritten, in an elegant script. She would like him to know that she knew, nothing more. And that she was delighted by it. Every so often she thought of Doc, and how wonderful it would be to tell him about it. Or how wonderful it would be to tell everything to anyone, over and over again.

While in the meantime she lived her everyday life.

When she felt that it was the moment, among all the things that she could have done she chose one, the smallest—the last.

67

She arrived in Camden Town, and had to ask quite a few people before she found the shop of the old man with the light bulbs. She found him sitting in a corner, his hands still. Things must not be going too well.

“May I?” she asked, entering.

The old man made one of his gestures.

“My name is Rebecca. Years ago I worked with Jasper Gwyn, do you remember?”

The old man pressed a button and the shop was lighted by a soft, weary light.

“Gwyn?”

“Yes. He came here for light bulbs for his studio. He got eighteen every time, always the same ones.”

“Of course I remember, I'm old, I'm not an idiot.”

“I didn't mean that.”

The old man got up and approached the counter.

“He doesn't come anymore,” he said.

“No. He doesn't work in the city. He closed the studio. He went away.”

“Where?”

Rebecca hesitated a moment.

“I don't have the slightest idea,” she said.

The old man gave a hearty laugh, less old than he was. He seemed happy that Jasper Gwyn had managed to disappear without a trace.

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“I have a weakness for people who disappear.”

“Don't worry, so do I,” said Rebecca.

Then she pulled a book out of her purse.

“I brought you something. I thought it would please you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

She placed
Three Times at Dawn
on the counter. It was the copy she had read, she hadn't been able to find another one.

“What is it?” the old man asked.

“A book.”

“I see. But what is it?”

“A book that Jasper Gwyn wrote.”

The old man didn't even touch it.

“I stopped reading six years ago.”

“Really?”

“Too many light bulbs. My vision is ruined. I prefer to save it for work.”

“I'm sorry. In any case, you don't really have to read the book, you just have to read one line.”

“What is it, a game?” the old man asked, now a little angry.

“No, no, nothing of the sort,” said Rebecca.

She opened the book to the first page and moved it toward the old man.

The old man didn't touch it. He gave Rebecca a suspicious glance, then bent over the book. He had to get really close, with his nose almost touching the paper.

There was just the title and the dedication to read. It took a while. Then he raised his head.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“Nothing. It's a dedication. Jasper Gwyn dedicated the book to you, that's all. To you and those bulbs, it seems to me.”

The old man lowered his head again in that extreme way and read it all again. He wanted to check carefully.

He got up again and took the book out of Rebecca's hands, with a care that he usually reserved for the light bulbs.

“Does it talk about me?” he asked.

“No, I really don't think so. He dedicated it to you because he admired you. I'm sure of that. He had a great respect for you.”

The old man swallowed. He turned the book over in his hands for a while.

“Keep it,” Rebecca said. “It's yours.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course.”

Smiling, the old man lowered his gaze to the book and stared at the cover.

“The name of Mr. Gwyn isn't there,” he pointed out.

“Every so often Jasper Gwyn likes to write books under a pseudonym.”

“Why?”

Rebecca shrugged her shoulders.

“It's a long story. Let's say he likes to make himself untraceable.”

“Disappear.”

“Yes, disappear.”

The old man nodded, as if he were perfectly able to understand.

“He told me he was a copyist,” he said.

“It wasn't completely false.”

“Meaning?”

“When you knew him he was copying people. He made portraits.”

“Paintings?”

“No. He
wrote
portraits.”

“Is that something that exists?”

“No. That is, it began to exist when he began to do it.”

The old man thought about it. Then he said that light bulbs made by hand also didn't exist before he began to make them.

“At first they all thought I was crazy,” he added.

Then he said that the first person to believe in him was a countess who wanted in her living room a light exactly like the light of dawn.

“It wasn't at all easy,” he recalled.

They were silent for a while, then Rebecca said that she really had to go.

“Yes, of course,” said the old man. “You were too kind to come here.”

“I did it happily, I was there in the light of your light bulbs. It's a light that is very difficult to forget.”

There might have been tears in the old man's eyes, but it was impossible to say, because the eyes of the old are always a little weepy.

“You would honor me if you would accept a small gift,” he said.

He went to a shelf, took a light bulb, wrapped it in tissue paper, and gave it to Rebecca.

“It's a Catherine de Médicis,” he explained. “Treat it with care.”

Rebecca took it with great attention and put it in her purse. It was as if he had given her a small animal. Alive.

“Thank you,” she said. “It's a beautiful gift.”

She went toward the door and just before opening it she heard the old man's voice pronouncing a question.

“How did he do it?”

She turned.

“Excuse me?”

“How did Mr. Gwyn
write
portraits?”