Mr. Gwyn (5 page)

“It's a very private thing, Tom, swear you won't discuss it with anyone.”

“You can count on that, since who do you think would believe me?”

When Tom married Lottie, a Hungarian woman twenty-three years younger than he was, Jasper Gwyn had been the witness, and at a certain point during the dinner had stood up on a table and recited a Shakespeare sonnet. Only it wasn't by Shakespeare, it was his, a perfect imitation. The last two lines were:
If I have to forget you I will remember to do so, but then don't ask me to forget that I remembered
. Then Tom had hugged him, not so much for the sonnet, which he hadn't really understood, but because he knew what it must have cost him to climb up on a table and get people's attention. He had really hugged him. Now, for the same reason, he couldn't take the business of the portraits well.

“Try to explain it to me,” he asked.

“I don't know, I thought I'd like to make portraits.”

“Okay, that I understand.”

“Naturally I'm not talking about paintings. I'd like to
write
portraits.”

“Yes.”

“But all the rest would be the way it is with portraits…the studio, the model, it would all be the same.”

“You'd pose them?”

“Something like that.”

“And then?”

“Then I imagine it would take a lot of time. But at the end I'll start writing, and what comes out of it will be a portrait.”

“A portrait in what sense? A description?”

Jasper Gwyn had thought about it for a long time. In fact that was the problem.

“No, a description, no, that wouldn't make sense.”

“That's what painters do. There's the arm, and the painter paints it, that's it. And what would you do? You'd write things like ‘the white arm lies softly' etcetera, etcetera?”

“No, exactly, that's not even thinkable.”

“And so?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?”

“No. I'd have to put myself in the situation where I'm making a portrait and then I could discover what it means, exactly, to write instead of paint. To write a portrait.”

“That is, at this moment you don't have the slightest idea.”

“Something, some hypotheses.”

“Like?”

“I don't know, I imagine it would be a matter of
taking people home
.”

“Taking them home?”

“I don't know, I don't think I can explain it to you.”

“I need a drink. Stay on the line, don't even think of hanging up.”

Jasper Gwyn kept hold of the receiver. He heard Tom muttering in the background. Then he put down the receiver and walked slowly toward the bathroom, while a lot of ideas whirled around in his head, all having to do with the portraits. He thought that
the only thing to do was to try it, and, besides, he certainly hadn't known where he wanted to end up when he started the thriller about the disappearances in Wales—he had just had in mind a certain way of proceeding. He peed. And then, too, if Tom had made him explain before he started to write what he intended to do, likely he wouldn't have known what to say. He flushed. It makes no more sense to start a novel, the first, than to rent a studio to make portraits without knowing exactly what it means. He went back to the telephone and picked up the receiver.

“Tom?”

“Jasper, can I be sincere?”

“Of course.”

“As a book it will be colossal nonsense.”

“No, you don't understand, it won't be a book.”

“What, then?”

Jasper Gwyn had imagined that people would take home the pages he had written, and would keep them shut up in a drawer, or put them on a low table. As you might keep a photograph, or hang a painting on the wall. This was an aspect of the matter that excited him. No more fifty-two things, just an agreement between him and those people. It was like making a table for them, or washing their car. A job. He would write what they were, that's all. He would be, for them, a copyist.

“They'll just be portraits,” he said. “The people who pay to have them done will take them home and the thing ends there.”

“Pay?”

“Of course, people pay, no? To have a portrait done.”

“Jasper, those are paintings, and, anyway, people long ago
stopped having their portraits done, except for the Queen and a couple of feeble-minded types who have walls to fill.”

“Yes, but mine are written, it's different.”

“It's worse!”

“I don't know.”

They were silent for a moment. He heard Tom swallowing his whiskey.

“Jasper, maybe it's better if we talk about it another time.”

“Yes, probably, yes.”

“Let's sleep on it and then talk again.”

“Okay.”

“I have to metabolize it.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Otherwise everything's fine?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. That is, one thing, maybe.”

“Tell me.”

“Do you know a real-estate broker?”

“Someone who looks for houses?”

“Yes.”

“John Septimus Hill, he's the best. You remember him?”

Jasper Gwyn seemed to remember a very tall man, with impeccable manners, dressed with meticulous elegance. He was at the wedding.

“Go to him, he's perfect,” said Tom.

“Thanks.”

“What is it, are you moving?”

“No, I thought of renting a studio, a place for attempting that portrait.”

Tom Bruce Shepperd rolled his eyes.

16

When John Septimus Hill handed him the form to fill out, in which the client was asked to specify his requirements, Jasper Gwyn tried to read the questions, but finally he looked up from the papers and asked if he could tell him.

“I'm sure I'd manage to explain better.”

John Septimus Hill took the form, looked at it skeptically, then threw it in the wastebasket.

“I've never yet met anyone who had the kindness to fill it out.”

Then he explained that it had been an idea of his son's. His son had been working with him for several months; he was twenty-seven, and had decided to modernize the style of the firm.

“I tend to believe that the old way of doing things worked very well,” continued John Septimus Hill, “but you can imagine how one always behaves with a sort of mad indulgence toward one's children. Do you have children, by any chance?”

“No,” said Jasper Gwyn. “I don't believe in marriage and I'm not fit to have children.”

“Very reasonable position. Would you begin by telling me how many square feet you need?”

Jasper Gwyn was prepared and gave a precise answer.

“I need a single room half as big as a tennis court.”

John Septimus Hill didn't turn a hair.

“On what floor?” he asked.

Jasper Gwyn explained that he imagined it facing on an interior garden, but he added that maybe also a top floor would work, the important thing was that it should be absolutely silent and peaceful. He would like it to have, he concluded, an uncared-for floor.

John Septimus Hill didn't take any notes, but seemed to be piling up in some corner of his mind all the information, as if it were ironed sheets.

They talked about heating, bathrooms, doorman, kitchen, trim, fixtures, and parking. On every subject Jasper Gwyn demonstrated that he had clear ideas. He was categorical in stating that the space had to be empty, in fact very empty. The mere term
furnished
annoyed him. He tried to explain, and succeeded, that he wouldn't mind some water stains, here and there, and maybe some pipes, preferably in a state of disrepair. He insisted on blinds and shutters on the windows, so that he could regulate the light in the room as he wished. Traces of old wallpaper on the walls he wouldn't mind. The doors, if they were really necessary, should be of wood, possibly a bit swollen. A high ceiling, he decreed.

John Septimus Hill piled up everything carefully, his eyes half-closed, as if he had just finished a heavy lunch, then he was silent for a bit, apparently satisfied. Finally he reopened his eyes and cleared his throat.

“May I be permitted a question that could legitimately be called reasonably private?”

Jasper Gwyn didn't say yes or no. John Septimus Hill took it as encouragement.

“You have a job that requires an absurdly high degree of precision and perfectionism, right?”

Jasper Gwyn, without really understanding why, thought of divers. Then he answered that yes, in the past, he had done a job of that sort.

“May I ask you what it was? It's simply curiosity, believe me.”

Jasper Gwyn said that for a while he had written books.

John Septimus Hill weighed the answer, as if he were waiting to find out if he could understand it without greatly disturbing his own convictions.

17

Ten days later, John Septimus Hill took Jasper Gwyn to a low factory building, at the back of a garden, behind Marylebone High Street. For years it had been a carpenter's storeroom. Then, in rapid succession, it had been the warehouse for an art gallery, the offices of a travel magazine, and the garage of a collector of vintage motorcycles. Jasper Gwyn found it perfect. He much appreciated the indelible oil stains left by the motorcycles on the wooden floor and the edges of posters showing Caribbean seas that no one had troubled to take off the walls. There was a small bathroom on the roof, reached by an iron stairway. There was no trace of a kitchen. The big windows could be blocked by massive wooden shutters, just redone and not yet painted. One entered the big room by a double door that opened onto the garden. There were also pipes visible, which were not in good shape. John Septimus Hill noted,
in a professional tone, that for the water stains it wouldn't be hard to find a solution.

“Although it's the first time,” he observed without irony, “that dampness has been mentioned to me as a hoped-for decoration, rather than a disaster.”

They settled on a price, and Jasper Gwyn agreed to it for six months, reserving the right to renew the contract for six more. The figure was substantial, and this helped him realize that if it had ever been a game, that business of the portraits, it was so no longer.

“Good, my son will take care of the practical details,” said John Septimus Hill as they parted. They were on the street, in front of a tube station. “Don't take this as a polite observation,” he added, “but it's been a real pleasure to do business with you.”

Jasper Gwyn wasn't good at farewells, even in their lightest form, like a goodbye from a real-estate broker who had just found him a former garage in which to attempt to write portraits. But he also felt a sincere liking for this man, and he wanted to be able to express it. So, instead of saying something generically nice, he murmured something that amazed even him.

“I didn't always write books,” he said. “Before that I had another profession. I did it for nine years.”

“Really?”

“I was a tuner. I tuned pianos. The same profession as my father.”

John Septimus Hill took in the information with evident satisfaction.

“There. Now I think I understand better. Thank you.”

Then he said there was something he had always wondered about tuners.

“I've always wondered if they know how to play the piano. Professionally, I mean.”

“Seldom,” answered Jasper Gwyn. “And yet,” he continued, “if the question you have in mind is how in the world, after working for hours, they refrain from sitting down right there to play a polonaise by Chopin, so as to enjoy the result of their dedication and knowledge, the answer is that, even if they were able to, they never would.”

“No?”

“A man who tunes a piano doesn't like to untune it,” Jasper Gwyn explained.

They parted, promising to meet again.

Days later, Jasper Gwyn was sitting on the floor in a corner of a former garage that was now his portrait studio. He turned the key over in his hands, and examined the distances, the light, the details. There was a great silence, broken only by the sporadic gurgling of the water pipes. He sat there for a long time, analyzing his next moves. He would have to put something there—a bed, maybe, some chairs. He thought of how to light it, and where he would be. He tried to imagine himself there, in the silent company of a stranger, both of them surrendered to a time about which they would have to learn everything. He already felt the grip of an uncontrollable embarrassment.

“I'll never do it,” he said at one point.