The Center of the World (3 page)

Adversity had emboldened Stokes. He lived more richly now than he had ever lived before. His debts had reached such spectacular proportions that even Rhinebeck could hardly imagine them. They had become, in some profound way that only Stokes himself could appreciate, beautiful.

“I am informed,” Stokes began, “that you have been peeking into the cabinets of broken-down families in France and
Italy, looking to exchange some of your plentiful cash for the odd Old Master.”

“I did not come here, Mr. Stokes,” Rhinebeck interrupted, “to be kept waiting five minutes in your antechamber nor to be insulted. I came, at your request, to discuss a matter of business between us. If you have something to say about that matter, please say it.”

Stokes allowed the gleam of hatred which had been shimmering about his eyes to come into crisper focus.

“Very well, sir. My firm is in debt to yours for a considerable sum. You have also indicated through Mr. Manwaring that you are aware of a potential disagreement between His Majesty’s government and myself. You are prepared, in the name of truth, of course, to provide to the government certain information with regard to that disagreement. Does that state the case?”

Rhinebeck nodded.

“Just before the turn of the century, never mind how, I came into possession of a remarkable painting by J.M.W. Turner,” Stokes went on. “I can tell you very little about the painting, nor can I, in fact, prove that it is by Turner, for reasons that you shall appreciate shortly. The painting is hidden behind the bookcase in front of you. I am going to leave you alone in the room for fifteen minutes by my watch. Then we will discuss our matter of business.”

Stokes moved with remarkable swiftness. With one light and gliding motion he rose from his chair and touched a hidden
latch. The heavy and fully laden bookcase slid into the wall and disappeared. With a deft and showmanlike continuation of his original movement, Stokes opened a black curtain that the bookcase had revealed and left the room, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

When he returned, exactly fifteen minutes later, Rhinebeck had regained sufficient possession of himself to be prepared for his arrival, but had it not been for the stark evidence of his watch he would have been unable to say how much time had passed. All at once
The Center of the World
became the hub of a wheel to which everything, or at least everything that mattered, was attached. When he saw Helen’s tunic fall in folds of gold and light about her incomparable shoulders, he saw Régine and that room in Paris when he was so much younger. He saw the very pulse of the world; he understood how empires rose and fell and that power and pleasure beyond his ability to imagine were before him to be grasped. Helen’s eyes told him that he was both her slave and a man of destiny who could go forward without fear.

Stokes closed the black curtain so suddenly that Rhinebeck felt a physical sense of loss. His face was flushed, his heart was racing, and sweat beaded his brow.

“I see that you are able to appreciate what you have just been privileged to see. Now to our business.” He proposed a transaction which, even then, Rhinebeck knew to be monstrous and outrageous. “And further: I insist that both of us never speak of this arrangement to any living soul and that—I am sure that this hardly needs saying—you will utter not a
word to His Majesty’s government on the matter about which you have threatened to speak. I also insist that we conclude this agreement within the next ten minutes. My terms are what they are; you will either agree within that time or I withdraw the proposal. The thought of parting with this painting is deeply painful to me. If I am to endure this amputation, I insist that the ax fall quickly.”

For the first and last time in his life Rhinebeck felt staggered. There did not seem to be enough air in the room. In the upper left corner of the painting he had seen an eagle soaring in the blue sky. The two armies were stretched out below the magnificent bird, the armor of the heroes sparkling on the plain. He saw the battlements of the great walled city in which Helen awaited her lover.

He understood now that Stokes’s financial difficulties were much greater than he had suspected. Only a desperate man would propose what he had.

He looked at his watch. Eight minutes had passed. He wiped his brow with his handkerchief. Stokes sat across from him as still as a statue.

“I accept your proposal.”

“Damn you. I knew you would. You are a man of sense and feeling.” Stokes rose. “I have a lorry waiting round the back. Within the hour my people will deliver it to your hotel. My business people will call upon yours. We are done with each other.”

Rhinebeck saw in Stokes’s eyes that he was a defeated man. A servant entered and ushered him out.

He crossed the square and looked at the house, trying to determine which curtained window hid the painting, which Stokes was surely looking at for the last time. London seemed vague and unreal. The sky was gray and unfocused. There were children playing in the park. An attractive young woman was looking at him. It all seemed like mere decoration, like the work of a third-rate Impressionist.

 
THERE IS NO PLAQUE
on the door of the elegant brownstone on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where Madison Partners does business. An attractive young woman greets those who arrive. She answers the telephone, keeps calendars, and makes travel arrangements. She hopes one day to sit at one of the nineteenth-century mahogany desks behind her, at which two or three other young people are working on silver laptops or speaking to clients on the telephone. These young people are always well dressed, usually in black, white, and shades of gray. Low shelves filled with catalogues and art books ring the room. The wall above is paneled, decorated with a changing collection of five or six top- or second-tier European oils from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries—a Sisley, say, or a Sir Thomas Lawrence. These works may be acquired, but the young people have been trained too well to say they are for sale.

Behind the front room is a small conference room, also decorated with three or four paintings, and behind that, with a view over the back garden, an office. A small kitchen completes the first floor. The two floors above are a private residence, the second floor being dominated by a large library.

The only dweller in this residence, and the principal of the firm, is Mr. Arthur Bryce. The office on the first floor is also his, for Madison Partners has no partners. When Bryce leans toward a client as if he is revealing a confidence, he often likes to say that he is a modest man who prefers to remain invisible, the one who disappears into the illusion of the many.

Although the paintings in the front room and the conference room are for sale, Madison Partners is not, in any conventional sense, an art gallery. It is, rather, a fine arts consultancy, specializing in European art. Bryce makes it his business to know who has what and who desires what. He brings parties together, often without either knowing who the other is. Payments are made and checks are written into accounts in Geneva, New York, or Nassau; shipments arrive from a secure facility near Kennedy Airport. Works not generally known to be available change hands without any of the inconveniences associated with auction houses or tax collectors. Those who might be tempted to raise concerns about the provenance of a work are not informed of anything that could cause them distress.

One afternoon in November of 2001 Bryce sat alone in his library, a cup of coffee by his side. A handsome man in his early sixties, with close-cropped gray hair, blue eyes, and a disarmingly clear complexion, he wore round tortoiseshell glasses, a
custom-made shirt, and a silk tie with a Windsor knot. Bryce prided himself on his ability to stand above the fray and to take the long view, but he realized that even he had been knocked into something of a funk by the recent events. The smell of smoke and death still hung in the air; getting around downtown was, he found, inconvenient as hell, and conversation had turned horrid. He had, of course, been able to take advantage of the panic that had set in that September; he had assisted in several transactions in which savvy clients in Japan and the Middle East were able to profit from the nervous desire for cash that a number of Americans felt. The walls of Madison Partners were more densely hung with paintings than was usual, but Bryce knew it was only a matter of time before cash would seek a more beautiful refuge.

Bryce picked up a leather binder and reread a document he had read a hundred times before:

The writer of the note was the bastard son and heir of the Third Earl of Egremont. Egremont, who was born in 1751 and died, at the age of eighty-six, in 1837, was the most important patron of the arts of his era. He supported any number of British artists, including J.M.W. Turner, the greatest of all English painters, and, in Bryce’s opinion, one of the three or four greatest painters who ever lived. Bryce smiled to himself as he remembered how he had acquired the letter, less at the ingenuity of the scheme than at the fact that it would not do if the circumstances became generally known.

If Bryce had been a conventional art historian or scholar, this document might have changed the general direction of Turner studies. But Bryce traded in information; information, like certain works of art, was precious and beautiful to him on account of its rarity. He was conscious of the fact that he knew something that no one else did, namely, that at the behest of
Egremont, Turner had created a painting that Egremont’s boorish son had described as “infamous.” And there was something curious about the phrase “I beg you to think of it as no longer existing.” Not quite the same as “it has been destroyed” or words to that effect. If, Bryce thought, it had not been destroyed, it might still exist; if it still existed, it could be found.

Yes, it still existed. Bryce decided he would believe in this “infamous” painting and that he would find it. He knew that he needed some greater purpose to help him get through the dreary days of war and vengeance that were sure to come. Such a quest would serve that end.

 
THE THREE OF US
who remained sat in silence for a moment. When His Lordship rose, we all rose with him. He seemed more than usually thoughtful as he led us to the staircase. A servant had appeared to lead us and light the way, while others had materialized behind us and were already cleaning up the brandy glasses.

“Turner, you know, is a brilliant man. He hits his mark more often than he misses it. It is time for bed, gentlemen. It is time for bed. Good night.” With those words Egremont shot forward and disappeared up the stairs.

Jones and I followed at a more moderate pace and said our good nights at the landing. I left the candle burning by the bedside as I settled myself down in the enormous bed. Lady Mary looked down out of the darkness. I wondered who else had slept in this bed under her baleful gaze. Some Tudor knight, I thought, might have died where I was lying and the panels on the wall may have echoed the sound of a baby’s first
cry when Elizabeth was queen and Shakespeare’s new work was the talk of London. Thinking of all those houseguests in tights and ruffs who must have known each other on this bed, I fancied that if it could speak we would have a history of noble life, death, and fornication to which I would be some insignificant footnote.