A Masterpiece of Revenge (8 page)

What did that mean? Was I to be the cause of my son's death? Instead of rooted in a father's love, were my feelings for him rooted in destructive selfishness? Did my sin lie in believing Jean-Louis was mine alone?

I got up and opened the window. Much about the city had changed since Zola's day, of course, but on that night his description in the book matched what I saw: “Paris, illuminated by a luminous cloud, the fiery blast of a furnace hovering over the city, produced by the groaning lives that it devours and spews out as fire and brimstone, like the clouds of smoke and steam that gather around the mouth of a volcano.”

I snapped the book shut and picked up the photograph of Jean-Louis, the most recent one. Something strange was stirring within me, struggling to rise to the surface of my consciousness. Memories, images. I could neither stop them nor explain them. A countryside; trees looking as if they had been painted, leaf by leaf; expanses of sky; a small waterfall and — over on the left — a fallen tree in the foreground; a play of light.

I knew this vision.

The scenes evaporated like bubbles, like words that form on the tip of the tongue and then dissolve. I was left with a feeling of unease and uncanny strangeness. Deja vu.

“Columns. Where are the columns?” a voice within me asked.

I went into my study and put the photo under ultraviolet light, then pored over every square inch, convinced now that I would find something to help me understand. No, nothing. I decided to enlarge it on a screen with a projector. I stood in front of it for half an hour, forcing myself to look at it not as a photograph of my son, but as a composition, as a work of art.

I focused all my attention on that tiny point of light. Could it be a reflection from a mirror — a watch crystal, or a magnifying glass, perhaps — made to look like a laser point? For that to be so, my son would have had to have been a willing participant, holding his pose while the reflection could be beamed on the point between his eyes.

That was not possible. It had to have been a reflection, an accident, a fluke. For the first time in hours, my breathing slowed.

Now that the point of light no longer drew all my attention, I began to look at the landscape around him, staring at it until my eyelids began to get heavy and the need to sleep overpowered me. I went into the bedroom and collapsed onto the bed fully clothed, and then fell into a deep sleep.

How many times since this whole miserable business began I had been jolted from sleep, seized with a spasm that gripped my guts and set my throat on fire. I would barely make it into the bathroom to vomit into the sink, my whole body wracked with nausea.

Then, straightening up, I would look at my reflection in the mirror. I was a vision of horror in the dim morning light — gasping like a carp on a kitchen table, trying to take in large, milky gulps of air.

This time I awoke feeling refreshed. My body seemed to have rid itself of torpor and was preparing itself for combat — though with whom or with what I had no idea. I didn't feel threatened so much as challenged. I felt a sense of dark jubilation at what lay ahead.

Here was what I had realized: if someone were threatening me for some reason other than money, it was because they were afraid of me. I was the threat to them, not the other way around. What I was therefore experiencing was
their
fear — my system was reacting as if to a foreign body. The question was, why?

I felt I would soon learn the answer. Waiting was now not only the only thing to do, it was the only reasonable thing to do. Reason, at last, reason.

T
he following night I had the oddest dream. I was cleaning the sky and the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens with a sponge soaked in mercury chloride. I was trying to uncover an image of Jean-Louis. Instead appeared one of the three Arcadian shepherds in that famous painting by Poussin, the shepherd on bended knee in the right-hand side of the painting. He was pointing toward some Roman ruins in the background and saying, “Over there. Over there is where you should scrub. Can't you see it's filthy?”

I dreamt that I tried to make my way toward the ruins, but the wind was blowing hard against me and I couldn't reach them.

I woke with the sensation that I had been in touch with something deep in my subconscious. That I had found some kind of key.

The landscape, that strange dream, the Arcadian shepherd. Uniting them all was a distinct impression of deja vu. I was on the threshold of a mystery and the solution was inside me. I wasn't waiting for a phone call, or a telegram, or a knock at the door. No, I was waiting for … myself. What I was sensing was the approach of an answer, a denouement. Danger is oddly less threatening when it is imminent.

For the first time in weeks I was able to keep down a little breakfast, and make at least a half-hearted stab at my old morning chess ritual.

I felt fit in body and mind, though more keenly alert than ever to signs and omens. But now I was enjoying puzzling over their meanings. They were auspicious. With almost childish relief I saw a crow land briefly on my balcony and then fly off, as if frightened. Several days before one had perched there for hours on end.

In the reproductions of all the final works by celebrated painters I had chosen for the
Magnificent Trembling of Age
I no longer saw only the memento mori, but a larger frame of reference, the greater and more life-affirming game of images within images, as in Lucas Cranach's
Melancholy
, where a large bay window opens onto a whole new picture.

My thinking had become magnetized, drawing to it thoughts and ideas like iron filings. For example, when examining a painting of Mary Magdalene by Jacques Bellange, who depicted her with her eyes lifted to the heavens, the name of a famous astrophysicist suddenly popped into my head. I had never met the man, but there his name was. I felt a desire to meet him.

The next morning I was reading a magazine and came across an interview with that same astrophysicist. The article featured a photograph of him, taken at his office. Behind his desk was a reproduction of Bellange's painting.

The coincidence was unnerving but fascinating. Why would I think of this astrophysicist? What did the Mary Magdalene have to do with any of this? Because her eyes were looking to the heavens?

Questions begot questions. I thought a great deal about my helpful Arcadian shepherd, and when I did I found both that my anxieties eased and that images and ideas started springing to mind. At first the sensation was exhilarating, but as time passed it became irritating and dizzying. It reminded me of the way one's head spins when one lies down after having had too much to drink.

It was in this state that I answered the phone when it rang at precisely five o'clock.

“May I please speak to Professor Vermeille?” asked a voice unknown to me, with a slight accent. Belgian, I guessed.

“This is he,” I replied.

“Forgive me for disturbing you. My name is Quentin Van Nieuwpoort. Sir, Fm calling you because, well, I've got something that might interest you.”

“You have my attention.”

“It involves a painting by Claude Lorrain.”

Good God, not another, I thought. In fact I very nearly hung up the phone, but politeness kept me from doing so.

“A painting that might be attributed to Lorrain. Is that what you mean?”

I had seen so many Lorrain copies in my time that I had long become used to disappointing dealers and collectors. Still, my response seemed not to have fazed this man.

“Believe me, Professor Vermeille, I am not wasting your time. The painting has been declared authentic by both the Oxford Institute for Art Research and the Griffith Institute in Los Angeles. I have certificates. This is the real thing. Except — well — it lacks your conclusive opinion.''

It was the painting I'd heard about in Los Angeles. After the Griffith's director had taken me into his confidence I'd gleaned more details about the painting in question from a friend at Sotheby's. I'd also looked through my own notes. Identifying the work had been easy, thanks to the painter's own
Libro di Veritá
, carefully conserved in the manuscript collection at the British Museum.

As I've mentioned, the
Libro
was essentially an inventory, in which Lorrain had himself patiently redrawn, in pen and wash, his entire oeuvre. He'd based the drawings on his working sketches. The
Libro
provided valuable information about the paintings: the dates and places of their genesis, the dimensions of the frames, the clients who had commissioned them, and even, in certain cases, the names of their eventual purchasers.

The work had to have been number six of the
Libro: Fort Scene
, painted by the artist during his stay in Naples in 1636, and last seen in Scotland in the middle of the nineteenth century.

“Can you bring the work to me? I have everything I need to study it here in my home.”

“Certainly. Tomorrow afternoon,” replied Van Nieuwpoort. “Sotheby's is handling everything.”

“Yes, fine. Then come tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock, if that's all right.” It was. I gave him my address.

I was very anxious to see the painting. No believer in miracles was Charles Vermeille, particularly when a Lorrain was involved, but I had never entirely given up hope that someday another one of his works would resurface.

My hands shook as I took my mail out of my box the next morning. While I was sorting through the stack of magazines and ads an envelope fell to the floor. I recognized it immediately. Mailed from Paris. I picked it up, then opened it.

The photograph showed Jean-Louis on a dock in San Francisco. He was leaning against the railing, looking pensively out into the bay. Behind him were the masts of sailboats. The water looked calm. The light came from the right, an autumnal light, giving everything a reddish glow. The mist on the horizon gave the photo a feeling of depth. The air seemed light.

What I had understood only unconsciously before now struck me full force.

The wooded landscape, the port. They were classic Lorrain subjects. This view of San Francisco had been photographed in such a way as to resemble his famous work
The Port of Ostia
. The parallel lay in the scale.

That was it. It was because of Claude Lorrain that my life was being terrorized. The port of San Francisco.
The Port of Ostia
. The port scene listed in the
Libro di Veritá
. The call from this mysterious Van Nieuwpoort. They were all linked. Behind this … thing, this monstrous thing that had brought me to my knees and bled me dry and nearly ripped my heart out, was a painting. A painting!

I nearly roared in anger. No revenge would suffice for what I had been put through. It would stay with me as long as I lived, and when I died I would take this hate with me.

I had never felt such raw hate, born of blood and love. It had a terrible power.

Thus did I await the arrival of this Belgian. At two o'clock that afternoon my doorbell rang. Van Nieuwpoort introduced himself and entered, accompanied by two Sotheby's employees carrying a wooden crate.

Van Nieuwpoort was a surprise to me. He had a great smile and an enormous red nose. I immediately found him endearing, even charming. He was a jowly, squirely man. His oval head and enormous mustache gave him the air of a country gentleman come to sell some cattle at a local fair. This was not a man capable of evil — not someone with a nose that had obviously been dipped so deeply into his country's malts and barleys. His handshake was firm and warm.

“I am indebted to you. Indebted to you! Seeing me on such short notice. You can guess I'm pretty impatient to show you my beauty! Not to doubt your opinion, of course, sir, but, well — ahem — the painting has been authenticated by two great institutes, and you know —”

I stopped him there, first in order to remind him of certain hard truths in these matters, and second so that I could contain my own mounting excitement at the idea of seeing this painting. I needed to stay sharp. Van Nieuwpoort seemed innocent enough, but somewhere someone was setting a trap.

“I must warn you, that doesn't mean very much,” I said. “The world's museums are packed with forgeries authenticated by the best laboratories and the most highly qualified experts. You might remember the Van Meegeren Vermeers. Holland's most famous expert at the time, Abraham Bredius, was completely taken in by these forgeries. He even went so far as to pronounce
Pilgrims of Emmaus
Vermeer's
 
finest work. Then there was Wolfgang Rohrich's fake Cranach, Otto Wacker's phony van Goghs —”

“Of course, Professor Vermeille, of course. But come, come. It's got to mean something that the painting is listed in that libro thing. Sketch number six, Fm told. Painted by the artist in 1636. He was staying in Naples.”

My guess had been correct. The port scene. It was more than possible that this work was authentic. I struggled to conceal my excitement.

“That's still no guarantee,” I cautioned. “Despite all the precautions taken to control the flood of forgeries that arose even during his own lifetime, Lorrain nonetheless remains among the most copied painters in the history of art. I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to sound so discouraging. Come, let's have a look at your painting.”

While the Sotheby's employees were unpacking the painting, Van Nieuwpoort showed me the copies of the authenticating reports. He told me that the painting had been discovered in the attic of his great-uncle's manor, which he had inherited, along with all its paintings and furnishings.

Given the layers of dust that covered everything, and the date of the storage records, it seemed to have sat in that attic since the end of the last century. Van Nieuwpoort explained that his great-uncle had been a passionate hunter. Possibly he had bought the work in Scotland, where he went each year to shoot grouse. Unfortunately, however, no one had been able to find either the bill of sale or any papers verifying provenance among his great-uncle's effects.