Madonna of the Apes (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

“I can’t have anyone in, and I don’t dare touch it,” Clayton said. “Even my conservator. A thing like that in the house, it allows me no peace.”

The chest was still sitting on the floor where Fred had last seen it, its top opened against the worktable.

The ape still fondled the fig. The Virgin still struggled with her offspring, with a distracted smile that could be seen as showing fey benevolence. The child still reached. His little pecker was in shadow. The painter had fudged the issue of circumcision, like all the other painters of the Renaissance who thus strove to correct, retroactively, the outward and visible sign of the embarrassing fact that the Messiah, their Messiah, everyone’s Messiah after all, was a Jew.

“What you want to do is get that top off,” Fred concluded. “But at the same time you trust no one to do the work. Because you trust no one to see what you have. So you are at a really sublime disadvantage, like the swimmer with the Olympic gold anchor around his neck.”

“I am not following,” Clay claimed. Fred was looking at the hardware. The hinges were old and rusty and attached with what appeared to be nails.

“What you have to do is disregard issues of value and importance,” Fred said.

“Don’t touch it,” Clay ordered, as Fred lowered the top to look at its other side, where the painter, or
a
painter, or his workshop, had painted the wood, the wreath of laurel resting on a surface that resembled marble. “Serpentine,” Clay observed.

“Like the back of Leonardo’s
Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci,
” Fred agreed. “Except there it’s porphyry.”

“How would you know a thing like that?” Clay exclaimed. “Of course you are right. Porphyry with a sprig of juniper, because of her name, juniper,
jinepro,
which is Ginevra. It’s part of what alerted me, at that man’s place, when I saw the
faux marbre;
and that caused me to lift the lid. My heart stopped, I can tell you. I thought for sure I had given the game away. I believe that I knew it for Leonardo’s creation even before I opened the chest. The man, Tilley, watched my every expression. But I raised no suspicion. Never have I dissembled so well. To the subject you raised: the
faux
stone back of the
Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci
is hardly common knowledge.”

“It’s not a secret either,” Fred said, studying the hardware. “Yes, I was afraid of that. It’s nails. Look how they’ve come through the wood, been bent over and pounded down, and the holes filled with putty and painted in to match. Not a bad job. But it’s going to be a bitch getting the hinges off. Meanwhile, you say you’re paralyzed. So, what you need is a bull in your china shop. Where do you keep your tools?”

“Tools?” Clay asked vaguely. “You don’t presume we will further violate…Stop! I insist!”

“Never mind,” Fred said, taking out his penknife. Clay had turned green. “I won’t hurt anything. Just take these pins out. The metal plates stay where they are. I can separate them without touching either the sides or the top. Why get a crick in our necks looking at the damned thing sideways?” He fiddled with the hardware while Clayton fluttered nearby, as nervous as any human mother watching her first child trying to learn to fly.

Clay said, “Vandals sawed the painting down to fit the chest. You can see on two sides. Criminals. Granted, until not long ago there was no work of art that was not discounted as mere wallpaper, to be trimmed as the occasion warranted. But Leonardo? I’ve been studying the panel. It’s walnut, I believe.”

“Like the
Ginevra.
”

“There’s a piece missing from the bottom, do you see? Also from the left side. For God’s sake, now, be careful.” Fred had removed the first pin from the knuckle where it served as pivot. It was a matter of bending the pin, which was shaped like a nail, so that its bent end straightened and it could be slipped free.

“Hold the panel steady while I work on the other hinge,” Fred ordered.

“I continue to stand by my original identification of this work as being from Leonardo’s hand. You’ll accuse me of presumption,” Clay fretted. He struggled to keep the panel in place. Nature, it seemed, had intended him to arrive in this world already clothed in the blue suit he was wearing. Neither it nor he had expected him to be called on to perform physical labor. “Considering that the
Ginevra,
now accepted by all scholars as an autograph work by da Vinci, was earlier dismissed as the work of Ghirlandaio, or Lorenzo di Credi, or Verrocchio, or even—and here words fail me—of Lucas Cranach! Leonardo had been Verrocchio’s pupil, granted, in Florence, before he was indicted. And his earliest works are primitive, as they should be coming under Verrocchio’s guidance. But the
Ginevra
is a mature work, nothing like…”

“Got it,” Fred said. He let the freed pin fall to the floor and, taking the full weight of the panel from Clayton, gently gave it the forty-five degree turn it needed.

“We should be wearing gloves,” Clay pleaded. “Both sides are precious now, remember. Be careful. Both sides are precious.”

Fred stood, holding the panel, freed now, by its edges. “Where do you want it, Mac?”

“You are going too fast,” Clay said. “From the outset. I am not accustomed to such haste. I…”

“You like anticipation,” Fred interrupted. “Rather than get it done. You like anticipation. Therefore you prolong it.”

“Perhaps. Without anticipation life is flat, pedestrian and sad. Language itself, if lacking the spice offered by anticipation, is monotone. Anticipation is a quality of hope, without which…”

“Let’s get it done. Upstairs or down?”

“It’s not my habit to bring a work into my living quarters until it has been cleaned and framed, “ Clay said. “But in this case…”

“Upstairs, then,” Fred concluded. “Let’s get it where we can look at it.” He led the way to the staircase they’d come down, the panel almost warm between his hands.

“Be careful. Be careful on the stairs. We’ll wrap it first.”

Clay disappeared upstairs and came back carrying a Kashmir shawl, which the two men wrapped around the panel before Fred carried it up the spiral staircase and into Clayton’s parlor. The room was a maze of comfort and beauty and almost immediately as they entered it Clayton Reed made sense. It was a mixture of Oriental, Victorian, antique European, and solid American objects and influences. “Put it on the love seat,” Clay said, leading Fred to a rosewood frame covered in pink plush. “It will be safe here. I’ll take the shawl.”

While Fred propped the painting against the love seat’s upholstered back, Clay crossed to a baby grand piano and smoothed the shawl over it before he took from its bench a photograph framed in silver, and placed it on the shawl. It showed a young woman, tender and beautiful, standing in an evening gown before a hazy background.

“My wife,” Clay said. “Prudence Stillton. She was called Lucy. This was her family’s house.” He paused and stroked the shawl. “She died of an awful illness. Very suddenly. And very young. We’d been married…” He did not finish.

The Hopper over the mantelpiece, with its roofs and impending storm, might once have dominated this room, but it was challenged now.

“I have made a decision,” Clay announced. “The new painting shall be entitled
Madonna of the Apes.
”

Chapter Thirteen

Fred found a chair whose solid design seemed likely to accommodate his bulk, and moved it to where he could sit in front of the
Madonna.
“She’s better right side up,” he said. He stared at the painting for five minutes while Clayton hovered in silence. “It’s a grand painting,” Fred said at last. “I don’t care who it’s by.”

Clayton said, “There’ll be books written about it. Academic conferences. Ph.D. theses. Letters back and forth in academic journals. All that palaver. But not in my lifetime.” He smiled with a seraphic smugness and clasped his hands at his waist. “Because I shall show it to no one.”

Fred said, “You might have found the one person in the world who truly doesn’t care. But what you say is true, I’m sure. There will be future debate. People like to take sides to prove their friends are dolts. Rembrandt has a committee, I’ve heard, to decide that everyone’s Rembrandt is a dud. Does Leonardo have a committee?”

“I don’t know. Some scholars’ opinions are presently in vogue. I haven’t looked into it, and I won’t look into it, because it is of indifference to me what such a committee, if any, might say.” One side of the room was lined with the little gilt chairs they used to bring out during dances to hold the wallflowers in Louisa May Alcott’s day. Clay brought one over and set it next to Fred’s chair. “Today’s moral equivalent to Berenson,” he sneered. “I don’t care who they are because they will not see this painting.”

“Given the way da Vinci worked,” Fred said, “if the work is his you might find his fingerprints in the paint. Or not. He used his fingers sometimes to maneuver his paint.”

“Indeed,” Clay said. “How do you know so much about it?” he did not say—but it was in the suspicion in his voice.

The Madonna looked imperturbably at a point that lay between the two men. The child looked at the ape, and struggled to reach it. The ape looked—it was hard to decide. At the fig, at the child; perhaps the ape even had a weather eye cocked toward the mother who was after all, by comparison, a mammal of considerable size and potential ferocity.

“Let them make, or break, or lose their reputations on someone else’s picture,” Clayton continued. “They are not getting near mine. May I offer you refreshment?”

Fred shook his head. “I have to go. Being in the neighborhood, I thought I’d take another look.”

“Talking of fingerprints,” Clay continued, “how do you know about Leonardo’s fingerprints? You’re right, but how do you know? But in any case, that will never be an issue, not while I live. No, to register prints, one would be obliged to subject the object to the X-ray procedure, which I will not do. It alters cells.”

“Thanks for letting me visit the lady. I’m glad to see her the right way around.” Fred stood and started for the door. “You have a program in mind for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” Clayton asked blankly.

“Yes. It’s not my business, but I am worried about tomorrow. The fact you are scheduled to call on Tilley again. Three o’clock, you said. According to him, he might have something really good to offer tomorrow.”

“The man is as ignorant as he may be dangerous. Naturally I
won’t
see him tomorrow,” Clay said.

“Suit yourself. It’s not my business. Maybe you really don’t care. But the question is—you have possession all right. Not to impugn your motives—you asked for a price, the guy gave you a price, you tussled, you agreed on a price, you paid him. So far so good. But was the thing his to sell? We now see the painting could have phenomenal importance. If it is ever going to take its place in the big parade, even if that’s only after your death, somebody has to explain where it came from, and how it got to you. Also where it was for the last five hundred years, if they can. Isn’t that how it works?”

“I know what provenance is,” Clayton spluttered.

“Of course you do. And if this honey of a painting is worth the gross domestic product of Rumania, as you say…”

“Excitement leads to emphatic expression. I said ‘Bulgaria.’”

“Okay. If that is true anyone, even you, needs to know that the man who sold it to you acted…”

“You think I am living in Cloud Cuckoo-Land?” Clay broke in. “We placed him under no duress. I acted in good faith. You are my witness.”

“His ignorance makes me wonder if he had clear title,” Fred repeated. “I don’t care if he collected the Commonwealth’s five percent sales tax…” Clayton blushed. “I’m talking about, Did the box belong to the man?” Fred persisted. “Can Tilley prove it? All that stuff in that place…If not, if he had no right to sell it; if it was hot, for example. Stolen, that is to say…you might as well know it. Supposing I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge…”

Clayton had risen to walk with Fred as he moved toward the front door. He held up his hand impatiently.

“So that I could see how there might be an advantage to your going over there. At the same time, I wonder, where’s all that stuff from, and where is it headed? It isn’t here by accident, and to me it looks like it’s here in a mighty quiet and, shall we say, informal way.”

Clay interrupted, “He strongly implied that he had inherited the collection.”

“And you believe it? Enough said,” Fred said, “on that subject. As I say, it’s your business.”

“This will afford me years of study,” Clay said, changing the subject abruptly.

Fred said, “The
Madonna
looks to me like Leonardo’s woman with the weasel. The one in the portrait in Krakow.”

“It’s an ermine.”

“An ermine is a weasel.”

“Painted in Milan,” Clay said. “In 1489, maybe 1490. After he had departed Florence. Under a cloud. And disappointed. Yes, I agree with you. Do you think I’ve been sitting on my hands the last two days? You think I am not studying the situation? Considering my painting from every possible angle? I must know everything. There are thirty-one paintings existing in the world that are known to be by Leonardo, or mostly by Leonardo. That’s if you don’t count the
Mona Lisa
in the Vernon collection, and I don’t. The Vernon collection’s
Mona Lisa
is a copy, and the copy is not by Leonardo.”

“For what it’s worth, Franklin Tilley will look for you tomorrow afternoon at three,” Fred said. “He’s convinced you’re a patsy. He’s got more to sell you, including the big thing that’s coming, he said. The big mystery painting. Most of all, he wants to follow you home.”

“Let him wait,” Clay said with a dry chuckle.

“I think you should go. And you should have someone with you,” Fred said, “as backup.”

“Backup?” Clay said. “I am unfamiliar with the term. It sounds unpleasantly medical.”

Chapter Fourteen

“If ever I’ve seen a blind eye,” Fred grumbled, on Mountjoy Street again, “that man has it in spades. He’s dazzled by his Leonardo, and he’s dazzled by his own success, and he’s dazzled by an intractable worldly ignorance. Like everyone else in the world, he won’t see what he doesn’t want to see.”

He gazed around at the world and it did not please him. It was unfinished, damp, and dangerous.

“We’ve got hold of the loose end of a crime that did happen, or is happening, or is on its way,” he said. “Peter Pan. Cloud Cuckoo-Land, did he say? The guy’s in Never-Land.”

Thinking of something else, he’d left his sack of laundry back at Bernie’s, and his grumbling walk took him in that direction, to pick up the sack, hoist it over his shoulder, and walk it back downhill on Pekham Street, toward Charles.

Tilley was coming out of his building. Wardrobe had given him a blue suit to wear, a distant cousin to the one Clay Reed was wearing. The package he was carrying was the right size to be one of the smaller paintings from his walls. His eye fell on Fred, studied him, discounted the laundry bag, and he rushed down to the sidewalk to cut him off.

“You’re the other guy,” he said.

“Many have said so,” Fred agreed.

“The other guy, who was here Sunday night. What was his name?”

“Search me,” Fred said. “You mean the guy you set up to mug?”

“A sales technique, and it worked. Too well, maybe. Now I’m looking all over for him. Where did he go when he left?”

“Taxi is all I can tell you,” Fred said.

“I’ve got to find him,” Tilley said.

Fred swung his bag to the sidewalk and sat on a stair. “Maybe I’ll see him,” he said. “What’s the problem? In case I see him.”

Franklin Tilley studied Fred for thirty seconds before he said, “I want my chest back.”

“You want the chest back,” Fred said. “Just like that.” He shook his head. “You took his money. He took the chest. The money’s yours. The chest is his. Transaction complete. That’s how it works.”

“I have his money.” Franklin reached into the suit jacket’s right breast pocket and brought out a fat envelope, which he waved more or less under Fred’s nose.

Fred gestured to the space on the stair next to him. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. “Tell me about it.” That wouldn’t do, of course. If Franklin adopted a posture of relaxation he’d lose the edge of his urgency, which he apparently hoped might give him an advantage.

“That sale isn’t binding,” Franklin said. “You threatened me. For another thing, I changed my mind. And for a third thing, I’ll raise him five thousand. For ten thousand I’ll take back the chest. That’s fair.” A woman wearing a red raincoat and walking a dog, uphill, on the far side of Mountjoy, stopped to watch. On Beacon Hill transactions of any consequence are seldom executed in such a public way, not even in the stores.

Fred held up a finger and said, “Your first point, you’re wrong. The second, if it’s a point, and if it’s valid, you’d have to demonstrate in a court of law. Your third point I grant you. You changed your mind. I see that. The lady across the street can see that. Also her dog.” The woman and her dog resumed their exercise. “But that third point, though true, doesn’t necessarily lead to action. And it is trumped by my response to your next point. You offer ten thousand, but we don’t want to sell.”

Franklin shook his fist. The envelope clenched in the same fist waved. Under his other arm the small rectangular package, in its brown paper, crackled. “We?” Franklin exclaimed. “‘Us’ again. What do you mean, ‘We’? It looked like, you turning up the other night, that was an accident,” he said.

“You’ve been telling yourself that,” Fred said. “Of course you have.” He shook his head.

“I want the chest back.”

Fred shook his head again. “You sold it to us and, so far, we like it.”

“‘Us’ again. You hardly opened your goddamned mouth. How did I know you were in it? Unless, what did you do, horn in on the deal later? I’ll do business with the other man, Reed something. Tell him I’ve got his money.”

“Food for thought,” Fred said. “If I get it for you, what’s it worth?”

“I’ll talk with Reed,” Tilley said. “Fuck you. I’ll find him. I’ll find him.”

“I don’t think you will.” Fred stood, dusting his hands. Franklin, below him, moved a couple of steps down the sidewalk.

“I can pay…” Franklin started. Fred shook his head. Up the hill, on this side of Pekham, a couple was approaching, a man and a woman, probably in their thirties, probably courting, probably recovering from lunch. They were both dressed for the rain that had long since gone.

“Our business is done,” Fred said, “as far as the chest goes. I can explain as we walk.” He took Franklin’s left arm by the elbow and started him down the hill. Tilley, smaller and having no better plan of action, reluctantly went along. They fell in behind the courting couple.

“What’s that, the Cézanne? Never mind. The thing is, about Reed,” Fred explained, “he’s unusual. And the kind of unusual he is, once he makes up his mind, he doesn’t change it. You and I, being reasonable, understand how the world works. But he, being unusual, feels he can disregard…well, for example, would feel he can disregard your offer. There’s nothing I can do.”

“So you and this Reed are friends, now, are you? I’m not finished,” Franklin Tilley said. He shoved the envelope into the left breast pocket of his blue suit.

Fred told him, “My advice is, when you see him tomorrow—you made an appointment with him, didn’t you?—
If
you see him tomorrow, don’t mention the chest. That’s the best thing. All the paintings you have you might sell him, concentrate on those other things, is my advice. The big new thing you’re going to get, that’s going to knock his eyes out. Did that come in?”

“Fuck you,” Franklin Tilley said.