The Center of the World (17 page)

He waited until the waitress had taken her order. “You can follow instructions. The last one seemed to think she was coming to an opening. A white shirt, tight black pants, and a black jacket. But you’ll do. Listen: the guy’s not very interesting, but who is?”

George took a sheet of paper from his pocket and consulted it as he spoke. “His name is Henry Leiden. He’s married twenty-six years, two grown kids. Wife seems to be the brains and the looks in the organization. She works in New York, partner in a midsized law firm. About the time he got in touch with the professor rumors started going around that the marriage was in trouble: he was sleeping with somebody else, so was she, maybe. But they’re still together. He works for something called the Nassau Foundation. Small outfit, staff of about ten. They distribute maybe ten million dollars a year in small grants, mostly in the arts and education. He reads grant applications, travels a bit to tell folks about the foundation. It’s one of those strictly nine-to-five jobs, not too stressful. Pay’s okay for what it is, but no way to be a millionaire. She’s the one that brings in the cash. Summer place upstate; been there and checked it out. Nice lake view, but nothing special.” George’s
cell phone rang and he listened for a few moments before putting it back in his pocket.

“Okay, we’re good to go. She’s in New York and he just got to the office. Finish your coffee.” As they were driving toward Princeton, George handed her a clipboard. “This should be pretty easy: no pets, no alarms, no help. We’re going to park on the street about a block from the house. If anybody sees us they’ll think we’re insurance adjusters. Something about a clipboard—it makes you look official.”

Hawthorne Avenue was lined with modest split-levels that looked as if they had been built in the fifties or early sixties. Gina had expected something grander from Princeton. She followed George up the driveway to the back. He took a ring of picks from his pocket and crouched down in front of the door. In thirty seconds it was open. He smiled with contempt. “Try not to touch anything and make sure your shoes are clean before we go in there.” He handed her a pair of thin cotton gloves and put on a pair himself.

The first thing she noticed was the smell; the second was the silence. The smell of burnt toast and coffee was so powerful she thought she would need a shower to get it out of her hair. The odor seemed amplified by the same trick that made the fall of her feet sound like thunder. She could hear the blood pounding in her temples and the air rushing into her nostrils. There was a copy of the
Times
on the kitchen table: “Iraqi Looters Tear Up Archaeological Sites.” There was a stack of junk mail on the counter. A shopping list stuck to the refrigerator. Just normal people whose lives were being
violated. She felt both sorry for them and excited in a way that surprised and disturbed her.

It was a modest place, like the Wisconsin home of her freshman roommate at Sarah Lawrence. Everything seemed a little worn around the edges, but it looked comfortable enough. She thought about how miserable her mother was in spite of all the money, about how little her own money contributed to happiness.

George went through the house systematically and with quiet efficiency. “People like this,” he said, “are not very sophisticated—unless looking unsophisticated is part of the act. So we have to look in the obvious places: in closets, under beds, in the attic, leaning against a wall, in the garage.”

When George went up to the attic, she stayed behind and looked around the bedroom, trying to get a sense of these people by looking at the photographs on the bureau: babies, a boy and a girl playing catch, college kids at a picnic table, wedding pictures, a middle-aged couple having drinks on a wooden dock with blue water in the background. She was a good-looking woman, whereas age had shown more on him. She picked up a picture in which he was looking up from a computer. He was smiling and making an effort, but nothing could disguise the thinning hair, the unhealthy fleshiness of his face, and something defeated around the eyes. He reminded her of the guy her father was trying so desperately not to become.

Hearing George on the attic stairs, she set the photograph carefully back in its place. She hurried to the unmade bed and looked under it.

“Anything under there?”

“Just dust,” she said. “And a sock. And a pair of his underpants. Any luck upstairs?”

“No.” George bent down and looked under the bed. “You missed the bra,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

They had been in the house for less than half an hour. Once they got to the car George called someone on his cell phone and told them he was done. Then he turned to her. “There’s nothing here. You can tell your boss I said so. Just the same old same old. Middle age and all that shit. Some day it will bite you in the ass too. Just you wait. I’ll drive you to the station.”

 “
TIME
,”
TURNER SAID
, “is the great subject.” He handed me a glass of sherry and took one for himself. “It will do you good.”

We were up in his studio. The morning light streamed in from the east. There was a great fire in the fireplace. “The passage of the past to the present, of youth to age, of the golden age to the dismal one, the rise of empires and their fall. Most fellows don’t think of it as they paint, but one must, since it takes so damn long to execute a painting and nothing is as it was when you started.

“Queer how some of those old Italian fellows went about it. Birth of saint in the upper right-hand corner. Pious education upper middle, first miracle upper left, gruesome death front and center, further miracles over on the left. Seems damn clumsy if you ask me, but it has a certain charm. I always try to get a hint of time in one way or another: a ruin or a twisted tree; something about to happen. Otherwise there is no interest.
Time is the only thing we care about. How long before we die is the only question.”

He put his glass down. “But come. Time is passing. This light will only be with us for so long. You are a fine-looking young man, but before long you will be like me and knocking on death’s door.”

He directed me to get up and stand on a small platform that was in the center of the room. He asked me to take my shirt off.

“I will give you a pose,” he said, “and ask you to hold it for about five minutes by my watch. And then another, and so forth.” He took his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and placed it on the ledge of his easel. I took my shirt off as he bade. Although Turner had taken pains to make the room as warm as possible, I felt goose bumps form on my flesh. I looked down at Turner and was relieved to see that he was not staring at me, but still setting up his materials.

“Ah, there you are,” he said after a few moments. I felt him look me over critically. “You will do.” He gave me a kind smile. “Are you comfortable? Warm enough? Not sure what I can do to make it warmer, so I hope the heat will suffice.”

I assured him that I was warm enough, but confessed to being a little uncomfortable.

“Most natural thing in the world. But you could make a career of this. Not that I would recommend it. As you shall see, it is tedious work. And I am a reasonable man, while many of my brethren are tight-fisted reprobates. Now, turn your back to me and clasp your hands behind your neck. Good. Shift your weight so that you place most of it on your left side. Now keep
very still. You may amuse yourself with the thought that you are a pagan youth awaiting a visitation from the gods.”

I did what I could to banish the incongruity of my position from my thoughts by looking out onto the park. A herd of deer was grazing in the middle distance, bending their heads down to the horse chestnuts. Traces of yellow and red were starting to appear in the trees. Formations of geese wheeled through the sky. I could hear the sound of Turner’s pencil scraping against the paper.

“Good. Now put your hands down. Rest a moment. You have lovely muscles on your back. Not so bulky as the Horse Guards I used to sketch at the Academy, but nicely articulated. You will not do for a hero, but you will make an excellent Athenian youth. Or perhaps one of those poor blokes the gods are always falling in love with. Doomed, of course. Or, if I was in that line, a first-rate Saint Sebastian.”

I put my hands in my pockets for warmth. I felt vaguely foolish looking down on him, as if I were going out for a stroll and had simply forgotten my shirt. But I also felt flattered by his remarks. “I don’t fancy being Saint Sebastian,” I said.

“You would not get the point of it, would you?” Turner asked. He broke into a hearty laugh. I smiled as best I could, more at the sight of his laughter than at the humor of the thing.

He wiped his eyes. “We must get back to work, although it does a soul good to laugh. Let us try another. Face me, and now turn a bit to the side. Turn your head also to the side. Raise your left hand and point to something outside the window there.” I did as I was told.

“This will be harder for you, but I’ll try to be quick.” Turner worked steadily for a moment or two, his eyes moving rapidly between me and his work. He muttered to himself as he worked, seeming more and more agitated about something. At last he cried out, “Damn,” and threw a piece of chalk to the ground. “Those trousers,” he said, “do you mind?”

I broke the pose and looked at him.

“I cannot leave the nineteenth century. Lord Egremont has asked me to do a classical composition. I wanted to do these sketches of you to help me in my thinking. But those trousers. It is impossible.” He gave me the most pathetic look.

Knowing that if I thought about it for more than a moment I would be lost, I took the plunge into unknown waters. I sat down on the edge of the platform and quickly divested myself of my trousers, stood up, and resumed the pose.

Turner went back to his drawing. In the moments that followed, something remarkable occurred. I cannot do justice to it, but I will try.

I concentrated on the place in the distance at which my finger pointed, trying to see whatever was there with all of my being. Turner and the sound of his pencil disappeared; my sense of my ridiculous position quite faded away. It seemed to me that I had left this world of steam trains and parliamentary debates. I was one of Cortés’s men in Keats’s poem, standing high above some unknown world and about to see something no man had seen before. And then it seemed that I had become the Greek youth in the painting that Turner was creating. I looked out at the far trees of Petworth Park, at the very reach
of my vision. I saw what I can only describe as a bright shadow on the physical world, and I knew in the depths of my heart that a goddess was making her appearance. I cannot say now what she looked like. No images remain in my mind. But I still have a sense of a beauty beyond all beauty that I had ever seen or imagined. My heart, I know, began to beat faster, and my body grew moist, as if I had been anointed with precious oils. I felt myself quiver with joy and worship.

But then I heard Turner gasp and the spell was broken. The goddess or the vision or whatever it was disappeared. It was if I had awakened from a dream and into a nightmare in which I was stark naked and in a most embarrassing state of excitement in front of a queer old painter in his drafty studio. I broke the pose in a panic, and looked about for something to cover my nakedness. Before I could speak Turner tossed me a robe, which I quickly donned. I sat down on the edge of the platform, still breathing hard. Turner handed me another glass of sherry, which I accepted gratefully.

There was something tender and solicitous about Turner’s aspect that touched my heart. “How long,” I asked, “had I been holding that pose?”

Turner consulted his watch and then his sketch pad. A look of amazement passed over his face. “Seemed more than five minutes’ work. We were both gone. Seventeen minutes by this watch. Is not your arm sore?”

I had not thought about my arm, as my mind was full with the wonder of what had just happened and with the vain attempt to capture the vision before it fled. But I realized that it
was indeed quite sore and that it hung like a dead thing at my side. I explained to Turner what had happened.

“Rum,” he said. “From my side it started out plain enough. But then the frenzy came over me. That’s what I call it. Happens rarely enough. The work seems to make itself, as though I’m a mere medium for some other power. Wish it would happen more often. But your body seemed almost to glow with light. Something in my mind, I suppose. Inspiration and so forth. Sweat, most likely. But that is enough for today. Enough. You should get dressed. Perhaps, if you would be so kind, we could try again. You and I, perhaps we can take a ramble in the park now.”

I gathered up my clothing and went behind the screen to get dressed. I could hear Turner putting away his materials.

“Funny about the gods. They’re a damn hard business. They are long gone in this miserable nineteenth century of ours. The groves are empty and so forth. Still, I sometimes imagine I catch a glimpse of them. Or see what they might be if they existed, if you follow me. You can walk about the park all you like. See deer. Foxes. Flocks of fowl. Most wonderful songbirds. Marvelous light. Color. Shades between shades never seen before. But no gods. They are gone. Decamped to who knows where. Railways and machines took their place. Who knows? But sometimes, when I look about me, I sense that they were here, that they have just departed. It is hard to explain. They leave behind a scent in the light. As though an attractive woman’s been in the room. Only her scent remains. But in light. The residue of their glory in the world. An odd business.”