Yok (41 page)

“Noticed that you're still in your old place in Dung-Beetle's corner?”

“You got one of the offices?” said Tortoise.

“My career has advanced.” Vincent laughed.

“Yes, there was that competition you were involved in,” Tortoise answered, and Vincent thought he detected a sting of bitterness in the tone.

“If you mean me and my race for partnership,” said Vincent with a broad smile, “you're completely right. The race continues. All races continue. We've just taken slightly different routes.”

Tortoise mumbled something Vincent did not hear, and returned to the office area, where he made his way to his corner. Vincent laughed and pressed the button for espresso.

A
fter a week at Bombardelli & Partners, Vincent found that mentally he felt better than in many years. It was a new start in more ways than one. At the architectural firm there was just the right mix of old and recently hired stuffed animals, which made the workplace familiar but new and exciting at the same time. The only thing that seemed untouched from before was the coffee machine.

The empty days at Lakestead House had been a strain on him, and now he felt stronger and stronger when he woke up in the morning. It was not so much the routine as the intellectual stimulation he needed. When he came home late in the evening, he was mentally tired, and when he went to bed it was with a feeling of satisfaction. During a normal day at Bombardelli, he was faced with a stream of challenges. Questions were asked and solutions sought, and he contributed and was important. Working with Daniela Fox was simple. She had an ability to sense when Vincent needed to shine, and when he could stay in the background.

After the first workweek was over, he wrote in his gray notebook:

1. Meaning of Life: If life is a transition, can it be about making it as smooth as possible?

2. Knowledge Account: Is a self-imposed task less satisfying than performing a task someone else has formulated? Are we a race of rulers and slaves? Do I have the soul of a slave?

3. Bank Account: Growing.

 

Rattlesnake Bombardelli's Comments

D
o you know who I am? Do you? Because you don't seem to. You seem to think I'm the head of an architectural firm. Yes, yes, but you don't seem to understand what it means that the firm bears my name. I'm not the head of an architectural firm. That's not my role. That's not my identity. Bosses are a dime a dozen. I happen to be the boss, but that's only a function of my talent. A side effect. A secondary effect, you might say. Besides, I never worked directly with Vincent. Not once. I have no idea what he was like at work. You'll have to ask someone else.

Yes, I did. I'm proud of that. I've never made a secret of it. Sure, it cost a lot of money. No, nothing. I did not demand anything. No, why should I be? He never asked for help, it was my own decision. I would have been surprised if he came running hat in hand to bow and scrape to thank me.

Yes. I can tell you that. One evening more than twenty years ago, my good friend Tony Horse called and told me to come down to the gallery. Tony had been an art dealer his whole life, he was a friend of my father, and he'd watched me grow up. He knew I understood art. He knew it required talent to discover talent. I asked what was going on, he said he wanted to show me something. He didn't want to say too much in advance and ruin the surprise. For Tony's sake I did as he asked, even though I wasn't particularly eager. There hadn't been a decent artist in this city in the past hundred years.

Tony was hanging canvases before an exhibition that would have an opening the following day, and he wanted to ask my advice about that, he said. That wasn't true. He wanted to show me what he considered to be the most talented artist he had yet run across. I walked around the gallery and looked dumbfounded at the pieces. It was unreal, how good it was. Even though it was everything I despised: paint and abstractions and pretentions, it was unreal how good it was. I asked to buy one of the paintings. To this day it's the best work I own. Of course I had never heard of the artist before, but no one else had either. I never would have guessed that Vincent Hare would remain unknown.

I can sympathize with that. As an artist I can understand it, in a way. Or at least respect it. I had nothing to do with him applying for a job, but when it was clear to me the Hare we had hired was the same Hare who had done the paintings at Tony's gallery, I was proud. It was a great joy. Being able to contribute to Hare's existence, being able to help him to an orderly life with orderly finances. I was happy to do it. More than that, I took up his cause. Without his asking me. That money I spent on his legs and the years at Lakestead House was nothing. Nothing.

I promise you, the drawings that Vincent Hare has contributed to over the years, never as lead architect because he doesn't have that expertise, but as an inspiration, as attendant, as an artist, I can pick those out anytime. Unmistakable. He has an eye that is unique. Vincent Hare is one of the most sensitive temperaments of our time, and I am one of the few who know it. Maybe the only one? That gives me a responsibility that goes far beyond a few simple invoices.

 

O
ne morning, five months to the day after Hare started back at Bombardelli, when he was 40 years, 55 days, 3 hours, and about 15 minutes old, a white, handwritten envelope was sitting on his desk. He immediately slit it open, and saw that he had been invited to dinner at the home of his boss, the great architect, the following Friday. To this point Vincent had successfully avoided Rattlesnake Bombardelli, and his instinct was also to decline the invitation. Later the same afternoon it became clear to him, however, that Daniela Fox had also received an invitation, and relieved, he realized it was not a private invitation but a kind of company event.

Apart from the phone call that resulted in the meeting with Daniela Fox at Plaza Costeau, Vincent had not spoken with Bombardelli since he'd been discharged from Lakestead House. With every day that passed he found it more and more difficult to imagine this conversation. Vincent had tried to calculate how much money Bombardelli had spent on his care, but the amounts were dizzying.

When Friday arrived, Vincent was very uncomfortable, and he was careful to make sure he was accompanied by Fox.

“You're joking? You mean you've never been here before?” said Daniela on their way up the steps, and Vincent let out a hissing sound that could most easily be interpreted as disinterest.

The door was opened by a grasshopper dressed in livery whose feelers were the longest Vincent had seen, and it was obvious the servant must have had the feelers sewn on recently. With a light, almost feminine voice ill-suited to his theatrical dress, he asked them to come in.

The smell of incense was noticeable even in the hall, but it overwhelmed them as they stepped into the living room, a room that resembled the inside of a windowless silo. The walls were painted with black enamel paint, in contrast to the worn wooden floor. Bloodred leather furniture stood in three groups around a teak coffee table, Bombardelli was sitting at an elegant desk that Vincent thought he had seen before, at Lion Rosenlind's house many years ago. He wondered if it was the same piece; had Bombardelli purchased it? The rattlesnake rose as they came in.

“Daniela, Vincent! Wonderful to have you here!”

He was wearing a black silk cape with red lining over a double-breasted suit, and as he swept the cape around him, the draft produced a small cloud of incense. The aroma was sweet, almost exotic, with a hint of musk and honey. Vincent coughed, Fox lit a cigarette in an attempt at counterfire, but Bombardelli pretended not to hear. The grasshopper with the feelers served champagne in glasses so tall and narrow they were hard to drink out of, and Bombardelli proudly told about various antique finds he had decorated the room with, but did not say a word about what had been, or give Vincent a look to suggest any special mutual understanding.

Dinner was served in the dining room, which proved to be located behind the heavy draperies along one wall of the room. The dimensions in there were different; a small room with a low ceiling and dark curtains on the windows. The dining room furniture was just as massive and terrifying as the desk. Candelabras stuck up under drifts of melted wax. Candles were the only illumination, and Vincent could not see what he was eating. On the wall above a display case hung the oil painting Bombardelli had purchased from his father's friend so many years ago, but Vincent did not see the painting and the rattlesnake did not draw his attention to it. Bombardelli experienced a subtle sensation in finally having Vincent Hare in the room, without the artist even noticing his own work.

“Excuse me,” said Vincent, as the grasshopper set out plates with blintzes and caviar, “but it was dark when we arrived . . . what kind of building is this? I don't live far from here, but I don't think I've seen a tower from the outside?”

That Bombardelli also lived in Yok was a surprise. Vincent had imagined the rattlesnake in one of the prosperous suburbs of Amberville or Tourquai, and then it turned out that he lived only a couple of miles away.

Bombardelli laughed, snorting and ready to tell, and his answer lasted through the appetizer and partway through the entrée. In summary, thirty years ago he had a modernized form of treehouse built. Like many houses in Mindie, the building on rainbow-colored Calle de Tremp had been a ruin when he found it, but a ruin built of stone. Inside the stone building Bombardelli had partitioned a foundation, on which he had his home erected, coal-black so that it looked like it was burnt, and therefore fit into the environment.

“Soon it will be a ruin standing in a ruin. You don't see it, with a little paint you can cover anything, but thirty years is a long time, my friends.”

While Bombardelli talked, the grasshopper served a heavy, almost undrinkable red wine.

“You're wondering, of course, why I invited you here this evening?” the rattlesnake called out a while later when the main course was finished and another couple of bottles of red wine had been emptied.

He got up from the dinner table and went toward one of the draperies flanking the serving table. Apparently, Vincent noted, Bombardelli had replaced doors with draperies throughout.

The architect led them into an office room flooded with light. They had become accustomed to the darkness in the dining room, and were blinded by the strong lamps. On a table in the middle of the room was a white model of the same kind they used at work, but this was only topography, land without buildings.

“This is my lot,” Bombardelli explained. “I've bought it.”

He pointed to the model with his tail in a sweeping gesture, and Fox and Vincent placed themselves alongside.

“I want you to design the house that will be on it,” said Bombardelli. “The two of you are the best I have. The best this city has. I intend to retire, but not until you have designed my house for me.”

“How much time do we have?” asked Fox.

“One month,” Bombardelli answered. “As of today, but not a day longer. You will have to consider this your true examination.”

A
lready that evening it was clear to Vincent what he wanted to produce, and right after the dinner with Bombardelli he took Daniela Fox with him to a bar not far from Bombardelli's house, and even closer to his own on Calle de Serrano. In Mindie there were no respectable bars, but there were a number of holes-in-the-wall where you were guaranteed not to meet anyone you knew and could therefore talk undisturbed.

Vincent ordered two glasses of red wine, and expanded on what he had in mind. Fox protested. She had a few ideas of her own about what Bombardelli might conceivably be looking for, but carefully Vincent took her out of one suggestion after another.

“Excuse me, Daniela, but Bombardelli will never be comfortable in a building that is not created out of passion,” said Vincent, and when he heard his own words he believed them. “We will never be able to speculate our way into what he wants. But I have a vision, Daniela. Call me ridiculous, but . . .”

And then he spoke uninterrupted for an hour about what he was visualizing, and the monument he wanted to create for Rattlesnake Bombardelli.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, Fox staggered out of the bar long after the chill of the night had taken possession of the city. In Mindie there were no taxis, and at this time of night she could not convince anyone to come down and get her. She hadn't taken the bus since her teens, but Vincent took her to the stop and waited with her until the No. 6 arrived.

“Passion, Daniela,” was the last thing he said. “Now we'll design the house we will never get to design again.”

He was so full of his own ideas that sleep was impossible. After sitting at the kitchen table doing a number of sketches, he found his gray notebook and wrote as he drank strong black coffee:

1. Meaning of Life: Work? Thoughtless, fulfilling, impassioned work? Moving society from one place to another, and giving the next generation something we didn't have? Is hard, rewarding work the meaning?

2. Knowledge Account: All of us need a benefactor.

3. Bank Account: Feels less important.

 

T
hey gathered their team and started work the following day. They had four weeks. They set up their headquarters in Daniela's office, and put cardboard over the windows of the office to isolate themselves from the others at the firm. Five of them would work full-time on the project, and put everything else aside.

If Vincent Hare before had created a professional role that charmed his colleagues with a kind of friendly nonchalance, this project—which they dubbed
Casa Magnifica
—was something quite different. After a hesitant start when Vincent found it frustrating and difficult in words as well as in sketches to express his grandiose intentions, the project took off during the second week, and by the middle of the third week Vincent brought a pillow and blanket from home to avoid leaving Fox's office at all. His enthusiasm was contagious. Another two on the team kept Vincent company on the couches and on the floor, despite Fox's mild protests. Meals were ordered in from pizzerias and bakeries in the neighborhood, and the scale model they built as they were drawing grew day by day.