by Morris West
It is possible, of course, that you may have knowledge of these works which I do not possess. If so, and you feel free to communicate it to me, I shall be happy to arrange for its publication with appropriate acknowledgment.
I trust you and your family are in good health. The memory of my darling Pia still haunts my dreams. Amid the jangle of New York traffic, I long for the sound of blackbirds outside my window.
It was not all humbug. The nostalgic sentiment was almost genuine. His role as scholar-simpleton was almost authentic. What he could not convey was the excitement of his new enterprise, heady as proof alcohol, the satisfaction of seeing a campaign plan taking shape, watching the field of operations being surveyed for mines and man-traps.
He palmed his tired eyes and settled to the last night-work: the preparation of his notes for the meeting with Harmon Seldes at Belvedere.
Seldes gave him a studiously warm welcome: a tour of the office, sherry with the senior editors, lunch with the publisher and in-house counsel who offered him a twelve months’ contract as consulting editor at a figure fifty per cent greater than he had expected. After the coffee, Seldes led him to his own office for a private discussion of what he called ‘these Raphaels of yours’.
‘I’ve thought this through very carefully, Max. Here’s what I propose. We publish you in the April issue. We have a long lead time, so that’s the best we can do. Our picture people will be looking out some interesting illustrations. Now, as editor for your piece I’m proposing Leonie Danziger. She’s a freelance, one of the best in town. She’s read your stuff and has come up with some excellent ideas. She works from her apartment; she’s expecting you there at three this afternoon. Is that convenient?’
‘Sure.’
‘Now as to the Raphael reference, I propose we exclude that from your text. We’ll run it as a boxed item properly attributed to you, related to your source material, but introduced by me personally. That way you’ll have the full weight of editorial approval and endorsement behind your work. Do you see any problems in that?’
‘None at all.’
‘I must say, Max’ – Seldes was suddenly uneasy – ’you’re very laid back about the whole business.’
‘I’m a happy hedonist,’ Mather dismissed the comment with a shrug. ‘I have no patience with academic jealousies.’
‘I wondered about that,’ said Seldes. ‘I looked you up, of course. The academic information is adequate but sparse; the social history is – let’s say – interesting!’
Mather’s smile was disarming as he spread his hands in a Latin gesture.
‘Get it off your chest, Harmon. You’re publishing me. You’re employing me. You’re wondering if I’ve read the price-tag on the deal.’
‘What does the price-tag say, Max?’
‘You want to develop the Raphael investigation yourself.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
‘Content, relaxed, happy – no problem at all.’
‘That surprises me.’
‘Why should it? I came to you, remember? I came because you are one of the few people qualified to mount and carry through such an extended and expensive piece of research. I’m interested, sure. But I’m not disposed to hard labour. If I can help while I’m doing my own things, I will – but I’m not chasing fame or foundation funds or eating money. I’m happy to share with you whatever information I pick up along the way.’
‘That’s more than generous of you, Max.’
‘Try to believe it’s the truth,’ said Mather with a grin. ‘Then you’ll sleep more soundly. There is one thing to remember, however.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Once you publish, the world and his wife will be rummaging in the attic for lost Raphaels.’
‘And all of them will be looking to me and to the Belvedere to pass judgment on their finds. Anyway, now that we understand each other let me prepare you a little for Danny Danziger. She’s quite a formidable young woman. I’m told she has offbeat sexual preferences. That’s only hearsay, of course; I never mix business with pleasure.’
Leonie Danziger was, to say the least, a suprise: a tall redhead, thirtyish on the calendar, with green eyes, a classic profile and a figure that would have sent the pre-Raphaelites wild. She wore a brocaded house-gown, horn-rimmed spectacles and Oriental mules. Her greeting was casual, her handshake a cool fleeting touch.
She ushered Mather into a large cluttered loft with a view across the water to the Jersey shore. Having seated him at a Spanish refectory table she perched herself, severe as a mother abbess, in a high-backed chair directly opposite him. Her first words were a flat sentence of damnation.
‘You’re a bloody dull writer, Mr Mather.’
‘I know.’ Mather gave her his most engaging grin. ‘That makes me God’s gift to editors. Anything I can do, they can do better.’
‘Have you published much?’
‘Very little. In practice I’m an archivist – by preference I’m an idler. Now, where would you like to start?’
‘By explaining how I work. First, I get paid for editorial labour, then I get a byline and additional fees for what I write for publication. In other words, I’m not going to ghost your work but I may interpolate it with commentary for which I take credit and for which I get paid. If the commentary distorts or misrepresents your intent, you say so. I’ll change it. In this case, I’m the presenter of your wares. Understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘So now, your material. The substance is obviously accurate. Your comparisons with domestic life today are interesting. Your conclusions are sound if sometimes facile. But you write everything in monotone. I know that Belvedere is a stuffy magazine, but it doesn’t have to be that stuffy! So what I’ve set out to do is to choose the best and most interesting parts of your thesis and tie them together with a fairly lighthearted commentary.’
‘How come,’ Mather leaned back in his chair and studied her like a physician, ‘how come I’m a light-hearted guy and write dull stuff – while you’re a blue-stocking and you can write lighthearted commentary?’
For the first time a light appeared in the green eyes and a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth.
‘Law of compensations. No man deserves to be as good-looking as you are. No woman deserves to be as much a blue-stocking as I am. So you get to be a lousy writer and I get to be a witty editor.…Shall we start work?’
He had to admit she was well prepared. She had taken a manuscript of some thirty thousand words, culled from it a score of sequences and put them together into a vivid mosaic of life on a villa farm in Tuscany in the early sixteenth century. She had an eye for lively detail – how wool was dyed and leather was tanned, how the grain that was shipped to Pisa from Sicily was exchanged for Tuscan wine and cheese, how the barrels of tunny fish from Trapani paid for iron from Elba, how woven silks and gentlemen’s saddlery were traded for gold-dust from Djerba and black slaves from the Barbary coast.
She had managed to endow his dry prose with the sap of personal experience. Mather, all too conscious of the slipshod work he had delivered on a subject which interested him not at all, was stimulated to critical discussion and lively reminiscence. He had quite lost track of time when she switched off the tape recorder and announced, ‘Six o’clock. That’s it for today. You talk better than you write. Maybe we should put you on the lecture circuit. I’m dying for a drink. Join me?’
‘Love to. Bourbon and water if you’ve got it.’
‘Over there on the sideboard. You can fix me a vodka and tonic. There’s a lime in the fruit bowl.’
While he made the drinks she set her papers in order and quizzed him in her offhand fashion.
‘You intrigue me, Max Mather.’
‘Why?’
‘This happy-chappie act. You walk in, I push a pie in your face. You wipe it off and grin at me. You admit you’ve written a half-assed thesis. There’s so little blood in the subject I can’t figure why you bothered with it. Then
I get you down to work. Lo and behold! Another man: serious scholar in search of excellence. Critical mind applying itself to classic categories. So which is the real you?’
‘What you see is what you get.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘How do you take your lime – slice or twist?’
‘Slice, please. Are you gay?’
He was taken aback by the question, but grinned and answered, ‘No. Are you?’
‘Yes, most of the time. Didn’t Harmon tell you?’
‘There was no reason why he should.’
‘He doesn’t need a reason. He’s a natural intriguer.’
He brought the drinks and raised his glass to her. ‘However, he did tell me you’re a first-rate editor.’
‘I can return the compliment and tell him you’re a very co-operative writer.’
‘Good. He needs the reassurance.’
‘You puzzle him. He can’t figure out why you’re not competing for credit on the Raphael references – they could turn out to be very important.’
‘Not to me. I’m not carving out an academic career; I’m a scholar who likes the easy life. Seldes needs the smell of endowment money, the authority of the big institutions, the power of rich foundations. He’s welcome to them.’
‘No wonder he called you the scholar gypsy.’
‘Did he now? Well, it’s a clever label but it’s a straight pinch from Matthew Arnold.’
‘He did add an embellishment of his own.’
‘Oh?’
‘The scholar gypsy with an iron cock ready to stand at the click of a woman’s fingers.’
‘How nice of him to say so.’
‘Provided, he said, she’s widowed or divorced and has a six-figure income.’
‘He’s a malicious bastard, isn’t he?’
‘Nature of the beast. He did add that he’s heard no complaints about your performance. The ladies all seem very loyal to your memory. On brief acquaintance, I can understand why.’
Mather was nettled by the quite obvious goading. ‘Is this all part of the editorial service?’
‘It’s the part I don’t charge for – my private pleasure, the getting-to-know-you game. I like to know my authors – are they married? What’s their state of health, their state of mind? All that sort of thing.’
‘Well now,’ said Mather evenly. ‘Let’s see if I pass the test. Married? No. Live-in arrangements? None. Transmissible diseases? None. What about you?’
‘The same. Nil return. Please’ – she laid a cool hand on his cheek – ‘we’ll stop the game now. I don’t think you’re enjoying it.’
‘It’s a nasty game.’ Brusque and angry, Mather moved in for the strike. ‘It’s cold-blooded and calculated. You play too rough, Miss Danziger. I don’t relish pie in the face. I’ve never liked sadism as a spectator sport – and with Harmon Seldes on the viewing end I like it even less. So I’ll thank you for the drink and be on my way. Call me when you’re ready for another work session. I enjoyed that part very much. I’ll be sure to tell Harmon Seldes how professional you are. Good night.’
He was half-way to the door before she found voice. ‘Please wait.’
He hesitated a moment, then swung round to challenge her.
‘Wait for what?’
‘I got it wrong – I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. Explain. About you, Seldes, all of it.’
‘Sit down, then. I need another drink. You?’
‘Thanks.’
She took her time over the drinks, perched herself on the edge of the table so that she was looking down at him and then began a halting narrative.
‘Harmon Seldes and I go back a long way. I was his junior assistant at Belvedere. When he discovered I could write, he used me to draft his speeches and edit his papers for publication. We got along well, because he’s not truly interested in women and most of the time I prefer to live in the Sapphic mode anyway. He still employs me because he gets the best job in town. So you come on the scene. He shows me your stuff. I think it’s pedestrian, but I agree to take you on. We talk. He tells me how you approached him on the Raphael references. His first thought was that you were setting up an elaborate confidence trick because, as I told you, he felt you were too good to be true. You can’t blame him for that. He’s been a long time in the business; he’s seen every scam in the book. Anyway he checked you out.’
‘And how, pray, did he do that?’
‘Sent cables to Palombini and to the Library in Florence. Said you were applying for a job at Belvedere and had given them as referees.’
‘Clever Harmon,’ said Mather softly. ‘Clever, clever Harmon.’
‘He didn’t show me the replies, but he did say they were A-grade recommendations. He still can’t figure how you earned them, but that’s another matter. Then he started digging into your social history from Princeton onwards. Apparently you cut a pretty broad swathe as a lover of convenience with ladies in late bloom. Hence the scholar gypsy and the iron cock and all that.…Which brings us back to me.’
‘It does,’ said Mather flatly. ‘It certainly does.’
‘Oh, God. This isn’t easy.’
‘It’s not meant to be. You walk shit into the house, you have to clean it up. Go on.’
‘I’m an editor. I deal with all sorts of writers – men, women, geniuses, idiots, sociopaths…you name ’em, I get ’em! So I’ve had to develop a technique. I put myself in command from the first moment. I try to unsettle them first, then gentle them down. That’s what I did with you. Instead you carved me up. I apologise. Now I need another drink.’
‘Stay where you are; I’ll get it. I haven’t finished yet. There’s a part of Seldes I don’t understand. The Raphael entries in the account books are four hundred and eighty years old. Think how many works of art have been lost, stolen or destroyed in that time. What happened to them is a fascinating speculation, but why should a man like Seldes lose any sleep over it? He writes his pieces…there’s a spate of correspondence, a few false leads and – basta! – we’re back to square one.’
‘That’s where you’re mistaken, Mr Mather. Seldes has a lot of secrets locked in his files – and a lot more that he keeps in his head. He consults for wealthy collectors in Europe and South America. He can tell you – but he won’t – which well-known items in well-known collections are forgeries. So he can exploit the Raphael information in ways you’ve never dreamed of. The last thing he wants is an ambitious junior sniffing in his tracks.’
‘He’d rather have him rattled by a Gorgon editor?’
‘You really are a bastard, Max Mather.’
‘I know I am. You know I am but, as Harmon Seldes reports, my women do keep happy memories of me. With a little practice, even you and I might manage to be polite to each other. Thank you for the work. Goodbye.’
It was a flippant and graceless exit and by the time he had reached his own apartment he was ashamed of it. As he showered and dressed he cast about for some words, some gesture of amends.
Then suddenly he remembered a trinket he had picked up one morning after Pia’s death. He was in Florence strolling aimlessly across the Ponte Vecchio, totally divorced from the present. In the window of a goldsmith who specialised in reproductions he saw a small cameo pendant of two women embracing. He went into the shop, haggled for half an hour and bought the pendant for fifty dollars. It was only when he walked out with the package in his hand that he remembered Pia was dead and the piece had no further meaning for him. It would sit well on Leonie Danziger, with her red hair and her ‘blessed damozel’ looks….
Using one of his silk handkerchiefs, he made a gift package in the Japanese style and sent it to her by special messenger. He also sent a note:
An apology for your client’s bad manners.
Scholars are presumed also to be gentlemen. I look forward to our next work session.
M.M.
FIVE
That night Anne-Marie was bidden to dinner with
Ed Bayard. It was an engagement she could not refuse because she needed to discuss with him the pricing of his wife’s pictures and the advertising that would be necessary to bring them successfully to market.
It was the first big test of her skill and judgment as a dealer. If she priced too low, she would lose money and the respect of a client who still possessed an important collection of his own. If she priced too high in a new downtown gallery, she risked an ignominious failure. The problem was compounded because she was dealing with a posthumous exhibition by an artist who had sold only privately through a specialised dealer.
She had already spoken with Lebrun, who had proved at the beginning reticent and faintly hostile. He was a short tubby Frenchman with snow-white hair, small expressive hands and the prancing gait of an old-time ballet master. He was at a loss, he said, to understand why Mr Bayard had not chosen to consult with him directly about the marketing of his wife’s pictures. He had nurtured this talent, often under difficult circumstances. He would have thought…but there! Perhaps not. He accepted of course that Miss Loredon was blameless in the matter. She was young, at the outset of a career. She was not yet aware of the subtle courtesies of the trade, the need for friendly alliances. He was, however, sufficiently touched by her sincerity and charm to offer a little advice.
The late Madeleine Bayard had been without doubt a fine painter with a special private vision. He had often urged her to exhibit, but she had always declined. Her husband, it seemed, was a repressive character – jealous of his wife’s talent, fearful perhaps of losing her. So Lebrun had introduced her work to certain of his clients interested in modern American talent. They might well be interested to increase their holdings in Bayard pieces. He would be happy to introduce them – for the appropriate finder’s fee. Prices? Not high while Madeleine was alive – two thousand, five, ten maximum. Of course, with a well-staged vernissage, good advertising and a sympathetic press, then one might move into higher brackets.
