Masterclass

by Morris West

  This Sapphic side of her life was recorded in a different vein altogether:

  Paula came today. Her children have left for summer camp. She is so pleased to be alone. I lock my doors and devote myself entirely to her. We make love, we sleep, we wake, we drink wine. I begin to sketch her, stretched naked on the coloured quilt…I do a dozen charcoal sketches and one big cartoon in a thin wash. In spite of child-bearing, she is still sleek and white as marble. When I touch her my hands leave paint marks. We both laugh and we begin to paint each other’s bodies like children.

  There was also a reference to Danny Danziger, of whom she wrote in quite another style:

  She tries so hard to make me put into words what I can only express on canvas or by making love. I tell her the words get jumbled in my head, stick in my throat…she refuses to understand. So I pin paper on a drawing board, shove a piece of charcoal into her hand and tell her, ‘Go on, draw! Draw me, draw the bottle and the glass.’ Of course she doesn’t know where to begin. So I tell her, ‘You can’t draw; I can’t talk. Now let’s go to bed!’ Which is what the argument is all about. Except she has to go through the whole dance of the veils before she gets there.

  Dotted like raisins in a cake were the references to Bayard:

  On days like yesterday, I can almost believe I can be happy with Edmund. We took a couple of my pictures to Lebrun. He bought them on the spot. Then we strolled down Madison, browsing in some of the smaller galleries and finally coming to a craft shop which exhibits the work of American potters, woodworkers, glassmakers and weavers.

  Edmund’s attitude to these works is of extraordinary humility. He says, ‘My God, they make me feel so useless, so clumsy. Look at that glaze.…Look at that wooden bowl, so simple, yet so respectful of the wood itself.’ I ask myself – I would never dare to ask him – why he does not show the same respect towards me and what I do. I know the answer: I am a wayward child who must be punished by withholding approval even from her virtues. He has the understanding eye, but not the understanding heart.

  These brief character sketches were interspersed with descriptions of sexual encounters in her studio and in the apartments of friends and acquaintances. But as Max pored over the beautifully scripted pages, he became slowly aware that what he was reading was not in fact a diary but a carefully constructed narrative, part fact, part fiction, of her real and imagined life. The handwriting itself was the clue. It was too regular, too controlled – like a manuscript laboriously copied in the scriptorium of some Rabelaisian abbey. It was a work of art which depicted what her pictures concealed. She manipulated her friends and sexual partners exactly as she posed her models to make the most expressive composition, the most dramatic statement:

  Paula and Danny are jealous of each other. I withdraw myself from them and have them make love with Lindy. Then I have Peter join in the play. I explain over and over that love should be fun, not fury. I sketch as they romp. When they look at the sketches they see the beauty of the game and begin to be friends.

  Clearly there were deep conflicts in such artificial relationships, but there was nothing to suggest an imminent act of violence until quite late in the record:

  Today a horrible fight with Peter. He is suddenly very jealous – obsessively so for a young man. He wants to take me out, show me off to his friends. I refuse. I try to explain that my love-place is private, that I am not a possession to be displayed in public. He calls me terrible names. He hits me, throws me on the bed and tries to rape me. The rape fails because I am only too ready to surrender. I begin to wish Henri would come back. His brutality is always under control.

  A few days later came another episode of exasperation:

  I ask Hugh to take me to Thursday’s auction – important Impressionist items from a Chicago estate. He has told me so many funny stories about sexy women at auctions that I am curious to see them. He says no. Auction days are business days for him. If I want to go, I go alone and stay away from him. I tell him to go to hell. He says, ‘Don’t push your luck, Madi. This town’s full of easy lays.’ I hit him in the face. He hits back and walks out. I wonder why the fun is gone out of everything.

  Late in the afternoon Danny arrives. She is in a mess too. She has just quarrelled with Harmon Seldes and is thinking of quitting her job as well. I tell her she’s a fool. She should stay. The pay is good. Seldes can’t afford to lose her. The affair was nothing but a fiction created by two people who couldn’t make up their minds about their own bodies.

  Mather read the passage three times before its full import hit him. Leonie herself had given him all the clues. He had simply lacked the wit to read them: the connection with Seldes and Hugh Loredon, her identification of Madeleine as voyeur as well as participant, the last words of her report: ‘A lot of us are involved and we’ll be looking to you to make sense of it.’

  He left the rest of the diary unread, turned to the photostats of the sketchbooks and studied them carefully page by page. The manic dancing, copulating figures were real personages now. He could fit names to them from the letters, identify their sexual particularities from passages in the diaries.

  On his first cursory examination in New York he had noticed only one image of Leonie Danziger. Now she thrust herself at him from several tableaux: in a Sapphic embrace with another woman, then transformed into a wild-haired maenad pursued through a variety of encounters by rampant fauns who had to be Peter and Ironman.

  He left the drawings open on his desk and got up to pour himself a drink. The telephone rang; Harmon Seldes was on the line, bubbling with goodwill.

  ‘I spoke with Berchmans. You made a very good impression on him.’

  ‘I’m an impressive fellow. You know that, Harmon.’

  ‘How’s the Bayard piece coming along?’

  ‘Slowly. She’s a hard woman to keep in focus.’

  ‘What sort of material have you been able to find?’

  ‘Not a lot. I’m relying mostly on oral history from Bayard himself and my own reaction to the pictures. This will be mood stuff, not scholarship.’

  ‘No papers, no letters?’

  ‘Not so far. Why?’

  ‘Apparently Berchmans and she were part-time lovers. He wrote her letters.’

  ‘Silly fellow.’

  ‘If any turn up, he’d like to get them back.’

  ‘I’m sure he would. My father had a saying about that.’

  ‘I’m sure it was profound,’ Seldes said drily.

  ‘It was,’ Mather told him. ‘ “Do right and fear no man. Don’t write and fear no woman.” I’d have thought Berchmans was brighter than that.’

  ‘You don’t have to be bright,’ said Seldes gloomily, ‘just rich enough not to care.’

  In a private room at the London Clinic, Hugh Loredon sat propped up with pillows and talked with his physician. At first glance they might have been brothers – white-haired, pink-cheeked, blandly eloquent and evasive as only the Boston Irish and the Home Counties English know how to be. The physician made a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘It’s rough, Hugh. It’s going to get rougher. The secondaries are spreading. You’ve got very little liver function left.…’

  ‘How long?’ Loredon asked.

  The physician shrugged. ‘A month or so of mobility, provided you take things easy. After that you’re on the slippery slide. We can ease you along a bit, but at the outside you’ve got three months.’

  ‘I won’t sit still for that.’ He was angry. ‘If you won’t knock me off, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Yes, well.…’ The physician surveyed him with detached pity. ‘I understand how you feel; but as things stand in this country, I can’t “knock you off”. You’re a casual patient; I don’t have a long history on my books, so I can’t build up a consistent overdose of painkillers. As for knocking yourself off, that’s easy enough, but let me ask you a question. Do you carry life assurance?’

  ‘Quite a lot,’ Loredon answered.

  ‘Who collects the b
enefit?’

  ‘My daughter.’

  ‘But if you commit suicide, she loses it. Of course it’s up to you to decide the issue; I’m just reminding you of the consequences.’

  ‘And that’s the best you can tell me?’

  The physician spent a long time studying the backs of his soft well-manicured hands. He seemed to be talking to his fingernails instead of to his patient.

  ‘There is another solution. It’s not one I dare even hint at with people who have strong religious views, but since you don’t appear to have any convictions in that matter…’

  ‘I don’t,’ stated Loredon emphatically. ‘I’ve lived without religion all my life. I can’t just put it on like a Burberry to keep off the rain. Tell me.’

  ‘You’re still well enough to travel. I suggest you go to Amsterdam. I’ll give you a letter to a colleague of mine there who runs an oncology clinic for terminal cases. He’ll take you in…. And when you feel you’re ready, he’ll help you to go out. It’s swift, painless and more and more doctors in Holland are offering it as a service to their patients. You’re a terminal case anyway. So there’s no problem with the death certificate. All you need to do is make sure there’s enough money to pay the hospital and cremation expenses and have your ashes shipped back home.’

  Hugh Loredon chewed on the proposition for a few moments and then asked, ‘Amsterdam, you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I could fly in, transact some legitimate company business, then put myself into hospital?’

  ‘That’s right. The business part is your own affair.’

  ‘It’s a charade, but I’d rather my daughter didn’t know what I was doing. She’s working on a big project. I don’t want to upset her more than I can help. No long goodbyes. No mercy flights across the Atlantic. You’re sure you can guarantee a painless exit?’

  ‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ said the physician calmly. ‘You’re a very sick man. You should be following the protocols of treatment. You have decided to keep working; you are off .to Holland. Like any good doctor, I refer you to a colleague in case you need emergency help. You carry the letter with you. It outlines your medical history. We are all covered.…Anyway, sleep on it. We’ll talk again in the morning.’

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Hugh Loredon told him. ‘Amsterdam it is.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll see you again on my early morning round and give you the letter of reference. You can be out of here by ten. I take it you’ll be going straight to the Continent?’

  ‘Well, yes.…There may be one or two things I have to do before I leave.’

  ‘You’re on borrowed time, Hugh. Don’t waste it on trifles. If you collapse in London, you’ll have to sweat it out right to the end.’

  ‘Point taken.’ Hugh Loredon held out his hand. ‘Thanks for the service. Now let me make a few calls and see how many friends I’ve got.’

  Max Mather had ordered coffee and sandwiches to be brought to his room. He was anxious to work through to the end of the Madeleine Bayard material and begin some rudimentary drafting on the architecture of the piece.

  When he turned back to the diaries, he became aware for the first time of the dates of the entries. It was a matter of visual awareness rather than of any conscious decision to examine a time-frame. He was surprised to find that the final entries ran right up to the date of Madeleine’s murder. Clearly Loredon must have gone to the studio on that day and taken away the material…which had to make him a prime suspect as the killer, or at least an accessory after the fact.

  The last entries in the diary were therefore singularly important. Mather read them slowly, several times:

  I saw the doctor again this morning. He gave me a long lecture. He says I cannot sustain the pace of a highly active sex life and the creative drive necessary to produce the amount of work I am doing. He insists I slow down and finish the course of sedatives he has prescribed. He believes I should put myself into therapy, to try to bring some sense of unity into a life which is becoming more and more fragmented. I argue with him, but I know he is right. The only time I feel whole is when I stand alone in front of the canvas, looking at a world which I have created.

  Yet people still make huge demands on me. I feel sometimes like Diana of Ephesus, with hundreds of breasts at which the whole world is feeding. The men are bad enough. They are brusque and demanding, but once satisfied they are gone. The women – and I think especially of Danny and Paula – consume much more of me. They demand affirmations and assurances I simply cannot give.

  Edmund is daily more concerned. I know that, but when he is concerned he scolds. When he scolds I become bitchy and then he gets angry and bitter and locks himself away from me. There are times when I believe I could goad him into killing me. The sedatives help a little. I could easily become addicted to that soft seductive calm that creeps over me as the dose takes hold.…If only I could share it and forget the furies and the jealousies…

  Mather closed the book and pressed the palms of his hands against his aching eyes. The momentary darkness was a relief from the glare of the paper and the unrelenting march of the script across the pages, but there was no way to blot out the disturbing images conjured up in this sterile Swiss apartment, three thousand miles and twelve months away from Madeleine’s studio in New York. Soon he would be living in that same studio. Would he still hear the piping of old music, see the flurry of ghostly draperies? Would the image of Madeleine Bayard still be as vivid as it was at this moment, lying in a drugged sleep, her white body naked on the bright quilt, waiting for the killer to strike?

  Not for the first time, Mather asked himself how he had become embroiled in the affairs of all these screwed-up people. One on one was so much easier – squire to indulgent mistress. You walked out hand in hand. When you shut the bedroom door, you shut out the world. Detachment was not so easy now. He was like Gulliver cast up on an alien shore, waking to find himself pegged out and bound by gossamer threads strong as ship’s cables.

  Sudden and startling, the telephone rang: Hugh Loredon was on the line from London. Mather greeted him without enthusiasm.

  ‘Anne-Marie told me you might call. She’s worried about you. What’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s not a problem, Max. It’s a death sentence. Concentrates the mind most wonderfully, they say.’

  ‘Oh, my God! I’m so sorry to hear that. Have you told Anne-Marie?’

  ‘No – and I don’t intend to.’

  ‘She has a right to know.’

  ‘It’s my life,’ Hugh Loredon said curtly. ‘The last thing I need is an argument.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Yes. Meet me at the Amstel Hotel in Amsterdam on Friday of this week. Spend a couple of days with me – we’ll look at the Rembrandts, have lunch with a couple of dealers whom you should know anyway. Then on the Monday I’ll be going into a clinic…I won’t be coming out.’

  ‘Oh.’ It took a few moments for the message to sink in. ‘Does this mean what I think it does?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve a physician’s report and a beautiful set of X-rays. Afterwards there’ll be a kosher death certificate and you’ll be one of the executors of my will. Ed Bayard’s the other.’

  ‘Why us, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘It’s a joke: the best and the last I can manage.’

  ‘Talking of documents, I’m already holding a briefcase of yours.’

  ‘Have you read the material?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  ‘I’d like you to explain it to me.’

  ‘What can I say? For me it’s written in sand. The wind and the tide will wash it away. Who cares who gave Gauguin the clap or what knife Van Gogh used to cut off his ear? It’s all trivia. Dying dispenses us from it. You haven’t said whether you’ll come to Amsterdam.’

  ‘I’ll be there on Friday.’

  ‘Good. I’ve already booked the room.’

  ‘You’re bloo
dy sure of yourself.’

  ‘I know you can’t resist a woman or a hard-luck story.’

  ‘Hugh, listen to me. I understand what you’re doing; I think I understand why. But if you want to go out clean, you must let Anne-Marie share this last event with you. If you don’t, it’s a terrible rejection to lay on your own daughter. How do I tell her that you’ve called me and not her?’

  ‘Simple, Max. You’re just the messenger hired to carry bad news. You stand to get killed for your pains.’ He laughed and the laugh ended in a choking splutter. ‘See you Friday!’

  As he put down the receiver, Mather’s hands were unsteady. The notion of optional death was new and suddenly too close for comfort. He wondered how he was going to explain all this to Anne-Marie. The thought of spending the rest of the evening alone was intolerable. He locked up his papers and drove down to the Limmat Quai.

  In a dingy night-dub called the Venus Room he drank watered whisky and bought gut-rot champagne for a Romanian hooker, then fed her a midnight supper of overcooked steak and undercooked potatoes. He also paid her a hundred dollars for her stimulating conversation and for having cured him of casual lusts. She was sober enough to tell him that if all gays were as nice as he was, the Limmat would be a much pleasanter place to work.

  By the time he got back to his apartment he was convinced that Hugh Loredon had a point. If you were going to end your life with a neat and tidy act, Amsterdam was a much more cheerful place to do it than Zurich.

  TEN

  Alois Liepert’s house was some ten miles out of town – a pleasant country-style chalet set on a wooded hillside overlooking the lake. The interior spoke money – old and new money – and a certain traditional discretion about displaying it. Liepert’s wife was slightly younger than he: slim, athletic and very much at ease in social situations.