The Swan Thieves

by Elizabeth Kostova

  Watching, I felt anew that it wouldn't be safe to release him unless we could ascertain that he would not become violent again from the stimulus of his everyday life. I didn't even know what that life consisted of; the Goldengrove secretary had done a preliminary search for me, but we couldn't track down any place of employment for him in the Washington area. Did he have the means to stay home and paint all day? He wasn't listed in the DC telephone directory, and the address John Garcia had received from the police had turned out to be that of Robert's ex-wife in North Carolina. He was angry, depressed, approaching real fame, apparently homeless. The episode with the sketchbook had made me hopeful, but the hostility that followed it was deeper than ever.

  His sheer skill on paper intrigued me, as did the fact that he had a genuine reputation; although I usually avoided unnecessary

  33

  research on the Web, I looked him up. Robert held an MFA from one of New York's premier arts programs and had taught there briefly, as well as at Greenhill College and a college in New York State. He had placed second in the National Portrait Gallery's annual competition, received a couple of national fellowships and residencies, and had solo shows in New York, Chicago, and Greenhill. His work had indeed appeared on the cover of several well-known art magazines. There were a few images from his sales over the years--portraits and landscapes, including two untitled portraits of a dark-haired woman like the one he'd been sketching in his room. They owed something, I thought, to Impressionist tradition.

  I found no artist's statements or interviews; Robert himself was as silent on the Internet, I thought, as he was in my presence. It seemed to me that his work might be a worthwhile channel of communication, and I provided him with plenty of good paper, charcoal, pencils, and pens, which I brought from home myself. He used these to continue his drawings of the woman's head when he wasn't rereading his letters. He began to prop up the drawings here and there, and when I left some tape in his room, he fastened them to the walls in a chaotic gallery. As I've said, his draftsmanship was extraordinary; I read in it both long training and an enormous natural gift, which I was later to see in his paintings. He soon varied his sketches of the woman's profile to full-face; I could observe her fine features and large dark eyes. Sometimes she smiled, and sometimes she seemed angry; anger predominated. Naturally, I conjectured that the image might be an expression of his silent rage, and I also speculated about some possible confusion of gender identity within the patient, although I couldn't get him to respond even nonverbally to questions on this topic.

  When Robert Oliver had resided at Goldengrove for more than two weeks without speaking, I had the idea of outfitting his room

  34

  as a studio. I had to get special permission from the center for my experiment, and to put a few security measures in place: it was a risk, granted, but Robert had shown full responsibility when using his pencils and other drawing supplies. I considered equipping a corner of the OT Room instead. However, Robert was unlikely to paint in front of other people, I thought, in this situation. I arranged his room myself while he was on one of his walks, and I was there to observe his reaction when he returned.

  The room was a sunny one, and a single, and I'd moved the bed to one side to make space for a large easel. I had stocked the shelves with oil paints, watercolors, gesso, rags, jars of brushes, mineral spirits and oil medium, a wooden palette and palette scrapers; some of these items I brought from my own supplies at home, so that they were not new and would give the feel of a working studio. I stacked one wall with empty stretched canvases of varying sizes and provided a block of watercolor paper.

  Finally, I sat down in my customary chair in the corner to observe him as he came back in. At the sight of all the equipment I'd put there, he stopped short, clearly startled. Then an expression of fury crossed his face. He started toward me, his fists clenched, and I stayed seated, as calmly as I could, without speaking. I thought for a moment that he would actually say something, or perhaps even hit me, but he seemed to think better of both urges. His body relaxed a little; he turned away and began to examine the new supplies. He felt the watercolor paper, studied the construction of the easel, glanced at the tubes of oil paints. At last he wheeled around and glared at me again, this time as if he wanted to ask me something but couldn't bring himself to do it. I wondered, not for the first time, if he had somehow become unable, rather than simply unwilling, to speak.

  "I hope you'll enjoy these items," I said as placidly as possible.

  He looked at me, his face dark. I left the room without trying to speak to him again.

  Two days later, I found him painting with deep absorption on

  35

  a first canvas, which he had apparently prepared for that purpose overnight. He did not acknowledge my presence, but he allowed me to observe him and to study the picture, which was a portrait. I examined it with the greatest interest; I'm first and foremost a portrait painter myself, although I also love landscape, and the fact that my long work hours prevent me from painting from live models on a regular basis is a source of sorrow to me. I work with photographs when I have to, although that runs against my natural purism. It's better than nothing, and I always learn from the exercise.

  But Robert, as far as I knew, had painted his new canvas without even a photograph to refer to, and it radiated startling life. It showed the usual head of a woman--now, of course, in color--in the same traditionalist style as his drawings. She had an extraordinarily real face, with dark eyes that looked directly out of the canvas--a confident yet thoughtful gaze. Her hair was curly and dark, with some chestnut lights in it; she had a fine nose, a square chin with a dimple on the right side, an amused, sensuous mouth. Her forehead was high and white, and what little I could see of her clothing was green, with a yellow ruffle around a deep V of neckline, a curve of skin. Today she looked almost happy, as if it pleased her to be appearing in color at last. It's strange for me to think of this now, but at that moment and for months afterward, I had no idea who she was.

  That was a Wednesday, and on Friday, when I went to see Robert, the room was empty; he had apparently gone out for his walk. The portrait of the dark-haired lady stood on the easel--nearly finished, I thought--magnificent. On the chair where I usually sat lay an envelope addressed to me in loose script. Inside it I found Robert's antique letters. I drew one out and held it in my hand for a long minute. The paper looked very old, and the elegantly handwritten lines I could see on the outer side were in French, to my surprise. I suddenly felt how far I might have to travel to know the man who had entrusted them to me.

  36

  CHAPTER 5 Marlow

  I hadn't intended at first to take the letters off the Goldengrove property, but at the end of the day I put them in my briefcase. On Saturday morning I called my friend Zoe, who teaches French literature at Georgetown University. Zoe is one of the women I dated when I first came to Washington years ago, and we've remained good friends, especially since I didn't feel strongly enough about her to regret her terminating our relationship. She made excellent occasional company to a play or a concert, and I think she felt the same about me.

  The phone rang twice before she answered. "Marlow?" Her voice was businesslike, as always, but also affectionate. "How nice that you called. I was thinking about you the other week."

  "Why didn't you call me, then?" I asked.

  "Grading papers," she said. "I haven't called anyone."

  "I forgive you, in that case," I replied sarcastically, since that's our custom. "I'm glad you're done with the papers, because I have a possible project for you."

  "Oh, Marlow." I could hear her doing something in her kitchen as she talked to me; her kitchen dates from just after the Revolutionary War and is the size of my hall closet. "Marlow, I don't need any projects. I'm writing a book, as you know from paying at least a little attention these last three years."

  "I know, dear," I said. "But this is something you'll like, exactly your period--I thin
k--and I want you to see it. Come over this afternoon and I'll ask you out to dinner."

  37

  "It must be worth a lot to you," she said. "I can't do dinner, but I'll come over at five--I'm going to Dupont Circle after that."

  "You have a date," I said approvingly. I was a little shocked to realize how long it had been since I'd had anything like a date. How had so much time slipped by me?

  "You bet I do," Zoe said.

  We sat in my living room, unfolding the letters Robert had carried on him even during his attack at the museum. Zoe's coffee was cooling off; she hadn't even started it. She'd aged a little since I'd last seen her, in some way that made her olive skin look weary and her hair dry. But her eyes were narrow and bright, as always, and I remembered that I must be aging in her sight, too. "Where did you get these?" she asked. "A cousin sent them to me."

  "A French cousin?" She looked skeptical. "Do you have French roots I don't know about?"

  "Not particularly." I hadn't planned this well. "I guess she got them at an antique shop or someplace and thought they would interest me because I like to read history."

  She was scanning the first one now, with gentle hands and a keen glance. "Are they all from eighteen seventy-seven through seventy-nine?"

  "I don't know. I haven't looked through them thoroughly. I was afraid to because they're so fragile, and what I saw, I couldn't understand much of."

  She opened another. "It would take me some time to read them properly, because of the handwriting, but they seem to be letters from a woman to her uncle, and vice versa, as you've already figured out, and some of them are about painting and drawing. Maybe that's why your cousin thought they'd interest you."

  "Maybe." I tried not to peer over her shoulder.

  38

  "Let me take one that's in better condition and translate it for you. You're right--that might be fun. But I don't think I can do them all--it's incredibly time-consuming, you know, and I have to get on with my book right away."

  "I will pay you generously, to be blunt."

  "Oh." She thought this over. "Well, that would be welcome, I have to say. Let me give one or two a try first."

  We worked out a fee and I thanked her. "But just do them all," I said. "Please. Send me the translation by regular mail, not electronically. You can send them a couple at a time, as you get to them." I couldn't bring myself to explain that I wanted to receive them as letters, real letters, so I didn't try. "And if you can work without the originals, let's walk to the corner and photocopy them, in case something happens. You can take the copies with you. Do you have time?"

  "Ever-careful Marlow," she said. "Nothing will happen, but that's a good idea. Let me drink my coffee first and tell you all about my affaire de coeur."

  "Don't you want to hear about mine?"

  "Certainly, but there will be nothing to tell."

  "That's true," I said, "so you go ahead."

  When we parted at the office-supply store, she with the crisp photocopies and I with my letters--Robert's, actually--I went back home and thought about grilling a sandwich, drinking half a bottle of wine, and going to a movie by myself.

  I set the letters on my coffee table, then refolded them along their worn lines and put them into the envelope, arranging them so they wouldn't knock against one another, with their fragile edges. I thought about the hands that had touched them, once upon a time, a woman's delicate hands and a man's--his would have been older, of course, if he'd been her uncle. Then Robert's big square hands, tanned and rather worn. Zoe's short, inquisitive ones. And my own.

  I went to the living-room window, one of my favorite views:

  39

  the street, lapped and laced with branches that have shaded it for decades, since long before I moved in, the old stoops of the brown-stones on the other side, the ornate railings and balconies, blocks built in the 1880s. The evening was golden after days of rain; the pear trees had finished their bloom and were a rich green now. I gave up my idea of a movie. It was a perfect night to stay home in peace. I was working on a portrait from a photograph of my father, to send for his birthday--I could make some progress on that. I put on my Franck Violin Sonata and went into the kitchen for a cup of soup.

  40

  CHAPTER 6 Marlow

  It had been more than a year, I was sorry to realize, since I'd actually entered the National Gallery of Art. The steps outside were overrun with schoolchildren; they swarmed around me in their drab uniforms, a Catholic school, or perhaps one of those public schools that require pleated navy and dull plaids in an effort to restore some long-lost order. Their faces were bright-- the boys with mostly very short hair; some of the little girls with plastic bubbles on their braids--and their skin was a spectrum of lovely colors, from pale and pinkly freckled to ebony. For a moment I thought, Democracy. It was that old idealistic feeling I got from social studies class in my Connecticut grade school, from reading about George Washington Carver and Lincoln, an America with the dream of belonging to all Americans. We were moving together up the grand staircase toward a museum free of charge and, in theory, open to everyone, everyone and anyone, where these children could mingle with one another and me and the paintings without restraint.

  Then the mirage cleared: the children were shoving each other and sticking gum in one another's hair, and their teachers were trying to keep the peace with only the resources of diplomacy. More important, I knew that most of DCs population would never make it into this museum, nor feel welcome here. I hung back and waited for the kids to go in ahead of me, since it was too late for me to thread my way through and beat them to the doors. That also gave me time to turn my face to the afternoon sun, which was warm, in the full flush of spring, and enjoy the green of the Mall.

  41

  My three o'clock appointment (borderline personality disorder, a long struggle) had canceled, and for once I didn't have an appointment after that, so I'd left my office for the museum, free, released; I wouldn't have to go back to work at all that day.

  Two women presided over the information desk; one was young, with a cap of dark, straight hair, and the other a retiree-- a volunteer, I guessed, frail-looking under her frothy white curls. I chose the older for my question. "Good afternoon. I was wondering if you could help me locate a painting called Leda."

  The woman glanced up and smiled; she might have been the younger docent's grandmother, and her eyes were a faded, nearly transparent blue. Her badge read miriam.

  "Certainly," she said.

  The younger woman edged toward her and watched her find something on a computer screen. "Hit 'Title,'" she urged.

  "Oh, I almost had it." Miriam sighed deeply, as if she'd known all along that her efforts were useless.

  "Yeah, you've got it," the girl insisted, but she had to press a key or two herself before Miriam smiled.

  "Ah, Leda. That's by Gilbert Thomas, French. It's in the nineteenth-century galleries, just before the Impressionists."

  The girl looked at me for the first time. "That's the one that guy attacked last month. A lot of people have been asking about it. I mean--" She paused and tucked an obsidian strand back in place; I realized then that her hair was dyed black, so that it appeared carved, Asian, around her pale face and greenish eyes. "Well, not a lot, I guess, but several people have asked to see it."

  I found myself staring at her, unexpectedly stirred. Her gaze was knowing as she stood there behind the counter, her body lean and flexible under a tight-zipped jacket, the smallest curve of hip showing between that and the top of a black skirt--that would be the maximum glimpse of abdominal skin permitted in this gallery full of nudes, I speculated. She might be an art student, working here in her spare time to get through school, a gifted printmaker

  42

  or fashioner of jewelry, with those long, pale hands. I pictured her up against the counter, after hours, no underwear under that too-short skirt. She was just a kid; I looked away. She was a kid, and I was no catch, I knew--no aging
Casanova.

  "I was shocked to hear about that." Miriam shook her head. "I didn't know it was that painting, though."

  "Well," I said, "I read about the incident, too--strange that someone would attack a painting, isn't it?"

  "I don't know." The girl rubbed one hand along the edge of the information counter. She had a broad silver ring on her thumb. "We get all kinds of crazies in here."

  "Sally," murmured her elder.

  "Well, we do," said the girl defiantly. She looked me full in the face, as if daring me to be one of the lunatics to whom she'd just referred. I imagined discovering some sign that she found me attractive, inviting her for a cup of coffee, a preliminary flirtation, over which she would say things like We get all kinds of crazies in here. The image of the woman in Robert Oliver's drawings came into my mind--she was young, too, but also ageless, her face full of subtle knowledge and life. "The man who attacked that painting seems to have cooperated with the police, once he was arrested," I observed gently. "Maybe he wasn't that crazy."

  The girl's eyes were hard, matter-of-fact. "Who would want to hurt a work of art? The guard told me afterward that it was a very close call for Leda."

  "Thank you," I said, now an elderly and correct man with a gallery map in his hand.

  Miriam took the map back for a moment and circled with a blue pen the room I wanted. Sally had drifted away already; the frisson had been only on my side.

  But I had the whole afternoon to myself; with a feeling of lightness, I climbed the stairs to the tremendous marble rotunda at their summit and wandered among its gleaming, variegated pillars for a few minutes, stood in the middle, taking a deep breath.