The Swan Thieves

by Elizabeth Kostova

  But you do have to get away from students, too, to do your own work, so for a while I was in the habit of sketching from

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  life in my favorite café, just after breakfast, if I could spare time before my classes began. I sketched the rows of teapots on a shelf, the fake Ming vase, the tables and chairs, the exit sign, the too-familiar Mucha poster next to a newspaper rack, the bottles of Italian syrup with their different but almost matching labels, and finally the people. I got bold again about drawing strangers, the way I used to be when I was a student myself--three middle-aged Asian women talking fast over scones and paper cups, or a young man with a long ponytail, half asleep on his table, or a fortysomething woman with her laptop.

  It made me see people again, and that made the hurt of Robert lessen a little, this feeling that I was one among many and that those other people--with their different jackets and glasses and variously shaped and colored eyes -- all had had their Roberts, their incredible disasters, their pleasures and regrets. I tried to put pleasure and regret into my sketches of them. Some of them liked being sketched and smiled sideways at me. Those mornings made it easier, in a small way, for me to accept that I was alone and didn't want to look at other men, although perhaps that would wear off eventually. After about a hundred years.

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  1879

  I cannot understand why you have not written or visited these weeks. Have I done something to offend you? I thought you were away still, hut Yves says you are in town. Perhaps I have been wrong in assuming your affection as strong as I have, in which case please excuse the error of your friend

  Béatrice de Clerval

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  CHAPTER 51 Marlow

  Traffic was heavy the morning after my dinner with Mary Bertison, possibly because I'd gotten a late start. I like to be ahead of the crowds, to arrive before the receptionists, to have the roads and then the parking lot and corridors of Goldengrove to myself, to catch up on paperwork for twenty minutes alone. That morning I'd lingered, watching the sun across my solitary breakfast table, cooking a second egg. I'd put Mary in a taxi after our genial dinner--she'd refused my politely couched offer of a ride to her door--but in the morning the apartment to which she hadn't returned, my apartment, had seemed full of her. I saw her sitting on my sofa, restless, hostile, confiding, by quick turns.

  I'd poured a second cup of coffee I knew I'd regret later; I stared out my window at the trees on the street, which were now thoroughly green, leafed out for summer. I remembered her long hand waving aside some point I'd made and making one of her own. At dinner we had talked about books and painting; she'd made it clear that she'd had enough conversation about Robert Oliver for one evening. But this morning I could still remember the quiver in her voice when she told me she'd rather write about him than talk.

  Halfway to Goldengrove I switched off my current favorite recording, which I'd usually have turned up louder at this point-- András Schiff playing some of J. S. Bach's French Suites, a glorious torrent, then a ripple of light, then the rush of water again. I told myself I was turning off the music because I couldn't focus on such heavy traffic and listen appreciatively at the same time;

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  people were cutting one another off at the entry ramps, leaning on their horns, stopping without warning.

  But I wasn't sure, either, that there was space in my car for both the Bach and Mary's presence, the sight of her eagerness over dinner when she forgot Robert Oliver for a few minutes and talked about her recent paintings, a series of women in white. I'd asked respectfully if I might see them sometime--after all, she'd gotten a glimpse of my small-town landscape, and I didn't even consider that one of my best. She'd hesitated, agreed vaguely, keeping a line between us. No, there was not room in my car for the French Suites, the deepening green of the roadsides, and Mary Bertison's alert, pure face. Or perhaps there was not room for me. My car had never seemed so small, so much in need of a roof to roll down.

  After my morning rounds were done, I found Robert's room empty. I'd saved him for last, and he was gone. The nurse in the hall said he was walking outside with one of the staff, but when I strolled through the back doors and across the veranda, he wasn't immediately in sight. I don't think I've mentioned that Goldengrove, like my office in Dupont Circle, is a relic of grander days, a mansion that saw great parties in the era of Gatsby and MGM; I often wonder whether the shuffling patients in its halls aren't uplifted and perhaps even a little healed by the Deco elegance around them, the sunny walls and faux-Egyptian friezes. The building was restored inside and out a few years before I arrived. I particularly like the veranda, which has a serpentine adobe wall and tall flowerpots, kept filled (partly at my insistence) with white geraniums. From there you can see across the property to the smudge of trees along the Little Sheridan, a halfhearted tributary of the Potomac. Some of the original gardens have been rejuvenated, although to bring them all to life would take more than we can give. There are flower beds and a large sundial, not original to

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  the house. In the dip beyond the gardens spreads a small shallow lake (too shallow to drown oneself in) with a summerhouse on the other side (too low for a damaging jump from the roof, the rafters inside covered with a dropped ceiling to prevent hangings).

  This all impresses the families who usher their loved ones into the relative silence of the place; I see family members drying tears out here on the veranda sometimes, assuring one another-- Look how pretty it is, and it's only for a while. And usually it is only for a while. Most of these families will never see the public city hospitals where people with no money at all are sent to wrestle with their demons, the places with no gardens, no new paint, and sometimes not enough toilet paper. I saw some of them as an intern, and it's hard for me to forget those sights, although here I am, employed in a private hospital and likely to remain. We don't know exactly when we get stuck, or lose the energy to work for change, but we do. Perhaps I should have tried harder. But I feel useful, in my own way.

  Coming out on the other side of the veranda, I saw Robert some distance down the lawn. He was not walking; instead he was painting, the easel I'd given him set up so that he could face the long vista to the river at the edge of it. A staff member wasn't far off, strolling with a patient who'd apparently insisted on staying in his bathrobe--how many of us would get dressed, ultimately, given the choice? I was pleased to see that the staff was following my orders to keep a close but respectful watch on Robert Oliver. He might not like being watched at all, but he'd certainly appreciate this bit of privacy allowed him in the process.

  I stood observing his figure while he studied the landscape; he would be choosing that taller, rather misshapen tree to the right, I predicted, and ignoring the farm silo that showed over the trees to the far left, across the Sheridan. His shoulders (in the faded shirt he wore almost every day, ignoring the fact that I'd obtained a few others for him) were straight, his head bowed a little toward the canvas, although I estimated that he'd extended the legs on their

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  screws as tall as they'd go. His own legs in graceless khakis were graceful; he shifted balance, considering.

  Watching him paint was extraordinary--I'd done it before, but always indoors, where he was aware of my presence. Now I could watch him without his knowing, although I couldn't see the canvas. I wondered what Mary Bertison would give to have this vantage for a few minutes; but, no--she had told me she didn't want to see Robert again. If I helped him get well and he returned to the world, if he became again teacher, painter, exhibitor of work, ex-husband, father with some loving custody, a man who bought vegetables and went to the gym and paid rent on a little apartment in DC or downtown Greenhill, or Santa Fe, would he still choose to stay away from Mary? And, more important, would her anger at him hold? Was it rotten of me to hope it would?

  I strolled up to him, hands behind my back, and I didn't speak until I was a few feet away. He turned quickly, gave me a baleful look
--the caged lion, the bars you shouldn't bang on. I bowed my head to indicate that my interruption was well-meant. "Good morning, Robert."

  He went back to his work; that, at least, showed a certain trust, or perhaps he was too absorbed to let even a psychiatrist interrupt. I stood next to him and gazed frankly at the canvas, hoping that might goad him to some reaction, but he went on with his looking and checking and dabbing. Now he held the brush up against the distant horizon, now he dropped his gaze to the canvas, bent his frame to focus on a rock at the edge of his painted lake. He'd been working on the canvas for at least a couple of hours before this, I saw, unless he was unimaginably fast; it was beginning to round up to fully realized forms. I admired the light on the surface of the water--the surface of his canvas--and the soft liveliness of the distant trees.

  But I said nothing aloud about my admiration, dreading his silence, which would smother even the warmest words I might be able to come up with. It was heartening to see Robert painting

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  something other than the dark-eyed lady and her grieving smile, especially something from life. He had two brushes in his painting hand, and I watched silently as he switched between them--the habit, the dexterity, of half a lifetime. Should I tell him that I'd met Mary Bertison? That, over a good wine and fish in parchment, she'd begun to tell me her story and part of his? That she still loved him enough to want to help me heal him; that she never wanted to see him again; that her hair shone in whatever light glanced off it, illuminating its auburn, its gold and purple lights; that she couldn't speak his name without either a tremor or defiance in her voice; that I knew how she held her fork, how she stood balanced against a wall, how she folded her arms against the world; that, like his ex-wife, she was not, after all, the model for the portrait he brought forth over and over from his angry brush; that she, Mary, somehow contained the secret of that model's identity without knowing it; that I was going to find the woman he loved above all people and learn why she had stolen not only his heart but his mind?

  That, I thought, watching him pick up a little white, some cadmium yellow for his treetops, was the very nature of mental illness, if you deserted clinical definitions and considered only human life. It was not illness to let another person--or a belief, or a place--take over your heart. But if you gave away your mind to one of those things, relinquished your ability to make decisions, it would, in the end, render you sick--that is, if your doing that wasn't already a sign of your condition. I looked from Robert to his landscape, the gray-washed spaces in the sky where he probably intended to flesh out clouds, the ragged spot on his lake that would surely become their reflections. It had been a long time since I'd had any new thought about the maladies I was trying to treat, day in and day out. Or about love itself.

  "Thank you, Robert," I said out loud, and left him. He did not turn to see me go, or if he did, I'd already presented my own back.

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  Mary called that evening. It surprised me considerably--I'd decided to call her myself but to wait a few days first--and for a moment I couldn't quite understand who was on the line. That alto voice I'd come to like even more over dinner was hesitant as it told me she'd been thinking about her promise to write down for me her memories of Robert. She would do it in installments. It would be good for her, too; she would mail them to me. I could make a complete narrative of them if I wanted, or use them as a doorstop, or recycle the whole pile. She had already begun writing. She laughed rather nervously.

  I was disappointed for a moment, because this arrangement meant that I wouldn't see her in person. Although what business did I have, wanting to see her again? She was a free, single woman, but she was also my patient's former girlfriend. Then I heard her say she'd like to have dinner again sometime--it was her turn to invite me, as I'd insisted on paying the bill for our first meal, over her protests--and perhaps it would be better for her to wait until she'd sent me her memories. She didn't know how long that might take, but she'd look forward to another meal; it had been fun to talk with me. That simple word, "fun," touched me to the quick, for some reason. I said I'd like that, that I understood, that I would wait for her missives. And hung up smiling in spite of myself.

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  CHAPTER 52 Mary

  Being in love with someone unattainable is like a painting I saw once. I saw this painting before I got into my habit--now of many years -- of writing down basic information about any picture that strikes me in a museum or gallery, in a book or somebody's home. In my home studio, in addition to all my postcards of paintings, I keep a box of index cards, and on each of them is my own handwriting: the title of the painting, the artist's name, the date, the place I encountered it, a synopsis of any little story about the painting that I've discovered on the plaque or in the book, sometimes even a rough sketch of the work--the church steeple is to the left, the road in the foreground.

  When I'm frustrated and coming up short on my own canvas, I flip through my cards and find an idea; I add the church steeple, drape the model in red, or break the waves into five sharp separate peaks. Once in a while I find myself flipping through my card file, in actuality or just mentally, searching for that important painting for which I have no card. I saw it when I was in my twenties (I can't even remember what year), probably in a museum, because after college I went to every museum I could, everywhere I went.

  This particular work was Impressionist; I'm certain only of that. It showed a man sitting on a bench in a garden, that wild, luxuriant garden the French Impressionists favored and even planted when they needed one, an all-out rebellion against the formality of French gardens and French painting. The tall man was sitting there on the bench, in a kind of bower of green and lavender, dressed like a gentleman--I guess he was a gentleman--in

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  formal coat and vest, gray trousers, pale hat. He looked content, complacent but also slightly alert, as if listening for something. If you backed away from the painting, you saw his expression more sharply. (This is another reason I think I saw the painting in life, not in a book; I remember backing away from it.)

  Near him in a garden chair--on another bench? perched on a swing? -- sat a lady whose costume matched his in elegance, black stripes on a white ground, a little hat tipped forward on her high hair, a striped parasol next to her. If you stepped back farther, you could see another female figure walking among flowering shrubs in the background, the soft colors of her dress almost merging with the garden. Her hair was light, not dark like theirs, and she didn't wear a hat, which I guess made her young or somehow lacking in respectability. The whole had a gold frame, glorious, ornate, rather grimy.

  I don't remember connecting this painting with myself at the time I saw it; it simply stayed in me like a dream, and I've gone back to it again and again in my mind. In fact, for years I've checked in surveys of Impressionism without finding it. To begin with, I don't have any proof that it was French, only that it looked like French Impressionism. The gentleman and his two women could have been in a late-nineteenth-century garden in San Francisco, or Connecticut, or Sussex, or even Tuscany. Occasionally I find I've thumbed that image in my mind so many times that I think I've invented it, or that I dreamed it at some point and remembered it the next morning.

  And yet those people in the garden are vivid to me. I would never want to unbalance their composition by taking the fine, formal, striped woman from the left side of the painting, but there is tension in the image: Why doesn't the younger woman in the thickets of blossom seem to have a place? Is she the man's daughter? No, something tells you--me--no. She is forever wandering off the canvas toward the right, reluctant to leave. Why doesn't the elegantly dressed gentleman start up and catch her sleeve, detain

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  her for a few minutes, tell her before she wanders away that he loves her, too, that he has always loved her?

  Then I picture just those two figures moving, while the sun shines permanently down on the tumbling, rough-stroked flowers and bushes, a
nd the well-dressed lady stays imperturbably in her chair, holding her parasol, certain of her place at the man's side. The gentleman does rise; he leaves the bower with a fierce step, as if on impulse, and takes the girl in the soft dress by her sleeve, her arm. She is firm, too, in her way. There are only flowers between them, brushing her skirt and streaking his tailored trousers with pollen. His hand is olive-skinned, a little thick, a little gnarled, even, at the joints. He stops her with his grip. They have never spoken like this before--no, they aren't speaking now. They are instantly in each other's arms, their faces warm together in the heavy sun. I don't think they are even kissing in the first moment; she is sobbing with relief because his bearded cheek feels the way she imagined it would against her forehead, and maybe he is sobbing, too?

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  1 879

  My beloved,

  Forgive my weakness in not writing to you, and in staying away in such an unseemly manner. At first it was, yes, a normal absence -- as I told you, I went to the south for a week or so and rested a little after a minor indisposition. That was also an excuse, however; I removed myself there not only to recover from my cold, and with the idea of painting a landscape I had not seen in years, but also to recover from a more profound ailment, about which I hinted to you some time ago. I made no progress, as you can see from the salutation of this letter. You were constantly with me, my muse, and I thought of you with startling vividness, not only your beauty and kind company but also your laugh, your smallest gesture, every word you have spoken to me since I first came to care for you more than I should, the affection I feel in your presence and out of it.