Painting Death

by Tim Parks

  What pious nonsense! Morris was aghast that a reputable British newspaper, one, he would never forget, that had turned down at least three job applications from a certain Morris Arthur Duckworth thirty and more years ago, should stoop to such disgraceful misrepresentation. ‘But Verona is a fantastic town!’ he shouted; the thought that his UKIP father might very easily end up reading this nonsense and enjoy a chuckle at Morris’s expense was immensely irritating. Then he noticed that his young friends were smiling.

  ‘What’s there to smirk about?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s true the city’s racist,’ Samira said.

  ‘You bet,’ Tarik agreed.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? Just because a place is racist you can’t say it’s the capital of kitsch. Verona must be one of the most beautiful cities on earth. The English haven’t got anything to hold a candle to it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Tarik said. ‘I just think the racist accusation is the one that matters. Who cares if we call it kitsch or not?’

  ‘I care!’ Morris fumed. ‘Everywhere’s racist. You think Milan isn’t racist? And Rome? You think London isn’t racist? Why are they rioting? Blacks are always rioting in London. They have their good reasons. Calling a place racist is like calling a spade a spade, or telling me grass is green. But calling it tasteless when it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth is sheer envy. It’s vandalism! Imagine the number of people who’d lose their jobs if the Brits stopped coming to Verona because of a criminal article like this. Think of the museums they’d have to close. The restaurants and hotels giving work to people without papers or permits. Albanians and Pakistanis and Moroccans.’

  ‘Come on Mo, darling,’ Samira laughed and leaned a head on his shoulder. ‘Don’t take it so seriously.’ Morris caught the wink she sent to her brother under his nose. Literally.

  ‘How are you two discriminated against?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me. Is there any problem finding a kebab? No. I’d eat them myself if I wasn’t a vegetarian. Do you need a bench to sleep on?’

  ‘There is no mosque to worship in,’ Samira said.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, you’re in a Christian country.’

  ‘We have trouble getting a permesso di soggiorno,’ Tarik said, ‘finding a landlord who will rent to Moslems.’

  ‘But I sorted out your permessi! And I found you the apartment!’

  Morris remembered in the past certain young immigrants who had been more grateful when he helped them.

  ‘But if they didn’t have these immigration laws, we wouldn’t need . . .’ Tarik stopped himself and put his face in his hands.

  ‘I’m going to reply to this,’ Morris announced importantly. ‘Talk about getting away with murder!’

  He opened Word and began to type. He was furious with the kids, but also aware that, at least partly, he was writing to impress them, to show them that Morris Duckworth was the kind of man who could see the wood for the trees, and get his name into print in the process. In the end, they were young; like Mauro, they needed to be taught a thing or two.

  ‘Dear Sirs,’ he typed, ‘Unlike your mendacious correspondent who published “Verona: Capital of Kitsch”, I actually—’

  ‘What does mendacious mean?’ Samira asked.

  ‘Someone who lies all the time. Mendace.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Tarik said a few words in Arabic and they both burst out laughing.

  ‘Now what are you sniggering about?’ Morris was incensed. He liked them. Liked them both. He loved their fine young features, black eyes, and snake-smooth skin. But not if they were planning to gang up and treat him like an old fogey.

  ‘Don’t be so sensitive, Mo.’

  ‘But what did you say?’

  ‘Tarik said you should come to Tripoli if you want to see what beauty is.’

  Morris didn’t believe for one moment this was what had been said; how could Tripoli possibly surpass an Italian town in beauty and why would the remark have created so much amusement, at his expense? But he let it go. Or rather, he let the anger flow from his fingertips:

  Unlike your mendacious correspondent who published ‘Verona: Capital of Kitsch’, I actually live in this town and have done so for almost three decades; well, I can assure your readers that Verona remains one of the finest and most elegant city centres the world over, a forward-looking and vigorous community where the rumour of Romeo and Juliet exists only as a pleasant background murmur of antique romance, its few scattered and very beautiful shrines, apocryphal or otherwise, attracting the same tourists who flock to see the London Dungeons or the execution place of Anne Boleyn; frankly amour, however clichéd, seems preferable to the bloody glamour of Anglo-Saxon vulgarity.

  Pork scratchings, lager louts, race riots, football hooliganism, vomit on street corners and stinking public urinals, such are the English charms the judicious traveller is spared in the shaded piazzas and stuccoed sobriety of this Renaissance gem. No wonder romance seems credible here. Your article, the journalistic equivalent, if I may be so bold, of a contract killing (since clearly Mr. Anderton-Dodds had viewed no more than a blurred photograph of his victim prior to pulling the trigger), simply aligns your newspaper with those enemies of sentiment who once brought the lives of two young lovers to tragedy. Shame on you! Shame on you too for putting at risk the jobs of those whose honest endeavours on behalf of Verona’s tourist industry gives work to thousands, many of them refugees from the Third World, people who can barely believe their luck to find themselves in this Italian paradise. All power to President Sarkozy and his splendid Italian signora for choosing the perfect place to renew their love before the long, hard slog of parenthood.

  Morris Arthur Duckworth

  The Duckworth Foundation

  Via Oberdan

  Verona

  Just like that! It had come out just like that: The Duckworth Foundation! Without a thought, without forewarning of any kind. This was what it meant, Morris thought, to be creative. Suddenly, from nowhere, an idea came into being. Most definitely he should have been a writer, an artist. He copied the passage and pasted it into the comment box below the offending article. Then not satisfied, because it really was such a well-written letter, he emailed it to the editors as well. Damn them. Let them see who was the better polemicist, Mr. Anderton-Dodds (Boris!) or Morris Arthur Duckworth. It was years since he’d signed off with his second name; it had always worried him that people would spot the obvious acronym. But this time it felt right. If the Telegraph needed a man in Verona, MAD was definitely better than BAD.

  ‘Morrees!’ Samira breathed.

  Entranced by the eloquence of his indignation, Morris had not registered the growing incredulity of the two young people beside him.

  ‘I never knew you could be so romantic!’

  The Englishman smiled and turned to kiss his girl on her dark lips.

  ‘What is the Duckworth Foundation?’ Tarik asked cautiously, and with new respect, Morris hoped. Speaking off the top of his head, the rich lover launched into a very promising explanation, and only four days later received a call from the town hall. The city council wished to express its gratitude.

  * * *

  ‘. . . the long, ard zlog ov paarent-hhud,’ the mayor concluded with a flourish ‘Morrees Artoor Dackvert! The Dackvert Fowndayshoon!’

  There was a moment’s bewildered silence from a public who understood only that they were supposed to approve. Nobody seemed sure whether the reading was over or not, until, with a whooped Californian cry of ‘Way to go, Morris, man!’ the balding figure beside Antonella began to pound his hands in enthusiastic applause. It was Stan. From top to toe Morris thrilled with shivery sweat. Christ! Why? As the Italians politely clapped their ignorant ovation, while his wife and daughter, he noticed, seemed to be studying him with the rapt apprehension of one who has found a brightly coloured mould on a bidet towel, the Freeman of Verona jumped to his feet and, invited or no, snatched the microphone from the mayor’s unsuspecting gra
sp.

  ‘Grazie, grazie!’

  He felt a little unsteady on his feet in front of so many people. The Tonbridge tie seemed to tighten round his neck. Undecided whether to sit or not, the mayor quite brazenly tapped on his watch. Morris was having none of it. Seize the day. There is a tide in the affairs of men. He hesitated, looking out across the well-groomed scalps of the city’s applauding elite to where, in the piazza beyond, he could just glimpse the balcony from which 150 years before Garibaldi had exhorted ‘Roma o morte! ’ In his cheeks and above his eye, the scars that had robbed him of his youthful beauty had stepped up their song to a fierce descant. Or perhaps it was a battle cry. His face was throbbing. Once again, in the most adverse circumstances, Morris must launch himself into the fray.

  ‘Signore e signori.’

  The clapping abruptly stopped and a fascinated silence fell on the crowd; most of them knew Morris as a respectable and quietly obsequious businessman, almost more Italian than the Italians themselves in his understanding of what must be said and what left unsaid, what paid, whether under or over the table, and what, with grace and aplomb, evaded; a man who in twenty years had turned a second-string family vintner’s into a major business concern, becoming a key figure in the local consortium of industrialists and, of course, the Rotary Club. But now, rather disconcertingly, there was a flash of fear in this sedate man’s face, something wild and perhaps even dangerous had surfaced from beneath the dark scars and pale shining eyes, while his posture, oddly contracted and unsteady, betrayed the kind of hunted, animal-at-bay anxiety that would have reminded some present that this man had once stood trial for murder.

  But Morris had been acquitted of course and the moment passed. He straightened up, filled his lungs and squared his shoulders. His face relaxed in a broad smile. Get a grip. Speak your best Italian. Stan was just an old friend visiting the haunts of his youth. Not the man who could put him in gaol.

  ‘Signori, grazie. I had prepared, I should tell you, a long and generous speech in praise of the city of Verona, a city that has given me, to be blunt, all that I have. But I shall leave it aside. You have already heard my little letter, so movingly read by our excellent mayor. My feelings will be clear enough, even to those very few who don’t know me either as a business partner or a member of the many organisations in which we are all involved. I am told that we are running late and that the mayor must meet a delegation of Arab businessmen; the last thing I would wish is to compromise a chance to bring fresh investment to our town.’

  There were murmurs of approval. Seeing Antonella’s relieved smile, Morris enjoyed the awareness that when it really counted he always got it dead right. And in perfect Italian.

  ‘So I shall just say thanks to you all for coming here today. It’s a great pleasure, in particular, to see a face I haven’t seen for twenty years and more. Welcome back to Verona, Stan Albertini!’

  Apparently there were no limits to Morris’s magnanimity. Stan, of course, stood up and bowed to laughter and applause. It was the man’s baldness and the absence of the old goatee, Morris realised now, that had delayed his recognition.

  ‘But I will, if I may, take this opportunity to explain just one thing. At the end of my letter, the mayor read the signature, Morris Duckworth, the Duckworth Foundation.’

  The mayor, who had sat down, reassured that his guest would be brief, now gripped the arms of his chair and half stood again. Morris motored on:

  ‘It was precisely on reading that cowardly attack in the British press, and with a profound awareness of all that Verona means to me, that I decided I must give something back. That something, far more than any letter, is the Duckworth Foundation. Its capital will be made up, in part, of the considerable art collection I have had the good fortune to build up over the years, some eighty canvases, which, on my death I shall gratefully bequeath to the city’s museums.’

  As the crowd burst into applause, a door to the right opened and an elderly official hurried in, scuttling along the wall and behind the polished table to whisper in the mayor’s ear.

  ‘To celebrate,’ Morris continued, determined to score all the points he could in the very brief time at his disposal, ‘I have proposed a major exhibition of these paintings together with other old masters from all over the world at a grand summer show in Castelvecchio, on the theme, I am pleased to announce . . .’

  Here Morris stopped a moment; for he wondered if he really had the courage to pronounce the idea that had come into his head literally this instant. He hesitated. This was seriously mad. What an idea! The audience waited. The mayor fidgeted. Do it? Don’t do it? The truth was that however much Morris schemed and planned, it was only his moments of pure extemporary genius that had ever really got him anywhere or reconciled him, for that matter, to the unhappy destiny of being his father’s son—God loves those who love themselves, he thought and raised his voice—‘. . . a show entitled, I was saying: Painting Death: The Art of Assassination from Caravaggio to Damien Hirst. An innovative show, signori e signore, that will put the town of Verona on the postmodern map and silence our critics for years to come. Thank you, everybody, thank you.’

  Sitting down—and he had spoken for only two minutes, for Christ’s sake—Morris smiled benignly into the alarmed eyes of his wife in the front row.

  The mayor was on his feet.

  ‘I’m afraid we shall have to call it a day, ladies and gentlemen. Our Arab delegation has arrived. There are important matters of trade and investment to discuss. Let me just say, because I’ve received a piece of news this very moment, that there is one member of the Dackvert family who hasn’t been able to be with us today. Now I understand why. I have just been informed that young Mauro Dackvert, son of Morrees, and a great fan of our beloved Hellas Verona, was amongst those arrested, scandalously and without justification, after last night’s game in Brescia. I would like to take this opportunity to assure the Dackvert family that they have all our sympathy and will receive our utmost support to ensure the rapid release of their courageous boy from unjust imprisonment. For this too is part of the same implacable campaign against our happy community.’

  The young mayor turned and with genuine affection embraced the irate Englishman as he stumbled to his feet.

  Chapter Two

  MEN OF POWER ARE always vulnerable.

  ‘Isn’t that true, Mimi?’

  Morris was contemplating Cecil Doughty’s Death of Julius Caesar. There sits Caesar in his white toga with his laurel crown, ready to deliberate on some important matter, disposing of other people’s lives, wives, goods and chattels, and before he knows it he’s being stabbed in the back. He feels for his own dagger, drops it and doesn’t see that right behind him Cassius already has his knife held high for the next blow. Perhaps one section of the show, Morris reflected, and he tapped out a quick note on his iPad, could be called ‘Poised to Strike’. Yes. Jan de Bray’s Judith and Holofernes, for example, or Poussin’s Abraham and Isaac. Gentileschi’s Jael and Sisera. Various Amnons and Abels. Thomas à Becket, David Rizzio. There were so many. And the gesture was always the same: the armed hand raised high, the point of a blade threatening to pierce the top of the picture frame, the intent face of the killer summoning up the will to strike, and the victim sprawled or sleeping, or simply, as in Caesar’s case, with his back happily turned; he had been getting on with business as usual until that first blow was struck. Morris particularly admired the way Doughty had painted bright red borders on the elegant white togas of the Roman patricians, as if in anticipation of the blood about to flow. Something decorative and civilised erupting in savagery.

  ‘You struck me from behind,’ the painted Mimi murmured.

  ‘I know, love,’ Morris replied softly.

  ‘I suppose it is kinder that way,’ Mimi acknowledged wistfully. ‘I mean, I’m glad I didn’t see it coming.’

  ‘I’m glad too,’ Morris smiled. ‘It was a terrible shame it had to be done at all.’

  ‘I’ve been looking
at Camuccini’s Caesar and thinking how much worse it must be when you have time to realise.’

  ‘I’ve always felt that,’ Morris agreed.

  She spoke from the far end of the room. She was Lippi’s Madonna, copied all those years ago by Forbes. Or Lippi’s Madonna was Mimi. The spitting image. She had learned English since she died, something she would never have managed alive. Acquired a baby too, and an impressive knowledge of art history. In Camuccini’s painting, or rather the careful copy that Morris owned, Caesar faces his assassins in regal red, raising a bare arm in desperate self-defence against a dozen plunging knives.