Restoration

by Olaf Olafsson

  “I’ll put it back,” I heard myself say.

  You looked at me.

  “Where were you?”

  I clasped the pillow and began to shake.

  “Where were you when he died?”

  “Please,” I managed to say. “Please . . .”

  “We looked for you everywhere. One of the nurses said she saw you go into the garden across the road. With a man. Who was he?”

  Was there anger underneath that pained look? I couldn’t tell. After all these years, I couldn’t tell.

  “Who was he?”

  “No one,” I said. “There was no one.”

  You looked at me. I didn’t look away.

  “I went into the garden to look for you,” you said. “I went to the fountain. You weren’t there.”

  “I went farther in,” I was going to say but stopped myself because I didn’t feel I could keep this up any longer.

  “Come and sit down beside me,” I said.

  This seemed to take you by surprise and you hesitated a little before saying in a low voice, “Pritchett’s waiting for me. I must go.”

  I heard your footsteps recede down the stairs and, going to the window, watched you cross the courtyard in the direction of the stables.

  Would I have confessed everything if you hadn’t left? I hope not. I hope I would have spared you the pain.

  During the next weeks and months you did not speak again of the day Giovanni died. I withdrew, spent most days in my room, unable to participate in daily life. You made sure you were constantly occupied and sometimes you left for days at a time, riding aimlessly in the hills, sleeping under the stars.

  The priest tried to be helpful but there was nothing anybody could do. I sank deeper and deeper and I don’t know what would have happened if the evacuee children hadn’t arrived.

  It was the priest who had brought the request from the Red Cross to my attention a month earlier. I had agreed but had not given it much thought. But one night they were here, after a twelve-hour journey from Genoa, tired and hungry, with white, pasty faces. “Mamma, mamma!” I heard them cry as the car drew up, and I ran downstairs as if touched by a magic wand.

  They saved me. They gave me purpose and strength, these scared little creatures whom fate had dealt such a terrible hand.

  Your attitude toward me didn’t improve with the arrival of the evacuee children. You became increasingly irritated, implying that I had taken in the children to compensate for the loss of our son. I chose to ignore this, telling myself that at least you were no longer interrogating me about the night our son died. In this I turned out to be deluding myself, as I discovered the evening the first bombs fell in the valley.

  “Where were you?” you asked as I watched the lights of the planes in the night sky and the fire that flared up on the hillside above Campiglia.

  “Where were you?”

  A week later you disappeared.

  II

  KRISTÍN WAS WALKING ALONG THE VIA DEL CORSO when she caught sight of Flora Marshall. Unsure at first, she crossed the road and followed her. She was walking slowly, keeping in the shade of the buildings, swapping her shopping bag from left hand to right, ambling across the square toward the street where they lived, her movements sedate and gentle, indicative of a state of profound well-being.

  She must have been seven or eight months pregnant and appeared to be blooming; Kristín had almost forgotten how beautiful she was. They hadn’t met since January.

  She did not go back to the studio that day and called in sick the next morning. The pain, searing at first, quickly gave way to anger. She gathered strength from it. Without it she would have broken down.

  Not that she ever used the word “revenge”—it seemed inappropriate. Yet it kept surfacing in her mind, perhaps because she could never articulate to herself exactly what her intentions were. There was no hiding the fact that she intended to teach him a lesson and even humiliate him, but she assured herself that she never meant to put him in danger. His own greed was responsible for that.

  She decided to keep silent about seeing Flora, knowing that the time must come when he would have to tell her that his wife was pregnant. That was an experience she would not spare him. He had clearly been at some pains to hide the situation from her, making sure that she and Flora did not meet. He must also have forbidden Signorina Pirandello to say a word, she realized; otherwise she would not have been able to keep the news to herself. Kristín was disgusted and had to force herself not to show it, but she managed, turning up to work as if nothing had happened two days after spotting Flora on the Corso, and telling Signorina Pirandello that she’d had a stomach bug but was fine now.

  She had been restoring a painting by Masaccio for the past few weeks, a Madonna and Child, and now resumed her work. Marshall had sent Signorina Pirandello’s nephew to fetch it from somewhere south of the city, a monastery from what she could gather, though nothing had been said openly and the account of the trip had been vague. This did not surprise her since Marshall’s collaboration with Berenson had been growing ever more dubious. Berenson, for example, had put his signature to the report about the picture alongside her master’s, although she was fairly sure he had not seen it.

  Marshall’s activities had even picked up since the Germans captured Rome in September 1943. Verrocchio and Giorgione were succeeded by Ghirlandaio, Filippo Lippi, and finally Masaccio. Marshall sold the Ghirlandaio and the Lippi to Count Contini Bonacossi, who had visited the studio and spoken openly about his dealings with Walter Hofer, Hermann Göring’s adviser. She never discussed these transactions with Marshall because she knew how he would react. They were so anxious to avoid accusations of selling these works of art to the Germans that Marshall was prepared to slip Contini Bonacossi a fee merely for acting as go-between. But it rankled with him to have to pay the Count, and Kristín thought it was probably only a matter of time before greed overcame his caution.

  She saw him only briefly on the day she returned to work and not much more during the rest of the week. This was a great relief and she focused her attention on the painting, which was in such bad condition that apart from a few brushstrokes, only the outlines of the Madonna and Child remained once she had cleaned off the earlier attempts at restoration. But he turned up at the studio on the Monday and stood for some time in front of the picture before commenting.

  “Time hasn’t been kind to it, but the master’s touch is unmistakable. I have complete faith in your ability to bring it back to life.”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder and was poised to say something more but she eased herself out from under his fingers in order to wipe some imperceptible fluff from the picture.

  She proved adept at forestalling his visits over the following weeks. She surprised herself with her ingenuity in reacting to his overtures, how easy she found it to smile at him when appropriate, how satisfying to hold back her knowledge. Her strength redoubled when she saw that she could deceive him, throw dust in those eyes that she had believed to be all-seeing. Yet she did not overdo it, being cautious by nature. She avoided him as much as she could but she made sure he wouldn’t sense it.

  She expected his confession any day but it never came. Every time she sensed that he was on the verge of telling her the truth, she was disappointed. He was either incapable of doing so or unwilling, and gradually it seemed as if he had started avoiding her too. She took it as a sign that Flora’s due date was approaching.

  One Wednesday late in November she arrived at work to find Signorina Pirandello in a state of excitement, though she refrained at first from saying anything to Kristín. At last, however, unable to hold back any longer, she poured out the happy news on the landing outside the office—a son had been born.

  Although the news did not come as a surprise to Kristín, she found herself at a loss. Trying not to let it show, she asked Signorina Pirandello the sort of questions people ask when they receive news of this kind, then went into the studio, shut the door, and stoo
d there without moving. Frightened of the thoughts that assailed her, she tried to suppress them.

  What sort of person is incapable of summoning up any happiness about the birth of a healthy baby? she asked herself. What’s happened to me?

  The Madonna and Child was waiting, but she did not return to the easel or switch on the light. The morning sunshine streamed white through the windows and she gazed at the shafts of light in the air between herself and the painting, before finally walking up to the sunbeam closest to her and stopping a foot away. She stretched out her hand with its pale skin and white fingers and studied them. Could they do it? She had asked herself the same question before but not as bluntly. But she did not answer herself because the idea was nothing but fantasy, a fantasy she could still snuff out. Am I right in the head? she asked herself, before turning on her heel and leaving.

  She bought a present for the boy, a little teddy bear, and asked Signorina Pirandello to pass it on to his parents, as she was apparently going to see them later that day. Kristín couldn’t help wondering how her master would react.

  He came to the studio two days later. She was at the easel, and he walked over and inspected the painting.

  “You’re getting on well,” he said, although she had only just started. His tone was neutral.

  She did not speak.

  “I’ve booked an exhibition space for you. You should go and see it when you’ve got a moment.”

  She did not put down her brush as he talked but carried on working with undisturbed concentration.

  He straightened up, hesitated before leaving, then said, “I’ve got myself into a difficult position. A very difficult position. I’ve no one to blame but myself.”

  He left. From the window she watched him walk down the street. She sensed no remorse in his movements, only self-satisfaction.

  THOSE LAST WEEKS IN COPENHAGEN HAD BEEN A torment. She stood in front of the canvas, unable even to make a start. She wanted to paint a picture of the pond and the swan taking off into the air and the girl in the yellow dress who had waded out into the pond and was watching the swan, but she couldn’t do it. It was the picture she had always meant to paint. But now she couldn’t see the girl or her mother half-running down the slope or the people gathered on the mound. The colors faded before her brush even touched the canvas.

  She gave up. This was a week before she was supposed to hand in her final assignment, an oil painting. Her grandparents had given her a small picture by the Icelandic painter Thórarinn B. Thorláksson when she left to go abroad, taking it down from the parlor wall at home and presenting it to her with their good wishes, and now she reached for it—without apparent pause for thought—and set it up opposite the window in her room. She moved the easel, keeping the window to the left behind her and the picture before her in the white spring light. Then she began to paint.

  She was amazed at how easy she found it. The glacier rose up into the sky, casting its radiance on the barren waste—black gravel, patches of moss, and a stream flowing among the stones. She had no need of rest, no wish to put down her brush because she was happy while she worked. She handed in the picture by the deadline, a Friday morning in May, as the birds were cheerful in the blossoming trees. She walked to the Academy relieved and fulfilled, and the feeling continued as she made her way resolutely along the corridors carrying her work. After leaving it in her teacher Jensen’s office, she reemerged into the spring sunlight where the mood of well-being slowly drained away, to be replaced by doubt and shame.

  “However, it is above all in the technical area that Kristín excels . . . although it should be noted that her graduation picture of an Icelandic landscape was both outstanding and unexpected . . . It is to be hoped that the talent Kristín evinces in this picture is a sign that she is maturing from a first-rate technician into a promising artist . . .”

  She knows the report by heart, yet she fetches the piece of paper and reads it in the dim light of the lamp. It’s a mystery to her why she should have brought it with her from Rome instead of taking the opportunity to get rid of it once and for all. She lets it fall onto the dressing table as darkness fills the valley and intermittent flashes light up the slopes of Monte Amiata. The war has reached them, its horrors are looming, but this document continues to pursue her. Will she never be rid of it?

  The pictures she exhibited in the little gallery just off Piazza Popolo were of the fjord and marsh by the farm, the mountains by the fjord, the sky above the mountains. And the ocean that lurked beyond the mouth of the fjord, with its godlike power to give and to take away. Marshall couldn’t see it; perhaps no one could see it but her. She didn’t care. The pictures were dark, their imagery abstract. Marshall said they alluded to impressions and feelings rather than to external reality. She heard him explaining this to guests at the opening and found it uncomfortable.

  There were around forty people at the exhibition, all invited by her master. She felt like an outsider at the opening; the guests knew one another and chatted during the brief time they lingered to view her work. Fortunately, few of them made any attempt to approach her; those who did merely mouthed some polite sentiments about the pictures, then turned back to one another.

  His wife attended the opening. She was as charming as ever to Kristín, kissing her on the cheek and congratulating her.

  “I don’t know the first thing about art,” she said, “but I think the pictures are beautiful. I couldn’t do anything like this.”

  There was a downpour during the opening and the square outside emptied of everybody except the soldiers who took refuge under the walls of the buildings. She was standing at the window, watching the rain, when Marshall came over and told her that two of the paintings had been sold, one of them to Count Bonacossi. She did not reply, and he hesitated a moment before turning back to the guests.

  For the first time, he was at a loss as to how to deal with her. Although he didn’t like it, he had to restrain himself, for he couldn’t risk turning her against him.

  He didn’t know she had overheard him talking on the phone the day before when he was issuing the last invitations to the opening. She had been passing his office on her way in to work, and his voice was clearly audible through the closed door.

  “A first attempt,” she heard him say, “but one must support the younger generation. No masterpieces but quite pretty in their way.”

  She watched the rain. People began to drift away. The soldiers stood against the walls, gray as the stone, one or two with cigarettes in their mouths. She thought about the picture she was going to paint for him. Would he describe it the same way?

  IT TOOK HER A LONG TIME TO REMOVE ALL THE paint. Solvent was ineffectual; only pumice stone, a scraper, and tweezers made any impact on the hardened paint, and she had to take great care not to tear the linen canvas. The painting she used dated from around 1600 and had been lying among a pile of other inferior works in a storeroom off the studio. It still had the original strainer, and the canvas was well preserved, attached to the frame by the type of tacks Caravaggio had used.

  She chose him on purpose. She could have picked Verrocchio or Ghirlandaio, Titian or Giorgione—painters she was more familiar with, but she didn’t. She chose him. Caravaggio. Hothead, thug, genius. The murderer to whom God gave the gifts for which others longed and would have sacrificed everything. For which she would have sacrificed everything.

  Her plan crystallized as she stood in a quiet corner of the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, not far from Piazza Navona, studying Caravaggio’s paintings of Saint Matthew. It came to her in the light entering through the dirty glass of the arched windows, fully formed as if it had been lurking in her brain, waiting to present itself. It sent shivers through her, not of fear but of excitement. She could do it. She knew she had the talent. She would find an insignificant painting from the period, clean the canvas completely, and use it to paint her own Caravaggio. She would find a way to get it to her master, incomplete and damaged. He wouldn’t s
uspect anything. He would ask her to restore and repaint it. No, not ask, beg. He would beg her, and she would agree reluctantly, only to complete his humiliation. Then she would tell him. After she had completed the restoration but before he could sell it. That would be the most painful moment.

  Madness, she said to herself as she turned away from Saint Matthew and looked at the light coming in through the windows. Sheer madness.

  But she was determined and the word only increased her anticipation. Madness.

  The ground layer favored by the rogue genius was different from that used by other painters of the period. Dark, reddish-brown, composed of calcite, minerals, and lead, it is left visible here and there in his pictures, sometimes with a translucent quality owing to the calcite. She brought the materials and tools home from the studio in the evenings and labored on the picture early in the mornings before going to work.

  Unlike his contemporaries, Caravaggio did not prepare his paintings with sketches but painted directly onto the ground, sometimes incising the outlines of his model with the handle of his brush while the ground was still wet. Therefore Kristín had to be ready with her composition as soon as she started on the preliminary layer. She decided on her subject before she left the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, staring at Caravaggio’s portrayal of the calling of the tax collector, feeling the heat emanating from it. The following morning she approached Maria, who worked in the canteen where Kristín took her meals. Maria accepted the invitation eagerly and did not complain about having to wake up early; it suited her well.

  Kristín based her work on Caravaggio’s painting of the penitent Mary Magdalene but decided to dress her model in simpler attire, choosing a white nightgown of her own for the purpose. She found the jewelry in the drawer of a desk belonging to the old man who owned the flat: a pearl necklace, bracelet, and hairpin. Assuming that they must have belonged to his wife, she took great care of them.