The Center of the World

by Thomas van Essen

  your most humble and obedient servant,

  J.M.W.T.

  “Very well,” I said. “Bring him into the sitting room and make us some tea. Tell him I will be down in a few minutes.”

  I dressed with care, although I knew that no pains of mine could disguise how much I had aged since Turner had last seen me. As I saw my face reflected in the mirror, I thought of how different it was from the face in the mirror of the painting. I did not relish the thought of this meeting, but if I had hoped to avoid it I should have moved to New York or Johannesburg.

  Steeling myself as best I could, I descended the stairs, but nothing could have prepared me for what awaited me. Although it had been only three years since we last saw each other, Turner appeared twenty years older. He had made some effort to make himself presentable for the interview, but his coat, although recently brushed, was greasy and worn at the elbows. His hair was dirty, and the soles of his boots were caked with mud. There was a wildness about his eyes that I did not recognize from our days at Petworth.

  I held out my hand. “How good of you to come,” I said. “You are looking well.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Pardon my rudeness, but not at all the case. Don’t feel as bad as I look, but don’t feel well either.” He smiled at his own pleasantry, showing even fewer teeth than before.

  We both sat down as Hannah entered with the tea. We waited in silence until she left.

  “You, on the other hand, are looking well. Time has passed, to be sure. If not a thousand ships, then still nine hundred.” I felt he had been rehearsing this small witticism for weeks and that he would have made it no matter how I looked.

  “You are too kind,” I said. “But it is only through your art that I could launch even a single ship.”

  “But you inspired me. Without you not a single ship would have been launched.” Turner looked about him for the first time. He paid me a few pretty compliments on my taste. “Have you lived here long?”

  “About three years. I went up to London a few days before Egremont’s funeral. Wyndham had no use for me at Petworth, and there is that about him which spoils perfection.”

  “Abominable fellow. Cut me cold at his father’s funeral. That was the last time I saw Petworth. It was raining, I remember, a horrible day. I caught a dreadful chill and shook so that my very bones felt as if they would crack during the ride back to London. I have so many fond memories of the place, and you not the least of them. But why did you not let me know you were in London? It is most cruel.”

  I looked at him for a long while. “You men cannot understand what it is like for a woman like myself, a woman of a certain age with a certain reputation, with her beauty gone. I had no prospects and no one to depend on. One feels entirely cast out.

  “Egremont,” I went on, “was kind to me until the very end. We understood each other better than most married couples do. He left me with a modest sufficiency that just enables me to live quietly in this out-of-the-way district. You will forgive me, I hope, for not seeking you out. I have sought out no one. I have wished for nothing but to be alone.”

  Turner looked at me for long moment. “You sound like that fellow—what’s his name? Horace? Retired to the country, but in the city, you know. But fair enough. Lord knows I have spent a good deal of my life trying to stay out of the general view. Operating in public is a damn nuisance. That’s why my time at Petworth was the best of my life; each of us kept to himself, but there were times, too, of fellowship. The best time of my life.

  “But you do yourself an injustice—you would still make a good model. Perhaps not Helen now. Dido instead.”

  “The ruined and scorned queen? How apt. But I have no relish for such employment. I cannot think of our time together at Petworth without shame.”

  Turner colored. “I only meant, you see, that you are still an attractive woman.”

  “You are very kind. But tell me, how did you find me?”

  “A bit of a long story. Not a day has passed since good Egremont’s death that I have not thought of you. I even inquired of your whereabouts to Wyndham, who returned my letter unopened. A few days later his solicitor wrote to say that any further attempts to annoy his client would be dealt with severely. That’s all poppycock, of course. Then, it must have been about five weeks ago, I ran into Garret at the Royal Academy. I doubt you would recall him, but he was once a guest at Petworth. We were chatting about those days when he mentioned that he had seen you. Just from a distance, you know. He paid a few compliments to your looks, both past and present. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by running after you, so you never knew you had been spotted. I was more interested than I let on, Mrs. Spencer, so I asked him, casual-like, where he had seen you, and he mentioned this district. After that I made it a point to be about here as much as I could. Two days ago I saw you when you were out marketing and followed you here. Not the behavior of a gentleman, I admit, but I was not prepared to speak just then. I felt like a damn schoolboy, in fact. Didn’t wish to intrude, in case you were with someone else.”

  I reminded him that he could have written.

  “I thought of that,” he said. “But in the end I allowed my desire to run ahead of my manners. Not for the first time and probably not the last. But it was policy also: much easier to turn away a letter than a broken-down old painter.”

  “I confess that you are right. I value my privacy and the life I have made. But now that you are here, I am glad to see you. Heartily glad,” I said. “We had such times at Petworth.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments, sipping our tea. Turner’s shoulders slumped as if he was carrying a heavy weight.

  “So how have you been? I see your name in the papers. You are still considered the lion of British art.”

  He snorted. “More like the mouse. I don’t read the papers; I just do what I can. My digestion is horrible. Sores and whatnot about my gums; pain in those teeth that remain; stiffness in my joints. I have coughs, cramps, and palpitations. All the evils flesh is heir to. I grow old.

  “But those were fine days at Petworth. You, young Grant, Helen, and the gods. I felt most fully in my power. I have sought those moments since then and only found success in the world, which is a damn poor thing compared to what I was seeking.”

  “It was a Paradise for me, too,” I said. “Looking back, I feel ashamed that I ever experienced a moment of unhappiness there. But I do not complain much—I have no one to complain to. A life of quiet independence suits me.”

  “But we were great friends. We had many fine moments together.”

  “You need not remind me,” I said. “When a lady is stripped of her clothes and set up on all fours like a dog in the street, she tends, no matter how great a lady she pretends to be, not to forget.”

  “Oh, dear,” Turner said. He wiped his brow with a dirty handkerchief. “I have made a mess of it. For all the world I did not mean to offend you. Far from it. Of all the women I have ever met, you are the one I admire most. Do let us be friends.”

  I felt pity for the old painter and was sorry that I had spoken as I had. “You must see the thing from my point of view,” I said. “When Egremont’s bastard put on his cloak of virtue and threw me out of the house, I was left alone in the world with nothing but my small sufficiency and my shame. I did not have, as you do, genius and a name in the world to carry me through. Indeed, I find it hard to hear you complain of your diminished powers, when most men would trade everything they have for a tenth of what remains to you.

  “Knowing each other as we do, or, rather, knowing how well you know me, it is foolish for us to be anything but honest with each other. I bear you no ill will, but I must ask you to understand my situation as it appears to me.”

  “I do,” he said. “At least I’m trying. But did you not feel, as I did, as Egremont told me he did, that we were touched, all of us—you, young Grant, myself—by some awesome fire? Not me alone. I never worked like that—not before, not since. All these years
—just me and my materials. It’s why I prefer landscape, don’t you see, as a rule.”

  Turner shook his head sadly. “You know, at the funeral, I asked him about our Helen. That is when he cut me. He said he would destroy it. Do you think him capable of such a thing?”

  “He is a monster,” I said. “I think him capable of anything.”

  “But even that?”

  “He would cut off his own finger if he knew it would grieve others. You must understand. He could no more appreciate your Helen than you could speak Japanese. He could not see her because he could only see that the life his father lived was so much greater than his. His soul is not large enough to encompass your genius.”

  “The rack is too good for him,” he said with sudden vehemence. “But it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart.” After a few moments he grew calm and I saw that tears had formed at the corners of the old painter’s eyes. “Of all my paintings, it is the one I loved best, though it was least like the others. I have tried many things in my day and accomplished much. But never anything like that. It is murder.

  “I have the sketchbooks, you know, from that time. I look at them often, trying to capture the spark, to see that light. But only a shadow’s shadow remains.”

  Turner looked up from the floor and stared at me intently. “It’s queer. You are not now what you were. You are still a stunner, no matter what you say, but, I grant you, not the same. It was those days: the light at Petworth, Egremont’s bounty, young Grant’s beauty and your own. I was able to catch a glimpse of something.

  “It was your face. I tried to capture stages of passion and delight. Some of my best work in pencil, you know. Not the sort of thing to exhibit, but very good.”

  “I wonder,” I asked, “if I might have one of those sketches? It would be a sop to my vanity, but no great harm in an old lady looking back at better days.”

  Turner seemed taken aback by my request. He looked at his hands and avoided my gaze. “Those sketches are part of a sketchbook, you know. I make it a rule not to take things out. They are the tools of my trade. And they are not finished—not worthy of your esteem.”

  “I understand,” I said. I poured him more tea.

  “You actually believe he burnt it?”

  “That is what he said. You know what I think of him.”

  “My eyes have grown dim,” Turner said. When he looked at me then my heart nearly broke. “Even now, looking at you, I can no longer see her. It is gone.”

  I summoned up some of my former skill and managed to direct the conversation to happier matters. We chatted about the weather and some of the other guests we had both known at Petworth.

  “It was good of you,” I said at length, “to come and seek out an old forgotten lady.”

  “Not forgotten. You have been much in my mind. I hoped we might become friends again, even create between us some small version of those happy days. It would be good for us both.”

  I shook my head. “You are very kind to think of me in such terms. But I am convinced that this retirement is best for me. You do not know how hard I have struggled to make this life. Please forget I live here. Tell no one that you have seen me.”

  He looked at me strangely. “Rum. But you are not like other women, and I respect you for it.” He rose to go.

  “I wonder,” I said, as we stood by the door, “if you have heard of young Grant?”

  Now Turner seemed anxious to get our parting over with. “No. A year ago I heard he had taken himself off to America. Why I don’t know.”

  I held out my hand to him. He touched it briefly.

  “Well, good-bye,” he said.

  “Good-bye,” I replied. I watched him through the door as he walked down the steps. The vigorous dogtrot that I had seen when he was rushing across the fields of Petworth was no more.

  Afterward I went up to my bedroom, locked the door, took the key from about my neck, and opened the cabinet. As I lay on the bed, bathed in the light from the canvas, I knew that what I had done was wrong, but as Helen looked back at me from her mirror, I knew also that it had been needful.

  . 59 .

  TWO WEEKS LATER we found a large box at our door. It was filled with money, bundles and bundles of wrinkled twenties and fifties, just over three million dollars when we finally counted it. The letter was in a plain envelope, the paper on which it was written was unremarkable. The ink was blue and the elegant cursive script was precise and unquestionably legible.

  Dear Mr. Leiden,

  I owe you neither explanation, justification, nor compensation, but I understand, I believe, the vacuum you currently feel in your life. If you have any sense of injury—as I suspect you do—it is, although natural, unjustified. You had no more right to that painting than I do and, from a moral point of view, mine was the greater claim. If possession is ninety percent of the law, the law was on your side. Now it is on mine. You had your chance; now I have mine. The ease with which I was able to acquire your possession suggests that you were not an appropriate steward of that which even you recognized as a work beyond compare, a work which, in some profound sense that even I cannot yet grasp, changes everything. You may rest assured that The Center of the World is no longer propped up on a bedroom dresser as if it were a second television!

  I do not know how it came to be in your house (although I have a strong suspicion), but it seems safe to say that the main element of the “how” was chance. You were lucky, more lucky than you or perhaps anyone deserves to be. You are still lucky, because you have seen what no more than a handful of people have ever seen.

  So while your claim to ownership was based on luck, mine is based on will. I have been actively seeking this painting for many years. Through intense study and scholarly intuition I came to suspect its existence; through painstaking work and patience I transformed my imaginings into physical fact.

  You will probably think this comically arrogant coming from one who, from your perspective, is nothing more than a thief, but I think I have some right to claim that I have willed this painting into being, or at least into visibility. My act of creation is, in its own way, on a par with Turner’s. Turner willed the painting onto the fabric of the canvas; I willed it onto the fabric of time and history.

  And you? You did nothing but have the advantage of mindless propinquity. Your father—not you—purchased a house in the Adirondacks. Do you even know that this house was once the property of Cornelius Rhinebeck? Do you know that Rhinebeck was one of the great New York collectors of European art of the nineteenth century? I suspect that for some reason the painting was being stored in your father’s house when Rhinebeck met his untimely death in 1929. There it sat until you stumbled on it. The painting, for reasons that are easy to imagine, was not part of any official inventory and did not pass into the hands of Rhinebeck’s two sons, both of whom died many years ago and without issue. So I feel quite comfortable dismissing any claims that you might care to assert—if you could.

  There is no justice in the fact that you possessed the painting as long as you did. What did you do to deserve such a gift? I have some information about you. You are one of those people who go about their business and make no great difference in the world. I suspect you have no great feelings either. How else could you live the life you do? I wonder, therefore, what you felt as you looked at The Center of the World.

  This painting is a lightning bolt hurled from the past and anyone (including you) standing near its point of impact must feel the heat and hear the thunder. So surely you felt something. You were probably blinded by Helen’s sexuality. What did you make of the anatomical precision of Turner’s brushwork? Did you see the play of light and shadow in the sea or the exquisite fall of the transparent drapery on Helen’s thigh or the masterly deployment of pictorial space? Even if you were unaware of the hundreds of small elements that contribute to the painting’s greatness, you must have appreciated some part of its glory and wonder.

  None of this really matters, although you have b
ecome in my mind something of a curiosity, an odd footnote in the history of art. You are one of a handful of individuals who have ever seen this wonder. You are one of an even smaller number who have seen it since the creation of the modern world. You and I are joined in a small and exclusive fellowship. We are products of the twentieth century—the great wars, the genocides, the atomic bomb, AIDS. All these things have a place in our consciousness, but so does The Center of the World. It has shown me truth more profoundly than I had ever imagined possible.

  Did you feel what I felt? Have you been transformed? As I write I can look up from my desk and see The Center of the World. Whenever I look at it, I see some new wonder or find myself lost in a totality whose boundaries I cannot map. For you, this painting has become a memory. You will never see it again. Could you perceive the thing for what it was when it was before you? Can you recall it now that it is gone? Will you only regret your loss or has some gift remained? I hope the latter.

  I think you understand that The Center of the World must always and forever remain a secret. Although you made a clumsy attempt to establish its worth, the indirectness of your approach suggests an awareness on your part that the very nature of this painting requires that it remain hidden. The worst thing that could happen would be for it to enter into the world and be degraded by reproduction. The thought of its image on a coffee mug or a beach towel turns my stomach. I suspect you share this feeling.

  In fact, in spite of who and what you are, you are a kind of hero. If you had rushed The Center of the World to market, all would have been lost. You understood, I believe, that it is not meant for general consumption, but I doubt that your understanding will take you so far as to allow you to comprehend that it was not meant for you either. There is a fitness in the way things have worked out that almost inclines one to a belief in Providence. You do not have the depth of interest or understanding that I do. I am far better equipped to allow Turner’s masterpiece to fulfill its destiny than you are. That is a fact.