“But what I haven’t really faced is a third possibility. Arnander picks up where he was, and continues to do what he did. A great painter with a unique vision – the painter of the Maremma, say, and of my self-portrait. But a great painter simply keeping it up. That would be, for me, mildly unfortunate. But at least I should have one consolation.”
“And that is?”
“And that is,” Weidle said seriously, “that I believe it would content you.” He paused. “No, that’s wrong. You’re not going to emerge with any sort of content from this history. You’ll get your crumb of comfort, say, by feeling that you’ve contributed simply to a large oeuvre.”
“I shan’t have contributed. The word’s an absurd one.”
“Oh, I don’t deny it must all be done by Arnander himself. The success or the failure will be his. But he’s got it all in the bank, you know.” And Weidle once more tapped the drawing. “We just have to wait and see how he uses it.”
Craine sat silent for some time. There was nothing more to say to Weidle, but somehow he was reluctant to get up and go. “I’ve had one odd thought,” he said presently. “There may be more paintings. There may also be more children.”
Weidle smiled – rather cautiously, so that Craine was oddly reminded of Groocock. “It’s certainly true,” Weidle said, “that with Arnander the one sort of creation doesn’t seem to exclude the “As it so often does.”
“Quite so.” Weidle seemed to meditate giving the talk a discursive turn. Then he sat up – with an effect of addressing Craine more directly than he had yet done. “Look here,” he said, “ought there not to be a limit to your chewing over the whole thing?”
“It’s natural that I should chew over that.” Craine was almost defensive. “It would be queer, would it not? My own children as the centre of the sandwich.”
Weidle ignored this. “Do you want,” he asked, “to receive that journal from – Saltino every few days? Ought she to be writing it? She had to choose, and she went to him. Nobody can criticise. But, well, wasn’t that”—Weidle gave his shrug—”precisely that?”
“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part? It’s not so simple. Don’t you remember how it goes on? Nay, I have done: you get no more from me. I couldn’t say that. And – strangely enough – I don’t know that Jill could, either. Our instinct seems to be against that large gesture. Even although, as I’ve told you, we haven’t met since it happened.”
“You don’t propose to go out and investigate?”
“No.”
“Not even during one of those times when she comes to Pinn?”
Craine hesitated. “I think not. Arnander, remember, has never set eyes on me. There seems no reason why he ever should.”
“But you’ll go”—Weidle was faintly ironic—”to his first one-man show?”
“If it’s said to be a good one, yes. If not, not.”
Weidle sighed. “I think, you know, if I had the power to persuade you, and if I were concerned, in the first instance, with your happiness, and, after that, with a general clear-up on the whole affair—”
“You’d insist that it had all ceased to be any part of my business. Perhaps you’re right. But I simply don’t – so far, at least – feel it that way.”
“I can’t assert that there isn’t plenty of practical business that’s your pigeon still. The fact that they’re economically independent – or at least that she is – doesn’t alter that. For instance, are they all – all three layers of the sandwich – going to be legitimate? And is there any legal authority likely to be so inquisitive that they’ll have to be convinced the whole strange story doesn’t involve collusion and bigamy?”
Craine laughed. “For what the point’s worth, both Jill and I are certainly in the clear. There might be trouble for Arnander. But he was in a queer way. I’ve no doubt we could get the right sort of doctors to swear to the right sort of thing.”
Weidle sat back. He appeared pleased. “I believe that,” he said, “to be the first honestly unscrupulous proposition I’ve ever heard you advance. Such parsimony is a novelty in my field.”
“I’m not in your field, my dear man, except as an occasional guileless buyer. As for the children’s position, the lawyers will look after that. There was quite a crop of such things – back-from-the-dead affairs – after the war. But you spoke about going out to investigate. I take it that it’s in your mind to do that again yourself?”
“Lord, yes. I propose to keep very well up on it all. There’s my bread and butter in it – or at least my quite celebrated tea. Which reminds me. Would you care . . . “
Craine shook his head, and stood up. “No, thank you. I’ve one or two things to do – and then I’ll be getting down to Pinn. The pigs are giving a spot of trouble. The children, fortunately, are flourishing.”
“I’m delighted to hear it. And my own particular friends, Tim and Charles?”
“The same, I think. Work and games unaffected by our perplexities. And one mustn’t hasten to suppose there’s going to be any deep disturbance.” As so often before in this room, Craine picked up his hat and umbrella. “When shall you go out there next?”
“Not – unless something untoward happens – for a couple of months. The man must have time. Too quick a look might result in drawing false conclusions. And I still, you know, can’t believe he hasn’t the devil of a lot to learn again.”
Craine considered. “That will take us to the holidays. Could you bear the boys again? They must go, I think. And I’d like it to be under your wing. So would they.”
“Then that’s settled.” Weidle was pleased. “Do you know, I’d very much like, at the same time, to take them on a dash to Rome? Would it be all right?”
Craine advanced to shake hands. “You must ask their parents about that,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
Saltino-Vallombrosa
28 December
Looking back over all those weeks, I’m chiefly surprised, I think, by the extent to which I had no notion of what they were going to be like. And what they were going to be like in – well, so many different aspects of the thing. I ought to be grateful, I believe, for this multifarious queerness. Some of them make others of them easier to take.
Tragedy, or triumph, or a mixture; these had all seemed possible. But who’d have expected a large infusion of comedy? And the sensational side of John’s return to life – which was so large a side until, some weeks ago, it began a little to die down – was certainly in the key of comedy in the main. When the news broke, the first people to arrive were straightforward journalists. They had open minds about the size of the story, but unshakable convictions as to its kind. It was human-interest stuff, and their job was to extract from it everything of that order that they could. You’d think they’d be unbearable. But in fact, and once you’d granted their bread and butter was impertinence, they weren’t a bad lot. Painting was the very last thing they knew one end of from the other – which is probably why John found it easy to get on with them rather well. I don’t mean that he was expansive. From what I could see – and, not being mistress of these ceremonies, I didn’t see much – he was reserved and courteous and impeccable. He had very little time to give them, but what he had to give he gave graciously. That went down very well. It was amusing to see them arriving at the notion that he must be important as well as sensational. Presently the correct approach among them became one of awe. John might have been Leonardo – always the lay notion, it seems, of the greatest painter of all time – risen from the dead. Not just Arnander risen from the dead.
Naturally there were awkward bits. On one occasion, for instance, two men were competing – literally with brandished cheque-books – for the right to reproduce, in one popular magazine or another, the first painting that the resurrected genius should consent to release. John enjoyed being indifferent to that. And Celia was furious with him. I’m bound to say I sympathised with her. They had only to hold an auction there and then, and the
money would be in the bag. In their bag. And it was something honest in her, surely, that made her feel they ought to have a bag. She’s living on me, after all. But nothing of that sort means much to John – and I don’t know whether it’s something very perverse in me that has always made me rather sympathise with that too. But Celia, poor child, knowing next to nothing about him, made a row. At least that’s what I conjecture from the fact that I heard him pitching dishes at her. La vie de bohème. I was a little relieved, at that moment, that Tim and Charles weren’t in residence with Papa and Mama.
This is a wretched hard-boiled vein. But the comedy – to get it down more clearly – is something to which, at moments, I’ve had to cling. I remember it being like that, long ago. Yet, this time, it’s different. It’s fundamentally different. Something has vanished from the other side of the account. Temporarily or permanently? That’s the question.
29 December
Yet all this – that he’s living openly, a stone’s throw away, with a silly girl; and even that, perhaps, something final has happened between us – all this is so plainly not the significant thing, the real thing, that’s going on! She hasn’t had much of a buy. If she has ten minutes of his time – day or night – I’d be surprised. And when Weidle brings out the boys, off she’ll go. I haven’t a doubt of it. He does have certain middle-class proprieties very strong.
But I was writing about the journalists. They faded out. Or at least the ordinary undifferentiated ones faded out, and then we had those of the artistic persuasion. They were much more difficult. One had heard of some of them; they expected lunch; they were disgustingly and smoothly discreet. John loathed them. He’d have nothing to do with them. But he took it for granted that they’d be adequately handled and informed by me. They did, however, a little infect him, and he turned on a certain amount of discretion himself. Perhaps he locked that girl up in a cupboard. Certainly she wasn’t much seen. But he was never any good at being really close about such matters, and they went away, I don’t doubt, with as much gossip as they wanted.
It’s funny to be back in such a world. At least, I suppose it is.
30 December
I see that my conduct, my attitude, is inexplicable – perhaps even revolting – in terms of anything I’ve yet got down, ventured to get down. I’ve been hardly at all in the studio – and, when I have been, nearly everything has been face to the wall. He’s very close with me. I have to piece together what’s happening. I’ve done so with sufficient success to know it’s a tremendous, an incredible lot.
But, if he’s close with me, he’s close to me too. That’s the whole key to the situation as something that can endure for a day. It’s desperately hard to see, let alone to describe. This morning – although it was very cold – I walked up and down the terrace for a long time, trying to remember a word the psychologists use. As if there could be illumination in a word! It turned out to be – for what it’s worth – “ambivalent.” It’s in one of the Latin poets, surely, in a more concrete phrase. Odi et amo. Is that it? But that isn’t right, either. He makes desperate assaults upon me, as if I were a barrier that he must at all costs force his way through. And I feel that, if he doesn’t get through, the odi will come terribly in. I wrote, I remember, about his looking at the Perino Mantegna. That moment keeps coming back to me.
The snows are tremendous, but it is very still. I walk to Vallombrosa and back. Shuttered villas, lifeless hotels. A few of the forestry people seem to have jobs out of doors, and there are a few sportsmen with guns. But it all isn’t gay. Not even for Celia Barfoot, I’m afraid.
4 January
Today we had our first great man, Otto Frink. He must be about a hundred. He was already an old man, and already a great one, when he discovered John, long ago. He was the first man with world authority to speak up about the quality of the earlier paintings. What made that so impressive, of course, was his being an art historian and not a chatterer about the geniuses of the day. He is now very doddery, and I was afraid it was going to be too much for him: both the ascent to these polar regions and what he found when he got here. He came out of the studio weeping, and told me he’d seen what he’d never hoped to see again.
So this is the place to say, to try to say, what has been happening, what beneath all these private pains and perplexities has really been happening, at Saltino.
It is, as Charles likes to say, very technical. I’d forgotten painting was so technical – and indeed I don’t think it ever was so much so with John before. He’s obsessed, quite obsessed, with the idea of making up for lost time. He has said to me that he mayn’t, after all, have long now. I don’t know whether he was thinking of his life, or of his eyes. He knows the doctors say his sight will now be as lasting as any other part of him. But it’s understandable that he should find that hard to believe, sometimes. So he works like a man possessed. No, that’s feeble. He is possessed. But still, it’s technical.
Otto Frink talked his art history to me for half an hour before he drove back to Florence. It was wandering talk – he was tired out – but its general theme was the recorded instances of spells of preternatural productivity among painters. The most striking belong, apparently, to the Renaissance and not to modern times. And there is, Frink said, a rational basis to it. Ever since the end of the seventeenth century the technique of painting has been more casual than during the Renaissance. This was a surprise to me. I’d supposed it would be the other way. Briefly, he said that modern painters put in a lot of time and energy messing around, whereas the older ones had everything organised and systematised from the start. It’s only quite recently that there has been a bit of a change. And John has pounced on it, he said, with an astonishing grasp of its possibilities. For instance, since he began in October he hasn’t spent ten minutes squaring up; he has simply chosen from among his sketches, and let photography and a sensitised canvas do the donkey-work. And he’s been using a scaled palette as if he’d been familiar with it all his life. And a great deal else. That it all adds up to a tremendous lot, I don’t know. Frink was plainly just getting a little way towards accounting, on those sort of grounds, for what had staggered him. In the studio there are a score of substantial oil sketches, two large finished compositions, and a third composition on the easel.
Just before he drove away, Frink told me – with a Germanic solemnity contrasting comically with his ancient quavering voice – that the two finished pictures are accessions to the body of European art. I watched his car disappear into a snow-storm. But I think it was tears, and not snow-flakes, that obliterated it so quickly.
5 January
Yes, I was very much moved. And that rather surprised me. For the thing that chiefly seemed to come to me after the first shock and strangeness of John’s return to life was a conviction that there could be nothing but confusion in basing any course of conduct on the fact of his having been a great artist. And I stuck to this conviction even when there came the further strangeness: the possibility that he might be a great artist once more. If he had a claim on me, it wasn’t on the score of his talents, however transcendent. But it hasn’t been so simple. For I have been more significant to the artist in John than the artist in John has ever been to me.
5 January: later
But there is more to tell about yesterday – after Otto Frink had departed like an Ancient of Days. John came in to dinner. He might have or he might not have. I simply haven’t been recording the minor iresomenesses and awkwardnesses of this wench-in-the-stables ménage.
He came in to dinner – and I looked at him and saw that he had been under more strains than I knew. He is, of course, under a constant stress one just can’t begin to estimate: the stress of getting on canvas what he is getting on canvas – and at a tempo he’s never touched before. But he has been, too – I could now clearly see – under a further heavy stress of uncertainty, of doubt. And Frink – as I say, his first discoverer – had released him from it. He didn’t look at me, but he spoke at once. “I
say,” he said, “I’m sorry about that girl. She’s gone, though.”
It was, with an absurd preciseness, a remark out of the past. I gave him his pasta – we live very simply – and said nothing.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve been living in rather a cloistered way for some time. But there was nothing to her.”
It was excruciating – by which I mean that it was another flare-up of the comic in our affair. I thought I could remember exactly the same words – prompted by an occasion on which they had shut him up in hospital with scarlet fever. But something moved me to say what would never, I realised, have been particularly apposite before. “Nothing to her?” I said. “Why, you thought her ravishingly beautiful.”
He was disconcerted. “No doubt she was a pretty piece,” he said. There was a consciousness of virtue in the very tense he used. It was as if he had merely had to tear her up and toss her into the waste-paper basket. “However, I’ve turfed her out.”
I suppose I’m getting old and soft. Anyway, for a moment I was on the verge of being revolted. For all I know, Celia Barfoot may have been a virgin. He had seduced her – in the first instance no doubt by employing the nasty little trick of getting her to pose for him with her shift off. And here he was, taking the largest credit for having ejected her – quite literally into a snow-storm. I was, I say, nearly revolted. And then – can it be called anything but hysteria? – I had a queer sense of exhilaration, as from the years falling away. But I knew it was something illusory and treacherous – like what an old man gets, I suppose, from some queer glandular operation. So I was sufficiently impassive. “Have some sugo,” I said.
He had a lot. He twirled his fork in the tagliatelli with a gusto I hadn’t seen since our early days; it carried the past with it as absolutely as did this brisk closing down on an exhausted amour. And I felt my heart melting before it. I wanted to give him pleasure – nothing in the world but to give him pleasure. “What did the great Otto think?” I asked.
A Use of Riches Page 17
