by Cathy Ace
The front door was to the left of the building, and up a couple of steps from the street, but it wasn’t one front door, it was two—both alarmingly narrow. As Bud and I mounted the steps, one of the elaborate lace curtains at the window to the right of the right-hand door visibly twitched. I wondered if we were about to be accosted by Jonas’s tenant, but we let ourselves in without anyone coming to greet us.
Once the slender door was open we were faced with a staircase that climbed before us; it was almost like a ladder and was no wider. “I guess this is where they found him,” said Bud gloomily. “I can see how coming down these would be dangerous. I’m not looking forward to it myself, and you’ll have to take real care, right?”
I readily agreed. I’m hopeless with heights, and I could imagine only too well how steep these stairs would look from the top. Of course, we had to get up them first, and that wasn’t exactly easy. The inadequate handrail had seen a lot of wear, and I used it to help pull myself up the steep and deep steps. Enclosed by a wall on each side, it felt as though an escalator should have been installed. I was panting by the time I got to the top. I reckoned the apartment downstairs must have been on two floors, with Jonas using the top three-fifths of what I’d counted to be a five-story building.
At the top we walked through a stout wooden door and found ourselves facing an opening. Across it hung a forlorn-looking curtain made of multicolored plastic strips. Peering inside we saw a diminutive kitchen, which filled the whole of the back of the house. It looked clean enough, but smelled musty. The front of the house was behind us, facing the canal, and was just one large, open room, with chairs that had seen better days, a few low tables, a small, round dining table with some rickety seating, and another staircase leading back toward the rear of the house directly above the one we’d just used.
“Keep going?” asked Bud. I replied with a short “Uh-huh,” hoping I wouldn’t pass out before we made it up.
This time the top of the staircase faced an open door to the bathroom, directly above the kitchen below. It was small, containing only a basin and a bath with a shower attached to the wall—a relatively recent installation if the newness of the chrome fittings was anything to go by. Beside it was another door, which revealed an improbably narrow lavatory cubicle. This time the front of the house was being used as a bedroom; the open space contained a bed, two dark wood wardrobes, a couple of chairs, and a dressing table. I wondered if Jonas had picked up the furniture as a job lot. A glass door led to yet another flight of stairs, which we labored up, emerging into a room set up as an artist’s studio; the bare wood floor was covered in a mass of dried paint drops of all shades and hues, looking almost like a piece of abstract art itself. The walls were bare brick, and covered almost entirely from floor to ceiling with various paintings, which were also stacked around the walls, making the floor space smaller. Two empty easels stood in the middle of the room, one facing the windows at the front, the other the windows at the rear. A table between them was littered with tubes of paint and acrylic, pots of dried color—which I assumed had once been water—and brushes of every size and description, plus a comprehensive collection of artist’s palette knives. Two large boards had been loaded with piles of paint, and looked to have been in use when Jonas had died. They were now a solid mass. It was a sad sight. Jonas had clearly been a man who produced a lot of work, even if it had only been his hobby.
“Eclectic,” said Bud.
“That’s one word for it,” was all I could manage.
Surveying the artworks made me wonder at Jonas’s talent; there were so many different types of pieces it boggled the mind. Perhaps what I was seeing was the result of a decades-long journey through artistic expression, or maybe Jonas had just enjoyed “playing” with art. Here I could see Jonas’s distinctive signature on canvases that depicted almost photographic representations of bowls of fruit, vases of flowers, humans, and animals. These pieces jostled for space with other scenes reminiscent of Seurat’s pointillist preferences depicted in the style of Dali, and Renoir’s outdoor frolics reimagined as Matisse pieces. Some looked for all the world as though they were real priceless works by Van Gogh, Breugel, Titian, Hals, and even Rembrandt. That was until you looked closely and noticed a swirl out of place, or a hat at the wrong angle—and the swaggering brushstrokes of Bud’s uncle’s name.
“Some of these look…well, ‘real’ I guess is what I mean, but they’re not. Are they?” asked Bud with hesitation.
“That one over there of wheat fields, with crows?” Bud followed my pointing finger and nodded. “The real one by Van Gogh is thought to be one of his last, if not his very last, painting. A print of it hung on the wall of one of the corridors of my old school, Llwyn-y-bryn, in Swansea. I saw the piece every day for years, and I loved it.” I closed my eyes to recall the print I’d known so well and smiled to myself. “Jonas has depicted the painting almost exactly. Indeed, the closer I get to it, the more I can see it’s nearly an exact replica—but more than that, he’s captured the intensity of Van Gogh’s brushwork. However, this one has fewer crows, and they’re in slightly different places.”
Bud looked suspicious. “Really? Fewer crows?”
“Trust me.”
Bud shrugged. “I trust that photographic memory of yours,” he conceded, “so I guess that’s what he liked to do—make copies of well-known pieces, and change them up a bit, signing his own name too.”
“That would legally allow him to be clear that he wasn’t intending to create saleable forgeries,” I agreed, “though he’s done more than that. Look—he’s taken the well-known subjects of a certain artist and mixed it with the technique of another. There—that’s Vermeer’s Milkmaid painted in the style of Van Gogh, here’s Hopper’s Nighthawks done just as though it would have been by Seurat, and that’s a Picasso version of the Mona Lisa. Can you see it?”
Bud bobbed his head about a bit, but his expression suggested that all he could make out was a jumble of bodily components. “Looks like a mess to me,” he said, “but you know the sort of things I like.”
I certainly did; Bud and I had finally reached a happy medium when it came to art for our new home. “Maybe we’ll have time to pick up some good prints from the Van Gogh Museum and the Rijksmuseum while we’re here,” I replied. “They’d always be a reminder of this visit. All the best galleries are open again—the Rijksmuseum’s been under renovation for the past ten years, and the Van Gogh museum only just reopened in May. It’s too good a chance to miss. I wonder if they still use those triangular red boxes for the prints everyone seems to buy.”
Bud’s expression told me he wasn’t focusing on what I was saying. “What on earth are we going to do with all this?” He scratched his head. Hard. “If we’re responsible for the lot of it, do we just chuck it all out? Give it away? I mean, who would want it?”
“Some of the furniture looks fit for the dump—though how that system works here in Amsterdam, we’ll have to find out. And if you decide you want to rent the place out, even then I think we’d have to clear every floor and replace everything, because I can’t imagine they have less-strict rules about the fire-retardant qualities of furnishings in rentals than we do in Canada. I haven’t seen anything that could possibly pass that sort of test. The bed looks ancient, but probably not old enough to be worth anything. We could have someone come to look at the place from the rental company Menno mentioned to check it over. They’d know about codes and rules, and the expectations of the marketplace.”
Bud looked thoughtful when he replied. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. At least then we could work out what we’d have to spend to make the place rentable, and know what income it could bring. Or maybe it’ll turn out it’s better to just sell the place.” He sighed. “It’s a lot to sort out. I know we only planned to be here for ten days or so, but I’m wondering if that’s realistic. Just clearing this room could take that long. And then ther
e’s this business with the bequests.”
“Do you want to go to his bedroom and read that letter?”
“Sure,” said Bud, sounding defeated. “I can’t imagine why the thing has to be read there, but I guess we’re doing everything else he asked us to do. Besides, I need to get away from this lot. For a large, bright room, it’s pretty claustrophobic up here. Tell you what, let’s open a couple of the windows on every floor and get a bit of a through-draft going. It might freshen things up a bit. We’ll meet back in the bedroom. I’ll let you do this one, and I’ll tackle downstairs.”
A few minutes later I was perched on a stool designed for someone a good deal taller than me, while Bud was on a low ottoman. We were in Jonas’s bedroom and ready to read the letter he’d written for Bud. I was anxious to know what Jonas had saved up for this set of what would undoubtedly end up being instructions.
“In the video he said I was to read this letter next to the window in his bedroom,” said Bud. “I’m right beneath the four windows, so I hope the letter will make sense. Here goes.”
As Bud carefully opened the envelope I said, “Aloud, please, so we can both be told what to do at the same time.”
“Okay.”
For Bud, my heir—my hands, feet, eyes, and ears: I rely upon you from now on. Thank you for doing all you have done so far, and for what you will do. You are now in my home. I hope it looks appealing. Maybe you think I lived a boring life, or maybe you have already seen my studio. This is the only part of my home that will show you the real me. The rest of the house? Just somewhere for my body to be taken care of. In my studio you will see how my spirit lived. If you have done as I have asked, you are in my bedroom, at the windows. Look ahead of you. You see the wall has three paintings on it. They are all portraits of my good friends.
Bud and I looked up. Two of the three portraits in question were about a couple of feet square, but the one in the center was much bigger. All three portraits carried Jonas’s clear and distinctive signature, and each showed a well-known portrait but with the face of the subject changed.
Bud stood, I jumped down from my perch, and we both walked the few steps it took to be able to examine the paintings more closely. Bud peered, and I closed my eyes to recall the original works in a sort of snapshot, then looked at Jonas’s work.
“He’s captured the originals to a T,” I said quietly. “He was an extremely talented artist. The styles, the brush strokes, even the rendering of the ‘replacement’ faces—they’re all exquisite.”
“As you know, I’m no expert,” replied Bud, “but these even look old. Look—they’ve got the crackly stuff all over them.”
“The aged varnish. You’re right. I wonder how he managed that. Without the faces you’d think these were the real thing, though of course everyone knows where the real ones are. You know, in galleries and so forth, like the ones upstairs. What else does the letter say?”
These portraits are gifts for the people in them—or for their families. The names of the people portrayed are on the back of the paintings. They might not care for the frames, but I hope they enjoy the work I put into them. The woman is Greta van Burken, shown as Rembrandt’s Juno; the man on the right, shown as Van Gogh from his self-portrait, is Pieter van Boxtel; the other is a portrait of my best friend in the Group, Willem Weenix, as Frans Hals’ Laughing Cavalier. In my studio you will find more portraits. For Dirk van der Hoeven, my lawyer’s father, I could not resist making him the sullen Doctor Gachet, as portrayed by Van Gogh. This piece will now be for his family to remember him by, because he died some years ago. Bernard de Klerk I painted as the courting man in the Vermeer piece The Glass of Wine. If I say it myself, I am proud of this work. It took me a great deal of time; Vermeer was a master—I am not. Then there’s Johannes Akker; I also used the work of his namesake, Vermeer, for him—he is The Geographer. My desire is that each person has their own portrait. You will do this for me. The large portrait will not be easy to transport, but it will be worth it.
“Great,” said Bud. “This big one’s going to be a nightmare to get down the stairs, let alone anywhere else.”
“We’ll manage somehow,” I said. “Now come on, what else is there?”
Each person will also have one more painting from my collection. One of my recent works. I have labeled them, on the back of each one. I am sure you will find them. I hope you enjoy the search. When all of this is done, then I ask you to select a piece of my work for my little sister Ebba, and one for her husband, Leo. The rest? That is for you to decide. But do not make that decision until you have done all I have asked of you. I hope you understand, one day, why I say this.
“He does think rather highly of his own opinions,” I couldn’t resist saying.
“Pot? Kettle?” quipped Bud, then he grinned. “The elderly can be like that, determined to have their own way—even after death, it seems. Nearly done.” He continued to read.
My life has been interesting. I have worked, traveled, loved, hated, and through everything I have painted. If all that is left is that which I have painted, the rest will have to be guessed at. This is my legacy. Do as you wish with my house, but be mindful of Hannah, my tenant. One of my new paintings is for her, and there is a portrait of her also. You will find it easily. She can be surly, but be kind to her; she has lived a difficult life. If you decide to sell my home, be sure of what will happen to Hannah before you do it. Every house has its history, this one more than most. You would do well to be certain you have found out all of its stories before you pass it to someone outside the family. It feels strange for me to write that word; I have never had a family, because I walked away from it, so I made my own—with my friends. I wish I could be walking at your side, but my time is over.
“That’s it?” Bud sounded surprised. “It doesn’t seem there’s much more to do than we originally thought—just a few items to deliver to half a dozen addresses, and we already had those from Menno. If we launch into hunting out the pictures he’s labeled up in the studio, we might have everything we need today, and we could just splash out to rent a cab to take us from one place to another tomorrow. Then we could get together with the house-rental guy and come up with a plan. We’d have time for galleries, walks, perhaps even a concert or two.”
My spirits lifted. “It’s the Concertgebouw’s 125th anniversary this year. They might have something good on. We’ll have left before they have the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performance on the twenty-sixth of August, but I happen to know they have the Australian Youth Orchestra and Joshua Bell playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on the thirteenth. That’s tomorrow, isn’t it?”
Bud checked his wristwatch. “Yep, tomorrow. I’m a bit muddled up myself. But a youth orchestra?” His wrinkled nose told me he didn’t think much of the idea.
“Having been in youth theater, and youth choirs singing with a youth orchestra myself, I’m going to leap to their defense. The enthusiasm, the tone, and the dedication can be of the highest level, and if this is representative of Australia’s best, they’re probably very good.”
“Even so, there might be something else. Tell you what, let’s crack on with what we have to do, then we can play around with what we want to do. I fancy the idea of the Bimhuis.”
I know I tutted aloud, because Bud’s face told me he’d heard it. I’d never known him to listen to anything other than classic rock music, hence my puzzlement at his enthusiasm to visit Amsterdam’s world-famous jazz venue. “Why there, all of a sudden? I went to the original one back in the eighties, and I’m not sure it’s your sort of place. I know it’s now housed in a new building, but still…you? Jazz? Really?”
“I went there the last time I was here. Great place, out on the waterfront with a big deck, and a good setup inside,” was all he said.
“And there was me thinking it had been all business when you were here.”
“We needed to get away from the meetings and the intensity of it all. But come on, let’s not dawdle—the sooner we start, the sooner we finish. Race you up the stairs to the studio,” he said, but I held up my hand to stop him running off.
“I know we need to do stuff up there, but you could do it while I have a good look around Jonas’s home and build a bit of a profile of the man—in my own way.”
Bud looked thoughtful, then agreed. “That’s a good idea. Come up and tell me all about my uncle when you’re done?”
I smiled at him. Bud likes to think he has enough control over his eyebrows to make them as effective as mine, but he always looks drunk when he tries to raise just one of them. I allowed him his moment and said, “Very well. I’ll be as efficient as possible.”
The Artist’s Home and Studio: A Detailed Study
HAVING SPENT ABOUT FORTY-FIVE MINUTES acquainting myself with Jonas de Smet’s belongings and lifestyle, I finally clambered up the steep stairs to join my husband, who’d been clattering about in the attic for the whole time. I was delighted to see he’d made some considerable headway. A collection of canvases was stacked neatly against one wall, which he’d cleared of other paintings.
“Have you found every piece Jonas wrote about?” I asked, then sneezed four times. Bud’s efforts had released clouds of dust into the air, and I could tell it was going to affect me for a while.
