Speaking of desserts: here are this week’s secret tips. This time they’re for making sorbets and gelati. But do remember what I said, Antonio: make an effort with your handwriting . . . You wouldn’t be planning to blackmail Teldi, would you now? You have to be very careful with that sort of thing. Pardon my indiscretion, but I’m curious to know what you’ve got in mind. We are old friends, after all.
All right. Here they are then, finally: this week’s two little indiscretions.
A trick used by le maître Paul Bocuse to improve the consistency of a mango sorbet
To maintain the consistency of a fruit sorbet, especially if it’s made with mango, you need to keep a sprig of marigolds handy, or, better still, two sprigs. What you do is . . .
THE SIXTH DAY
ERNESTO TELDI AND MISS RAMOS
THE ROTUNDA OF the Palace Hotel has featured in innumerable photographs as the calm and discreet backdrop for interviews with all manner of famous people. Its carpet, woven on the Royal Looms, has muffled the catlike tread of Julian Barnes making his way toward the ideal armchair in which to pose and display a pair of expensive French moccasins. The kentias in the lobby inspired La Toya Jackson to try something different: peering through the branches to reveal the oval of her pallid face, like a Versace medusa. Famous athletes and legendary actors, left-wing intellectuals and right-wing politicians (moderately right wing, of course): at some point they have all chosen this cozy yet well-illuminated space, unique in all Madrid, not just because the photos turn out well but also because it is one of those places that have their own significance. It adds the following message to a profile piece: I, ladies and gentlemen, am someone who appreciates quality but disdains ostentation, who is not averse to comfort so long as it is accompanied by a hint of cleverly simulated decadence. I honor the life of the mind, of course, but artistic sensibility is incomplete without that—how shall I put it?—that deft, almost imperceptible touch of sophistication.
The unique ambience of the rotunda at the Palace says all that, or at least that is what Ernesto Teldi imagined it to say, which is why he had chosen it as the setting for his appointment with the photographer and the journalist from Patron of the Arts, a trade magazine with around 350,000 subscribers throughout Europe (individuals, mostly, plus a very select group of institutions). This prestigious publication had been trying for months to set up an interview with Teldi—“A professional piece, of course, very classy, but with a human slant: the home life of the highflier, in the style of Fortune magazine. You know the sort of thing.”
Teldi had been waiting for Miss Ramos and her photographer for some time. On the table in front of him, the remains of a frugal breakfast were arranged as if for effect: grapefruit juice, a cup of tea, crumbs (presumably from a slice of toast), while the lord of this little domain flipped through the pages of The Financial Times (the arts pages, naturally).
“GOOD MORNING, Miss Ramos. Agustina Ramos, isn’t it?” A kiss for her, a firm handshake and a slap on the back for the photographer. “Allow me to introduce myself: Ernesto Teldi,” he added, his manner poised between familiarity and reserve. He had discovered that this worked well on the better sort of journalist, and especially on the likes of Miss Ramos: usually extremely well educated, sometimes left-handed, and occasionally cross-eyed (a trait that may add a touch of originality to an otherwise nondescript appearance). Often, remarkably often in fact, these journalists were also the daughters, nieces, or close relatives of some unknown or unjustly forgotten painter, a painter of enormous talent (what a barbaric world we live in), and for these reasons Miss Ramos and her ilk considered themselves hard done by. They were acutely aware that working for a glossy but pseudo-intellectual magazine like Patron of the Arts was a miserable waste of their intelligence, but what really peeved them was having to endure the company of Chema or someone like him.
Chema was the photographer. He was much younger than Miss Ramos, and was in the unforgivable habit of chewing gum and dressing with an absolute disregard for aesthetics: a dire combination of stripey Nikes and checked trousers, say, proof positive of his bad taste, which didn’t stop him taking good photographs, so good, in fact, that they tended to overshadow the impeccable prose of Miss Ramos. This time, however, she was determined not to be overshadowed, which was why she had prepared a battery of penetrating questions for Ernesto Teldi. Some were hard-hitting, even impertinent, all were backed up by careful research: intellect and gossip, blended fifty-fifty, a foolproof recipe, mused Miss Ramos. She was going to show her stupid bosses at Patron of the Arts what a top-class interview should be.
“Good morning, Mr. Teldi.”
Miss Agustina Ramos had almost vanished into an enormous sofa with claret upholstery, no doubt very comfortable, but far too voluminous for someone of her modest dimensions. Nevertheless, she got her tape recorder going.
“One, two, three, testing,” she said, adding, by way of a label: “Interview with Ernesto Teldi, Spanish-Argentine art dealer and collector.”
“Plain Spanish, I would say,” interjected Teldi with a marked South American accent. “Many people think I’m an Argentine because I lived for a long time in Buenos Aires and my surname sounds vaguely Italian, but I assure you I’m Spanish through and through.”
Miss Ramos didn’t like to be interrupted. What a drag. Now she would have to stop and rewind the tape. And besides, there was absolutely no need for him to butt in. She had prepared the interview thoroughly; she knew perfectly well that Teldi had started out as a young man in Madrid with ambition to spare but not much money and that, at the end of the sixties, ignoring everyone’s advice, he had decided to give up a steady job and try his luck in Argentina. It was hardly an ideal time to make the move—the country’s glory days were well and truly over, and yet against all the odds Teldi had managed to make a fortune, especially in the seventies and eighties, buying up paintings in bulk at absurdly low prices (compared with what they’d fetch in Europe): Sorolla, Gutiérrez Solana, Ruisiñol, Zuloaga, even occasionally minor works by Monet, Bonnard, and Renoir, gems that had come to Buenos Aires at the beginning of the century. Thanks to these good deals, Teldi was now a successful businessman, a highly respected professional, and he had recently become a generous patron of the arts. All this made him an ideal subject for the magazine Miss Ramos had the misfortune to work for, which was interested in the rich and in artists who were famous only because of the price a bunch of philistines were willing to pay for their work. Nevertheless, there are dark corners in the life of every eminent man, and Teldi was no exception. Miss Ramos was determined to seek them out, even if it meant opposing the directives of her insufferably ignorant bosses. She would show them what a real arts journalist can do. But before going for the jugular . . .
“Tell me, Mr. Teldi, for you, is art business or pleasure?” she asked, because this highly original question was an obligatory part of any interview with Patron of the Arts.
Same old drivel, thought Teldi, silently cursing Mr. Janeiro, the developer who owned the lavish magazine as well as a chain of shoe stores, which allowed him to devote his time to humiliating serious people like Miss Ramos, forcing them to ask hackneyed questions like “Business or pleasure?”
Teldi leaned back in his armchair. Privately, he agreed with Miss Ramos about the stupidity of the question: everyone knows that art these days is a business first and foremost. Nevertheless, he trotted out an appropriate reply.
“Well, of course, it’s neither one nor the other. Art is a source of aesthetic experiences, part of the common heritage of humanity. It is what distinguishes us from the animals and brings us closer to the gods.”
Right, thought Miss Ramos. Now that she had discharged her obligation, she could get down to business. She pulled out a little notebook in which she had patiently summarized the key facts and dates from Teldi’s CV. Are you ready, Mr. Teldi? she said to herself. Brace yourself; here comes the first cruise missile. And she launched into her first penetrating question, cle
verly laced with vitriol; but before she could get to the end of it, two sounds distracted her. The first was emanating from the jaws of the photographer, who was chewing gum in time with the second sound: click, click, click, CLICK, went the shutter as Chema dodged around Teldi, taking photo after photo. This always drove Miss Ramos up the wall, but there was no point complaining: the editor of Patron of the Arts believed in having the photos taken during the interview. “They’ve got more life and authenticity that way, Ramos. You don’t get it, do you? You still haven’t realized we’re living in a visual culture. A gesture’s worth a thousand words. Do us a favor and stop whining.”
So Agustina Ramos didn’t whine, not even when Chema thrust himself between her and Teldi to immortalize the way the dealer stroked his chin as he replied to the tough question that the young lady had left dangling.
“No, no. I’m afraid you’re mistaken, my dear. It was easy to buy paintings back then, but I can assure you it had nothing whatever to do with Argentina’s political problems or the repression and the horrendous crimes committed by the military. The art boom had begun before all that. You realize, of course, that I’ve been a member of the UN IC for years” (IC for Investigating Committee, of course). “As I said, I’m a member of a body set up precisely to investigate human rights violations; so I’m hardly likely to have taken advantage of those unfortunate circumstances to—”
“To get rich by ripping off families that, as well as being torn apart, also had their property devalued during the dictatorship.”
“Quite, my dear,” broke in Teldi, who knew that the best way to handle this sort of virago was to confront her directly and get the upper hand as soon as possible. “That’s precisely why we set up the PFVST, the Philanthropic Fund for the Victims of State Terrorism, and it’s well known that I was one of the founders of the fund, at considerable personal risk, believe me. Remember, we’re talking about the period from ’seventy-six to ’eighty-three—not the best time to go playing the hero, I can assure you.”
He was looking at her. His suave philanthropist’s gaze seemed to settle tenderly on Miss Ramos’s ankles, which were the most attractive part of her anatomy. “Nice ankles,” he seemed to be saying with his eyes, and Miss Ramos almost smiled, because she wasn’t completely immune to the masculine gaze, especially the gaze of a connoisseur. Nevertheless, like a true professional, she managed to continue in the same aggressive style as before:
“Yes, yes, perhaps it wasn’t a good time for heroics, but curiously, with everything that was going on, it seems to have been a good time for making a great deal of money. As you mentioned yourself, those were the years of state terrorism. So what’s your secret?”
“There is no secret,” Teldi replied (his gaze sliding down from Miss Ramos’s ankles to her shoes, which she suddenly wanted to hide, lest those gallant eyes discover that her seemingly expensive looking footwear was fake). “You see, Agustina” (such a pretty name, the way he said it), “in the period we’re talking about, there was only one way to succeed: a good deal of hard work and contempt for the military. But we’re here to talk about art, not politics, aren’t we, my dear? So perhaps we should sharpen the focus of our conversation.”
At this point, Chema took advantage of Teldi’s emphatic pause on the word focus to capture an image of him making his point with an expression of such royal grandeur that a lady having breakfast two tables away let out a stifled “Oh” and elbowed her husband in the ribs.
“Look, Alfredo, it’s someone famous!” she said. “Look, over there, on the left. Isn’t it Agnelli, the owner of Maserati? He looks just like a Florentine cardinal!”
And the husband, apparently up on such things, informed her that Agnelli had nothing to do with Maserati; he was the owner of Olivetti, the multinational, didn’t she know anything? Meanwhile, Chema went on firing off his flashes and Miss Ramos made a valiant effort to back Teldi into a corner with her tough questions.
“All right, it’s true that no one has ever been able to link you with the military, and that’s to your credit, because if a link were to be discovered, well, the stain would be indelible. So let’s leave all that aside and talk about art, but even where art is concerned, there have, I’m afraid, been a number of rumors about your highly profitable dealing. Is it true, for example, that you once bought a magnificent Monet for a ridiculously small sum, then sold it for twenty times its value while the former owner of the painting, unable to pay his debts, ended up committing suicide?”
“Well, it’s true about the transactions,” said Teldi with a charming smile, “but the rest of the story is a little fanciful. The former owner of the Monet is not only alive and well, he’s also a good friend of mine and now one of the richest men in South America. I like to help people out and expect them to do the same for me. Is there something reprehensible about that, Agustina?”
Mr. Teldi was coming to seem less and less reprehensible to Miss Ramos. Especially when their eyes met, which didn’t happen very often, just often enough to make her want more. In fact, Miss Ramos, who prided herself on being an infallible judge of character, had to admire the way he was handling her aggressive questions: smiling calmly, even once (just once alas!) stretching out his right hand toward the sofa where she was sitting, although he didn’t actually go so far as to touch her. The perfect gentleman, naturally. His gaze settled on her again. Miss Ramos felt as if she were melting and would soon be no more than a puddle on the claret-colored sofa. My God, his aura! No camera could ever capture it, the aura of this exquisite philanthropist and patron of the arts. Besides, she thought, however hard I try to do my duty as an aggressive interviewer, the facts speak for themselves: as he says, hard work and a passion for art, that’s how he earned his money; and you have to consider what he’s done with it, too.
“Setting up two schools for abandoned children, my dear” (two little words that were music to her ears) “and scholarships to foster talent, not just for painters but for musicians and writers too. We can never do enough for the arts. Life has given me so much, I feel I should give something back, you see.”
Of course she does: Miss Ramos can see clearly now. This man is so sensitive, so wonderfully straightforward, and what he says is so true.
“I’ve got it,” said the wife of the man named Alfredo, sitting two tables away. “It’s not Agnelli. He’s an actor, that guy. What’s his name . . . ? Sean Connery? No, I don’t know, that mustache and the gray hair . . . But I’m sure I’ve seen him in a film. They never stop acting, even in real life, but it always seems so natural, doesn’t it, Alfredo?”
Alfredo had no opinion on the matter. He couldn’t have cared less. Distinguished-looking men with gray hair fascinate a good many wives, but husbands are, on the whole, far less susceptible to their charm, especially husbands who happen to be bald. Besides which, Alfredo couldn’t hear what they were saying, although he knew two things for sure: it wasn’t Sean Connery, and that poor girl, the journalist, was falling into the same hypnotic trance as his wife. If you ask me, he’s a small-time con man, thought Alfredo. But all he said was: “Forget it, Matilde.”
Meanwhile, Teldi was saying to Miss Ramos: “Yes, yes, but let’s not restrict ourselves to Art with a capital A. It’s all very well to talk about Monet and congratulate oneself on being the lucky owner of so many wonderful works, but there are other things in life that give me much more pleasure, things I feel I can talk about with someone like you. I’ll let you into a secret, my dear. But perhaps if you switch off the tape recorder first . . . You see, it’s not the sort of thing that would interest a magazine like Patron of the Arts, with its three hundred and fifty thousand subscribers among the . . . they really should call it Art Shark, don’t you think?”
Miss Ramos couldn’t have agreed more. She switched off her tape recorder. Then she looked at Chema to see if he was going to butt in and spoil everything as usual. But Chema, who had finished taking photos, was chewing gum about ten meters away, inspecting his exposure
meter.
“Perhaps it’s rather frivolous, but it’s the sort of thing I really enjoy, and I know you’ll find it amusing. The philanthropists you interview are probably always telling you how they hobnob with other famous patrons of the arts, getting together to talk about the pieces they’re planning to buy or throwing parties just to show off their latest acquisitions to friends and rivals—a Byzantine virgin, say, bought from some dealer who specializes in extracting such objects from Eastern Europe. You know the type, swindlers the lot of them. Not that I don’t occasionally participate in that sort of pantomime myself. I do—I go along to their cocktail parties and do business with them, but the people I really like are the ones who are passionate about Art with a capital A, my dear, and by that I don’t mean things that cost a fortune but things that are truly unique. Just to give you an idea, let me tell you what I’m organizing for next week . . .”
You can tell me anything, Ernesto Teldi, thought Miss Ramos. What do I care about my art-shark bosses and penetrating interviews and all the stupid, unscrupulous people who try to fling mud at you? There are always slanderous rumors about anyone who really stands out. If only I could . . . if only I knew . . . While all these thoughts were running through Miss Ramos’s mind, she maintained the outward appearance of a dispassionate journalist, thanks to her professional reflexes. Resist, Agustina, she said to herself, as if her scruples were the walls of a besieged city. Keep on resisting. But Agustina’s gunpowder was damp.
“Look, I’m organizing a little get-together in a few days’ time. You really must come,” said Teldi, as if the idea had just occurred to him and it wasn’t a devious way to sidetrack Miss Motormouth, with her artistic pretensions and her dangerous questions about his past in Argentina. “I come from a humble background, and I like to mix with simple people. I should explain: I’ve invited some collectors to my country house. Not big collectors, mind you, the kind with more money than sense, who hoard Picassos or collect Folio editions of Shakespeare and never read past the first page of Hamlet, though they’re always quoting ‘To be or not to be’ without knowing the rest of the speech, which is better still, don’t you think?—‘Who would fardels bear, / To grunt and sweat under a weary life . . .’ and so on. You know what I mean: the kind of people who love possessions rather than art. No, the guests I’ve invited are not like that at all.”
Little Indiscretions Page 12
