Ernesto Teldi then proceeded to seduce Miss Ramos (and, incidentally, the magazine’s 350,000 subscribers, including all the major players in the international art game) with one of his original ideas.
“Naturally, I wouldn’t want you to mention this in Patron of the Arts. You can keep the sharks happy with the politically correct side of my activities, if you see what I mean. You can tell them about the artists I sponsor, my efforts to bring art to a wider public, my scholarships to foster young talent—that’ll do for them. They haven’t got the sensitivity to appreciate this sort of thing. So it’s just between you and me, all right?”
And as if to drive his point home, he went on to explain that he would be delighted if she could join them the following weekend. It would be an opportunity to meet some truly eccentric collectors: tin-soldier fanatics, seekers after exotic daggers and stiletti, not to mention beer-mug and stuffed-animal fanciers or connoisseurs of saucepans, porcelain dolls, and books of ghost stories. “People who really appreciate the objects themselves, above all. The way they love those sublime odds and ends, it’s so pure, and that, for me, is how all art should be appreciated.”
Ernesto Teldi prudently avoided mentioning that by gathering eccentrics such as these (and plying them with the contents of his cellar), he was often able to pick up very rare pieces for a song before they came onto the market. Miss Ramos didn’t need to know insignificant details like that. What someone of her aesthetic sensibility couldn’t help but recognize, however, was the generous spirit of his initiative: bringing together a varied group of real experts, in the most tasteful and refined of settings, free of snobbery and greed.
“And you’re more than welcome to come if you’d like,” he insisted.
Life is so unfair, thought Miss Agustina Ramos. She was still half buried in the claret-colored sofa, and for a second the enveloping warmth of the cushions helped her imagine what the gathering might be like, with all those interesting people. No famous, insufferable painters, no filthy-rich philistines incapable of telling a Monet from a Manet, none of the usual Pa-tron of the Arts pond life. Just genuine aesthetic sensibility, she thought, looking at Ernesto Teldi’s handsome hands, which had once again advanced toward the armrest of the sofa. He was watching her, waiting for an answer.
“Well, Agustina? Hmm, my dear?”
It was so unfair. Agustina my dear would have given anything to be able to say yes, but, just her luck, that weekend she had to be on the other side of the world, interviewing a Japanese collector who owned a van Gogh suspected by many of being a fake. Now, there was an art shark who had better watch out. She’d be cooking up her nastiest questions for him. A boring assignment in Japan instead of a party at Teldi’s house. Typical, she thought. I never have any luck, never.
“That’s such a pity, such a pity,” said Teldi, who had chosen this psychological moment to bring the interview to a close. “I do wish you could come. But don’t forget, my dear, not a word about our little secret. People are so narrow-minded,” he added. “It’s really quite sad: all they want to know is how much money I give to young artists and how much I spend on sponsorships. Money, money, money, it’s all they can think about. But we may as well give them what they’re after, don’t you think, my dear?”
Agustina said good-bye. He kissed her hand, the hand that wrote for Patron of the Arts and would compose an extremely boring and conventional but glowingly positive profile of Ernesto Teldi, a man who, in the space of a few short years, had risen to become a philanthropist of international standing.
“You’re a truly remarkable person, Mr. Teldi,” she said to him as he bid her farewell with a wink of complicity almost as intimate as a kiss.
“Good-bye, Agustina. We’ll be seeing each other.”
And as Miss Ramos walked toward the door with a voice in her head crying, When? When?, and Ernesto Teldi sat down again with a sigh of relief, like someone catching his breath after an obstacle race, two things happened almost simultaneously.
“Now I remember who that man is. It’s the actor who played the cannibal in The Silence of the Lambs,” exclaimed the woman two tables away. “Alfredo, do you think he’d mind if I asked for an autograph?”
“Mr. Teldi,” said a bellboy who had appeared from nowhere, as bellboys should. “A letter has come for you. It was just delivered.”
Alfredo’s wife was approaching Teldi. Soon she would be able to hear his voice. So would her husband.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, standing up abruptly when he saw the envelope in the bellboy’s hand: it was the second such letter he had received in twenty-four hours. Both had been written in a crabbed hand using green ink; the letters looked like a row of parrots on a wire.
“Did you hear that, Matilde?” said the gentleman named Alfredo to his wife. “You see? I told you he wasn’t some foreign actor.”
ERNESTO TELDI COULDN’T decipher the signature at the bottom of the page, but part of the text, written in capital letters, was clear enough for him to make out five words that had figured in the previous letter: “Lieutenant Minelli . . . Don Torcuato Airport,” and then, in a tangled scribble that almost seemed to be a burst of laughter: “Remember, Teldi?”
Part Three
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE DEPARTURE
Others apart sat on a hill retired
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand’ring mazes lost.
MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book II
EDITOR’S NOTE: The recipe that follows is the last one Nestor Chaffino sent to his friend Antonio Reig. He had supposed that after his trip to the Teldis’ country house, their correspondence would continue. As we know, this was not to be. Destiny had decided that Nestor’s fascinating work should remain unfinished and unfinishable. The chapter devoted to petits fours is dated the twenty-seventh of March. It must, therefore, have been written the day before his departure. As usual, Nestor occasionally interrupts his culinary notes to pass on news.
LITTLE INDISCRETIONS
PART FOUR: PETITS FOURS AND OTHER AFTER-DINNER DELICACIES
One of the high points of a good meal is the arrival of the little after-dinner treats that are usually served with coffee. Chocolate truffles, caramelized cherries, biscotti with or without almonds, mille-feuilles with glacé oranges . . . there’s no better way to round off a menu than with these delicious morsels, and as we shall see in a moment, they too have their little secrets, jealously guarded by the professionals. For example, Lucas Carton’s tiny soufflés. The recipe is as follows:
[ . . . ] but first, dear Antonio, let me digress for a moment, I promise it won’t take long. Remember in my last letter I was telling you I had this strange feeling that the various parts of my life were coming together to form a peculiar puzzle of coincidences? (A disconcerting feeling, to say the least, I’d even say creepy if I wasn’t half-Italian and worried about bringing bad luck on myself: gettatore, gettatore.) Anyway, it seems to have stopped. A wrench got into the works of fate, and at least one of Madame Longstaffe’s supposedly infallible predictions has turned out to be wrong. It had to do with the love life of my assistant, Carlos Garcia, the one who’s responsible for getting me mixed up with this fortune-teller in the first place. You may remember we went to see her to get a love potion that was meant to help Carlos find the living image of his ideal woman. Well, to my great surprise and relief, not only has my young friend lost interest in love potions (before finishing the bottle), he’s also lost interest in his ideal woman (the one in the painting). He told me he’s fallen in love with a real woman—a flesh-and-blood, living, breathing woman—and has forgotten all those fantasies he used to have. I don’t know her, and although I’ve tried to draw him out, so far he’s refused to tell me her name. My guess is she’s a bit older. Maybe some thirty-year-old divorcée, who knows? It wouldn’t surprise me; they can be so a
ttractive . . . Anyway, if you’re interested, I should be able to give you more details in my next letter, because I may well meet her tonight. You see, Carlos urgently needs to sell the apartment he inherited from his grandmother, so he’s asked me to help him. I put him in touch with an acquaintance who works in real estate, and we’re going over in a bit to take a look at the place. So today I’ll get to see the apartment and the portrait and most likely the girlfriend, too. She’ll probably be there to give him moral support at such a crucial time, don’t you think?
Anyway, I’m nattering on like I always do in my letters. You don’t need all these details. The important thing is that the spell has been broken and I don’t feel like I’m being driven along a path anymore. It was like a sort of determinism. I think that’s what it’s called when your destiny is fixed in advance. But that’s all over now. Madame Longstaffe’s potion didn’t work, and the boy has fallen in love with another woman, who has nothing to do with any predictions, so you see I feel free. It’s such a relief to realize that no one can know or determine your destiny, not even some crafty old witch. That’s why I’m feeling so good today, dear Antonio. In fact I feel so good that before I give you Lucas Carton’s recipe, I’ll slip in another one that’s even better. This is my most precious indiscretion. Here goes:
In 1911, the chef at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York discovered an infallible secret method for making a cold soufflé that looks exactly like a hot one. These days one of the most interesting petits fours being made is a cold pistachio soufflé. Because it is so small, it is perfect for
1
NESTOR AND THE WOMAN IN THE PAINTING
“SMALL BUT PERFECTLY formed: ideal for the client I have in mind,” said Juan Solis, the real estate agent, with an admiring little whistle. “What a find, Nestor!”
Nestor Chaffino and Carlos looked at each other and then at Solis, who was opening and closing drawers, inspecting the contents of biscuit tins, expertly pacing out the distances, walking around and weighing things up, as if making a complete inventory. He had broken a personal rule in coming to Number 38 Calle de Almagro with Nestor and Carlos. In twenty years as a real estate agent he had never agreed to see a property on a Saturday night—absolutely out of the question; he spent his Saturdays practicing Tai Chi. It was the only way he could maintain his emotional balance in such a stressful profession. But the sacrifice had turned out to be worthwhile. Solis felt he had discovered a pearl, and didn’t mind saying so, over and over again. He was full of praise for Number 38: the height of the ceilings, the ideal orientation of the windows, the quality of the woodwork, and he kept emphatically repeating the bit about it being “small but perfectly formed,” just right for his client.
Nestor was not particularly curious about this client, who apparently considered a 250-square-meter apartment “small” (and on the Calle de Almagro, no less). But as he walked away, leaving them to it, he heard Solis mention, in a discreet but intentionally sonorous whisper, somebody by the name of Baggerscheit.
“A kid who sings heavy metal,” added the whisperer, by way of explanation. “He’s huge, a real phenomenon.”
No doubt he is, thought Nestor before slipping away through a door on his left. He was disappointed. Carlos had come on his own, without his new girlfriend, so he would have to wait to satisfy his curiosity. Now he had a choice: he could either follow Carlos and Solis from room to room, admiring the apartment and making the appropriate noises, or he could entertain himself. Off you go, Juan, he thought. Discover the unexploited potential of Number 38. In the meantime, I think I’ll sit down and wait here in this little room . . . I can note down a few things I mustn’t forget for tomorrow’s trip.
Switching on the light, Nestor realized that there was nowhere to sit. Sheets covered all the furniture in the room, and underneath the dustiest of them all, the looming shape of what seemed to be a large armchair was hardly inviting; it had the air of a relic from a bygone age. He looked around and discovered that he had stepped into a semicircular room with walls that must once have been yellow. At the far end was a fireplace, and there, sitting in the hearth, like a woman looking out at the world through a window frame, was the portrait of a lady.
Nestor approached, examining her features curiously. This must have been the young woman he had heard so much about, the lady in the armoire . . . Because of Carlos’s straitened circumstances, the room was lit with a single bulb, which dispensed such a feeble glow that the cook had to open the door wide so that the light from the hallway would illuminate the portrait at the far end of the room.
“Baggerscheit’s going to love this purple foyer,” said Solis’s voice. “It is purple, isn’t it, kid? You can’t see a damn thing in here.”
And it was true. Even with the door wide open, Nestor couldn’t see a damn thing. He rifled through his pockets. Cooks, even if they don’t smoke, often carry a lighter, or matches at least, and sure enough, in the pocket of his vest, Nestor found a small box of Mulberry & Mistletoe matches decorated with the company insignia, a motif at once floral and magical: the mulberry tree, favored food of silkworms, and mistletoe, a talisman for finding hidden treasures. Most appropriate. Anyone else would have seen the portent in those symbols, anyone but Nestor, who innocently lit a match.
“Listen, kid, my client will want to know how much of the furniture’s coming with the apartment, and remember he’s keen to buy the lot if he can. He’s about your age, actually, but absolutely rolling in it. Have you heard his latest hit, ‘Kill Me with the Lawnmower’? Great stuff.”
Solis kept calling Carlos “kid,” and his insistent voice worked its way into the little yellow sitting room. Nestor could hear every word of the agent’s patter, which went on and on as if to provide an odd counterpoint to his own silent activity. He had lit a match and, with the uncertain precision of someone who doesn’t yet know that he is on the point of making a strange discovery, he was moving the flame up and down in front of the picture. First the halo of light illuminated a woman’s forehead, then her platinum blond hair, then it hovered a little too long in front of a pair of blue eyes, so that by the time it moved on, the flame was nearly spent. Nestor tried to use the fading glow to reveal another of the girl’s features, her mouth at least, but the flame shrank and died, as if it were trying to preserve a secret. Too late: the secret was out. While Nestor was looking for another match, he could have sworn that under cover of darkness those mocking lips said, in a dimly familiar voice, “Ah so it’s you, Nestor, back again?” or, more simply, “Good evening, Nestor.”
The flame of the second match opened a breach in the darkness of the yellow sitting room and the voice fell silent immediately, dispelled by the light, like all enchantments. But when he examined the girl’s lips up close, it seemed to Nestor that they remained slightly open, as if she had just been speaking.
“What’s in that room there, kid, the one with the open door?”
It was the voice of Solis, the pioneer, discoverer of unknown lands. But Carlos diverted him with a request.
“Hang on, Mr. Solis. Let’s leave that room till last. First I’d like to show you this one here on the right. It’s a dressing room. Your client may want to use it as a gym. I think there might even be an old massage table in here.”
“Excellent! You’re in luck, because Baggerscheit wants to buy it all—everything. Let’s have a look.”
So Nestor had a little longer to make absolutely sure, not that he needed to: the blond girl in the painting was Adela Teldi, the woman he had met in Buenos Aires when she was thirty-something, the perpetrator of that little indiscretion he had told his staff about one afternoon to stop them from asking questions about his moleskin notebook full of culinary secrets. Nestor no longer needed confirmation, but the third match, like a meticulous clerk, verified the presence of Adela’s features, one by one. Experience had yet to accentuate them, but they were all latent in that smooth young face: the somewhat absent expression, the blue eyes he had seen staring at S
oledad’s lifeless body. Even now, by the flickering light of the match flame, he could detect a hint of incredulity in those eyes, just as he had when the broken, lifeless body of her sister was found on the paving stones of the patio three floors below, three floors closer to hell. Nestor, Adela, and all the other witnesses could see Soledad’s head, tiny and black like a period, while her twisted body lay in the shape of a stupid question mark. It’s her sister, it’s Mrs. Teldi’s younger sister, all the eyes confirmed, while down below, a dark stain had begun to spread from the question mark. It was the beginning of Soledad’s long revenge on two of the onlookers: her unfaithful husband and Adela. The bloodstains left by suicide are stubborn. They never wash away completely.
Piecing together the coincidences, Nestor turned his thoughts to Soledad: for Carlos, her son, she was faceless. And now, of course, it all made sense: the apartment at Number 38 Calle de Almagro, where Carlos’s father was not welcome, the frosty grandmother, the silences . . . and the portrait, the one he was examining, relegated to the back of an armoire by Teresa, the grandmother, who no doubt wanted to forget both of her daughters: it was too painful to remember Soledad, and it was better to banish Adela from her mind than to hate her.
Little Indiscretions Page 13
