Forgetfulness

by Ward Just

  Thomas was not listening. He stood in the gathering darkness with the palette knife in his right hand and the palette in his left. Finally he sat down, exhausted. God, we are an old country, Francisco said. We are the oldest country on the face of the earth. He fell silent at last, poured wine for them both, lit the table lamp, and peeked around the corner of the easel to look at the portrait. Francisco stared at it for a long minute and then he said in English, Oh, very fine. And you painted it in an afternoon! My dear Thomas, you are a prodigy. And you are sweating like a goat. As if you had been rutting in a field under the hot sun. Wearing yourself out and the she-goat, too. But it's me, all right. It's me down to the ground. I would call it of the school of Goya, and that is logical because I am a graduate of that school.

  You are an admirer? But of course you are.

  What a shame, Francisco said with a broad smile. It will never hang in the Prado.

  Maybe when Franco goes, Thomas said.

  He will never go, Francisco said. El Caudillo is eternal.

  Everyone goes, Thomas said.

  Not him, Francisco said. He is our Dracula.

  You must leave this place, Thomas said after a moment.

  But it's my home, Francisco said.

  Nevertheless, Thomas said.

  It's perfectly secure. I have people who watch out for me. And I have friends elsewhere.

  Not secure, Thomas said. Not perfect.

  Nonsense. I have confidence in my friends.

  Misplaced confidence, Thomas thought but did not say. Instead, he murmured, You should listen to me.

  Why should I listen to you?

  Because I know what I'm talking about. And we're comrades.

  That's true, Francisco said.

  I hear things—

  Francisco had been staring at his portrait but now he turned and asked softly, What things do you hear, Thomas?

  He paused, uncertain how far he should go. He and the old man were in a zone of trust and Francisco had a sensitive ear for the false note, the thing not said or said incompletely. A false note would not be forgiven. Thomas looked at him and said, I believe this place is not secure for you. We have not been friends forever but we know each other well. I would not mislead you.

  I will never abandon my house, Francisco said.

  We trust each other. Trust me now.

  I know you are sincere, Thomas.

  Thomas was silent a moment, cleaning his brushes, distracted by the paint smell. The canvas would take days to dry. He said, Do you have plans?

  No plans, Francisco said.

  Please reconsider. Make plans.

  New arrangements take time. Maybe I should hang a clove of garlic from my doorknob.

  Francisco, be serious.

  The Spaniard laughed softly and shrugged, as if he had no say in the matter. He turned away, in deep thought, and when he spoke it was with profound resignation. I have lived a very long time but I am not ready to give up. Be assured.

  Thank you, Thomas said.

  I wonder if I might ask you a favor, my friend. From an old man to a young one. May I have the portrait?

  Yes, Thomas said. I want you to have it. Thomas lifted the canvas from the easel, signed it in the lower left-hand corner, and handed it carefully to the Spaniard. It seemed the very least he could do.

  After looking at it a moment Francisco said in a voice filled with emotion, A pure brushstroke.

  Thomas said, I had good material.

  I wish I had a talent for art or music. But I don't. It must be a comfort.

  Comfort? Sometimes it is. I can't imagine life without it. Where will you go now, Thomas? Now that you have finished with me.

  I'll be back soon, Thomas said.

  Very soon, Francisco said. I'm old. I haven't much time.

  More than you think, Thomas said.

  We'll see, Francisco said with a ghost of a smile.

  Thomas had no idea what the Spaniard knew or didn't know. He remembered that the longer he remained in the room the smaller it got, closing in on itself, as claustrophobic as a prison cell. It was true that they had not known each other a long time, barely five years since their first meeting in an artists' café in Barcelona; but he believed they knew each other well enough and trusted each other and he hoped the old man trusted him now. Thomas gathered his paints, brushes, and easel and said goodbye to Francisco, but not without a final look at the portrait he had made; one of his best, he thought. The old man had beautiful bones and a surface as weathered as a cathedral. At the doorway they embraced and as Thomas walked away Francisco gave him what he always called his Spanish salute, a clenched right fist at his temple, knuckles in, elbow out, the salute he first gave at Montblanch, near Barcelona, October 1938, a black beret on his head, a bright red scarf around his throat.

  Thomas drove south to Málaga, where he spent the night, then meandered east to Almería and Cartagena and up the coast to Benidorm, with its wide vacant beach and fish restaurants open to the air. He planned to stay a week sketching fishermen and the women in the market. He met a young woman who was happy to pose so long as the sittings were kept private, owing to her strict Catholic family. The one week turned into three weeks. All the time he was with the señorita he was thinking of Francisco in his adobe in the mountains west of Grenada. One morning Señorita Carolina told him she was moving on. She had a job in one of the hotels. There were three large ones with three more to begin construction the following week. The Bavarians had arrived, she said, with satchels filled with deutschemarks. It is the first time we have been occupied since the Mussulmen in the fifteenth century. In five years you won't recognize Benidorm. Meanwhile, she said, I am training to become a receptionist. You are very sad about something, Thomas. What is it? And will you give me one of the sketches?

  Thomas stayed on a few more weeks because he had nothing better to do, hoping Carolina would tire of her receptionist duties. In the morning he swam and in the afternoon he sketched and took long walks and in the evening he listened to the villagers enthuse about the hotel construction, prosperity at last. Carolina did not appear. He sent Francisco a postcard of the Benidorm beach in midwinter, empty as the Sahara. No message, only the card. At last he gave it up and drove to Barcelona, arriving at his apartment at dawn, discovering that while he was gone someone had broken in and taken his radio and phonograph and the stash of pesetas in an envelope behind the Michelin guides. He looked in the drawers and closets, cursing, finding that the thieves had also taken a pair of shoes and his good blazer. The Grand Rapids table was undisturbed and his portraits were in the closet where he had left them. The thieves had come in through the window via the fire escape and left the same way, probably weeks before. In minutes he decided to quit the apartment—Barcelona had lost its savor—and the next day was on his way to Paris, where he rented a two-room apartment in Montparnasse, good light and a decent restaurant on the ground floor. Francisco was mostly absent from his thoughts. A month later the Spaniard's portrait arrived, carefully packed and sent from an unfamiliar address in London. There was no note. He had no idea whether Francisco had taken his advice or not. He feared not. And beyond that Thomas was unwilling to go.

  That night he called Bernhard, who said he could not speak just then. He would call back in one hour.

  Thomas said, What happened to our Spanish friend?

  Gone, Bernhard said. Disappeared.

  Safe? Thomas asked.

  I hope so. I don't know.

  Thomas said nothing. In the street below, a musician was playing an accordion, badly.

  You're not to blame, Bernhard said. Thomas said, Why not?

  You did what we asked. Something went wrong.

  What? What went wrong?

  Missed communications. Someone betrayed us. One of those two, perhaps both.

  Bullshit, Bernhard.

  The telephone was silent. In the street, the accordion music stopped abruptly; someone had probably paid the musician to stop.

&
nbsp; I've told you what I can, Bernhard said. I don't know the details.

  But you think the worst.

  I think the worst, he said.

  A fine old man, Thomas said.

  Yes, Bernhard said. He was.

  Were we actually trying to help him?

  Yes, we were. Believe that.

  We were on his side?

  Yes. We were on his side. Bernhard's voice was as subdued as he had ever heard it. Bernhard said, We'll settle the score. It may take awhile. It may take years but we'll settle it. When Thomas didn't answer, Bernhard mumbled a word he rarely used, and never to a friend. He said, Sorry, and rang off.

  That was effectively the end of Thomas's career in espionage. He undertook two more odd jobs over the next few months, both in Paris, minor business. Russ handled the assignments, apologizing, but they were in a jam; would he do it as a favor? At the end of the year Thomas handed over the currency, the passports, and the Smith & Wesson; they insisted he keep the Grand Rapids table. Thomas did not hang Francisco's portrait but propped it against the wall of his studio where he could see it while he worked. He knew that he was responsible for the old man's death and he believed that Francisco knew it, too, and knew it from the moment Thomas appeared at the door with his paints and his easel. As Bernhard said, missed communications, betrayal, something like that, but Thomas was not responsible. Like hell.

  For a while Thomas carried his knowledge around like a lump in his throat. He wished to atone in some way but did not know how. The old man had no family. No one knew where he was buried, if he was buried anywhere. In due course Thomas sent the portrait back to Spain, not to the Prado but to a new museum across town, the small one that featured twentieth-century art. The portrait was not a favorite of schoolchildren but there were usually one or two old people looking at it, men and women both, always with somber expressions, remembering whatever it was they remembered. Thomas knew this because not long after he dispatched the portrait he flew to Madrid and spent a morning in the gallery watching the traffic.

  Snowfall continued without letup. Discouraged, Thomas poured a cup of espresso and went upstairs to shower and dress. He shaved quickly and chose corduroys and a heavy sweater against the chill of the room. He looked into Florette's closet, six feet of clothes on hangers, dresses, slacks, blouses, and what seemed an infinity of shoes. Some of the items he associated with specific occasions, Christmas Mass, Sunday lunches, and dinners out. She had worn the black shift on their last visit to the auberge south of Toulouse, where they had eaten great blocks of foie gras followed by a veal something. Both of them were tipsy by the end of the meal. The dress still had a stain where he had clumsily dropped a spoonful of sorbet while passing it to her across the table. He made a ribald remark and she shushed him.

  Be quiet, Thomas. Be good.

  Stop laughing. People are watching.

  That was only last month. Thomas had no idea what to do with her clothes. He knew it was not right to throw them away as if they were garbage. No doubt there was some established French custom and when he had the time he would ask Ghislaine or Monsieur Bardèche. No doubt a charity existed for the efficient distribution of the used clothes of dead Frenchwomen, all but the shoes. Shoes, like underwear, were nontransferable. Finally he turned his back on her clothes closet, at a loss.

  Now he inspected Florette's dresser top, crowded with her cosmetics, her photographs, and the elephants. Thomas decided to remove an elephant a day, saving the silver elephant with the maharajah in the howdah for last. The elephants would be happy out of sight in the cedar chest in her sewing room. He looked at each of them in turn, memento mori. One of the elephants from Kenya would be the first to go, a crudely carved, utterly forgettable animal from an African country he did not care for. He remembered it had been a long-ago gift from Bernhard, who had said he loved Kenya with all his heart. Thomas put the Kenyan elephant in his pocket. Chore one.

  Well done, he said aloud.

  That wasn't too difficult, was it?

  Thomas went to Florette's knitting room, opened the cedar chest, and dropped the elephant inside, where it fell noiselessly on her blue Brittany sweater, the one she believed was too heavy for indoor wear. He heard her voice now, complaining about the dense weave and the buttons on the shoulders. The elephant had fallen tusks-up, surely a signal of Florette's dissatisfaction. Florette thought the sweater suitable for seafarers, not inhabitants of the interior. The sweater was not comme il faut and so it was consigned to the cedar chest until she met a mariner who would appreciate it. So it was obvious that the elephant had no place in the cedar chest and a Brittany sweater was not a suitable bed. He reached into the chest and retrieved the elephant and again put it in his pocket, stepping back to survey the room. He had an idea he would commandeer it for this very place, his new studio. He took the elephant from his pocket and placed it on the windowsill.

  Thomas visualized the easel and paintbox in front of the window, north light the color and vivacity of lead. Elephant gray, he thought. Unlike most painters, he did not care for north light. He thought it came from growing up in Wisconsin. The room was much smaller than he was used to. The ceiling was low. The room smelled of damp wool. The windows were small-paned and dusty, as if they were unaccustomed to being seen through. Naturally Florette's presence was palpable. When Thomas looked through the windows he could see St. John Granger's farmhouse and the modest backyard orchard where the graves were, the stone markers barely visible in the falling snow. The house looked abandoned and he hoped that Ghislaine had not let it go cold; but he knew at once that she had. There were no lights anywhere and no smoke from the chimney. The graves were as forlorn as graves anywhere.

  Thomas trudged downstairs to his studio, gathered up his paintbox and easel with the half-finished portrait of Monsieur Bardèche, and set them up in the knitting room. He placed the portrait on the easel and moved back three steps until his shoulders were against the wall, knowing at once that the room was too small for artwork. Cozy would be the word for it. He tried to remember the French for "cozy" but could not. Florette liked it well enough but knitting was a cozy activity. What it shared with artwork was solitude and a scrupulous attention to detail. That, and patience. Probably patience more than the others.

  This room won't do, he said aloud.

  Even old Bardèche looked uncomfortable in it.

  The light's wrong, not elephant gray but penitentiary gray. LaBarre gray.

  He picked up Florette's sewing basket and put it beside the easy chair and sat in the chair. He looked at the book she had been reading, one of her accounts of contemporary scandal. This one was about Onassis, his houses, his yacht, his airlines and oil tankers, his strange friendships, his many enemies, his distant children, his footloose women and the financial arrangements he made with them. What would it mean to have an airline at your disposal? A private island with a cadre of servants in situ? Permanent suites in half a dozen hotels? What would it mean to have your own intelligence service reporting on your enemies and your friends, too, to ensure that they remained friends? Florette was fascinated by the means of accumulation and disposal of millions, and by the conspicuous lack of remorse. The lack of embarrassment when sordid details of your private life became public. Conscience was not included in the tycoon's repertoire of personal qualities because it would indicate a failure of nerve, and then they would be on you like a school of piranhas. Well, Florette remarked one day, perhaps tycoons were remorseful after their own fashion. Those would be private moments, never shared; and no doubt there was an element of self-pity, so much mythmaking, so misunderstood. So few could comprehend the responsibilities and hazards of great wealth.

  Have you ever considered what it would mean to you to have a great deal of money, Thomas? And he had told her truthfully that no, he never had. He had never considered the consequences of being born blind, either, or being beautifully coordinated like an Olympic athlete. He had known a few very rich people and they did not seem t
o him to live easily, worried as they were that someone might take their money away. One of them had commissioned a portrait but seemed to want the portrait to contain certain inalienable qualities, and now that he thought of it, one of the qualities was lack of conscience, implied in the don t-fuck-with-me expression of the subject's mouth, though the tycoon preferred habit-of-command. And you? he had asked Florette. She had, she said, when she discovered her ambition of becoming a couturier with a shop in Place Vendôme. Jewels from Cartier, a car and driver, an Old Master in the living room and a Fabergé egg in her bedroom and frequent journeys to New York and London. But such an ambition was not realistic for her so she was not ruined when it failed to materialize. Hers was only a girlish dream inspired by a photo essay in Paris-Match. She was disappointed of course, but only a little. She had an agreeable life in St. Michel du Valcabrère even though it was out of the way, a mere vestibule in the great house of France. In St. Michel they were undisturbed and able to fashion a life according to their own lights. In that way they had been fortunate.

  Yes, he said. They certainly had been.

  But they were no longer young and needed an occasional tonic, such as a trip to New York City, the Statue of Liberty and Saks on Fifth Avenue. Also, she wanted to inspect the place where the twin towers were. She wanted to see it with her own eyes. She wanted most of all to attend a musical on Broadway and take a hansom cab through Central Park at midnight. Onassis had often been in New York, not that he ever seemed to enjoy it much. I want you to read the Onassis book, she said, and tell me what you think. Whether he had a life worth living. Yes, he had some good times, who wouldn't with all that money? But the end was not good, not good at all, because no one loved him. Instead, he was feared. You wouldn't wish such a fate on anyone unless you thought he had it coming.