He has spent all these years with this wound, with the knife. And now Valérie has found him again and he cannot give her what she is asking, or rather, he just no longer wants to.
The afternoon of the second day stretched on. In the next-door room, a couple made love in a profusion of noise. More than once I detected—or thought I did—a wistful smile on Valfierno’s face. I had more questions, but I didn’t ask them. Interviewing is a strange business. Somehow, you think you have the right to ask a perfect stranger what you wouldn’t ask your best friend. This time, in spite of that, I kept quiet.
We had reached the point where there was not much left to say, when Valfierno called down to have them bring us a bottle of champagne. It was his way of marking the end. We had just been through two days that had felt like two years. I could no longer see in his face the majestic features I had seen at the beginning. His greying mane was in disarray, his eyes were tired, and he wore a kind of grimace I could not decipher. His slightness of frame was now more noticeable. He had just entrusted me with the story of his life, and yet he continued to keep an unbridgeable distance between us. We toasted. Then he reminded me that I had asked him, on the first day—to say “yesterday” would have been improbable—why he was telling me all this.
“Yes, I remember. Although I think I’m starting to understand.”
“I doubt it, Newspaperman. I’m telling you all this because tomorrow Valfierno is going to die,” he said, and he gave what he meant to be a dramatic pause, which it was. By now I had learned: I didn’t want to seem ridiculous by asking what was sure to be the wrong question. He proceeded to play with me, going on a detour:
“That rascal Don Simón was wrong. Age is knowing that there are things you are doing for the very last time. You don’t know this yet; you’re too young, but I know. I have eaten kidneys, which I will not eat again, as my body will not let me. I have been in places that I know I will not see again. I have enjoyed the company of women who are now dead. I’ve given up all hope of seeing certain parts of the world. This is the last time I will tell the story of Valfierno. It might even be the first, but it is without doubt the last. Starting tomorrow I will have to have a new history or I will be finished. And I will have to forget what it was I did so that my life would have meaning.”
These were very hard words—hard more than sad—and so they were accompanied by his brightest smile. I didn’t know what expression to have as I listened.
“Tomorrow I will no longer be Valfierno. I don’t know yet who I will be. I do have a passport which I will use for a while, as you might imagine. I know what I will call myself, and where I’m going to live, but these are small things. It saddens me, but I have no option. The truth is, Newspaperman, I liked being Valfierno.”
Valfierno’s specialty was words, concocting grand phrases, but this time there was something very serious behind them. Valfierno—or whoever he was by this time—spoke in softer and softer tones, as if to himself only.
“If I had been consistent, if I had really been making a work of art of my life, I should have died—should have been seen to die—seven years ago, when I finished selling the Jocondes. Valfierno has already lived too long, certainly longer than was a good idea. But I’m not happy about it. I had become used to it, I liked it,” he said, and fell silent. He seemed to be very far away. He had another sip and went on, not looking at me.
“Now of course it’s necessary. Valérie is hard at my heels, so I have no choice but to disappear. This revenge is much greater than anything she could have planned. She will have gotten rid of Valfierno. It’s funny, isn’t it?”
And then, suddenly, as if it had just occurred to him:
“What do you think about Bonaglia as a name? Now that would be a great joke, don’t you think?”
Whenever I think about the story of my life I always look for the moment when everything changed, when everything turned around. And I find that there wasn’t one. That even though I changed my name and my story many times, that was never it. And that for me, for him, for us—for the one who survived—that was the key: the hope that one day we would become another. But it never happened. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it—it just never happened.
“Excuse my asking, but why did you choose the name Valfierno?”
“Didn’t we agree that you would limit your questions to matters of fact?”
“Yes, of course. Isn’t that a matter of fact?”
“My dear fellow…”
It was now very late. With the last of the champagne, Valfierno moved on to detail his instructions.
“Of course, you’re not going to be able to tell this story, Newspaperman.”
“What?”
My face must have looked a sight. For the first time, Valfierno let out a huge guffaw.
“It’s not so bad! I didn’t say never. I’m just telling you that you cannot tell my story until I say that you can.”
“And when do you think that will be?”
“It’s not that I think—I’m ordering it. You may not think I can do that, but you’ll see that in fact I can. I realize I’ve put myself in your hands, but not in the boring way you imagine. It’s true that you could publish all of this tomorrow, and I’d have a bad few days of it, but it would be much worse for you.”
Valfierno stood up and began to pace the room. I could only think of that old image of the caged lion. He told me it would not be difficult: that if I were to publish early, he would be able to deny the entire story categorically, and that I would be found, not long after, with a bullet in my head.
“A suicide, of course. You would not have been able to bear the shame of such an enormous lie.”
It didn’t seem that simple to me, but from where I stood, nothing he said seemed all that implausible. I believed him. Valfierno opened the blinds. It was the middle of the night.
“No, the reason I’m in your hands is because when the time comes, if you don’t print my story then I will vanish forever. It’s up to you: if you remain quiet, my entire life will be a resounding failure. I’ll be like the castaway who writes a magnificent book on his desert island. Or the blind man who conceives a brilliant sculpture that no one will ever see. Or the great ruler who stepped down in a friend’s favor in order to avoid the war that would have destroyed his country. If you remain silent, then an artist of genius will have disappeared from the face of the earth, disappeared without a trace. But you won’t do that. You couldn’t stand that silence. That is not what you are made of.”
“How do you know?”
“Don’t you worry—I know. Or do you think I chose you without knowing anything about you?”
He stopped talking and stared at me, and I could not return his gaze. He went on to give me his specific instructions:
“Every year from now on, on the twenty-second of August, you will receive a letter from me. It will not, of course, say who it’s from, but you will know. This annual letter will be what tells you that I am still alive; it will be the affidavit of my existence. Don’t look for me—you would regret it. When I die; then, yes—then you can tell my story to the world.”
I thought about what he was describing and then said, without thinking:
“But, Marqués, that could be a long time.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“No, no, please—that isn’t what I meant. Forgive me, but how will I know when you are dead?”
“You will know, don’t trouble yourself. You will know when I die. The person who won’t know, of course, will be me,” he said, attempting a smile which was pure melancholy.
“That is when you will tell my story. This is another reason why I have told you all of this—so that I can die in peace. I don’t want to have to remember it all on my deathbed. It would be horrible if what occupied my life were to occupy my death as well.”
I didn’t want to offend him, but there was one question I still had to ask. I had learned his very own lesson:
“Forgive
me again, Marqués, but how can I be sure that you are not lying, that your whole story is not another forgery?”
“You can’t know. But don’t worry. You’ll see that it’s true. When you tell the story, there will be certain old fools who will appear, bleating that Valfierno sold them one of the paintings. Nothing will please these old leftovers more than to have been hoodwinked by someone widely acknowledged to be their better. It’s a simple fact. If it weren’t for this, modern democracy could not exist.”
“Never mind all that, Marqués. I’m asking you if it’s true.”
“It is, but you will never be able to be sure. You could ask Perugia, but you would still never know if he was lying. You could look for the others, but you might never find them. Or you might—who knows? But you will not know. These are the terms on which you tell the best story of your life—the story of mine.”
I don’t believe I have made a mistake: Becker will tell the story. Then I will have the answer to the question that haunts me so much now: who is it that will die when I die? At one point I came to believe that no one would. That just in the strength of changing who I was over and over again, I could cheat death itself. I now know that that is not true; that someone has to die.
But I would like to know who. Who will die when I die? Which one? The one who walked the earthen streets of Rosario? The one who loved Marianita without knowing who she was? The one who made art of a plan? The one who didn’t want to be one? The one who wasn’t one of the others? The one who never smoked that opium in Malacca, who tried all those delicacies, who didn’t see his father, who let himself be touched by that priest, buggered by that prisoner, loved by those women who never wanted him. Bonaglia, Juan María, Perrone, Eduardo—the one who tomorrow, in telling his story, would die. Not all of these—so many deaths in one would be an injustice! But nor had they all been lives—just intentions.
No doubt for Becker it will be Valfierno who dies. For many people it will be Valfierno. There is no one for whom it will be Bollino who dies—Bollino died a long time ago. Sometimes I think that you could prevent an old man from dying if you were to call him by his first nickname—if someone were to address him by the name his mother first used, and if he were to believe it. But someone has to die. Where will they bury me? And under what name?
Becker will tell the story; he will answer my question. Of course, it’s also possible that he won’t. I hope that he does, but I will never know. I could tell it myself, first, but who knows what price I might pay? Perhaps one day I will decide to pay it. It’s an interesting thing to decide one is going to pay a price when one doesn’t know what that price is. I’ve done it so many times; it’s the only way to really pay. It’s quite possible that he will never tell the story. Many years ago I read a sentence which I have never forgotten: “Now, in the room, all that’s left is what is left when there is nothing else left.”
Me.
Valfierno.
About thirteen years went by after that meeting. I moved to Baltimore, and his letters continued to find me. They would arrive every year in late August, containing the same fragment of a poem, in Spanish. After a few years, I had it translated so I could discover its message:
I shall die before you, and my spirit
In its tenacious resolve
Will sit there by the doors of death
Awaiting you.
There, where the enclosing tomb
Opens, in turn, an eternity
Everything we’ve both so long kept quiet
Now we must begin to speak!
I have to confess that I did not quite understand it.
From time to time he also sent me gifts: an expensive book, opera tickets, a three-day vacation in New York, even a silver service for my wedding. He was in my hands as he had said, though in fact I held nothing. I must admit that I found it difficult, knowing that I had a story that would change my entire career and not being able to use it. More than once—in fact hundreds, thousands of times—I was tempted just to go ahead and publish it. But I resisted, or rather, I didn’t have the courage not to resist. That night in San Francisco, as we were taking leave of each other, Valfierno smiled:
“Who can say for sure that the painting that Perugia returned is in fact the real Mona Lisa? That I don’t have it in my house, for example. That I didn’t burn it, or sell it to J. P. Morgan? Can you, Newspaperman?”
I, too, tried to banish my own doubt. It served me to do so.
In October of 1932, I learned of the death of Eduardo de Valfierno. As he had promised, I received a very formal letter announcing his decease. It was not signed, and the style of it made me think he might have written the letter himself before he died. There was a poem, but a different one this time. I had it translated that very day:
I’d gladly give the best years of the little life I have left to know what you told them when you spoke of me.
The letter went on to inform me that in his last years he had called himself such-and-such and had lived somewhere, which I was asked not to reveal—and I won’t; it doesn’t change anything. The letter told me—and authorized me to reveal—that in his last months he had again taken the name of Valfierno, and that death had finally visited him on a finca—a ranch—near Buenos Aires. He had told me once: that to have lived as Valfierno he would have to die as Valfierno.
This news caused me unparalleled excitement. It never even occurred to me to wonder if indeed it was true. I quit my job at that Maryland newspaper and invested everything I had in completing the story. In those months I met Perugia, and Chaudron—and I convinced myself that the Marqués had not been lying. Valérie, on the other hand, I was never able to find. I don’t know if she is even alive now, and I don’t like to think that he might have killed her. I also tried to get in touch with the buyers. Valfierno had not given me any of their names, which was understandable. I never found any of them, which is also understandable.
So now at last I can write the story of the most ingenious theft of the century. And while I can’t be sure this is exactly how it happened, that can’t prevent me from telling the story—journalism does not allow such indulgences. In any case, all that is left now is for me to write.
About the Translator
JASPER REID WAS BORN IN MADRID, and has lived in Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Latin America. This is his second work of translation. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Deb, and children, Ian and Ella.
The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa Page 28
