The Goldfinch, Page 71

  We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.”

  “So—” Boris downed the rest of his wine, and poured himself some more—“what are your so-big plans?”

  “As regards what?”

  “A moment ago, you were tearing off. Why not stay here a while?”

  “Here?”

  “No—I didn’t mean here here—not in Amsterdam—I will agree with you that it is a very good idea for us probably to get out of town, and as for myself I will not care to be coming back for a while. What I meant was, why not relax a bit and hang out before flying back? Come to Antwerp with me. See my place! Meet my friends! Get away from your girl problems for a bit.”

  “No, I’m going home.”

  “When?”

  “Today, if I can.”

  “So soon? No! Come to Antwerp! There is this fantastic service—not like red light—two girls, two thousand euro and you have to call two days in advance. Everything is two. Gyuri can drive us—I’ll sit up front, you can stretch out and sleep in the back. What do you say?”

  “Actually, I think maybe you should drop me at the airport.”

  “Actually—I think I should better not. If I was selling the tickets? I would not even let you on a plane. You look like you have bird flu or SARS.” He was unlacing his waterlogged shoes, trying to jam his feet into them. “Ugh! Will you answer me this question? Why—” holding up the ruined shoe—“tell me why do I buy these so-fancy Italian leathers when I wreck them in one week? When—my old desert boots—you remember? Good for running away fast! Jumping out of windows! Lasted me years! I don’t care if they look crap with my suits. I will find me some more boots like that, and then I will wear them for rest of my life. Where,” he said, frowning at his watch, “where did Gyuri get to? He should not be having so much problems parking on Christmas Day?”

  “Did you call him?”

  Boris slapped his head. “No, I forgot. Shit! He probably ate breakfast already. Or else he is in the car, freezing to death.” Draining the rest of his wine, pocketing the mini-bottles of vodka. “Are you packed? Yes? Fantastic. We can go then.” He was, I noticed, wrapping up leftover bread and cheese in a cloth napkin. “Go down and pay up. Although—” he looked disapprovingly at the stained coat thrown over the bed—“you really need to get rid of that thing.”

  “How?”

  He nodded at the murky canal outside the window.

  “Really—?”

  “Why not? No law against throwing a coat in the canal, is there?”

  “I would have thought so, yes.”

  “Well—who knows. Not very widely enforced law, if you ask me. You should see some of the shit I saw floating in that thing during the garbage strike. Drunk Americans puking in, you name it. Although—” glancing out the window—“I am with you, rather not do it in broad daylight. We can take it back to Antwerp in the trunk of the car and throw it down the incinerator. You’ll like my flat a lot.” Fishing for his phone; dialing the number. “Artist’s loft, without the art! And we’ll walk out and buy you a new overcoat when the shops are open.”

  vi.

  I FLEW HOME ON the red-eye two nights later (after a Boxing Day in Antwerp involving neither party nor escort service, but canned soup, a penicillin injection, and some old movies on Boris’s couch) and got back to Hobie’s about eight in the morning, breath coming out in white clouds, letting myself in through the balsam-decked front door, through the parlor with its darkened Christmas tree mostly empty of presents, all the way to the back of the house where I found a swollen-faced and sleepy-eyed Hobie, in bathrobe and slippers, standing on a kitchen ladder to put away the soup tureen and punch bowl he’d used for his Christmas lunch. “Hi,” I said, dropping my suitcase—occupied with Popchik who was pacing round my feet in staunch geriatric figure eights of greeting—and only when I glanced up at him climbing down from the ladder did I notice how resolute he looked: troubled, but with a firm, defensive smile fixed on his face.

  “And you?” I said, straightening up from the dog, unshouldering my new overcoat and draping it over a kitchen chair. “ Anything going on?”

  “Not much.” Not looking at me.

  “Merry Christmas! Well—a little late. How was Christmas?”

  “Fine. Yours?” he inquired stiffly a few moments later.

  “Actually, not so bad. I was in Amsterdam, “ I added, when he didn’t say anything.

  “Oh really? That must have been nice.” Distracted, unfocused.

  “How’d your lunch go?” I asked after a cautious pause.

  “Oh, very well. We had a bit of sleet but otherwise it was a good gathering.” He was trying to collapse the kitchen ladder and having a bit of a problem with it. “Few presents for you still under the tree in there, if you feel like opening them.”

  “Thanks. I’ll open them tonight. I’m pretty beat. Can I help you with that?” I said, stepping forward.

  “No, no. No thanks.” Whatever was wrong was in his voice. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned his gift: a child’s needlework sampler, vine-curled alphabet and numerals, stylized farm animals worked in crewel, Marry Sturtevant Her Sample-r Aged 11 1779. Hadn’t he opened it? I’d unearthed it in a box of polyester granny pants at the flea market—not cheap for the flea market, four hundred bucks, but I’d seen comparable pieces sell at Americana auctions for ten times as much. In silence I watched him pottering around the kitchen on autopilot—wandering in circles a bit, opening the refrigerator door, closing it without getting anything out, filling the kettle for tea, and all the time wrapped in his cocoon and refusing to look at me.

  “Hobie, what’s going on?” I said at last.

  “Nothing.” He was looking for a spoon but he’d opened the wrong drawer.

  “What, you don’t want to tell me?”

  He turned to look at me, flash of uncertainty in his eyes, before he turned to the stove again and blurted: “It was really inappropriate for you to give Pippa that necklace.”

  “What?” I said, taken aback. “Was she upset?”

  “I—” Staring at the floor, he shook his head. “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he said. “I don’t know what to think any more. Look, I don’t want to be censorious,” he said, when I sat motionless. “Really I don’t. In fact I’d rather not talk about it at all. But—” He seemed to search for words. “Do you not see that it’s distressing and unsuitable? To give Pippa a thirty thousand dollar necklace? On the night of your engagement party? Just leave it in her shoe? Outside her door?”

  “I didn’t pay thirty thousand for it.”

  “No, I dare say you would have paid seventy-five if you’d bought it at retail. And also, for another thing—” Very suddenly he pulled out a chair and sat down. “Oh, I don’t know what to do,” he said miserably. “I’ve no idea how to begin.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Please tell me all this other business has nothing to do with you.”

  “Business?” I said cautiously.

  “Well.” Morning classical on the kitchen transistor, meditative piano sonata. “Two days before Christmas, I had a fairly extraordinary visit from your friend Lucius Reeve.”

  The sense of fall was immediate, the swiftness and depth of it.

  “Who had some fairly startling accusations to make. Above and beyond the expected.” Hobie pinched his eyes shut between thumb and forefinger, and sat for a moment. “Let’s leave aside the other matter for a moment. No, no,” he said, waving my words away when I tried to speak. “First things first. About the furniture.”

  There roll
ed between us an unbearable silence.

  “I understand that I haven’t made it exactly easy for you to come to me. And I understand too, that I’m the very one who put you in this position. But—” he looked around—“two million dollars, Theo!”

  “Listen, let me say something—”

  “I should have made notes—he had photocopies, bills of shipping, pieces we never sold and never had to sell, pieces at the Important Americana level, nonexistent, I couldn’t add it all in my head, at some point I just stopped counting. Dozens! I had no idea the extent of it. And you lied to me about the planting. That’s not what he wants at all.”

  “Hobie? Hobie, listen.” He was looking at me without quite looking at me. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, I was hoping I could straighten it up first but—it’s taken care of, okay? I can buy it all back now, every stick.”

  But instead of seeming relieved, he only shook his head. “This is terrible, Theo. How could I let this happen?”

  If I’d been a little less shaken, I would have pointed out that he’d committed only the sin of trusting me and believing what I told him, but he seemed so genuinely bewildered that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything at all.

  “How did it go so far? How can I not have known? He had—” Hobie looked away, shook his head again quickly in disbelief—“Your handwriting, Theo. Your signature. Duncan Phyfe table… Sheraton dining chairs… Sheraton sofa out to California… I made that very sofa, Theo, with my own two hands, you saw me make it, it’s no more Sheraton than that shopping bag from Gristede’s over there. All new frame. Even the arm supports are new. Only two of the legs are original, you stood there and watched me reeding the new ones—”

  “I’m sorry Hobie—the IRS was phoning every day—I didn’t know what to do—”

  “I know you didn’t,” he said, though there seemed to be a question in his eyes even as he said this. “It was the Children’s Crusade down there. Only—” he pushed back in his chair, rolled his eyes at the ceiling—“why didn’t you stop? Why’d you keep on with it? We’ve been spending money we don’t have! You’ve dug us halfway to China! It’s been going on for years! Even if we could cover it all, which we absolutely can’t and you know it—”

  “Hobie, first of all, I can cover it and second—” I needed coffee, I wasn’t awake, but there wasn’t any on the stove and it really wasn’t the moment to get up and make it—“second, well, I don’t want to say it’s okay, because, absolutely it’s not, I was only trying to tide us over and get some debts settled, I don’t know how I let it get so far out of hand. But—no, no, listen,” I said urgently; I could see him drifting away, fogging over, as my mother had been apt to do when being forced to sit still and suffer through some complicated and improbable lie of my dad’s. “Whatever he said to you, and I don’t know, I’ve got the money now. It’s all fine. Okay?”

  “I suppose I don’t dare ask where you got it.” Then, sadly, leaning back in his chair: “Where were you really? If you don’t mind my asking?”

  I crossed and re-crossed my legs, smeared my hands over my face. “Amsterdam.”

  “Why Amsterdam?” Then, as I fumbled over my answer: “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

  “Hobie—” afire with shame; I’d always worked so hard to screen my double-dealing self from him, to show him only the improved-and-polished version, never the shameful threadbare self I was so desperate to hide, deceiver and coward, liar and cheat—

  “Why did you come back?” He was speaking fast, and miserably, as if all he wanted was to get the words out of his mouth; and in his agitation he got up and began to walk around, his heel-less shoes slapping on the floor. “I thought we’d seen the last of you. All last night—the last few nights—lying awake trying to think what to do. Shipwreck. Catastrophe. All over the news about these stolen paintings. Some Christmas. And you—nowhere to be found. Not answering your phone—no one knew where you were—”

  “Oh, God,” I said, honestly appalled. “I’m sorry. And listen, listen,” I said—his mouth was thin, he was shaking his head as if he’d already detached himself from what I was saying, no point in even listening—“if it’s the furniture you’re worried about—”

  “Furniture?” Placid, tolerant, conciliatory Hobie: rumbling like a boiler about to explode. “Who said anything about furniture? Reeve said you’d bolted, made a run for it but—” he stood blinking rapidly, attempting to compose himself—“I didn’t believe it of you, I couldn’t, and I was afraid it was something much worse. Oh, you know what I mean,” he said half-angrily when I didn’t respond. “What was I to think? The way you tore off from the party… Pippa and I, you can’t imagine it, there was a bit of a huff with the hostess, ‘where is the groom,’ sniff sniff, you left so suddenly, we weren’t invited to the after-party so we legged it—and then—imagine how I felt coming home to find the house unlocked, door standing open practically, cash drawer ransacked… never mind the necklace, that note you left Pippa was so strange, she was just as worried as I was—”

  “She was?”

  “Of course she was!” Flinging out an arm. He was practically shouting. “What were we to think? And then, this terrible visit from Reeve. I was in the middle of making pie crust—should never have gone to the door, I thought it was Moira—nine a.m. and standing there gaping at him with flour all over me—Theo, why did you do it?” he said despairingly.

  Not knowing what he meant—I’d done so much—I had no choice but to shake my head and look away.

  “It was so preposterous—how could I possibly believe it? As a matter of fact I didn’t believe it. Because I understand,” he said, when I didn’t respond, “look, I understand about the furniture, you did what you had to, and believe me, I’m grateful, if not for you I’d be working for hire somewhere and living in some ratty little bed-sit. But—” digging his fists into the pocket of his bathrobe—“all this other malarkey? Obviously I can’t help wondering where you fit into all that. Especially since you’d hared off with hardly a word, with your pal—who, I hate to say it, very charming boy but he looks like he’s seen the inside of a jail cell or two—”

  “Hobie—”

  “Oh, Reeve. You should have heard him.” All the energy seemed to have left him; he looked limp and defeated. “The old serpent. And—I want you to know, as far as that went—art theft? I took up for you in no uncertain terms. Whatever else you’d done—I was certain you hadn’t done that. And then? Not three days later? What turns up in the news? What very painting? Along with how many others? Was he telling the truth?” he said, when I still didn’t answer. “Was it you?”

  “Yes. Well, I mean, technically no.”

  “Theo.”

  “I can explain.”

  “Please do,” he said, grinding the heel of his hand into his eye.

  “Sit down.”

  “I—” Hopelessly he looked around, as if he was afraid of losing all his resolve if he sat down at the table with me.

  “No, you should sit. It’s a long story. I’ll make it short as I can.”

  vii.

  HE DIDN’T SAY A word. He didn’t even answer the telephone when it rang. I was bone-tired and aching from the plane, and though I steered clear of the two dead bodies, I gave him the best account of the rest of it that I could: short sentences, matter of fact, not trying to justify or explain. When I was finished he sat there—me shaken by his silence, no noise in the kitchen except the flatline hum of the old fridge. But, at last, he sat back and folded his arms.

  “It does all swing around strangely sometimes, doesn’t it?” he said.

  I was silent, not knowing what to say.

  “I mean only—” rubbing his eye—“I only understand it, as I get older. How funny time is. How many tricks and surprises.”

  The word trick was all I heard, or understood. Then, abruptly, he stood up—all six foot five of him, something stern and regretful in his posture or so it seemed to me, ancestral ghost of t
he beatwalking cop or maybe a bouncer about to toss you out of the pub.

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  Rapidly he blinked. “What?”

  “I’ll write you a check for the whole amount. Just hold it until I tell you it’s okay to cash it, that’s all I ask. I never meant you any harm, I swear.”

  With a full-armed gesture of old, he swatted away my words. “No, no. Wait here. I want to show you something.”

  He got up and creaked into the parlor. He was gone a while. And—when he came back—it was with a falling-to-pieces photo album. He sat down. He leafed through it for several pages. And—when he got to a certain page—he pushed it across the table to me. “There,” he said.

  Faded snapshot. A tiny, beaky, birdlike boy smiled at a piano in a palmy Belle Époque room: not Parisian, not quite, but Cairene. Twinned jardinières, many French bronzes, many small paintings. One—flowers in a glass—I dimly recognized as a Manet. But my eye tripped and stopped at the twin of a much more familiar image, one or two frames above.

  It was, of course, a reproduction. But even in the tarnished old photograph, it glowed in its own isolated and oddly modern light.

  “Artist’s copy,” said Hobie. “The Manet too. Nothing special but—” folding his hands on the table—“those paintings were a huge part of his childhood, the happiest part, before he was ill—only child, petted and spoiled by the servants—figs and tangerines and jasmine blossoms on the balcony—he spoke Arabic, as well as French, you knew that, right? And—” Hobie crossed his arms tight, and tapped his lips with a forefinger—“he used to speak of how with very great paintings it’s possible to know them deeply, inhabit them almost, even through copies. Even Proust—there’s a famous passage where Odette opens the door with a cold, she’s sulky, her hair is loose and undone, her skin is patchy, and Swann, who has never cared about her until that moment, falls in love with her because she looks like a Botticelli girl from a slightly damaged fresco. Which Proust himself only knew from a reproduction. He never saw the original, in the Sistine Chapel. But even so—the whole novel is in some ways about that moment. And the damage is part of the attraction, the painting’s blotchy cheeks. Even through a copy Proust was able to re-dream that image, re-shape reality with it, pull something all his own from it into the world. Because—the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn’t matter if it’s been through the Xerox machine a hundred times.”

  “No,” I said, though I wasn’t thinking of the painting but of Hobie’s changelings. Pieces enlivened by his touch and polished until they looked as if they’d had pure, golden Time poured over them, copies that made you love Hepplewhite, or Sheraton, even if you’d never looked at or thought about a piece of Hepplewhite or Sheraton in your life.

  “Well—I’m just an old copyist talking myself. You know what Picasso says. ‘Bad artists copy, good artists steal.’ Still with real greatness, there’s a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn’t matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It’s the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock. And these copies—” leaning forward with hands folded on the table—“these artists’ copies he grew up with were lost when the house in Cairo burned, and to tell you the truth they were lost to him earlier, when he was crippled and they sent him back to America, but—well, he was a person like us, he got attached to objects, they had personalities and souls to him, and though he lost almost everything else from that life, he never lost those paintings because the originals were still out in the world. Made several trips to see them—matter of fact, we took the train all the way to Baltimore to see the original of his Manet when it was exhibited here, years ago, back when Pippa’s mother was still living. Quite a journey for Welty. But he knew he’d never make it back to the Musée d’Orsay. And the day he and Pippa went up to the Dutch exhibition? What picture do you think he was taking her specially to see?”

  The interesting thing, in the photograph, was how the fragile little knock-kneed boy—smiling sweetly, pristine in his sailor suit—was also the old man who’d clasped my hand while he was dying: two separate frames, superimposed upon each other, of the same soul. And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate. There wasn’t a single meaning. There were many meanings. It was a riddle expanding out and out and out.

  Hobie cleared his throat. “Ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “How’d you store it?”

  “In a pillowcase.”

  “Cotton?”

  “Well—is percale cotton?”

  “No padding? Nothing to protect it?”

  “Just paper and tape. Yep,” I said, when his eyes blurred with alarm.

  “You should have used glassine and bubble wrap!”

  “I know that now.”

  “Sorry.” Wincing; putting a hand to his temple. “Still trying to get my head around it. You flew with that painting in checked baggage on Continental Airlines?”

  “Like I said. I was thirteen.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me? You could have done,” he said, when I shook my head.

  “Oh, sure,” I said, a little too quickly, though I was remembering the isolation and terror of that time: my constant fear of Social Services; the soap-heavy smell of my un-lockable bedroom, the drastic chill of the stone-gray reception area where I waited to see Mr. Bracegirdle, my fear of being sent away.

  “I’d have figured out something. Although, when you tipped up here homeless like you did… well, I hope you don’t mind my saying so but even your own lawyer—well, you know it as well as I do, the situation made him nervous, he was pretty anxious to get you out of here and then on my end, as well, several very old friends said, ‘James, this is absolutely too much for you…’ well you can