The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (119 page)

—Stop that damned laughter . . .

—Ah oui, qu’il voulait un souvenir, vous savez, un tout petit souvenir de sa vieille connaissance du monde des truqueurs . . .

Valentine didn’t answer, staring at the damage under his hand. He ran his finger along the edge where it was cut, as his tongue ran over his broken tooth, though he stopped that as he turned, to catch his lower lip under the broken place.

—Bleu de Prusse, alors, ça ne fait rien vous savez, le ciel en bleu de Prusse, retouché simplement vous savez . . . the work of some incompetent restorer, un restaurateur vous savez . . .

—Come here! Yes, and now you want to damage that . . . van der Goes the same way . . . come here!

—For the same reason, vous savez . . .

—Come here! But Basil Valentine followed him to the panel door; and stood behind him as he stared at the painting hung inside.

—That face, that . . . Good God, that face, where did it come from?

—The face? Valentine watched him, with hardly a look at the painting, —and . . . what do you think of it? . . .

—Think of it! Think of it? Good God, I . . . I can’t think of it, look at it, it’s . . .

—You don’t care for it, eh? Valentine withdrew a step, and back outside the door. —You think it’s bad, eh?

—Bad? No. No, it’s not bad, it’s funny. It’s funny, do you know what I mean? he demanded turning on Basil Valentine. —It’s funny, it’s . . . vulgar, he said holding a hand up between them.

—But you . . . stop, my dear fellow, stop that laughing and come out.

—That’s why it’s funny, because it’s vulgar, do you see?

—Damn it, come out of there.

He came out, and followed Basil Valentine across the room laughing. —Oh, and they . . . said I dishonored death! Did you see that face? Then he stopped. —Where did it come from?

—My dear fellow . . .

—No, tell me, who painted that face, tell me.

Basil Valentine stood taking a cigarette out, which he hung under the swollen lip. —Your benefactor there did it, he said, and motioned away.

—
He
did it?
He?

—What do you think all this . . . foolishness about climbing into a suit of armor was, this . . .

—Oh no! No! No! The same thing, yes, oh yes, the same thing he wanted, but the only way he knew, but
you
 . . . 
you
 . . .

Basil Valentine tasted blood. The cigarette paper had torn his lip again. He stood backed against the pulpit. But he could not turn away as he had in the lion house: for these were the same eyes on him, the same movements the lioness made, approaching, the head hung, one foot crossed over the other in a bound, and the eyes again on him in another approach, and no bars between them. The broken smile on Valentine’s face yielded its weak incipience as he tried to draw his lips tight against a feeble sound that escaped them, initiating defense, or some proposal. Then he straightened up, a step from the pulpit. The threatening shadows had stilled, the figure retreated across the room to stand over the low table in the dull glow of the fireplace. —And you were the boy! Valentine said in a tone gone almost childish with recrimination. —The boy in your story? whose father owned the original? The boy who copied it, and stole the original, and sold it, for “almost nothing” to . . . him.

—To him! How did I know, I didn’t know who bought it, I just sold it. The original! I thought . . . do you know what it was like, coming in here years later with him, and seeing it here? Waiting, seeing it here waiting for me? waiting to burn this brand of final commitment, as though, all those years, as though it was what I thought, instead of . . . a child could tell, even in this light . . .

—Perhaps you were right all the time, Valentine said quietly, coming closer.

—But this is a copy!

—Of course it is. When the old count sold his collection in secret, this was one of the copies he had made.

—And, the original? all this time . . . ?

—All this time, the original has been right where this one is now. Basil Valentine stood very near him by the table. —Of course it was the original here for so long, the one you sold him. And this, I picked this one up in Rome myself scarcely a year ago. Do you recall when we first met? right here, across the table? Of course that was the original. I said it was a copy simply to hear you defend it. I knew Brown would trust your judgment. And I knew Brown would be troubled enough to have it gone over again, by “experts.” I brought the idea into his mind simply to let him kill it himself, so that once I’d exchanged the two, no matter who called this a copy, he’d simply laugh at them. He’d just made absolutely certain, hadn’t he? And the original? It’s on its way back to
Europe where it belongs. I exchanged them quite recently. Do you think he knew the difference? And Valentine laughed, a sound of disdain severed by a gasp of pain at the shock in his lip.

—Yes, thank God! The figure across the table stood illumined at its edges with the steady glow of the fire. —Thank God there was the gold to forge!

Valentine smiled his broken smile, coming closer, as the other retreated a step up the room.

—And you wanted me to copy the Patinir, so you could steal it, so you could steal it from him too.

—Steal! Look at him, look at him over there. Steal from him? Look at . . . his hand on the carpet, Valentine shuddered. —Like a fat soft toad on the carpet, the ugly venomous toad with the precious jewel in its head, look at it. Hands like that, on these beautiful things? Then drawing his hands together before him as though in protection, Valentine’s wrist pressed the weight at his waist. He stepped forward suddenly, keeping his arm there, and said, —Listen . . .

—Good God!

—It’s all different, Valentine said, —it’s different now, now that you and I are . . . alone.

—You . . . what do you want of me?

—And you! what do you want? Basil Valentine burst out, advancing again as this figure before him moved backwards up the room, not unsteady, but from side to side, back toward the staircase and the hulk flung at its foot. —Yes, your by all that’s ugly! And you, handling you like a jewel, he went on, his voice rising. —You and your work, your precious work, your precious van der Goes, your precious van Eyck, your precious not van Eyck but what I want! And your precious Chancellor Rolin, look at him there, look at him. Yes, why didn’t you paint him into a Virgin and Child and Donor? Do you think it’s any different now? That that fat-faced Chancellor Rolin wasn’t just like him? Yes, swear to me by all that’s ugly! Valentine hissed, and got breath. —Vulgarity, cupidity, and power. Is that what frightens you? Is that all you see around you, and you think it was different then? Flanders in the fifteenth century, do you think it was all like the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb? What about the paintings we’ve never seen? the trash that’s disappeared? Just because we have a few masterpieces left, do you think they were all masterpieces? What about the pictures we’ve never seen, and never will see? that were as bad as anything that’s ever been done. And your precious van Eyck, do you think he didn’t live up to his neck in a loud vulgar court? In a world where everything was done for the same reasons everything’s done now? for
vanity and avarice and lust? and the boundless egoism of these Chancellor Rolins? Do you think they knew the difference between what was bizarre and what was beautiful? that their vulgar ostentation didn’t stifle beauty everywhere, everywhere? the way it’s doing today? Yes, damn it, listen to me now, and swear by all that’s ugly! Do you think any painter did anything but hire himself out? These fine altarpieces, do you think they glorified anyone but the vulgar men who commissioned them? Do you think a van Eyck didn’t curse having to whore away his genius, to waste his talents on all sorts of vulgar celebrations, at the mercy of people he hated?

Blood flowed over his broken tooth. He’d turned away, but swung about again unable to stop. —Yes, I remember your little talk, your insane upside-down apology for these pictures, every figure and every object with its own presence, its own consciousness because it was being looked at by God! Do you know what it was? What it really was? that everything was so afraid, so uncertain God saw it, that it insisted its vanity on His eyes? Fear, fear, pessimism and fear and depression everywhere, the way it is today, that’s why your pictures are so cluttered with detail, this terror of emptiness, this absolute terror of space. Because maybe God isn’t watching. Maybe he doesn’t see. Oh, this pious cult of the Middle Ages! Being looked at by God! Is there a moment of faith in any of their work, in one centimeter of canvas? or is it vanity and fear, the same decadence that surrounds us now. A profound mistrust in God, and they need every idea out where they can see it, where they can get their hands on it. Your . . . detail, he commenced to falter a little, —your Bouts, was there ever a worse bourgeois than your Dierick Bouts? and his damned details? Talk to me of separate consciousness, being looked at by God, and then swear by all that’s ugly! Talk to me about your precious van Eycks, and be proud to be as wrong as they were, as wrong as everyone around them was, as wrong as he was. And Basil Valentine flung out a hand to the broken hulk on the floor, toward which he backed the retreating figure before him. —Separation, he said in a voice near a whisper, —all of it cluttered with separation, everything in its own vain shell, everything separate, withdrawn from everything else. Being looked at by God! Is there separation in God? Valentine finished, and held out his hand again, but more slowly, less steady, to withdraw it immediately the two retreating before him came up, breaking the surface as the voice broke the silence he left.

—And that van der Goes? Who put the face on it? Who couldn’t stand that emptiness? Who had to see it with his hands, then! Yes, what are you telling me all this for . . . you . . .

—Look out! Valentine spoke too late, and stopped still as the figure
before him tripped over a gauntlet and was down to his knees again beside the shape on the carpet between them. Standing over it, Valentine said quietly, —Because, my dear fellow, you and I . . .

—You and I what! You and I what!

—Because finally, you and I are together. And now . . . here! what are you doing? What are you trying to do? He got no answer but what he saw, the hands straining again at the visor, blood spilled out on the rose beneath that gross chin and the back of a hand against the bloodied uneven teeth, and the hoarse whispered, —Damn it . . . damn it . . .

—Here now, leave . . . leave all that alone.

—His eyes, I see his eyes shining through this . . . thing. Do you see them? Do you see them?

—Stop it now, stop it . . .

The visor came open. And they both drew breath suddenly, as though they had even now expected to see the youthful face of a Mantuan noble, and had been tricked, and were mocked, by this heavy forehead still wet, and the sharp protruding eyes in a stare unbroken by the quick interruptions of life.

Basil Valentine again made a cross on his chest, caught, now, his upper lip under whole teeth until it bled again, stepped back with a wave of the damp heat from his crotch rising, saw his own hand glittering with a shock of gold out before him, and below there a hand on the lower jaw, a thumb lapped over the bloody uneven teeth, and the other hand wiping the sweat away from the forehead.

—And now . . . Valentine said.

The moving hand stopped, and the eyes turned up to him.

—This man . . .

Valentine hung there over him, —What? . . .

—This man is your father.

Basil Valentine stepped back, his weight on one foot; and the other foot he put out, slowly, until it reached the headpiece. —You are mad, aren’t you . . . and with his toe he kicked the visor shut, and held his foot there.

The visor was jammed closed on the thumb which had opened it, jammed tight, as Valentine saw, crushing the white length between the joints, and Valentine moved nothing but his eyes, up, to the living eyes which burned green upon him. —But you and I, now, you and I . . .

The green eyes did not move, and Valentine withdrew slowly, withdrew his foot from the visor whose edge moved no more than the still thumb recovering its shape forced, for the thumb itself stayed.

—You know . . . Valentine said, getting his weight on both feet
now, —all of this . . . He made a faint gesture over the room. —You and I . . . Then he watched the thumb withdrawn from the broken mouth, and that hand trailing a streak of watered blood down the breastplate. —You and I . . . listen. Listen . . . Valentine tried to smile; and was as instantly aware of the image he had left in the mirror returned to mock the cold lines of this face which he had learned so well to use and trust. —Listen . . . he said, watching the hand search between roses, and stop fingertips on the penknife, —Listen to me. You and I now, it won’t be . . . the kind of thing that . . . it won’t be vulgar . . . it won’t be vulgar, he repeated with half a step back, watching the other hand come away from the half-opened visor, and as he saw the hands join on the penknife his own reached toward his waist but it hung at the weight there, —Because you’re . . . part of me . . . damn you, damn you, damn you, he cried throwing both hands up before his face as the short blade stabbed him once, and again, and again, driven each time at the top of his chest, and he lost his balance and hit his head against the newel and went down.

A cry, or a yelp was it? came from the kitchen. And there Fuller walked over to the sink, none too steady, and washed his hands. Then he washed the butcher knife and dried it on a hand towel, dropped the towel in a hamper and put the butcher knife in the rack where it belonged, and then picked up the two cardboard suitcases which he’d been all this time tying closed. He turned off the kitchen light by stooping and catching the switch with his shoulder, and emerged into the great room with a bag in each hand.

—You, sar!

—Fuller! . . . I . . .

—But what occur sar? The bags in Fuller’s hands sank to the floor. —And Mister Valentine, sar?

—Yes, yes I . . . I’ve just taught him the lesson . . . the only lesson the gods can teach, yes . . .