The Recognitions (Dalkey Archive edition) (45 page)

Recktall Brown stood beside him, the heavy naked hand on his shoulder.

—And so when you’re working, it’s your own work, Basil Valentine said. —And when you attach the signature?

—Leave him alone, God damn it Valentine, he . . .

—Yes, when I attach the signature, he said dropping his head again, —that changes everything, when I attach the signature and . . . lose it.

—Then corruption enters, is that it, my dear fellow? Basil Valentine stood up smiling. He lit a cigarette. —That’s the only thing they can prosecute you for in court, you know, if you’re caught. Forging the signature. The law doesn’t care a damn for the painting. God isn’t watching them. He put a hand on the other shoulder, the hand with the gold seal ring, and his eyes met those of Recktall Brown. The liquid blue of them seemed to freeze and penetrate the uncentered pools behind the thick lenses, and to submerge there as Recktall Brown said, —Let go of him.

They stood that way for a number of seconds, any one of which might have contained the instant that one would pull him from the other; until he stepped back himself and said, —I know. I know.

Then Basil Valentine shrugged, and sauntered the few steps back
to his chair. —You are mightily concerned with your own originality, aren’t you, he said, standing behind the chair, turned toward them.

—Originality! No, I’m not, I . . .

—Come now, my dear fellow, you are. But you really ought to forget it, or give in to it and enjoy it. Everyone else does today. Brown is busy with suits of plagiarism all the time, aren’t you Brown? You see? He takes it as a matter of course. He’s surrounded by untalented people, as we all are. Originality is a device that untalented people use to impress other untalented people, and protect themselves from talented people . . .

—Valentine, this is the last time . . .

—Most original people are forced to devote all their time to plagiarizing. Their only difficulty is that if they have a spark of wit or wisdom themselves, they’re given no credit. The curse of cleverness. Now wait, Brown. Stop. Stop there where you are and relax for a moment. We still have some business to straighten out. He needs to talk or he’ll come to pieces, isn’t that what you told me before he got here? Well let him talk, he’s said some very interesting things. But don’t let him talk to himself, that’s all he’s been doing, that’s all he does when he talks to you and you don’t listen, he knows you don’t. Let him talk, then, but listen to him. He may not say anything clever, but that’s just as well. Most people are clever because they don’t know how to be honest. He paused. —Come, my dear fellow. If you don’t say anything I shan’t be able to use you in this novel, the one in which Brown figures so monumentally since everyone thinks he’s honest because he doesn’t know how to be clever.

Recktall Brown had started toward him; but as Basil Valentine’s voice rose, Brown stopped beside the pitcher of martini cocktails and watched him carefully. A vein stood out on Valentine’s temple, and he raised his hand to ascertain it there with his fingertips, an impulsive gesture as though he had once done it to suppress. He touched the place, and continued his hand round to the back of his head where he smoothed the over-long ends of his hair. —Yes, he will figure monumentally, Valentine went on. —That portrait there, he said, flinging a hand toward it, —do you know why he keeps it? To humanize him, as evidence of youth always does, no matter how monstrous.

Basil Valentine watched them. When neither of them spoke he straightened up and walked across the room, watching his feet, to the low pulpit, where he turned and sat against it, drumming his long fingers against the oak leaves carved there.

—“Another blue day,” eh? he said, looking beyond Brown, at the
fever-stricken eyes fixed upon him. —“Another blue day,” he repeated. And then, —Brown tells me you have another self. Oh, don’t be upset, it’s not uncommon you know, not at all uncommon. Why, even Brown has one. That’s why he drinks to excess occasionally, trying to slip up on it and grab it. Mark me, he’s going to get too close one day, and it’s going to turn around and break his neck for him. He picked up the whisky bottle. —Have you heard Brown talk about the portraits he sells? Nineteenth-century portraits of blond men with strong chins that he sells for ten times their price, he tells me, to precarious Jews who want nice ancestors, he said, pouring the whisky into a glass. He sat against the pulpit again, drew a foot up, and it swayed slightly, with the sound of bottles ringing together like the sound of bells in the distance. —To the same purpose, you know. And they believe it, when the portraits have hung about long enough, common ancestor to their vulgar selves that everyone else knows, and this other . . . more beautiful self who . . . can do more than they can, he finished, swirling the whisky in the bottom of the tumbler.

In the middle of the Aubusson carpet, the dog licked itself. That was the only sound. Then Basil Valentine put the glass of whisky down and left it there. —Where do you keep him, Brown? he demanded, looking at them, around the walls, up to the balcony.

Recktall Brown turned back to his chair. He looked up at the man whom his bulk no longer separated from Basil Valentine. —Sit down, my boy, he said, and then abruptly to Valentine, —Where are you going?

—I’m simply going in to wash my hands, if no one objects.

Recktall Brown took out a cigar. He unwrapped it, trimmed the end with his penknife, thrust it among uneven teeth, and lit it. He shook the match out in the air, and tossed it toward the ashtray. It fell to the carpet, and lay smoking on a rose. —When most people ask where the washroom is, they really mean they want to go to the toilet. He just goes in there to wash his hands. Sit down, my boy. We’ll be done in a few minutes. Recktall Brown filled the air before him with smoke. —What’s the matter? he asked, as the smoke rose, and the figure before him remained unmoved and unchanged.

—Oh, I . . . I don’t know, he said, looking down at Brown and seeming to recover. —I suppose I was surprised, when you let him go on like that.

—Never interrupt people when they’re telling you more than they know they are, no matter how mad they make you.

—Telling you?

—About themselves, my boy. Recktall Brown drew heavily on
the cigar, and the smoke broke around the discolored teeth as he spoke. —I never do business with anyone until I’ve had them investigated, I never sign a thing until I’ve been through a report by a good private detective agency. I know a lot about Basil Valentine. I know about him with the Jesuits, I know what happened there, and I know what happens now, I know what his private life is. Be careful of him . . .

—He . . . studied for the priesthood?

—He’s not out of it yet.

—But then me? Even me? You had them . . . you had detectives . . . finding out about me?

—Of course I did, my boy. It’s all right, it’s all right. You’re all right, but just keep on the way you are, Brown said, laying a heavy hand on the wrist before him, —don’t let anybody interfere with you, and be careful, be God damn careful of that pansy.

—That’s funny, then you . . . we both studied . . .

—What have you two accomplished? they heard behind them. —Dear, just sitting here and holding hands. I thought we had fearfully pressing business. Basil Valentine approached rubbing his hands together. He kicked the crumpled reproduction on the floor, and paused over it to smooth it out with the narrow toe of his black shoe. —Oil of lavender, eh? he said, looking down at it. —Mansit odor, posses scire fuisse deam, he said kicking it aside. —You must remember your Ovid, my dear Brown? He touched his smooth temple and smiled as he sat down. —“An odor remained, you could tell that a goddess had appeared.” He took his eyes from Brown, and looked across the table. —But what are you looking at me that way for? Come, we have work to do. Hubert van Eyck . . .

—Why should he rate a quarter of a million? Brown interrupted.

—I was about to tell you: because he never existed.

—But he did, he did, came sharply across the table.

—All right, my dear fellow . . .

—He did, he did, of course he did, who . . . why, the Ghent altarpiece, the Steenken
Madonna
 . . . ?

—Who the hell, what is this? Who? He never existed but he painted the what? . . . sting . . .

—All right, have it your way, Valentine went on, speaking across the table, paying Brown no attention. —After all, we will have to have it your way, won’t we. If one of his paintings is to appear?

—But he did.

—All right, he did, Brown broke in again, sitting forward. —Now that’s settled.

—It’s not settled, yet. But it will be.

—But to say he didn’t exist, to say Hubert van Eyck didn’t exist?

—God damn it, stop. Stop arguing with him, Valentine. You’re just trying to upset him.

—Don’t you understand? But don’t either of you understand? Basil Valentine brought both hands up before him. —There are authorities who still insist that Hubert van Eyck is a legend, that he never lived at all, that Jan van Eyck never had an older brother. As a matter of fact, I’m one of them myself, but, wait. He held up an arresting palm. —Now don’t you understand? If a painting appears, a signed, fully documented painting by Hubert van Eyck, they’ll be proved wrong. The others, the . . . experts and art historians who have been insisting that there was a Hubert van Eyck will pounce on this new picture. They won’t question it for a moment, because it will prove their point, and that’s all they care about. It will prove that they’ve been right all this time, and that’s all they care about. The painting itself doesn’t matter to them, their authority is all that’s important. And the dissenters? He dropped his hands, sank back in the chair and smiled across the table. —Even I may be brought around, you see.

Recktall Brown grunted an assent, and Valentine took out a cigarette and passed his case open across the table. It was snapped closed, and the worn inscription caught the light. —This? what’s this? may I read it?

—If you can, Valentine said.

—Yes, it’s difficult . . . Varé tava soskei me puchelas . . . cai soskei avillara catári . . . Gypsy?

—Why yes, a Hungarian dialect. Valentine’s face almost showed surprise, as he took the thing back and slipped it into an inside pocket. —But you don’t understand it? “Much I ponder why you ask me questions, and why you should come hither.” A gift, he added, cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and went on speaking as though to find recovery in his own words. —Van Eyck? and what did you think I was going to suggest? another Jan van Eyck?

—But, no but . . .

—Yes, another
Virgin and Child and Donor?
You could do that. Paint Brown in the place of Chancellor Rolin. Lovely! on his knees at a prie-dieu, before the Virgin and Child. A pious monument to his Christian virtue as a patron of art. We’d have to take off his glasses, and get him a haircut. You wouldn’t mind running around in a tonsure for a while, Brown? But that ring . . . His eye caught the double gleam of the diamonds. —We could hardly have such vanity flaunting . . .

—What are you talking about? Brown demanded. —We decided he exists, this Herbert . . .

Valentine shrugged wearily, and went on in his irritating monotone,
—Yes, we are, I suppose, basically in agreement. Now here is the point. Some time ago the will of a man named Jean de Visch was found. It is in the public domain, available as substantiation of this . . . project. The will mentions a picture by Hubert van Eyck, which goes to prove, supposedly, that such a picture was painted. Another Virgin of some sort. Proves it well enough for your purpose, at any rate. Now when they tore down that house in Ghent they hoped to find some of Hubert’s work, hidden somewhere. They didn’t. But there was a scrap of paper. It was regarded as a curiosity, and then it disappeared and was forgotten. It was a letter signed by Jodoc Vyt, the man who commissioned the Ghent altarpiece, commissioning a work by Hubert van Eyck. I can get hold of it for two thousand dollars.

—You can get it for less, Brown muttered.

—Perhaps I shall. Basil Valentine smiled at him. —You never begrudged me a commission?

—How do I know it isn’t faked?

—You haven’t made a habit of doubting my word either. But look at it this way. If it is not genuine, why should it exist at all?

—If it exists, why should I buy it?

—You are inclined to oversimplify, aren’t you Brown? To insist on carrying us back to Rome, where for all their ingenious vulgarity they never managed to evolve blackmail, at least there’s no word for it in Roman jurisdiction. They depended so heavily on the Greeks, and the Greeks apparently had no word for it either. No, it’s taken our precocious modern minds to devise this delicate relationship between human beings. You might call this blackmail in reverse. You see, if you don’t buy this slip of paper it will be destroyed.

—And he can’t paint the picture without this scrap of paper?

—He can. Of course he can. But with this attached to it, it will be irreproachable. He paused. —This isn’t a thing to scrimp on, and you know it.

—All right.

—Well?

They both looked across the table. —It isn’t the first time I’ve thought of it, he said, watching the brandy he swirled in the bottom of his glass. —A
Virgin
by Hubert van Eyck.

—An
Annunciation
.

—Yes, he said, holding the glass up. —Isn’t that an exquisite color? The cc o. of the sixth heaven, jacinth. I remember a story my father told me, about the celestial sea. Instead of bedtime stories he used to read to me. The same things he was reading.

—Now this Herbert picture, Recktall Brown said, interrupting.

—When I was sick in bed, he read to me from
Otia Imperialia
. The twelfth century, Gervase of Tilbury, when people could believe that our atmosphere was a celestial sea, a sea to the people who lived above it. This story was about some people coming out of church, and they saw an anchor dangling by a rope from the sky. The anchor caught in the tombstones, and then they watched and saw a man coming down the rope, to unhook it. But when he reached the earth they went over to him and he was dead . . . He looked up at both of them from the glass. —Dead as though he’d been drowned.