The Swan Thieves

  Kate had set her coffee cup, with its ring of glazed blackberries, on a table at her elbow. She made a little gesture, as if asking me to let her stop talking. I nodded and sat back at once; I wondered if there were tears gathering in her eyes. "Let's take a break," she said, although it seemed to me we were already taking one. I hoped she'd be willing to continue at all. "Would you like to see Robert's studio?"

  "Did he work much at home?" I tried not to accept too eagerly. "Well, at home and at school," she told me. "Mainly at school, of course."

  Upstairs, the central hall doubled as a small library, with a faded carpet and windows that looked over that spreading lawn. More novels, collections of short stories, encyclopedias. At one end there was a table equipped with drawing materials, pencils standing in a jar, a large open pad--someone's sketch of windows, apparently. Was this finally a glimpse of Robert? But Kate saw me looking. "My work spot," she said shortly.

  "You must be a great reader," I hazarded.

  "Yes. Robert always thought I spent too much time reading, in fact. And a lot of these books belonged to my parents."

  So they were her books, not his. I noted entrances to various rooms, some with their doors shut, some open to views of carefully made beds. In one of these--at last--I saw the children's toys, scattered joyfully on the floor. Kate opened a closed door and let me in.

  The aroma of mineral spirits lingered here still, as well as the

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  smell of oils--I wondered how such a careful housekeeper as she seemed to be (even neater than my mother) could possibly have tolerated that smell in the upstairs of the house. Perhaps, as I did, she actually found it pleasing. We entered without speaking; I had at once a funereal feeling about this room. The artist who had worked here only a short time before was not dead, but now he lay in a bed far away, staring at the ceiling of a psychiatric center. Kate went to the big windows and folded back a series of wooden shutters, and the sunlight for which Robert Oliver must have chosen this room came sweeping in. It fell on the walls, on canvases stacked backward in one corner, a long table, cans full of brushes. And it fell on a handsome adjustable easel with a painting still on it, nearly finished, a painting that electrified my senses.

  In addition, the walls were littered with images of paintings-- mainly postcards from museums and from every era of Western art. I saw dozens of works I knew and many I didn't. Every inch of space leapt with faces, meadows, dresses, mountains, swans, haystacks, fruit, ships, dogs, hands, breasts, geese, vases, houses, dead pheasants, Madonnas, windows, hats, trees, horses, roads, saints, windmills, soldiers, children. The Impressionists dominated; I could easily pick out masses of Renoir, Degas, Monet, Morisot, Sisley, and Pissarro, although there were other images that were clearly Impressionist but new to me.

  The room itself looked as if its occupant had left it on impulse: a heap of paint-hardened brushes--good brushes, wasted--and a stained rag rested on the table. He had not even finished cleaning up, my patient who showered and shaved daily in the heart of an institution. His former wife stood in the middle of the room, the sun touching her sand-dune hair. She glowed with sunlight, with young beauty beginning to ebb, and--I thought--with anger.

  Keeping one eye on her, I stepped up to the easel. Robert's familiar subject gazed out of it, the woman with the dark curls, the red lips, and the brilliant eyes. She wore a gown that might have been an old-fashioned nightdress or robe, a garment ruffled

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  and pale blue and barely held in place by her white hand. It was a vivid, romantic portrait, highly sensual--saved from sentimentality, in fact, by a frank eroticism, one curve of the woman's breast pressed roundly under her forearm as she reached up to gather her robe together. To my surprise, the hand that gripped the gown also held a paintbrush, its tip smeared with cobalt as if she herself had been caught in midstroke, working on some canvas of her own. The background seemed to be a sunny window, a window with stone framing and diamond-shaped glass panes, filled in the distance with slate-blue water and ocean clouds. The rest of the background--the room where the woman stood--was unfinished, trailing away into bare canvas in the top right corner.

  That face was familiar enough to me, and the wonderfully curling, living dark hair, but two aspects of this portrait were different from the images Robert was constantly painting in his room at Goldengrove. One was the style of the work, the brushwork, the heightened realism; he had abandoned his occasionally rough handling, his modern version of Impressionism, for this painting. It was highly realistic, in places nearly photographic--the texture of her skin, for example, had the smoothness of the late medieval period, the attention to fine surfaces. It reminded me, in fact, of the Pre-Raphaelites and their detailed portraits of women; it had that mythical quality, too, with the loose robe, the woman's broad-shouldered height and splendor. A few fine black curls had escaped to brush her cheek and neck. I wondered if he'd actually painted it from a photograph; but was he a painter who would use photographs at all?

  The other thing that startled me--no, shocked me, really--was the subject's expression. In most of the sketches of her at the hospital, Robert's woman was serious, even somber, at least thoughtful--sometimes, as I've mentioned, angry. Here, on a canvas that apparently sat most of the time in shuttered darkness, she was laughing. I had never seen her laugh before. Despite her dishabille, it was not a wanton laugh but a joyful, intelligent mirth, a witty

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  love of life, a natural movement of her lovely mouth, a glimpse of teeth, eyes sparkling. She was utterly, almost terribly, alive on the canvas; she seemed about to move. To see her was to want to reach out and touch her living skin--yes, to long to bring her close and hear her laugh in your ear. The sunlight fell across her in streams. I'll admit it: I desired her. It was a masterpiece, one of the most splendidly conceived and executed contemporary portraits I'd ever seen in the flesh. Unfinished as she was, she had taken--I knew at a glance--weeks or months of work. Months.

  When I turned back to Kate, I couldn't help reading her disdain. "You like her, too, I see," she said, and I heard coldness in her tone. She seemed small and worn, even pinched, next to the lady on the canvas. "Do you think my ex-husband is gifted?"

  "Without question," I said. I felt myself lowering my voice, as if he might be just behind us, listening--I remembered the contempt I'd so often seen on his face when I spoke to him about his drawings and paintings. This once-married couple might be divided now by their difficult history, but they both knew how to look bitterly disdainful, that was certain. I wondered if they'd sometimes faced each other with that expression. Kate stood staring at the brighter-than-life woman on the easel, who gazed radiantly past us. I had the sudden sense that the portrait was searching for Robert Oliver, her creator, that she, too, saw him standing behind us. I almost turned around to check. It was unnerving, and I wasn't entirely sorry when Kate closed the shutters and the lady was laughing in dusk again. We went out and Kate shut the door. When would I have the courage to ask her the identity of the woman in the portrait? Who had been its model? I had missed the moment; I was afraid that if I asked this, she would stop talking with me altogether.

  "You've left his studio as it was," I observed as casually as I could.

  "Yes, I have," she admitted. "I keep meaning to do something about it, but I guess I'm never quite sure what to do. I don't want

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  to just put everything in storage or throw it all away. When Robert settles down somewhere, I might pack up these things and send them all to him so he can start a new studio. If he ever settles down anywhere." She avoided my gaze. "The children ought to have separate bedrooms soon. Or maybe I'll finally make a studio for myself. I never had one. I always just took my easel outside, but that meant working in good weather, and then we had the kids--" She broke off. "Sometimes Robert offered me a corner of his studio, or said he could work at school and give me this room, but I didn't want a corner. And I certainly didn't want him at school even m
ore of the time."

  Something in her tone made me feel I shouldn't ask why not. So I stayed silent, following her down the stairs. Her back in the golden shirt was small and straight, her body firmly controlled, as if she dared me to feel any longing or even curiosity, as if she would turn that ladylike hostility on me in an instant if I let my eyes travel over her. I glanced out the window instead, at a beech tree that threw rosy light into the staircase. She led me to the living room and sat down on her sofa with a purposeful look. I understood that she wanted to get on with our task, and I sat down opposite her and tried to collect myself.

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  Mon cher oncle:

  We did have a bit of social life last night, and I regretted you could not come to enjoy it with us; in addition to the usual friends, Yves brought home with him Gilbert Thomas, a painter of excellent family who they say is talented-- although he was refused at the Salon last year and took it hard. M. Thomas must be about ten years older than I--perhaps in his late thirties. He is charming and intelligent, but there is something angry in him at moments that I do not quite like, especially when he speaks of other painters. He was gracious about asking to see my work, and I believe Yves had the idea that he, like you, might help me. He seemed genuinely struck by my portrait of little Marguerite, the new maid I told you about, who has such white skin and gold hair, and I confess it was flattering to hear it praised. He said he thought I could do great things, given my talent, and complimented my rendering of the figure. I did find him kind then, if a little sure of himself (I won't quite say pompous, so that you will not scold me later for snobbery). He and his brother intend to establish a large new sales gallery, and I daresay he would like to show your work there. He promised Yves to come back one day and bring his brother along, and you must come, too, if that is the case.

  There was also a delightful man in the party, a M. Dupré, another artist, one who works for the illustrated papers. He has been in the country of Bulgaria, where they have recently had a revolution. I heard him tell Yves that he knew of your work. He brought us some of his prints, which are very detailed and show all kinds of skirmishes and battles, with cavalry, magnificent uniforms-- and sometimes quieter scenes with villagers in their native costumes. He says it is a mountainous country, rather unsafe at the moment for journalists

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  but full of dramatic views. He is doing a series he calls "Les Balkans Illustrés." In fact, he has married a Bulgarian girl with the lovely name of Yanka Georgieva and brought her to Paris to learn French --she was unwell and could not attend this evening, but he wrote down her name for me. I found myself wishing I could go to such places and see them for myself. In fact, we are pretty dull with Yves working so much these days, and I was glad to have a dinner party under my own roof. I do hope you will join us the next time.

  I must go now, but I will look forward to whatever lines you can send your devoted

  Béatrice de Clerval

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  CHAPTER 22 Kate

  Our new place was a big green cottage provided by the college. After classes started, Robert was gone more than ever, and now he was painting in our attic at night as well. I didn't like to go up there because of the fumes, so I stayed away. I was going through a stage of constantly worrying about the baby, maybe because I'd begun to feel it squirm and kick--"Feeling life," one of the faculty wives told me. Whenever it wasn't moving I was sure it was sick, or more likely dead. I didn't buy bananas at the grocery store anymore when I chugged over there in our new very old car, because I'd read that they had some kind of horrible chemical on them that could cause birth defects. Instead, I went into Greenhill now and then with a big empty basket, filling it with organic fruit and yogurt we couldn't quite afford. How were we going to send a child to college if we couldn't even pay for safe grapes?

  It was all a conundrum to me. I had lost hope again that I would be anything but a terrible, awful mother, bored and impatient and popping Valium. I wished we'd never succeeded in conceiving--I wished it nobly, for the sake of the poor baby who was just going to have to make the best of me, and the best of its miserable fate with an artist father--God, maybe his sperm had mutated from all the paint fumes he'd breathed. I hadn't thought of that before. I got into our bed with a book and cried. I needed Robert, and when we had supper together I told him all my fears and he hugged and kissed me and insisted that there was nothing to worry about, but after dinner he had a meeting at the Art Department because they were about to hire a new specialist in

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  mountain crafts. I never seemed to have enough of him, and he didn't seem to mind that enough either.

  In actuality, Robert went up to his attic room more and more when he wasn't in class, which was probably why I didn't know for a long time about the sleeping. One morning I noticed that he hadn't come down to breakfast, and I knew he must have been painting all night, as he sometimes liked to, and then gone to bed as the sun rose--it wasn't unusual for me to wake to find his side of the bed empty on those occasions, because he'd put an old sofa up in his attic soon after we moved in. He appeared sometime around noon on this particular day, his hair standing straight up on the right side. We had lunch together, and he went to his afternoon classes.

  I think I remember that day mainly because only a few mornings later I got a call from the Art Department. They were phoning for Robert to know if he was all right, because his students had reported that he'd missed teaching their morning studio twice in a row. I tried to remember his schedule these last days but couldn't--I was in a haze of fatigue myself, my belly so large now that I could hardly bend forward to make our bed. I said that I would ask him when I saw him but that I thought he wasn't home.

  The truth was that I'd slept late myself and assumed he'd left before I woke, although now I began to doubt this. I went to the foot of the short flight of stairs that led to Robert's attic and opened the door. The stairs looked like Mount Everest to me, but I hitched my dress up a little and began to climb. It occurred to me that this might bring on labor, but if it did--so what? I was in the safe zone already, or rather the baby was--the nurse-midwife had told me cheerfully the week before that I could have the baby "anytime I wanted to." I was torn between longing to see our son or daughter's face, and the desire to postpone the inevitable day

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  when my baby would look me in the eye and know that I had no idea what I was doing.

  There wasn't a door at the top of the stairs, and I could see the whole attic as I clambered up the last step. Two lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, and they'd both been left on. A bleak midday came in through the skylight. Robert slept on the sofa, one of his arms hanging to the floor, the hand twisted inside out, graceful and Baroque. His face was buried in the cushions. I checked my watch--it was 11 :35. Well, he'd probably worked until dawn. His easel stood with its back to me, and the smell of paint was still strong. I wanted to gag, as if I'd been flung back into the uneasy stomach of my first trimester, and I turned away instead and lumbered down the stairs. I left him a note on the kitchen counter telling him to call the department, ate some lunch, and went out on a walk with my friend Bridgette. She was pregnant, too, with her second, although not as huge yet as I was, and we'd promised each other we'd walk at least two miles a day.

  When I got home, the evidence of Robert's lunch was on the table and the note was gone. He called me to say he'd need to stay late to meet with students and might show up for the college meal. I went down to have dinner in the dining hall, but he never joined me there. I heard the stairs to the attic creak in my dreams, and again the next night and again the next. Sometimes I rolled over in bed and found him a hand-span away from me. Sometimes I woke in the late morning and he was gone. I waited for the baby and for him, although I was more worried about the baby. Eventually I began to worry that I might go into labor at a time when I wouldn't be able to find Robert. I prayed that he'd be in the attic painting or sleeping whenever the pain began, so that I'd be able to
get myself to the foot of the stairs and shriek for him.

  One afternoon after I came in from my walk, which had felt like twenty miles, the department called again. They were sorry to ask, but had I seen Robert? I said I would find him. As I counted back, it seemed to me that he hadn't slept in days, at least not in

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  our bed, and that he'd barely been home. I'd sometimes heard the creak of the stairs at night and had assumed he was painting up a storm, perhaps trying to finish extra work before the baby came. I made my way up again, and in the attic I found him stretched out on his back, breathing slowly and deeply, even snoring a little. It was four in the afternoon, and I wasn't sure he had gotten up that day. Didn't he know he had classes to teach, a wife and mammoth belly to support? I felt a flash of anger and hauled myself toward the sofa to shake him awake, then stopped. The easel was turned toward the big skylight, and I'd just gotten a glimpse of it and of the sketches that littered the floor.

  I recognized her immediately, as if we were meeting on the street after having fallen out of touch for a while. She was smiling at me, her mouth turned down a little, her eyes shining, an expression I knew from the sketch I'd pulled out of Robert's pocket in the rest area months before. It was a portrait to the waist, clothed. I could see now how lovely her body was, too -- slender, strong, full, the shoulders a little broader than you'd expect, the neck sinuous. Up close, I saw there was an indistinctness to the painting, a roughness to the surface, although the forms were real and solid--Impressionism, or something on the verge of it. She wore a ruffled beige dress with crimson stripes curving down the front to emphasize her breasts, an outfit from another era, a studio costume, and her hair was piled up with a red ribbon around it-- my favorite alizarin crimson--I knew exactly the tube he'd used for those details. The sketches on the floor were studies for this painting, and I understood on the instant that it was one of Robert's best ever. It was elegant but also full of suppressed action. I'd seldom seen a human expression caught so brilliantly--she was about to move, to laugh softly, to lower her eyes under my gaze.