Recktall Brown did look startled at that. But he recovered immediately to take off his glasses and turn his sharp eyes on Basil Valentine. —We’re going to get down to business right now, he said.
—Brown doesn’t exist, you must admit, Valentine went on. —He’s a figment of a Welsh rarebit taken before retiring. A projection of my unconscious. Though a rather abiding one, I must confess.
—By God, Brown said, —if you don’t settle down and be serious . . .
—But my dear man, I am being serious. I am the only person in this room who exists. You are both projections of my unconscious, and so I shall write a novel about you both. But I don’t know what I can do with you, he said, turning to the other chair.
—With me? He almost smiled at Basil Valentine. —Why not?
—Because, my dear fellow, no one knows what you’re thinking. And that is why people read novels, to identify projections of their own unconscious. The hero has to be fearfully real, to convince them of their own reality, which they rather doubt. A novel without a hero would be distracting in the extreme. They have to know what you think, or good heavens, how can they know that you’re going through some wild conflict, which is after all the duty of a hero.
—I think about my work.
—But my dear fellow . . .
—God damn it Valentine, Brown broke in, —I’m as real as hell, and in just a minute . . .
—All right, to work, to work. Wait, there’s something I’ve meant to ask. Your own paintings, you have done work yourself, certainly. Are there any of them lying about anywhere?
—Why no, I . . . the only ones I had were destroyed in a fire.
—Good, good. If someone picked them up . . . you can’t suppress all of yourself, you know. Valentine watched the brandy bottle raised and tipped over the empty glass.
—I know, he said, watching it himself. His hand quivered somewhat, and the bottle rattled against the edge of the glass.
—Now be careful, my boy, Recktall Brown said, watching him drink it down.
—Before we go any. further with this, Valentine said, —I would like to know more about your work, because what I have in mind . . . The hard surface, for instance. Oil takes years to dry.
—Yes, that . . . getting the hard surface, it was one of the worst problems. He leaned toward them, his elbows on the table, clutching one hand in the other, and spoke rapidly but with effort. —I’ve tried everything, every different . . . I tried mixing my colors on blotting paper, to absorb the oil, and then mixing them with varnish but it dried too quickly, you see? It dried too quickly and it was unalterable. I tried a mixture of stand oil and formaldehyde, but it wasn’t right, it wasn’t what I wanted. I tried oil of lavender and formaldehyde and I like it better, the oil with an egg tempera, and a varnish glaze. In those two Bouts pictures, in those when I prepared the canvas I laid linen threads on the gesso when it was still wet, you see? in the pattern I wanted for the crackle. Then I baked it, and when it came out of the oven the threads came off and left the pattern. But the best thing, here, I used it here, he said, motioning at the van der Goes reproduction which still lay open on the table, —a thin layer of gesso, over and over on the canvas, and it cracks of its own volition, because of the atmosphere, the changes, you see? This painting is whole egg and oil of lavender, and then glue, dilute glue and the varnish. This one, this is amber varnish, the undercoat of dilute glue shrank faster than the varnish when they dried and cracked it, you see? And a little India ink in the cracks and when that dried there were only particles, like dirt, when the experts came . . .
—Now take it easy, my boy, sit down, sit down.
—And then the experts came, you see? he said, standing, and rubbed his hand over his eyes, and his chin, leaving a broad smile quivering there when he reached down for the bottle again. —There isn’t one test they don’t know, and not one that can’t be beaten. Not one. That . . . that’s why I couldn’t use that varnish medium, it dried so fast that I had to paint too fast, and you can’t do that, you can’t paint that fast and control these . . . these things that have to be controlled, do you understand? And an X-ray would have shown up those abrupt strokes, he added. He lifted the glass, and threw back his head to drink it down. —You see, this . . . controlling this damned world of shapes and smells . . .
—Sit down, my boy, Recktall Brown said as he started to walk away from them.
—But I haven’t told you, after all this work, this . . . fooling around. Do you know what the best medium is? It’s so simple I never dared try it, it’s that simple. Glair, the liquid that settles to the bottom when the whites of egg are beaten, with dry powdered pigments, and a layer of clean white of egg over it and the varnish, it’s so simple it doesn’t need anything, it doesn’t need to be baked, it crackles by itself beautifully, as though years, hundreds of years had passed over it. And that, it’s . . . and then the experts come, with their little bottles of alcohol, to see if they can dissolve the fresh paint, but the glue . . . You never have music here, do you. Never, in all this time . . .
—Come back here and sit down. We can’t talk to you way the hell out in the middle of the room.
—This glair, Basil Valentine said to him. —You sound as though you consider it practically foolproof.
—Yes, that’s the word, foolproof. Foolproof, he said, coming back to them.
—That is what we need, Basil. Valentine said, his hands drawn up beneath his chin. —The fools are the ones we must be most careful of. Most secrets are discovered by their accidents, very few by design. Very few, he repeated, looking up. —Foolproof enough, would you say, for a van Eyck?
Brown seemed to be awaiting some violent reaction to this, if it were, as he believed from Valentine’s casual tone, the challenge. But he looked up to see it greeted with no more than a shrug.
—Easily, the perfect medium for him, for Jan van Eyck, but he’s been done so often . . .
—Yes, yes, Basil Valentine interrupted impatiently, —there are probably more badly faked Jan van Eycks then any of the others. Hubert, on the other hand . . .
—Hubert van Eyck?
—It might be the art discovery of the century, if it were absolutely perfect, signed and documented . . .
—Yes, yes it might, it probably would be.
—If you could do it . . .
—If I could do it? If I could do it? he said, raising his head.
—How much? Recktall Brown demanded.
—It depends entirely on the picture. Perhaps as much as you got for all the rest put together.
—That much! What the hell have we been doing fooling around with these . . .
—If he could do it.
—If I could do it! Of course I can do it, he said more calmly, looking down at the van der Goes reproduction. —But listen, they have no right to do this, he went on, crumpling the reproduction into his hand as it tore from the magazine. —You have no right to do this, he said, as Valentine put a hand on Recktall Brown’s arm.
—To do what, my dear fellow?
—This . . . these reproductions, they have no right to try to spread one painting out like this. There’s only one of them, you know, only one. This . . . my painting . . . there’s only one, and these reproductions, these cheap fakes is what they are, being scattered everywhere, and they have no right to do that. It cheapens the whole . . . it’s a calumny, that’s what it is, on my work, he said, standing with the thing wadded up in his hand.
Basil Valentine took the thin cigarette from his lips and spoke coldly. —Forgery is calumny, he said. —Every piece you do is calumny on the artist you forge.
—It’s not. It’s not, damn it, I . . . when I’m working, I . . . Do you think I do these the way all other forging has been done? Pulling the fragments of ten paintings together and making one, or taking a . . . a Dürer and reversing the composition so that the man looks to the right instead of left, putting a beard on him from another portrait, and a hat, a different hat from anoth
er, so that they look at it and recognize Dürer there? No, it’s . . . the recognitions go much deeper, much further back, and I . . . this . . . the X-ray tests, and ultra-violet and infra-red, the experts with their photomicrography and . . . macrophotography, do you think that’s all there is to it? Some of them aren’t fools, they don’t just look for a hat or a beard, or a style they can recognize, they look with memories that . . . go beyond themselves, that go back to . . . where mine goes.
—Sit down, my boy.
—And . . . any knock at the door may be the gold inspectors, come to see if I’m using bad materials down there, I . . . I’m a master painter in the Guild, in Flanders, do you see? And if they come in and find that I’m not using the . . . gold, they destroy the bad materials I’m using and fine me, and I . . . they demand that . . . and this exquisite color of ultramarine, Venice ultramarine I have to take to them for approval, and the red pigment, this brick-red Flanders pigment . . . because I’ve taken the Guild oath, not for the critics, the experts, the . . . you, you have no more to do with me than if you are my descendants, nothing to do with me, and you . . . the Guild oath, to use pure materials, to work in the sight of God . . .
—You’ve had enough of this stuff now, my boy, Recktall Brown said, reaching, too late, for the brandy bottle. —You need to keep a steady hand for what you’re doing, all these God damn tiny little details . . .
Basil Valentine sat, watching him.
—A steady hand! he said, and drank down the brandy. —Do you think that’s all it is, a steady hand? He opened the rumpled reproduction. —This . . . these . . . the art historians and the critics talking about every object and . . . everything having its own form and density and . . . its own character in Flemish paintings, but is that all there is to it? Do you know why everything does? Because they found God everywhere. There was nothing God did not watch over, nothing, and so this . . . and so in the painting every detail reflects . . . God’s concern with the most insignificant objects in life, with everything, because God did not relax for an instant then, and neither could the painter then. Do you get the perspective in this? he demanded, thrusting the rumpled reproduction before them. —There isn’t any. There isn’t any single perspective, like the camera eye, the one we all look through now and call it realism, there . . . I take five or six or ten . . . the Flemish painter took twenty perspectives if he wished, and even in a small painting you can’t include it all in your single vision, your one miserable pair of eyes, like you can a photograph, like you can painting when it . . . when it degenerates, and becomes conscious of being looked at.
Recktall Brown stood up, and came toward him.
—Like everything today is conscious of being looked at, looked at by something else but not by God, and that’s the only way anything can have its own form and its own character, and . . . and shape and smell, being looked at by God.
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 Vale
ntine. —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.