Pilgrim

  Lotte bobbed and said nothing. When she returned to the kitchen and sat at the table, she was disconsolate.

  “She will thank Doctor Jung and I will be in trouble.”

  “No you won’t,” said Frau Emmenthal and patted the girl’s hand. “You’ve made a lovely gesture and it will raise her spirits. I can protect you from Doctor Jung. He will understand. In the end, he will thank you.”

  In the dining-room, Emma lighted an uncharacteristic cigarette and drank her coffee.

  I want to see the smoke, she was thinking, rising about the roses—mellowing the view. And the gardens—and the sound of songbirds singing in our trees…

  And way, way off above the lake, the gulls adrift on stillness itself and the mountains in their mists that define all this, the stillness I have made of smoke and silence.

  Smoke and silence.

  All would be well.

  Surely, if there are roses, all will be well.

  We shall one day have another child, she thought—and, thinking, reached out to touch the nearest petals of the bouquet. If only…

  Do not say that. Do not think that ever again. Never. If only is a deadly phrase. It means you have given up. And you have not given up. You merely wanted to. Damn you! Damn you. Damn me. I will never give up.

  She stubbed the cigarette.

  There was orange juice. There was a brioche. There was apricot preserve. There was muesli, which she ignored. And there was the paper—die Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

  Emma drank the orange juice, broke the brioche into quarters, ate two of them with butter, one of them with the apricot preserve and set the last aside for the birds, as Carl Gustav had told her Mister Pilgrim used to do with his morning toast.

  When all of this had been done, she poured another cup of coffee and lighted a second cigarette. (How wicked I am today!) She then sat back and opened die N.Z.Z.

  Emma sputtered.

  Coffee drops fell to the napkin in her lap.

  There was a headline three inches deep.

  MONA LISA STOLEN!

  She let the paper fall to the tabletop.

  I don’t want to know this, she thought—already knowing, before she read another word, what had happened and who had perpetrated the crime.

  At last she raised the paper again and confronted it—reading details only, skipping all the theories, all the accumulated speculations and most eye-witness accounts.

  It had happened the day before yesterday, Monday, the day on which by tradition the Louvre was closed every week to the public. “Someone”—possibly with one or more accomplices—had entered the Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa was hung, and absconded with the painting, possibly during a fifteen-minute interlude during which the only guard on duty in the Salon—a substitute for the regular guard—was taking his leisure in the W.C., where he smoked a cigarette.

  Emma lighted her own cigarette, smiled and took a deep pull of smoke. It’s what we all do under stress…

  When the discovery of the painting’s absence was first made, it was some hours later. The assumption had been that La Gioconda was away in the Photography Annex being photographed. This often happened. On the Tuesday, a witness—who happened to be a painter by the name of Louis Béroud—remarked that when women are not with their lovers they are apt to be with their photographers.

  Emma skipped ahead, turning pages furiously, until she came to the next salient details.

  By noon on the Tuesday, all the necessary inquiries had been made regarding the Photography Annex and the laboratory where paintings were taken to be cleaned. The Mona Lisa was nowhere to be found. Plainly, she was gone.

  At this juncture, the sûreté and the gendarmerie had been notified and the Louvre immediately filled with more than a hundred policemen.

  The painting, which had been secured to the wall by means of four iron pegs, had clearly been removed by an expert who had brought the appropriate implement with which to loose it from its place. And not only this, the culprit had also brought whatever was required to release the canvas itself from its frame. The frame and its glass were discovered in one of the stairwells leading to an emergency exit.

  Pilgrim.

  It could only be Mister Pilgrim. Emma had “known” he was going to Paris. Now, she “knew” why. How, it barely mattered. She had read him in both senses: his journals, and his personal angst as Carl Gustav had related it.

  What would the outcome be? If Pilgrim were truly mad, he might destroy the painting. Yet this was unthinkable—not from Pilgrim’s point of view, Emma realized, but from the point of view of western civilization at large. The Mona Lisa was seminal. She was the centrepiece of all painted thought. She was the goddess of perfection and the patron saint of attitude. A woman’s integrity depended on her protection. Men so deeply feared her, it could not be told what magic powers she possessed. No man, Emma thought, has ever understood her—but every woman has.

  No man but Pilgrim.

  She was the very air he breathed.

  Oh, do not—do not—do not do this, Emma prayed.

  And yet, Pilgrim wanted so desperately to die. Would the destruction of a painting—of this painting—this one painting release him? He believed with such vehemence that he himself had been La Gioconda that he might well think that, like Dorian Gray, if he plunged a knife through the portrait’s heart, it would bring about his own longed for death. What if Wilde had also known? What if Wilde had been privy to Pilgrim’s dilemma, and had fashioned his novel on the basis of what he knew? After all, they had been friends—they had confided in one another, and Pilgrim had mourned for Wilde as one mourns only for those one trusts. The words Dorian Lisa presented themselves. And Mona Gray.

  She lighted a final cigarette. The smoke rose. The roses, having been cut, and warmed by the interior air, leaned forward in their bowl and opened wider. Their scent was overwhelming—wondrous and rich and provocative—but Emma watched them with dismay. We cut and kill everything, she thought. We cut and kill everything that stands in our way. Just as Carl Gustav cut and killed me. Just as I cut and killed my child. Just as Mister Pilgrim will cut and kill La Gioconda. Because she stands between himself and eternity.

  At the Clinic, Jung—not knowing of the theft—went to the third floor and let himself into Suite 306.

  The useless pigeon cage was still there—its doors standing open, the very symbol of Pilgrim’s escape—a symbol so blatant and indiscreet that Jung had to smile.

  He looked about the rooms. Some drawers had not been closed—nor the doors of the armoire—nor one of the windows, where a few doves and pigeons had gathered expectantly.

  Jung inspected the bureau and found a brown paper bag of stale crumbs, with which he fed the birds.

  In another drawer, he found the photograph Pilgrim had removed from the silver frame that now was emptied, lying face down, where he had placed the photograph of Sybil Quartermaine.

  The photograph in Jung’s hand showed the head and shoulders of a sad but beautiful woman—the person Pilgrim had described as the woman who claimed to be my mother.

  She would have been perhaps forty-five years old when the picture was taken late in the nineteenth century. Oddly, she faced the camera in precisely the same position as Elisabetta Gherardini Giocondo had faced the gaze of Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps this was merely a trick—or perhaps, from the artist’s point of view, it offered the perfect view of the sitter’s face. Leonardo himself had written: always require your subject to sit so the head is at an angle to the torso.

  There she was: the woman who claimed to be my mother.

  There was no smile. There was no guile. There was only sadness.

  Pilgrim had seemingly hated her—dismissing her as a poseur, since in his own view he had no parents but merely was. This was, indeed, a unique form of madness—not to have been born, yet to be.

  Jung placed the photograph in his pocket. He looked about the bedroom and the sitting-room and decided, before he left, that Kessler must pa
ck all of Pilgrim’s possessions—his clothing, jewellery, books and toiletries—against the time when the escapee would be returned to them. In the meantime, he would see to it that no one else would occupy these rooms. In the strangest way, they were sacrosanct. Jung wanted them to remain, whether empty or not, as a part of his purview.

  To that end, he returned every morning to feed the birds.

  6

  Two days earlier, on Monday, July 1st, Pilgrim and Forster had risen early, packed their bags and locked them in the boot of the Renault. They checked out of the Hôtel Paul de Vere and drove to a service station where they had the car prepared for its next journey. The petrol tank was filled and extra petrol was set on the floor of the back seat. Pilgrim had insisted on two containers, in spite of Forster’s protestations that one was ample and more was possibly dangerous.

  “I have my reasons,” Pilgrim said—and that was that.

  There was also a checklist in Pilgrim’s inner pocket.

  Soft cotton gloves for both.

  Walking shoes.

  Light overcoats.

  An artist’s portfolio with twelve sheets of drawing paper.

  Conté crayons and pencils.

  Canvas camp stool.

  Pliers.

  Razor knife.

  Money.

  Picnic hamper—pâté—bread—fruit—chocolate—wine.

  All of this had duly been assembled and put in place.

  Forster parked the Renault on the rue du Pont Neuf, just around the corner from their hotel and only a block or two from the morning’s destination.

  At ten o’clock on the dot, they arrived at the Louvre and presented M. Moncrieff’s waiver to the guard at the door. Pilgrim was then saluted as if he might have been visiting royalty.

  The great halls were empty. The echoes of far distant footsteps were the only presences besides the silent statuary and the mirrored images of Pilgrim and Forster as they passed on their way to the Salon Carré. Then, at a greater distance still, someone unseen began to whistle and a door slammed.

  “Merde,” a man said.

  The whistling continued.

  The light, though diffused, was ample and bright enough to reveal every detail as they went along—the carved lintels above the doorways—the marble figures ensconced in their niches—the glorious tapestries and the gilded mirrors.

  Stairways curved away hither and yon and one of these had an arrowed sign that pointed to La Mona Lisa. Forster carried the camp stool, the portfolio and the box of artist’s supplies in which the pliers and the razor knife were secreted. Pilgrim carried the picnic basket. He looked as if he were bound for the Tuileries.

  There was a guard at the entrance to the Salon Carré, to whom Pilgrim showed the chief curator’s waiver. More saluting, more nodding, and they continued on their way.

  At the far end of the Salon Carré, an artisan in a white smock was standing on a ladder attending to some painting that was needed on the exit door frame. Apparently, earlier in the morning, the man had repaired the plaster there and was now disguising the joins where the new work met the old.

  Pilgrim and Forster walked about the room as if they had all the time in the world—though on each pass before the Mona Lisa they lingered longer and longer until at last they stopped.

  Forster set aside the portfolio and opened the camp stool, placing it about five feet away from the painting.

  Pilgrim removed his topcoat and hat and laid them on one of the benches provided for viewers. He did not, however, remove his gloves. Sitting, he opened the portfolio and spread it on his lap. Forster handed him his box of drawing materials and stood back gazing at the portrait.

  “See what you can find out about that fellow at the far end of the room,” Pilgrim said, sotto voce. “We may need to do something about him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Pilgrim sketched what he already knew was his own portrait, he was amused by the juxtaposition of his present image over that of the painted lady. The glass that covered her reflected only the roughest contours of his face—its basic shape, its bones and its shining highlights. The rest was a melding of artifice and reality. A portrait of time.

  The artisan’s name turned out to be Vincenzo Peruggia. He was a northern Italian from the town of Domena in the Lake Como district. His true profession was house-painting, but he had extended his talents to plastering and repair. This much Forster learned in the course of a preliminary conversation, standing at the foot of the ladder as the moustachioed Italian worked above him.

  They also discussed the care and growing of moustaches, Forster confessing that growing his own had been a relatively new adventure.

  Peruggia was not very large—being even shorter than Forster, who stood at five-foot-nine. He had a dark, overly serious face, though not unattractive. His body was spare and compact, his posture exemplary. Oddly—or so it seemed to Forster—he had extremely small hands. But his work was delicate and fine and exquisitely executed. Forster was fascinated by the process of how the paints were mixed to mask the lines between the old and new plaster.

  Their conversation in itself was a charming, almost comical mix of English and Italian sprinkled with French.

  At the same time, the guard on duty—whose name was Verronet—came and stood behind Pilgrim and his sketching.

  It was clear almost at once that Verronet was an amateur—a substitute guardian with no real interest in what he did. The Mona Lisa meant nothing to him. It is just another painting and I am here to watch the paintings—as if his job was to be a voyeur.

  “Do you like her?” Pilgrim asked in French.

  “She’s all right. I could do with larger breasts.”

  Pilgrim smiled, thinking he could remember the weight of them.

  “She was not a large woman, you know.”

  “Well, she’s sitting down—how is a man to tell? I think I would not have made love to her.”

  “Oh? And why is that?”

  “I do not like superior women. A woman should stay in her place.”

  “You think she is superior?”

  “In attitude, yes. But I wouldn’t call her beauty superior. I think she is too aloof. I feel no humanity.”

  “Are you a student?”

  “No.”

  “You talk like a student. You know nothing—yet you have opinions.”

  This was a mistake.

  “I am not a fool,” Verronet said indignantly. “And, if I may say so, judging by your scribbles, you are not an artist. May a man not have opinions?”

  “Of course,” said Pilgrim. “I apologize. I meant only that I think you are wrong about her lack of humanity. I think she is supremely human.”

  “Each man to his own taste. If I were to have a woman of that station, I should want her to seem less above me.”

  “I see.”

  There was an awkward pause. Pilgrim withheld his sketching hand. Verronet gave a cough. “I will leave you now,” he said. “I am going to the W.C. for a cigarette. And while I am gone, if I may say so, I should keep an eye on the Italian at the other end of the room. Anyone can be a thief, you know—and Italians are notorious for it. Like gypsies and all other dark-skinned people.”

  “Very well,” said Pilgrim—and resumed his sketching.

  At noon hour, Forster returned from his conversation and suggested that now would be an appropriate time to take their lunch.

  “And the man on the ladder?”

  “I think we need not fear him.”

  “But can we use him?”

  “It is possible. Though how, I do not know.”

  “Why not invite him to dine with us?” Pilgrim smiled, like a conniving child. Then he said: “after all, generosity breeds compliance.”

  They ate in the Place du Carrousel.

  Peruggia had brought his own bread, cheese and wine, but accepted pears, more wine and some chocolate from the hamper.

  The sun was shining. It was all very pleasant. Pilgrim had suffi
cient Italian to be able to manage something of a conversation with the house-painter. In the course of this, he discovered that Peruggia was single, thirty-two years of age and had come to Paris in order to escape the intransigent reign of poverty in Italy, where there had been so little employment he had been in danger of starving.

  The man was barely literate. He could write his name and garner the gist of a headline in the Italian papers, but he had never read a book nor had one read to him. He had never gone to school and he could calculate figures only by counting on his fingers. And yet, he was a craftsman of great skill and had worked many times at the Louvre.

  As they ate and drank, Pilgrim worked his way further into Peruggia’s passions—having sensed that, as with most uneducated people, his passions were many and profound. The inability to read and write was a source of deep frustration—not to be able to communicate made the need to do so overwhelmingly urgent.

  Peruggia’s greatest passion was his patriotism. Italy is the mother of all the living world. It was that simple and that straightforward. La Donna Italia! he called her, raising his glass. And he said that in all his many working hours at the Louvre, it had not been lost on him that the greatest works of art were every single one of them Italian! Titian! Tintoretto! Caravaggio! Botticelli! Leonardo!

  He sang these names as if they had been set to music by Verdi.

  “And the greatest of the treasures in the Louvre is La Gioconda! La Gioconda is La Donna Italia herself! The mother of us all!”

  Pilgrim smiled and nodded, but said nothing.

  Vincenzo Peruggia went on: “if it had not been for Napoleon, La Gioconda and all these other wonders would have remained in Italy, where they were born.”

  “Napoleon?” Pilgrim tried not to sound too incredulous.

  “Of course,” said Peruggia. “He came into our country and raped it of all its great works of art. This is what, everywhere, the French have done. Invade, make war, slaughter, burn and walk away with the spoils. It is all Napoleon’s fault. My greatest wish would be to return every one of the Italian paintings in the Louvre to Florence, Rome and Venice—to wherever they were born—and to keep them there forever.”