Sunday 9:35 A.M.
Dear Anna,
I have been wandering the streets for the last hour wondering what to do. I called home this morning (there was something I had to check) and a neighbor answered the phone. She told me that my wife had been taken to hospital. It happened late last night. She had taken an overdose. The hospital says her condition is stable and she is out of danger but obviously I have to go to her. There is a plane at 12:30 from Florence airport. I can catch it if I leave now.
I don’t know what to say. I can’t lie to you and I don’t know how to tell the truth. There were things I didn’t tell you; about her, about our relationship, because they were too difficult, and if I had—well, anyway, it’s not the time to start now. I’m sorry. You will think me a total bastard and that wouldn’t be far from the truth, though there are mitigating circumstances, but once again, this isn’t the time for them. I thought about waking you up to tell you all this, but I suppose I didn’t have the courage to face your reaction. So much for what you once called my monstrous confidence, eh?
I’ve taken the car because it’s in my name and I have to return it and because it’s the quickest way for me to get to the airport. The hotel manager tells me there is a train from a nearby station back to Florence through Arezzo and from there to Pisa and he has promised me that he will get you to the right place at the right time to catch it. Your ticket will be waiting at the British Airways desk in the name of Anna Revell. The flight leaves at 7:45 tomorrow morning, BA 145.
I want to say that I’ll call you in London as soon as you get back, but right at this moment I don’t know that I can promise anything, since I don’t know what will greet me on my return. Knowing what you know about me now, you probably wouldn’t feel like answering the call anyway. I don’t quite understand what happened between us last night, and this isn’t the time to ask. I’ll leave it a while before I get in touch, so you can think about how you feel. You can always put the phone down on me. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Forgive me, Anna. I want you to know that I didn’t lie about everything, only the things I couldn’t handle. I shall miss you in more ways than I can say. If I say more, I risk you not believing me, and I’m already feeling guilty about too many things as it is. Yes me, guilty. Who would have believed it?
Yours, with love,
Samuel
It was a good letter, even down to its apparent spontaneity, with the odd words scored out or overwritten in haste or uncertainty. As a way of ending an affair it delivered all the right romantic ingredients: guilt, passion, confession, and the sense of being overwhelmed by circumstance, the stuff of melodrama. Nevertheless, by the time she’d finished reading it the words left echoing in her ears were not his, but Sophie Wagner’s: “Very emotionally articulate for an Englishman.”
Articulate, though not at all like the calculated vivisection that Ms. Wagner had found herself subjected to. Was there a different method for every woman, a kind of matchmaking of gain to pain? Or had her abrasiveness the night before made him rethink his plans, decide on a swifter exit, one in which he didn’t lose the initiative? So was this about a scam complete or a scam aborted? She realized that she still had no idea. She was not, however, entirely without ways of finding out.
The two most used numbers from his mobile had Geneva prefixes. That much the operator confirmed. She dialed the first and waited. After a while an answering machine kicked in. The message was in English, then in French, the woman’s tone, with its American accent, smooth and businesslike, no sex in it this time. “You’ve gotten through to the Matterman Gallery. There is no one here to take your call. Please leave your name and number and we will get back to you.” The second number (home?) was another answering machine. Different message, same voice. “Anthony and Jacqueline are out at present. Leave a message after the beep. Or if it’s urgent call the mobile at . . .” She articulated the numbers with singular efficiency. Not a voice with an affinity to anything as unproductive as overdoses.
She had had time to jot down just two more, but the pencil had been smudging and she couldn’t be sure of the numbers. The first turned out to be Russian, a district on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. It rang six times and a man answered. Just as he picked up she realized she had no idea what she was going to say. The voice answered in Russian.
“Hello. Do you speak English?”
“Yes, I do.” And it was clear from the accent that he also did it well.
“I’m calling from the Matterman Gallery in Geneva. I’ve had a query about a painting that I think you may have helped us with earlier this year. February, I think it was.”
There was a pause. Either his English had got suddenly worse or he hadn’t liked what he heard. “Who is this calling?”
“Er . . . the Matterman Gallery. In Geneva, Switzerland.”
“Is Tony there?”
“No. No. Tony and Jacqueline are away. But—”
“I’m sorry. You must have the wrong number. I can’t help you.”
The line went dead. She put down the receiver. The phone rang immediately.
What if it’s him, she caught herself thinking as her hand reached out for it, ringing to see if I’m okay? But she knew it wasn’t, even before she heard the manager’s voice, efficient, ever eager to help. Mr. Taylor had said that she would be wanting to catch an evening train for Arezzo in order to get herself to Florence that night. The 7:20 was the last through train, and the station was thirty or so kilometers away. In Sunday evening summer traffic it might take a while. He had taken the precaution of ordering a taxi, which was downstairs waiting, but if she had changed her mind he could cancel it again. . . .
It struck her that she should call the airport now to book another seat. The final irony was that the ticket he had bought her was, of course, not in her own name, and she might find herself having to fund her own way home. But the number, when she got through, was engaged and she didn’t want to miss the train. Instead, she got the hotel owner to cash the rest of her English money in case she should need to buy another ticket. As he waved her good-bye on the steps he was, she felt, relieved to see her go. By the end of the season he would have processed the “Taylors” into an exotic story of domestic violence and desertion. Even that wouldn’t be as colorful as the truth, whatever that was.
The journey to Arezzo took almost an hour. She sat watching the landscape turn from forest to scrubland dotted with olive groves and vineyards as the train moved south down from the hills and into the valley. Leaving Casentino. She remembered the morning they had driven out of Florence (was it really only yesterday?), the sun in her eyes and romantic tales of fates and furies in her head. It was not as yet clear how close she, too, had come to losing her soul. For now, against the odds, she was all right, a woman cruising on a high-octane fuel of curiosity and outrage.
She pulled her eyes in from the window. The leather suitcase was perched on the seat opposite, like some old-fashioned traveling companion. It was so stylish and perfect that it was hard to see it as a gift, rather than a token of his self-esteem. Add it to the list of things that didn’t make sense. If this was a scam about fleecing lovers, why waste good money on rich gifts? Somehow they must be part of the deal. Fuck ’em stupid and leave them with something to remember you by. But the puzzle remained: Why spend so much on someone you were planning to steal from later?
Unless you knew you were going to get it back. Of course—if you were going to burgle them, it didn’t matter how much the gift cost. They wouldn’t get to keep it anyway. Had Sophie Wagner’s Russian presents walked out of the apartment with her antique rugs and jewelry? Was that what would happen to her—she’d come home to find the suitcase gone along with the stereo and the computer? God knows it was probably worth more than most of the other things in her house.
The thought lit up like an electric light in her head. Of course. The most expensive object was the present that he stole back. That would explain why he had waited till Sophie Wagne
r got home. If all he wanted was her valuables he could have sent someone in while he was bedding her in another country. But he waited. Presumably because whatever he had given her in St. Petersburg was more important than anything that was already there.
She pulled the case over onto her lap. She was struck again by the extraordinary quality of the work; the suppleness of the leather, the perfection of the stitching. She slid her fingers over its soft sides. Touching skin. It was what this story was about. Think about it, Anna. One more time.
She and Sophie Wagner had met a stranger from the want ads who claimed to be an art consultant, but who in fact made his money through scams.
She opened it up and felt inside. Even the invisible bits were beautifully sewn, a veritable miracle of craftsmanship in an age of cheap disposable luggage.
Scams. The art of theft. Taking what didn’t belong to you and making money out of it.
She plunged her fingers farther down, feeling her way past the carefully wrapped wooden horse right to the bottom of the case. Its leather base was solid, and a substantial size too, though still acceptable for hand luggage.
The art of theft. Or, to be more accurate, the theft of art. Two love affairs, two different places. St. Petersburg and Tuscany: the first a city groaning with art and run by new bad boys willing to flog Mother Russia’s heritage to the highest bidder, the second a region so stuffed with historical treasures that it was virtually impossible to even document, let alone protect them all. It was just a question of matchmaking: find the right collector and the right price, and the only problem is how to lift it off the walls or out of the vaults and get it safely out of the country.
She felt the weight of the bag on her knees. She remembered herself sitting in the taxi that first afternoon from Florence to Fiesole, her old nylon holdall on her lap, the heat sticking her clothes to the seat underneath. It was cooler now, but this case still felt heavier than the other one. Yet she had added nothing since then. Nothing, that is, but the bag itself. It was so simple it was almost an insult. Like giving a present in order to take it away again.
The engine had started to slow down and the voice over the speakers told her they were approaching Arezzo. She hauled herself out of the seat, the bag gripped tight to her chest, and they spilled out together onto the platform, her head spinning. She had just under forty minutes to make the Florence connection. How long did it take to skin a pig a second time?
In the end she went to a hotel at the corner of the station piazza, because the loos were too small, the station waiting room too public, and she couldn’t think of anywhere else where she wouldn’t be disturbed. She took a room for the night. She explained that she had had her wallet stolen, losing everything but the hundred-thousand-lire note she had just put on the counter, but that fortunately she had an emergency stash of British money sewn into the bottom of her suitcase. All she needed was a knife or scissors to cut it out with. He may or may not have believed her. She flashed her wrists to show there was no previous history of self-mutilation. No doubt he had seen and heard weirder in his time. She took the bag and the knife upstairs and started cutting up pigskin.
Home—Sunday P.M.
PAUL LEFT IN midafternoon, dropping us at the tube on our way into town. It seemed better that way, rather than having to negotiate another full-blown set of good-byes. He had told Lily about the meeting and promised he’d be back by Monday night at the latest. He put a lot of energy into emphasizing that fact. I don’t know what she made of it, but she hugged him over the backseat anyway and wished him luck.
We got off at Westminster and walked along the embankment to the Tate Gallery. Outside it was hot and sticky and London was full of tourists, people like Anna, clutching guidebooks and money belts, searching for culture with a secret hankering after life. The Tate was already crowded with Sunday art lovers, but Lily was a regular, and she had a plan. She made a beeline for the Kids’ Cart set up like a colorful tea trolley in the Atrium. From there, clutching a plastic tray full of scissors, instructions, and sticky bits, we sallied forth to track down the right painting with which to inspire our own collage.
She read the gallery map better than I did and, cutting a swath through the various isms of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, we ended up in England circa 1780, in front of a selection of George Stubbs horse paintings, which we then proceeded to re-create with the help of large expanses of sticky colored paper on white card.
I did what I was told. Lily was at her most imperious—concentration like a force field around her. As I sat in the corner cutting out bits of horse anatomy according to her orders, I kept thinking about how my father and I had spent the weekends after my mother’s death. I was too old for do-it-yourself art and too young for Certificate 15 movies; it had been a sorry couple of years. Train journeys were out of the question, of course. I don’t think my father traveled by train for years after her death. Too afraid of running her over on the line, I expect. Fortunately I didn’t absorb that particular fear. Maybe, after all, it’s better not to see the body.
For the record, I don’t really believe my mother was leaving us for anyone else. I think she just made a mistake. Spent too long somewhere and in her hurry to get back to the station disobeyed the notices and crossed against the barrier. You never think it’ll happen to you, anyway. Statistics are only numbers until you become one of them.
No. I don’t think there was any subtext—any other man, or the search for another life, any story at all really. I think she was an ordinary woman who loved her family, and that what happened to her was simply an accident.
I feel safer that way.
Lily was staring up at the painting, her nose wrinkled up in deepest thought. “Problem?” I said, ruffling her hair, which I know she hates but sometimes lets me do anyway.
“He’s got the back legs wrong, they’re too spindly. And look at that tree over there. It’s all furry.”
It had to be said she had a point. “Fried parsley,” I said.
“What?” she giggled.
“That’s what one of his fellow painters called Thomas Gainsborough’s trees.”
“They didn’t,” she said, evidently delighted.
I shrugged knowingly.
“Really. Who told you that?”
“Can’t remember. Must have been something I learned at school,” I said. “Where do you want to put this wavy bit?”
“The mane you mean.” She snatched it from me, insulted. “Honestly, Stel, you don’t know anything about horses.”
“No,” I said. “Me and George Stubbs.”
She rode the rest of the afternoon in equine triumph, but when we got back, tired and hot from the journey, and went into the house, its very emptiness set us both on edge. In the hall the light was flashing on the answering machine. I saw it as soon as we got in and was desperate to answer it, but not in her presence. I needn’t have bothered. She marched straight up to it, flicking all the right buttons like some kindergarten pinball wizard. The tape buzzed back and I found myself picking her up in my arms to listen to it, just for protection.
First the beep, then Patricia’s voice, dancing down the line, calling to see how we all were and whether Mum had managed to get home as yet, and that she would call again this evening sometime. Patricia, of course, would know that her charge was a dab hand at the answering machine, and mediate her words accordingly. I glanced at Lily’s face. The light from the horses had gone out of her now and I could feel what I thought was a growing fragility.
I did what I could. We made supper together, spaghetti carbonara, her sounding out the words in the recipe book while I did the business, bringing her in for the beating of the eggs and the tossing in the pan. We ate it at the kitchen table with Parmesan and tomato salad. It was quarter to seven. The evening stretched ahead like wild unmapped territory, the howl of the wolves getting louder in my imagination.
The phone rang twice between the washing up and the bath. I tried not to run to pick it
up. Mike calling from the theater to see how we were. Lily joined in on the extension and he saved the best bits for her, stories of lights that made a snowstorm on the stage, and stars in the sky. Maybe after school tomorrow she would like to pop in and see it.
“Thanks,” she said. Then, “But I can’t tomorrow. Mum’s coming home.”
No sooner had we put it down than Patricia called again. Lily chattered to her while I finished running the bath; then I put her into it and took the call alone in Anna’s study.
“. . . That’s grand news. When did she call?”
I took a sigh. “It’s not that simple, Patricia. It’s a long story.”
“Oh,” she said, after I had told it. “Oh dear. And I was sure from the way Lily . . .”
She broke off and I realized she was near to tears. Family occasions. They bring out the sentiment in all of us. I cleared my throat and told her we’d speak again tomorrow as soon as she got home. All this and I still had Paul’s late-night call to look forward to.
As I put down the receiver I heard the crash from the bathroom. My heart went crazy. I was there almost before she hit the floor. Only the scream told me I’d missed it. She had been climbing out of the bath, foamy dolphin-fat body on slippery feet, and had missed her footing. As she fell the back of her head had slammed into one of the cupboards. When I finally got to look at it, the skin wasn’t broken and the bump was no big deal at all, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she was hurt and scared and her mum wasn’t there to make it better. Maybe she’d been looking for a reason to cry. I know I had.
Once the tears started they wouldn’t stop. I wrapped her in a big towel and clutched her to me, letting the sobs flow. As she cried I talked to her: “You’re all right, darling. Stupid bath, poor Lily. Nothing broken,” half-repeated phrases, silly mantras of comfort, while I carried her down to the kitchen where I fixed a poultice of ice to stop the swelling.