The Oldest Confession

  “Must we stay on until you find out who stole the paintings from us?”

  “Those paintings represent an enormous amount of money.”

  “Must you always think first and last about money?”

  “It is you who always thinks of money!” He flared up, his face reddening. It was an intolerable area.

  “If the money represented by the paintings leads us on and on into other things, perhaps into violent things, will you allow that there is the possibility of one more sin existing, the sin of the love of money, my learned Cardinal?”

  “Sarcasm is not necessary,” he said sullenly.

  “Answer the question.”

  “Which part of the question?”

  “Both parts.”

  “I have already been led to a violent thing.”

  “What?”

  “It is a sin, yes.”

  “How many sins will make you safe or get you enough money, then?”

  “Eve, listen to me. The lease on the hotel has just under ninety days to run. We will go to Spain and I will try to find the paintings and if I don’t find them by the time the lease has expired we will leave Spain or we will stay in Spain, as you elect, but I will have finished with those paintings. Is that acceptable?”

  “I’ll accept it because I have to.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Jim, why did you accept this ‘new’ sin as a sin so readily? You contradicted yourself.”

  He was puzzled. “What new sin?”

  “This new sin of violence,” she said.

  “New sin?” He snorted. “Violence is only childish unkindness.” He got to his feet. “Come on. Get dressed. This is our last night in Paris for God knows how long. Let’s walk up to Fouquet’s and watch the world go by.”

  The town house of the Duquesa de Dos Cortes overlooked El Retiro where God sat on a park bench under the shade trees fashioning houseflies and dreaming his terrible dreams. The duchess insisted upon giving a gala party in honor of the wedding, three days before, of her friends, Mr. and Mrs. James Wallace Bourne. Seventeen servants polished glasses, roasted birds, shined silver, skated on rags over waxen floors, chilled wine, dampened down cigars, sang horrendous flamenco, and were happier than they had been for years and years because the duque was dead, dead, dead, and the soul of their darling duchess had seemed to soar.

  The duchess and Cayetano had two days off from the bulls. They were en route from Valencia to Jerez de la Frontera where he would fight in two days’ time. They had drifted on a cloud from Medinaceli to Zaragoza to Barcelona to Valencia and now, six bulls later, they were absolutely at the top of their form, dedicating, commemorating and entertaining their dear friends, en route to more of love and art in the south.

  The duchess didn’t talk to many people any more and many people didn’t talk to the duchess as a result of her revolutionary activities on behalf of the king, her formation of the cooperatives, her contempt for widowhood, her flaunting of a bullfighter and a variety of other reasons so that the guests who were assembled were very pleasant company indeed.

  Among those present were Jean Marie Calbert, the brilliant new French painter who had been discovered at Bourne’s hotel and invited; Cayetano had invited his protégé, a dashing, young novillero named Victoriano Roger who was a lawyer but who was too sensible to stay with that trade, Cayetano said; the other Victoriano, Dr. Muñoz, Marqués de Villalba, arrived early wearing a black tweed dinner jacket with satin lapels and a peony in his buttonhole. He explained the flower, which he had had bred for boutonniere use, to the bride telling her how he absolutely adored color and underscoring that she could be sure that he was not one of those who would attempt the weight, in color tones, of a fleshy peony against a background of mohair or silk, which was why his jacket was made of tweed. He told her severely that a fitness in some things lays the road to a fitness in all things, then he asked her how long Bourne had been her lover before they had married, if they were truly married. She told him, somewhat expressionlessly, that they were really brother and sister which caused him to suck air sharply between his clenched mouselike teeth then to compliment her on her sense of the decadent. She yawned widely, looked down at him, then turned away to find Jim. His face got very red.

  Because Monsieur Calbert had accepted, Representative and Mrs. Pickett had been invited, for new, important painters of any nation made the congressman happy and Mrs. Pickett was sure to enjoy the cold wine. Sir Kenneth Danvers, the famous British photomicrographer of the insect world, danced through the evening with Miss Doris Spriggs, a beautiful insect cataloguer, singing two or three hundred songs of all nations. At one o’clock in the morning a troupe of gypsies swept in with guitars and firecracker shoes and iron palms and a flamenco was started from which the night never recovered, losing joy to the day.

  Off and on the population of the party swelled and shrank and swelled again from fourteen to sixty-four people, leveling off at about nineteen, counting Mrs. Pickett who really should have been counted out; all of whom had Dublin thirsts and the glazed intensity of Glaswegians on New Year’s Eve, which is enough party spirit to strike terror to the heart of Tamerlane. The fact that four-fifths of the guests were Spanish helped this effect immeasurably. They drew energy from the music, from the gypsies who were acting as though they had just awakened from a rest of seven months of hibernation, and from an undoubted tonic called sangria, which went on to become the people’s choice, made up of red wine, champagne and cognac with a little lemon for the teeth.

  Neither Bourne nor Eve could ever remember such a perfect party where everyone seemed endowed with love and joy, after Dr. Muñoz had taken the Picketts home, and everything that had happened to all of them so worth celebrating.

  Before the flamenquistas had arrived, Dr. Muñoz took Bourne aside and told him that he had been put off for the last time, that he understood things like marriages and journeys to Paris had to take precedence over the mere requests of one’s old friends, but that he would not take one more postponement of Bourne’s visit to his new flat. Surely Bourne would bring Mrs. Bourne, as delightful and beautiful a young woman as he had ever met. Bourne would. And perhaps he would bring the stimulating French painter, Monsieur Calbert, as it was quite possible that the Picketts would drop by. Bourne would. Very well then. The following Saturday, which was three days away, at seven o’clock. Dr. Muñoz had a lot of new things which made him very proud of Spanish art and he wanted Bourne’s forthright opinion, no hemming and hawing, about each one of them because, as Bourne well knew, he valued his opinion very highly.

  When he broke the news of the engagement to Eve the following day she kicked a hatbox clear across the room in a vile temper. Bourne told her that these were the things one did, that was all, and that he was sure that if they ever got back to the States she could get even through invitations from some of her friends.

  The duchess approved of Eve exceedingly, and Eve approved of the duchess even more than that. Eve was a smashing hit with everyone there, but the duchess was particularly pleased with her because she had lived for five days in dread since they had received Bourne’s cable: to her Bourne had been the most discriminating of men so it seemed like some kind of justice that he would select something bovine and shrill to marry. The duchess ended the evening as she had started it, hugging Jim and hugging Eve. And she told them that because they were all together, she and Cayetano, Bourne and Eve, at the moment of greatest happiness for each of them and all of them, they would be friends for the rest of their days, sharing all that there was to share. She became very serious. She took Eve’s hand, then put Jim’s great hand on top of that, then Cayetano’s, then her own at the summit. She looked from face to face in the soft light of dawn which had been the legacy of the wonderful night, her eyes shining then running over with tears. She took her own hand off the top of the pyramid pact then kissed Cayetano’s hand, then Jim’s hand, then Eve’s hand with the humility of a great lady.

  Time never ch
eats the great. Time is living and life is only time in motion, fast or slow. The duchess simply did not bother to make the unimportant moves, so that when she chose to move she endowed that space in time with greatness. Eve felt exalted and cleansed. Bourne felt stronger and more tender. Cayetano, who was the truest receptacle of all the duchess would ever feel again, felt loosed among angels.

  That night, Mr. Pickett wrote a letter to Arthur Turkus Danielson, the hard-hitting editor of Art, Things and You, the dominating art weekly in the United States and one which even Mr. Pickett had only cracked twice in a long life given to art and then over a matter of eight-year intervals. He wrote very slowly. Every word would count with Danielson and nothing got by him. What a man, Mr. Pickett thought with a sideways wag of his head at the thought. He had discovered Blore in a junkshop, ten years after the painter’s sad death, and had found immortality for him also beginning with that day. He had come out fearlessly against the shockingly dark backgrounds utilized by Titian and by so doing had driven down the values of all Titians throughout the world by over three per cent and the losses had stayed in that cellar for over six months. Mr. Pickett could not be sure how much Danielson knew about the painters of Spain, past and present, because Danielson was not a man who would talk to contributors face-to-face, preferring the letter method, but from the notes they had exchanged Mr. Pickett knew the editor’s comprehension of the subject to be more than sound, in fact in several instances almost echoing two of Mr. Pickett’s books on the Iberian world. “Dear Mr. Danielson,” he wrote. “In a setting suggesting the middle ages I have made a discovery which is destined to thrill the world. It is one which I humbly offer to Art, Things and You for final evaluation and stentorian announcement. If that sentence seems vainglorious to you, Mr. Danielson, then what I am about to set down will shatter and stun. In a canvas to be called I hope, from this day forward, The Pickett Troilus, I have discovered the presence of two great brushes and two great palettes. I will frustrate you no longer. One canvas, two immortal masters. One painting, two great painters. You are saying, ‘Who are these painters? What is this painting?’ I am sure, sir. Upon my twenty-seven years of authority in the field of Iberian art, as author of three books which teach the art of Spain in the schools, colleges, universities and ateliers of the Western world, I pledge to you that the superb Troilus, the property of the Duchess de Dos Cortes, was painted by Diego Rodríguez da Silva y Velázquez and Peter Paul Rubens!” Mr. Pickett paused again, baffled and annoyed over whether it was Peter Paul or Paul Peter, chewing on the end of his pen. “One moment, sir!” he wrote on. “Within this communication you will have found a stout brown envelope containing three photographic slides. Project these slides, Mr. Danielson, and when you have seen with your own eyes what I have claimed, then return to this letter and read my documentation which will make the art story of the year.” Mr. Pickett took a fresh piece of paper and, setting down as a heading the words THE PICKETT TROILUS, he began to write his monograph.

  Mrs. Pickett called out from the bed, “How long are you going to sit there with the light on, you fat son-of-a-bitch? Are you writing to some sailor? Why the hell couldn’t I have stayed at that party if all you were going to do was come home here and write all night with the light on, for Christ’s sake!”

  “In a minute, darling girl. In a minute.”

  “In a minute, my ass!”

  “Have a drink, sweetheart. I’ll be right there.”

  “A drink of what, you silly bastard?”

  “There’s a pint of bourbon in the night table drawer.”

  “Oh. Thank you, dearest.”

  The message left by Señor López with the key man at the Hotel Autentico read: NADA. VUELVA USTED DENTRO DE DOS SEMANAS LOPEZ, in heavy, black crayon on the back of a sheet from a German desk calendar of 1943. Señor López had made his canvass and had nothing to report. Tense was efficient. López wanted her back in two weeks. López was thorough. When she did go back in two weeks, Eve decided, she would leave a note asking to see him just to satisfy herself on what he had done so that Jack Tense could say he had earned the fifty pounds and because she had promised a written report to Tense so that Mr. Merton would have more material to fill out the chapter. Before she had left him, Tense had agreed that if “Crime Is My International Business” were ever sold to films Glynis Johns would play her part. “You’d make three of Glynis Johns,” he said with deepest admiration, but he’d agreed.

  It was a beautiful day so she decided to walk home. Thinking about what a sweet, old thing Jack Tense was she stopped off at SEPU, Madrid’s five and ten cent store equivalent on the Avenida de José Antonio and bought a picture of a stereotypically beautiful, middle-European film actress with leaden eyelids and a mouth like a broken doughnut, for five pesetas. At the General Post Office she autographed the portrait for Tense writing For Jack, who gave me Spain, with the memory of fire, Marianne Pickett, then slipped it into the stout envelope and mailed it, care of The Populace, London.

  Bourne had been mistaken about Dr. Muñoz’ new apartment being on Calle Fortuny. It was on the extension of Fortuny, Calle Amador de los Ríos, directly opposite The Jockey, a formidable restaurant.

  Dr. Muñoz, looking shorter than usual and altogether less attractive to all of them, was bubbling with good spirits when he met them at the door of the apartment which took up the entire top floor, waving the houseman away then shooing the three guests ahead of him to a very small, very comfortably furnished bar with enormously broad and high windows, high enough to overlook the Paseo de la Castellana and out toward Las Ventas.

  En route from the main floor to the bar he kept starting them and stopping them to look at a piece of carving here or a small painting there. Everything was done in breathtaking good taste, which for some reason, probably for reasons of personal revulsion for the doctor, they found surprising.

  “For a man who is always crying poverty you live pretty well, old boy,” Bourne said, trying for some fake essence of camaraderie.

  “My dear boy,” Muñoz said, “when I refer to poverty, naturally I speak of relative poverty. After all, if Goya hadn’t cost my family almost everything there would have been very few people richer than I in all of Europe. What will you have, Mrs. Bourne?”

  “Sherry, please.” Eve had perched herself on a high bar stool at the end of the bar near the window. The two men leaned on their elbows upon the bar between Eve and the doorway under the immediate scrutiny of the cat Montes who faced them from a place among the bottles, while the host stood ready for anything behind the bar, a corkscrew in his hand.

  “Sherry? Come, come, come, Mrs. Bourne. That won’t do at all. I have put in a huge stock of whiskeys for you. Rare bottles like bourbon which only Congressman Pickett could possibly hope to get in Spain. Impossible to get. Very American. Won’t you have a glass of bourbon?”

  “Sherry, please.” He seemed shot down in mid-air. He swallowed hard then addressed Jean Marie, pouring a small glass of sherry for Eve as he did.

  “M’sieu Calbert? Quinquina? Amer Picon? St. Raphael?”

  “Byrrh, I think.”

  “Oh.” He looked distressed. “I find I don’t have any Byrrh. What a pity! And I was being so very French when I prepared all this for you.” He looked at Jean Marie hatefully, his face like a little fist, his pencil-line mustache like the seam in a dark, clenched glove.

  “I’ll take a Dubonnet then,” Jean Marie said pleasantly.

  “A Dubonnet?”

  “Dubonnet is very French,” Jean Marie said.

  “Of course it is. But I haven’t put it in.”

  “Then give me water. Your Madrid water is marvelous.”

  “Thank you. But you are sure you won’t have a Quinquina, Amer Picon, or St. Raphael?”

  “No, thank you. Water will be fine.” Dr. Muñoz poured the water. His hand shook slightly.

  “Jim!” he said briskly. “What will you have?”

  “Anything, Victoriano. Anything at all.”

/>   “No, no. Jim! Please! I insist! You must have what you want. Perhaps some vodka. The Jockey gets me Iron Curtain vodka from Poland. Marvelous stuff. Or Drambuie. Oh, my yes. There’s something really smooth.”

  “You should do television commercials, Dr. Muñoz,” Eve said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said you have a wonderful voice for television.”

  “Ah. Well! Thank you, my dear. Now then, Jim. What will it be?”

  “Vodka, I think. I’ll try vodka with a little ice.” Dr. Muñoz had that in front of him in a jiffy. Eve asked him what he was going to have. He explained that he didn’t drink or smoke then flashed his puerile smile. They all settled down to awkward talk.

  “I’ve read a great deal about your work, M’sieu Calbert. Wonderful things.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I don’t paint myself, but I do pride myself that I am something of a judge of painting. I hope you concur, Jim?”

  “Indeed you are, Victoriano.”

  “Are you interested in art, Mrs. Bourne?”

  “Avidly.”

  “By the way,” Bourne put in, “you mentioned some new pieces you’d picked up. We’re looking forward keenly to seeing them.”

  “Muchly,” Eve said.

  “Later. I shall certainly be honored to show them to you later. A friend is stopping by for just a moment to pick up a book. He won’t stay but a minute, then we shan’t be interrupted.”

  “What are your new pieces, doctor?” Jean Marie asked sleepily.

  “Paintings. Spanish paintings. I’m really so anxious for Jim to see them before I show them to Mr. Pickett.”

  “Mr. Pickett?”

  “Mr. Pickett is the authority on Spanish art,” Bourne told him. “He was at the party the other night.”

  Jean Marie turned to Eve. “Am I thinking of the same man?”

  “Probably.”

  Jean Marie shrugged. “Then I guess we were talking about French art. But that’s not his field.”

  “Are you enjoying Madrid, Mrs. Bourne?” Dr. Muñoz darted away with the conversational ball.