I drained my glass and pondered my life. She was right, of course. It was stagnant, going nowhere. I wanted to move on but I didn’t know how to. It wasn’t a question of settling down with a woman, breeding a family, building a home, because the stagnation was within me. It was a state of mind. A state of emotion — or in my case, a lack of emotion. I had settled back into the way I was when I was six, before Coyote had sauntered into our world and thawed it with love. I trusted no one. I had made myself a little island, except now it wasn’t Maman and her little chevalier, but me, alone, forever alone.
When I got home Linda had packed her things and left. Nine years of her life gone. She had walked out on me once before, but this time, I knew she wasn’t coming back. I was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of loneliness. I went from room to room like an abandoned dog, regretting my outburst, wishing she would come back. The place seemed empty, like my mother’s apartment. It was tidy and soulless. I soon realized that although the walls echoed with memories of our togetherness, the years all merged into a sludgy washed-out color, making them barely distinguishable. I had invested my time but not my heart. She had come into my life, but like rainfall on the back of a duck, made no impression — because I hadn’t let her.
I put the album and letters on my desk. I had brought my mother’s mail home too, but didn’t feel ready to read it. The telephone rang. It was Harvey Wyatt, my lawyer.
“How are you feeling, Mischa?”
“Fine. What’s up?”
“I’ve finally had an answer from the Metropolitan.”
“And?”
“They can’t accept the Titian as a gift, because they don’t know where it comes from,” he said.
“I can’t help them there.”
“Your mother never said anything?”
“She never mentioned it.”
“Family!” He sighed.
“I didn’t even know she had it, for Christ’s sake.”
“She didn’t steal it, did she?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Harvey, my mother couldn’t even lie, let alone steal!”
“Just kidding.”
“Where the hell would she have stolen it from?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“So, what are they going to do with it?”
“They’ll accept it ‘on loan,’ in case the real owners come back for it.”
“Didn’t they find out anything? It can’t have come from nowhere. Someone must have a record of it, surely?”
“Robert Champion, the head curator, says that he suspects your mother’s Gypsy Madonna was an earlier version that was either lost or stolen. It’s not uncommon for an artist to do a repeat. The later version, the one we all know, which was painted in 1511, hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. They’re not identical, but they’re very similar. The point is, there’s no record of your mother’s version anywhere, which suggests it’s been in the hands of private collectors for hundreds of years. With all the publicity, whoever it belongs to might come out of the woodwork and want it back. You don’t know how long your mother had it, by any chance?”
“I’ve already told you, I never even knew she had it at all. Christ!”
“Calm down, Mischa.” I took a deep breath. “You have to understand that this is a big deal. A painting by a world-famous painter suddenly comes to light after almost five hundred years. The art world is going berserk.”
“It’s not a fake?”
“No. It’s genuine.”
“What the fuck was she doing hiding it away? Why didn’t she sell it?” I laughed bitterly. “We’d both have been rich!”
“Mighty hard selling a painting like that — it’s priceless.”
“It’s a mystery. Now she’s dead, I’ll never know.” But then I had a thought. There was possibly one man who might know. I was astounded that I hadn’t thought of him before. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Call me if anything comes up.” I hung up, then searched for a number I wasn’t even sure I had kept. Matias had retired to Chile with his wife in 1960; I didn’t even know whether he was still alive.
That night I went out alone. I often frequented a small bar called Jimmy’s round the corner from my apartment, but they all knew me in there and they all knew Linda. So I wandered somewhere else, I didn’t notice the name. I sat on a stool and stared into my drink. I didn’t smoke, but I could have done with a drag or two that night. The scent of Coyote’s Gauloise still clung to my nostrils, setting me off balance, dragging me back into the past. There were so many unanswered questions. I wasn’t ready to go through them, because I wasn’t ready to solve them. I was happier with my head in the sand, as Linda had said. I didn’t really want to know why Coyote hadn’t come back. The little boy in me still hurt from his rejection.
After a while, the alcohol melted the tension in my neck and shoulders and my breathing grew deep and regular. I looked around. A man played the guitar while a pretty woman sang sad songs. The mood was mellow, the light dim, the air thick with the scent of smoke and perfume. I felt I was lost in there and began to feel better. Perhaps it was a blessing that Linda had gone. I’d have to do my own washing, so what? I considered my newfound singlehood and realized that it felt good. What I needed was to get away. I needed to get out of New York, go abroad. I hadn’t traveled in years. I’d slipped into the routine of work like a blinkered horse pulling a cart. I’d find Matias and take a vacation at the same time. My spirits rose. I asked for another shot.
“Hi.”
I turned to see a woman sitting on the stool beside me.
“Hi,” I replied.
“You on your own?”
I nodded. I found myself appraising her, my eyes tracing the thick red hair that fell over smooth creamy shoulders, the full breasts barely restrained by the body of her black dress, and a soft, fleshy face.
“You on your own too?” I asked, finding something almost beautiful in her hazel eyes.
“No, they’re all my friends in here.” I raised my eyebrows. She laughed and placed a hand on my arm. “I own the place. My name is Lulu.” She must have registered my blank expression for she said, “You haven’t been here before, have you?”
“No, I haven’t,” I replied.
“No, I would have noticed you.” She caressed my face with her eyes. “Do you have a name, or shall I call you Handsome?” When I laughed at that lame joke I knew the alcohol had really got to me.
“My name’s Mischa, Mischa Fontaine.” I extended my hand. She shook it. Her skin was soft and moist.
“Well, Mischa, I’d like to welcome you to my bar. You’re tall, aren’t you? I like tall men. You’re not from here. You’re foreign. You have an unusual accent.”
I shook my head. “You’re wrong, I’m afraid. I am from around here.” There was something about her expression that made me laugh. It was as if even she wasn’t taking herself very seriously. As if flirting was a game she enjoyed playing.
“Oh, you might be now, but you didn’t grow up here.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s in the eyes. There’s another world in there. That’s what I like about you. You have that look of another world.”
I chuckled and raised my glass. “It must be the drink.”
“Oh, the drink does other things to a man.” She placed her hand on my crotch. “We wouldn’t want you to have too much of it, would we? No, you’re a river that runs deep. Very deep. If I cast my rod, I might find that world down there.” She moved closer and whispered into my ear. “Why don’t you let me take you back to my apartment?” She placed a long red nail through the gap between the buttons of my shirt. “I’d like to fuck you, Mischa. You’re in my bar, you’re my guest, it’s only right that I show you all I have to offer.”
I let her take me home. Her apartment was small but tidy, the air light with the scent of flowers and cheap perfume. I wasted no time, lifted her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom, although I tried a closet fir
st, causing her to scream with laughter. She was delicious in bed: large, soft, and juicy. She had an enormous capacity for pleasure, spreading her legs without shame so that I could touch her there. She writhed beneath my hand like a cat, moaning and mewing, gyrating her hips until I buried my face in her folds and used my tongue. I hadn’t enjoyed sex so much in years. She was a woman of experience, and one who took pleasure as if devouring a hearty meal. When we lay in each other’s arms, our hearts still racing with adrenaline, she murmured softly into my chest. “I knew you’d be a good lover.”
“How did you know?”
“The French always make good lovers.”
“How do you know I’m French?”
“Your accent. There’s a trace of France in it.”
“I was French, long ago,” I said, sensing a sudden longing in my heart for those fields of vines and that warm, pine-scented air of the château.
“Just like I said. There’s another world in those eyes of yours.”
“You have no idea,” I replied. “But it’s a lost world.”
“Nothing is ever lost, Mischa,” she said wisely. “You can get it back if you want it.”
“I don’t believe you can.”
“That, my handsome stranger, is the very thing barring your way.”
24
The following morning I went in to work with a spring in my step. Stanley looked at me with amazement, as if I had grown a second head or something. “Hey, you all right?” he asked. Esther bustled out from behind the desk.
“I hear Linda’s walked out,” she said, folding her arms and shaking her head. “It’s too bad.” Stanley shot her a look.
I smiled at them both. “I’m taking a vacation,” I declared.
Stanley took off his glasses. “A vacation?”
“You know, the thing people do when they need a break,” I replied sarcastically.
“But you never go on vacation.”
“Of course you are,” interrupted Esther, her face crumpling with sympathy. “Your mother’s died, your girlfriend’s walked out, it’s cold, snowy, gray, gloomy. Where you going?”
“Somewhere hot.” I shrugged. “Chile.”
“Is that a country?” Esther joked. “It doesn’t sound hot at all.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow and I want you two to hold the fort while I’m gone.”
“You look better than you did yesterday. Your face is glowing.” Esther grinned. “You’re in love or you got laid. Whichever, I wish you did it more often!”
I shook my head. “I’ve just realized I need to get away for a while.”
“If you see anything interesting while you’re there, be sure to pick it up,” said Stanley, cleaning his glasses with his tie. “Why don’t you go to Europe? It won’t be so easy to find anything worth buying in Chile.”
“Europe!” said Esther. “Ooh, I’d love to go to Europe. Sure you don’t want to take me with you? I’m a great traveling companion. I might talk a lot but I’m never dull.”
“Oh, let me think about that and get back to you.” I pretended to ponder. “No, thanks for the offer, but I’m going alone.” I smiled broadly at her.
Esther laughed. “You’re meshugena — nuts! I’m glad to see the old Mischa is back. I almost lost patience with the grumpy old shlemiel who took his place. I hope you have a good rest. It’ll take the years off you and boy, do you need it! No one would ever believe you’re only in your forties!”
I spent the day sorting out my desk so that Esther and Stanley could run the business in my absence. It was doing well. My mother had taught herself, listened to experts, taken advice, charmed her way into the market, and carved out a niche. When I was a boy, she had taught me to read and write; when I was a young man, she had taught me about the business, so that later, when she fell ill, I was able to take over. She had patience, my mother, and her dedication to my tuition reminded me of those quiet evenings in the stable block in France when I had laboriously learned my letters and she had prompted me gently, her eyes brimming with love. As a troubled young man I worked with her because I didn’t know what else to do and because it suited my nature. I was a loner. I always had been. And I was lost. Her store was a place of refuge where I could hide among inanimate things that didn’t judge me, or love me, or let me down. Later, when my rebel days were no more than painful memories, I grew to love those things as I had loved the bric-a-brac in Captain Crumble’s Curiosity Store; they didn’t disappoint like people did.
I looked out of the window into the snowy street below. I saw Zebedee on the sidewalk, chatting with a young woman with two small children, one in a stroller, the other holding her hand. They had pink cheeks and shiny eyes and their breath rose on the cold air in small clouds of steam. I thought of Linda. She would make a good wife and mother. I wondered whether I had been a fool to let her go. Had I let a perfectly acceptable future slip through my fingers, like the string of a bright yellow balloon? Would the chance ever come around again? Zebedee was waving his arms around and making the children giggle. The mother looked on indulgently, pleased that her babies were happy. It looked so simple, love.
I tracked Matias down. It wasn’t as hard as I had expected. The number I had for him was out of date, which wasn’t a surprise as it was more than twenty years old, but I remembered he had said he was going to retire and breed birds, so when I mentioned that to the woman who answered the telephone, she suggested I call the aviary in Valparaiso. The man from the aviary chuckled when I mentioned his name. “El gordo loco?” he said — “the crazy fat man” — but he gave me his number and address without hesitation. Matias was unforgettable; I smiled when I thought of him. Larger than life in Jupiter, unforgettable in Chile; he’d be easy to track down anywhere in the world.
When Matias answered the telephone, he sounded exactly as he always had. “Hola,” he said in his deep, resonant voice and I felt an overpowering sense of “home.”
“Matias, it’s me, Mischa.” There was no pause while he searched through his mental files. He simply greeted me with the same enthusiasm he’d have shown if he had spoken to me only the day before.
“Mischa, you must be a man now!”
I laughed. “An old man, Matias.”
“If you’re an old man, I should be in the grave! How’s your mother?”
“She passed away,” I said after a small pause, wishing I had called him earlier.
“I’m sorry, Mischa.”
I felt my throat constrict with the effort to contain my grief. My mother and I had always been a small boat adrift in a hazardous sea. Coyote had been the rock against which we had set our anchor for a while, Matias the cove that sheltered us when that rock had slipped away. I wanted to harbor in his big arms again, as I had done as a boy, when I had gone adrift, and sob my heart out for my dead mother and my deadened heart. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. “I want to come and see you,” I croaked.
“You’re always welcome, Mischa. You’re the son I never had, you know that.” He must have sensed my sorrow, for his voice became low and tender. “Come tomorrow. I’ll pick you up from Santiago myself.”
I wasted no time. I packed little and with haste. I suddenly felt the need to leave the city as soon as possible, as if the very air was choking me. I left my mother’s apartment as it was, her mail on my desk unopened, her bag of memories on my bed. Only my little rubber ball came with me, in my pocket, as it had done before.
The moment I was on the plane I was able to breathe again. The ostrich hadn’t simply put his head under the carpet but let it spirit him off to another life far away. As I escaped, I didn’t realize that I was embarking on a journey that would force me to confront my demons.
I watched the lights of New York City diminish as the plane climbed into the night, and relished a growing sense of optimism. Perhaps Matias would shed light on Coyote’s disappearance; we had never discussed it and, if he had talked it over with my mother, she had never said. Anyhow, I had been a boy and then, when
I had become a teenager, I hadn’t wanted to know. It had been a form of self-defense, I know, but it had overridden my desire to know what had become of him. If I didn’t confront it, it wouldn’t hurt me, so I had thought. The problem was, the wound cut deep. Even though my skin had grown over it, the flesh was as raw and bleeding as ever. I went with the intention of finding Coyote but, really, I just wanted to go home.
The flight was long, but I didn’t mind. I used the time to reflect. I felt I was in limbo, suspended between two worlds: the present, which I had left behind in New York, and the future, which was really a return to my past. I perked up when the plane flew low over the brown suede Andes mountains. The sky was cerulean, the sun dazzling white as it rose with the morning. The heat shimmered off the arid sierra, and my spirits soared. Only when we began to descend into Santiago did I notice the famous smog that sat in the valley between the mountains, like a bowl of steaming soup, waiting for the wind to blow it away. I forgot about Linda, my cold office in downtown Manhattan and my mother’s silent apartment. It wasn’t until I saw Matias, standing in Arrivals, that I realized how lost I had been.
The years had left little impression on his skin. Only his curly black hair had turned gray. When he saw me, his cheeks glowed pink and his jovial face lit up into a wide smile. We fell into an embrace and, although I was now taller than he was, he still felt like home. “Dios, you’ve grown like a beanstalk!” he exclaimed with a hearty chuckle, patting my back so hard, I winced. “What have you been eating?”
“You don’t know how good it is to see you,” I said, holding his thick shoulders, sinking into the familiar gaze of his toffee-brown eyes.
The Gypsy Madonna Page 21