by Jane Smiley
Max said, “I think maybe it would be nice to take a complete break from the war, if only for a day or two,” and Stoney saw that Elena heard exactly what he meant. She said, “Yes, it would be nice,” more as if she wished to mean it than as if she really did, but Stoney respected the attempt. He glanced at Isabel, across the room. Isabel looked authentically intrigued. He grinned at her, and she grinned back. He said, “Okay, then, I’ll call Ben Avram and say, what, today? That we’ll go up today? The sooner the better, I think.” He tried not to sound excessively relieved.
Cassie said, “Will we need to buy food?”
“I’ll ask,” said Stoney.
All around him, heads nodded. Max kissed Elena on the forehead, then he said, “How many cars are we taking?”
“Not mine,” said Simon. “I don’t want it to feel humiliated. I’ll ride with Zoe and Paul.”
“I’ll ride with Stoney,” said Isabel.
Max said, “I can take four—Elena, Cassie, Delphine, and myself.”
“I might not want to stay up there every single minute,” said Charlie, “so I’ll take the rental and people can use it if they need to.”
And now that he had won them over, now that they were actually talking about transportation, Stoney’s sense of relief shaded toward anxiety. He had talked them into it, and, yes, it would probably turn out to be a sojourn in the palace, but, hey, this was Hollywood. It could also turn out to be The Haunting. He pulled out his cell phone and called Ben Avram. Ben Avram answered at once, as if he had been waiting for the call.
It was always amazing, Stoney thought, what sort of properties could be found in the hills around L.A. For sure, Mike had more than five acres here, maybe seven or eight, right in Bel-Air, in fact with a view of the Getty, though from the opposite side to Max’s view—Max viewed the exhibition hall and the restaurant, whereas Mike viewed the permanent galleries, though Mike viewed them from somewhat farther away. Today, as Stoney looked out, the Getty was clearly a building rather than a glacier. The air was so fine that he could see tiny museumgoers strolling here and there on the piazzas. But you only observed the Getty as you were approaching Mike’s place along an avenue lined with eucalyptuses that hid almost everything. Then you turned suddenly in front of the house. Apart from the driveway and the view toward the pool, there were so many trees and glades that you had no sense of being high up or exposed—everything was designed for luxury rather than display.
Behind the eucalyptuses, the house was set within an Italian-style garden of alternating pergolas and small lawns punctuated by beds of spring plants that were now, at the end of March, shifting from daffodils (tops tied together) and tulips (heads clipped off) to irises, lilies, and roses (just budding out), as well as more exotic plants that Stoney could not identify. The essential requirement, for southern California, that no burnable brush or trees grow within thirty feet of the dwelling, was elegantly managed by the irrigated lawns. Paths led across the lawns and past the beds. It was tempting to venture onto one of them, and he yielded to temptation, with Isabel, even though he should have been organizing things with the manager, whose name he could not remember. He looked at his watch. It was certainly at least twenty minutes until the arrival of the others. He also thought it would be wise to ascertain from Isabel the precise nature of their show for the other members of the family—his lines, his demeanor, his feelings that were to be made evident.
They wandered down a hill and came upon a tiny circular valley, a mere cleft, but strangely remote from the house, where the grass was thick and bright, amazingly green for California, even at the end of winter. The hillside was dotted with neatly pruned and well-cared-for trees. Some of them were in quite fragrant bloom. Stoney said, “What do you think those are?”
Isabel took a deep breath. “Those are almonds. And there are cherries, plums, olives, avocados, and crab apples, and, of course, you recognize the lemons and the limes and the oranges, because they have the fruit and the flowers at the same time. Oh, I love this. Last summer, I spent so many mornings at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden! That’s a bay tree. There’s rosemary spilling over the rocks over there. That patch is lavender, but it isn’t too fragrant at this time of the year. Smell these. I don’t know what they are. This is much wilder than my dad’s Japanese garden. I like it.”
She crushed a couple of moist leaves between her thumb and forefinger and held them up to Stoney’s nose. Their sweetness was light but delicious. She said, “Maybe verbena. I had some soap like that once. It might have been the verbena one.” She gazed around. “Isn’t this something? You can’t even see the house from here. And look. There’s a little stream down there.” She trotted down the slope, and Stoney followed her, even though maybe he was hearing another car arrive. The stream, about four feet across and two feet deep, ran clear over what looked like carefully and artistically placed stones of a great variety of shapes and colors set in pure white sand. Stoney had never seen anything like it in California. Isabel said, “It’s a made stream. It’s a completely idealized, perfect stream, and you only get to see it if you are willing to hike down this hill and back up again. Amazing! I wonder if he pays the sun to shine, too?” She laughed. After a week of strange weather—high, apocalyptic winds and wild clouds—in this spot it was calm. The air was dry and fragrant.
Stoney followed her along the little stream around the hillside to where it entered what appeared to be the swimming-pool area. Avram had said there were three connected pools, and this looked like the bottom pool, at this time of day still partially shaded. It was alluring to be in this private spot with her. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. The lowest pool was shallow and actually rather warm (he felt the water), certainly heated. Instead of concrete, it was constructed of smooth stones, and a light current eddied from one side to the other, the effect of a small bubbler. “No mosquitoes for Mike,” said Isabel. “I love this.” They went around the lowest pool and climbed some steps to the second pool, which was much bigger and deeper and in brighter sunlight. This pool seemed to be the main swimming pool; it was entirely constructed of mosaic tiles set in an elaborate floral design, mostly purple and gold. It was hard to make out what the flowers represented on the bottom were meant to be, because of the deep water rippling over them, but maybe wisteria. The sides of the pool were “planted” in alternating white and purple irises, which were depicted as if growing out of thick mosaic grass. Isabel said, “Wow! Did you see this before, Stoney?”
“When Avram had the place, there was a kidney-shaped pool from about 1955 and a rambling adobe. I don’t think I’ve been up here in five years, though. Avram and Jerry and some other guys used to smoke cigars up here.”
“Oh, right,” said Isabel. “And shoot small animals, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure,” said Stoney.
They climbed another set of steps alongside the waterfall, which plunged over a third mosaic, this one of some god, probably Bacchus, Stoney thought, with his head back and a bunch of grapes in his hand. The upper pool, which was just below and to the south of the golden house, had a fresco on the bottom of a girl with a unicorn lying in her lap. She, too, had her head back; her eyes were closed. A dress, form-fitting and wet-looking, partially covered her breasts. Her blond hair swept behind her and around the periphery of the pool, which was not terribly large and rather shallow, more for lounging in the water than for swimming. The silvery-white unicorn lay with its legs curled, like a dog, and its head in the girl’s arms. She was stroking its cheek with one hand, while the fingers of her other hand were spread over the golden horn that grew from its forehead. Its tail flowed out to the periphery of the pool and entwined with her hair. The unicorn had long eyelashes, and its eyes were closed, too. Stoney said, “Three guesses what that picture is supposed to represent.”
Isabel squeezed his hand. “I like the unicorn. I always wanted a unicorn when I was a kid. I thought it would be just like that.” She gestured toward the pool. “Me and the ulti
mate dog/horse combination.” Stoney had never heard her express this sentiment before, and it made him smile, it sounded so promising in some way. He said, “Say—” but as they walked along the side of the pool, here came Zoe, Paul, Max, and Elena, who had gone around the other side of the house. Elena caught sight of the pool. She said, “How lovely!”
Stoney looked at his watch.
Isabel said, “Just go down the steps by the waterfall. You won’t believe it.”
“There’s more? You three should go through the greenhouse and aviary we just walked through. It’s meant to reproduce some spot in northern Australia, with all these strange rain-forest plants and at least a hundred birds of all varieties. The birdsong in there is deafening. I guess they have three bird people who come in just to take care of them. Parrots, macaws, lorikeets, whipbirds, bellbirds. So many colors! And there’s a butterfly house, too. It’s like a zoo here, but no big animals, only birds and butterflies.”
“I have to find the manager,” said Stoney.
Elena smiled. “I don’t think we are going to get Delphine out of the bird sanctuary. We saw someone. He was standing on the steps. When we started gawking, he gave us this big wave, as if to say, Go ahead and look.”
“We should go back to the house,” said Zoe.
“I should, at least,” said Stoney. “But how do you get to the front?”
Paul said, “This place sure does kill any ennui you might have been feeling.”
Stoney and Isabel now followed a path that wound through the pergolas, around the aviary, and emerged in just the right spot for taking in the façade. Paul and Zoe were behind them. No one was standing on the steps, but the front door was open. They walked across the flagstones toward it. “What style is this building?” said Zoe. It was not modern and it was not California Spanish, but, Stoney thought, it fit with the landscape in a strange way. “Palladian,” said Paul, “but not like anything I’ve seen before. Italian Palladian with, let’s say, an overdone, vaguely Russian twist.”
“Let’s say that,” said Zoe, laughing. Stoney laughed, too. The house was built of pale-golden stone. Stoney rubbed one of the columns as they stepped onto the porch. It left bright flecks on the tips of his fingers. The big double doors were wide open, and Cassie stood in the entry hall, talking to a small man in a suit who looked, Stoney thought, like old pictures of Rudolf Nureyev. Stoney half expected him to leap in the air and spin around, but he only smiled, excused himself from Cassie, and glided toward them across the polished floor as a glossy, elegant animal might have, a cheetah, or something smaller, something like a lynx. He reached out his hand to Stoney, and Stoney took it, an apology on his lips. But the manager laughed gaily. He introduced himself as Joe Blow, and waved away Stoney’s embarrassment. Cassie laughed, too. He said, “Please, call me Joe. When I came to this country from Russia, for Mike, I found it amusing to take this kind of name, the name that means just any person at all. It was between ‘John Doe’ and ‘Joe Blow’ for me, and ‘Joe Blow’ did not sound so bourgeois, so I chose that one.”
“What was your name in Russia, Joe?” said Cassie.
“In Russia, my name is Akaky Akakievich.” He grinned again, though Stoney did not quite understand why. But he seemed like a good-natured fellow, and Stoney said, “You must be the manager that Avram told me about.”
“Yes, I oversee Mike’s property here. We are not quite finished with every room, but we are tremendously happy to have you visit.” He nodded to Zoe, and then to Elena, but he addressed his remarks to Max. “Mr. Maxwell. I have seen several of your films and admired them very much, and of course everyone knows Miss Cunningham, and so it is our pleasure and honor to enjoy your company for these few days. Mr. Ben Avram has supplied me with a list of the names of each guest, and so, if you will just inform me who is who, I will be happy.”
“But first,” said Cassie, “you have to tell them what you were telling me about these tapestries.”
“Miss Cassie Marshall, of Marshall Arts Gallery in Pacific Palisades, and I have just been getting acquainted.” He stepped back with a smile and turned toward the room. Stoney’s gaze followed his gesture, and then he saw the tapestries hanging on the walls. There were eight of them, each some ten or twelve feet high and eight or ten feet wide. They went around three sides of the room and seemed to depict a story.
“These tapestries are a set. They were made in France, at a workshop in the Loire Valley, probably in the beginning to the middle of the fifteenth century. They tell the love story of a couple named Pierre Dieudonné and Agnès La Belle, but no doubt these were not a real couple. I am certain this couple was intended to symbolize an ideal of true love. Here they are in the first frame.”
In the first tapestry, the two lovers seemed to be setting out on their horses. A castle flying banners was depicted in the background, and a dark forest loomed to the left. Agnès was wearing a blue dress with a golden bodice and a tall headdress. Her horse was white, and Pierre was lifting her into the saddle. Pierre’s horse, dark brown with a white blaze, whose rein was looped over the branch of a tree, was glancing back toward the castle. Joe said, “You see, they are escaping. He is a prince and she is of low birth, and they have been forbidden to marry—by his father because he wishes his son to make a powerful alliance, and by her father because her father is afraid of his father. And so they have decided to elope.”
In the second panel, they were deep in the forest. Her white horse, her headdress, and the white blaze on his horse’s face were the only bright spots in the dense, dark mass of limbs and tree trunks. “You see,” said Joe, “that here is a fork in the road. If you look up in the right corner of the tapestry, all the way at the top, there is a town with a bit of bright sky above it. That is the town that Pierre wishes to find, where he has some friends. In the upper left corner is a tiny, quite sinister dark castle with a dark sky above it. As you can see, Pierre and Agnès are gazing upon one another as young lovers do, and because they are doing that, Pierre’s horse is beginning to take the left fork, and of course Agnès’s horse will follow him. That is how they go astray.”
The group of them stepped over to the third frame. Joe said, “Now you see that the dark castle is down here in the right corner, and the drawbridge is down. Up here on the left are Pierre and Agnès, and this band of knights gallops toward them. These knights are bandits of the forest, enemies of Pierre and his family. You can see here, Agnès notices them before Pierre does.” Stoney could see that—both the girl’s face and her horse’s head were turned toward the knights; the fear in the horse’s expression was more eloquent than that of the girl. Pierre looked as he had in the previous tapestry, all moony with affection and desire.
Joe said, “After this, there seem to be a number of missing panels. In the story, Agnès and her horse run into a very deep and wild part of the forest and are lost. In this next panel that we have, here is a battle between two sets of knights. The original group numbers ten—you can see their helmets all in a row, decked out in black and yellow, the colors of their master. Don’t you like the way the weaver has caused them to glint brightly in contrast to the dark branches and leaves of the forest? Coming against them from the right are twelve knights belonging to another faction, and they are dressed in red and green. Gang warfare has not changed much in six hundred years, wouldn’t you say? But look, up here in the right corner we have Pierre, and he is wearing only his pants, and his shirt and boots lie upon the ground beside him. Some of the threads have been worn away in this section of the tapestry, unfortunately. In the story, Pierre will have been threatened with torture and hanging by the black-and-yellow group. Now he has escaped, but he has lost his horse.”
The next panel was fairly self-explanatory, thought Stoney. Pierre was wandering through the forest, clearly dejected. The tapestry-maker had taken this opportunity to fill the forest with birds and animals, none of which Pierre was noticing, but all of which were noticing Pierre. His path was strewn with flowers, and f
lowers and fruit seemed to lean toward him from the branches of the trees. The forest was not as wild or hostile as he thought it was, but he didn’t notice that. He stumbled along, his sword dangling from his side and dragging on the ground.
They stepped to the following panel. Isabel said, “Why is he in the tree?”
“Well,” said Joe, “he has hoisted himself into the tree, and you can see that he has tied himself to the trunk so that he will not fall out while he is sleeping. No doubt, he feels that this is the safest way to spend the night in such a wild forest. And, indeed, here is his horse, being chased across the lower half of the panel by wolves. You see the fear on the horse’s face, again. This weaver, whoever he was, was very good with horses. Of course, every tapestry had many weavers, but the expert who has told me about this tapestry maintains that one person might specialize in one theme, such as flowers or birds or, indeed, the facial expressions of horses.
“In our next tapestry, we turn to Agnès, who has found herself refuge in a small house deep in the forest. We see the householder here to the left, in the doorway, and you can just see his wife peeking from behind him. Perhaps he is a woodcutter or a mushroom gatherer. At any rate, his clothes and shoes reveal that he is a humble fellow. The wife’s headdress is merely a scarf. Here to the right you see Agnès’s white horse, and he is looking around. I think he is surveying the path along which they have come, keeping a wary eye out while Agnès and the couple confer.
“After this panel, there are two missing. In the story, the house is raided in the night by one of the marauding bands, though I do not know whether it is the black-and-yellow band or the red-and-green band, and Agnès takes refuge in a pile of hay, where she narrowly escapes being impaled by a spear belonging to one of the knights. When the knights leave, they steal her horse. Subsequently, Agnès emerges from the hay and persuades the humble couple to accompany her to the nearest castle, where she throws herself upon the mercy of the count who lives there, whose wife turns out to be a friend of Pierre’s. I am sure there would have been a panel showing the conversation between the two women, in which the girl tells of the dangers she has passed and the wife compassionates her. We would also be able to see the very elaborate room in which the conversation would have taken place. I am very sorry that this panel has been lost, because no doubt many of the details of dress and furniture would have helped date our tapestry more precisely.”