by Morris West
‘So…will you do the job, Nicki?’
‘For you and for Palombini’s money, of course I’ll do it. Now, if you’ll promise to see me safely to bed, we’ll have another brandy.’
Next morning, early, Mather returned to Tor Merla, hung-over but purged of his devils. Claudio Palombini was still at the villa. He was happy to know that the archive would probably be taken off his hands and that tax advantages were possible. He charged Mather to begin the negotiations with the National Library and to supervise Tolentino’s valuation of the art works. He handed over a cheque for six weeks’ salary, told Mather that his legacy would be paid within thirty days and then left for Switzerland.
Mather pottered about the archive for an hour, noting what had to be done to set it in passable order for inspection by the directorate of the National Library. He needed trestle tables and shelving to get the stacks of documents off the floor before they were all eaten by cockroaches and paper-worms. He was aware, though he had not mentioned it to Palombini, that the Library – short of staff and storage space – might well balk at the unwieldy mass of documents still to be examined.
He called up the villa and asked Matteo to have the carpenter start work the following morning; then, because the day was bright and the courtyard warm, he made himself coffee and settled down under the chestnut tree with his own reference books and the unfinished text of the monograph.
He was working through the account book for the year 1505 when he stumbled on an unusual entry for the month of October. On the eighth day of that month it was noted that a sum of 80 florins was paid to Master Raffaello, painter from Urbino, on account of two portraits – the one of Donna Delfina Palombini, wife of the Gonfaloniere Andrea Palombini; the other of their daughter, the Maiden Beata. In addition, there was payment of 60 florins for five cartoons for a pala, an altar-piece, for the chapel of San Gabriele on the confines of the villa. The note added that these sums were in full payment – signifying that the commissions had been executed and the works delivered.
The entry fascinated him. It was the kind of boiler-plate provenance that art dealers and historians begged heaven to provide. But he could not remember any reference to Palombini portraits or cartoons in the catalogue raisonné of Raffaello works. He cast through the volumes on his own bookshelves, found a Passavant and a Carli. Neither made any reference to the portraits or to the altar-piece. So – another of those mysteries beloved by scholars and browsers – had the works survived the centuries? If so, where were they now?
Yet another line of inquiry: were there records of other art purchases in the old account books? His coffee grew cold while he worked carefully through the antique script and the puzzling abbreviations. He was only half-way through January 1506 when Matteo, the major-domo, came up from the villa with Luigi the carpenter to measure for the shelving and trestles he needed.
These were practical country matters which demanded his full and respectful attention for half an hour. He was required to offer coffee and a tot of grappa. He must listen to a lament from Luigi the falegname that it was unfair to ask for good carpentry in a hurry. Mather understood what was required of him. He knew that there was no way to fight the Apennine wind; you turned your back to it, muffled your ears and waited until its fury was spent. He put a marker into the account book, packed away his notes and devoted himself body, soul and breeches to the questions of shelving, trestle tables and the choice between dressed and undressed timber. If he would accept undressed timber, the work could be done tomorrow. If he wanted craftsman work, he would have to wait another two weeks. Just as he was about to scream surrender the telephone rang. Anne-Marie was on the line; she too had a complaint to make.
‘Max, I’ve just heard the news of your bereavement. You must be feeling awful. Why didn’t you call me?’
‘If you want the truth, I was too embarrassed.’
‘About what? We’re friends, aren’t we? What are friends for if you can’t share grief-time with them? Nicki Tolentino told me you’re sleeping in town – what’s wrong with my place?’
‘Nothing. Except I only have weekend visiting rights, remember?’
‘Nonsense! You’ll come to me tonight. If it makes you feel any better, you buy the food and cook it. We have to talk anyway, Max; I’ve got a proposition to discuss with you. Shall we say seven-thirty?’
‘I’ll be there.’
As he hung up he felt a sudden surge of gratitude and relief. A grieving man was almost as vulnerable as a man in love. Each – for a different reason – was scared of making himself look foolish.
At the same moment he realised that Matteo and Luigi the falegname were still waiting for his answer – and for a second glass of grappa. As he poured the fiery liquor he announced firmly, ‘Use whatever timber you’ve got. I simply want space to stack files and books off the floor. We’re not building an apartment for the pope.’
‘But we have our pride.’ Luigi was suddenly eloquent. ‘When the gentlemen come from the Library, we cannot bring them into a pigsty! To your good health, professore.’
That night Mather made a princely meal for Anne-Marie. The ceremonies of preparation made intimate conversation difficult, but she was content to wait until the meal was done and they sat close and quiet, watching the yellow moon climb over the campaniles. Then she began, patiently, to coax him into talk.
‘What happens to your job now, Max?’
‘I’ve agreed to stay on for six weeks, to arrange the hand-over of the archive and the valuation of the art collection. After that, who knows? I never realised until now how much I depended on Pia, how far I counted on the permanence of our relationship.’
‘You never told me much about the kind of relationship it was.’
‘I never questioned it myself; I took everything at face value…until the end, when Pia became absolutely dependent on me. I fed her, bathed her, dressed her, carried her from place to place like an ailing child. Quite literally, she died in my arms.’
‘You must have loved her very much.’
‘I must have.’ Mather gave her a small embarrassed grin. ‘Are you surprised?’
‘A little. You have to be pretty tough to offer that kind of support. Frankly, I never saw you as that kind of man. The rest of it made perfect sense – wealthy widow, handsome scholar, an alliance of interest and convenience.’
‘Whatever it was, it’s over…finita la commedia! But enough of me…tell me about your plans.’
‘I go home, I look for gallery premises and begin putting together a stable of artists and clients. My father’s lending me enough money to make a start.’
‘Good for you!’
‘I wondered, Max, if you’d be interested in working for me?’
He considered the proposition for a long moment, then shook his head.
‘Working for you, no. Working with you on some basis that would leave me a free agent – yes, possibly. Could we leave it open for discussion until I get to New York?’
‘Of course. But tell me frankly: why wouldn’t you consider working for me?’
‘Because,’ said Mather flatly, ‘I’ve had a bellyful of patronage. I’ve lived on it all my life – endowments, grants, fellowships and funds supplied by wealthy ladies like Pia. I don’t feel so badly about her because I was able to repay some of the debt I owed her, but from here on, my love, I fly solo. If I fall out of the sky, too bad. That may not sound very important to you, but to me it’s life or death. Academically I’m sound, though I was always too lazy to attempt brilliance. But now or never, I have to test myself and the metal I’m made of.’
‘I’ll drink to that, Max. I’ll be interested to see how you test out. Now tell me something.’
‘What?’
‘How much did you tell Pia about me?’
‘Not much. She knew I lodged here at weekends, that I was tutoring you in art history and appreciation – beyond that, nothing.’
‘And she believed that was all?’
‘S
he chose to believe so.’
‘You can’t have had very much sex during her illness.’
‘We didn’t. She accepted that I was getting it elsewhere, but so long as I didn’t present her with a visible identifiable rival, she didn’t make an issue of it.’
‘I’m not sure I’d be as complaisant.’
‘You would – if you didn’t want to lose a good cook! Not to mention a trouble-free bed-mate.’
‘That sounds more like the Max I used to know.’
‘That one? Well, lately he comes and he goes. I’m never sure whether he’s there or not.’
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ suggested Anne-Marie. ‘It’s a shame to waste that moon.’
They slept late the next morning, so it was midday before Mather returned to Tor Merla. Luigi the falegname had kept his word. The shelves were finished. The frame of the table was completed. There was a note to say that he was looking for material for the top; he would be back later. His tool-box was lying unlocked on the floor.
Mather’s first task was to set the files in order on the shelves. It was a hot and dusty job that gave him an attack of hay fever. When it was done he discovered that the files had been resting not on the stone floor of the chamber, but on a wooden pallet like those used by carriers for stacking bricks or packages of a standard size. Closer inspection revealed that it was not a pallet but a slatted box about three feet long, two feet wide and six inches deep, packed with straw matting.
It was idle curiosity more than hope of any discovery that urged him to prise open the slats and unfold the matting. Inside was a large thick envelope of heavy canvas, sewn with a sail-stitch and sealed airtight and watertight with brown beeswax. His heart seemed to miss a beat and for a moment he trembled and gasped for breath. Then he closed and locked the entrance door, carefully repacked the straw mats in the box, nailed back the slats and carried the canvas envelope to his bedroom at the top of the tower.
He drew the shutters so that the light inside the chamber was dimmed. Then, using a razor-blade, he peeled back the wax along one edge of the envelope and began, very carefully, to unpick the heavy stitching which had been done with cobbler’s twine. He was the complete professional now, working slowly and rhythmically. Whatever was inside the package was precious. The packer had taken great care to shield it from air and damp; it would be an unmentionable horror to damage it by incautious handling. His exploring fingers first felt two rigid objects wrapped in velvet, then beneath the velvet something else wrapped in silk.
Carefully he drew out the velvet-covered objects – two panels of aged wood: two portraits, one of a woman, the other of a child; head, shoulders and bust against a background of Tuscan hills and summer sky. They had obviously been cleaned before they were packed, because there was no evidence of retouching. Both subjects wore the square bodice of the period; painted into the buttons of the one and the embroidery of the other was the signature ‘RAFFAELLO URBINAS FEC’.
Mather felt suddenly dizzy. He dropped to his knees by the bedside, propped the pictures against a pillow and knelt for a long time staring at them like a monk in adoration. But he was not praying. His brain was racing like a buzz-saw. The damned things had to be right. They looked right, they felt right…the draughtsmanship, the brush-strokes…the palette. His eyes blurred, he closed them and bowed his head down to the counterpane.
The dizziness passed. He drew out the rest of the treasure – the cartoons, faded by the centuries but still legible, still vibrant from the master-touch. The first was the design for the whole altar-piece, the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem riding upon an ass, with the people waving palm fronds like banners and shouting hosannas. The rest were studies of the separate elements – the animals, the figures, the architecture. All the personages save the Christ were depicted in the Florentine costume of the period and matched to a background of rural Tuscany. The men waving palms were the young Palombini males, courtiers to the Medici. The women were their consorts.
Once again, everything looked right. The objects matched the description in the old account book. The paper looked and felt right. The draughtsmanship seemed characteristic of the young Master. They had been packed with great care but stored in a hurry in a wartime emergency, where they had lain buried under a pile of paper for forty years. The only man who could have been aware of their loss was dead. The only man in the world who knew of their existence was Max Mather. And by legacy from a dead lover, he could lay valid claim to own them.
Italian law differed from Anglo-Saxon law in one important particular: it laid more emphasis on the form of the document than on its intent. And the form of Pia’s bequest to him was very clear. First, it was a holograph document. The testator had written it herself; it was, by the strongest presumption, a total expression of her wishes. Second, the Italian phrasing was specific: ‘…la sua propria scelta d’un oggetto ricordo dal archivio…his own choice of a memento from the archive.’
The other heirs – provided they knew – would obviously dispute his title. They would claim, not without reason, that a package of old master art works worth tens of millions of dollars was hardly an ‘oggetto ricordo’. The Belle Arti would obviously intervene and impound the works pending a court settlement, which could take years. And even then they could forbid the export of national treasures.
So simple common sense prescribed that he begin immediately to protect his title to the master works and – as soon as possible – get them out of Italy and into a safe-deposit in Switzerland. However, even as he was doing that he must have a care that the perfect provenance of the works was neither damaged nor destroyed.
They had been commissioned from Raffaello by and for the Palombini family. There, in the authentic account books of the period, was the record of the transaction in October 1505. They had obviously remained in the possession of the family right up to the present day, but while Luca the Double-Dealer had been running the estate they had found their way into the archive and remained buried for more than forty years under piles of dusty paper.
…Comes now Max Mather, rummaging in the archive for a memento of his own choice – a legacy left to him by Pia Palombini. He stumbles upon a curious canvas envelope which is clearly part of the archive. The fantasy takes him that this should be his memento – a surprise packet. He does not open it immediately, therefore he remains ignorant of its contents. It is only when he is on neutral ground that he discovers the art works and connects them with the entry in the family account books.
Even then, he has no certainty that the works are the originals. He is aware that Luca the Swindler caused copies of many master works to be made. So these pieces must be checked by experts. Until they have been declared authentic, there is no ground for dispute. In all of this no blame or suspicion attaches to Mather. He has acted with perfect propriety. If at any later stage his title to the works is challenged, it can be only on civil and not on criminal grounds.
All in all it seemed an excellent legal position. Max might have private doubts about its morality, but he could hardly be expected to make them public and brand himself a greedy or a venal man. After all, the Palombini played rough-and-tumble games too. They had only one rule: let the other fellow watch out. It was not beyond the bounds of possibility that they would be willing to make a deal to get the pictures back. That would be another situation to contemplate if ever the game got too rough.
Conscience thus having been momentarily lulled to rest, the next move was to shift the works out of Italy. A moment’s calculation convinced Mather that he should do it immediately. He could drive to Milan in two and a half hours to take the last flight to Zurich, visit his bank in the morning, leave the pictures in a safe-deposit and then fly back in the afternoon. After that, he could sleep soundly and plan calmly for a prosperous future.
He laid the pictures and the cartoons on the desktop one by one and took a series of flashlight photographs in colour. Then, with infinite care, he rewrapped them and replaced them in the
canvas envelope. Clumsily he restitched the canvas, melted the wax with a cigarette lighter and resealed the package completely. He found that it would fit snugly inside the hanging carrier he used for his suits and still leave room for a jacket and trousers. These and a change of shirt and underwear were all he needed for the overnight trip. He checked his wallet – money, passport, credit cards, traveller’s cheques. With Pia in the old days he had formed the habit of being always ready to move at a moment’s notice.
He hefted the hanging bag over his shoulder and walked downstairs. On the way out he passed Luigi and his assistant, a spindly youth from the village. Mather thanked them for the work already done and handed them half a bottle of grappa to encourage them to finish it by the next day. He was almost out of the door when the telephone rang. The Custodian of Autographs was on the line; he was very excited.
‘Max, my friend, great and important news! Our director is most interested to acquire the archive. He would like to inspect it with me on Tuesday next at ten in the morning.’
‘Good. I’ll be here to welcome you both.’
‘And you can tell Signor Claudio Palombini that there are tax advantages for the donor. These are described in a letter which will be posted to you today.’
‘That’s most helpful. Anything else? I’m rushing to catch a plane.’
‘Even so, you must hear this last piece of news. If the archive is accepted in the Library, I may well be named curator and you will most certainly be inscribed in our golden book of benefactors!’
‘I am very touched, my friend. I only regret that I must leave so quickly, but I’ll call you as soon as I get back. Meantime, Tuesday at ten a.m. I’ll put out the red carpet. A presto! Ciao!’