The Swan Thieves

by Elizabeth Kostova

  Again, that vulnerable boy gazing out of his eyes. She passes a hand over her forehead. She cannot imagine loving anyone more than she loves him in this moment--not his letters, not his

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  politeness, but the man himself and all the years that have polished him and made him both confident and fragile. She swallows, puts the needle neatly through her embroidery. "Yes. Thank you. I will come."

  When they return to Paris three weeks later, she takes with her five small canvases of the water and the boats, the sky.

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  CHAPTER 36 Kate

  Robert didn't move out right away, and neither did I--in fact, I had no intention of uprooting my mother and children or leaving the house I'd dreamed about and come to love and that my mother had helped us buy. After I broke that vase, Robert collected his pile of letters, put them in one of his pockets, and went out without getting so much as a toothbrush or a change of clothes. I might have felt better about him even then if he'd gone upstairs and prudently packed a suitcase.

  I didn't see Robert for several days, and I didn't know where he was. I told my mother only that we'd had a bad quarrel and needed some time off, and she was concerned but also neutral--I saw that she thought it would blow over. I tried to convince myself that he was staying with Mary, wherever she lived, but I couldn't shake the feeling I'd had that he'd been telling the truth when he'd said so bitterly, "She's dead." He didn't seem capable of real mourning. That was almost the worst of it. The fact that the affair had ended with her death didn't ease my hurt. In fact, it added a sense of haunting to my days, of eeriness, that I couldn't shake.

  One afternoon that week when I was reading--not very attentively--on the front steps and my mother was doing our mending in the chair on the terrace and we were both watching the children overwater the garden, Robert drove up without any fanfare and got out of his car. I could see that he had some things stowed in the back of it--easels and portfolios and boxes. My heart knotted in my throat. He came up the front walk and made a detour to kiss my mother and ask how she was. I knew she was telling him

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  that she felt fine, although I'd had to take her to the doctor for another dizzy spell the day before. And although she now knew he'd all but moved out.

  Then Robert came slowly up the walk toward me, and for a moment I saw the sum total of his presence, his big body that was not lean and not heavy, the broad movements of muscle under his shirt and pants. His clothes seemed grubbier than ever, and he had been more than usually careless with paint, so that his rolled sleeves bore flecks of red and his khakis were smudged with white and gray. I could see the skin of his face and neck beginning to age, the lines under his eyes, the deep brown-green of his gaze, his thick hair, the angelic curls threaded with silver, his largeness, his distance, his self-sufficiency, his loneliness. I wanted to jump up and throw myself at him, but that was what he should have been doing for me. Instead, I sat where I was, feeling smaller than ever, framed, in a frame--a little, straight-haired, too-clean person he had forgotten to look after in his big quest for art, an essential nobody. He had forgotten even to tell me what his quest was for.

  He paused at the steps. "I'm just going to get a few things."

  "Fine," I said.

  "Do you want me to come back? I miss you and I miss the kids."

  "If you came back," I said in a low voice that I tried to keep from trembling, "would you really come back, or would you still be living with a ghost?"

  I thought Robert would get angry again, but after a moment he said simply, "Leave it alone, Kate. You can't understand."

  And I knew that if I shouted something like "I can't understand? I can't understand?" I would never stop shouting at him, even in front of the children and my mother. Instead I closed my fingers in my book so that they hurt, and I let him go on up the steps and come back down after a while with the proverbial suitcase, actually an old duffel bag from one of our closets.

  "I'll be gone a few weeks. I'll call you," he said. He went and kissed the kids and threw Oscar up in the air, letting their wet

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  clothes dampen his shirt. He lingered. I hated him even for his pain. Finally he got into the car and drove away. Only then did I wonder how he could leave his job for weeks at a time. It hadn't occurred to me yet that he might stop teaching, too.

  As it turned out, that was one of the last days my mother felt like herself. Her doctor called us into his office to tell us she had leukemia, far gone. She could have chemo, but that would probably cause her more discomfort than anything else. She opted instead to accept a brochure for hospice care, and pressed my arm as we left, to save me from my own grief.

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  CHAPTER 37 Kate

  I will pass over some of this part. I will pass over it, but I do want to describe how Robert came back. I called him that night, and he came back for the six weeks it took my mother to weaken to almost nothing. It turned out he hadn't gone farther than the college, although he never told me where he slept while he was there-- maybe at the studios or in one of the empty cottages. I wondered if our old house there was empty. Maybe he was sleeping among our own ghosts, in a pile of blankets on the floor, the rooms to which we'd brought Ingrid and Oscar home as newborns.

  When he returned for that brief period to help me with my mother, he camped out in his studio room, but he was calm and kind and he sometimes drove off with the children on excursions so I could sit with my mother while she took painkillers and long naps, longer and longer. I didn't ask him about his work at the college. I thought Robert and I would wait together for the time when the hospice nurses would come in; everything was arranged, and my mother had even helped me arrange it--she would tell me, give me a sign, and I would call the number by the phone in the kitchen.

  But in the end only Robert and I were there, and that was the real finish of our marriage, unless you count the previous endings, or the dwindling calls later, or his disappearance to Washington, or my filing for divorce and leaving his office untouched for more than a year, or my beginning to clean out his office at last, or my putting away most of his paintings of Mistress Melancholy, whatever you want to call her. Or even the moment when I heard he'd

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  attacked a painting and been arrested for it, or when I heard later he had consented to enter a mental institution. Or when I realized that I wanted to help his mother at least a little with his bills, still wanted him to get better, if that was possible, so that someday he could come to the children's graduations and weddings.

  People whose marriages haven't collapsed, or whose spouses die instead of leaving, don't know that marriages that end seldom have a single ending. Marriages are like certain books, a story where you turn the last page and you think it's over, and then there's an epilogue, and after that you're inclined to go on wondering about the characters or imagining that their lives continue without you, dear reader. Until you forget most of that book, you're stuck puzzling over what happened to them after you closed it.

  But if there was a single ending for Robert and me, it happened the day my mother died, because she died more suddenly than we had expected. She was resting on the sofa in the living room, in the sunlight. She'd even been willing to let me fix her a little tea, but then her heart failed. That's not the technical term, but that's how I think of it, because mine failed me, too, and I reached her as it happened, dropping the tray on the living-room carpet in my rush to her. I knelt holding her by the arms while our hearts failed us, and it was terrible, and terrible to watch, but very fast, and it would have been much more terrible if I hadn't been there to watch and hold her after all the years she had taken care of me.

  When it was over and she was no longer herself, I put my arms around her and held her more tightly, and my voice finally came back. I called for Robert, screamed for him, although I was still afraid it would disturb her. He must have heard the tone from his office behind the kitchen, because he came running in. My mother ha
d lost most of her weight already, and I held her up easily in my arms, my cheek pressed to hers, partly so that I wouldn't have to look at her directly again right away. I stared up at Robert instead. What I saw in his face finished our marriage just as my mother's life vanished. His eyes were blank. He was not seeing us, me

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  holding her lifeless body in my arms. He was not thinking how he could comfort me in those first moments, or how he could honor her death, or how he mourned her himself. I saw clearly that he was watching someone else, something that set his face alight with horror, something I could not see or possibly understand because it was even worse than this, this worst moment of my life. He was not there.

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  November 1878

  Paris

  Très chère Béatrice:

  Thank you for your touching note. I don't like to think I missed another evening with you, even for the best of Molière; forgive my absence. I wonder, rather jealously, if the stylish Thomas pair was there again; perhaps it is knowing they are closer to your age than I am that makes me a little protective. In fact, I don't care, these days, for the way they hang over you -- or, for that matter, ogle your work, which ought to be seen only by discerning eyes (not theirs). Excuse my unbecoming grumpiness. If I could prevent myself from writing, I certainly would, but the beauty of the morning is too much for me, and I must share it with you. You will be at your window, perhaps with your embroider for some book, possibly the one I left last time, resting in your hand. You told me, when I committed the indiscretion of admiring them, that your hands are too large; but they are lovely-- capable-- and in proportion to your graceful height. Moreover, they are not capable only in appearance but in your handling of brush and pencil, and, no doubt, everything else you do. If I could hold each of them in mine (mine being, after all, still larger but less capable), I would kiss each in turn, respectfully.

  Forgive me; I am already forgetting my purpose of sharing the morning's beauty with you. I've walked as far as the Jeu de Paume this morning, shaking off my late night at the theater and feeling, my dear, that I am after all not up to many late nights, since I always wake early; I would rather have been at your side yesterday evening, and perhaps tomorrow night I shall again be reading to you by your cheerful fire or saying nothing at all so that I can watch your thoughts. Do sit that way sometimes, when I cannot sit there with you.

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  Again, I wander. Walking to the Jeu de Paume, I saw a family of sparrows fed by an old gentleman who might have witnessed Napoleon's last charge and once looked very fine in a cocked hat. You will laugh at my innocent fantasies. Walking through the park, too, was a young priest (who in some other realm might have blessed us), kicking his gown impatiently ahead of him; he was in a hurry, that's certain. And I, who was not, sat down on a bench to dream for ten minutes, even in the cold, and you can perhaps guess some of my reflections. Please do not laugh at their wisfulness.

  Now that I've come home, warmed up, and breakfasted, I must ready myself for a day of meetings and work, during which I will think of you incessantly and you will forget me entirely. But I'll have news for you by tomorrow, I hope, news that will please you, and at least one of my meetings concerns this news. It concerns also the new painting, my probable submission to this year's Salon. You will excuse my attempt at mystery! But I would like to talk with you about it, and it is of sufficient importance that I must beg you to come to the studio sometime tomorrow morning between ten and twelve, if you are free, on a matter of business--one of the utmost propriety, since Yves has urged me to seek your approval of the work. I have enclosed the address and a little map; you will find the street picturesque but not unpleasant.

  Until then, I do kiss your slender hand with respect, and await a welcome scolding -- and acceptance of my invitation -- aimed at your devoted friend

  O.V.

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  CHAPTER 38 Marlow

  I left Kate with heartfelt thanks, and with my notes on our sessions in my briefcase. She shook my hand warmly but also seemed relieved to watch me go. At the edge of downtown, I stopped at a coffee shop, but stayed in my car and got out my cell phone. It took only a little searching. The switchboard operator at Greenhill College sounded friendly, casual; there was some kind of rustling in the background, as if she might be eating lunch on the job. I asked for the Art Department and found an equally receptive secretary there. "I'm sorry to call out of the blue," I said. "I'm Dr. Andrew Marlow. I'm writing an article on one of your former faculty, Robert Oliver, for Art in America. That's right. Yes, I realize he's not there anymore--I've actually interviewed him in Washington, DC, already."

  I could feel some sweat at my hairline, although until that moment I'd been completely calm; I wished I hadn't named a particular journal. The question was, did they know at the college that Robert had been arrested and institutionalized? I hoped that the incident in the National Gallery had been publicized mainly in the Washington papers. I thought of Robert stretched out like a fallen colossus on his bed, arms behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle; he was staring at the ceiling. You can talk to anybody you want.

  "I'm passing through Greenhill today," I pressed on cheerfully, "and I know it's short notice, but I wonder if any of his colleagues might be able to sit down with me for a few minutes this afternoon or--or tomorrow morning--and comment on his work a bit. Yes. Thank you."

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  The secretary went away for a moment and came back with surprising rapidity--I pictured a big warehouse studio, loft-style, where she could stop anyone at an easel and ask a question. But that couldn't be correct. "Professor Liddle? Thank you very much. Please tell him that I'm sorry about the short notice and that I won't take too much of his time." I clicked the phone off, went in and got an iced coffee, and wiped my forehead with the paper napkin. I wondered if the young man at the counter knew from looking at me that I was a liar. I haven't been one in the past, I wanted to tell him. It crept up on me. No, that wasn't quite accurate. It happened recently, by accident. An accident named Robert Oliver.

  The drive to the college was short, perhaps twenty minutes, but my suspense made it feel endless: a big arching sky above the mountains, highways planted with vast triangles of wildflowers, something pink and white that I didn't recognize, smooth asphalt. "You can even talk with Mary," Robert had said to me. It was easy to remember what he'd said because he'd said so little in front of me.

  There were only three possibilities, I thought. The first was that his condition had deteriorated to the point of delusions since the time of his break with Kate, and he now thought a dead woman was still alive. I hadn't seen real evidence of this, however. Surely if he were plagued by delusions he wouldn't be able to maintain his silence in such a studied way. Another possibility was that he had been lying to Kate, elaborately, and Mary was not dead. Or-- but the third possibility wouldn't quite take shape in my mind, and I gave up on it around the time I had to start watching for the exit to the college.

  The area wasn't my picture of backwoods Appalachia; perhaps you had to go farther off the interstate for that. Greenhill College was responsible for the stretch of neat country road I turned onto, a sign informed me, and--as if to prove it--there was a group

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  of young people in orange vests picking up negligible amounts of trash in the ditch off the shoulder. The road wound into mountains and past a sign that I realized must have been the one Kate had described, weathered carving framed with gray fieldstones, and then I entered the drive to the college.

  This wasn't the backwoods either, although some of the buildings near the entrance were mellowed old cabins, half hidden in stands of hemlock and rhododendron. A big official hall turned out to be the dining center; wooden dormitories and brick classroom buildings climbed the slope behind it, and beyond that in every direction were woods--I had never seen a campus so nestled in woodland. The trees on the grounds were even bigger than those at Goldengrove--patrician, wild--oaks scraping
the blustery sky, a great sycamore, skyscraper spruces. Three students played Frisbee on the lawn in a neatly balanced triangle, and a golden-bearded professor was holding class on the piazza, all the students balancing their notebooks on their cross-legged laps. It was idyllic; I wanted to go back to school myself, start over. And Robert Oliver had lived for several years in this little paradise, ill and frequently depressed.

  The Art Department proved to be a concrete box at one end of campus; I parked in front and sat looking at the gallery building next door to it, a long narrow cabin with a colorfully painted door. A board outside announced a student art show. I hadn't expected to be so nervous. What was I afraid of? I was there on an errand of mercy, essentially. If I wasn't being open about my profession or its relation to former painting instructor Robert Oliver, that was because I knew I'd get no information otherwise. Or less information, at least--perhaps far less.

  The secretary turned out to be a student, or young enough to be one, wide-hipped in jeans and white T-shirt. I told her I was there for a meeting with Arnold Liddle, and she showed me along hallways to an office with a door; I got a glimpse of someone with his legs on his desk. They were scrawny legs in faded gray

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  trousers, ending in sock feet. When we came in, the legs went down and the person on the phone hung up abruptly--it was a normal phone, the old kind, not wireless, and it took him a second or two to uncurl the spiral cord from his arm. Then he stood up and shook my hand. "Professor Liddle?" I asked.

  "Just Arnold, please," he corrected me. The secretary was already gone. Arnold had a lively thin face and hair that receded to a ginger haze around the back of his shirt collar. His eyes were blue--large, pleasant--and his nose long and red. He smiled and motioned me to a seat in the corner, facing him, and put his feet back up. I had the urge to slip off my shoes, too, but didn't. The office was cluttered: there were postcards of gallery shows on a bulletin board, a big poster of a Jasper Johns over the desk, snapshots of a couple of skinny children balanced on their bicycles. Arnold settled more deeply into his chair as if he loved it there. "How can I help you?"