* * *
I returned to Bexford House a week later, to stay two nights and to sort through Rumby’s stock of material about Archimboldo, Rudolph, and the Prague Court. I have a good reading knowledge of German, French, and Italian, though I’m not conversationally fluent in those tongues. Any book I needed to take away with me was photocopied in its entirety by Lascelles on a high-speed, auto-page-turning machine. Pop in a book—within five minutes out popped its twin, collated and bound. The machine cost twenty thousand dollars.
A week after that, Case drove me to the docklands airport for a rather lux commuter flight with him to Amsterdam, where I examined all the other Archimboldo “originals”; although I didn’t meet the forger himself, nor did I even learn his name. The paintings were stored in three locations: in the apartment of Rumby’s chosen printer, Wim Van Ewyck, in that of the gallery owner who would host the show, Geert de Lugt, and in a locked room of the Galerij Bosch itself. In the event of premature catastrophe, the entire corpus of controversial work (minus the fishy masturbatress at Bexford House) wouldn’t be wiped out en masse.
Presumably the printer didn’t need to be in on the conspiracy. What about the gallery owner? Maybe; maybe not … This, as Case impressed on me, was a subject which shouldn’t even be aluded to—nor did Mijnheer de Lugt so much as hint.
The other eleven Archimboldos were even more stunning at full size in the frame than in colour reproduction. And also more … appalling?
I returned to Bloomsbury to write twenty large pages of introduction. Less would have been skimpy; more would have been excessive. Since I was being fastidiously attentive to every nuance of the text, the writing took me almost three weeks, with five or six drafts. (“Put some feeling into it,” Rumby had counselled. “Smear some vaginal jelly on the words.”)
The task done, I phoned Bexford Hall. Case drove the Merc to London the same evening to courier the pages personally. Next day, Rumby phoned to pronounce himself quite delighted. He only suggested a few micro-changes. We were rolling. Our exhibition would open in the Galerij Bosch on the first of September, coinciding with publication of the book.
And of course I must attend the private showing on the last day of August—the vernissage, as it were. (I did hope the varnish was totally dry!)
While in Amsterdam, our party—consisting of Rumby and Case and Lascelles and myself—the Grand Hotel Krasnopolsky because that hotel boasted a Japanese restaurant, and Rumby was a bit of a pig for raw fish. I wasn’t complaining.
We arrived a day early in case Rumby had any last-minute thoughts about the layout of the show, or Case about its security aspects. So the morning of the thirty-first saw us at the Galerij Bosch, which fronted a tree-lined canal not far from where dozens of antique shops clustered on the route to the big art museums.
The high neck gable of the building, ornamented with two bounteous sculpted classical maidens amidst cascades of fruits and vegetables—shades of Archimboldo, indeed!—incorporated a hoisting beam, though I doubted that any crated paintings had entered the loft of the gallery by that particular route for a long time. Venetian blinds were currently blanking the three adjacent ground-floor windows—the uprights and transoms of which were backed by discreet steel bars, as Case pointed out; and already Mijnheer de Lugt, a tall blond man with a bulbous nose, had three muscular fellows lounging about in the large, spot-lit exhibition room. One in a demure blue security uniform—he was golden-skinned and moon-faced, obviously of Indonesian ancestry. The other chunky Germanic types wore light suits and trainers.
A high pile of copies of Archimboldo Erotico stood in one corner for presentation that evening to the guests: the media people, museum directors, cultural mandarins and mavericks. Particularly the media people.
And my heart quailed.
Despite all the gloss, mightn’t someone promptly denounce this exhibition? We were in liberal Holland, where the obscenity in itself would not offend. Yet wouldn’t someone cry “Hoax!”?
Worse, mightn’t some inspired avant-garde type perhaps enthusiastically applaud this exhibition as an ambitious jape?
De Lugt seemed a tad apprehensive beneath a suave exterior. He blew that snozzle of his a number of times without obvious reason, as though determined to be squeaky-clean.
“Ms. Donaldson, would you sign a copy of the book for me as a souvenir?” he asked. When I had obliged, he scrutinized my signature as if the scrawly autograph might be a forgery.
Maybe I was simply being paranoid. But I was damn glad of this dry run amongst the exhibits.
Case conferred with the security trio quietly in Dutch. They smiled; they nodded.
* * *
The wet run that evening—lubricated by champagne to celebrate the resurrection of long-lost works of a bizarre master, and contemporary of Rabelais—went off quite as well as could be expected.
A young red-haired woman in a severe black cocktail dress walked out along with her escort in shock and rage. She had been wearing an Archimboldo eco-badge as her only form of jewellery, with the word Ark printed upon it.
A fat bluff bearded fellow in a dinner jacket, with an enormous spotted cravat instead of bow tie, got drunk and began guffawing. Tears streamed down his hairy cheeks till Case discretely persuaded him to step outside for an airing.
Rumby was bombarded by questions, to which he would grin and reply, “It’s all in the book. Take a copy!” One of the great art finds, yes. Casts quite a new light on Archimboldo, that emotionally complex man.
So why had Mr. Wright sprung this surprise on the art world by way of a private gallery? Rather than lending these paintings to some major public museum?
“Ah now, do you really suppose your big museum would have leapt at the chance of showing such controversial material, Ladies and Gentlemen? Some big city museum with its reputation to think about? Of course, I’ll be perfectly delighted to loan this collection out in future…”
I was quizzed too. Me, in my new purple velvet couturier pant-suit.
Geert De Lugt smiled and nodded approvingly, confidently. Naturally Rumby would have paid him handsomely for use of his gallery, yet I was becoming convinced that Mijnheer De Lugt himself was innocent of the deception. He had merely had stage nerves earlier.
* * *
We stayed in Amsterdam for another five days. Press and media duly obliged with publicity, and I appeared on Dutch and German TV, both with Rumby and without him. So many people flocked to the Galerij Bosch that our Security boys had to limit admittance to thirty people at any one time, while a couple of tolerant police hung about outside. Our book sold like hot cakes to the visitors; and by now it was in the bookshops too. (“At this rate,” joked Rumby, “we’ll be making a fucking profit.”)
During spare hours, I wandered round town with Case. Rumby mainly stayed in his suite at the Krasnapolsky in phone and fax contact with Bexford and Texas, munching sushi. I nursed a fancy that Chaplain Lascelles might perhaps lugubriously be visiting the Red Light District to let his hair and his pants down, but he certainly wasn’t getting high on any dope. Me, I preferred the flea-market on Waterlooplein, where I picked up a black lace shawl and a slightly frayed Khasmiri rug for the flat back in Bloomsbury.
I noticed a certain item of graffiti on numerous walls: Onze Wereld is onze Ark.
“Our world is our Ark,” translated Case.
Sometimes there was only the word Ark on its own writ even larger in spray-paint. I couldn’t but recall the badge worn by that pissed-off woman at the party in the gallery. Pissed-off? No … mortally offended. Obviously, Ark was a passionate, punning, mispronounced allusion to … who else but Emperor Rudolph’s court jester?
When I mentioned this graffito to Rumby, he almost growled with glee.
“Ha! So what do you do in this fucking ark of theirs? You hide, anchored by gravity—till you’ve squandered all your major resources, then you can’t get to anyplace else. Sucks to arks.”
* * *
We all flew back t
o England on the Sunday. At seven A.M. on the Monday the phone bullied me awake.
Lascelles was calling.
Late on the Sunday night, a van had mounted the pavement outside Galerij Bosch. The driver grabbed a waiting motorbike and sped off. Almost at once the van exploded devastatingly, demolishing the whole frontage of the building. As well as explosives, there’d been a hell of a lot of jellied petrol and phosphorus in that van. Fireworks, indeed! The gallery was engulfed in flames. So were part of the street and a couple of trees. Even the canal caught fire, and a nearby houseboat blazed, though the occupants had been called away by some ruse. The two security guards who were in the gallery on night shift died.
And of course all the Archimboldos had been burnt, though that seemed a minor aspect to me right then …
Case was coming pronto to pick me up. Rumby wanted us to talk face to face before the media swarmed.
Two hours later, I was at Bexford Hall.
Rumby, Lascelles, Case, and I met together in a book-lined upstairs study, furnished with buff leather armchairs upon a russet Persian carpet. The single large window, composed of stone mullions, seemed somewhat at odds with the Italianate plasterwork ceiling which featured scrolls and roses, with cherubs and putti supporting the boss of an electrified chandelier. Maybe Rumby had bought this ceiling in from some other house because it was the right size, and he liked it. The room smelled of cheroots, and soon of my Marlboro too.
“Let’s dismiss the financial side right away,” commenced Rumby. “The paintings weren’t insured. So I’m not obliged to make any kind of claim. Hell, do I need to? The book will be the only record—and your fee stays secure, Jill. Now, is it to our disadvantage that the paintings themselves no longer exist? Might someone hint that we ourselves arranged the torching of the gallery before independent art experts could stick their fingers in the pie? I think two tragic deaths say no to that. Those poor guys had no chance. T. Rumbold Wright isn’t known for assassinations. So, ghastly as this is, it could be to our advantage—especially if it smears the ecofreaks, the covenanters of the Ark.”
What a slur on the ecofreaks that they might destroy newly discovered masterpieces of art for ideological reasons in a desperate effort to keep the artist pure for exploitation by themselves. When people saw any Archimboldo badge or poster now, they might think, Ho-ho … I was thinking about the two dead guards.
Lascelles had been liaising with Holland.
“The Dutch police are puzzled,” he summarized. “Is this an outburst of art-terrorism? A few years ago some people revived a group called the SKG—so-called ‘City Art Guerillas’ who caused street and gallery trouble. They never killed anyone. Even if the couple on that houseboat were kept out of harm’s way to make the attackers seem more benign, De Lugt’s two guards were just slaughtered …
“Then what about these Ark people? The loony fringe of the Dutch Eco movement have gone in for destructive industrial sabotage—but again, they haven’t caused any deaths. This is more like the work of the German Red Column, though it seems they haven’t operated in Holland recently. Why do so now? And why hit the gallery?”
“To hurt a noted Capitalist, in the only way they could think of?” asked Rumby. “No, I don’t buy that. It’s got to be the Ecofreaks.”
“The ecology movement is very respectable in Holland.”
Rumby grinned wolfishly. “Mightn’t be, soon.”
“Ecology is government policy there.”
How much more newsworthy the destruction made those naughty paintings! How convenient that they were now beyond the reach of sceptical specialists.
“I don’t suppose,” said I, “one of your allies in the Star Club might conceivably have arranged this attack?”
Drop a ton of lead into a pond.
“Future of the human race,” I added weakly. “Big motivation.”
Rumby wrestled a cheroot from his coat of many pockets and lit it. “You can forget that idea. Let’s consider safety. Your safety, Jill.”
I suppose he couldn’t avoid making this sound like a threat, however benevolently intentioned—or making it seem as if he wished to keep my free spirit incommunicado during the crisis …
“Someone has bombed and murdered ruthlessly,” said Rumby. “I’m safe here.”
“Yes, you are,” Case assured him.
“But you, Jill, you live in some little scumbag flat in any old street in London. I’d like to invite you to stay here at Bexford for a week or two until things clarify.”
“Actually, I can’t,” I told him, with silly stubbornness. “I have a couple of lectures to give at St. Martin’s on Thursday.”
“Screw them. Cancel them.”
“And it isn’t exactly a scumbag flat.”
“Sorry—you know what I mean.”
“At least until there’s a communique,” Lascelles suggested to me. “Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with. It’s only sensible.”
“Don’t be proud,” said Rumby. He puffed. The cherubs above collected a tiny little bit more nicotine on their innocent hands. “Please.”
And some more nicotine from me too.
“You don’t need to feed some goddam cat, do you?” asked Rumby.
“No…” In fact I loathed cats—selfish, treacherous creatures—but Rumby probably wouldn’t have cared one way or the other.
In the event, I stayed at Bexford. Until Wednesday afternoon. No news emerged from Holland of any communique.
Could the attackers not have known about those two guards inside the gallery? So now they were ashamed, and politically reluctant, to claim credit?
Unlikely. You don’t assemble a vanload of explosives and napalm and phosphorus, make sure there’s a getaway motorbike waiting, and bail out the occupants of a nearby houseboat, without checking everything else about the target too.
Lascelles was stonewalling queries from the media. (“Mr. Wright is shocked. He grieves at the two deaths. He has no other comment at present…”) Stubbornly, I insisted on being driven back to Bloomsbury.
* * *
My little flat had been burgled. My CD player and my TV were missing. Entry was by way of the fire escape door, which had been smashed off its none too sturdy hinges. Otherwise, there wasn’t much damage or mess.
I hadn’t wished Case to escort me upstairs; thus he had already driven away. Of course I could have reached him on the Merc’s car phone. Yet this was so ordinary a burglary that I simply phoned the police. Then I thumbed the Yellow Pages for an emergency repair service which was willing to turn up within the next six hours.
The constable who visited me presently was a West Indian. A couple of other nearby flats had also been broken into the day before for electrical goods, so he said. Was I aware of this? He seemed to be pitching his questions towards eliciting whether I might perhaps have robbed myself so as to claim insurance.
“Fairly neat break-in, Miss, all things considered.”
“Except for the door.”
“You’re lucky. Some people find excrement spread all over their homes.”
“Did that happen in the other flats that were burgled?”
“Not on this occasion. So you reported this just as soon as you came back from—?”
“From the Cotswolds.”
“Nice part of the country, I hear. Were you there long?”
“Three days.”
“Visiting friends?”
“My employer.” Now why did I have to say that?
Blurt, blurt.
“Oh, so you live here, but your boss is in the Cotswolds?”
“He isn’t exactly my boss. He was consulting me.”
The constable raised his eyebrow suggestively.
Obviously he believed in keeping the suspect off balance.
“You do have a lot of expensive books here, Miss,” was his next tack.
Yes, rows of glossy art books. Why hadn’t those been stolen—apart from the fact that they weighed a ton?
“I don�
��t suppose the burglars were interested in art,” I suggested.
He pulled out a Botticelli, with library markings on the spine, from the shelf.
“This is from a college library,” he observed.
“I teach there. I lecture about art.”
“I thought you said you were a consultant…”
By the time he left, I was half-convinced that I had burgled myself, that I habitually thieved from libraries, and that I was a call-girl who had been supplying sexual favours to Mr. X out in the country. Would these suspicions be entered in the police computer? Did I have the energy to do anything about this? No, it was all so … tentative. Did I want to seem paranoid?
Bert the Builder finally turned up and fixed the door for a hundred and thirteen pounds … which of course the insurance would be covering. Otherwise the job would have cost just sixty, cash.
I did manage to look over my lecture notes—on Titian and Veronese. I microwaved a madras beef curry with pilau rice; and went to bed, fed up.
The phone rang.
It was Phil. He’d been calling my number for days.
These weird long-lost Archimboldos! Why hadn’t I told him anything? And the terrorist attack! What had happened? Could he come round?
“Sorry, Phil, but I’ve just had my CD and TV nicked. And the helpful visiting constable thinks I’m a hooker.”
I was glad of the excuse of the burglary.
* * *
Towards mid-morning my phone started ringing, and a couple of Press sleuths turned up in person, pursuing the art bombing story; but I stonewalled, and escaped in the direction of St. Martin’s where, fortunately, no reporters lurked.
At four in the afternoon I stepped out from the factory-like frontage of the art school into a Charing Cross Road aswarm with tourists. Beneath a grey overcast the fumy air was warm. A sallow Middle Eastern youth in checked shirt and jeans promptly handed me a leaflet advertising some English Language Academy.
“I already speak English,” I informed the tout. He frowned momentarily as if he didn’t understand. No points to the Academy.
“Then you learn cheaper,” he suggested, pursuing me along the pavement.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection Page 28