The Icon

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The Icon Page 10

by Neil Olson


  It surprised him how comfortable he felt in her kitchen. Perhaps because it wasn’t really hers, but her grandfather’s, or not even his, but old André’s. And kitchens were familiar. His family was always in the kitchen, his father doing as much of the cooking as his mother, holding forth on some complex scientific theorem, his sister arguing. Robin and he spent a lot of time in the kitchen as well, touching as they slipped past each other going to the stove, cabinet, freezer. Though constantly together, they had separate apartments, and he was always aware of being at her place, on her turf, not his own—except for her kitchen, which felt somehow connected to his, a seamless parallel space passing from West to East Side. He recalled her stinging reply when he once admitted this strange theory to her: he loved her kitchen because that was where the front door was. It wasn’t a long way from that comment to the end of their relationship.

  “My grandfather loved good coffee,” she said to his back. “He couldn’t really drink it anymore the last few years.”

  “Which explains this cheapo coffeemaker. Who bought this, Diana?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “Sorry.” He really shouldn’t drink socially.

  “I like good coffee too, but I can’t be bothered with the effort. Turkish coffee, that’s what he liked. Middle Eastern food, Orthodox religion. I think he hated being born Swiss.”

  “Did he join the Orthodox church?”

  “No. He sort of drifted away from Catholicism, tried a bit of everything—I mean, of the Old Testament choices. He didn’t do Buddhism. Eastern Orthodox art seemed to speak to him, and that’s what pushed him in that direction. I don’t think he even went to church.”

  “So it was more a personal spirituality.”

  “I guess. To tell you the truth, I don’t really know how religious, or spiritual, he was. Sometimes he seemed intensely so. Other times, it just felt like superstition. I guess it all feels like superstition to me.” She was quiet long enough that he wondered if he was expected to respond. “One thing I can tell you, though,” she said finally, “he worshiped that icon.”

  Matthew came back to the table as the coffeemaker finished burbling. “So can I ask you a rude question?”

  “Fair is fair.”

  “If he worshiped it, like you say, why did he leave no directions for its disposal?”

  She looked perplexed. “He left all that to me.”

  “In most cases, with a collection like this, there are specific instructions about what should be done. Usually these things are worked out in detail with museums and galleries, long before the person dies. You must know all that. Did the will say anything?”

  “There were instructions, but they weren’t specific. A lot of latitude was built in for me to do what I wanted, add to my collection, sell to cover expenses. He had no relationship with museums. He knew very few people by the end of his life. And he never mentioned the icon.”

  “Do you find that odd?”

  “I did,” she nodded. “Then Wallace suggested that maybe the icon was too personal to him, that he simply couldn’t deal with the idea of being separated from it, even in death.”

  Matthew stifled a skeptical laugh. It had a ring of truth, after all.

  “Mr. Wallace is a psychiatrist too, huh? Didn’t he draw up the will?”

  “The primary will. Notes on the paintings were appended to my grandfather’s copy, in a safe, here. He didn’t believe in safe-deposit boxes. I guess that came from being a banker. At one point some pieces were left to Swiss museums, but those were crossed out. Wallace pressed him to come up with a plan, but he just wouldn’t deal with it. I think he believed he would live forever.”

  “He did pretty well. Ninety-seven years old, the obituary said.”

  “And very sharp of mind, right up until the last year or two. He had a bunch of illnesses and injuries in his eighties and nineties, all of which he bounced back from. I think the blindness really broke his spirit.”

  “He was blind?”

  “Almost. The last several years, his vision started to go. It was devastating for him. That’s when the other things, the arthritis and the weak heart, got the better of him.” Ana caught his eyes lingering on her a little too long. “That coffee is ready.”

  The last thing either of them needed was more coffee, but it gave Matthew something to do, and he sensed that she took some comfort from his serving her.

  “Wow, this is strong,” she said.

  “Don’t drink it.”

  “I’m up all night anyway, might as well be alert.”

  “This has been very tough on you.”

  “Mostly it’s the responsibility. There’s a lot to handle with the estate. I snipe at Wallace, but I’d be lost without him.”

  “There’s no one else, no brothers or sisters, uncles, cousins?”

  “My dad was an only child, and he’s gone. I’m his only child, so it’s just me on the Kessler side. There’s my mother, but she’s no help. She and my grandfather hated each other. Well, she hated him, anyway.”

  “That’s too bad.” There was a story there, Matthew figured, but it was her business whether she felt like telling it. “You were close to him, right?”

  “Off and on. Less so in recent years. Too much traveling.”

  “You enjoy it.”

  “Buying and selling art is what I do, for myself and a few friendly clients. I have to travel. But I do love it, it’s true. I keep waiting for the settling-down urge to hit me. You must travel a lot, also.”

  “I lived in Greece, went to Turkey a few times. Ravenna, Venice, great Byzantine stuff there. Otherwise, I never go anywhere. Hate to fly.”

  “Most people do,” Ana agreed. “I sleep like a baby right through turbulence. Must come from my dad owning a jet. I was always flying off with him someplace from the time I was, like, ten.”

  “Was he in the art trade too?”

  “The family curse,” she said, sadly, leaning back in her chair.

  “Actually, he was a banker, like my grandfather. But he dabbled in art, especially when the old guy stopped being able to travel. In fact, he died on a business trip for my grandfather.”

  Matthew wondered what to ask. She glanced over at him and he merely nodded.

  “Plane crashed,” she went on. “Nobody knows why. Mechanical failure, I guess. He was a good pilot.”

  “He was flying himself?”

  “Oh, yeah, he loved to fly. But the circumstances were kind of awful. He and my mother were supposed to take a trip, about the same time that my grandfather was supposed to go to South America and see this painting. Another icon, actually. I guess the icon was being auctioned, or there was another bidder or something. Anyway, he got sick and persuaded my father to go in his place. So my dad flew down to check it out. And his plane crashed into a mountain in Venezuela, coming back. Took them days to find the wreckage and there was so little left they couldn’t figure out what happened. They think he was too low and hit the mountain in a fog bank, but we’ll never really know.”

  He waited a few moments to see if she would say more, then found his voice again.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Fifteen years ago. I was in high school.”

  “That’s a terrible story. I’m sorry, Ana.”

  She shrugged. “History.”

  “It must have wrecked your grandfather.”

  “He was never the same. And my mother still hasn’t forgiven him.”

  “Well. That’s unfair, but understandable, I guess. Given the circumstances.”

  “I went through a period of blaming him, but it was no good. My dad could have said no. He loved that kind of thing, jetting off on a lark. You can’t live in fear of what might go wrong.”

  “Maybe she’ll forgive him now that he’s dead.”

  Ana scoffed. “Mother’s not big on forgiveness. She hasn’t forgiven me for reestablishing a relationship with him, and I’m her only damn child.”

  He glanced at the cl
ock above the refrigerator for the first time since arriving. It was late, after eleven.

  “Doesn’t look like you’re going to get that reading done,” she said.

  “It’ll wait.”

  “Thank you for dinner. And for talking to me.”

  “I don’t know that I said anything useful.”

  “You listen, you ask good questions. And I find your voice soothing.”

  “Almost puts you to sleep,” he countered, needing to make light of her words.

  “Anything that puts me to sleep these days should not be disparaged.” She stood abruptly and stretched, rolled her neck about gently. “Come on, let’s make good on our deal.”

  Matthew followed her down the old, looping staircase, his steps uncertain, his suppressed excitement leaping up again with distressing intensity. She fumbled for the lights in the small antechamber, and then they passed through the narrow arch. The chapel was smaller than he remembered, claustrophobic. He made a show of examining the panels from eastern Europe, stations of the cross, but his eyes were drawn inexorably back to the icon. The colors, subtle to begin with, appeared to shift about. The cloak was maroon, mauve, bloodred; the luminosity seemed to come from a place below the surface. Focusing on details usually helped, but the closer he got, the harder objective observation became. He grew agitated. One of the Virgin’s hands seemed to move, and he closed his eyes and stepped back.

  “I’m not sure it’s good for you to be in here,” Ana said quietly.

  “Don’t read your own discomfort into other people’s reactions.”

  “I’m not. I’m looking at you, and you seem very uneasy.”

  He shifted to avoid her gaze, then took a deep breath.

  “Just tired. I should get going.”

  In fact, he had no real desire to leave, but he was troubled by her attention, by her seeming need to get under the lid of his emotions.

  “All right,” she answered.

  He closed his eyes once more to compose himself. Then felt her hand on his shoulder, her lips on his, softly, gone again in a moment. She stepped back, the contact brief enough to have been only friendly if he saw fit to leave it at that. They faced each other for half a minute, enveloped by the warm light, the near walls. Ana tried to wait him out, but couldn’t.

  “You’re not used to doing the work, are you? Things just come to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” but it sounded less like the confused response he’d intended, and more like the apology it was. “Mostly, things just go away from me.”

  “Poor boy.”

  She turned to the door, but he reached out and gripped her shoulder. She turned back and kissed him again, more forcefully, and this time he took the hint.

  8

  H e was supposed to wait on the sidewalk for the black sedan to come rolling down Seventy-ninth Street, but it was a cold day, and Matthew sat in the coffee shop instead. The big glass windows commanded a view of the intersection, busy with vehicular and human traffic, shoppers and museumgoers, marching beneath the little sign that proclaimed this stretch Patriarch Dimitrious Way. The Greek consulate was just down the street.

  His concentration was shot—lack of sleep and a not altogether unpleasant state of agitation. Without warning, his mind shifted back a few hours to the warmth of her bed, the unexpected heat of her body. She had been so ready for him that a simple touch had been enough, and he had continued to touch her, in various ways, for some time, totally consumed with pleasing. He didn’t make a conscious decision to stay, simply found himself there in the gray predawn, her weight upon him before he knew where he was. Half-asleep, they rediscovered their rhythm and proceeded in a steady, dreamlike fashion, Ana laughing in embarrassment at her own pleasure, thighs spasming against his hips, her whole body responding to his every motion. He had held her for a long time, not speaking, smelling her hair, her skin, his mind and muscles relaxing for what seemed like the first time in weeks. A blessedly uncomplicated sense of how right they had felt together still possessed him.

  Over breakfast, they talked about the icon again, and she seemed to come to a decision. Matthew encouraged her not to make up her mind too quickly, but he had not been displeased. At the door, she wouldn’t let him go.

  “This was reckless,” she’d said, squeezing his hand. “We hardly know each other.”

  “Knowing takes time. We haven’t done too badly.”

  “I don’t even know how old you are.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  “OK, I’m fourteen,” he confessed. “Really, I’ve been shaving since I was eleven.”

  Ana smiled, but her mind had already moved to something else.

  “You wouldn’t marry her. That was the problem, wasn’t it?” Her words carried such certainty that he’d felt no need to respond. “That doesn’t make it your fault, Matthew. Just a decision.”

  “I’m thirty.”

  She’d made a show of being chagrined, but she couldn’t be that much older. Obviously used to being surrounded by older men. Eventually he had broken free and escaped into the frigid morning, but he could picture her still at the half-open door, in a gray cashmere robe, hair askew, blue eyes tracking him down the stairs, seeing him, knowing him in some deep and unsettling way.

  There was a draft in the shop, and Matthew wrapped his hands around the porcelain coffee mug. When he looked up again Fotis was there on the sidewalk, just beside the bus shelter. The old man pretended to look around, but Matthew was certain he had spotted him there in the window before ever leaving his car. He stood, and Fotis looked directly at him, gestured for him to stay put.

  “Am I late?” “No, I just didn’t want to stand in the cold.”

  “We must get you a warmer coat. Why don’t we forget the walk and stay here?”

  “Sure.” He hung his godfather’s coat and squeezed into the second chair across the table. It was a slow day, and the waiter was hovering instantly.

  “This is the place with the good rice pudding?” Fotis asked.

  “Best in New York,” Matthew confirmed.

  “Two of those.”

  The waiter slid the eight feet back behind the counter. Three of them worked in that small space, banging dishes, shouting at each other in some hybrid of Greek and Spanish.

  “Now,” Fotis leaned across the table, “what is so urgent that it could not wait?”

  “I would have told you on the phone.”

  “These conversations are better had in person.”

  Matthew tapped the speckled Formica table. He needed to pin the old bastard down.

  “I’m pretty sure Ms. Kessler wants to make a deal with the church.”

  The older man nodded slowly.

  “This is excellent. You have done a good thing, my boy.”

  “I didn’t do anything, except talk to her.”

  “Did I not say that would be all that was required?”

  “Anyway, I thought it would please you.”

  “But not you, I fear.”

  Matthew shrugged as the desserts were placed before them. Fotis began eating immediately.

  “I think it’s the right choice,” the younger man continued,

  “but I can’t help feeling that I’ve been dishonest. She doesn’t know anything about your connection with the church.”

  “What is there to know? They asked for my help, it has proved unnecessary.”

  “I thought I would tell her. About them talking to you, and you talking to me.”

  Fotis continued eating methodically, pudding sticking to his huge mustache.

  “You say she came to the decision on her own. If you tell her these things, you tell her to doubt her decision.”

  “Maybe she should doubt it.”

  The old man glanced up at him. “Why?”

  “Because another buyer might pay her more. And a museum would be accountable for what it did with the work. Who knows what these Greeks will do?”

  “Demand to know.”<
br />
  “I’ve told you, I can’t demand anything.”

  “Advise her. You’ve done well so far.”

  “And why should I undermine my own museum’s interests?”

  “That is a different issue.”

  “I’m denying myself the chance to have this work at my fingertips, to examine it at length, any time I want. That’s a very appealing idea to me.”

  “And that is a different issue still.” Fotis paused to chew as two large women with several colorful shopping bags each bustled into the tiny shop, gabbling in some Scandinavian tongue.

  “Now we have the girl, the museum, and yourself. Who comes first?”

  “It’s Ana’s icon.”

  Matthew hadn’t meant to use her first name, but if the old fox noticed, he did not let on.

  “Very good. She has taxes to pay, I understand, but her financial situation is sound. She has no real money needs. She may well have spiritual ones.”

  “That’s not for us to conjecture about.”

  “Her grandfather built a chapel to contain the icon.” The old man’s bushy eyebrows rose meaningfully. “Mother of God, what could be a clearer sign of his intentions than that? What could better honor his feelings for the work than giving it to the church? So there is the girl. The museum, truly, I must tell you that I don’t give a damn about them one way or another. Your loyalty is admirable, of course, but it is a big, rich institution which has no need of your protection. Eat your pudding.”

  Matthew wasn’t hungry, but dutifully took a bite.

  “As for what you need,” Fotis continued, the long spoon clattering in his empty dessert glass, “that concerns me greatly.” He wiped his face carefully and turned his eyes to the street. Always on the lookout, thought Matthew. For what? “The church will want to secure the icon before the girl has second thoughts, but they will not be able to take immediate possession. They have not made arrangements for transport, or for what happens to it over there. I can provide them with a neutral location to store it for a few weeks, insurance coverage, security. I do it for my own work anyway. And you may examine it during that time, whenever you wish.”

 

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