by Cathy Ace
“Sit,” he said, waving at the chairs. “Enjoy.” His tone made the invitations sound like an order, but, despite this, we did as he asked. Soon I was feeling the unreasonable thrill I get when I use my two thumbs to pop the little metal device that holds the top on a bottle of Grolsch.
As Pieter helped himself to cheese, drawing the little slit in the triangular slicer along the top of the wedge, making curls, Bud poured his own Heineken, and I pulled apart the thick chunk of ham on my plate with my fingers; Helga had provided no cutlery, so I inferred this approach was expected. Pieter’s beaming smile as we all tucked in confirmed this to be the case. Appreciative sounds of “mmm” and “yum” followed. The cheese was sharp and strong, the ham succulent and sweet, and the dried figs complemented them both. I didn’t touch the grapes. Too healthy, I thought.
Pieter took three curls of cheese and most of the grapes, then, nibbling, asked lazily, “These are the pieces Jonas left to me?” Bud and I nodded, both chewing. “Good,” added Pieter. He strode across the room and pulled the wrappings off each piece. The sheets puddled on the floor.
He stood in front of the pieces with his back to us. I was annoyed that I couldn’t see his face. He wrapped one arm around his middle and balanced his elbow on it, stroking his chin. He turned to address us. “I like the acrylic piece. Marc Chagall’s Lovers by Moonlight in the style of Rembrandt? Very amusing. But the portrait? Not my…cup of tea.”
I looked again at how Jonas had depicted Pieter, and was astonished by how he had captured the essence of the man, while remaining within the creative parameters of Van Gogh’s self-portrait. The original artist had portrayed himself clean-shaven, wearing a blue jacket buttoned to the throat. I knew it to be the last self-portrait Van Gogh had painted, one of three he’d created in September 1889 while a voluntary patient at the sanatorium of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy. This rendition showed the left two-thirds profile of Pieter von Boxtel, which didn’t flatter him. Jonas had shown him as gaunt, with dark hair swept back; the man’s hairstyle hadn’t changed, though its color had, and it was the style Van Gogh had sported at the time of the painting. The tragic Vincent had hidden his damaged right ear from the eyes of the viewer. Involuntarily I looked at the right-hand side of Pieter’s face and spotted a scar; faint and a little jagged, it ran along his jaw. I wondered how long he’d had it, and how he’d got it.
“It’s very much like you,” I said. “At what age do you think Jonas chose to capture you?”
Pieter shrugged, half turning to look at the portrait. “In my forties, maybe.”
“You didn’t have that scar on your face then?” I wondered how he would react.
His right hand touched his jawline. “This? Yes, I’ve had it since I was young.”
“I wonder if Jonas chose this portrait to hide your injured face,” I mused. “Did you come to know Jonas before you’d been scarred?”
Pieter van Boxtel straightened his back. “Jonas himself cut me. In anger. He had a bad temper, that man.” His tone was not charged with any emotion.
Bud stepped up. “What happened? Why would my uncle have attacked you? I thought you were friends. I thought all of the members of the Group of Seven were close.”
Pieter sighed. His shoulders sagged a little. “We were, but we were also young, headstrong, and—I will be honest—we sometimes drank too much.”
“What was the cause of the argument?” I pressed.
“It is too long ago; I do not remember.”
“I think you’d remember what gave rise to you being marked for life.”
Pieter threw a baleful glance in my direction then strode back to the counter, picked up his beer glass, and drained it. He placed the glass down with the utmost care. As he turned toward me, I saw an unmistakable flash of hatred in his eyes before he lowered his eyelids and contemplated his perfectly manicured hands. “He was your uncle, so I will tell you,” he said; he didn’t look at Bud. “It was because of a woman. Of course.” I spotted a half-smile. “Jonas thought I had been unfair to a young woman and I disagreed. Sometimes Jonas thought he ran our Group. He did not. There was no leader, there were no rules. Jonas thought he could say how I should live my life.” He finally looked up. “This was before I married, of course.”
Bud looked puzzled. “A fight between two young men over a girl isn’t so unusual, but how did you come to be so badly injured?”
Once again Pieter stroked his jaw. “It was a bottle, a glass— something jagged. There were punches, then this. There was a lot of blood. Jonas panicked and ran off. Willem took me to the hospital. There is not much flesh here. It took a long time to mend. Longer to heal than the affair with the girl had lasted.” A wry smile played around his lips. I suspected that this was a man capable of cruelty. “I will always remember her because of this. I have forgotten most of the others.” I was beginning to believe that Hannah might have summed up this man correctly.
“Of course I’m sorry my uncle injured you like that,” said Bud quietly, “but I assume you two made up? As friends, you know?”
Pieter smiled coldly. “This was nothing compared to what bound us together.”
“You mean your shared love of art?” I knew I sounded disbelieving.
“Yes, that,” replied Pieter coldly.
“More than a shared love of art, what did you all have in common?” I asked.
Pieter seemed not to notice Bud’s glare at me, and answered evenly, “I would say art was the glue that held us together, to begin with. After much shared time and experiences, we became close. Eventually we all did different things with our lives. Things some of us had not imagined. Through it all, our interest in art was always there for us.”
I looked around the empty walls. “You don’t live with art around you?”
Pieter replied quietly, “Art does not need to be merely paintings hung on walls. I choose to see the artistry of nature out there, and the interplay between light and planes in here. I do have some pieces in other parts of my home, where only I see them.”
“How terribly mysterious,” I said, as whimsically as possible.
“I was hoping to learn about my uncle from you,” said Bud, changing the topic. “My mother never knew him, you see. So far we’ve met Willem Weenix, who gave us some insights, and Dirk van der Hoeven’s widow, Marlene. She wasn’t really able to help much.”
“Marlene?” grinned Pieter, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “She never so much as knew or cared what day of the week it was. It astonished us all when Dirk said he was marrying her—then Menno came along soon afterwards. We all understood. By then Dirk was highly respectable, and it was difficult for him to take Marlene to public events. She was always…unpredictable. A beautiful woman in her way, but like a child. Is she well? I have not seen her since Dirk’s funeral. They had a large house in Bennebroek. Does she live there still?”
Bud shook his head. “No. We visited her at a small apartment in central Amsterdam. It looked as though she’d lived there for some time. She was fully installed.”
“Was she wearing a sari? She did for quite a number of years, I recall,” asked Pieter.
“No, just regular clothes,” said Bud gently. “Did you know Marlene well—before she married Dirk?”
Pieter shook his head. “Not…well.”
“And my uncle?” pressed Bud. “What can you tell me about him? Anything I might be able to tell my mom?” He spoke with as light a tone as I suspected he was able; it was annoying that we hadn’t been able to find out much about Jonas so far.
Pieter offered us another beer, which both Bud and I declined. I suspected he was playing for time. Time to consider his answer—or was it to avoid answering at all, I wondered.
Eventually he sipped his second beer, then said, “Jonas wasn’t our leader, but I have to agree that he was the person who held the Group t
ogether. He was our center, and certainly our most talented member when it came to making art. I might not care for this portrait, but it is well executed. I like the freedom and inventiveness he has expressed in this other work. However, overall, I think Jonas’s main shortcoming was that he never took time to develop his own ‘voice’ in art. He doted on several artists and traveled a great deal to visit places where Van Gogh, especially, had lived and painted, for example. Like this portrait, he aped great works. That is why I am pleased and surprised to see the acrylic piece. It seems he found his own style in the evening of his life. He chose to rage against the dying light, it seems, by amusing himself with this mixture of subject and style.”
I found it curious that a Dutch man would speak about my Canadian husband’s Swedish uncle by referring to the work of a poet from my own home city of Swansea. I couldn’t let it pass. “You like Dylan Thomas’s work?” I asked.
A sly smile crossed Pieter’s lips. “Yes, I like many Welsh things.” My skin crawled. “Dylan Thomas wrote in a way that is fun to read aloud. I practiced my English by speaking aloud these words by a Welsh man. I thought—and still think—highly of Dylan Thomas. He was a particular hero to me. Your accent is Welsh, I am correct?”
“Yes, I’m from Swansea too.”
Given what Hannah had said about Pieter van Boxtel’s habits, I wondered if he’d modeled his life after the hard-drinking, womanizing Thomas, with amateur artistic attempts taking the place of breathtaking poetry. I further wondered if Pieter’s wife had to put up with what Caitlin Thomas, my namesake and Dylan’s wife, had faced. Looking again at the portrait of Pieter, I said quietly, “Dylan Thomas died at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York. Another link to Vincent, and you?”
Pieter shrugged. “A coincidence. I certainly didn’t worship Thomas so much that I retraced his footsteps around the world, as Jonas did for his favorite artist.”
“When did he do that?” asked Bud.
“Over decades,” replied Pieter. “Van Gogh traveled to, and stayed in, many places in his short life. Your uncle did his best to visit every place his idol did, here in the Netherlands, in Belgium, London, Paris, and the south of France—Arles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, and Auvers-sur-Oise, that I know of. Whenever he had been somewhere he would return with sketches and paintings he had made, and photographs he had taken, his eyes full of fire. Especially when he returned from France. Jonas went there many times. He told me once he met a woman who claimed to be Van Gogh’s daughter. Her mother had been a dancer at a bar, I think. Or maybe a prostitute—that is more likely. Van Gogh had relationships with more than one, I understand. Jonas wanted to believe she was Vincent’s daughter. He carried a photograph of her for some time. That was in the sixties. She was an old woman when he met her.”
“Was he just as obsessive about his other favorite artists?” I asked. “I understand Hals, Vermeer, and Rembrandt were on his list too, and the range of work we found at his home suggests he at least managed to capture the techniques of many painters, even if he didn’t revere them.”
“No, he was not as obsessive about any others as he was about Van Gogh. He loved the work of great artists and did whatever he could to be close to it and, as you can see here, to emulate it. He worked in many galleries and museums over the years, taking night shifts when he could. He did not care for the people who came to see the art—his birthmark, you know—but he cared for the pieces themselves. He enjoyed being alone with them. He called it his ‘special time,’ when he could touch the works.”
“Surely those places are all locked down at night,” said Bud. “Automation means everything is on camera, right? And they can’t ever have been keen on anyone fondling the paintings.”
Pieter shrugged. “Maybe today, but forty or fifty years ago that wasn’t the case. Doors and windows had locks, and there were men with flashlights—Jonas being one of them. That was it. Yes, art was attached to the walls, but not with any great care. Much of it was simply hung, and people were trusted to come within inches of it. A velvet swag was put in place to keep people a little distance away, but that was all. It is strange, but true.”
“A loop or two of rope keeping the honest honest?” observed Bud wryly. “Maybe you’re right, then. Jonas might have become intimately connected with the works of the artists he admired. His ability to reproduce the different styles we’ve seen in his portraits was extraordinary, and must have required close inspection of the originals.”
“You are correct,” said Pieter with gravitas as he looked back at the two pieces we’d brought with us. “I will place the portrait of me…somewhere, of course. The Chagall/Rembrandt will hang in here. I like it. It makes me smile.”
“You had a career as an accountant, I understand,” I said to Pieter, calling him back from his thoughts.
“Indeed.” He blinked slowly. “It was a good career.”
“You live well off it in your retirement,” I added casually.
Pieter’s face crumpled into a crooked smile. “People are happy to pay someone to do small but important accounting jobs for them. I have retired, but still have some private clients. It helps me afford the gardeners, and Helga.” The way he said the woman’s name made me wonder if her role extended beyond keeping his house clean.
“Do you think my uncle had a good, happy life, Pieter?” asked Bud, sensing, like me, our interview was coming to a natural conclusion.
Pieter gave the question some thought, then said, “Happy, for the most part. Good? What is ‘good?’ Fun? Productive? Influential? Who knows? I think Jonas lived his life for himself and not for anyone else. Though he did allow our Group to benefit from his…passion. That is all I can say.”
Pulling the unknown man’s photo from my purse, I hopped down from my stool to pass it to Pieter. “Do you recognize this man? We aren’t sure if he was one of your Group—or maybe you know him from somewhere else?”
For the first time since we’d arrived I noted what I judged to be an entirely open display of inner thoughts and feelings by Pieter. He frowned as he looked at the photo, then shook his head. “Not someone I know.” He paused. “Is this recent—I mean, is he this age now? It’s not a good shot. Not sharp. Might it be an old photograph?”
“I think most pictures printed like this, on photographic paper from, presumably, a real film, are more than a decade old now. There were some showing him older, so maybe this is about thirty years old.”
Pieter shook his head slowly. “Not one of the Group, certainly, not even anyone from our regular groups of friends, or anyone I know personally. He could be from another part of Jonas’s life.”
Sensing Pieter was hoping we’d leave, I tucked the photo away again and said, “There’s just one more thing—and then we’ll let you get back to your day, Pieter. When we were leaving Marlene van der Hoeven’s home today, she said something to her son that suggested she thought her husband Dirk had been killed by someone trying to get at Jonas’s paintings, and that the same people had killed Jonas too. What do you think she was talking about?”
I watched intently as Pieter listened to me, and thought about how to respond. His facial muscles gave away almost nothing; the throbbing vein in his neck told a different tale.
“She said this?” he snapped. “Dirk died a few years ago. He was a healthy-looking but sick man. He always seemed to be in control, but he held his emotions inside him. It ate away at him. In the end his heart could take it no longer. They say she found him in the garden, dead among the roses. That would have been difficult for anyone to accept, most of all Marlene. Poor Marlene. As for Jonas? I heard from Willem he fell at home. It was an accident. Is this not correct?”
“That’s what Menno told us,” I said, choosing my words with great care.
“And the police told this to Menno, I understand,” retorted Pieter. I agreed. He relaxed a little, though the vein in his neck cont
inued to throb. A couple of quick licks of his lips told the rest of the story—Pieter van Boxtel was suddenly worried that Jonas de Smet had not died of natural, or at least accidental, causes. I found his reaction interesting.
It was clear that our host wanted us to leave. I suspected he’d phone Willem Weenix as soon as we were out of the front door, which took us about two minutes, even allowing for putting on our shoes. His farewells were cheerful enough, but I could tell something dark was bubbling inside Pieter van Boxtel.
As we walked along the neatly bordered path toward our vehicle, I said to Bud, “I know we can’t talk in the car, but I would like us to go right back to Jonas’s house for a serious chat.”
“Why there?” asked Bud conspiratorially.
“For one thing, we can take the damaged painting back and dump it off, and for another, I want to hunt through the place again. I think we’ve missed something.”
Bud sighed as he allowed the attentive Frans to open the car door for us. “Sadly, I think you’re right,” he said. His response set my mind racing as we made our way back to the canals of Amsterdam from the canals of Hoofddorp.
Candlelit Interior
AS WE STOOD ON THE step of Jonas’s house, Hannah pulled open her door and stomped out. “Hope all your meetings went well today. Didn’t one of them want what Jonas sent ’em?” she gestured toward the sheet-covered painting we’d brought back from Marlene’s.
“It’s been damaged,” I said, deciding not to explain how. “We’ll replace it. There are a lot to choose from.” I hoped she’d let us get on, but it wasn’t to be.
“Want to come in for a cuppa?” she said, beaming. “I know you do.” She stood back and opened the door as wide as it would go. “Come on wit’ ya.”
Bud’s voice was firm when he answered, “We’d like to Hannah, but we still have a lot to get done today, so we’ll have one with you tomorrow, as we said. Do you know if anyone else had a key to Jonas’s place?”