Picture of Defeat

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Picture of Defeat Page 13

by John Harris


  Eleven

  They were all gloomy and low in spirits.

  ‘Two,’ Marco kept saying. ‘Two.’

  Tamara was less concerned with the loss of the paintings than with the loss of life. ‘Italy is descending into anarchy,’ she said. ‘There is no law anywhere.’

  Pugh said nothing because he suspected that there would be no real law in Italy for some time after the Germans had been sent packing.

  They were on the point of moving on when Tassinari reminded them about the paintings. ‘We shall now need another within easy reach,’ he said. ‘We may have to bribe our way across the lines and we mustn’t have to pull the lot out and choose one there.’

  They agreed. A painting had freed them from the Germans and from Salvadori’s partisans, but they all knew that if either Hoggeimer or Salvadori had been aware that there were other canvasses in the hearse, they would have lost the lot.

  It was late, so they decided to leave the rest of the paintings where they were in the coffin and open it the following morning. Because it was drizzling, the first essential was to find somewhere they could rest for the night.

  ‘There’s an orphanage at Moccino,’ Tamara said. ‘The Convent of the Virgin of Manimora. The nuns will give us somewhere to sleep.’

  They climbed back to their places, Pugh, Tamara and Tassinari on the box of the hearse, the other two riding in the back with the doors open, their feet dangling. Tassinari was in a contemplative mood.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I have often wondered what Bocco was up to with these paintings.’

  ‘You think they’re fakes?’

  Tassinari shrugged. ‘In the past the masters didn’t regard forgery as a depreciation of their work. They showed indulgence towards such frauds and even promoted them. Boucher always permitted the copying of his pictures and even signed the best with his own name. If Ingres judged a copy good he signed it, making it an original, Corot did the same. He only painted 2,000 pictures but there are more than 5,000 in existence. Utrillo couldn’t distinguish forgeries from his own work and Vlaminck was said once to have painted a picture in the style of Cézanne which Cézanne thought was his own. Rembrandt, in his Christ Scourging the Money Changers, copied the figure of Christ from a woodcut by Dürer, while Rubens, one of the shrewdest men in the business, copied paintings of 200 years earlier and signed copies of his work painted by his pupils.’

  Tassinari smiled as he went on. ‘The Louvre paid a fortune for a 300-year-old Benvieni bust in the last century, and ignored a dealer who said it was only three years old. Van Goghs by the dozen were exposed as forgeries in 1929 but Meier Graef, in Germany, whose opinions on Van Gogh were held in awe, continued to be convinced by them. Now’ – he shrugged again – ‘there are probably dozens of works being painted at this very moment especially to be bought up by Hitler’s agents on his behalf. He knows nothing about art and manages to pick agents who also know nothing.’

  He nodded to the clopping hooves of the horse. ‘I’ve stood in the Uffizi Galleries,’ he said, ‘watching students copying the masters, and have not been able to tell the difference. The sole reason for forgery is because purchasers judge paintings by the name on them. Art has become a status symbol.’

  ‘All of which,’ Pugh reminded him, ‘doesn’t help us choose another Detto Banti.’

  It brought them back to earth with a bang and they finally decided to keep out the painting of sheep being driven up a hill by a shepherd, entitled Sheep Returning to the Fold.

  ‘Nothing but a lot of sheeps’ behinds,’ Pugh commented. ‘On the other hand, sheep facing you aren’t exactly an inspiration either.’

  Marco was far from pleased. ‘This is the third,’ he pointed out angrily. ‘At this rate, our 48 million lire worth of art is going to look pretty sick. It’s already down to 40 million.’

  Tamara sniffed. Her opinion of Marco seemed to have undergone a certain amount of change. ‘I think I could live on that for a while,’ she said.

  The Convent and Orphanage of the Virgin of Manimora at Moccino was at the end of a long valley marked by the tall brush strokes of cypresses and rows of terraced vines. It was a huge edifice consisting of wings containing offices, dining rooms, work rooms and living quarters, making the four sides of a huge square which contained a well and a few trees for shade against the summer sun. It had existed for 200 years and had always opened its doors to travellers.

  At the moment, the courtyard was noisy with the cries of children. One nun was overseeing a group of little girls manipulating a skipping rope and another, younger and more boisterous, was keeping goal between two heaps of piled coats for a shrieking horde of small boys who were playing football with a tied-up bundle of rags. As they pushed their noses inside the gate, she had just collected the ‘ball’ and was returning it to centre field with a tremendous kick from one of her stout black boots.

  The nun who received them agreed that they could remain there for the night, and they drove the hearse into the courtyard. Seeing the coffin, the nuns crossed themselves and muttered prayers for the deceased.

  Tamara was on the point of admitting there was nothing inside it but rocks and a few rolled canvasses, when Pugh whipped her away quickly.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t tell them!’

  ‘But they think we’ve got a body in there.’

  ‘It won’t harm them.’

  ‘But they’re nuns! They believe in truth, honesty and God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.’

  ‘They’ll be no worse off for not knowing.’

  Tassinari was busily telling the sister who had welcomed them a long story about his uncle who had died in Vicinamontane but, because of the arrival of the Germans, couldn’t be buried there and had to be taken to Moccino.

  ‘He was Boccaccio Detto Banti, the painter,’ he explained gravely.

  The nun had obviously heard the name. She crossed herself and suggested that they place the coffin in the chapel for the night. Tassinari clearly hadn’t expected this but there was nothing he could do about it. They wrestled the box out of the hearse and carried it solemnly into the spartan little chapel, where two benches had been placed near the altar to support it.

  Pugh was about to turn away when Tamara clutched his wrist. ‘Prayers,’ she whispered, horrified. ‘Prayers for the dead!’

  Pugh pushed Foscari ahead of him and they knelt with her and the other two while the nun muttered at the foot of the coffin.

  ‘I feel awful,’ Tamara whispered. ‘I am a fraud. I don’t like it.’

  ‘We’ll be gone tomorrow.’

  As they were shown their quarters, Marco introduced them all, announcing Pugh and Tamara by the names they’d been given by Tassinari at Vicinamontane when Klemper had arrived.

  The nun didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I am Sister Angelica,’ she said. She indicated a large room, where several straw mattresses were spread on the stone floor, and led Pugh and Tamara to another smaller room further down the corridor, where there was a proper bed. It consisted of a battered iron bedstead with a thin horsehair mattress, a bolster and two folded blankets.

  ‘This is for visitors,’ she said. ‘It’s the best we have to offer,’ she admitted with a smile. ‘But for a loving wife and husband, I imagine it will be enough.’

  As she turned away, Pugh saw Tamara opening her mouth and promptly whipped her round and kissed her so she could say nothing. From the doorway the nun saw them and beamed.

  ‘We can provide you with a meal,’ she said. ‘It won’t be much. Largely vegetable soup and bread, but it will help you on your way.’

  As the door closed, Tamara wrenched herself free. Swinging her arm, she delivered a tremendous swipe at Pugh’s face. As he stepped back she almost fell over.

  ‘They’re nuns!’ she said furiously. ‘I’m not going to sleep here with you!’

  ‘You don’t have to sleep with me. Just here. It’s very different.’

  ‘They think we’re
married.’

  ‘You’re certainly behaving as if we are.’

  The chiding seemed to bring her up sharp. ‘Piu,’ she said, ‘we can’t do this to these good women.’

  Pugh thought for a moment before answering. ‘Nuns,’ he said, ‘have always seemed to me to be very down-to-earth people. Witness the one who was playing goalkeeper. If there’s one thing they’ve learned to do it’s survive. If they knew, I doubt if they’d worry. They’d understand. Most of them do.’

  ‘Then why don’t we tell them?’

  ‘And let them know that we’ve allowed them to put the coffin in their chapel and say prayers over it? Let’s spare them the truth. It’s best to say nothing.’

  She studied him for a long time, her face grave. ‘I think, Piu,’ she said, ‘that you are dishonest.’

  The meal was sparse, as they had been warned: thin vegetable soup with bread. They ate in the main dining room with the children and the nuns who were looking after them. The tables were scrubbed and devoid of anything but knives and spoons, with tin mugs for the wine that was served in earthenware pitchers.

  The children were noisy and full of laughter and chatter. From time to time one of the nuns shushed them and they became quiet, but it didn’t last long and a moment later they were all noisily chirruping once more.

  Sister Angelica sat at the end of the table, smiling benignly on Pugh and Tamara. ‘Forty of them,’ she said. ‘Orphans, every one of them. Children whose fathers have been killed by the war, whose parents have died in the bombing or abandoned them to us because they could no longer feed them. I think they are as happy as they can be. They are given love, a little discipline and a respect for the Church and for the Lord. When we send them out into the world they are no worse for their stay here.’

  ‘How do you manage for money?’ Tamara asked anxiously.

  ‘We manage. We have our own little workshops and our sisters are very clever with their hands. One is a carpenter and does the woodwork repairs. We have a bakery. A garden. An orchard. A kitchen. We even have a wheelwright. Sister Domenica is far from expert, but her father was a wheelwright, so she knows what to do and she repairs our carts when they break down.’

  ‘But money, Sister? You must need so much of it.’

  Sister Angelica smiled. ‘It is often difficult and sometimes we have to cut our rations. We try not to cut the children’s so we go a little short ourselves. Not much. Just a little.’

  ‘If only we could give you money!’

  ‘Nobody in Italy these days has money, child. We would welcome money from anywhere for the children, but when it doesn’t exist we simply manage without.’

  They spent the evening sitting in the courtyard, where Foscari joined in the football, and as darkness fell they went to their rooms. Tamara refused to look at Pugh and sat with her back to him, avoiding his eyes so that he couldn’t tell whether she was angry or not.

  ‘Sono truffatrice,’ she said. ‘I am a cheat. We’re taking their food and doing nothing for them.’ She paused, then she swung round. ‘Why can’t we give them a picture, Piu? It would be so simple. We could give them a canvas and tell them where to sell it. It would bring in enough money to keep forty children for months.’ Pugh was not unattracted by the idea and knew it was part of her generous spirit to think of it. But there were drawbacks.

  ‘How do we do it?’

  ‘We have one in the coffin. The sheeps’ behinds.’

  ‘How do we get it out without letting them know the coffin doesn’t contain a body?’

  She stamped her foot. ‘You are too practical, Piu,’ she snapped, but it was obvious she realised he was right.

  She refused to lie on the bed with him, so he lay down alone and left her sitting upright on the opposite edge.

  About midnight, he woke to see her still there, her body drooping, her head dangling, her fair hair over her face like the wing of a bright bird. She was fast asleep, kept upright by some interior mental plumb-line. Without speaking, he put gentle hands on her and laid her down on the bed, then placed the blanket over her. She managed to open her eyes for a second but she was so tired she didn’t know what was happening and simply murmured a quiet ‘Grazie, Piu,’ before falling asleep again.

  He woke up in the morning to find her sitting bolt upright again, on the bed alongside him, her eyes flashing with a dark fire of indignation.

  ‘You made me go to bed with you,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘If I hadn’t, you’d probably have fallen off your perch on to your head and stunned yourself.’

  She refused to speak to him and they went silently to the big dining room for breakfast with the others, the children streaming noisily past them. The meal consisted of nothing but coffee and dry bread, and once again Tamara flushed pink with embarrassment at the knowledge that in the hearse they had canvasses that were probably worth millions of lire while the nuns were struggling to feed the orphans on nothing.

  ‘We must do something,’ she insisted in an urgent, demanding whisper to Pugh.

  They attended another session in the chapel. Tamara was silent, watching the praying nuns.

  ‘Sancta Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ ora della nostra morte…’

  The altar glowed with candles, gilt, cheap polished brass and the glittering of imitation gems. She adjusted the black lace scarf she wore on her head, deep in thought.

  ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…’

  She rose with the others, crossing herself with quick dabs of the fingers against her breast. As they left the chapel, Sister Angelica drew Pugh on one side.

  ‘Your uncle,’ she said. ‘He could be buried here. We have a little graveyard where the nuns are buried when they are old and die.’ Her face became sad. ‘Sometimes there are children. Since the war started, too many, unhappily. I think we could find room.’

  Pugh went into a long explanation involving Tassinari and a family plot that existed in Moccino. Sister Angelica didn’t argue and they solemnly carried the coffin back to the hearse. The horse, Fiorello, was led out of the stable, where he had spent the night with the three mules the nuns kept for doing the heavy work about the fields they tilled, and backed into the shafts of the hearse. The sable plumes still attached to his browband bobbed and nodded as they moved slowly through the gate of the orphanage. The children halted their games to wave them off. It brought tears to Tamara’s eyes.

  ‘We must do something,’ she said furiously. ‘We have 40 million lire-worth of painting in the hearse. Surely we can afford to give away one canvas to the nuns.’

  ‘No,’ Marco said.

  ‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘And if you are not prepared to do something about it, I am. I shall send one to them as soon as they become mine.’

  They had just entered the woods a mile from the convent when there was a bump as the rear wheel hit a stone, then a clatter and a lurch which threw Marco and Foscari from their perches at the rear. Fiorello came to a dignified stop, his head up proudly for a moment before it began to droop to its normal position between his forelegs.

  ‘The wheel has come off, sir,’ Foscari said.

  The hearse was tilted crazily to the right, the wheel in the ditch at the roadside, and they stood staring at it, wondering what to do.

  ‘Sir, I regret to announce that the split pin’s worn through.’

  ‘So how do we keep the wheel on?’

  Foscari smiled. ‘The convent, sir,’ he said. ‘They have a resident wheelwright there. She will have a split pin, or if not a split pin, an oak peg we can drive through in its place.’

  ‘We’re not going back there,’ Marco said.

  Tamara rounded on him angrily. ‘Yes, we are,’ she said. ‘And we’re going to take them a picture and tell them where to sell it.’

  Marco moaned. ‘È finito!’ he said slapping at his forehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Give away my birthright!’

  ‘My birthright,’ she corrected.


  ‘Your birthright! My birthright! Anybody’s birthright! But give it away? Why did I go to all that trouble to dig all those pictures out? Why did we crate them up? Why did we uncrate them, take them from their frames and build a coffin for them? To give them away, of course!’

  ‘It’s only the backsides of a lot of sheep going up a hill,’ she snapped. ‘That one we shan’t miss. I should never want to hang that in my living room.’

  ‘Some American from Idaho might! Perhaps he doesn’t know that the sheep’s backsides are not very good, only that it was painted by Bocco Detto Banti and is worth a lot of money. In Idaho if you have a Detto Banti in the dining room – or a Canaletto on the stairs, or anything else – you are one up on the neighbours.’

  ‘We are giving them the sheeps’ backsides!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Si!’

  Pugh watched the duel with amusement. While he couldn’t recommend Tamara’s generosity with something that wasn’t yet hers, he could only admire her warm heart.

  Curiously, old Tassinari seemed to agree. No one raised any support for Marco, and in the end they accepted what Tamara insisted. Unscrewing the coffin, they removed the Sheep Returning to the Fold.

  It was Pugh and Tamara who set off for help. It seemed safe to leave the hearse and the other paintings with Foscari to guard them. Without him, Pugh would have expected to find Marco gone on their return, the paintings stolen and old Tassinari unconscious by the roadside. But Foscari was sturdy enough to deal with Marco, whose drinking had hardly left him in the best of health, and by this time Foscari was devoted to Pugh and unlikely to be bribed or duped.

  Tamara walked with the rolled painting in her hand, her brows down, her eyes angry. ‘We must do it,’ she said.

  ‘We’re doing it,’ Pugh reminded her gently. ‘Just as you wished.’

  She stopped and faced him. ‘You don’t mind, Piu?’

  ‘They’re your paintings. Not yet, of course, but they will be. It’s your own property you’re giving away.’

 

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