Madonna of the Apes

by Nicholas Kilmer

  “Join the club,” Fred said.

  “You will find I am not inclined to pry into matters concerning your personal life or past history,” Clayton said.

  “Suits me,” Fred said.

  “Will you require time to settle your personal affairs?” Fred spread his arms. “As long as it suits us both,” Clay continued, “the office space downstairs can be yours. The couch—you have a place to sleep?”

  “I do,” Fred said.

  “As for salary…”

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” Fred said. Clay tilted his head inquisitively. “I said there is nothing I want and it’s not true. Candid, but not true. I’ve been thinking about it. I want to see the other sides of those paintings downstairs. The ones you have turned to the wall. That’s what I want. Salary, sure, we’ll figure that out, and the rest. Until one of us says to hell with it.

  “Now. The Brierstone collection. Tell me about it.”

  “Very well,” Clay said. “I am pleased. Delighted. There is no time to waste. As you say, the operation on Pekham Street is clearly temporary. Equally clearly, not legitimate. Thank God we brought at least the Leonardo into safety. At any moment, all the rest could vanish. As I told you, I thought I recognized the Magdalene that first visit. I’d thought about it before, having seen it reproduced in an old issue of Adonis, an article about the Brierstones’ country house in Kent. There had been collusion between the family and the editorial board of the magazine, because within the year the estate was put up for sale and the contents, apparently, dispersed. The Magdalene appeared, with others that are presently a few blocks from where we sit, in photographs showing the drawing rooms and staircases of the house. Such images stay in my mind. In particular the Magdalene had caught my attention because the caption reported the authorship of one of the Brierstones’ paintings to be attributed to Mantegna. The caption seemed to relate to this painting, though it was not clear. I remembered because it was easy to see, even in the photograph, that the painting could not be by Mantegna.”

  “Did your chest show up in any of the photos?” Fred asked.

  “I did not recall it. I took time yesterday, in the museum’s library, to go back to the old issue, find the article, and study the photographs. Though I still could not resolve the issue of the purported Mantegna, not even to ascertain whether it was the Magdalene at issue, as I say, I identified six paintings: six paintings from the Brierstone collection, that are presently on the wall of that man Tilley’s apartment. The inference is plain. Unless he has already sold to Tilley, Brierstone’s last heir is quietly and secretly selling what he can, the least notorious objects from the family collection, here, outside of England, clandestinely, in order to evade the taxes due to the governments of both countries. I don’t know for a fact, but I presume, until further notice, that the chest was part of the Brierstone collection which, in its time, was varied and considerable. I have already set a researcher to work, in England, to find pertinent records. Wills. Inventories. In the big families such records are always kept.”

  “So it’s a tax dodge,” Fred said.

  “My purchase was made in good faith,” Clay said. “It is up to the seller to collect any sales tax due. I have no knowledge that Tilley does not mean to pay the Commonwealth of Massachusetts its five percent, even though he was so generous as not to require it of me.”

  “I mean, as you just implied, whoever is selling the material now, in the U.S., is avoiding British taxes. The obvious next question…” Fred said,

  “Exactly. Who is the heir?”

  “Is, Who is the heir?” Fred said.

  “According to the article, when it was published he lived in South Africa. He does not set foot in England, according to what I can learn, on account of legal matters. His name is Peter Hartrack, and, reading between the lines, he may well be a scoundrel. Though my sources in the world of art are multifarious, when it comes to doing research in the world of scoundrels…”

  Fred said, “There are people I can call…”

  “I thought as much,” Clay said. “Good. Excellent. Proceed. I am pleased, Fred.”

  “The office downstairs?” Fred asked.

  Clay, nodding, said, “I’ll leave you to it, then. I am obliged to go out for dinner. The door locks itself as you leave. I notice you do not smoke. I cleared out the desk drawers, anticipating this eventuality. May I say again how pleased I am. I placed a blanket on the couch, should you wish to nap. A nap often clarifies the mind. Anything you wish to look at while you are down there, by all means, do. You are most welcome. I have taken note, also, that you understand how to handle a painting.

  “I must dress, or I shall be late. I suggest that for the time being you not answer the telephone. People would be confused. Well, then…”

  “About the phone,” Fred said. “One thing. The calls I make, for information about Hartrack—you’ll be billed for them as usual, but only the charges will appear. At least—the numbers that show on your bill next to the charges, those numbers, if you call them, will get you only the recorded message that they are temporarily not in service.”

  “Ah,” Clayton said, his face breaking into the first smile Fred had seen on it. “I am delighted.” He paused, hesitating as if before giving away his deepest secret. “Incidentally, Fred. As long as we are working together now. You should know: I am no thief, nor do I condone or abet thievery. Should it be proved that the Leonardo was not properly offered to me, I shall take what recuperative measures are indicated. Be under no illusion. It will have been an honor merely to house the work, and to protect it, however briefly. When driven to it, I am capable of nobility.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Ten-thirty. If Clayton Reed had returned, he’d come through the upstairs entrance and he’d been quiet about it. Fred left his notes on the desk, took a look at the old leather couch, gave it a smack, and made for the street.

  Though his office provided a window through which he could see the feet and lower legs of passing dogs and pedestrians, he had not noticed the fine persistent rain that had developed. It was cold and smelled of new leaves. Also it pierced directly through his short hair and ran down his face and neck. If he’d thought to do so, he might have picked up one of the umbrellas from the blue and white vase next to the entrance door. But he hadn’t thought of that until the door was closed, and he was locked out.

  His buzz at the intercom bell next to the antique shop’s front window got him a sleepy “Hey?”

  “Amnesia?” he said. “It’s Fred.”

  “Just a minute,” she said. “I’m on the phone.”

  Fred took what shelter he could in the building’s doorway until, ten minutes later, she came down and, seeing him through the glass door, gave him a wave. She was enveloped in a large terry-cloth wrapper, bright yellow. She opened the door and told him, “You’re wet,” as she stepped aside for him, put out her hand and said, “You have suffered enough. My name is Mandy. Short for Amanda. Come upstairs. I’ve been watching a truly stupid monster movie with the sound off while I talk to my mother. God!”

  Fred followed her to the fourth floor. Mandy. “So, I’m forgiven?” he asked.

  “Hell no. It’s just easier,” she said. “I’m in bed. It’s the only warm place there is. The heat’s off.” She ran through the apartment’s single room, throwing Fred the yellow wrapper and climbing naked into bed. “Hang your wet stuff in the bathroom. Maybe it will dry by morning. Put on the robe and don’t come near me until you are dry.”

  A television the size of a breadbox, on a table on her side of the bed, was pullulating with vague maggoty monsters that had likely been conceived in Japan. While Fred took off his loafers she was turning the sound up with the remote. Sounds came from the film, resembling slobbering, growling and, distantly, human speech.

  “God, that woman,” Mandy exclaimed as Fred made for the bathroom. He hung his clothes on the shower rod over the tub, and dried off before he pried himself into the yellow robe.
It had been huge on her and barely did for him if you did not count the inches of wrist it did not cover.

  “I wanted to see you again. I didn’t think—I should have brought something, Mandy,” Fred said.

  “I’ve got everything,” Mandy said.

  “A house present I mean. Nothing was open, and besides, I didn’t know I would stop until I was here. That sounds…”

  “Random,” Mandy said. The TV gulped. “Random and episodic.”

  “Like a bottle of wine,” Fred said. “So I’m not empty-handed.”

  “There’s Scotch someone gave me,” Mandy said. “Or, I know, make us some tea.” The TV gulped again. “God! The idea is they eat the people alive, but slowly, a lot of them at once, and they have gotten mixed up with bees somehow, so there’s a queen monster maggot who gives the orders and there’s a good chance they’ll take over the world, which I could tell them is a mistake but they’re not asking me. There’s Lemon Zest and Red Zinger and something else that has no taste at all with chamomile in it. Mugs in the cabinet. I want sugar and milk.”

  Fred began fumbling in the kitchen alcove. “Do you care which one I make?” he asked.

  “They’re all the same.”

  The TV gulped.

  “God!” Mandy said. “Someone told them about my mother.”

  Fred found a saucepan in which to boil water, and two mugs with mottos on them: Fuhgeddaboudit and The Boston Globe. He looked for real tea and, finding none, elected the Lemon Zest and the Red Zinger and put a bag of each into the saucepan. The TV gulped. After the water had boiled he filled the mugs, added sugar and milk to Mandy’s, and carried it to her. She sat up, letting the bedclothes fall to her waist. The left arm, reaching out for the tea, brought the snake’s tail writhing forward.

  “Come,” she said, glancing beside her to the unoccupied side of the bed.

  “I’ll spill everything,” Fred warned.

  Instead he hoiked a chair from the little dining table and sat by the bed, across from the TV. The maggots continued eating what, it appeared, had been an honest and well-meaning newspaper reporter. But there was another newspaper reporter, even more honest and well meaning, and with a girlfriend, who would probably come out of this Okay.

  “Random and episodic,” Fred said.

  “With a monster movie, what else do you expect?” Mandy asked. “I was talking about my mother, though. In this movie everybody’s got a prevailing motive. The maggots want to take over the world. That’s dumb, but it makes sense. Take it over, eat it, I guess. The other people—the reporters, the girlfriend, and now the army—see how those bullets just kind of ploodge through the maggots without hurting them? What do you do to a creature that has no organs, after all? No brain, you can’t shoot it in the head. No, I’ve seen it before and a wise and kind old scientist who has discovered a gene that everyone thinks could destroy the world, instead it’s going to purify the world by infecting all the maggot monsters. It’s, well, a kind of anti-Nazi movie as I read it.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “What I was going to say,” Mandy went on, “the good guys—the girlfriend is a student of the wise and kind old scientist. Their motive is to save the world and also, obviously, have sex—I mean the girlfriend—though the movie is too old-fashioned to mention sex beyond rolling their eyes. Which I’m not up to tonight, do you mind?”

  “Fact is, don’t be insulted, I came for your company,” Fred said.

  “Okay. So really, it’s not that random and episodic, it’s just—you run into someone, who knows what’s in their mind?”

  Fred said, “The wise old scientist looks like Einstein.”

  “I wasn’t listening,” Mandy said. She sniffed at her tea and drank. Her dark curls swept briefly across her forehead.

  “When I was a kid, I spent time on a farm in Iowa,” Fred said. “Cows. Dairy. A herd moves around its territory in a regular, predictable way. The beasts have habits, and those habits take them beyond their private, individual motives, like eating or copulating or swishing flies with their tails. You get odd birds who are good at spotting weak points in the fencing. But for the most part, after you live with them long enough, you know pretty much what they are going to do next. But if you were on the farm for one day, and happened to watch them, random and episodic is what you’d conclude.”

  “The tattoo,” Mandy said. “I thought about it for six months before I did it, saving my money. Yet everyone, when they saw it, assumes you don’t do that except as an impulse purchase.”

  “Exactly,” Fred said.

  “The snake has a bad rep, I figured, among Christians anyway. You know, how the Virgin Mother is going to crush its head beneath her heel? Seemed awfully bloodthirsty for the mother of God. This isn’t India! And the nuns used to threaten me with her when I was little? So I figured, I was about twenty-two at the time, and the idea didn’t leave me until I acted on it: ‘Crush this, Baby!’ Ever since then, the Virgin Mary and I have gotten along just fine. She doesn’t mess with me, I don’t mess with her.

  “Everyone thought this tattoo was random and episodic, whereas in fact, once you get to know me, it’s only the tip of the iceberg.” Mandy drank again. The queen of the maggots said, “They shall all be destroyed. No one shall live.” She slurped and smiled in a maggoty way. “My mother,” Mandy said. “She still won’t talk to me. She was on the phone with me for an hour.”

  “Complex woman,” Fred remarked.

  “Not really talk. You don’t know what they want,” Mandy said. “Unless someone writes them a stupid line to say like ‘They shall all be destroyed.’ But you’re right. Mom’s more complex than that by a mile. They’ve already tried diplomacy.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Fred said.

  “The U.N. When the first reporter, the dead one, realized the maggots talked English, being genetically modified by radiation. It’s really more than you need to know and I wouldn’t be watching it except, well, hell, it’s on.”

  “Talking about motives,” Fred said.

  “We were?”

  “In a way. I was going to make an observation about someone, but I lost track of what the observation was going to be. In my experience, sometimes while you are watching the main character, the one in front, figuring out what he or she might want, you lose sight of what’s happening in the background—let’s say for example there’s a bunch of monkeys running around.”

  “This film’s gonna blow a gasket if you add monkeys,” Mandy said. “There’s a scene coming up I like, then I’m turning it off. Take War and Peace for example.”

  “Okay,” Fred said.

  “Sure there’s a lot of monkeys running around, all with the same name, or all the same person but with different names. You choose. Then there’s the maggot monster, Napoleon, who says, ‘They shall all be destroyed. No one shall live.’ And there’s another guy, Pierre, who’s like the wise old scientist except he hasn’t got a clue and he doesn’t have a formula either. Well, he has a formula, but there’s nothing to go with it. It hasn’t been developed. So when the whole thing’s over the monkeys have pretty much taken over and there’s Pierre in a rocking chair, still with no clue. The rest of it I didn’t follow but it wasn’t going anywhere. Now watch. This is the scene.”

  The maggots had withdrawn from the screen. The wise old scientist had gotten onto a plane, along with the surviving and handsomer reporter, Tad, and the handsome female student, Monica. A storm was shaking the little plane up and down, lightning played outside the windows against which stagehands were throwing buckets of water. A stewardess bounced down the aisle and teacups and glasses flew off the tray.

  “I love it,” Mandy said. “The maggots aren’t enough. They get to the White House, the President is in bed with pneumonia, it turns out the Vice President is in league with the maggots, has been the whole time.”

  “Complex,” Fred said.

  “Exactly. Yes. Like my mother,” Mandy answered. She killed the thing with the remote. “I
f I ever have children, which I won’t,” she said, “it will only be to get my revenge.”

  She’d emptied her cup and Fred took it, with his, to the sink. Outside the window the rain was stronger.

  “You’re not married, are you?” Mandy asked.

  Fred shook his head. “Never. I told you that.”

  “Although you make a good cup of tea. Will you join me? In a minute.” She slid out of bed and half-closed herself into the bathroom, from which watery sounds emerged to join with the rain.

  When was the first time that a painting made in the Western world depicted falling rain?

  Chapter Thirty-six

  At four-thirty in the morning Fred’s eyes opened and it was clear they would not close again. He stared around the room, listening to the regular breathing of his companion. The air on his face was chilly. They’d burrowed under two blankets. Then Mandy had turned the TV on again. The maggot movie had been supplanted by a similar one about spies from an unnamed Middle-European country, and Fred slept to the familiar sounds of gunfire.

  He couldn’t just leave again. Not for a second time. Not after she’d promised to make him eggs for breakfast. But neither could he happily sit in her straight-backed chair for three hours or so waiting to do the right thing by a pair of poached eggs. Using the street light coming through the window, he searched a table that had papers on it and found the back of an envelope addressed to Amanda Mont, on which to write, “Dear Mandy: Gone for a stroll. I’ll be back for breakfast. Love, Fred.”

  Where would she look first? The toilet’s cover might be inappropriate. He found a spot in the kitchen alcove next to the sink and put it under one of the mugs they’d used for tea. No, that wouldn’t do. It was the one that said Fuhgeddaboudit. He replaced that with the one advertising the Boston Globe. He dressed in his damp clothes and went out and down the stairs into a night that dripped intermittently, but whose rain had stopped.