A Masterpiece of Revenge

by J. J. Fiechter

  More accustomed to stronger spirits than to wine, the young woman’s head began to spin well before the arrival of the dessert. She became vaguely aware that Vermeille was getting her drunk. And drunk she soon was.

  She decided to pounce. Suddenly, desperately, she interrupted Vermeille and started telling him everything: how much she admired his work, and how she couldn’t believe the absolute consensus of their ideas on Lorrain — wasn’t it miraculous? — and how wonderfully generous, yes, wonderfully, he was in sharing a vision inspired by the master’s works. And here they were at the same table. Wonderful. It was all too wonderful.

  Everything came tumbling out. Jane knew vaguely that she was speaking too loudly and slurring her words, that her mascara was running, and that her hair was, as the French put it, en bataille.

  Trying to push the hair out of her eyes, her hand caught on one of her earrings, which popped off and tumbled to the floor. This caused her consternation. She had never liked her ears; the lobes were too long, she felt. They were the one thing about her appearance she deemed a flaw. She had always kept them hidden with jewelry.

  Vermeille bent down and retrieved the earring, which Jane put back on, blushing deeply, still unable to stop talking. The dam had burst.

  Though her mind was swimming, Jane could see that she had awakened no signs of desire in Vermeille. His blue eyes were fixed upon her, glinting with irony and condescension. He listened with a bemused smile.

  She was crushed. Pretending she was suddenly suffering from a pounding headache, she hurried back to her room before the coffee arrived.

  Throwing herself onto the bed, Jane gave in to heaving sobs of rage and shame. To have met the man she most admired in the world, only to have the whole thing devolve into farce. He had gotten her drunk. And he had known exactly what he was doing. The bastard!

  Jane cried herself to sleep.

  * * *

  Early the following morning she packed her bags. She called the organizer of the symposium to tell him that she had received an urgent summons from the clinic where her father was a patient; she needed to hurry home. How very sorry she was she would be unable to attend the closing ceremonies. By late morning she was on a plane for London.

  Seeing Vermeille again would have been too much to bear. Physical revulsion brought on by a screeching hangover mingled with implacable bitterness. He had shattered her dreams, dashed any hopes that he would fill the void in her life — fill the place left by her father, her adored father, her hated father, who now inhabited a world of his own, beyond her touch.

  Part I

  Charles

  1

  Looking back now on that September morning, it is clear to me I should have heeded the omens. But you must understand, I was not one of those people who lived life bracing for disaster, straining to read dire warnings and grim portents in ordinary things. I am not a superstitious man. Walking under ladders never fazed me. If the wind blew I didn’t automatically assume some storm was rising. In short, Cassandra was not a prophetess to whom I paid particular homage. Perhaps I should have.

  Anyway, the first sign came while I was heading into my kitchen to make morning coffee. A painting — it happened to be a portrait of a man by Guillaumin hanging in my hallway— had fallen off the wall. How very, very odd, I thought. Some credulous creatures might have leapt to the conclusion that this signified something ominous. Not me. I was merely irritated, nothing more.

  While setting up the pieces on the chessboard — on which, every morning, I tinker with the Tartakover Strategy — I noticed that one of the pieces was missing. A bishop. A thorough search turned it up. It had somehow fallen from its perch and rolled under the table. Again, some credulous people might ascribe deep significance to this. To the superstitious, the bishop represents dark, deep forces: a master over pawns but himself a pawn of greater powers.

  Again, however, all I felt was irritation. Someone had been careless and I hated carelessness. I also hated anything, any little anomaly, that disrupted my routine.

  I am not alone in loving routine. Richard Wagner used to fondle the folds of a velvet curtain every morning before setting to work. Agatha Christie devised her plots in the morning bath. Georges Simenon systematically chewed pencils, beginning at one end and working down to the other. Rossini did housework the minute he got up in the morning. If the house wasn’t orderly, the mind wouldn’t be either.

  Every morning, like Rossini, I do a few simple chores. Then I toy with the chessboard while listening to a Haydn quartet (normally one of the three opus 77 pieces, the composer’s poignantly lighthearted farewell to music). And I always drink two cups of arabica, black and very strong.

  Such were the elements of my routine. Done in proper sequence, they set the day into motion.

  That morning in September I was, generally speaking, in excellent spirits. I had returned from my summer vacation a few days earlier and was glad to be home. Fall was arriving, and I had always liked the season, relishing summer’s poignant descent. Keats’s “season of mists” was arriving. I was born in September, and it has always felt like a time of fresh starts and expanding possibilities. The first whiff of crisp air gives wings to my ambitions and fills my head with fantasies. My students at the College de France, most of whom view me as little more than an illustrious but crusty old pedant, would never guess at the boyish thoughts leaping within.

  Anyway, as I’ve said, I had just returned from vacation. I was looking forward to an existence ordered by schedules. Channeling energies redoubled their strength, I always said.

  Mine was a good life. Financially, I was in very good shape. Never mind that recent fluctuations in the stock market had nibbled a little at my financial portfolio. My apartment had been repainted during my absence and was cheerful and bright. The results of the medical checkup Fd had before leaving on vacation would have pleased a man of thirty. Fit as the proverbial fiddle. I could still tuck into foie gras without a second’s hesitation.

  I kept myself in shape by refusing to take the elevator in my Paris apartment building, though I live on the fourth floor. Each morning, following my chess and coffee, I walk down to the ground floor to pick up my mail. This, too, is part of my routine. Quite often I chat for a moment or two with Madame Fernandez, the concierge, then climb the stairs back to my apartment.

  That particular morning I was a little behind schedule. I was, so to speak, dragging my feet. Possibly because I expected two unpleasant pieces of mail: my tax assessment and the dentist’s bill. No sense in hurrying to deal with disagreeable little matters, thought I. Sure enough, when I went to retrieve my mail, the bill and the assessment were both there. Ah, well, I reflected philosophically, life could be worse. Besides, there also were two postcards to distract me. And a plain white envelope with my name and address printed on a label — by a computer, from the look of it.

  The first postcard showed a plate overflowing with seafood, and was signed by my friend Georges. “Enjoying myself immensely!” (“immensely” underlined three times) was the exuberant message. The other postcard showed the beach at Biarritz, packed with people. “One person in this crowd misses you,” read the line from my old friend Sylvie. How sweet.

  As for the plain envelope, it contained, I discovered, a photograph — a color photograph, and not a very good one, of my son, Jean-Louis, who had left some weeks earlier to begin studying for his business degree at Berkeley. Perhaps it had been taken in California. He appeared to be surfing. There was no accompanying letter, nothing on the back of the photograph, no return address. Why would anyone send me a photo of my son? The postmark indicated it had been mailed from Geneva.

  A gag, obviously, though I couldn’t think of anyone in Geneva who knew me well enough to play a joke on me, other than a childhood friend I hadn’t heard from in years. From what I remembered, he wasn’t the joking type.

  I looked at the photo again to see if the young man on the surfboard truly was my son. It had been taken from some d
istance away — probably with a telephoto lens. Perhaps, I thought, I’m mistaken. Perhaps this is a look-alike, and someone, struck by the marked resemblance to Jean-Louis, decided to send it to me. Logical enough. But why then would they type my name on a label?

  As I climbed the stairs back up to my apartment, I considered the possibilities. There had to be a simple answer. My son had given the picture to someone to mail to me, and this person had simply forgotten to add a note of explanation. Again, though, that didn’t explain the label. That label made no sense. There were, of course, lots of people who had forgotten how to write by hand because of the computer, but still.

  I had another thought. It was conceivable the photo had been sent to me by a girl. One of Jean-Louis’s innumerable conquests, abandoned when he moved on to the next one. Perhaps she was trying to get back at him. Who knows what sort of things girls today dream up?

  This hypothesis intrigued me: getting at the son by going for the father. It would mean that other photographs would follow this one, further and perhaps more intimate proof of her relationship with Jean-Louis — and her control over us both. Eventually there would be some sort of message. The poor creature was too shy to reveal herself for the moment.

  Whatever the case, the photo of Jean-Louis showed him looking healthy and vibrant. I paused on the landing and stared at the handsome face of my son. Soon I was lost in pleasant memories.

  I was remembering the first vacation Jean-Louis and I had taken together. His mother died of cancer when he was three, and when August came and all good French citizens leave for a month’s vacation, he and I went to my sister Caroline’s summer house in Auvergne. This was extremely convenient for me. What would I have done with a little boy all by myself? With its volcanic peaks and medieval forests, Auvergne is a spectacular part of France.

  When Jean-Louis turned twelve, things changed. The minute we got in the car that August, to drive as usual to Auvergne, he turned to me.

  “Please, papa, I don’t want to go to Aunt Caroline’s. I want to go surfing!”

  Surfing? Good heavens. I looked at him. He was giving me one of his irresistible smiles, his eyes filled with longing and with hope. I knew this look, and it nearly always worked. There was very little I wouldn’t do to make the boy happy.

  There was more to it than guilt. At some point I had begun to realize that his smiles were as precious to me as life itself. His laughter was music to me. I sometimes went to ludicrous extremes to please him — games, amusement parks, treasure hunts. I spoiled him.

  Surfing it would be, then. Without a word, I got on the highway and headed south. The little bully knew exactly what I was doing and was all over me, squealing in delight. I cannot remember when I felt happier than at that moment. For the first time it would be just the two of us, father and son, on the road.

  By nightfall we had made it to the Mediterranean coast. We looked for a hotel where they served mussels, which we both adored, and direct access to the beach from our rooms. We found the little town of Biscarosse. I can still remember the churr of cicadas and the aroma of pines warmed by the sun.

  The next morning I sent a telegram to my sister, to tell her where we were. “We’ve gone surfing,” I wrote, practically giggling with delight at the thought of her reaction.

  How wrongheaded and irritating were those friends who with good intentions offered bad advice. They told me to send Jean-Louis to summer camp so that I could go off by myself and get some rest. Many were concerned I needed to meet a woman. “You ought to be having fun,” they said.

  What imbeciles. They had no idea that my son was the source of my greatest happiness, and that watching him live, grow, eat, run —these were my raisons d’etre. All those hours spent standing up in the surf, my shoulders getting burned by the sun, watching with pride and anguish while a small silhouette squared itself on a surfboard to do battle with the waves. Those plates of seafood we shared every evening. I remember thinking there would be only four or five summer vacations when the two of us would be together. Then would come that moment when he would announce he wanted to spend his vacation camping with friends.

  We spent every vacation in each other’s company — on the backs of camels traveling the Silk Road, diving into the blue waters of the Pintade, drinking coconut milk on the Marquesas Islands. We saw the Promised Land, crystal-blue desert skies, palaces painted by Carpaccio. We drank the wines of Cyprus.

  And every summer I took him surfing. Jean-Louis had talent; there were competitions in Hawaii and Reunion Island. My vacations were scheduled around them. We were always together. And never, never, did Jean-Louis ask if he could go camping with friends.

  Standing there on the landing, holding that photo, I felt a deep sadness. There he was, surfing, and I wasn’t there with him. Someone else’s camera had taken the picture. Perhaps that was what hurt the most. It was as if the photo was telling me that my days with him were over, that my son was riding the waves on his own. He no longer needed me to watch over him. Now he preferred going to Pizza Hut with his pals to sharing seafood on the shore with his old man.

  “Everything comes to an end, happiness included.” That was the cruel message the photo was delivering.

  I believe that the reason I called Jean-Louis later that day was not worry, but jealousy. I asked him, as casually as I could, who might have sent me the picture. He told me he had no idea.

  “It must be a joke, Dad.”

  I placed the photo on the mantelpiece and thought no more about it. After preparing my Thursday lecture, I went, as always, to the Guy Savoy Restaurant. The Guy Savoy was one of my bachelor hangouts. Every Wednesday evening I dined there in the company of my good friend Luciano. The Savoy has a wonderful ragout of mushrooms, and foie gras steeped in a truffle sauce.

  That evening I planned to suggest to Luciano that we play a game of chess. A game I was determined to win. Luciano had defeated me the last time we’d played. “Defeated me” is putting it mildly; he had crushed me, rather, on the twenty-seventh move, right after I had moved my pawn to C2. All I needed was to move it to Cl to get queened, but, blinded by that ambition, I fell into his trap.

  Playing with Luciano was an intellectual experience. One could never predict when and where he would set his trap. The precision and rapidity of his calculations were confounding. He planned eight moves in advance. To him chess was more than a pastime. Though Luciano was a successful corporate lawyer, his life revolved around moving pieces on a chessboard, while I played purely for pleasure, and because playing well means using your imagination and your instinct. Chess is a perfect vehicle for revenge — of the slow, quiet sort. That night I checkmated Luciano with my bishop.

  A dinner at the Savoy followed by chess: here was a marriage of the pleasures of palate and mind.

  A week passed. I got a long, chatty letter from Jean-Louis. He loved Berkeley, he wrote, and was being challenged by his courses. He was playing tennis again. His backhand was improving. All this pleased me. Anyone working on his backhand wasn’t likely to spend evenings doing drugs at a rave in San Francisco. The more sports my son did, the more contented I was.

  My mind was at rest and my work proceeded peacefully. I was planning a few trips: a short visit to the Stuker Gallery in Bern, which was seeking my counsel, followed by a day at Christie’s in Dusseldorf. A private collector in London wanted me to have a look at a Poussin he’d bought. I worked on the proofs of my latest book, and was polishing an article for an art journal.

  I also needed to finish my biographical entry for Who’s Who. Generally I dismissed any suggestion of including my name in these sorts of publications. But Who’s Who would be practical from a professional point of view, particularly to promote my credentials abroad. I didn’t mind the world knowing I considered myself— and was considered — the greatest authority on the work of the French landscape painter Claude Gellée, also known as “le Lorrain” or Claude Lorrain, born in 1600 and died on November 23, 1682. I was an expert in sevent
eenth-century French painting in general, but the paintings of Lorrain had been my passion for many, many years.

  I felt territorial about Lorrain. The artist himself had been mortally afraid of imitators, who were legion in his day, and had drawn shaded outlines of each of his paintings. He called this private register the Libro di Veritá, the “Book of Truth.” What I was putting down about myself in the Who’s Who entry was nothing more than the truth, the shaded outlines of my career.

  Right after I’d finished I went down to get my mail. A vague feeling of unease spread through me when I retrieved an envelope that looked suspiciously like the one that had contained the photo of Jean-Louis. The label was identical. The enveloped was postmarked Rome.

  I opened it. Inside was another photo of Jean-Louis, playing tennis. It had obviously been taken at Berkeley. Again, no identification, no note, nothing. Just the photo.

  This nonsense was starting to irritate me. It was a tasteless joke. Or was it a joke? I shuddered involuntarily, as if a small electrical current had passed through me.

  What worried me was the postmark. First Geneva, now Rome. What linked them? What did it mean? I knew at least that my theory about the absentminded friend was untenable.

  Again I thought it might be from one of Jean-Louis’s jilted girlfriends. Perhaps she was trying to show me that my supposedly studious son was spending all his time having fun. “See?” it seemed to be saying. “He’s nothing but a playboy.”

  Perhaps it was from some guy who was attracted to Jean-Louis and expressing his feelings voyeuristically, by sending me photographs.

  I didn’t think my son kept things from me, but what parent knows all there is to know? He didn’t tell me everything that was going on in his life. Maybe he led a secret life. Did he have enemies? My mind started turning over scenarios, each more dreadful and absurd than the one before.