Vanishing Point

by Morris West

  There was nothing I could do about it. There was nothing I wanted to do about it. My meager psychic resources were running out, and I saw no prospect of renewing them in a strange house and in an ambience where I had fewer affinities than in any other place in Italy.

  My driver was a taciturn fellow, so I allowed myself to drowse into reverie. For me, there was a hint of Gothic melancholy about this region—I have always associated it with long fogbound waits at the airport or diversions to Nice or Rome. The mists of sadness still trailed about its history too. Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were murdered near the village of Azzano by an official assassin from the Committee of National Liberation. Now, at the tag end of the twentieth century, old rivalries and old hates were being called up again by a new Lombard league and new divisive propaganda by modern dukedoms of money and influence. Once, on a walking tour, I had been shown the Iron Crown of Lombardy—that strange relic which is kept in a chapel of the cathedral in Monza. Forty-four emperors are said to have been crowned with it. The curious thing about it is that it is too small for the head of any man, or woman, or child, yet its magic was potent enough for Barbarossa and Charles V and Napoleon to demand to be invested with it. It was on the same day, I remembered, that I was shown the Index of Oils: the list, written by an antique hand, of the vials of oil from the lamps on tombs of saints in Rome. A monk named John had brought them in the sixth century as gifts to the Empress Theodolinda. Theodolinda, I had never known any girl called by that name…or had I?

  My head was still fogged with these irrelevant snippets of memory when we stopped outside a big gateway of wrought iron whose elaborate scrollwork carried the legend Villa Calpurnia. The driver sounded his horn; a few moments later, a small wizened fellow who looked like an elderly jockey came trotting down the gravel path to open the gate and close it behind us.

  I had time to note that the garden walls were high and topped with slivers of bottle glass and that the trees and shrubberies, though carefully tended, were thick and reclusive. The villa itself was set square and uncompromising on a small rise overlooking a formal garden, screened from view by the border trees and bushes of the perimeter.

  It had three stories. The windows of the first and the topmost levels were all shuttered. Those on the middle level were open to the late sun. The small fellow came hurrying up the path to usher me into the house and present me to his wife, a good-looking matron in her early fifties. She led me to my bedroom, a large chamber with a bathroom and dressing room attached, whose windows opened onto the fall of the terraced garden and a tumble of evening clouds blown up by the wind from the south.

  Michele and the driver arrived with my luggage. Elena bowed herself out. The driver followed her. Michele demonstrated the old-fashioned bellpull which would summon any help I needed. He offered to unpack my clothes and deal with any pressing or laundry. I was happy to let him do it, while I laid out my toilet gear in a bathroom large enough to harbor a warship. He asked me whether I would like him to draw a bath. I told him I would draw the bath if he could find me a drink. Immediately, Signore! He opened one side of the wardrobe to reveal a minibar, a bucket of ice, and a bottle of mineral water. I asked him whether he could find me a small carafe and a couple of old saucers for watercolors and gouache. His eyes sparkled with pleasure. He asked whether he might see something of my work. I showed him the sketches from Verona and Padua. He nodded approval and, I thought, looked at me with a more respectful eye. Every Italian is a critic in his own right.

  This prompted me to ask what sort of visitors were usually entertained at the Villa Calpurnia. A sudden cloud of unknowing enveloped the lively little man.

  “Visitors? This is not a hotel. This is a private property of the Carlino family. It used to be part of a much larger estate, which the family has sold off over the years. Only Signor Sergio uses it now, for business conferences and seminars. Sometimes he lectures here to small groups.”

  “What sort of groups?”

  “We are not usually told who they are. It is a good policy. What we do not know, we cannot tell.”

  “You mean you could be threatened?”

  “We know that Signor Carlino’s work carries certain risks. He does not wish us involved in those risks. We are, therefore, very careful. We do not gossip. We do most of our shopping in Como itself…Do you take water with your whiskey, Signore?”

  “Only a little. No ice.”

  “I am told you may want to go painting tomorrow. I am at your disposal with the car.”

  “I’ll let you know. I may decide to work in the garden—perhaps in the woods.”

  “If I may suggest, we take a little drive after breakfast and then you decide where you want to work. I will leave you with a mobile phone. You can call me when you are ready to return. I have to help Elena prepare for tomorrow evening. Now I shall leave you to take your bath. Afterward, there is a library in the salone, and music and a television—if you can bear the garbage!”

  He mixed my drink and handed it to me. Then he left, with my suit draped over his arm and my laundry bundle in his small fist. He strode out jauntily as if he were walking into the saddling paddock.

  Before I turned on the bath, I examined the room more closely. At first glance, the furniture and the draperies, ornaments, and pictures looked like heirlooms. On closer inspection, they looked more like auction-room items, bought cheaply and assembled with reasonable taste and skill. The linens and the towels were spotless, but of ordinary quality. The few bedside books were vintage fare from the early seventies.

  The telephone installation, however, was modern, and a printed direction indicated a direct-dial service without any prefix. The minibar was another utilitarian feature. Michele’s description of the villa as a place of business seemed, so far, accurate. It was certainly a good place to keep someone like myself on ice while other, more competent folk went about their business.

  My feelings of isolation and unease persisted. I decided to test the phone service with a call to Arlette in Nice. The phone was working, but the gallery was not; Arlette’s recorded voice asked me to leave a message and number and she would return my call as soon as possible. I thought of calling Ellie Milland in Venice. Then I remembered there was nothing I could say to her, because I had hidden myself behind my own shabby grab bag of secrets. I looked at my watch. It was coming up to six o’clock. Even with a long soak in the tub and another generous whiskey, it was a long time to dinner, and it would be a long, solitary evening. I was just about to climb into the bath when the telephone rang. I was surprised to hear my father’s voice on the line.

  “How the devil did you find me?”

  “Simple! I called your friend—what’s his name? Carlino—at the Corsec office in Milan. We had an interesting chat. He told me where to find you.”

  “It’s only a few hours since we spoke.”

  “I know. But while you’re disporting yourself in the country, I’ve been busy. I found us a good attorney in Switzerland, recommended again by my banker friend. I outlined our situation for him.”

  “And…?”

  “The news is not promising. He has dealt with a similar situation in which a young woman joined one of the more extreme sects which practice peer pressure and virtual brainwashing. She had executed a deed of trusteeship in their favor. The property involved was considerable. Her parents sought to have the deed overturned. The court action and all appeals failed. The girl was deemed sane and responsible at all relevant times. The indoctrination procedures were not deemed to be force majeure.”

  “So where does that leave us with Larry?”

  “On very doubtful ground. First, and most important, we have to begin a civil action. The police will not involve themselves unless there is clear evidence of criminality somewhere along the line. Second, the best we can hope for in the first instance is an interim injunction to keep Larry in the care of the Burgholzli until the case is heard. Even the application for such an injunction is bound to
fail if Larry is deemed to be rational and responsible when depositions are taken.”

  “So what does the lawyer suggest?”

  “Basically what you propose. Madi and I will fly to Zurich tomorrow with the children and their nanny. We will bring all the documents, including your papers.”

  “And Dr. Levy?”

  “She will take another flight, but she has agreed to stay with us at the Dolder. We are picking up all her expenses and indemnifying her for lost fees and the expenses of a doctor to cover for her.”

  “What does she think about the lawyer’s opinion?”

  “She agrees in general with his judgment. She points out that prima facie Larry’s letters to Madi and to me are a lucid expression of a clear and rational desire on his part to break the family ties. However, she has managed to get in touch with a Swiss psychiatrist who does voluntary work at the clinic. He has agreed to make discreet inquiries about Larry. At least it’s another contact in the medical community.”

  “Will you need me for the first depositions?”

  “No. What you are doing with Carlino may be even more important. Make you way here in your own time.”

  “You said you spoke with Carlino. How did he impress you?”

  “Very well. He’s lucid. He’s decisive. He has police and military training. He is determined to ferret out some evidence of criminality on the part of Falco and his associates. If he could, that would enable us to involve the police. This session he has arranged tomorrow night sounds like an interesting exercise.”

  “He has explained it to you?”

  “In general terms, yes. What do you think of it?”

  “Like you, I think it’s a very interesting idea.”

  Of course, the irony was lost on him. Whatever Carlino had told him was much more than he had confided to me. However, my father was the last man in the world to whom I would confess my ignorance.

  By ten in the morning, with Michele’s guidance, I had found myself an agreeable subject for a painting: the white temple in the public gardens of Como, which is dedicated not to ancient gods but to a physicist, Alessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, who invented the electric battery.

  The scene made a pleasant plein-air study: the reflections in the lake water; the formal gardens with their flush of spring blooms, the hills beyond, which marked the run of ancient glaciers. The passage of people gave movement and color to the scene, and I found myself painting freely and boldly in a manner which for a long time had eluded me. The architecture of the temple was no longer a constraint. It seemed somehow fluid, flexible, accommodating itself to me, rather than confining me to its own classical form.

  The tension inside me relaxed too. I was able to free part of my mind to contemplate Larry’s problems. On this sunny morning, I was able to face the questions that we, his family, had so far sidestepped. How was Larry himself feeling? How had he felt as a conspirator planning his own disappearance? How had he judged the rogues with whom he was consorting as a client? How was he feeling at this moment, confined within the walls and perimeters of the Burgholzli in Zurich?

  We, his family, had judged him, each in the light of our own interest. Only Dr. Levy had seen him and empathized with him as a patient in need, lost in a wasteland of whirling confusion because the chemistries of his brain were out of kilter.

  What would he do, how would he feel, if the court judged him incompetent and made his wife his legal guardian? How would he feel if, judged sane and competent, he had no place to go but back to the company of rogues? Having taken possession of his estate, what would Falco and Rubens offer him beyond arm’s-length maintenance and effective exile? How would my father deal with him? How would Madi receive him, now that, as Alma Levy expressed it, she had liberated herself from the tyranny of his infirmity? How would he feel toward his children? How would they react to him? Come to think of it, how would he feel toward me, the hunter who had dogged him around the compass but still wasn’t street-smart enough to find and confront him face-to-face?

  While all these questions were buzzing like bees inside my skull, there was still a quiet alcove where the small elusive soul of Carl Strassberger the artist played happily with lights and shadows and forms and watched the hand that made the brush strokes, bolder and bolder on the canvas.

  It was, I had to confess, a very little soul, and not too bold a wanderer, for all the freedom it claimed for itself. It was too firmly anchored in family and tradition, too well cosseted by wealth and generous parenting. It would never take to the dusty caravan roads, never arrive at the cold and lonely peaks where the giants lived and made their masterworks.

  Arlette knew this and was wise enough not to commit herself to a marriage vow. Ellie had grasped it, swiftly and painfully. I clung to my cozy little soul because I could not risk it half so far as the wild follies of Larry Lucas or the stubborn, shrewd, but fearless forays of my father.

  He was the one who was flying across the Atlantic to stage the last act of the drama, while I sat here at the placid lakeside, dabbling on a canvas while a group of children, women, and idle old men stood watching. Last night I had told myself that the race was over for me. I had run my sector of the relay, and I could now be a spectator.

  In the cold light of morning, I understood that there was one more person I had to confront: the man about whom I knew least, Dr. Hubert Rubens of Geneva. He was the one who held the money box and all the magical spells required to open it. Before I left the villa with Michele, I had telephoned Falco in Milan and told him that I was almost ready to make a decision but that I wanted an early meeting with Rubens. I asked him to fax the good doctor, telling him that I would be in Geneva in three days’ time and asking him to make time to see me. I also asked him to send with Liliane a copy of his fax and any reply.

  Falco was delighted that I had come so close to a decision. He asked me where I was calling from. I told him I was on my way to Lake Como for a day of painting. Would he please remind Liliane that the mystery party was still a mystery but she would be picked up promptly at seven-thirty? I had one more question for him. Did he happen to have a copy of the standard trustee agreement with Dr. Rubens? No, he did not. Each agreement was tailored to the needs of the client. Dr. Rubens was skilled and flexible, and a tower of strength to his clients.

  It was curious how the thought of this man inserted itself into the painting. Like the mountain peaks in the background, he and others like him were fixtures in the landscape of twentieth-century Europe. Their financial roots were plunged deep into the burial grounds of the dead and the dispossessed, victims of the concentration camps and the mass migrations and the legalized looting of the horror years. They were scot-free now because old money has no smell and people have short memories for the misery of others.

  But you and I will meet soon, Dr. Rubens, and I hope, I pray, I may be able to remind you where and how your future was founded.

  As I began working on the mid-ground of the picture with a palette knife, an elderly man standing just to my right said to the woman next to him, “This is no amateur. He knows what he’s doing.”

  I affected not to hear or understand the words and frowned in concentration over the palette, trying to tone down a blob of cadmium orange. Then a tiny dark-haired girl tugged at my sleeve, pointed at the canvas, and let out a babble of words whose meaning escaped me altogether. The old man was quick to see my puzzlement.

  “Lei e’ Americano?”

  “Canadese.” I had learned to be cautious.

  The old man switched to English.

  “She wants to know whether you’ll let her paint with you.”

  “I’m working in oils. She’ll get paint on her dress.”

  The old man shrugged.

  “If she gets stars in her eyes, what does a dab of paint matter?”

  I put down the palette and knife, hoisted the child on my knee, picked up a small filbert brush, and, holding her hand, helped her to drag some of the fresh chrome into the color m
asses of the flower beds. My audience was delighted. There were murmurs of approval. I was good and kind and gentle. When I set the child down, she scampered off happily while I worked on with the canvas, hoping to make it at least the conversation piece which Sergio Carlino had recommended for dinner that evening. Watching an artist at work is a little like watching grass grow. After a while the crowd drifted away, and I was left in peace to contemplate my handiwork.

  It wasn’t bad, I decided. There was a certain vitality about it which was absent—perhaps necessarily absent—from my normal work.

  I called Michele on the mobile phone and asked him to pick me up. It had been a pleasant, meditative morning. I liked the world and myself a little better. I wondered what surprises Sergio Carlino would produce that evening from his box of tricks.

  Sergio Carlino arrived at the Villa Calpurnia at five in the evening. He was accompanied by one of the most striking women I had ever seen. She was somewhere in her late thirties. Her hair was jet black, her skin the color of dark honey, her eyes as black as her hair. Her features were soft in repose, yet expressive of every momentary shift in emotion, surprise, pleasure, amusement. She was dressed in a light cotton confection which molded, as she moved, to the contours of a body shapely as that of a Renaissance madonna. There was an extraordinary aura about her: of authority, of calm, of sex, of a huge reserve of passion. Her name, Sergio told me, was Sibilla, and, in true Italian style, he swallowed the rest of it so I was never sure whether I had heard it or not.

  To me she extended a gracious hand, which I knew I was expected to kiss. There was a spark even in the touch of it.

  She smiled approval of the greeting and told me in English, “I know everything about you. I am here early to rehearse you in your role and to make sure that you remain in control of it at all times.”

  “I hope you are going to explain it to me first. To this moment, Sergio has left me in complete ignorance of what is to happen here this evening.”

  “Only because Sibilla prefers to direct the whole performance herself.” Sergio was unrepentant. “Everybody is wholly under her direction, including the two observers from the police who will be asked to certify the legality of the proceedings and the authenticity of the record, if a denunciation is made and a criminal complaint is filed.”