By the time the hammer had fallen on the last lot of the day, Tony, who came and went, had ascertained that the three outsiders were Americans, and that someone had recognized the oldest of the trio as a member of the art investment department of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Chase Manhattan had a corporate art collection. Presumably they had decided to assemble a collection of early printed books too. The underbidders, with depressing regularity, had been Mr. Scott, Mr. Morton, and (of course) Doctor Wasserstein and Hans Kraus.
Tony wanted me to come to dinner in Hampstead, but I was too intent on peering into the future. Like a sports fan on the evening of an important game, I went over the stats, looking for clues, looking for certainty where there was none. What if—I thought to myself—the dealers have become too discouraged and dispirited to stand up to the Chase Manhattan trio? What if the porter brings the Aretino up to the front of the room and Mr. Harmondsworth opens the bidding and nobody bids? I wasn’t very hungry, but I stopped at a place on Russell Square that advertised genuine American hamburgers. When I saw the counterman drop a patty of ground meat into a pot of boiling water, however, I found I wasn’t hungry at all.
At precisely eleven o’clock the next morning Mr. Harmondsworth mounted the rostrum and gave three ritual blows with his hammer to quiet the crowd.
The first few lots went very quickly, and Mr. Harmondsworth kept the pace fairly brisk, often selling two lots in the space of a minute. An editio princeps of Marco Polo’s travels, De consuetudenis, went to Maggs for eighteen thousand pounds, and the Revelations of Saint Birgitta to Quaritch for an astonishing thirty-two thousand. What on earth could she have revealed? I wondered. Whatever it was, my fears about the dealers had been unfounded, my doubts ungenerous. These men in rumpled suits showed their determination not to let all the good lots go to the outsiders. The Chase Manhattan trio continued to dominate the sale, but they had to pay handsomely for the privilege. Time after time one dealer or another, now Wasserstein, now Kraus, now Maggs, now Quaritch, forced the bidding to seven or eight times the estimate.
I had mixed feelings myself. I didn’t care for the breezy style of the Americans, but I wouldn’t have wished them elsewhere. (I thought of the Chase Manhattan trio as “the Americans,” though Wasserstein was from Philadelphia and Kraus was from New York.)
Instead of trying to estimate the value of the Aretino, I now found myself trying to estimate the buying power of the various bidders. Chase Manhattan had already spent a lot of money. Did that mean that they were bidding without a limit or that they were rapidly approaching their limit? On the other hand, Kraus and Wasserstein and the other dealers had come prepared to spend a lot of money they hadn’t spent yet. Did that mean they would be primed to spend more on the later lots? They did not look to me like the kind of men who would be swept away on waves of passion, like operatic lovers; on the other hand, I had the sense that tremendous egos were involved here, egos that filled the room with electricity, or perhaps phlogiston.
Lot 241 came up at about one-thirty. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast, and my stomach was churning so hard I seriously considered leaving the room. Tony, who had disappeared for a quarter of a hour, returned to his place as Mr. Harmondsworth opened the bidding at five thousand pounds.
“Relax,” he whispered. “There’s nothing you can do now. Ch’è sera sera.” He began to hum, very very quietly, the tune of that awful song.
He was right, of course; but that’s not the way I felt. I felt that whatever was going to be depended on my will, that I could actually will the bidding up if only I kept my mind focused. (I used to think the Cubs couldn’t lose if I listened carefully to the game. Then I’d get interested in something else and forget to pay attention to the game. But that wasn’t going to happen today.)
There was no bid. Fifteen seconds went by. Fifteen seconds is a long time at an auction. Many lots had been knocked down in less time.
The first bid came from the junior member of the Chase Manhattan trio. He was answered by Mr. Scott for Maggs, who gave a very determined nod. A couple of bids came from the back of the room, where some new faces had appeared. All in all I’d say there were a dozen bidders, though it was hard to tell exactly who was bidding—a raised hand here, a nod there, the tap of a pencil, a catalog held aloft. As Mr. Harmondsworth’s eyes swept the room I was reminded of an air-traffic controller who has to keep track of a dozen planes at a time. He had no time now to chat up the dealers in front. He was all eyes and ears, though I thought he might have missed a bid here and there. A woman behind me, for example, was holding her catalog up by my ear and making a fluttering noise, as if she wanted to cry out but knew she wasn’t supposed to.
The bidding, which had slowed slightly at the catalog estimate—like a car negotiating a dangerous curve—was now proceeding steadily in increments of a thousand pounds. Bid was piled on bid. Mr. Scott, for Maggs Brothers, who had been the underbidder on many of the lots the previous day, gave his bids with a determined nod; Dr. Wasserstein raised his hand slightly; Kraus pointed his finger at Mr. Harmondsworth and emitted a little popping sound, as if firing a pistol; the senior member of the Chase Manhattan trio, who had taken over the bidding, gave a sort of friendly wave, as if he were waving to someone at the beach.
The bidding rose in a long, steady spiral till it reached thirty-four thousand, a thousand pounds short of the price Chase Manhattan had paid for the Caxton on the previous day—another psychological barrier because it was the highest price of the sale so far. About half a dozen bidders were left by this time—Chase Manhattan, Kraus, Wasserstein, a dealer in the back of room, a telephone bidder, and Mr. Scott for Maggs. Mr. Scott leapt over the barrier with a raise of two thousand pounds. The woman sitting behind me, who had finally managed to attract Mr. Harmondsworth’s attention by waving her catalog, joined the circle at thirty-seven thousand, just as others were dropping out. The two-thousand-pound raise had been Mr. Scott’s parting shot. The agent who’d been relaying the telephone bids indicated that whoever was on the other end of the line had had enough; the dealer in the back left the room.
That left Chase Manhattan, Wasserstein, Kraus, and the woman sitting behind me.
The bidding went up rapidly as each bidder attempted to outdo the others in decisiveness—from thirty-seven thousand to forty, then climbing steadily to fifty. Wasserstein, who had been faltering, dropped out at fifty-four thousand. I did some quick calculations: at the current rate of exchange that was almost exactly the price he’d paid for the Gardner manuscript.
Tony touched my arm with his finger, and I realized I was shivering. The sense I’d had all along of being on a secret mission or possessing a secret identity had never been stronger. I was there, physically present in the room, but no one could see me. I was a godlike (or goddesslike) presence behind the scenes. Men in rumpled suits were venturing fortunes for a little book of pictures that I myself had carefully and lovingly restored and brought to this temple as a sacred offering. I recalled Madre Badessa’s question: What sort of thing is a man? and her answer: A little picture gallery. I held my breath as we approached sixty-five thousand, the amount that Kraus had paid in the previous year’s sale for the Saint Alban’s Apocalypse, the highest price ever paid for a book at auction. Would he have the resources to pay that much for the Aretino? Was he bidding on behalf of a client with unlimited resources?
The bidding slowed down as it approached the summit, a long freight train climbing a steep incline. Chase Manhattan and Kraus were taking their time. Chase Manhattan no longer smiled as he waved, and I could see him exchanging glances with his two partners. Kraus himself seemed uncertain. He was trying to get a look at the woman sitting behind me, but I had the feeling that he was looking at me, glaring at me, as if I were the one bidding against him. He was an angry man, faced not with one opponent but two, both outsiders who didn’t play by the rules. I’m sure he would have been more comfortable bidding against Do
ctor Wasserstein, who sat with his head down, listening to Mr. Harmondsworth call the bids.
I twisted around in my chair to have another look at the woman behind me. I’d say she was about fifty, dressed simply in a white blouse and tweed skirt, and that she, too, looked somewhat flustered. She had her open catalog wedged between her stomach and a large purse she was emptying out onto her lap. She’d spread her knees apart to pull her skirt tight, but there wasn’t enough room for everything—compact, fountain pen, a tin of mints, banknotes, bits of paper, letters. The fountain pen slithered to the floor, and when she leaned forward to retrieve it she lost her compact and some banknotes. Tony got down on his knees to help retrieve them.
Kraus bid sixty-two thousand, emitting another involuntary burst of sound. Mr. Harmondsworth waited almost fifteen seconds for Chase Manhattan to cover the bid, which he did. The woman behind me raised her catalog into the air without looking up. And there was another long silence. There was something mystical about these soul-searching silences, which were becoming longer as the bidding climbed higher and higher.
“I have sixty-four thousand pounds,” said Mr. Harmondsworth, “will you cover the bid?” (This toward Kraus.)
The American intervened, bidding out of turn: “Sixty-five thousand.”
Kraus threw down his catalog in a paroxysm of disgust and stormed out of the room. I glanced back at the woman behind me. She had gathered all the loose bits of paper into a pile and was methodically going through them one at a time.
Mr. Harmondsworth turned his gaze in our direction. I waited for the woman to raise her catalog. I didn’t turn around to look at her again, but I could hear her clearly, unfolding bits of paper and looking at them just the way I did when I cleaned out my purse, and then running her nails along the crease as she refolded them.
Mr. Harmondsworth’s voice seemed to be coming from far away, but I could feel his gaze on me, like the eye of Sauron searching out poor Frodo, the ring bearer, as he climbs Mount Doom in the last book of The Lord of the Rings.
“All done?” Mr. Harmondsworth was asking. “Any more bids? Fair warning.” Once again he searched the room and then sent his gaze back in our direction. I think he was reluctant to knock the book down to Chase Manhattan. I could hear the woman fussing with her papers. Something else fell on the floor, and once again Tony knelt to retrieve it.
“I’m selling at sixty-five thousand pounds,” Mr. Harmondsworth said, looking straight at me.
Just as he raised his hammer I raised my hand, lightly fluttering my catalog.
“I have sixty-six thousand pounds,” he said, turning toward Chase Manhattan.
No one applauded but the room was alive with whispers: the bidding had set a new record; the sale had entered into uncharted territory. And so had I. I felt as if I had stepped out of Plato’s cave into the blinding light of reality. At first I couldn’t see anything, and then I began to pick out small details. I could see that the Doctor had nicked himself shaving, for example; that Mr. Harmondsworth had a tiny mole on his neck, just above his collar; that the shirt worn by the junior member of the Chase Manhattan trio was a size too small; that three of the half dozen women in the room, though not the woman behind me, were wearing corsets. And then, as my eyes gradually adjusted, I could see that the porter standing in front of the rostrum was holding the Aretino open to one of my favorites, a position the Italians call lascia pascolare le pecore—let the sheep graze. I could see other things, too: Saint Francis dancing before the pope, Michelangelo’s wonderful curve that Mama’s bookcases shared with the Ponte Santa Trinità, Ruth and Yolanda undressing in the crowded compartment of the train, Papa looking down on the Rio Grande, Madre Badessa surprising me in the loggia, and Tony resuming his seat, perfectly relaxed, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. All these images were starting to coalesce into a larger whole, one that made sense, like Pilgrim’s Progress or the Stations of the Cross, and as my eyes continued to adjust, I could see that this larger whole was itself a small piece of a still-larger whole, one that made even more sense, and I was filled with a sense of the strangeness and wonderfulness of the world that I’ve never been able to explain to anyone else, not that I was able to explain it to myself. “Explain” is the wrong word. “Point to” would be more accurate. You try to point out a bird that you see in a tree, a long way off. “It’s right there,” you say. “Look, see where I’m pointing, look along my arm, there, right there.” But the person you’re with can’t see it, and pretty soon you can’t see it either. But you can remember it.
It was as close as I’d ever come to a mystical experience, though what I experienced, I suppose, was not the mystical unity of the good and the beautiful or of spirit and matter, but of buyer and seller, bidder and consigner; and in fact I knew at the time, and I know now, that I’d done a foolish thing. But I’ve never regretted it, and I don’t think I would have regretted it even if Chase Manhattan had failed to cover the bid, though had that happened my life would surely have taken a sharp turn—along another road not taken—that I can’t even begin to imagine now.
The senior member of the Chase Manhattan trio not only covered the bid, he raised it five thousand pounds. A raise of that magnitude is intended to break the rhythm of the sale and intimidate one’s opponent. Back down in the cave, suitably intimidated, I was not about to offer another bid, but the woman behind me, who had stopped fussing with her papers, waved her catalog. I could feel the flutter at my ear.
Mr. Harmondsworth turned to Chase Manhattan: “I have seventy-three thousand pounds against you.”
As the bidding entered the upper stratosphere of book prices Chase Manhattan began to stumble badly, and I wondered if he, too, had climbed out of a comfortable cave onto a snow-covered mountain peak where a single misstep might mean sudden death, or whether he’d simply exceeded his commission and could not guess what his boss would want him to do at that point. Mr. Harmondsworth, who was allowing him fifteen seconds or even more to recover between bids, encouraged him in a whisper: “I have seventy-five thousand against you, I have seventy-seven thousand against you, I have seventy-nine thousand against you.” The woman behind me had her own offensive strategy: she simply held her catalog in the air, even when the bid was against Chase Manhattan, so that as soon as Chase Manhattan covered a bid, he found that within seconds it was against him again.
Mr. Harmondsworth went through the familiar closing routine for the third or fourth time: “All done? Any more bids? Fair warning . . . I’m selling at . . .” Chase Manhattan, after one last agonizing silence, finally surrendered, and lot 241 was knocked down for eighty-nine thousand pounds to the woman behind me, who received a standing round of applause of the sort that is generally reserved for the sale of major works of art. I did some quick calculations and came up with two hundred forty-nine thousand dollars.
No one seemed to have noticed my unobtrusive entry into the bidding, not even Tony, who’d been picking up banknotes for the mysterious woman sitting behind me, and the Platonic vision I’d experienced had already disappeared so completely—like Keats’s nightingale—that I wasn’t even sure myself what I’d done, but when I turned to congratulate the woman personally, to shake her hand, she pulled me toward her and whispered in my ear: “Thank you so much,” she said. “I couldn’t remember if I was supposed to stop at sixty-five thousand or a hundred and sixty-five thousand. I wrote it down on a slip of paper and put it in my purse, but I have so many things in my purse, if you know what I mean . . .”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I lose things all the time.”
*
Many of the remaining lots brought two or three times the estimates, but the excitement for the day was over. The woman who had bought the Aretino was mobbed by reporters in the downstairs lobby as she tried to verify her identity with the auctioneer’s clerk, but she wasn’t giving anything away. She was representing a friend, she said, who was
staying in London and had read about the book in the Times.
“Your friend must have a good deal of money to spend,” said one of the reporters, angling in for a photo.
“Yes,” she said, clutching her purse tightly, as if the reporters were Gypsies trying to rob her, “she does.”
All the papers carried the story. Outrage and indignation that such a large sum—more than most people earn in a lifetime—should have been squandered on a work of pornography were offset by tributes to the artistic genius of the Renaissance. A spokesman for the British Museum said that the book was most certainly not worth the sum that had been paid for it, but the curator of prints at the National Gallery declared that it was worth every shilling, not as a book per se but as art, as a collection of invaluable engravings. And then there were the tabloids: renaissance sex manual brings record price at auction. europe’s answer to the kama sutra. mystery buyer nabs nude pics from pope’s private bathroom.
No one managed to discover the identity of the buyer. I thought Sotheby’s might at least tell me, the consignor, but everyone’s lips were sealed, so the whereabouts of the book remains a mystery. And only one paper, the Times, mentioned the binding. It was only a phrase, but I still carry the article in my wallet: “expertly restored and beautifully bound.” I was glad someone had noticed.
18
The Elgin Marbles
There were two things I intended to do immediately after the sale: the first was to call Papa, the second was to go to see the Elgin Marbles, Mama’s favorite work of art. But I didn’t do either. At least not right away. Instead I shopped for a wedding present for Molly. The wedding was on my mind not simply because it was another important milestone in the story of our family, but because it gave me a sense of direction; it stood out on the horizon, a buoy marking a familiar channel. Landfall.
The Sixteen Pleasures Page 29