After Dachau (8 page)

When I’ve been away for a while, I’m always happy to spend a couple of days poking around in the antique shops. Many are to be found under the roof of what is said to be the Dar al-Bey, which served as guest quarters for the Ottoman Regents, and many more are clustered around the Zitouna Mosque, itself now a great museum. Charming relics of the city’s romantic past abound, and it doesn’t much matter that they’re virtually all fakes. In the better shops, the fakes themselves are centuries old, desirable and even respectable antiques in their own right.

I wrote a preliminary report on the case of Mallory Hastings for the newsletter. I took my time over it. I took my time over everything, dawdling over menus and wine lists, planning excursions, finding a gift for my mother’s birthday. At last, however, my sentence of exile was up, and I boarded a plane to wing my way back to New York.

When I finally got there, I approached Mallory’s industrial-park
cottage with a profound sense of dread. I pounded on the dented metal door at the front, waited, then pounded some more. At last the door swung open, and Mallory reluctantly admitted me—and the secret was revealed in an instant.

Gloria MacArthur was a painter—and not of pleasant garden scenes or arrangements of fruit on Spanish shawls. It was a moment of profound awkwardness for us both. For her part, Mallory knew how much of a shock she was presenting me with, and for mine, I knew how much of our future relationship depended on the way I handled the shock.

After a moment of stunned silence, I said, “I’ve never seen anything like this”—a statement full of truth but not too full.

“Yeah,” she said, half deflated and, I felt, half relieved.

The children of
the rich learn about art, but not the way other people learn about it. The world of art belongs to the rich, the way a certain province might belong to a prince who lives far away. In the same way that ordinary people are allowed to
inhabit
that province (though it belongs to the prince), ordinary people are allowed to
look
at the art (though it belongs to the rich). Here it should be evident that by art, I don’t mean “something painted” or “something sculpted.” Most of what is merely painted or sculpted never becomes art, because it never belongs to the rich. Before that, it may be the very life’s blood of the painters and sculptors who starve themselves and drive themselves mad to create it. Before that, it may make interesting and striking
decoration for restaurants or suburban villas. Before that, it may be collected by enterprising investors in hopes that it might someday
become
art. But it isn’t art until it begins to be seen in the mansions of the wealthy and in the catalogues of the great auction houses. Then it truly leaves the domain of ordinary folk and enters the domain of the rich, who assuredly know—and assuredly teach their children—how to value and care for it.

This is what I know about art. Art is treasure that hangs on our walls, sits on our tables, and stands in our hallways. And my parents take it for granted that I’ll be able to differentiate a Dürer from a Schongauer, a Steen from a Terbrugghen, an Houdon from a Canova. If the Fenshaws were to have such knowledge, this would strike my parents as marvelously droll, like a legless man owning an exquisite French racing cycle.

Since I have intimate knowledge of my family’s treasures, people think I’m being modest when I tell them I know absolutely nothing about art. But if they show me a piece of student work, I won’t have the slightest idea whether it’s art or even “good.” What I will know is whether such things hang or stand in the houses of the rich—or in the museums where the rich allow their treasures to be seen. And when people understand this, they’ll instantly agree with what I said in the first place, that I know absolutely nothing about art.

But my ignorance goes beyond this. I have, additionally, no idea what’s being produced in the garrets, cellars, and lofts of the art world—no idea and utterly no interest. This is not something I either brag about or apologize for. It’s just how I am—and how I was when I walked into Mallory’s studio.

Beyond the fact that nothing like her work has ever hung in the houses of the rich, I had no idea what I was looking at, and I told her so. To me, in my innocence, it was simply an abomination—a nauseous mess, an insolent defiance of taste, artistry, and craft. It might have been done by an ape or a lunatic or a pervert.

“Is this,” I began feebly, “the sort of thing artists were doing when you—when you were …?”

“When I was alive as Gloria MacArthur? Yes. Not every artist, of course. This was … the school of New York, you might say.”

“And were you successful?”

She made a face. “I was only starting. I was … young.” The admission seemed to stick in her throat.

I walked around, taking a polite interest. There were just four canvases in work at this point—all quite huge. She’d had only a week. I say they were “in work,” but I had no real way of telling whether they were in work or finished. They reminded me of the rags painters use to clean their brushes, except on a giant scale. That anyone could be
driven
to such work struck me as profoundly pathetic.

Having nothing to say, I walked round and round the four of them groping for any plausible word of praise I could bring forth. I felt sure that adjectives like
colorful
and
different
and
interesting
would be received as merely patronizing. Finally I just told the truth and admitted I had no idea what I was looking at.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” she snapped—but at the same time I had the feeling she was secretly pleased.

“Can you explain what you’re trying to achieve?”

“Achieve? What are you talking about? They’re
paintings
.”

Clearly the word
painting
had a different meaning for the school of New York than it has for me.

She said, “Don’t you have
anything
like this now?”

“Perhaps we do, Mallory. I wouldn’t know. I know absolutely nothing about art.”

Out of all the hundreds of statements I’d made to her, this was the first one she could swallow without a moment’s hesitation.

TO PRESERVE
its bohemian ambience, Mallory had outfitted her studio with a few sticks of furniture from something she called “the Sally.” There was a high stool, a straight-backed chair, and a wobbly table covered with brushes, rags, and tubes of paint, but nothing like any traditional easels, which I gathered were only for sissies and wouldn’t have accommodated her enormous canvases anyway. In a corner at the back there was a mattress and some pillows on the floor—“just for naps and things,” as Mallory was still spending her nights at the condominium.

One of the rags on the table seemed familiar. I picked it up and turned it around in my hands till it came to me that it had been torn from the dress she’d worn home from the hospital.
I put it back where it belonged and took notice of her work clothes for the first time—dungarees and a heavy, dark sweater. With her pale hair and pale face, she looked like a shipwreck survivor picked up from the North Sea.

We sat, I on the chair, she on the stool.

“I don’t need much down here,” she said, explaining the absence of amenities, “since I decided to keep the apartment for the time being.”

I told her I thought that was wise, then, hearing myself, suddenly felt middle-aged and stuffy. “Let’s go out and get some lunch.”

“I don’t eat lunch.”

“Then some coffee.”

“I’ve got gallons in a thermos.”

She slid off her stool and sixty seconds later returned with two steaming mugs. It was like nothing I’d ever tasted, and Mallory said, “I hope you like chicory. It wasn’t easy finding any in this fucking town.”

“It’s an experience,” I told her. “Rather like what I’d expect asphalt to taste like if you heated it up.”

She laughed and slid off her stool again. This time she returned with a bottle of bourbon. “This’ll help,” she said, adding a dollop to each mug. “Or at least it’ll cut it.”

It did that. We sipped, waited.

Finally I said, “You know I want to ask you some questions.”

“Go ahead, ask.”

“What year was Gloria MacArthur born?”

“Nineteen twenty-two,” she replied promptly.

“A.D.?”

“Of course A.D. Do you think I painted at the court of Cleopatra?”

“Don’t get huffy. I’ve talked to Nefertiti’s hairdresser.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I’ve talked to a woman who believes she’s the reincarnation of Nefertiti’s hairdresser.”

She glared at me. “And you’re putting me in with her?”

“Why? Do you automatically assume she’s deluded?”

After pondering that for a moment, she said, “I suppose I’d better not. But do you really believe her?”

“Should I believe
you?
”

“Yes. But that’s different. I’m not claiming to be Madame Pompadour’s manicurist or anything like that.”

“You mean I should believe you because you’re not claiming to be Somebody, with a capital S.”

“That’s right.”

“But what if you’d lived a little longer and gotten married to a Somebody—or become a Somebody in your own right. Would you expect me to scoff at you then?”

She gave that some thought. “I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if you scoffed.”

“Nefertiti’s hairdresser isn’t surprised when people scoff at her either.”

This silenced her for a bit. Then she looked up and said, “But in spite of all this talk, you don’t actually believe she’s Nefertiti’s hairdresser, do you? Admit it.”

“No, I don’t believe it. But that’s not because she claims a famous connection.
Someone
was Nefertiti’s hairdresser, after all. William Shakespeare had a housekeeper. Marie Antoinette had a manicurist. Napoleon had a valet. These
were all perfectly ordinary,
real
people who were born, lived, ate, slept, worked, and one day died. Is there some reason why they should be barred from reincarnation, if such a thing exists? Should being someone famous or knowing someone famous blackball a person from the same process that put Gloria MacArthur in the body of Mallory Hastings?”

“Then why didn’t you believe this woman?”

“Because she couldn’t give me a credible description of the tools and materials hairdressers used in Nefertiti’s time. Because she was completely up to date on who was sleeping with whom but had no idea what anybody ate for breakfast.”

“Oh. I see. Yes.” She sat there for a moment looking dazed. Then: “I remember once we had chicken
necks
.”

“Chicken necks?”

“We were
poor
.”

“This was when you were growing up?”

“Yeah.”

“Where was this?”

“In Cleveland.”

“Do you remember the address?” She shook her head vaguely.

“You don’t remember it?”

“I don’t
want
to remember it.”

“Why, Mallory?”

She winced. “I can’t stand being called Mallory. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“I don’t know. At a guess, I’d say it’s derived from the French
malheureux
, meaning unfortunate or unhappy.”

“What could be better? It sounds like it came from one of
the knights of the fucking Round Table—Sir Mallory the Miserable.”

I held out my mug, and she supplied me with a slug of bourbon.

“Did you like the name Gloria?”

She shrugged. “To tell the truth, I thought it was vulgar. Common. I don’t know why. It was good enough for the Vanderbilts. Maybe I thought it was vulgar and common because
I
was vulgar and common.”

It was beginning to look as if there was a cliff to fall over no matter which way I turned. “Did you have any younger brothers and sisters?”

She gave me a suspicious look. “Why do you want to know that?”

“It’s not inconceivable that they might still be alive. If they were born in the 1930s, they’d only …” My train of thought was interrupted by a heavy ceramic mug whizzing past my right ear at fifty miles an hour and smashing on the wall behind me.

“They’re
dead!
” She popped off the stool and lunged at the bourbon bottle in a way I didn’t like. I grabbed it myself and twisted it out of her hands. She turned to me with bloody murder in her eyes.

“
You
killed them, you fucking cocksucker!”

As I stood there with my mouth hanging open, she started to look around for something else to throw.

“I didn’t kill them,” I said firmly. “I didn’t kill
anybody
. I’ve
never
killed anybody.”

“You killed them, you fucking—” She paused, speechless, then made a rapid sign, snapping her fingers together in
front of her eyes, then flicking them away. “That’s you,” she said darkly.

“What does it mean?”

“That’s what you are.”

“Yes, but what does the sign
mean?
”

This question seemed to interest her, to calm her slightly. She repeated the sign thoughtfully. “It means … blind.”

“Blind?”

“No, that’s not right. Blind is this.” She crooked two fingers in front of her eyes and then pulled them down as if dragging her eyelids closed. “This”—she repeated the gesture of snapping her fingers together in front of her eyes and then flicking them away—“this is a kind of shorthand or code word. It means … someone who’s thrown sight away. Someone who refuses to see.”