Corpus Christmas

Haricots verts Pommes

Sacher Torte Noix glacee Topfenstrudel

Vermouth Bordeaux Champagne

from Welcome to the Breul House!-An Informal Tour, by Mrs. Hamilton Johnstone III, Senior Docent. (© 1956)

VI

Wednesday Night (continued)

Sigrid Harald?” asked Soren Thorvaldsen. “Er De dansk, froken Harald?”

“My father’s father was from Denmark,” Sigrid acknowledged, “but I’m afraid I know very few words of Danish.”

And not much more than a few words of party talk either, she thought as she listened to a small white-haired woman quiz Thorvaldsen about the frivolous names he’d given his cruise ships.

“I think ships deserve more stately names,” said the woman, whose own name Sigrid couldn’t remember. “Something like Empress of the Sea or Queen Margrethe.

“But those are for serious ships,” Thorvaldsen answered her playfully. “My ships are frivolous, Mrs. Hyman.”

Hyman, Sigrid told herself. Hyman. Wife of David Hyman, trustee. And next to Mrs. Hyman was Mr. Herzog. Albert. Husband of Lydia Herzog, another trustee, whom she hadn’t yet met but of whom Mrs. Hyman had whispered, “ Lydia was a Babcock, you know.”

Sigrid did not know, but had dutifully placed a mental star next to Mrs. Herzog’s name and attached a Babcock in parentheses since Mrs. Hyman seemed to think it was important. It was the sort of remark that reminded Sigrid of going through reception lines with her Southern grandmother. If Mrs. Lattimore’s hierarchal memory of bloodlines and obscure degrees of kinship had ever failed her, Sigrid was unaware of it.

“I shouldn’t have thought you’d find much profit in running Caribbean cruises out of New York,” Mr. Herzog observed.

“Oh, you might be surprised how many people like the extra time in our casino,” Thorvaldsen said with pleasant candor.

With a vague smile as Thorvaldsen elaborated on Caribbean fun ships, Sigrid detached herself from the group standing near the piano in the drawing room and wandered back to the gallery. So many pictures stacked on the walls like cord-wood both fascinated and repelled her. As did everything else she’d seen of this house so far.

It was too full of things. How could anyone relax in a place so visually distracting? Even tonight, with the lights lowered and candles to soften the impact, the busyness of the decor made her edgy. She tried to imagine the walls stripped of the pictures Erich Breul had collected, the furniture surfaces cleared of vases, ornaments and other bibelots. Even so, would these ornate rooms really make an appropriate exhibition space for Nauman’s abstract pictures?

Evidently she wasn’t the only one who wondered that, for immediately after her arrival, while still talking to Jacob Munson, whose old-world courtliness had charmed her, a tall storklike man in formal evening clothes strode into the Breul House, spotted Nauman, and immediately cried, “Oscar! What’s all this crap about a retrospective here?”

“Behave yourself, Elliott,” laughed Francesca Leeds, swooping down upon them, “or we shan’t let you play, shall we, Jacob?”

The newcomer murmured appropriately as Sigrid was introduced to him, but his eyes were for Lady Francesca and Oscar Nauman. Arguably the hottest curator in town, Elliott Buntrock did not recall having met Sigrid at a Piers Leyden opening back in October. Nor did he seem to consider her someone with whom he need bother tonight.

Which suited Sigrid. As the other four began to discuss the possibilities of an exhibit here at the Breul House, she had followed the sound of a piano into the drawing room where Mrs. Beardsley had introduced her to Thorvaldsen and some of the trustees of the Breul House.

And now she had examined all the pictures hung one above the other on the gallery walls and, except for the Winslow Homer drawings, the only work that really captured her interest was a still life of bread and cheese. It reminded her empty stomach she’d eaten nothing since a pushcart hot dog around noon. Back at the far end of the drawing room, Thorvaldsen and the Hymans had been joined by Francesca Leeds and Jacob Munson; a young black woman entered the gallery in animated conversation with a vivacious middle-aged blond who exhibited a slight limp; and, as Sigrid crossed the great hall at the upper end, she saw Nauman and Elliott Buntrock walking slowly in her direction.

Both men were tall and lean, but while Nauman looked fit and moved easily, the curator seemed all joints. In his formal black-and-white evening clothes, he looked like some sort of long-legged water bird, a stilt or a crane, picking his way across a shallow lake, on the alert for any passing minnows. He had neglected to check his long white evening scarf and it hung down over his jacket. Occasionally he would forget and gather both ends in a large bony hand and pull his head forward while making sweeping uncoordinated gestures with his free arm. Nauman had an expression on his face which did not bode well for whatever Elliott Buntrock was propounding.

Sigrid prudently continued into the dining room.

“You’re too important for this place,” said Buntrock. “A Nauman retrospective’s big business. Where’s your head on this, Oscar?”

“If I do it-” Nauman began mildly.

“You’re doing it!” the curator interrupted. “And high time, too.”

“-it’ll be for Jacob.”

“Loyalty. How touching. But why here? With your reputation and my connections, we could easily have the Whitney. Or what about a triple header? Any three galleries you name, any part of the city. Uptown, downtown, Soho, the Village-you say it, you’ve got it. But for the love of God, Montresor, not here.”

“Nobody’s threatening to wall you up with a cask of Amontillado,” Nauman grinned. “You don’t have to get involved. It was Francesca’s idea; I told her you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Francesca Leeds is the only one with any sense on this whole damn project. Of course I’m interested.”

The art world was always a little crazy but Elliott Buntrock was beginning to feel as if he were caught in a comic opera version of “This Is the House that Jack Built.” Francesca Leeds’ wealthy shipowner wanted to sponsor a Nauman retrospective. Everyone knew Nauman refused to have one. Somehow Francesca had known that Munson was Nauman’s Achilles’ heel, so she’d gone looking for Munson’s, and, of all the absurd people in the world, wouldn’t you know it’d turn out to be that goof-up Benjamin Peake?

Buntrock wasn’t quite sure why Peake’s well-being was important to old Jacob Munson. Francesca thought it had something to do with Munson’s only son who’d been killed years ago.

Anyhow, there they were: Peake’s career was wobbling again, so once Jacob Munson was persuaded that a Nauman show would shore it up, he’d put the screws to Nauman, who was evidently unwilling to refuse his old friend.

Exasperated, Buntrock pulled harder on his silk scarf, which only hunched his angled head forward and increased his resemblance to a reluctant stork being pulled along to his doom. Only a fool would turn down the chance to curate a major Nauman exhibition, but here?

They had entered the gallery. It was the first time Buntrock had ever been here and he just stood shaking his head from side to side. “The most important abstract painter of our time in a shrine to nineteenth-century kitsch? You’re crazy, Oscar.”

Until their conversation, Nauman had not made up his mind but now the trendy curator’s patent dismay roused the imp of perversion that lurked in his soul.

“The Breul House or no house, Buntrock. Take it or leave it.”