around.”
“You could have called the police.”
“The two of them are pretty intimidating, and maybe they had a magistrate’s warrant. It’s easier to imagine all the things you should have done afterwards,” said Emma. “After a bit the Colonel comes back. Behind him is the Maresciallo, seven framed paintings under his arms. Four of them are works by Treacy, ‘in the style of Old Masters,’ as he used to put it in his dishonest way. The fifth-I can’t remember what it was. I think it was an original painting by some seventeenth-century Dutchman. I can’t even think of a name, now. Ter Borch, maybe-probably another Treacy fake. And the last two were nothing to do with Treacy. He left us all the modern-style works, making sure he damaged them and my mother’s feelings first. He says, ‘These modern works here are obviously yours,’ and starts circling the room, unhooking the paintings, breaking open the backing boards as if this was the most natural thing in the world, then checking out the canvas, smelling it. At one stage I think he even licked his finger, smiling all the time and shaking his head to show how pathetic he thought they all were.”
Emma sat back with a sigh, and said, “Have you got a drink?”
“Only bottles of sweet stuff that I take out and put away again at Christmas without opening. Do you want some of that?”
“No vodka?”
“No.”
“All right,” said Emma. She half slipped a stockinged foot from her shoe. Caterina looked down at her own spreading thighs, her cotton running pants.
“I’m waiting,” said Caterina.
Emma resumed. “Then he sits down. The Maresciallo comes up, hands him a file folder and a tin. He puts the tin in the middle of the table, opens it, picks out a round brown ball wrapped in crinkled plastic, unwraps it, pops it into his mouth.
“ ‘Give me your hand,’ he says, plucking another ball from the tin. I refused. ‘From England. Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls. Very hard to find here.’ Then he pulls out pages of numbers with the TIM logo on it and fans them out on the table. He explains it showed the connections my BlackBerry had made with cell masts and the GPS satellites during the day on which Treacy was killed. It showed, he says, that I was with Treacy until late. So I asked him how he knew Treacy was with me all that time, and for a moment he stopped sucking the candies, then he smiles, and says, ‘Good point. I like that. We’ll have to get witnesses, too, won’t we?’ Then he asks if I had accompanied Treacy to the place where he was found dead, and I told him I had accompanied him part of the way.
“ ‘So you do not deny you were with him moments before his death,’ said the Colonel. And I sort of shrugged at that. I expected more questions, but then he announced, ‘None of that matters, the case is being filed away since we do not suspect foul play.’ ”
Emma stopped talking and looked down at the picture. “The painting he was looking for is this one here.”
Caterina looked at it again. It still seemed unremarkable. “Was it hidden somewhere?”
“No. It was in plain sight,” said Emma. “He held it in his hands, looked it over, smirked, and put it back on the wall. It was one of the works he treated with most contempt, telling my mother she was a deluded incompetent. He didn’t even seem to notice that of all the paintings in the house, it was the one that had the most space to itself. I looked at my mother to see what effect his insults were having. She was keeping a neutral expression, but I could see that inside she was happy.”
“Happy?”
“Happy-triumphant. It was in her eyes. But he didn’t see it, because he was squinting at the painting with exaggerated distaste. Now I suddenly remembered the way she looked at it, tilting her head to the side, sometimes frowning, sometimes smiling. She even touched it sometimes. She never did that with any of the others.”
“What’s special about it?” asked Caterina.
“I’ve no idea. Except it was the only one he sent. I remember its arrival, even though I was only a little girl.”
“Your mother allowed you to take it after they had left?”
“She didn’t try to stop me, if that’s what you mean. But I didn’t ask her permission. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“A moment ago, it sounded like you were admiring her.”
“I don’t think she’s a good mother. She’s not responsible enough. I paid for her artistic self-indulgence.”
“You seem OK.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“She’s the only mother you’re going to get,” said Caterina. “You’re young. Maybe when you’re a bit older you’ll forgive her. She is human and humans are deluded. She probably thinks she was a good mother.”
“She doesn’t think about it. All she thinks about is herself.”
In the pause that followed, Caterina listened for Elia’s breathing, but he was too far away.
“Treacy only ever sent one painting,” said Emma. She touched it with her foot. “And that’s it there. I remember it coming to the house, just before we left for Pistoia. The others, the ones the Colonel took, were always there. As I was leaving, my mother gave me this, as if it would justify things. I balled it up and threw it away. But it has to do with me, too, so I picked it up again.”
She pulled out a piece of crinkly blue writing paper of the sort Caterina had not seen in years and handed it to her. She recognized Treacy’s handwriting at once. On this occasion, he wrote in Italian.
Dear Angela,
I am keeping my promise and my distance. Some time ago, I found myself trying to copy some de Chirico works, and it turned out to be harder than it looked. I had more success in painting originals after de Chirico, and I am sending you the best result of my efforts. It was not until I tried to paint him that I realized what you were trying to achieve in your work. You were seeking expressiveness and therefore a truth that I stopped looking for too many years ago, and this is why I derided you. I never should have done so. And I also know that deriding your work was not even the worst thing I did to you. I am glad you found Nightingale, though I wish you had found someone better than him.
I should not have written that, but I won’t score it out either, because it’s right that you should hear echoes of the sort of person I used to be. I have always tried to tell you what was best for you, when all I really meant was that I was best for you. And I wasn’t. That’s not news to you, of course. I am glad you realized it long ago. Please destroy the various insulting notes and eliminate from your mind the punches, slaps, and moments of exquisite torture based on neglect and denigration. I don’t know why I did those things. I shall never know why. Not everything has its reason, not everyone has his place in the world.
I have failed. I am still the best draftsman you will ever know, perhaps the best of my generation, and I have a good eye for color, but I have never found my own voice. I am a mere copyist, a plagiarist, a forger, and a cheat. I still say today’s artists are no good, and the true greats belong to the distant past, but if I were less of a coward, perhaps I might have tried to create my own style.
This is my bequest to you. If you look at it carefully, you will see a thousand second thoughts, a thousand regrets, and a thousand “pentimenti” in it. Take them as referring to all the harm I ever did to you. If you forgive me, you will keep this painting, and perhaps hang it on a wall where it should sit happily with your own original works.
Someday, you will understand even better why I have sent this to you. Imagine ourselves in the foreground, sitting on a stone bench. I take a berry from a yew tree, and you tell me that a yew is pure poison from the leaves to the fruit. Your mother had warned you not to touch it. Then I put it in my mouth and eat it, and you panic, and I allow you to panic to see how much I mean to you. It was just one of a thousand cruel gestures, one of a thousand regrets. Yew trees last a thousand years. They will still be there, exactly where we left them. Go back there someday and think of me.
Your art was wonderful. The yew leaf and its seed are poisonous, but not its fruit.
Yours with love,
Henry
Caterina folded up the letter and handed it back to Emma who took it, making tongs of her fingers and
