Cheyney Fox (18 page)

“He would never get Cheyney that way. He is smart enough to know that he can’t buy her. That she has to earn her way back up again, or he would have a basket case in his bed. If he wanted her just for a one-night stand, Kurt Walbrook would have bedded her the only time he ever met her, that night at the Tinguely exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”

“He’s such a schemer, Roberto. It’s like he’s stalking Cheyney in the dark.”

“Yes, but Lala, darling, he demands nothing of her. All he has for his efforts is the hope that her psychological scars will heal enough for him to make his move one day.”

“And shoot her down for himself.”

“Well, I wouldn’t put it exactly that way.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then she doesn’t. She will have not been good enough for him, and he will have helped a woman he was intrigued by.
You have got to admire him, Lala, it’s very romantic.”

“No more romantic than us, Roberto.” Lala took the cigarette from between Roberto’s fingers and crushed it out in a marble ashtray.

“No. Different league from us, my darling.”

“Would you have done that for me, Roberto?”

“I have done more, my dearest heart.”

They made love. Roberto was half asleep when Lala put one last question, “Roberto?”

“Ummm” was all the patient, princely Roberto could manage.

“Roberto, what if Cheyney does turn herself again into the Cheyney he fell in love with, and then says no to him in favor of someone else?”

No answer. Lala shook him by the shoulder to see if he was awake. “Couldn’t happen,” he mumbled, en route to a deep sleep.

Roberto did not find Kurt Walbrook in Austria. Or at the telephone number in Paris. They found him in Montevideo, where the three spoke at length. He was clearly delighted to hear that Cheyney was on the move. He made arrangements for Roberto to meet him in Venice. Three days later Lala was waiting for Roberto’s return. His plane had already landed and he was on his way in from the airport.

Lala was still miffed at not having been invited to Venice with Roberto. She had kept going on about it all the way to the airport the morning of his departure.

“What will I do while you’re away?”

“Lala, darling, I’m only away for a day. Not even a day. For lunch, altogether maybe ten hours. Surely you can find something to do. Do what you always do.”

“What’s that?”

“Go shopping.”

She perked up at that. “You won’t be cross if I’m a
little
extravagant?”

“Shopping, but
not
extravagant. And I will bring you a surprise from Venice.”

She did go shopping, and she was extravagant. By the time Lala arrived on the Via Condotti, two chic shopping bags already in her hands, she had forgotten about Cheyney Fox. And
Roberto in Venice. Even about not having been invited to the Palazzo Borgano, the Walbrook Venetian residence.

That was where she bumped into Giovanna Buchelli and found out that Kurt Walbrook kept a German mistress in Vienna, a German, a great beauty. But that it didn’t mean a thing. He had another in Paris, and that didn’t mean a thing either. “They are like convenience food to Kurt. I should know. I was once part of the menu. He devoured me and I loved it, and I saw — as all his women do — myself as his baroness. My dear Lala, as long as the present baroness, his mother, is alive, he will not marry. You can depend on that. She is monstrously important in his life.”

“You mean he has a mother complex?” Lala had scanned her
Readers Digest
.

“Oh no, not at all. I could’ve handled something as routine as that. No, this is complicated. If anything, she has a son complex.”

They had a girls’ lunch together, and Giovanna drank too much. She broke down and confessed — in strictest girls’-lunch confidence — that Kurt Walbrook was the most exciting lover she had ever had. That he could get some surprising erotic tricks out of her. She called him a sexual Svengali and rhapsodized over his prowess. The wine drew from her the intimate details of the sex life she shared with him. She had been heartbroken when it was over between them. Lala raised an eyebrow at the news. All Rome knew Giovanna’s sexual reputation and how hard her heart was even by Roman standards.

“It happened so quickly. We went to a private exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, guests of Ali Kahn. And then, just like that,” Giovanna snapped her fingers. The sound was quick and sharp, puncturing the hum of other gossip around them. “He saw a woman on the edge of the crowd, and he walked away from me. When we went to reclaim him from her, I saw it in his eyes. He was finished with me. Just like that.” Giovanna snapped her fingers once more. A gossiping diner accorded her a glance.

Lala nearly choked on her wine as her lunch companion said, “If I ever see that woman again, I will grind my heel in her face.” The woman had, of course, been Cheyney.

Lala made a quick exit after that. What delicious gossip she
had for Roberto when he came home. Feeling guilty about her shopping extravagances, she made an effort with an antipasto, selecting for it all the things she knew Roberto liked. The antipasto and the drinks were waiting on the terrace. And Lala sat in the library awaiting Roberto and wondering what was going to happen to Cheyney. Secretly Lala still believed that Cheyney had met the great love of her life in Christopher. No one would ever replace him.

Roberto arrived and presented her with a beautifully wrapped gift. All silver paper, gold and silver and bronze ribbons. A minutely carved snail of chased silver, the size of a plum. A compact for face powder. Delighted, she read the note.

“Be assured I will never harm your friend. Kurt.”

Typically, all her doubts about Kurt Walbrook vanished while the snail held her attention.

“Roberto, darling, isn’t it gorgeous?” Visibly delighted, she bubbled with enthusiasm until she asked Roberto about his day trip to Venice and remembered that she had not been invited.

“I suppose this is an apology because he didn’t ask me to go to lunch at the palazzo with you.” She held the silver snail up, opened it, and looked at herself in the small mirror on the inside of the lid. She plucked out the white swansdown puff and dusted the tip of her nose, then asked, “Why didn’t he, Roberto?”

“The first thing I’m to tell you,” said Roberto, “is that Kurt would like you to visit the Palazzo Borgano sometime very soon. A time when we can stay for a few days. He said no more than that, but I understand from what I saw that his mother was in residence and entertaining, and not he.”

“Oh, I suppose I forgive him. And actually I do know that he finds me amusing and likes my company. So I really can’t take it too personally. And, well, I gotta lovely snail.

“We’re having drinks on the balcony. So come along and tell me all. You first and then, golly, have I got some hot gossip for you! And it’s about Kurt Walbrook. Is the palazzo divine?”

“Unimaginably grand, yet warm and inviting. It has to be one of the finest palazzos in Venice. On the Grand Canal, once the palace of a ducal family whose members tended to get themselves elected doge of Venice. Restored impeccably. And the things in his collection — quite unbelievable. Where, how,
he was ever able to assemble such a collection of art and artifacts is beyond imagination. Several lifetimes’ work. The furniture, the mirrors, and, and … a priceless library. It just kept going on.

“I was given a personal tour by his librarian, who explained that I couldn’t see Kurt until after he had dined with his mother and her guests. A long-standing luncheon date he could not cancel. I was given lunch on the library balcony.”

“The linen, the silver, the goblets, the food — what about all that?” asked a voracious Lala.

“Baroque French silver, eighteenth-century Venetian goblets, Burano lace on the table. I don’t remember the china, oh, yes, Sevres.”

“The food, Roberto. What was the food like?”

“You will be furious, you’ll pout the rest of the evening if I tell you.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I promise,” Lala begged.

“Ravioli stuffed with lobster and scallops.”

“I am furious. What was the sauce?”

“A lobster sauce. That was followed by thin strips of veal cooked in Marsala and covered in two-inch-thick shavings of fresh white truffle, mange-tout, and a potato thing that melted in the mouth. Small puffs, deep-fried. The wines were excellent.”

“I can’t bear it. I’ll pout. Yes, I can. Tell me, what was the dessert?”

“Warm zabaglione.”

Lala stamped her foot, and Roberto laughed at her. She playfully snatched away the antipasto and announced, “Roberto, you don’t deserve this. You will have to make it up to me tonight by taking me out to dinner at the Osteria Del Orso.”

“Delighted, honored.”

She poured him another scotch on shaved ice, and then asked, “What about Cheyney? What did he have to say about her and what she’s doing? Wait, wait, I don’t want to miss anything. Okay, so you saw the palazzo and then you had that sumptuous lunch overlooking the Grand Canal, and then what?”

“Then he appeared. About four o’clock. Lunch over, he excused himself just long enough from his mother’s guests to
meet me in the library. We spent an hour together.”

“Roberto,
caro mio
, that doesn’t tell me anything. You’re dragging this out. Teasing me. What’s happened? And I want all the details.”

“Well, as we already knew from speaking to him on the telephone, he was delighted about Cheyney leaving the lover and New York. I think he sees it as a move toward him, even if she is unaware of it.”

“Did he say anything, show any flicker of emotion, about David being out of the picture?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? What a cold bastard.”

“No, Lala, he’s not a cold bastard. He’s a man. Stop expecting him to behave like a woman in love. And he’s an Austrian, who can deal unemotionally with the reality of his situation.”

“Well, maybe he isn’t an icy bastard. But how can one tell? He’s such an enigma. Maybe what scares me is what Giovanna Buchelli calls his Svengali charm. You must admit, Roberto, he’s a man not easy to figure out. And from what I heard today … well, never mind. Go on, what happened next?”

“The upshot of our meeting is that he wants to help Cheyney to be happy in Europe. He sees it as a stepping-stone for her, and for him and his purpose. Kurt believes she needs some real successes, and that he has the means to put some work in her way that will give her a chance to achieve them. He was very straightforward with me, which took me by surprise. He said, ‘I want her in Europe. So we are going to see that she has enough interesting work here to contemplate making a permanent move. My plan is simple — if you will work for me, Roberto, as you have done before.

“ ‘I intend to ask you to front for me on some things I want to buy. You will do nothing more than pass the deal over to Cheyney. And, for your trouble, you will split between you the buyer’s fee I am prepared to pay. The original purchaser, that’s me, will of course remain anonymous. You will be able to explain that to Cheyney by saying your client deals with you on the condition of strict confidentiality. I will assemble some fine works of art, and both of you will benefit financially.
En
plus
, Cheyney gets a psychological boost. A beginning, Roberto, for what I hope will ultimately be a lifetime of happiness for me and this woman who intrigues me so.’ ”

“Roberto, that’s wonderful news. You did, of course, say yes?” asked Lala, a look of concern on her face. She knew how softhearted Roberto was. He could easily have played the grand gentleman that he was and offered to do it for nothing.

“Yes.”

A sigh of relief. Gentlemen needed money, too.

“I told him that I thought it an excellent way to help Cheyney, and I believed we could get her to act for us, just so long as it had nothing to do with anything in the contemporary art world again.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Nothing. He just gave me a smile that told me he was thinking ‘Don’t bet on it.’ What he did say was, ‘We will begin by luring her back into the art world through buying antiquities. In that field she has no failures to be reminded of. I want her to be the vital, sensuous creature I saw and have been enchanted by ever since. That’s the way I want her, for me, of course. But, if not for me, then certainly for herself.’ ”

Roberto stopped, moved by the hint of a tear in Lala’s eye, and waited for her to say something.

“The man
is
a romantic. I would never have believed it. The cold fish. I’m speechless.”

“Good. Then let me tell you the immediate plans. I am going to speak to Cheyney this evening. I have already sent a cable from Venice asking her to call us tonight, midnight, our time. I will tell her that I have two projects pending in Athens, and I want her to take them over and complete the deals for me. Payment, a thousand dollars and my eternal gratitude. She is to check into the Grand Bretagne, and we’ll meet her there any day she chooses. She is not to worry about the money because the client picks up all expenses.”

“
We’re
going to Athens?”

“Yes,
we’re
going to Athens.”

Chapter 18

A
thens continually enchanted Cheyney by resisting the metropolitan chic that veiled the charm of so many capital cities. It would always remain for her simply the biggest village in Greece, no matter how men strove to urbanize it. Too bad if the “cradle of democracy” did not appreciate that its village mentality, wedded to its magnificent ancient past, was its greatest asset. It was what made a cross section of the world want to flock there and bask for a time under its sun or to stand in the shadow of its Acropolis.

Cheyney had first arrived in the city in 1958. More than half of it was still sunbaked neoclassical buildings, and ancient architecture, sculpture, art, and artifacts. It raised the spirit and dimmed the vision against all the poured concrete — that lethal amoeba, spreading across the city in the guise of
polycatoias
, apartment buildings. In their basements hundreds of handsome young would-be architects sketched their urban blueprints. But no inspired modern architecture arose. Just functional, boring, concrete blocks with terraces. Now, ten years later, a neoclassical building was getting harder to find. And a newly spawned dictatorship promised even fewer of them. Concrete was on the march faster than ever, part of the promise of an orderly, modernized Greece.

Athenian intellectual life before the military coup of ’67 that ousted the king and probably destroyed the monarchy in Greece forever, had been modest but graceful. It swelled to something unique because of the French, English, and American artists and intellectuals who chose to pass through the city en route
to somewhere, or indeed to linger in Athens or on the islands, sensing some remnant of their ancient allure that can still energize the creative spirit.

In those days Athens’ intellectual life flourished in a hearty village atmosphere. Simple and easy. The vitalizing part of it was less what it finally produced than the life-style it offered its artists. A communication between men and women able to ditch their egos in their studios and absorb the sun at a
cafeneon
in Kolonaki, in the bar at Orphanidis or the Grande Bretagne. At Zonar’s for a sidewalk lunch, a taverna in Plaka. Exchange the day’s gossip for hours, pronounce upon world events, pontificate upon their favorite subject, politics. All the time watching the world stroll by and letting it know who was in town. An effortlessly rich and inspiring place to be. In that Athens could rival Paris any time.

Cheyney had arrived with Zazou and six suitcases on the last flight into democratic Greece, still under its monarchy. She awoke next morning to the rumble of tanks affronting the slender streets of the city. First the shock of what the coup meant. Then Cheyney realized that she lacked the hard cash to quit Greece as a fine gesture, so she learned to live in her adopted country as her Greek friends did. Cautiously and in the hope that in time there would be a countercoup, and democracy would be restored. A fascinating and repellent time to be in democracy’s hometown.

In some respects the Greek life-style Cheyney had moved to Athens to enjoy changed little under the dictatorship. Her Greek friends were deeply saddened and depressed by the political stifling of their country, and filled with fear for the arbitrary power the colonels wielded over their lives. Men could disappear for telling a joke against the regime. Paranoia had become the Greek disease. Absurd phobias surfaced. Intellectual life shrank correspondingly from within and without. Many of the more famous foreign writers, painters, and scholars stayed away. They launched much-publicized protests against the colonels’ deadly posturings. And yet, even under those extraordinary pressures, much of the day-to-day living in the city carried on as usual.

It was still difficult to be lonely, poor, a failure, a stranger, in Athens, even if you tried. The hum and rattle, crash and
bang of the city as it kept on the move day and night — except during the sacrosanct siesta — and the Greeks, with their extravagant hand and arm gestures that seemed to go with the exaggerated volume of their voices, their music, their generosity, would never allow it. You could be penniless in Greece, but you couldn’t be poor. Their fear of silence or isolation kept them a people who enjoyed living in the streets. Only, these days, discretion entered the Greek armory, a new and necessary skill. It was not an easy thing for them to learn, but they did, and fast. Eventually it was what changed the Athenians and the city.

The first time Cheyney flew into Athens, she knew nothing about the city, nor a soul in it. Nor anything about the Greeks — except what Kazantzakis, Henry Miller, and the history books had made them into. Hers were the same romantic expectations of the city for which millions of other travelers made the journey.

She had therefore been prepared for the much-vaunted brilliance of the light of Greece. Or she thought she had, until the plane circled the airport. Below her was Athens, all white, and the blue Aegean Sea, luminous with it. She was dazzled for a few minutes, then seduced. Greece was going to outshine all that she had imagined.

And it still did. Yet many things had happened to both Cheyney and Athens. Certainly not all of them good, some much worse than just bad. But there were things that stayed essentially the same. There was little difference between her arrival ten years before and her return to make the city her home in ’67.

Or for that matter now. A year after the colonels’ coup, you still had to go through the same trial by fire to get into Athens from the airport. Passport control, find your luggage, customs, the taxi ride — all horn and riding the brake. The blaring bouzouki from the tinny radio, the constant taxi driver chat, the near-misses among the after-siesta traffic.

That, like so many other things that were part of the fabric of Athenian life, had become part of Cheyney’s life. She never took any of it for granted, feeling always the foreigner, a mere guest in the country, no matter how hospitable Greece and the Greeks were to her. She still felt the same vibrancy about living
in Athens as she had the first time she saw the Acropolis. Yet she knew that the vibrancy came from Ancient Greece and Athenians who had been dead two thousand years. The rest was something else. A carnival, a fiesta of living, or a great clinic for the spirit where the patients came to be healed. If they make it, they leave.

Having an on-again-off-again Athenian life for nearly a decade before she had moved permanently into the city, Cheyney slipped easily into it: work, street cafés, bars, tavernas, the cinema, and crowds. The lonely days of solitude were still there, but there were fewer of them.

In Greece to find someone dining alone was like finding a pearl in an oyster. The Greeks liked to eat, drink, laugh, talk, go to the movies, the theater, a concert, anything, in groups. The
pareia
, their own little clique of friends, that almost every Greek finds life unbearable without, was as important as family. The Greek sense of humor, their sense of honor, their openheartedness, had always appealed to Cheyney. What she learned now was that when a Greek grabs your hand, he grabs it forever. That, after her New York experience of transitory friendships, was not only a joy to see and, on occasion, to be part of. It was yet another kind of restorative for Cheyney. Such kindness stood out amid the gloom engendered by the colonels. And Cheyney enjoyed not one but two
pareias
. One Greek and one of expatriates. She had become a social animal again.

Cheyney Fox had got her life together. She thought about the past only after the recurrent nightmare she occasionally suffered. She even accepted that she might one day return to New York, but told herself through gritted teeth that she would make sure she was a millionaire before buying the ticket. Once again she began vaguely to savor contemporary paintings. Savor yes, but think about them, talk about contemporary art, never. When it came to that, she simply switched off. She wasn’t there.

Pop Art and Andy Warhol were the phenomena of the sixties art age. She never spoke about her part in that world; to friends in Greece or Egypt, to those in Europe, she was just a lady with a random eye for art, who bought antiquities and folk art.
The pose suited her just fine. Cheyney Fox’s preferred profile was low.

On that first trip, when Roberto and Lala had flown in from Rome to meet Cheyney in Athens, once all their business discussions were over, the two women had had a girly gossip in Cheyney’s room. Lala pointed out in her inimitable way that “Europe is not America, Cheyney. We Europeans don’t insist that you fall in love every time you land a good fuck. And try and keep in mind we come from the old school of sexual morality. The alma mater has just erected a new wing: it calls itself the permissive society. Sexual freedom is all the rage. It’s a joyride, a merry-go-round, a carousel. I know you, you love too much. Take a rest. My suggestion is that you hop on, grab the golden ring, and have a good ride.”

Cheyney had been amused by Lala’s “we Europeans” and the way she never shed her fantasy. She had also listened well to Lala’s advice. She learned that her friend was right: nobody bothered anymore to use love as an absolution for sex. Sex was, like the
pareia
, fun.

In the past few years she had had her share of “fun.” Sundry mini and harmless sexual affairs that had been conducted with a good deal of affection, if not with love. She had even had sex with Christopher in the Greek island house. He had been thrilled. For her it was an exorcism. They both knew it and never tried again. It had been a muted ending to so passionate a love. But neither of them had wasted tears on it; they went their separate ways.

For Cheyney, there had even been an affair that still lingered. A famous Paris surgeon. A man dedicated to the science of healing, always dueling with death, who had the temperament and the soul of an artist. A man in constant conflict with his emotions, torn between the bourgeois man of science that he was and the free-spirited creative human being he would like to be. When he and Cheyney began their affair, they opened worlds for each other they both yearned for, but were unable to live with. Each had what the other wanted, but not enough courage to do anything about it. They grew apart, and Cheyney was left with yet another love affair that fell short of its promise of a romantic, erotic passion with something solid on which to build a life of love and togetherness. Christopher, David,
Claude — they had all given her much, but nothing of that extraordinary warmth and oneness she had experienced for those fleeting few minutes in the arms of Grant Madigan in the backseat of a New York taxi.

If Grant Madigan had not yet entered her soul, he had most certainly entered her psyche. A brief thought, the occasional yearning to experience her more thrilling sexual encounters with him. The ridiculous fantasy even, that he would one day ride into her life, as he had done once before, and fill the hole in her heart, the void in her soul, that disappointment in love had inflicted upon her.

Afternoon heat. Coffee time at Zonar’s. Cheyney was having a cappuccino with several members of her expatriate
pareia
. She had tried changing the subject under discussion several times. No dice. She gave a languid ear to what so gripped them.

“The case has been going on for two and a half weeks. Not just in the courtroom. The papers are full of it. The artistic and moral issues are all bound up together. Everyone’s using them to fight his own corner. Seems this guy Barry Sole had taken half of them for one great big Pop Art ride. If it’s true, an awful lotta heads are going to roll right into the basket. The art world is screaming for justice,
the facts, the facts
.”

For days, the two men, a Chicago painter and a Toronto poet, had been talking about little else over lunch with the other foreigners. The painter, the bitchier of the two, clubbed two somnolent bluebottles in quick succession with a rolled-up
Time
magazine. He swept them from the table to the ground. Then, tilting his chair back, he leaned against the glass window, and let the hot October sun do its enervating worst.

He tossed
Time
across to Cheyney. She caught it by the cover. “What do you think about all this, Cheyney?”

“I try not to, Ben.” She returned the magazine via the man next to her. Someone else at the table took up the subject.

“As I see it, Barry is being sued for fraud on the art world. Is that right?”

“Just about.”

“Now why would anyone do a thing like that?” Yet another person at the table got involved.

There was even a sun-seeking lawyer friend of Ben’s from
New York to explain the public dimension of the case. Now the whole table was listening. Cheyney was about to switch off, but he was so pompous she couldn’t resist hearing his interpretation. The sun was hot. She was a long way from the events that were for the moment shaking the art worlds of Paris and London as well as New York.

“Seems a complaint was sent to the district attorney’s office by a famous art collector. That complaint stated that the said collector, as well as any number of other collectors, big and small, had been collecting the works of Barry Sole for the past ten years. He had been assured by Sole, along with other reputable people and institutions, that Mr. Sole’s paintings were of a serious nature.

“Now, the indictment against him claims that this is not true. That the millions of dollars invested in the work of the Pop painter Barry Sole, as well as other Pop Art painters, have been made virtually worthless by the recent actions of Mr. Sole.”

Ben sniggered. Cheyney began to be irritated by the lawyer. She thought the whole thing a bore. Someone else did, too. A blond hippie, dressed in fringed doeskin and dripping with Navajo jewelry, all hammered silver and chunky turquoise, from Madison, Wisconsin, began fumbling with her boyfriend’s shirt buttons. “Doreen, I wanna hear this,” he whined. More fool you, thought Cheyney. She had decided to leave as soon as she finished her coffee.

“I can shut up if I’m boring you,” said the lawyer huffily.

The table opted for him to get on with it, and he continued. “The evidence submitted was that Barry Sole found a salvage company in Miami, Florida, with a warehouse full of candy bars covered with chocolate and filled with caramel. A shipment damaged in a freight-car accident. The bars, all in their original silver and green wrappers, were crushed, broken in half, or melted into odd shapes or with their wrappers blackened — smoke damage. Sole snapped up the candy — all one hundred thousand bars.