Next Life Might Be Kinder (7 page)

“So you speculate that someone in this family was in France or Italy.”

“That's my somewhat educated guess.”

“Go back and look again, Cynthia.”

Dropping the cigarette on the porch and pressing a heel to it, Cynthia returned to the ornate table, which had a china tea set on it and a dozen or so paperback books. She then got down on the ground and lay on her back (I didn't see anyone else notice) and, elegant as she was, inelegantly slid halfway under the table. A few moments later, she slid out again, got to her feet, brushed off the back of her slacks and jacket, tapped a second cigarette from its package, lit it with her lighter, took a few puffs, then walked back to sit next to me on the porch.

“Is it?” I asked.

“Definitely. I all but saw Diego Giacometti's reflection in the glass.”

“What's it going for?”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

“Chump change, like they say in the States.”

“Know what's ringing in my ears? That goddamn thing Philip keeps saying: situational ethics. What are the options here, do you think, Sam? All right, should I just tell the granddaughter what the table is? Tell her its potential worth? You know?”

“What do you think it might be worth?”

“A hundred thousand, if Sotheby's, or another of the big auction houses, was to appraise and sell it. Oh, I don't know,” Cynthia said. “I may be high in my estimation. Then again, I might be short.”

“A life-changing amount for most mortals.”

“Even after the auctioneer's fee. If one were to go that route.”

“Okay, that's one option,” I said. “You educate the granddaughter, your good deed for the day, and we go home. You could leave her your address. Maybe she'll send you a thank-you note.”

“Option number two: I buy the table and keep it,” Cynthia said. “An authentic Diego Giacometti table. The granddaughter remains in the dark. What she doesn't know doesn't hurt her. Or what is hurting her she'll never know about. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

Cynthia thought for a moment and added, “Option three: I sell it and send the granddaughter a big check. Or how about, I tell the granddaughter it's a Diego Giacometti and say I feel she should know, in case someone in her family had been in Italy or France during the war, give her a context. Give her some history and say I feel it is very much underpriced, and can I offer her, say, a thousand dollars.”

“Oh, I get it. If you offer
five
thousand, she might get too strong a hint that it's worth a lot more.”

“I'm simply thinking out loud here. Okay, what if I rely—rare as it is in a person—on her sense of equity, and tell her I'll work through professional channels and get the table sold, and promise to split the money fifty-fifty with her.”

“Which option can you live with?”

“I could probably live with any of them, but with each one differently.”

“Slippery use of words, Cynthia.”

“Don't judge me, for God's sake. I haven't made a choice yet.”

“Don't look now, but you've got competition.”

Cynthia hurried over and stood near the Giacometti table and eavesdropped on the conversation between a late-middle-aged man and his wife. When Cynthia returned to the porch, she looked relieved. “‘I don't want the thing'”—she mimicked the woman's voice—“‘because those stupid little birds remind me of the chirpers who wake me up before daylight every morning. No thanks.'”

“Close call. What're you going to do?”

“I'm going to have a heart attack,” she said. “I'm all worked up.”

I walked into the house, which did not seem open to the public despite the For Sale sign. I went into the big empty kitchen, saw some cups and glasses on the counter, filled a cup with water from the spigot, and carried it out to the porch. Cynthia gulped it down. “Thank you,” she said.

“Maybe the best option is to just go home,” I said.

“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

In the end, after an additional twenty minutes of torment, rumination, and debate, striving to worry each option to acceptability, a hint of dusk now on the ocean horizon, Cynthia lit a third cigarette. “Okay, I've come to a decision,” she said.

I accompanied her to the granddaughter, who was still sitting at the roll-top desk. The granddaughter said, “I'm Violet, by the way. I used to smoke on the porch too, as a teenager.”

“I'd like to purchase the glass table, please,” Cynthia said.

“Will it fit in your car?” Violet said.

“It's a station wagon. So, yes, I think so,” Cynthia said.

“Bring me the tag, please, if you would. I can't recall the price.”

“It's twenty-five,” Cynthia said.

“Oh, yes, all right. But I'll need the tag anyway, for recordkeeping.”

The transaction completed, we gently loaded the Diego Giacometti table into the back of the station wagon. I offered no comment on the entire drive back to Port Medway. It was well past dark when we arrived, and I went straight to the beach.

It was nearly an hour before Elizabeth appeared. She lined up her books and we spoke, but only briefly. “I don't want to talk, not really,” she said. “But tell me about your day, darling. Just tell me, then I have to go.” So what else could I do but tell her about the antique stores and the Giacometti table. I spoke with as much detail and deliberation as I could, to try and keep her on the beach. “I love you but I have so much work to do,” she finally said. Then she picked up her books and was gone. Back in the cottage I thought,
Every night is different,
promoting, for the sake of a little solace, let alone the possibility of getting some sleep, the obvious as a revelation.

The subject of the table did not come up for another week. Then, quite late one night, Cynthia telephoned. “Can I talk to you?” she said.

“It's the table, isn't it? Want some coffee?”

“Yes and yes. I'll be right over.”

We sat in the kitchen and Cynthia toured me through the tortuous mental landscape, as it were, she'd been traveling in since purchasing the table. “Philip keeps saying what I did was just another example of situational ethics,” she said. “Situational ethics or not, things took a totally different turn than I could ever have imagined.”

“In what sense?” I asked.

“See, when I got the table home, I put it in my studio. You've seen it there, I suppose. Then I started doing research. I made some inquiries. I called Sotheby's in New York. I spoke to higher-ups. They were tremendously interested. I could almost hear them drooling and panting. They wanted to send appraisers, but I said I had to think about it. They have been very solicitous.
Very.
‘At least send some photographs,' they said. So I sent some photographs. A few days later, they called and gave me an estimate, based on the photographs alone. So few Giacometti tables come on the market.

“But I couldn't sleep. I was tossing and turning, driving Philip crazy. He knew I felt guilty. He kept quoting Freud—Anna Freud, I think: ‘Put your guilt to good use.' But I didn't know which good use to put it to. I was going insane with this, Sam. Really, I was.

“Then, just yesterday, I couldn't stand it anymore. I put the table in the car, drove all the way to Gunning Cove again, and tracked down the granddaughter. I asked for Violet's address at the post office. I drove to her house and knocked on the door, and when she came out on the porch and saw that I'd set the table on the ground, she said, ‘Oh, Lord, and here I thought I'd got rid of that godforsaken thing. You want me to buy it back—that why you're here? I can't believe my bad luck.'

“I asked had she ever heard of Sotheby's.

“‘The Sothebys, do they live over in Ingomar? Or is it East Point?' she says.

“‘No,' I say, ‘it's a famous auction house in New York and London.'

“‘Is that supposed to mean something to me?' she says.

“‘The thing is,' I say, ‘the table is worth—one estimate is a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars American. I'm not saying it would go for that at auction. It's just an estimate.'

“And then she just looked me over. She sort of took me full in. Then she said, ‘Whatever scheme is afoot, I'm already shut of it.' I protested and even confessed that I knew the worth of the table before I bought it, and could we at least discuss a few options.

“But here's the surprise, Sam. Here's the surprise. Violet pushed right past me, walked over to the table, lifted it up, and set it back in the station wagon. She was a larger woman than I'd remembered. Then she got behind the wheel, turned the car so it was facing back toward the road. She got out, engine running, and said, ‘See, you're on the straight and narrow now. Facing the right way home now. Look, I understand, you are not at peace with your actions. You brought your problems to me, but I do not want them. I don't want your problems delivered to my porch. But I'm going to tell you something that might put your mind a little more at ease. I'm going to tell you something about that table. And this is not common knowledge, and God won't go out of His way to bestow blessings if you go and wag your tongue with this information, eh? My own disreputable father, a charlatan, bought that table during the war, when he served in France. He bought the table in Paris. And that table resided in a Paris apartment, which my father shared with his second—unbeknownst to my mother—wife.
Unbeknownst to my mother.
My mother was his first wife. You can put two and two together, eh? My charlatan father lived with the French wife and had a daughter with her. That daughter and I have never met, but none of it's her fault. Then one day my mother, may she rest, discovered a photograph of the French wife, the French daughter, and my father standing next to the godforsaken table in their Paris apartment. Big shouting quarrel, and my father went back to Paris, promising to settle things there and come back and try to right things with us. He left for Paris and did not come back. Why? Maybe because the French wife stabbed my father in the stomach. He's in some cemetery or other in France, we didn't bother to inquire. It may have been a foreigner's pauper's grave, we didn't bother to inquire as to the details. France kept a lot of Canadian fathers in the ground after the war, but for more heroic reasons. Heroic didn't apply to my father. See, the French daughter was now half orphaned—as was I—and the French wife was in prison. About a year later, out of the blue, mind you, four pieces of furniture arrived, and the table was one. We didn't know it at the time, but my mother had just a few years left on this earth. We put the table in the cellar. I brought it upstairs for the estate sale. Now, I'll admit I was very, very grateful you bought the table. Let's leave it at that, shall we? I don't care one bit if it's worth a million dollars. Good riddance to that table.'”

Then Cynthia said, “I paraphrased there, Sam. I don't have your memory. But that's pretty much what Violet told me. Whew. And then she went back into her house and I drove the table back home.”

So, that is my friend Cynthia. The table is still in her studio.

I
STVAKSON SENT LILY
Svetgartot to give me a gift, a framed print of
The Sleepless Night of the Litigant.
I had never heard of this engraving. “I understand you have your new telephone number, now unlisted,” she said.

“That's right.”

She was wearing jeans and that thick sweater again. She also wore a stylish black raincoat. It had started to rain.

“Hmmm, okay, Mr. Lattimore. Well, Mr. Istvakson has sent me, delivery lady, with this picture. Will you accept it?”

“I'm not going to watch the movie being made. No bribes. And contractually I got out of having to contribute any dialogue, so—”

“Mr. Istvakson wrote something for me to read to you. May I?”

“Go ahead.”

“On the porch here?”

“Yes, I'm busy.”

“I smell some cooking.”

“I'm busy with cooking. That's what I'm busy with.”

“It's a two-hour drive from Halifax. A truck almost killed me. My car slid in the rain.”

“Read what you have to read.”

“All right.” She took out a piece of paper from her raincoat pocket and read from it:

“‘Hello, Sam Lattimore, my author. My brilliant writer and, I hope someday, friend Sam Lattimore. Our start with the movie is going very well. We have often had miracle weather and the actors are doing brilliant work. They all would like to meet you. So, please, come meet. My assistant Lily Svetgartot delivers something I want you to keep as a gift, based on my admiration. It is called
The Sleepless Night of the Litigant.
It is an engraving from 1597. I had this facsimile sent from Amsterdam, an art dealer I befriended there. I had it framed in Halifax last week. The artist is named Hendrik Goltzius. It is an engraving from a series called
The Abuses of the Law.
I was once thinking of having a screenplay written based on this engraving and may someday. Look at the engraving! A man so guilty of something he cannot sleep, and demons visit him. I admit it is a familiar situation to me personally. I have a notebook full of ideas. If I do make that as a movie, maybe you would consider writing the novel based on the screenplay. They do that kind of thing in America and they are often successful books, I'm told. Look at this engraving closely, please, Sam Lattimore. Lily Svetgartot will unwrap the paper and kindly please closely look at it.'”

“All right, come in,” I said. “Let's have a look at the engraving.”

I didn't expect her to take off and hang up her raincoat on the silent butler (from the apartment in the Essex Hotel), near the front door, but that is what she did. “Could it be a bouillabaisse? Mmmm,” she said. “Such a dinner takes time. It takes patience. I have learned something about you.” She set the engraving down on the sofa and walked into the kitchen, lifted the top off the cooking pot on the stove, closed her eyes, and inhaled dramatically. Then she took up the wooden spoon from the counter, dipped it in the pot, and sampled the soup. “Sea bass, definitely, but a bouillabaisse needs two fish, usually. I can't quite make out the other—”