Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

"Great," I said. "At least the conversation will be lively."

It was. Lorenzo was in classic form, voluble and opaque. "All of our old constants of 'objective reality,' " he piped, pushing a canape farther into his mouth with one lank forefinger (the caviar had arrived in the nick of time, so that crisis, at least, had been averted), "all of our old constants-space, matter, time-we now recognize as nothing more than constructs of cultural consciousness." He smiled brighdy at the group of six or eight people gathered around him, and gulped some more from the glass of Schloss Johannisberg Riesling wrapped in his other hand. "They are no longer valid."

"No longer valid," murmured a dazed one-star general, edging surreptitiously backward.

"No. Reality is, in reality-ah-ha-ha-a multidimensional and, in the end, an ambiguous invention, of no significance to the artist. In my paper 'Rembrandt, Warhol, and the Synthetist Manifesto'…"

The reception was a little over two hours old, and Lorenzo, having established a station within arm's reach of one of the food tables, had been going on like that for almost the whole time. Following Robey's instructions to mingle, I had wandered in and out of his ongoing discourse several times, finding myself entertained, as always, by his inexhaustible resources of learned goofiness.

I had also talked briefly with his father. Claudio Bolzano, looking happy and healthy, broke away from a circle of generals and diplomats to come and talk with me.

"So," he said, "here I am, after all." His alert black eyes glittered with life. "You're progressing in your investigations? Why don't I hear from you?"

"I'm afraid there's been nothing to report, signore."

"You're afraid?'

"Well, I only meant-"

He threw back his head and laughed. "I understand. I should tell you, signore, that as soon as I arrived, before the reception began, I went carefully through the collection, and my conclusion was this: To search for a forgery among these paintings is to waste your time. They are authentic, all of them; I will stake my reputation on it. And the three masterpieces from Hallstatt are even more wonderful than I remember." He smiled suddenly, his whole face alight. "Surely you must agree?"

I nodded. "I do."

Bolzano laughed good-humoredly. "I hear a scholar's disappointment. You're sad because you have no earth-shaking discovery to report to the world of art. Well," he said generously, "it's all right; I understand your long face very well."

But he didn't. I didn't give a damn about earthshaking discoveries. My friend and teacher had been killed because of something he'd found in the show. He had told me about it, and I'd been too dense to understand or even to follow his lead. And so his murderer was still walking around free. There were other compelling things to worry about, too, as Harry had pointed out; since I'd gotten involved I'd been beaten, grazed by a bullet (a doctor at Rhein-Main had confirmed it), and knocked silly by a bomb. And without a doubt I was still on somebody's hit list.

And I still didn't have a clue. I'd gotten absolutely nowhere at all.

That's why I had a long face.

"And so," Lorenzo was saying, "the subjectivist, essentially post-existential viewpoint opens to our minds a third reality, the astructural, nonfunctional, purely relational reality of an interior, many-layered system of reference…"

I managed to hide a yawn under cover of finishing my Scotch and water, and let my eyes wander over the room looking for Anne. She was musing before the Vermeer, her arms folded, an empty wineglass cradled against her cheek.

It was the first time I'd seen her that afternoon without some panting male-or two or three-drooling over her. And no wonder. She looked marvelous; tawny-haired and glowing with girl-next-door prettiness. And she was in mess dress uniform, a knockout outfit of dark mess jacket, white shirt and cummerbund, and ankle-length skirt slit up to the knee. I hadn't been able to keep my eyes off her.

I went to her and took the glass from her hand. "I could sure stand a break. Why don't I get us a couple more, and we can find someplace to sit down for ten minutes."

"I don't know," she whispered. "I have orders to amuse the VIPs. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk to you."

"Well, couldn't you pretend I'm a VIP?"

Lorenzo, unfortunately, had noted my absence, and his voice, shrill with wine, cut effectively through the racket of a successful cocktail party well underway.

"Christopher, come over here and settle a fine point for us! We'll soon see," he said to his circle, "what the eminent Dr. Norgren has to say."

Anne took the glasses from me. "Duty first. Go be entertaining. I'll get your drink."

"Make it fast," I said out of the side of my mouth. " I'm going to need it."

"So, Christopher, ah-ha-ha," Lorenzo said, welcoming me with a comradely and unsteady arm across my shoulder, "tell us: If we accept-and how can we not-the epistemelogical underpinnings of de Chirico's pittura metafisica, must it not follow that an inner reality- that is, the expectations and values which we impose upon our world-is infinitely more persuasive, more real, than the exterior world itself, which we can know only through our senses? How would you answer?"

"Uh, well." I looked for help to the group around us, but they simply looked back with that expression of stunned astonishment that ten minutes of Lorenzo invariably produced. I cleared my throat. "It's an interesting question…"

Lorenzo rescued me, as I hoped he might. "It is a vital question, and not only for art. Heidegger, Kafka, Proust…"

He burbled merrily on, forgetting me again, as Anne came with the drinks.

"Thanks." I sipped, and then I must have frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, the Scotch just tastes a little peculiar. Maybe they put mineral water in it." I laughed nervously. "Or maybe I'm getting paranoid." I took another tentative sip. "I guess they just changed brands, that's all. No taste of bitter almonds or anything like that."

"Are you serious?"

"About what?"

"It's wine, not Scotch. Reisling. That's some educated palate you've got there."

"Wine? Why did you get me wine?"

"That's what I thought you were drinking. You had a wineglass."

"No, they just ran out of highball glasses, that's all. Is this really wine?" I tried it again. "Of course it is. Funny that I'd think it was Scotch."

"Oh, not really. Other things being equal, you see what you expect to see, hear what you expect to hear, taste what you think you're going to taste. Proven many times over."

"So that's what you learn in career counseling."

"That's what you should have learned in Psych 101. It's an elementary principle of perception: expectancy."

"Expectancy! Yes!" Lorenzo burst out. "Exactly my point! Do you see? It's why you didn't recognize the wine!"

It wasn't the first time I'd observed his ability to take in other conversations even when he was in the middle of one of his own harangues. Presumably it was due to his being unable to follow what he was saying any better than anyone else could.

"You see?" He grinned triumphandy at his glassy-eyed audience. "One's expectation overrules the evidence of the senses. You expect whiskey, and although your senses tell you you have wine, your 'inner reality' constructs a complex rationale to protect itself, to convince you that it is right and your senses wrong. 'They put mineral water in it'; 'It's a different brand.' Anything to maintain the integrity of your preconception."

"Yeah!" one of the somnolent listeners said suddenly. "That makes a lot of sense."

Lorenzo's button eyes blinked in surprise. It wasn't the sort of thing people generally said to him. "Well," he mumbled gruffly, "I was merely speaking in concrete terms."