Conor Fitzgerald - Fatal Touch

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 dropping it on the floor at her feet. “I am the fruit, you see? His fruit. It’s so creepy that ‘poetic’ way of talking and thinking. My mother does it, too. Hippies, isn’t that what they were called? But he was wrong about the fruit. The fruit is pure poison, too.”

“I am not following you, Emma.”

“I killed him,” said Emma. “I killed Henry Treacy.”

As emma pronounced the words, Caterina sat back, only now realizing that she had been leaning forwards and waiting for this confession. She had essentially known it since Emma’s craven boyfriend withdrew his alibi.

Emma continued: “It was an accident. I didn’t even mean to hurt him. He was drunk.”

Caterina believed her at once. She tried to suppress the immediacy of the belief as unbecoming for a police officer, but it simply felt true. The incongruity of Emma killing someone was too great. But it wasn’t just that. Emma’s main concern now did not seem to be to claim innocence for herself, but to confess the reasons for her actions. The girl was telling the truth. She was reliving the moment.

“Henry tried to hug me, and he tried to kiss me, and then he started weeping like a child. It was revolting. The folds in his skin, the bristles, and the smell of beer, wine, urine, and old man’s breath.”

“He tried to assault you?”

“No. Not like that. All evening I had stayed with him waiting for him to reveal this really important thing he said he needed to tell me, but all he did was go on about how beautiful I was. How intelligent, how elegant and perfect until I thought I could take no more. It was so much better when he was sober and ironic, making jokes at my expense. Then we got to that piazza, and he started talking about the self-portrait in his office and asking me what I saw in it. And suddenly he grabbed me and pulled me toward him and he tried to kiss me, not on the mouth, but on the face, on my forehead. I struggled and pushed at him, but he kept begging me to listen to him for a moment, so I told him I would if only he would let me go, which he did.

“ ‘Nightingale thinks I don’t know about you. He thinks he has me fooled and blinded and that I’m no better than a bewildered wreck, which may be true. But I knew who you were even before Nightingale brought you to the gallery with his false provenance stories, pretending he had just happened to find a treasure like you lying about. And he thought I would not see the way he treated you and looked proudly at you, the way his breast puffed up like a pigeon every time he was watching you. Anyone would have noticed how he behaved toward you. His cover story was pathetic.’