William Gaddis - The Recognitions

— Telling you?

— About themselves, my boy. Recktall Brown drew heavily on the cigar, and the smoke broke around the discolored teeth as he spoke. — I never do business with anyone until I've had them investigated, I never sign a thing until I've been through a report by a good private detective agency. I know a lot about Basil Valentine. I know about him with the Jesuits, I know what happened there, and I know what happens now, I know what his private life is. Be careful of him.

— He. studied for the priesthood?

— He's not out of it yet.

— But then me? Even me? You had them. you had detectives. finding out about me?

— Of course I did, my boy. It's all right, it's all right. You're all right, but just keep on the way you are, Brown said, laying a heavy hand on the wrist before him, — don't let anybody interfere with you, and be careful, be God damn careful of that pansy.

— That's funny, then you… we both studied.

— What have you two accomplished? they heard behind them. — Dear, just sitting here and holding hands. I thought we had fearfully pressing business. Basil Valentine approached rubbing his hands together. He kicked the crumpled reproduction on the floor, and paused over it to smooth it out with the narrow toe of his black shoe. — Oil of lavender, eh? he said, looking down at it. — Mansit odor, posses scire fuisse deam, he said kicking it aside. — You must remember your Ovid, my dear Brown? He touched his smooth temple and smiled as he sat down. — "An odor remained, you could tell that a goddess had appeared." He took his eyes from Brown, and looked across the table. — But what are you looking at me that way for? Come, we have work to do. Hubert van Eyck.

— Why should he rate a quarter of a million? Brown interrupted.

— I was about to tell you: because he never existed.

— But he did, he did, came sharply across the table.

— All right, my dear fellow.

— He did, he did, of course he did, who. why, the Ghent altarpiece, the Steenken Madonna .?

— Who the hell, what is this? Who? He never existed but he painted the what?. sting.

— All right, have it your way, Valentine went on, speaking across the table, paying Brown no attention. — After all, we will have to have it your way, won't we. If one of his paintings is to appear?

— But he did.

— All right, he did, Brown broke in again, sitting forward. — Now that's settled.

— It's not settled, yet. But it will be.

— But to say he didn't exist, to say Hubert van Eyck didn't exist? — God damn it, stop. Stop arguing with him, Valentine. You're just trying to upset him.

— Don't you understand? But don't either of you understand? Basil Valentine brought both hands up before him. — There are authorities who still insist that Hubert van Eyck is a legend, that he never lived at all, that Jan van Eyck never had an older brother. As a matter of fact, I'm one of them myself, but, wait. He held up an arresting palm. — Now don't you understand? If a painting appears, a signed, fully documented painting by Hubert van Eyck, they'll be proved wrong. The others, the. experts and art historians who have been insisting that there was a Hubert van Eyck will pounce on this new picture. They won't question it for a moment, because it will prove their point, and that's all they care about. It will prove that they've been right all this time, and that's all they care about. The painting itself doesn't matter to them, their authority is all that's important. And the dissenters? He dropped his hands, sank back in the chair and smiled across the table. — Even I may be brought around, you see.

Recktall Brown grunted an assent, and Valentine took out a cigarette and passed his case open across the table. It was snapped closed, and the worn inscription caught the light. — This? what's this? may I read it?

— If you can, Valentine said.

— Yes, it's difficult. Varé tava soskei me puchelas. cai soskei avillara catári. Gypsy?

— Why yes, a Hungarian dialect. Valentine's face almost showed surprise, as he took the thing back and slipped it into an inside pocket. — But you don't understand it? "Much I ponder why you ask me questions, and why you should come hither." A gift, he added, cleared his throat, shifted in his chair, and went on speaking as though to find recovery in his own words. — Van Eyck? and what did you think I was going to suggest? another Jan van Eyck?

— But, no but.

— Yes, another Virgin and Child and Donor? You could do that. Paint Brown in the place of Chancellor Rolin. Lovely! on his knees at a prie-dieu, before the Virgin and Child. A pious monument to his Christian virtue as a patron of art. We'd have to take off his glasses, and get him a haircut. You wouldn't mind running around in a tonsure for a while, Brown? But that ring. His eye caught the double gleam of the diamonds. — We could hardly have such vanity flaunting.

— What are you talking about? Brown demanded. — We decided he exists, this Herbert…

Valentine shrugged wearily, and went on in his irritating mono- tone, — Yes, we are, I suppose, basically in agreement. Now here is the point. Some time ago the will of a man named Jean de Visch was found. It is in the public domain, available as substantiation of this. project. The will mentions a picture by Hubert van Eyck, which goes to prove, supposedly, that such a picture was painted. Another Virgin of some sort. Proves it well enough for your purpose, at any rate. Now when they tore down that house in Ghent they hoped to find some of Hubert's work, hidden somewhere. They didn't. But there was a scrap of paper. It was regarded as a curiosity, and then it disappeared and was forgotten. It was a letter signed by Jodoc Vyt, the man who commissioned the Ghent altarpiece, commissioning a work by Hubert van Eyck. I can get hold of it for two thousand dollars.

— You can get it for less, Brown muttered.

— Perhaps I shall. Basil Valentine smiled at him. — You never begrudged me a commission?

— How do I know it isn't faked?

— You haven't made a habit of doubting my word either. But look at it this way. If it is not genuine, why should it exist at all?

— If it exists, why should I buy it?

— You are inclined to oversimplify, aren't you Brown? To insist on carrying us back to Rome, where for all their ingenious vulgarity they never managed to evolve blackmail, at least there's no word for it in Roman jurisdiction. They depended so heavily on the Greeks, and the Greeks apparently had no word for it either. No, it's taken our precocious modern minds to devise this delicate relationship between human beings. You might call this blackmail in reverse. You see, if you don't buy this slip of paper it will be destroyed.

— And he can't paint the picture without this scrap of paper?

— He can. Of course he can. But with this attached to it, it will be irreproachable. He paused. — This isn't a thing to scrimp on, and you know it.

— All right.

— Well?

They both looked across the table. — It isn't the first time I've thought of it, he said, watching the brandy he swirled in the bottom of his glass. — A Virgin by Hubert van Eyck.

— An Annunciation.

— Yes, he said, holding the glass up. — Isn't that an exquisite color? The cc o. of the sixth heaven, jacinth. I remember a story my father told me, about the celestial sea. Instead of bedtime stories he used to read to me. The same things he was reading.

— Now this Herbert picture, Recktall Brown said, interrupting.

— When I was sick in bed, he read to me from Otia Imperialia. The twelfth century, Gervase of Tilbury, when people could believe that our atmosphere was a celestial sea, a sea to the people who lived above it. This story was about some people coming out of church, and they saw an anchor dangling by a rope from the sky. The anchor caught in the tombstones, and then they watched and saw a man coming down the rope, to unhook it. But when he reached the earth they went over to him and he was dead. He looked up at both of them from the glass. — Dead as though he'd been drowned.