Michael Gruber - The Forgery of Venus

But after lunch it occurred to me that I might have hallucinated Rose’s answers. I was angry with myself for even thinking of such a stupid ploy, and in this mood I slipped down to the kitchen, chatted with the girls and Frau Bonner. They were making cakes, and busy, and I had no problem easing a six-inch chef ’s knife out of a drawer and up my sleeve. It was old and black and the wooden handle was cracked, so they probably don’t use it much and won’t miss it. Still razor sharp, though. It made me feel good to have a weapon. I thought that if I ever figured out who my real enemies were I would use it on them. I tested it on my own wrists too, just scratches. That was also a possibility that came to mind.

That evening we were having dinner with his excellency the evil magician, and we were asked to dress for it. Lotte thought it was a lovely idea, to dress up for dinner. I wore my Venice suit; she fetched out a wonderful sheath dress in a Naples-yellow fabric that sparkled. She looked terrific in the formal dining room too, along with the crystal and the polished mahogany and the silver champagne bucket and Krebs smiling in his white dinner jacket like Reichsmarschal Göring, but not as fat.

A nice dinner too, or would’ve been if I hadn’t had so much to drink. I’d forgotten that booze knocked you out of that state of just being, which is why drunks are always going on about the past and making promises about the future, and why AA is always preaching one day at a time. Anyway, we’d just finished the boar with red cabbage, and Krebs and Lotte were deep in a conversation about what was showing in New York, and Lotte was telling him about Rudolf Stingel, who apparently uses chipped Styrofoam panels and linoleum and industrial carpeting distressed in various ways and hung on the wall to make people forget beauty and really experience the fact that everything is just total shit, and who was having his one-man at the Whitney, and Lotte turned to Krebs and said in a clear voice something about my own one-man show at the Whitney.

Krebs listened affably to this while my blood chilled, and then Lotte looked me right in the eye with a hesitant half smile and said, “It was a wonderful show.”

Yes, my Lotte.

Before anyone could stop me, I jumped up and ran out of the dining room and down the hall to Krebs’s office, where I entered and locked the door behind me. I started searching, I’m not sure for what, some evidence, some physical object that I could use to defend my memories of my life as an impoverished commercial hack, and funny, isn’t it, I hated it while I was living it, but in retrospect it seemed to be the most precious thing in the world; how we love what we take to be our true selves. And so much did I not want to be the painter of those sexy Teflon nudes that I looked for such an item. I looked a little roughly, I have to say; I think I broke some nice things in there. I used my knife on some of Krebs’s possessions.

Keys were rattling in the lock as I ran out through the French windows, around the house, and in through the kitchen door. There was a wall phone there, and I grabbed it and punched in my sister’s number, the number of her organization, surely there’d be someone there who would take an emergency message, get it to her in Africa, please, your brother doesn’t know who he is, could you tell him? But what I heard was “The number you have reached is not a working number, please try again,” which I didn’t have time to do, because they were coming through the house after me, so I ran up the back stairs. I had to find Rose, because she was the only one now, because maybe I’d made up Charlie too. If I could get to Rose and ask her a few questions again I’d be all right.

She was standing in the hallway holding her pink blanket. I dropped to my knees in front of her.

“Rosie! What are you doing out of bed?”

“I was scared, Daddy. I heard people shouting.” Indeed people were shouting, in German. Footsteps pounded below.

“It’s okay, Rose,” I said. “Look, I’m going to take you to bed again, but first I want to play that game again, okay? Just tell me where I live and where you live and I’ll take you to bed and tell you a story and it’ll be all right.”

“I don’t want to, Daddy. I’m scared.”

“Come on, Rosie-where does Daddy live?” I knew it was wrong, just like I knew blowing a grand’s worth of coke a week was wrong, but I’d done that too. I thought. Anyway, I had to hear it, I had to have that information that instant or die.

I can imagine what my face looked like at that moment, because I could see the terror in her eyes. She started to blubber. I grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. “Tell me, damn it!” I yelled. Rose cried out and I heard Lotte scream behind me, as who would not on seeing a maniac poised over a little girl brandishing a knife? And then I was jerked backward by an arm around my throat and the knife went flying and Franco and one of the Slavs held me down, screaming, and then Krebs came up and yanked down my pants and shot me up with something that switched off my brain.

Icame to in a small white room, tied with soft restraints to a hospitel bed, my mouth parched, foul tasting, and dry as old newspapers. I croaked a little and someone must’ve heard me, because a nurse (or someone posing as a nurse) came in and took my pulse and gave me a cup of water and a straw to sip from. She said what I supposed were soothing things in German, and shortly thereafter a brisk young man appeared in my field of view. He had on a white lab coat and those fashionable slit-type black eyeglasses, and he said his name was Schick and that he was the psychiatrist in charge of my case.

I said, “The world is whatever is the case.”

He blinked, then smiled. “Ah, yes, Wittgenstein. Do you study him?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just a bit that floated up.”

“Ah! Well, no matter. Do you know where you are, Mr. Wilmot?”

“A hospital?”

“Yes, it is a small hospital near Ingolstadt, and this is the psychiatric ward. Do you know why you are here?”

“I’m crazy?”

He smiled again. “Well, you have had a breakdown of some kind, delusions and amnesia, and so forth. In such cases, where there is no history and rapid onset, we look for organic causes, and I am happy to tell you that we have found none. You were given a CAT scan while you were unconscious, and your brain is perfectly normal in all respects.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Yes. And could you tell me what is this implant you have? It showed up on the scan.”

“I don’t have an implant.”

“Oh, yes. Very small, at the back of your left arm.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, this may be part of your amnesia, yes? In any case we will have it out and then we shall see what is what. Now, tell me, do you know now who you are?”

I didn’t, but I told him the story I thought he wanted to hear, successful painter goes berserk, thinks he’s an unsuccessful painter, and as we talked it suddenly made a lot of sense. What a strange thing to have concocted, I thought then, fantasizing myself as a bitter failure instead of the prosperous painter I clearly was. I felt calmer than I’d been for a long time. They had me on some drug, obviously, and it was working. The implant? Well, I was sure there was some explanation, some necessary medical procedure that had slipped my mind. I hadn’t been myself lately, and so I might have forgotten I’d had it put in. Really, nothing seemed worth getting excited about. When he saw how calm I was he released the restraints. Quite a pleasant talk with Dr. Schick, and then he went away.

I had lunch and a pill and dozed for a while, and a nurse came in and shot some local anesthetic into my arm and did something with an instrument and went away. I asked her if I could see what she took out of me, but I couldn’t make myself understood, or maybe it wasn’t allowed. In a little while I fell asleep again.