Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

“Oh, God,” I said, honestly appalled. “I’m sorry. And listen, listen,” I said—his mouth was thin, he was shaking his head as if he’d already detached himself from what I was saying, no point in even listening—“if it’s the furniture you’re worried about—”

“Furniture?” Placid, tolerant, conciliatory Hobie: rumbling like a boiler about to explode. “Who said anything about furniture? Reeve said you’d bolted, made a run for it but—” he stood blinking rapidly, attempting to compose himself—“I didn’t believe it of you, I couldn’t, and I was afraid it was something much worse. Oh, you know what I mean,” he said half-angrily when I didn’t respond. “What was I to think? The way you tore off from the party… Pippa and I, you can’t imagine it, there was a bit of a huff with the hostess, ‘where is the groom,’ sniff sniff, you left so suddenly, we weren’t invited to the after-party so we legged it—and then—imagine how I felt coming home to find the house unlocked, door standing open practically, cash drawer ransacked… never mind the necklace, that note you left Pippa was so strange, she was just as worried as I was—”

“She was?”

“Of course she was!” Flinging out an arm. He was practically shouting. “What were we to think? And then, this terrible visit from Reeve. I was in the middle of making pie crust—should never have gone to the door, I thought it was Moira—nine a.m. and standing there gaping at him with flour all over me—Theo, why did you do it?” he said despairingly.

Not knowing what he meant—I’d done so much—I had no choice but to shake my head and look away.

“It was so preposterous—how could I possibly believe it? As a matter of fact I didn’t believe it. Because I understand,” he said, when I didn’t respond, “look, I understand about the furniture, you did what you had to, and believe me, I’m grateful, if not for you I’d be working for hire somewhere and living in some ratty little bed-sit. But—” digging his fists into the pocket of his bathrobe—“all this other malarkey? Obviously I can’t help wondering where you fit into all that. Especially since you’d hared off with hardly a word, with your pal—who, I hate to say it, very charming boy but he looks like he’s seen the inside of a jail cell or two—”

“Hobie—”

“Oh, Reeve. You should have heard him.” All the energy seemed to have left him; he looked limp and defeated. “The old serpent. And—I want you to know, as far as that went—art theft? I took up for you in no uncertain terms. Whatever else you’d done—I was certain you hadn’t done that. And then? Not three days later? What turns up in the news? What very painting? Along with how many others? Was he telling the truth?” he said, when I still didn’t answer. “Was it you?”

“Yes. Well, I mean, technically no.”

“Theo.”

“I can explain.”

“Please do,” he said, grinding the heel of his hand into his eye.

“Sit down.”

“I—” Hopelessly he looked around, as if he was afraid of losing all his resolve if he sat down at the table with me.

“No, you should sit. It’s a long story. I’ll make it short as I can.”

vii.

HE DIDN’T SAY A word. He didn’t even answer the telephone when it rang. I was bone-tired and aching from the plane, and though I steered clear of the two dead bodies, I gave him the best account of the rest of it that I could: short sentences, matter of fact, not trying to justify or explain. When I was finished he sat there—me shaken by his silence, no noise in the kitchen except the flatline hum of the old fridge. But, at last, he sat back and folded his arms.

“It does all swing around strangely sometimes, doesn’t it?” he said.

I was silent, not knowing what to say.

“I mean only—” rubbing his eye—“I only understand it, as I get older. How funny time is. How many tricks and surprises.”

The word trick was all I heard, or understood. Then, abruptly, he stood up—all six foot five of him, something stern and regretful in his posture or so it seemed to me, ancestral ghost of the beatwalking cop or maybe a bouncer about to toss you out of the pub.

“I’ll go,” I said.

Rapidly he blinked. “What?”

“I’ll write you a check for the whole amount. Just hold it until I tell you it’s okay to cash it, that’s all I ask. I never meant you any harm, I swear.”

With a full-armed gesture of old, he swatted away my words. “No, no. Wait here. I want to show you something.”

He got up and creaked into the parlor. He was gone a while. And—when he came back—it was with a falling-to-pieces photo album. He sat down. He leafed through it for several pages. And—when he got to a certain page—he pushed it across the table to me. “There,” he said.

Faded snapshot. A tiny, beaky, birdlike boy smiled at a piano in a palmy Belle Époque room: not Parisian, not quite, but Cairene. Twinned jardinières, many French bronzes, many small paintings. One—flowers in a glass—I dimly recognized as a Manet. But my eye tripped and stopped at the twin of a much more familiar image, one or two frames above.

It was, of course, a reproduction. But even in the tarnished old photograph, it glowed in its own isolated and oddly modern light.

“Artist’s copy,” said Hobie. “The Manet too. Nothing special but—” folding his hands on the table—“those paintings were a huge part of his childhood, the happiest part, before he was ill—only child, petted and spoiled by the servants—figs and tangerines and jasmine blossoms on the balcony—he spoke Arabic, as well as French, you knew that, right? And—” Hobie crossed his arms tight, and tapped his lips with a forefinger—“he used to speak of how with very great paintings it’s possible to know them deeply, inhabit them almost, even through copies. Even Proust—there’s a famous passage where Odette opens the door with a cold, she’s sulky, her hair is loose and undone, her skin is patchy, and Swann, who has never cared about her until that moment, falls in love with her because she looks like a Botticelli girl from a slightly damaged fresco. Which Proust himself only knew from a reproduction. He never saw the original, in the Sistine Chapel. But even so—the whole novel is in some ways about that moment. And the damage is part of the attraction, the painting’s blotchy cheeks. Even through a copy Proust was able to re-dream that image, re-shape reality with it, pull something all his own from it into the world. Because—the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn’t matter if it’s been through the Xerox machine a hundred times.”

“No,” I said, though I wasn’t thinking of the painting but of Hobie’s changelings. Pieces enlivened by his touch and polished until they looked as if they’d had pure, golden Time poured over them, copies that made you love Hepplewhite, or Sheraton, even if you’d never looked at or thought about a piece of Hepplewhite or Sheraton in your life.

“Well—I’m just an old copyist talking myself. You know what Picasso says. ‘Bad artists copy, good artists steal.’ Still with real greatness, there’s a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn’t matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It’s the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still carries some of the same shock. And these copies—” leaning forward with hands folded on the table—“these artists’ copies he grew up with were lost when the house in Cairo burned, and to tell you the truth they were lost to him earlier, when he was crippled and they sent him back to America, but—well, he was a person like us, he got attached to objects, they had personalities and souls to him, and though he lost almost everything else from that life, he never lost those paintings because the originals were still out in the world. Made several trips to see them—matter of fact, we took the train all the way to Baltimore to see the original of his Manet when it was exhibited here, years ago, back when Pippa’s mother was still living. Quite a journey for Welty. But he knew he’d never make it back to the Musée d’Orsay. And the day he and Pippa went up to the Dutch exhibition? What picture do you think he was taking her specially to see?”