The Italian Teacher(98)

He opens his eyes, takes it by the stem. “Lepidopterist,” he says.

“What language is that?”

“Just a language in my head.”

Noticing Pinch’s eyes flutter closed, she tiptoes away.

“I have a question,” he says, or believes that he says. “Why is that leaf so beautiful? Why does one thing contain beauty and another doesn’t? The park, it overwhelms me.” (He says “park” but means “back garden.”) “Almost makes me cry to look out that window. But those concrete flats over the fence actually make me furious. Not that nature is better than artifice. Because art is artifice. Sorry, what was the question?”

“The question is: Why should a leaf be beautiful?”

“Because it has healthful associations? Or because, within our primal selves, we associate color with plenty? Might that be it?”

“But why find beauty in a painting? And how can an abstract be so affecting?”

“Or a piece of pottery, for that matter,” he adds.

Silence interrupts him; it holds.

He yearns for beauty. More. The art books around him—he doesn’t care to view them. Lately he finds the sublime in unpretty faces. He could watch them for years. Natalie was right: Life is thrilling.

Must get to the cottage. Must.

Charles Bavinsky outlives his father by little more than a decade.





Portrait of an Artist


   HAND-BUILT ABSTRACT CERAMIC,


   SPLASHED BLUE AND RED GLAZES,


   INCISED LINES


   16 X 9 X 6 INCHES


   Courtesy of Xiao Jingfei





2011




85


Upon learning of Pinch’s death, his siblings contact the Petros Gallery. They know their brother’s plan was to bequeath the Faces to museums. Can that be canceled? Everything depends on Pinch’s estate. His sole beneficiary is someone named Xiao Jingfei. Wait—what? This must be a mistake. It turns out to be the woman in whose house Pinch lodged during his final years. Was this some sleazy affair? Did she manipulate their half brother when he was sick? In any case, this is an outrage—a stranger controls their legacy.

Complicating matters, tax officials are meddling, with the French, the Americans, and the British all making claims to the inheritance. And one big question hovers over everything: Are there more paintings?

A lawyer counsels Jing to immediately conduct an inventory at the cottage where the deceased apparently stored his father’s art. If she finds nothing, fine. But if she gets lucky? “You realize how much a Bavinsky goes for these days?”

Jing refrains from answering—or admitting that she has no idea where Pinch’s cottage is. She does own a set of scratched old keys, however, and considers asking Birdie for the address. But perhaps that sister is allied with hostile family members. Instead, Jing approaches another of Pinch’s final visitors, Marsden, who mentioned living at the cottage for a spell.

“You can come and show me?” she asks by phone. “I pay for your flight. Okay?”

They meet at an airport outside Barcelona and drive north into French Catalonia. Marsden’s transatlantic haze is intensified by the strangeness of returning here. He attempts to converse with her, but most exchanges falter. “Interesting,” he says, “how Charles studied grammar right till the end.”

“Chars liked preparing.”

“But what for, at that point?”

“It’s good to study.”

They drive up the mountain in silence, united by someone who doesn’t exist.

“Scary to think what we might find,” he remarks, looking at her.

Gripping the wheel, she slows into another hairpin turn.





86


He guides Jing around her own property, pointing to the art studio and the woods behind. In the cottage kitchen, dead flies dot the tile floor. The shelves are stacked with domestic pottery, stamped on the underside with the hallmark “C.D.” Upstairs, the bed is made, linen humid, whiffs of potpourri. Entering each room, they flick on the lights with anticipation, as if someone might lie there, sit up, staring at them.

On the bookcases are battered thrillers, guides to the Roussillon in English, and a notepad so old that when Jing takes it from the shelf, pages flutter to the floor. It once belonged to Cecil Ditchley and contains glaze formulas in elegant cursive of the kind that nobody can produce anymore. They also find a copy of the Bavinsky memorial booklet, along with Pinch’s bound thesis on Caravaggio, with Bear’s notes jotted in the margins, even though he always claimed never to have read more than a few words. Marsden rests the Caravaggio thesis on his palm—he has never read this. He recalls staggering up the stairs of that shared home in Toronto, Pinch frowning at his desk at this housemate with a bottle of booze in hand. That isn’t a happy memory, for they were growing apart. The indolent and the industrious cannot stay friends. But such distinctions are trivial now. Their affinity on the steps of the Sidney Smith lecture hall proved truer than any rupture.

Marsden flips open the thesis, stopping at the dedication: “To the two great artists of my time, Natalie and Bear.” Marsden smiles. He slides the copy into his bag, calling out: “No paintings over here. But don’t abandon hope. We still have the studio to check.”