1

‘It is madness,’ Eduard Poussard said, growing excited, ‘to compare Picasso to Le Fauconnier and de la Fresnave. Duchamp was an infant, Léger a painter of plumbing. I cannot even speak of Gleizes or Metzinger. Braque I can certainly mention if I try. Tanguy was a painter of fæces. He refined and polished them like gems. I cannot imagine why you even think of his name. I forgot it the moment I saw one of his paintings. To mention it – in the same breath with Picasso! . . .’

‘Picasso, Picasso!’ Mildred sang out harshly, making no effort at all to keep the sneer from her face.

‘I agree with the artist,’ the Countess said. ‘Picasso is a great painter, but careless. I cannot forgive carelessness. Never do I forgive carelessness in art. I have wept before some of his paintings: the portraits of boys and of his sweet children . . . little Paul in a clown suit; but others I could spit upon.’

The artist was now so angry, the colour spread from his throat across his chest.

‘If Picasso dipped his brush in dung,’ he said, biting at his words, ‘and spread it across a brick wall, it would breathe with fire of life, it would glow with fevered energy. . . .’

Mildred couldn’t control her outrage. ‘Our Picasso, who art in heaven,’ she chanted whitely, ‘hallowed be thy name. . . .’

‘I like him,’ Gia contributed. ‘He has a sense of humour.’

‘Humour!’ Mildred shouted, now so excited the corners of her mouth were flecked with saliva. ‘He is an ape and a buffoon! He is a swindler! He has perpetrated the greatest hoax in the history of art. He is shameless and lives like the Spanish pig that he is! I would gladly set fire to every canvas he has defiled. He has been the anti-Christ of art, promulgating his pornographic scrawls until the world stinks of his corruption. Art is dead unless it finds the strength to crucify this monster. It has been drowned in the cesspool he has stirred to a maelstrom with his . . . phallic brush!’

‘There, there,’ Mrs Carter said gently, patting Mildred’s hand. The girl’s lack of restraint, the violent gestures she used, were obviously embarrassing Suzette Dier and enraging the artist. The veins in his neck were a skein of pulsing cords.

‘Picasso,’ he hissed, ‘is the saint, the saviour of art. We should all be dead for the next thousand years but for this giant, this hero of the spirit.’ He reached forward, his hands grasping, strangling the air between himself and Mildred. ‘– There was a glimmer of light in Delacroix, Poussin, Daumier; it brightened in Pissarro, Degas, Lautrec, but Cézanne was John – the voice crying in the wilderness, bringing his holy water – presaging the birth of the hero, the saviour who was Picasso! It is people like you’ – he jabbed a finger toward Mildred in a gesture he would have used had he been holding a knife – ‘who would crucify the king! You – all of you’ – and in his rage he encompassed the others in a sweeping gesture that was a scythe slashing through a field of wheat – ‘you are the Pilates of the world, or worse – the crowd milling at the gate – “Give us Barabbas!” – give us anyone at all as long as we can taste blood!’

With this he stood, and in his impatience to leave them, stumbled and fell as he turned. In a moment he was up, cursing under his breath, stomping towards the hotel. The others stared after him in a slightly embarrassed silence.

‘Well!’ Mrs Carter said presently, ‘we have certainly touched some sore spots this morning. I confess I am disturbed when things get quite so out of hand.’ She looked at Mildred archly. ‘I do believe you could have expressed your opinions with a little more restraint.’

‘They are not opinions,’ Mildred returned hotly; ‘they’re convictions. I feel strongly about painting.’

‘Well, we all do, my dear,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘But to call Picasso the anti-Christ of art! Surely that is going a little far.’

‘A mere figure of speech,’ Robert suggested. ‘And an interesting one. Or do you still believe in the devil, Mildred?’

The girl’s anger was slow to die. She was breathing heavily and unravelling yards of her knitting as if the last hour’s work had displeased her.

‘What do you mean – still?’ she asked irritably.

‘Well, you are a Catholic’

‘Mildred is not a Catholic,’ Mrs Carter interrupted quickly, speaking for the girl who seemed quite ready to turn her wrath on Robert if she did not prevent it. ‘She was merely born into a Catholic family. That was many years ago. – Not too many,’ she added, again patting Mildred’s hand. ‘But when she was in her teens, she realised how atavistic it was and gave it up instantly, though she has retained, wisely, a poetic appreciation for the Mass. I know all about it, don’t I, Mildred, because once’ – she turned to face the others – ‘we had a long and most agreeable discussion about it without either of us losing our tempers.’

‘I have heard,’ Robert said, ‘that it is all simply a sneaky way of tapping the incestuous libido, of rendering it impotent and relatively harmless. . . .’

Mildred had stuffed the knitting into her beach bag and without another word or a moment’s further delay, rose and marched toward the hotel.

‘Perhaps you have an opinion, Paul,’ Robert continued, his eyes on the psychiatrist. ‘You don’t say very much. I suppose your profession conditions you to silence. You must sit all day and listen.’

Paul frowned slightly and glanced quickly at his wife before returning his eyes to Robert.

‘Well, as I listened to Miss Hawkins and the artist,’ he replied, somewhat coolly, ‘I was inclined to feel that they represented extremes. I’m sure Picasso is neither as good nor as bad as either of them makes out. As for myself – I enjoy him. I feel he has contributed immeasurably to the riches of the world and of the spirit. – My wife owns one of his paintings – a small head – one of the first so-called “double-vision” women.’

‘I don’t mean Picasso,’ Robert said peevishly. ‘I mean that ghost in the Vatican, that “past of an illusion”.’ He was obviously ill-tempered this morning and trying to bait even the psychiatrist.

‘What ails everyone today?’ Mrs Carter interrupted quickly. ‘Robert – I do believe you are the instigator. You know how Mildred feels about Picasso. And you must have discovered the artist’s feelings, and so, in your insidious way, you introduced the subject. Don’t tell me it is merely research for one of your books! That would be too heartless. – Victoria, do help me until everyone has quieted down. Tell us something interesting and diverting. Tell us about Nicky.’

‘–Ah, Nicky,’ the Countess replied. She glanced back toward the hotel. ‘Where is he? I have not seen him for hours. I am getting lonely.’

‘He went with the Constable,’ Mrs Carter said, ‘ – to see the bud on the valdepeñas and then to inspect the santanella. There is a whole nest of them this year.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘You are really most exasperating, Victoria. You know how I loathe secrets. Why, I divorced one of my husbands for exactly that reason. The most exasperating man! – always locking his desk drawers and putting sealing wax on large manila envelopes. For years I thought he was a spy of some sort until I discovered that he simply liked things closed. Everything had to be covered, sealed. Did you ever hear of such a thing! Why, I couldn’t keep a jar of jam open on the breakfast table that he didn’t break into a sweat and have to clap on the cover and screw it tight. I could barely manage to get a spoonful of jam for my toast in the morning!’ She looked at Paul Dier. ‘He was an oil man, you know; and I’m sure that must be significant – I mean, having to cap all those geysers all the time. I remember – there was always “a big one” coming through. I don’t know why every one was a big one, but it always was. The foreman would usually call me on the phone and say, “Tell Henry ‘the big one’ is coming through.” So I would turn to Henry and tell him that, and whenever I did his eyes would get shiny and he would say quietly, “The big one!” in a very faraway voice. Of course, sometimes it would turn out to be only a dribble, or a gas pocket, and then Henry would become ill. He always became ill when that happened. Truly. He would actually go to bed for a day and nothing would do but that he have chicken soup and Jello. – That was in Texas.’ She turned to the actress. ‘Texas is a state in America. – But what I started to say’ – she looked at the Countess severely – ‘is that you have been very unkind to us, Victoria. Now I insist. I want to know about Nicky – I want to hear all about him.’

‘Ah, Nicky,’ the Countess replied. She brooded, her melancholy eyes staring at the sea of Corbodéra as if she were seeing a mirage.

‘I found him in Rome,’ she murmured, and sighed.

Mrs Carter settled comfortably back in her beach chair as she might in a theatre seat when the lights begin to dim and the curtain is about to rise. Her eyes sparkled a little as she glanced at the Diers and when the actress shifted her position on the sand and seemed about to say something, Mrs Carter promptly shushed her.

‘He was living in a hot near the slums,’ the Countess continued, ‘close to Capannor-Mesagne.’

Rarely did her accent confuse the others, but even Robert who, for some reason kept staring at the actress, didn’t know what a ‘hot’ was.

‘A hot, a hot,’ the Countess repeated – as if the others were being quite stupid. ‘ – The kind children build. – Come now; you take sticks and nails and build a small house – a room – out of doors.’

‘A hut!’ Robert said.

‘Yes, a hot,’ the Countess replied. ‘I used to build them myself; though in Russia there is very little wood. Everything is steel and iron.’ She turned to the Diers and the actress. ‘But I am not Russian; I merely lived there when I was a little girl.’ She did not explain further, and it was doubtful that she could, since her lineage was so confused that no country could rightfully claim her as its own. In addition, it seemed impossible to name any country in the world where she hadn’t lived for at least a time.

‘About Nicky ’ Mrs Carter whispered, as if she were backstage cueing an actress.

‘ – Ah, Nicky,’ the Countess replied, her face saddening.

‘Tell us what he was doing in Rome,’ Mrs Carter prompted. ‘After all, he is an American.’

The Countess nodded. ‘He came to Rome with his mother – to visit his paternal grandmother. His father had died, and after the news of her son’s death, the grandmother had written that she herself was ill and in fear of dying, and that her last dear wish was to see her grandson.’

‘They were impoverished, of course,’ Mrs Carter anticipated. ‘But the grandmother sent them the money.’

‘Yes,’ the Countess replied; ‘yes – and she assured them there would be money for their return.’

‘But when they arrived,’ Mrs Carter said triumphantly, unable to restrain herself – for she knew stories very well, and all life’s little ironies, ‘the grandmother was dead. And there was no money at all, not a sou –all had been spent for the funeral.’

The Countess was astonished. ‘But that is true!’ she said, ‘that is exactly what had happened.’

Mildred wandered back, having got over her temper. She sat primly at the edge of the group, far from Robert, where she counted stitches and pretended to listen to the Countess with only half an ear.

‘I don’t suppose they grieved, not really,’ Victoria continued. ‘They hadn’t known the grandmother at all – only her letters, and a photograph or two: an old lady, very stout, wearing her elegant embriato and sitting te d’orato in her garden under a lemon tree.’

The Countess shrugged, her beautiful mouth soured and drooping. ‘ – But it must have been a shock, nevertheless; death seemed to pursue them. And it was only too true for poor Nicky. Do you know how I found him? Distraught. Weeping, Alone. – He and his mother had rented the hot – a bietetre, really – in the slums. An artist had built it as a studio; it was on a hill, the side of a cliff – and it was a wretched place with a broken skylight through which the rain was forever raining.’

‘I can see it,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘I have a picture in my mind.’

The Countess nodded, tears beginning to gather in her eyes.

‘One day.... I don’t know quite how it happened . . . Nicky said his mother had been shopping; she had bought a quarter of a pound of corte au dora and a few bones; she was going to make soup.’

‘–With corte au dora!’ Mrs Carter cried.

‘–Yes; yes, it was that bad. But when she was climbing the outside stairs – they were just stones, a few steps with a rickety railing – she tripped’ – Victoria paused, adding quietly ‘­ – and plunged over the cliff to her death.’

The others were silent, watching the Countess who was wiping the tears from her face and rubbing at the wetness under her nose. She was caught in the memory and could still see the bietetre – the grey rags that were curtains, the tiny oil stove that clouded the room with a choking haze, the police babbling away in their tireless Italian, and heartbreaking Nicky, his tragic angel’s face staring at his mother, his cheeks streaming with tears.

‘I buried her,’ the Countess concluded.

She had been so moved by her account of little Nicholas Passanante that her story would have ended there, but many things seemed missing to Mrs Carter; the curtain had come down much too soon.

‘And then?’ she persisted.

Victoria threw up her hands, taking heart.

‘There was Nicky. – Should I have sent him back? He had relatives in America; he could have gone to them.’ She shook her head quickly. ‘But he was too sad, too beautiful, too grieved. I fell in love with him. – With his grief, understand; with his sad beauty. I could not send him away. He became instantly too dear to me, too imperative. I could not eat. I could not sleep. I could not write a letter. I was filled with longing; I ached always to be with him. In the beginning, if he were out of the room, out of my sight for an instant, I suffered. I felt impoverished. He meant more to me than a lover; more than the first day, the first hour of love. Yes, he was like the dearest of pets, a sweet and beloved animal which somehow, in a special way, we always love so much more than human beings, and you know the anxieties they cause – because they are stupid somehow, and you worry constantly because you fear they are forever being run over by street cars, or mauled by other animals.’

She turned to the others with a penetrating gaze, looking directly at each in turn. ‘­ Have you ever had an animal die – seen him killed, and picked him up and carried him in your arms? Don’t ever do it – for you will be nearer to suicide than at any other time in your life. If you have a servant, send the servant to do it. Let him carry your dead animal away. Or a relative if one is near. Or a friend. Send a stranger if need be – pay a boy to do it; there are always small boys around when an animal dies. They come running. Pay him; pay him to do it!’