‘And you’ll be vilified for bribing us. Denying the twentieth century all that originality.’
‘Originality shit. It’s an overrated commodity, you know that. You can be a visionary painting Virgins.’
‘That’s what I’ll do then. Virgins in any style. I’ll be celibate, and I’ll paint Madonnas all day. With child. Without child. Weeping. Blissful. I’ll work my balls off, Kleiny, which’ll be fine because I won’t need them.’
‘Forget the Virgins. They’re out of fashion.’
‘They’re forgotten.’
‘Decadence is your strongest suit.’
‘Whatever you want. Say the word.’
‘But don’t fuck with me. If I find a client, and promise something to him, then it’s down to you to produce it.’
‘I’m going back to the studio tonight. I’m starting over. Just do one thing for me?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Burn the Poussin.’
He had visited the studio on and off through his time with Vanessa - he’d even met Martine there on two occasions when her husband had cancelled a Luxembourg trip and she’d been too heated to miss a liaison - but it was charmless and cheerless, and he’d returned happily to the house in Wimpole Mews. Now, however, he welcomed the studio’s austerity. He turned on the little electric fire, made himself a cup of fake coffee with fake milk, and under its influence thought about deception.
The last six years of his life - since Judith, in fact - had been a series of duplicities. This was not of itself disastrous - after tonight it would once more be his profession - but whereas painting had a tangible end result (two, if he included the recompense), pursuit and seduction always left him naked and empty-handed. An end to that, tonight. He made a vow, toasted in bad coffee, to the God of Forgers, whoever He was, to become great. If duplicity was his genius why waste it on deceiving husbands and mistresses? He should turn it to a profounder end, producing masterpieces in another man’s name. Time would validate him, the way Klein had said it would; uncover his many works, and show him, at last, as the visionary he was about to become. And if it didn’t - if Klein was wrong and his handiwork remained undiscovered forever - then that was the truest vision of all. Invisible, he would be seen; unknown, he’d be influential. It was enough to make him forget women entirely. At least for tonight.
At dusk the clouds over Manhattan, which had threatened snow all day, cleared and revealed a pristine sky, its colour so ambiguous it might have fuelled a philosophical debate as to the nature of the blue. Laden as she was with her day’s purchases, Jude chose to walk back to Marlin’s apartment at Park Avenue and 80th. Her arms ached, but it gave her time to turn over in her head the encounter which had marked the day, and decide whether she wanted to share it with Marlin or not. Unfortunately, he had a lawyer’s mind. At best, cool, and analytical; at worst, reductionist. She knew herself well enough to know that if he challenged her account in the latter mode she’d almost certainly lose her temper with him, and then the atmosphere between them, which had been (with the exception of his overtures) so easy and undemanding, would be spoiled. It was better to work out what she believed about the events of the previous two hours before she shared it with Marlin. Then he could dissect it at will.
Already, after going over the encounter a few times, it was becoming, like the blue overhead, ambiguous. But she held on hard to the facts of the matter. She’d been in the menswear department of Bloomingdales, looking for a sweater for Marlin. It was crowded, and there was nothing on display that she thought appropriate. She’d bent down to pick up the purchases at her feet, and as she rose again she’d caught sight of a face she knew, looking straight at her through the moving mesh of people. How long had she seen the face for? A second; two at most? Long enough for her heart to jump, and her face to flush; long enough for her mouth to open and shape the word Gentle. Then the traffic between them had thickened, and he’d disappeared. She’d fixed the place where he’d been, stooped to pick up her baggage, and gone after him, not doubting that it was he.
The crowd slowed her progress, but she soon caught sight of him again, heading towards the door. This time she yelled his name, not giving a damn if she looked a fool, and dived after him. She was impressive in full flight and the crowd yielded, so that by the time she reached the door he was only yards the other side. Third Avenue was as thronged as the store, but there he was, heading across the street. The lights changed as she got to the kerb. She went after him anyway, daring the traffic. As she yelled again he was buffeted by a shopper about some business as urgent as hers, and he turned as he was struck, giving her a second glimpse of him. She might have laughed out loud at the absurdity of her error had it not disturbed her so. Either she was losing her mind, or she’d followed the wrong man. Either way, this black man, his ringleted hair gleaming on his shoulders, was not Gentle. Momentarily undecided as to whether to go on looking or to give up the chase there and then, her eyes lingered on the stranger’s face, and for a heart-beat, or less, his features blurred, and in their flux, caught as if by the sun off a wing in the stratosphere, she saw Gentle, his hair swept back from his high forehead, his grey eyes all yearning, his mouth, which she’d not known she missed till now, ready to break into a smile. It never came. The wing dipped, the stranger turned, Gentle was gone. She stood in the throng for several seconds while he disappeared downtown. Then, gathering herself together, she turned her back on the mystery, and started home.
It didn’t leave her thoughts, of course. She was a woman who trusted her senses, and to discover them so deceptive distressed her. But more vexing still was why it should be that particular face, of all those in her memory’s catalogue, she’d chosen to configure from that of a perfect stranger. Klein’s Bastard Boy was out of her life, and she out of his. It was six years since she’d crossed the bridge from where they’d stood, and the river that flowed between was a torrent. Her marriage to Estabrook had come and gone along that river, and a good deal of pain with it. Gentle was still on the other shore, part of her history; irretrievable. So why had she conjured him now?
As she came within a block of Marlin’s building she remembered something she’d utterly put out of her head for that six-year span. It had been a glimpse of Gentle, not so unlike the one she’d just had, that had propelled her into her near-suicidal affair with him. She’d met him at one of Klein’s parties - a casual encounter - and had given him very little conscious thought subsequently. Then, three nights later, she’d been visited by an erotic dream that regularly haunted her. The scenario was always the same. She was lying naked on bare boards in an empty room, not bound but somehow bounded, and a man whose face she could never see, his mouth so sweet it was like eating candy to kiss him, made violent love to her. Only this time the fire that burned in the grate close by showed her the face of her dream-lover, and it had been Gentle’s face. The shock, after so many years of never knowing who the man was, woke her, but with such a sense of loss at this interrupted coitus she couldn’t sleep again for mourning it. The next day she’d discovered his whereabouts from Klein, who’d warned her in no uncertain manner that John Zacharias was bad news for tender hearts. She’d ignored the warning, and gone to see him that very afternoon, in the studio off the Edgware Road. They scarcely left it for the next two weeks, their passion putting her dreams to shame.
Only later, when she was in love with him and it was too late for common sense to qualify her feelings, did she learn more about him. He trailed a reputation for womanizing that, even if it was ninety per cent invention, as she assumed, was still prodigious. If she mentioned his name in any circle, however jaded it was by gossip, there was always somebody who had some titbit about him. He even went by a variety of names. Some referred to him as the Furie; some as Zach or Zacho or Mr Zee; others called him Gentle, which was the name she knew him by, of course; still others John the Divine. Enough names for half a dozen lifetimes. She wasn’t so blindly devoted to him that she didn’t accept there was truth in these rumours. Nor did he do much to temper them. He liked the