The Magus - John Fowles [19]
15
This time he was waiting for me at the table. I dumped my dufflebag by the wall and he called for Maria to bring the tea. He was much less eccentric, perhaps because he had transparently determined to pump me. We talked about the school, about Oxford, my family, about teaching English to foreigners, about why I had come to Greece. Though he kept asking questions, I still felt that he had no real interest in what I was saying. What interested him was something else, some specificness I exhibited, some category I filled. I was not interesting in myself, but only as an example. I tried once or twice to reverse our roles, but he again made it clear that he did not want to talk about himself. I said nothing about the glove. Only once did he seem really surprised. He had asked me about my unusual name. "French. My ancestors were Huguenots." "Ah." "There's a writer called Honor�'Urf�-" He gave me a swift look. "He is an ancestor of yours?" "It's just a family tradition. No one's ever traced it. As far as I know." Poor old d'Urf�I had used him before to suggest centuries of high culture lay in my blood. Conchis's smile was genuinely warm, almost radiant, and I smiled back. "That makes a difference?" "It is amusing." "It's probably all rubbish." "No, no, I believe it. And have you read _L'Astree_?" "For my pains. Terrible bore." "_Oui, un peu fade. Mais pa. s tout a fait sans charmes._" Impeccable accent; he could not stop smiling. "So you speak French." "Not very well." "I have a direct link with _le grand si�e_ at my table." "Hardly direct." But I didn't mind his thinking it; his sudden flattering benignity. He stood up. "Now. In your honour. Today I will play Rameau." He led the way into the room, which ran the whole width of the house. Books lined three walls. At one end there was a green-glazed tile stove under a mantelpiece on which stood two bronzes, one a modern one. Above them was a life-size reproduction of a Modigliani, a fine portrait of a sombre woman in black against a glaucous green background. He sat me in an armchair, sorted through some scores, found the one he wanted; began to play, short, chirrupy little pieces, then some elaborately ornamented courantes and passacaglias. I didn't much like them, but I realised he played with some mastery. He might be pretentious in other ways, but he was not posing at the keyboard. He stopped abruptly, in midpiece, as if a light had fused; pretention began again. "_Voil�" "Very nice." I determined to stamp out the French flu before it spread. "I've been admiring that." I nodded at the reproduction. "Yes?" We went and stood in front of it. "My mother." For a moment I thought he was joking. "Your mother?" "In name. In reality, it is his mother. It was always his mother." I looked at the woman's eyes; they hadn't the usual fishlike pallor of Modigliani eyes. They stared, they watched, they were simian. I also looked at the painted surface. With a delayed shock I realised I was not looking at a reproduction. "Good Lord. It must be worth a fortune." "No doubt." He spoke without looking at me. "You must not think that because I live simply here I am poor. I am very rich." He said it as if "very rich" was a nationality; as perhaps it is. I stared at the picture again. I think it was the first time I had seen a really valuable modern picture hanging in a private house. "It cost me... nothing. And that was charity. I should like to say that I recognised his genius. But I did not. No one did. Not even the clever Mr. Zborowski." "You knew him?" "Modigliani? I met him. Many times. I knew Max Jacob, who was a friend of his. That was in the last year of his life. He was quite famous by then. One of the sights of Montparnasse." I stole a look at Conchis as he gazed up at the picture; he had, by no other logic than that of cultural snobbery, gained a whole new dimension of social respectability for me, and I began to feel much less sure of his eccentricity and his phoniness, of my own superiority in the matter of what life was really about. "You must wish you bought more from him." "I did." "You still own them?" "Of course. Only a bankrupt would sell beautiful paintings. They are in my other houses." I stored away that plural; one day I would mimic it to someone. "Where are your... other houses?" "Do you like this?" He touched the bronze of a young man beneath the Modigliani. "This is a maquette by Rodin. My other houses. Well. In France. In the Lebanon. In America. I have business interests all over the world." He turned to the other characteristically skeletal bronze. "And this is by the Italian sculptor Giacometti." I looked at it, then at him. "I'm staggered. Here on Phraxos." "Why not?" "Thieves?" "If you have many valuable paintings, as I have--I will show you two more upstairs later--you make a decision. You treat them as what they are--squares of painted canvas. Or you treat them as you would treat gold ingots. You put bars on your windows, you lie awake at night worrying. There." He indicated the bronzes. "If you want, steal them. I shall tell the police, but you may get away with them. The only thing you will not do is make me worry." "They're safe from me." "And on Greek islands, no thieves. But I do not like everyone to know they are here." "Of course." "This picture is interesting. It was omitted from the only _catalogue raisonn