The man flipped the magnifiers up to the top of his head while reaching beneath the apron to his chest and adjusted a hearing aid control.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know we had visitors.”
He spoke with a hard German accent.
“Dr. Derek Vosskuhler, this is Mr. McCaleb,” Scott said. “He’s an investigator and he needs to steal Mrs. Fitzgerald away from you for a short while.”
“I understand. This is fine.”
“Dr. Vosskuhler is one of our restoration experts,” Scott volunteered.
Vosskuhler nodded and looked up at McCaleb and studied him in the way he might study a painting. He made no move to extend his hand.
“An investigation? In regard to Hieronymus Bosch, is it?”
“In a peripheral way. I just want to learn what I can about him. I’m told Mrs. Fitzgerald is the expert.”
McCaleb smiled.
“No one is an expert on Bosch,” Vosskuhler said without a smile. “Tortured soul, tormented genius… how will we ever know what is truly in a man’s heart?”
McCaleb just nodded. Vosskuhler turned and appraised the painting.
“What do you see, Mr. McCaleb?”
McCaleb looked at the painting and didn’t answer for a long moment.
“A lot of pain.”
Vosskuhler nodded approvingly. Then he stood and looked closely at the painting, flipping the glasses down and leaning close to the upper quarter panel, his lenses just inches from the night sky above the burning village.
“Bosch knew all of the demons,” he said without turning from the painting. “The darkness…”
A long moment went by.
“A darkness more than night.”
There was another long moment of silence until Scott abruptly punctuated it by saying he needed to get back to his office. He left then. And after another moment Vosskuhler finally turned from the painting. He didn’t bother flipping up the glasses when he looked at McCaleb. He slowly reached into his apron and switched off sound to his ears.
“I, too, must go back to work. Good luck with your investigation, Mr. McCaleb.”
McCaleb nodded as Vosskuhler sat back in his swivel chair and picked up his tiny brush again.
“We can go to my office,” Fitzgerald said. “I have all the plate books from our library there. I can show you Bosch’s work.”
“That would be fine. Thank you.”
She headed toward the door. McCaleb delayed a moment and took one last look at the painting. His eyes were drawn to the upper panels, toward the swirling darkness above the flames.
Penelope Fitzgerald’s office was a six-by-six pod in a room shared by several curatorial assistants. She pulled a chair into the tight space from a nearby pod where no one was working and told McCaleb to sit down. Her desk was L -shaped, with a laptop computer set up on the left side and a cluttered work space on the right. There were several books stacked on the desk. McCaleb noticed that behind one stack was a color print of a painting very much in the same style as the painting Vosskuhler was working on. He pushed the books a half foot to the side and bent down to look at the print. It was in three panels, the largest being the centerpiece. Again it was a ramble. Dozens and dozens of figures spread across the panels. Scenes of debauchery and torture.
“Do you recognize it?” Fitzgerald said.
“I don’t think so. But it’s Bosch, right?”
“His signature piece. The triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s in the Prado in Madrid. I once stood in front of it for four hours. It wasn’t enough time to take it all in. Would you like some coffee or some water or anything, Mr. McCaleb?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you. You can call me Terry if you want.”
“And you can call me Nep.”
McCaleb put a quizzical look on his face.
“Childhood nickname.”
He nodded.
“Now,” she said. “In these books I can show you every piece of Bosch’s identified work. Is it an important investigation?”
McCaleb nodded.
“I think so. It’s a homicide.”
“And you are some kind of consultant?”
“I used to work for the FBI here in L.A. The sheriff’s detective assigned to the case asked me to look at it and see what I think. It led me here. To Bosch. I am sorry but I can’t get into the details of the case and I know that will probably be frustrating to you. I want to ask questions but I can’t really answer any from you.”
“Darn.” She smiled. “It sounds really interesting.”
“Tell you what, if there is ever a point I can tell you about it, I will.”
“Fair enough.”
McCaleb nodded.
“From what Dr. Vosskuhler said, I take it that there isn’t a lot known about the man behind the paintings.”
Fitzgerald nodded.
“Hieronymus Bosch is certainly considered an enigma and he probably always will be.”
McCaleb unfolded his notepaper on the table in front of him and started taking notes as she spoke.
“He had one of the most unconventional imaginations of his time. Or any time for that matter. His work is quite extraordinary and still subject these five centuries later to restudy and reinterpretation. However, I think you will find that the majority of the critical analysis to date holds that he was a doomsayer. His work is informed with the portents of doom and hellfire, of warnings of the wages of sin. To put it more succinctly, his paintings primarily carried variations on the same theme: that the folly of humankind leads us all to hell as our ultimate destiny.”
McCaleb was writing quickly, trying to keep up. He wished he had brought a tape recorder.
“Nice guy, huh?” Fitzgerald said.
“Sounds like it.” He nodded to the print of the triptych. “Must’ve been fun on a Saturday night.”
She smiled.
“Exactly what I thought when I was in the Prado.”
“Any redeeming qualities? He took in orphans, was nice to dogs, changed flat tires for old ladies, anything?”
“You have to remember his time and place to fully understand what he was doing with his art. While his work is punctuated with violent scenes and depictions of torture and anguish, this was a time when those sorts of things were not unusual. He lived in a violent time; his work clearly reflects that. The paintings also reflect the medieval belief in the existence of demons everywhere. Evil lurks in all of the paintings.”
“The owl?”
She stared blankly at him for a moment.
“Yes, the owl is one symbol he used. I thought you said you were unfamiliar with his work.”
“I am unfamiliar with it. It was an owl that brought me here. But I shouldn’t go into that and I shouldn’t have interrupted you. Please go on.”
“I was just going to add that it is telling when you consider that Bosch was a contemporary of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet if you were to look at their works side by side you would have to believe Bosch – with all the medieval symbols and doom – was a century behind.”
“But he wasn’t.”
She shook her head as though she felt sorry for Bosch.
“He and Leonardo da Vinci were born within a year or two of each other. By the end of the fifteenth century, da Vinci was creating pieces that were full of hope and celebration of human values and spirituality while Bosch was all gloom and doom.”
“That makes you feel sad, doesn’t it?”
She put her hands on the top book in the stack but didn’t open it. It was simply labeled BOSCH on the spine and there was no illustration on the black leather binding.
“I can’t help but think about what could have been if Bosch had worked side by side with da Vinci or Michelangelo, what could have happened if he had used his skill and imagination in celebration rather than damnation of the world.”