‘Which is?’
‘I didn’t trust my brother’s girlfriend. And I was right not to, because she stole Leon’s theory. She copied it.’
‘Jesus …’
‘But not before I’d already made my own copy.’
Bobbie Feldenchrist swallowed painfully. ‘What are you saying?’
‘Leon’s theory is with the Prado, Madrid, and has been for weeks. I lodged it with them the day after my brother died. If Bartolomé Ortega tries to claim that he’s the author, he’ll be outed for a liar and a fraud.’
There was silence down the line, Bobbie struggling to answer.
‘You’ve got a fake skull and a fake theory. You’ve got a great big pile of lies and you’re sitting on the top of them, holding on for dear life. I wouldn’t want to be you. I used to be angry with you for cheating my brother, but not now. I told you that one day you’d regret ever seeing that skull. I warned you.’ His voice hardened. ‘Bartolomé Ortega lied to you. He used you. But then again, I imagine you used him too. I don’t suppose he knows about the skull being a fake—’
She was reeling, but still fighting.
‘Do you have the real skull?’
‘I have nothing, Ms Feldenchrist,’ Ben said enigmatically. ‘Nothing but right on my side.’
Putting down the phone, Ben paused for a moment, thinking he heard a noise from upstairs and then remembering the nurse who was caring for Abigail. Walking into the hallway, he stood at the base of the stairs and looked up. But it wasn’t the nurse who stood there.
It was the very fragile – but resilient – figure of Abigail Harrop.
74
London
Later that night, while Abigail dozed on the sofa in the study, Ben sat down and looked at the skull, now sitting on his desk. Goya’s skull – for which three men had died and another had been tortured. Goya’s skull – which had been stolen from a corpse and temporarily housed on the shoulders of a great ape.
Thoughtful, Ben kept staring at it. From the day Leon had been given the skull to the poisoning of Emile Dwappa, everything had been permeated with a kind of sickness, a madness of greed. The madness of the art world, who sought to possess the skull at any lengths. The insanity of Leon, driven to the end by his own obsession. And the madness of the Black Paintings themselves. In awe, Ben touched the cool, dead bone of the skull and felt the holes under his fingers, and then he reached into the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out the battered envelope in which were Leon’s writings. All his jottings, his scribbled notes, his sketches, and his conclusion. The final and definitive meaning of the Black Paintings.
With the curtains drawn and the lamps turned on, Abi slept on while Ben hesitated, his right hand resting on the papers, preparing himself to read the last entries his brother had made. Now, finally, he was going to understand what had obsessed Leon for so long. The theory for which he had lived and died. The culmination of his brother’s life.
It was almost too much to bear. But he began to read.
… Coming to the painting later entitled The Reading. The meaning of this has been disputed for many years.
What are this disparate group of men reading? They represent communication. A testimony. Goya’s testimony. He is saying ‘Look on my works, read them as you would a book. Study what I have painted on these walls and find the message within.’ In the image there are three men fixed on reading a book, on the left is a skeleton, and behind them all is a man looking upwards to Heaven. ‘Read what I have written, not in ink but in paint,’ Goya is saying. ‘See death and look to Heaven – as I do – for deliverance.’ I believe he was also looking to Heaven to bear witness to what he was suffering, And, if possible, to intervene.
Read what I am telling you. See it.
And now is the time to consider The Cudgel Fight.
For how long have people studied this image without understanding it? But I humbly believe that it represents the most atavistic clash of wills – that of good and evil. A competition, each man fighting for the upper hand, both knee-deep in the mire. For Goya, it represented Spain and France. Light and dark. Life and death. Goya’s health against the onslaught of his illness. But most of all I believe that it represents the cause he believed in – the Liberals against the Spanish King. The very reason why Goya, ill and old, was so afraid, hiding within the suffocating walls of the Quinta del Sordo.
We then come to the penultimate image – The Fates. The Daughters of the Night.
These are the three women of allegory who depict the goddesses who determine the fate of man. One spins the thread of life, one determines its length and one severs it. With them is a bound man, whose fate they are determining. But do these creatures really represent the old fable of The Daughters of the Night? Perhaps, instead, Goya was updating his version and making it peculiar to him.
The three women I believe depict the three women of the greatest importance in Goya’s life: his wife Josefa, a gentle soul who spins the thread of life for him by giving him children and hope for a future; the Duchess of Alba, who Goya loved and who controlled him more than any other woman, determining his thread of his life – the thread that bound the painter to her; and lastly, Leocardia.
Ben leaned back in his seat, trying to assimilate what he had just read. Then, after a moment, he continued.
Goya wasn’t insane, but he was willing to be believed mad. Why? Because that was his protection. Hiding behind old age, infirmity and deafness – how much less of a threat would the great man seem? But madness wasn’t protection enough.
When I examined Goya’s skull I saw the small holes in the bone: three of them, of differing sizes. Then I spoke to several specialists who confirmed what I suspected. But I’m hurrying on too fast. I must go back … The last picture of the series, entitled The Witchy Brew, depicts an old woman eating, with a skull-headed figure next to her. This was the final painting Goya did in the Black Painting series. It is the conclusion – and it tells us what happened to him.
‘Christ!’ Ben said softly.
He had been poisoned for a long time, poisoned with lead, the doses of which were increased steadily.
Lead poisoning was common in painters when lead was in the pigments they used – like Flake White, which Goya must have ingested steadily over the years. But suddenly he appeared to have taken in large amounts. When I first obtained the skull I had many tests undertaken. The results were inconclusive because of the age and condition of the skull, but it was agreed that the holes suggested the very real possibility of lead poisoning.
Look at the three holes – these are typical of a longterm ingestion of lead.
Look at the symptoms – sleep disorders, seizures, raised blood pressure, hallucinations, impotence and hearing problems.
Goya was deaf. Sleep disorders were a trouble to him. And hallucinations would explain much of his work. But the fact that the skull has holes in it points to a sudden and drastic intake of the toxin. Not the gradual assimilation which a painter of Goya’s time might ingest, but a comprehensive attempt at poisoning.