“What do you mean, how could I tell? I remember every fucking brushstroke on that thing.”
“Yes, and your memory is full of things that did not in fact happen to you, as you yourself confess. So this is not an impressive claim.”
“But the painting is real. I saw it. I saw Salinas test it. I saw you phony it up with that Bassano fake.”
“Did you? Tell me, do you actually know who I am?”
“Yes, of course I know who you are. You’re Werner Krebs, art dealer and criminal mastermind, and for some reason you’re trying to fuck with my brain.”
“My friend, your brain is, as you put it, fucked up beyond my poor power to add or reduce. And why would I do that, if I am such a criminal? Perhaps I am actually trying to bring a brilliant but psychotic artist back to reality. Perhaps I am a psychiatrist hired by your family to take you to my clinic in rural Bavaria.”
“Oh, right. But I don’t have the kind of family that shells out for Bavarian clinics, remember? Lotte can barely pay her rent, I have a sick kid, and my son from my first marriage wouldn’t pay a nickel to save my life.”
“Yes, but perhaps that is the case only in your paranoid ideation. Suppose, however, that in truth you are a well-known and famous artist, whose work routinely sells in the six figures, and that all these memories of failure and frustration are part of the psychosis.”
And now that whole New York thing, which I had been repressing all this time, came snarling out of its box and started tearing big chunks out of my sense of who I was. The result was paralyzing terror. What did I know? Montaigne’s question, and I couldn’t answer it. I shook. I sweated. I shut down: the traffic sounds and Krebs’s voice seemed to come through thick insulation.
“Wilmot,” he said, in that same calm professional voice, “believe me when I say that although you are a brilliant painter, you have no way of distinguishing what is real from what is the product of your afflicted brain and of the drug you were given.”
“We went to see those gangsters,” I said dully. “I was pushed in front of a bus. I remember that.”
“Yes, this is how you interpret your appearance before, let us say, a mental health commitment board-international gangsters. And you jumped in front of the bus, Wilmot. This is why Franco must follow you everywhere. You could have been badly injured. Well, in any case, here we are at the airport.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore,” I said.
He smiled. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, “but we shall see what happens. It is early days yet in our relationship.”
They led me out of the car and onto a plane; I did as I was told, without will, moving slowly like one of those sad brain-damaged vets you see in the documentaries, and we flew out of Spain on an elegant little thing, a six-passenger job carrying me, Krebs, Franco, and Kellermann. Kellermann slept in the rear the whole way, snoring; Franco was next to me and Krebs was up front talking on his cell phone in German.
“Franco,” I said when we were up in cloudland, “tell me, did you get a look at the guy who pushed me in front of the bus?”
“What guy?” he answered. “You jumped.”
Stupid to ask, really, Franco a faithful servant of the king. Although Krebs had said he wasn’t, that he worked for the bad guys. Who knew? Was that the first mirror in the hall of mirrors? Were there bad guys at all?
I reclined my seat and tried not to think about anything. It’s harder than it sounds, although apparently the holy men do it all the time. It must be very restful, not to think.
We landed, we got in a big Mercedes, just me and Krebs and Franco-Kellermann had been assigned some errand-and we drove north on the A9 autobahn. It’s nice to drive in a powerful car on the German autobahn: there are no speed limits and the peasants are wise enough to keep out of the left lane. I got a kick out of the big blue signs that read Ausfahrt Dachau; gotta love the Germans-they’re sorry, but not that sorry, not sorry enough to change the name of a town that’s a curse in every other civilized country. I mentioned this to Krebs, who gave me the kind of look you give to kids who mention poo-poo at the dinner table, and then he started talking about where we were going, a part of Bavaria known as the Fränkische Alb, a real beauty spot apparently, quite isolated even in crowded Germany. His father had bought the house just after the war, along with a substantial area of surrounding land. Much of the neighborhood was a nature preserve, but he had fishing and hunting rights on his own land. Did I like to fish? To hunt?
I said I did, and was this part of my therapy?
“Of course,” he said genially. “Everything is part of therapy. But I think the best thing will be if you have your family around you. I have been in contact with your ex-wife and she has agreed to visit. I am truly looking forward to meeting your children.”
At which point I started to cry.
I sat in that car, slumped in a corner with my temple against the cool glass, watching the sweat and tears flow down the window, thinking, Oh, yeah, I bet he was looking forward to meeting my kids, then he’d have total control over me, the master manipulator. Who did I think he was-right, the question Jesus asked his disciples, but in my case no answer came. Rolling through the possibilities in my mind, logic a comfort, a sign that the brain’s still functioning. No, actually, maniacs are flawlessly logical, it’s their premises that are false. Dredging up memories, my Cartesian theater lit up and roaring, all the crap jobs I’d done, the details of the paintings, my loft, the meals I’d eaten, cubic yards of Chinese food and pizza, the children in the loft, the move to Brooklyn, the furniture of our house, my life with Lotte, the agony of our divorce…Yeah, it was there in my head, solid, reliable, visuals, audio, even smells, twenty years of life.
And then I recalled my life as Velázquez and it was the same: grinding pigments; laying on the paint; my wife, Juana; talking with my teacher and father-in-law, Pacheco; walking with the king in the gardens of Buen Retiro, painting him, his ugly, gentle face, all just as real. Besides that, I have the same vivid memories of a whole year that never happened to me, and no memories at all of three months that did, apparently. And I knew it couldn’t be real, so what good was memory? It was no good at all, and without that existential confidence, I was nothing, I was in there with the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, deep brain malfunction, like those people who think their wives are robots sent from the CIA.
Other explanations? A gigantic conspiracy? Terrific, that’s not just schizophrenia, that’s paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoia’s related to memory, that’s clear, Alzheimer’s patients attacking their kids, becoming suspicious, who are all these strangers pretending to love me? Happening to me too, inevitable. And Shelly Zubkoff-did that really happen at all, or was that a fantasy too, an excuse to retreat from reality, like the CIA rays that make necessary the wearing of tinfoil helmets?
Why would Krebs do such a thing? If he’s Krebs the criminal, why am I still with him? He’s got the painting. A handshake and good-bye for Wilmot would be more to the point, or a knock on the head-thinking of Eric Hebborn, greatest faker of the last century, besides me, had his head cracked open in Rome, murder never solved. How would someone like Krebs handle forgers who’ve outlived their usefulness? He’s planning to kill me in his secret mountain laboratory? No, Franco saved me, and Franco works for Krebs. Unless Franco pushed me and then pretended to save me, so that I’d be scared, so that I’d stick with Krebs, a docile tool, and get my family into his clutches. Again, if true, why? And then, why rig up this dark legion of background heavies, that interview, maybe it was a setup entirely, a show with actors, so that I’d see Krebs as my protector instead of my persecutor-but why go through all that trouble, like I wouldn’t do what he wants out of simple fear? I would, I admit it, I’m a total chicken.