He had become grateful for the ordinary things that could be maintained in this thoughtless city. It was no longer necessary for these things to last indefinitely. A few more years would do, perhaps less. Better not to think too much about that, his granddaughter kept telling him. Absurd. It was all that he could think about; it was the only thing that made sense to think about. His wife and son were already gone before him. He spoke to no one but the nurse and the girl, when she made time for him, when she wasn’t in London, or California, spending his money. He could picture her now, perusing the walls of some slick Santa Monica gallery, striding about in the track-lit backroom, making hasty decisions she could repent at leisure. A Hockney or Thiebaud being wrapped for packing, or else some new, even less talented artist she had just discovered. Abominable. Why had she inherited his interest but not his taste? Where did she put all the pieces she bought? She must have filled the walls of all her flats by now. It couldn’t be that she was hanging them on the walls around him, taunting his advancing blindness? No, he didn’t think she hated him that much, but he would ask the nurse just the same. Of course, he wouldn’t know if she was telling him the truth. After all, she was stealing his books. That was all right; she could have them.
Books had been his solace since childhood. They were an older and, he could now see, a far better love than the paintings, which had become a sad obsession, a bright flame burning up the middle decades of his life. The books never disappointed him. He didn’t worry about getting first editions, though he probably had many. He didn’t try to keep them pristine, never treated them as objects of art. They were for reading, preferably over and over again. Most of his books had seen hard duty, were well and proudly worn. He wanted what was in them. Not knowledge so much, or wisdom-every fool chasing wisdom in books, dear God, what idiocy. Stories, which was to say, the chaos of life made coherent, this is what compelled him. Lies, his father had called the novels he read as a boy. Yes, but what beautiful lies, what useful lies in a world of hard, unrevealing truth. Even the biographies, memoirs, essays: Boswell, Augustine, Montaigne, all liars. Who cared? They got at something that was real.
Could it be that he had gone to the paintings, sixty, seventy years ago, with similar expectations, similar needs? He could no longer remember, but it seemed likely. Somehow the values assigned by the world, by men like his father, the wealthy pack that plucked and hoarded, had clouded his mind. He became very good at the acquisition game, ceasing to wonder why he played. He had so many stories, which he remembered telling and retelling with pride, at the clubs in Zurich, or here in New York, tales of triumph, getting this painting from that one, or snatching it out from under the nose of that other one, his vanquished opponents sometimes sitting at the same table with him, laughing with him. The dilettante, the banker who could outduel the craftiest dealers. And the stories were always about the deals, never about the paintings.
Yet surely that wasn’t right. That was an oversimplification. Club talk had no bearing on his private impulses; the two were unrelated. He had loved the works he had collected, of course he had. There was no other explanation for the choices he had made. Love, not greed, had compelled the decisions that hounded his conscience. It was the only logical explanation. It was his only hope for forgiveness, that he had acted out of love.
He pressed the familiar button on the arm of the chair and sensed the bell ringing in the nurse’s quarters below. She might at least tell him which volumes she was taking, but that would be a confession, of course. How to let her know that he didn’t mind? He could even direct her to which titles might best suit her limited intelligence. As long as she was reading them, or giving them to friends. God, what if she were selling them? That would be hateful. No, if she were selling them she would have to be stopped.
The books. He could no longer see the words well enough to read, not even in the large-print editions. His granddaughter used to read to him, poetry mostly. She had a mannered delivery, but he suffered it to hear her beautiful voice, to hear her say anything at all. Recently, all he heard was the distraction in her tone, the moment’s hesitation when he asked her to read him this or that passage, and so he told her to stop. She protested, but he understood that she was relieved. Anyway, he seldom saw her anymore. Something had changed, she could no longer be the same old girl with him. The nurse was a miserable reader; only the Bible inspired her. He tried the books on tape, but it was impossible, some heinous actor’s interpretation of a text he couldn’t even grasp. So, no more books. It was the heaviest blow he’d suffered since his son’s death, a killing blow he suspected. And the girl wondered why he obsessed about the end! What else was there?
He pressed the button again but the woman was suddenly there before him, blocking the light from the window, her face in shadow. She was clever that way.
“I’m right here, Mr. Kessler.”
“I can see that.” How long had she been there, reading the thoughts on his face? Or worse, reading his lips? He had acquired the habit of speaking his inner musings aloud, or so a few people had told him.
“Do you want something to eat? You haven’t eaten today.”
Always with the food. He understood that these basic activities went neglected without her reminders, but he still resented the nagging. He must seize control of the conversation, command her, or else suffer an endless series of questions about his diet, digestion, hygiene. But her name wavered before him uncertainly.
“Do you want me to have André make you something? Some oatmeal, or a sandwich?”
“Diana.” There it was. Like the huntress, or the dead princess. Must use her name when he thought of her, stop leaning on lazy terms like “the nurse.” “Diana, I want to go to the chapel.”
He heard her sigh, ignored it. Her manipulations did not move him; he knew what he wanted. Contemplation, not food. She worked for him, damn it. He sat quietly, not repeating the request, determined not to sound desperate. Then she was behind him, and they were moving. In theory, he could do this for himself. The chair was motorized, and he’d had the lift installed years ago, after he had taken that fall down the narrow stairs. With his vision going, however, simple negotiations around the furniture had become perilous, and he was terrified of having a seizure on the lift, unable to call for help, dying alone in the tall, mechanized coffin. They might not find him for hours.
The lift door rolled shut, and Kessler clutched his armrests as they descended. He had never learned to like this contraption, but it had allowed him to move freely about his home, rather than become a one-floor recluse, with all of the limitations of mind and spirit that entailed. Truthfully, most days he did not feel like stirring from his bed, but something always drove him to move, cover ground, breathe fresh air. Sometimes he would even go to the park, if he was able to persuade the girl-no, use her name. Christiana. Chris to her school chums, such a bland, American name. Ana to him. He had felt so painfully close to the child before Richard died, and she to him, it seemed. Visiting often, accompanying him on his daily walk, an honor he had accorded none before her. Going to all the museums and galleries, speaking about art, German expressionism, surrealism. She was so curious about everything.
Then the newspaper stories surfaced, dirty deals during the war. His name wasn’t mentioned, of course, but his bank was, and he had been rather highly placed. Awkward questions arose within the family, seldom voiced but always present. And then his first serious illness, the errand undertaken by his son, which ended in his death. Her mother forbade Ana’s visits after that. Nobody told him this, but he knew it must be so. Richard’s wife hated him, blamed him for Richard’s death, as he blamed himself. After her schooling ended, Ana sought him out again, and they had a few wonderful years. He’d made his last trip to London with her, set her up with dealers and gallery owners, made purchases for her growing collection. Somewhere between his first stroke and her short, unfortunate marriage, Ana stopped seeing him so often. There were plenty of good reasons why, but he suspected the girl had simply grown weary of his dark moods, his feebleness of mind and body. She hadn’t grown tired of his money, that was certain. It was the last hold he had upon her.