— Perhaps I shall. Basil Valentine smiled at him. — You never begrudged me a commission?
— How do I know it isn't faked?
— You haven't made a habit of doubting my word either. But look at it this way. If it is not genuine, why should it exist at all?
— If it exists, why should I buy it?
— You are inclined to oversimplify, aren't you Brown? To insist on carrying us back to Rome, where for all their ingenious vulgarity they never managed to evolve blackmail, at least there's no word for it in Roman jurisdiction. They depended so heavily on the Greeks, and the Greeks apparently had no word for it either. No, it's taken our precocious modern minds to devise this delicate relationship between human beings. You might call this blackmail in reverse. You see, if you don't buy this slip of paper it will be destroyed.
— And he can't paint the picture without this scrap of paper?
— He can. Of course he can. But with this attached to it, it will be irreproachable. He paused. — This isn't a thing to scrimp on, and you know it.
— All right.
— Well?
They both looked across the table. — It isn't the first time I've thought of it, he said, watching the brandy he swirled in the bottom of his glass. — A Virgin by Hubert van Eyck.
— An Annunciation.
— Yes, he said, holding the glass up. — Isn't that an exquisite color? The cc o. of the sixth heaven, jacinth. I remember a story my father told me, about the celestial sea. Instead of bedtime stories he used to read to me. The same things he was reading.
— Now this Herbert picture, Recktall Brown said, interrupting.
— When I was sick in bed, he read to me from Otia Imperialia. The twelfth century, Gervase of Tilbury, when people could believe that our atmosphere was a celestial sea, a sea to the people who lived above it. This story was about some people coming out of church, and they saw an anchor dangling by a rope from the sky. The anchor caught in the tombstones, and then they watched and saw a man coming down the rope, to unhook it. But when he reached the earth they went over to him and he was dead. He looked up at both of them from the glass. — Dead as though he'd been drowned.
— All right, my boy, is there anything else? Anything you need to go ahead with this? I had to buy him a God damn expensive egg-beater a couple of months ago, Brown said, turning to Basil Valentine, who stood up saying, — I have a number of photographs, blown-up details of the brushwork, you know. The foreground figures in the Ghent altarpiece, the Steenken Madonna.
— Or imagine heaven and earth joined by a tree, he went on, as Valentine reached over and picked up the book he had laid before him, some time before. — The sky is a roof, with windows in it for rain to fall through. People live up there, you see. And if you climb up high enough you can visit them. They're just like you are, he said, turning to Recktall Brown.
— The hell they are, Brown said, getting to his feet. — Do you want to talk any more about this Herbert picture you're going to do, or…
— But I am, he said. — I am. He looked from one of them to the other, from Recktall Brown to Basil Valentine, who stood over him. He looked bewildered. — Someone, who was it? said maybe we're fished for?
— Come along, my dear fellow. I'm going downtown, I'll drop you off.
— Or the seven heavens of the Arabs, he said decisively, making a hemisphere with one hand, which trembled as he held it forth. — Emerald, white silver, white pearls, then ruby, then gold, red gold, and then yellow jacinth, and the seventh of shining light.
Recktall Brown looked at his cigar. It had burned on the bias. — Look at this God-damned thing, he muttered. — This is the way they make cigars today. It's the way they do everything today, he said, and threw it into the fireplace. — Everybody but him, he added, and, walking over, put a hand on his shoulder as he got up.
— That vase, he said, motioning toward a glass-enclosed bookcase.
— That's not a fake, it's real. Early Netherlands ceramic.
— Can I take it? For a week or two. — What do you need it for, it's damn valuable, Brown said.
— Lilies.
— Lilies, they're expensive here too, Brown went on, leading him toward the door slowly. — Fuller used to bring them in here by the armload, all held up by wires. I don't like them, they make me sick to my stomach. I told him to quit it. Nobody likes lilies much, why don't you use some other kind of a flower?
— In an Annunciation …
The dog followed them on one side, Basil Valentine on the other.
— Those little oak frames I got, I'll show them to you the next time, the ones with velvet inside them.
Basil Valentine held out the book he had picked up from the table before the fireplace. — Your Thoreau?
— Why. why yes, I…
— Hardly fifteenth-century reading. Though I'm as far in the other direction, I'm afraid. Valentine picked up the book which lay with his coat. — Dear Tertullian, he muttered. — And I suppose you're going to have your usual vulgar gathering this Christmas eve, Brown?
— I get more business done at those than a month in an office. This picture you've got now, he went on, turning, — as soon as you're done with it call me, I'll send down for it. And be careful with that vase. It's going to be a damn good auction, he said to Valentine. — You remember that Queen Anne sofa upstairs? There was enough perfect inlay in that to make two sofas and two chairs, part of the original in each one. Some smart guy says it's a fake, and you show him the original piece.
— Rather like Osiris, Basil Valentine said, pulling on his coat.
— What's that?
. —They cut Osiris up in fourteen pieces, and later Isis modeled his body fourteen times, with an original piece in each one.
— Like a saint?
Basil Valentine smiled, lifting his coat by the lapels as he straightened it. — Precisely, my dear fellow.
Recktall Brown had taken a pigskin pad from his pocket. — Glassware, he mumbled, — for this auction. I've got some beautyful glassware, it's been in a manure pile out in the country, gives it that nice glittery effect, colors like you see in bubbles, that old glass has. Some wop taught me that trick.
— Italia irredenta. Basil Valentine reached down his hat. — That fine Italian hand, he said wearily, — which has taught us to make antiques by inflicting every possible indignity and abuse upon beautiful objects. He walked on toward the outside door.
Brown put the pad back into his pocket. — Be careful of that vase now, he muttered. — And don't forget what I told you. He nodded ahead of them. — Be careful of him.
— I… I wish you hadn't said what you did, he said, as Brown put the diamond-laden hand on his shoulder. — About her.
— About who?
— Her. Esme.
— Come on, my boy. Is she a good model for you?
— Yes, yes, she. why she can sit for three hours without moving.
— No needle marks on your Annunciation's arm, now.
— But you.
— She's a nice little piece, my boy, I know that too. But don't let that get in the way of your work. Don't let nothing get in the way of it. Here, don't forget your eggs.
— She says it's because she hasn't got any stomach, he said, smiling.
— Who?
— Esme. She says that's why she's a good model, because she hasn't got any stomach.
Recktall Brown stood in the hall, tapping his foot, until the outside door closed. Then he turned and went back to the vast room they had just left. The dog watched him approach, and got up when he came near, moving her stump of a tail slowly; but he stopped before he reached her, and she sat down. In the middle of the room, Recktall Brown took out a cigar and looked around him. He looked at the extensive wool tapestry on the wall to his right; but all their eyes were looking past him, in the other direction. He looked at the refectory table, where books and publications lay accounted for, and nothing moved. Then he turned abruptly, as though someone in the room with him had gone the instant his broad back was turned; but his youthful portrait was there, hanging silent as everything else. He raised his head, and looked up at the balcony where he saw the back of a rosewood chest, and the suit of armor standing patiently before the deed it had waited centuries to commit.