The Interview
His excuse was "I’m dying".
I had asked him why the interview, why now?
"We’re all dying" I said in response as we sat sipping wine on the patio overlooking his Tuscan garden. He looked in ridiculously rude health.
"Ah," he smiled, as if I had discovered some incontrovertible truth that in turn justified him and his well-publicised desire to ‘break boundaries’ - though at that moment I had no idea what that might mean. In the trees some way below us, far beyond the swimming pool and small orchard, I could make out people moving, their dark blue uniforms punctuated by flashes of white; one or two had been forced into shirt sleeves by the heat - and I inevitably wondered what, if anything, those figures might have to do with his breaking boundaries.
"I had it installed a couple of years after I moved here."
He thought I had been looking at his swimming pool. From the surface of the water, between the occasional leaf that had somehow found its there from the fruit trees, the sun bounced irregularly in our direction. His pool avoided the predictable and ubiquitous blue that seemed universal; its random mosaic tiling of interspersed reds, yellows and green giving it something of a patchwork quality.
"I found I couldn’t live without one of course," he continued. "During the first summer I took advantage of Leandro and Vicki’s offer to use their pool whenever I needed it, but… Well, it wasn’t really private. And I couldn’t entertain."
I turned my eyes towards him, allowing the hand that had been shading my eyes to find its way back to my wine glass. It was three in the afternoon and I was already beginning to feel the effects of the Multipulciano Bruno.
"Entertain?" I queried. There was something in the way he said the word which seemed to lace the generic activity to which he referred with a certain significance. It was a uniqueness in his speech I could not help but notice. Had it always been there I wondered, this ability to invest extra layers of meaning in simple words and phrases?
He smiled, and I sensed he was amused by my inept probing, as if I were some kind of treasure hunter waving my linguistic metal-detector in his general direction with the faint hope of hearing the machine beep.
"As I began to know people," he explained, "and as they began to know me. At first it was mainly Leandro and Vicki’s friends I purloined. Not all of them; just the choice ones. The ones that fitted me best. And as I began to know people from the town, to make acquaintances in my own right… Friends even, over time."
"You were popular then?"
"Not at first," he said, laughing. "At first I was another strange Englishman; an interloper who spoke none of the language. Someone who had invaded their domain and was desperately trying to pass himself off as one of the locals. Some were more hostile than tolerant."
"It must have been difficult."
"Fun, actually. Or rather a challenge." He paused, glancing beyond the pool, the orchard, and the trees towards the hills in the distance. "Perhaps it was difficult at times, too. But then the painting helped. Or" - and here he corrected himself quickly - "it was rather those hills, this landscape."
For all his renown, this was an air of self-deprecation which struck a discordant note. His desire to wave away his contribution, his talent, had a falseness about it that seemed unnatural. Unbelievable, in fact.
"You’re too modest," I ventured.
"About my daubings?"
"Hardly daubings."
Unable - or unwilling - to summon the energy to restrain him as he leaned forward to top up our glasses, I watched him weighing his response; a conflict perhaps between a private assessment of his talent and that of the wider world. As he offered me the replenished glass there came a distant shout from the far off olive trees.
"Perhaps I was lucky," he suggested, ignoring the muted vocal intrusion. "You must remember that I had never really painted in my life before. Let alone - God forbid! - possess any misplaced or mad notion about having talent or being some kind of artist."
"But you did," I suggested.
"Did what? Have talent - or harbour the secret notion that I might think I was capable of becoming an artist? The two are most definitely different. Perhaps after a while the thought might have crossed my mind."
"Which one? That you had a modicum of talent?" I played down the scale of the suggestion to try and make it palatable.
"A ‘modicum’, yes." He smiled. "I guess it was only natural. If enough people start telling you something is true then sooner or later, no matter what you might start out thinking, you have to come round to believing it yourself. Salut!"
He took a sip of wine with the air of a man who, after all this time, still found the whole experience - sitting on a warm Italian hillside drinking good quality wine - breathtaking. I followed his gaze. From the trees below a figure had emerged and was beginning to make the long march back up the hill towards us.
"You were lucky to find this place," I said.
"My first real slice of luck was when Alex offered to try and sell some of my landscapes in his gallery," he corrected. "Even now I don’t really know why I agreed. Perhaps I was flattered. I met him when he arrived for dinner with Vicki one day, when Leandro was away on business."
"Was that here?"
"This place was my second piece of luck, remember. I used to rent a hovel on the south side of town. It was small and vaguely appropriate; quiet enough. There was a lake of sorts nearby, and in the spring it was an amazing place. When I started painting I thought I was Cezanne!"
At this he let out a huge laugh; the kind of laugh I had not heard from him before. As he played it out, he seemed to be pinching himself inside, as if he still couldn’t believe how things had turned out. Clearly the notion amused him too, and I could see that it was not self-deprecation after all, this dumbing down of his ability, but a genuine lack of understanding as to why people should appreciate him in the way they did. Or that he even had any ability worthy of appreciation in the first place. It was almost a by-product rather than an end in itself, as if a stranger had tapped him on the shoulder one day and given him a lamp complete with resident Genii. He could neither refuse the lamp nor prevent the Genii from escaping the bottle.
"I stayed there about a year - which was long enough," he carried on. "It actually ceased to be appropriate, partly because Alex was selling my paintings almost faster than I could turn them out - and at ever-increasing prices too. He must have been some kind of magician! Under those circumstances - and with a much more healthy bank account, not to mention a growing reputation to support - the hovel and I had to part company." He laughed again, back to restrained amusement.
There was an interesting mix here; the notion of Genii and magician, balanced against the vaguely industrial process of ‘turning out’ paintings. I had seen some of them, of course; vibrant and daring, his landscapes seemed to both define and defy the countryside around us. That they had ‘taken off’ was no surprise.
Away down the hill the small figure appeared no closer even though I had little doubt they had remained in motion throughout our conversation. As I looked, I could feel my host’s eyes upon me.
"You asked about my entertaining," he prompted when I returned his gaze.
"You mentioned it," I replied. "It had justified the pool, perhaps. Or at least been linked with it."
"I said as much?"
"Implied - though I’m not exactly clear what you meant. ‘Entertaining’ could be anything from dinner parties to whist drives."
He smiled. It was a game, our conversation. Or perhaps a joust, intellectual and largely innocent.
"You’ve come this far," he suddenly said, putting his wine glass down on the low table between us. He rose. "I wouldn’t want you to go away empty handed - metaphorically at least."
Accepting his invitation, I got up and followed him as he walked across the patio and back into the house through the large glass doors that comprised half his sitting room wall. Having started our meeting there some two hours previously, I already knew the views from inside were spectacular; yet even so, in spite of this certainty - or perhaps because of it - I paused to glance back out across the terrace, the orchard and the fields to the purple hills beyond.
Ahead of me, he had paused in the hallway at the foot of the stairs.
"One of the big draws of this place for me," he said as he began to ascend, knowing I was firmly in tow, "was the potential of the loft. It had dawned on me that I had to decide whether or not I was going to take myself seriously at this new game I had discovered. Alex’s success on my behalf forced the issue really. I had come to Italy with a vague plan, and suddenly the plan had borne fruit - and more." He paused on the first floor landing. "It would have been relatively easy to carry on the way I was going; after all, I was earning enough to live on now. I had two choices: just get a slightly better hovel or go ‘all in’ and burn my bridges."
"You chose the latter? I can’t see you as a perpetual hovel man."
He nodded.
"There was some money back in the UK from the sale of my place in London. It was my nest-egg, my parachute, in case things didn’t work out. I took soundings from my friends - who were all terribly supportive and enthusiastic, of course - then got the money over here and bought this place."
"So there’s no going back?"
"Would you want to?"
I looked around his first floor landing, glancing through the open doors: his bedroom, a guest room. Everywhere was bright, light and simply furnished. Yet there was a touch of class about the house; unfussy but measured. There were some nice pictures on the walls here and there, but - and this I realised with surprise - none of them were his.
"I got that from Alex," he explained in response to my momentary gaze at an abstract but fetching collage that hung outside his bedroom. "I get most of my things from him; some paid for, but many as gifts. He has taste."
Turning, he moved towards a door at the end of the short corridor and opened it. There was another staircase beyond. I followed him as he led me upwards, this time without explanation. After six or seven steps, there was a small landing where the remaining stairs doubled back on themselves - and here was the first flood of light.
He paused on the last step, hesitating. "Not too many people come up here you realise".
The space was enormous, clearly mapped over the entire footprint of the house. Not only were the walls painted white but the vaulted ceiling too, on each side of which were inset four large windows. The room embraced light, drawing it in and then bouncing it around joyously. All around were the tools of his unexpected trade: easels, canvases, paints, brushes, furniture, props, ornaments. Leaning against the walls at various points around the room, canvases in various stages of completeness. His canvases. It was a treasure trove.
He said nothing as I began to edge my way around the room, my eyes darting from one item to another, from one image to another. This was why he had nothing of his own on display elsewhere in the house. As I paused before a large painting of a lake, he drew alongside me.
"That’s the lake near the hovel," he explained, "or at least how I remember it. Of course the colours aren’t quite right, so in the end I abandoned it."
It was stunning. I told him so.
"These are largely old pieces; landscapes mainly," he said, taking on the role of the museum guide. "The most recent is - what? - maybe twelve or fifteen months old."
"Why did you stop?"
"Painting landscapes? I haven’t really; I’ve just moved on. It was time to try something else. Like this."
Placing his hand on my arm, he turned me towards the opposite wall, half way along the studio. There, stacked in three neat groups, were portraits of young women. They were staggering. I had seen examples of this new style in London of course, but to be this close… He had transferred all his natural vibrancy into these incredibly subtle depictions of female beauty. It was perhaps several seconds - more than I could ever have imagined - before I realised that all the women were naked. Yet it was a subtle nudity, without crassness or crudity; celebratory rather than voyeuristic.
"In a way these were Alex’s idea. He thought it would be good to experiment. His instinct told him that if I could turn my hand to something completely different, then that might just prove something."
"Your modicum of talent?" I suggested.
"As you say," he smiled. "I had no confidence, no self-belief - not to begin with at least. But after a while… Well, you can see for yourself."
"May I?" I asked, venturing to sort through the stacked canvases.
"Be my guest."
Image after image had something sublime about it, as if it attempted to transcend the merely two-dimensional. While they boasted more artistry than craft; there was passion of the most intimate variety there too.
"That’s Sophia," he said as I bent over one particular painting. "There are a few of her."
I stood up, in my hand an immaculate portrait of a woman on the cusp of life, possessing extreme beauty and serenity. Yet despite her nakedness - or even because of it - there was a modesty in her pose.
"Sophia?"
"The girl they’re looking for."
He said it with a lack of feeling that belied the painting I held, as if a world of distance existed between artist and subject.
"Do you know where she is?"
"If I did, I’m not sure I would tell them," he said, "after all, it’s none of their business."
"They seem to think otherwise; that’s why they’re here." I thought of the blue uniforms at the bottom of the hill.
"They think they’ll find something because of these," he gestured to his paintings. "Because Sophia came here and I painted her - just as I painted a number of other girls."
"But this one," I looked again at the one I held, offering it to him as if he were able to look at it for the first time, "this one is different. The style is so much softer, more mature, more…"
"Romantic?" he offered.
Whilst the word sounded right, it did not seem to do the picture justice. It was too common, too shallow; it had echoes of cheap gestures, and there was clearly more than that here. He took the painting from me, studying it himself.
"She would arrive relatively early in the morning," he said. "Well, early for Italians anyway. I preferred to paint then. We would drink coffee and talk for a while. In the beginning this seemed to help her relax; it was important she was at ease with me. Then we could come up here and I would begin. Depending on how the session was going, I could work anything from an hour to four hours. Afterwards we would have lunch, often sitting outside as we have today. The pool was being built when Sophia first started coming here. Once it was finished, sometimes she used to swim."
Just for a moment he seemed to be overtaken by a memory, an image. I looked at the woman in the painting and tried to draw the scene for myself. Romantic? Idyllic? Whatever the word, to some inherent idea of manliness it was sublime. I wanted to comment but had no idea what to say.
"As you can see, she is truly beautiful. Inevitably perhaps there was a bond between us, because of these," he gestured again to the canvases leaning against the wall. "Artist and model. Picasso and all that! We had no secrets. I remember the first day we made love. She climbed out of the pool, her skin wet, shinny in the sun; her hair like perfect long brushstrokes against her back and shoulders. It was not planned, nor engineered. Like many things, it just happened. It seemed a natural extension of our relationship. We fell into a routine: painting, swimming, making love. And then one day - don’t ask me why - we made love as soon as she arrived. It was different, more impulsive. And the paintings after that… This one, for example. You’ve noticed the difference in style, the greater subtlety and softness. I guess there is a kind of intimacy about it; something more immediate."
"I’ve seen one of these in London; I’m sure I have."
He replaced the painting against the wall and motioned for me to move on.
"At the Cromby and Giles Gallery, perhaps? Alex has a connection there - though how he persuaded them to keep a small stock of my work I’ll never know. We get such a ridiculous amount of money for them!"
He was correct. I had visited Cromby’s as soon as I knew I was coming to meet him. Theirs was the only gallery I was aware of that regularly displayed his work, and so it seemed the logical thing to do. But his revelations now left me with a question.
"The painting I saw in London…"
"Yes?"
"The same style, most definitely - that softer, intimate feel about it."
"But?" It was not difficult for him to sense that there was a question to follow.
"Unless my memory’s playing tricks with me, I’m sure it wasn’t Sophia."
We stopped by one of the large, low-set skylights and he showed me how, from a certain angle, the window framed the mountains in the distance.
"This is ready made," he said. "I haven’t painted it yet, but when I return to landscapes I’ll pick a day when the clouds are gathering in the distance and rush the colour onto the canvas in a huge and dramatic sky with the land cowering beneath it."
"And will that be soon?" It seemed to be such an immediate and real image to him that I could not see its execution being very far away.
"Perhaps sooner than we both think."
Between the portraits and the far end of the studio there were various half-finished canvases. Some, neither landscape nor portrait, appeared to be the end products of experimentation either in style or subject. It was only when I reached the workbench at the far wall - a bench littered not with painting materials but a small range of chisels and woodworking tools - did he speak again.
"It wasn’t Sophia. Of course it wasn’t. Neither your memory nor your visual acuity have failed you."
"But the style?"
He let my poorly formed question hang for a moment, then chose to answer it with one of his own.
"Do I need to paint you a picture?"
It had been said without any attempt at being clever, demeaning, or insulting, nor as an attempt at humour; but once what he said had sunk in - for me in terms of content, and for him in terms of the sheer appropriateness of the language - we both laughed.
"There’s something else you need to see," he said, beginning to walk back across the room. As he did so there was the sound of someone rapping on one of the downstairs windows and a shouted greeting rose up the stairs to us.
By the time I joined him in the lounge he was already shaking hands with a Carabiniere.
"Roberto", he said, introducing me to his new, blue-uniformed guest.
"Signori," as we shook hands, "my English, she bad."
The two men exchanged a few words in Italian.
"I’ll just be a few minutes," said my host, "perhaps you’d like to wait by the pool."
As I left the house their conversation began, the rapidity of it dispelling any residual notion I might have had of him being an awkward Englishman abroad. If those first few months had been difficult, it was clear that one of his mitigating actions had been to throw himself headlong into the language. This kind of fluency - mastery of another tongue - was not something that could be obtained by accident; it demanded focus and dedication. I wondered whether the image of being a laid back character who just happened to get lucky was not a little disingenuous. If he applied himself to his art in the same way as he evidently had to the acquisition of language, then it was more than just Alex’s acumen which had led to his success. The notion of trial and error, experimentation and disappointment, work and more work, was not one I had seriously entertained to this point. I recalled the workbench, the half-finished canvases. Perhaps assumptions that there was something ‘special’ about artistic talent which rendered workaday labours less relevant, said more about my preconceptions than anything else. Perhaps - and this as I returned to my unfinished Multipulciano - he might also have been something of a genius.
I had been watching the light dancing on the surface of the water for a few minutes when the two men emerged from the house. Roberto offered me a short salute then disappeared round to the front of the building. Instinctively I looked down the hill towards the trees.
"They’ve all gone," he said, seeing the direction of my gaze. "Roberto was apologetic - he’s a good man who plays a wicked game of backgammon! - but said that they had to look."
"To look?"
"To see if they could find anything."
"In relation to what, exactly?"
"Sophia’s disappearance. Or at least that’s how they choose to frame it. Obviously someone is very worried."
"And knows she came here," I suggested.
He laughed.
"Everyone knew that Sophia came here - after all, how could she suddenly appear in my paintings without doing so?" He too picked up his wine glass and emptied it. "According to Roberto, it appears that not everyone has yet accepted me…"
"Your Italian is very good," I offered. It was a loose connection, but I felt obliged to say something.
"It’s important - for them as much as me."
"He seemed more like a friend than a policeman."
"Roberto?"
"Yes."
"That’s how I would prefer to regard him. And, I hope, that’s how he regards me. Friend first, potential criminal second." He laughed.
"They didn’t find anything of course."
He paused before replying.
"No - and yes." Another pause. "Come."
It was said in English but somehow I sensed that it had more than a touch of the Italian mentality behind it; closer to an instruction that an invitation perhaps. We walked alongside the pool and then down a few steps onto the slightly scrubby land that spread out before us. All of this - perhaps fifty to a hundred yards either side, and then much of the expanse down into the olive grove - belonged to the house. I had already established as much. Once in the trees, the border was a little less well defined.
"Certainly a significant part of the orchard would be mine. At least fifty metres I would say. After that it gets a little hazy."
"What does your neighbour say?"
"The trees actually go on for a reasonable distance - and they spread out too. It looks a narrow expanse from here, but as the land drops away the wood fans out to either side. As for neighbours? Depends exactly where you’re standing when you ask the question."
We walked on for a short while, covering the ground towards the trees more quickly than I had imagined - though the hills in the distance appeared as far away as ever.
"Sophia stopped coming probably two or three weeks ago," he suddenly said, as if in response to a question from me. "She was jealous. Some of my other models, you see. I realise now that I had been making certain assumptions about our relationship - about my role, if you will. The Artist and the Model. I had assumed that there were certain rules… Or, more precisely, an absence of certain rules. There were privileges that went with the territory and which, being a reasonably hot-blooded male, I suppose I didn’t stop to think about or question."
"She had invested meaning in your relationship that wasn’t justified?"
"Perhaps. Or perhaps she recognised it for exactly what it was, but had assumed exclusivity. It was not something we talked about. There seemed no need. I thought things were just working fine as they were - at least in terms of our relationship."
I took my eyes away from the uneven ground for a moment to look at him.
"So something wasn’t working? Such as?"
He carried on walking for a few more strides, eyes focussed on the first trees which were now just yards ahead of us. Then he stopped.
"I told her I wasn’t going to paint her any more," he said. "She was shocked. Before I had a chance to explain, she became upset. She began to accuse me of all sorts of things: betrayal, lying, lacking any talent… Anything she could think of in fact! Perhaps some of it was true to a degree, but it took me a while to explain."
"Explain what?"
"I had begun to feel the paintings weren’t working. Certainly they succeeded on a certain level; perhaps they still managed to capture her beauty two-dimensionally, but I began to feel that might not be enough. Or that they had taken a step backwards. There was just not enough in them to satisfy me any more, and no longer enough to do her justice."
"But they are splendid," I countered, somewhat confused, "how anyone could be dissatisfied…"
"You haven’t seen the last ones. No-one has." This he said with some finality. "It was Vicki who gave me the idea. We had initially been talking about money; and then the subject had meandered to possessions and then experience. She made some comment about ‘not being able to take it with you’: the suggestion that there was no longevity; that we should enjoy what we have now; that no matter how we try, there would come a point when the lights went out and nothing would matter any more. It gnawed away at me for a while, this idea, this truth. That dying meant the end of things. I came to the conclusion that perhaps the two dimensional portrait wasn’t enough, that it was fulfilling Vicki’s notion of impermanence. And that didn’t seem right to me. It didn’t seem right that I could care as much as I did about someone like Sophia - and I do care about her - and yet despite my best efforts, still fail to preserve her in any true sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work; I’m proud of my paintings and what I’ve achieved. But under certain circumstances… Which is why I decided that I couldn’t justify painting her any more - and when I had the idea."
"Idea?"
"Come," he began to move again, "my last little surprise."
As we stepped across the threshold of the trees I immediately sensed the ground beginning to fall away exactly as he had said. The breadth of the wood became immediately apparent.
"Where Caesars walked," he murmured.
I stopped.
"Sorry?"
"Legend has it that there was once a trail that ran right through here. A path from the old town down through the mountains. Probably to Rome, who knows? It was part of the story the estate agent sold me, but Leandro says it might be true."
"It’s a thought," I offered.
"Something to cling to, perhaps." Saying this he too stopped then motioned me onwards. "Just a few more metres. I’ll wait here."
"A few more metres to what?" I was a little confused.
"You’ll see."
I walked forward - more slowly given it was evident I should be looking for something. It was quiet and still, and the canopy of branches overhead made the heat a little more bearable. I glanced behind me. He was motionless. Over his shoulder and in the distance, I could see the villa on the crest of the hill.
All around me there were nothing but trees. Not densely packed, but for the unwary close enough together to induce a sudden sense of being lost. Alternately, I looked down at the ground then above me, not knowing precisely the location of his ‘last little surprise’. And then, glancing to my left, something caught my eye. A pale shape, upright against the darker bark of the trees. I moved closer, inadvertently holding my breath. Then, suddenly: Sophia! But it was not Sophia in flesh and blood, but her image, every bit as magnificent as her portrait, carved into the living bark of the tree. A small three dimensional rendering of her, beautiful and perfect. And then all about me I noticed other trees and other carvings, some clearly fresh, the wood pale and untarnished. Others - such as Sophia’s - already bore the tint of nature’s discolouration. It was a living gallery!
"What do you think?" He had arrived unnoticed at my side.
"I’m amazed," I said - my amazement existing on many levels.
"You can see why, when you asked me if Roberto and his men had found anything, I said ‘No and yes’?" He said this with a slight smile, more pleased perhaps by the linguistic twist than anything else.
"But why?" I said, looking back at Sophia. "I mean…"
I did not know what I meant, nor which question I should ask first.
"Vicki’s idea," he reminded me. "About not taking it with you. About the failure of the two dimensional. The deadness of painting, in a way. I wanted to see if I could do more; to leave an image that wasn’t frozen in time, but one which grew and - to some extent at least - lasted. I don’t know where the notion came from exactly, but it seemed worth trying."
"To carve Sophia - and the rest - in wood?"
"No, my friend! To carve them into a living tree, so that as the tree grew my models would be growing also. To ally my depiction of them, my art, with something that carries on, that lives. It’s like a heartbeat; a real heartbeat."
"But surely the trees will die? After what you have done to them, they must do."
"One day the lights go out?" He smiled. "Probably - but not yet. Not for a little while at least. And in the interim I feel as if I will have done justice to my models; to Sophia - even if she never realises she is here. Its as if I have given them all a chance to live beyond the canvas. And while she lives here she will change; she will age as we all must age. And yes, eventually she will die as the tree must die - but isn’t this something more profound than simply putting paint on canvas?"
*
Eventually I wrote my article as commissioned - and eventually it was published as expected. Word about his tree sculptures began to leak out of Tuscany - after Roberto’s find I dare say it would have been the buzz of the town within hours. My article was just about simultaneous with the news breaking generally, which for a while earned me some recognition for having achieved a ‘scoop’.
I did not hear from him directly again. Oddly enough I had a letter from Alex (via the gallery in London) which suggested he was happy with what I had written - and particularly my highlighting the irony that the sculptures were commercially ‘worthless’. I allowed myself the gratification of knowing he had taken the trouble to read the piece. I tried responding via both the gallery and Alex, initially without success. A few weeks later came another note from Alex which suggested things had gone somewhat downhill - even after Sophia was located alive and well in Milan.
A final communication informed me of his leaving his Tuscan villa for pastures new. Whether voluntary or not, Alex refrained from saying. He also made no mention of his destination - although I was certain that, in one way or another, it would boast mountains and a ‘hovel’ in which he could entertain.