A Closed Book by Gilbert Adair Page A

will you. Then we’ll unwind with a glass of whisky.’
    â€˜Read what we did today?’
    â€˜Just what we did today.’
    â€˜Are you sitting comfortably?’
    â€˜Just read it, please.’
    â€˜â€œLet us now consider the case of Rembrandt van Rijn. This man – this artist at the close of his earthly existence, old and unlovely, yet also serene and self-sufficient, whose last self-portrait hangs in the National Gallery, his two hands splayed upon his knees before him as if to say to the spectator, accept me as I am, as with age I have become – this man looks out at us from the canvas with the same two eyes with which he, the artist, looked at that same canvas three hundred years ago. He is only four months from his own death – or, should I say, from his immortality. His eyes, though, those eyes we feel it would be indecent to approach too closely, as indecent as though he were a real person in front of us, his eyes are what the painting is about, are what it is a painting
of
. For it is less a self-portrait than a study of eyes, a study of the eyes which saw first what we see now and which appear togaze at us gazing at them, making eye contact with us across an abyss of three centuries.
    â€˜â€œWith
us
, I say. But I,
I
have no eyes to gaze at Rembrandt’s. I cannot make eye contact with him or with anyone in the world. And yet I do continue to ‘see’ those eyes of his even if I have been unable to see the portrait itself for several years. I see them with that so-called inner eye which has remained unscarred through all the trials and travails of my recent existence. Rembrandt’s eyes have gone; and mine, too, have gone. Yet those four spectral eyes, his and mine, continue to make contact, his by virtue of representation, mine by virtue of memory.
    â€˜â€œLet us imagine, now, his ‘Self-Portrait at the Age of 63’ as a jigsaw puzzle on a tabletop. No, why imagine it? It exists. The National Gallery sells just such a puzzle in its souvenir shop. Imagine it, though, complete save for those few pieces, no more than three or four, that would fill in Rembrandt’s eyes. What would we see? The landscape of a human head and torso. Or, rather, straight-edged and rectangular as it would be, the map of such a landscape, with, at its centre, a table-top-textured, jigsaw-shaped space, as amorphously curvate as a Hollywood star’s swimming-pool, where the eyes would normally be.”’
    *
    â€˜Well? What are you waiting for?’
    â€˜That’s it.’
    â€˜That’s it? That’s all we did?’
    â€˜â€™Fraid so. It’s not too bad, considering. I’ve just done a word count. Four hundred and seventeen.’
    â€˜Hmm.’
    â€˜We can always continue.’
    â€˜No. No, let that do for now. But I wonder. Does it actually mean anything?’
    â€˜In my opinion, it means quite a lot.’
    â€˜Thanks for the kind thought, John, but I can’t help wondering if it’s a load of guff. Now if I could only
see
it, I could judge it.’
    â€˜The painting?’
    â€˜The text!’
    â€˜Ah.’
    â€˜That business about the inner eye. The inner eye? What crap it is, really!’
    *
    â€˜Oh well. Heigh-ho. Tomorrow’s another day, as someone said.’

 
    Â 
    â€˜The plate’s very hot’
    â€˜The plate’s very hot.’
    â€˜Well, John, whatever this is, I can already tell it most certainly isn’t
à la
dear old Ma Kilbride.’
    â€˜Pheasant at noon, sautéed potatoes at three, French beans at seven.’
    â€˜Mmm. How delicious it all smells. Even though “Pheasant at Noon” sounds like the title of some dreadful well-made play by Rattigan or N. C. Hunter. Is there bread sauce, by any chance?’
    â€˜Yes, indeed. Bread sauce at, let me see, I know you prefer me not to be too finicky about these things, but I’d have to say it’s at