Imperial currency into passing a counterfeit ruble in the marketplace. My last words on Earth will be a confession to you, should we find ourselves side by side with nooses around our necks in the marketplace. I will say, ‘You were right after all. I wasn’t as talented as I thought I was. Good-bye, cruel world, good-bye.’”
13
C OCKY D AN G REGORIAN left Beskudnikov’s employ that day, and easily became a journeyman under another master engraver and silk screen artist, who made theatrical posters and illustrations for children’s books. His counterfeit was never detected, or at any rate was not traced to him or Beskudnikov.
“And Beskudnikov surely never told anyone the true story,” he said to me, “of how he and his most promising apprentice came to a parting of the ways.”
He said he had so far done me the favor of making me feel unwelcome. “Since you are so much older than I was when I surpassed Beskudnikov,” he went on, “we should waste no time in assigning you work roughly equivalent to copying a ruble by hand.” He appeared to consider many possible projects, but I am sure he had settled on the most diabolical one imaginable well before my arrival.
“Aha!” he said. “I’ve got it! I want you to set up an easel about where you’re standing now. You should then paint a picture of this room—
indistinguishable
from a photograph. Does that sound fair? I hope not.”
I swallowed hard. “No, sir,” I said, “it sure isn’t fair.”
And he said, “Excellent!”
I have just been to New York City for the first time in two years. It was Circe Berman’s idea that I do this, and that I do it alone—so as to prove to myself that I was still a perfectly healthy man, in no way in need of assistance, in no way an invalid. It is now the middle of August. She has been here for two months and a little more, which means that I have been writing this book for two months!
She swore that the city of New York could be a Fountain of Youth for me, if only I would retrace some of the steps I had taken when I first got there from California so long ago. “Your muscles will tell you that they are nearly as springy as they were back then,” she said. “If you will only let it,” she said, “your brain will show you that it can be exactly as cocky and
excited
as it was back then.”
It sounded good. But guess what? She was assembling a booby trap.
Her promise came true for a little while, not that she gave a damn whether it was hollow or not. All she wanted was to get me out of here for a little while, so she could do what she pleased with this property.
At least she didn’t break into the potato barn, which she could have done herself, given enough time—and a crowbar and an axe. She had only to go into the carriage house to find a crowbar and an axe.
I really did feel spry and cocky again when I retraced my first steps from Grand Central Station to the three brownstones which had been the mansion of Dan Gregory. They were three separate houses again, as I already knew. They had been made separate again about the time my father died, three years before the United States got into the war. Which war? The Peloponnesian War, of course. Doesn’t anybody but me remember the Peloponnesian War?
I begin again:
Dan Gregory’s mansion became three separate brownstones again soon after he and Marilee and Fred Jones left for Italy to take part in Mussolini’s great social experiment. Although he and Fred were well into their fifties by then, they would ask for and receive permission from Mussolini himself to don Italian infantry officers’ uniforms, but without any badges of rank or unit, and to make paintings of the Italian Army in action.
They would be killed almost exactly one year before the United States joined the war—against Italy, by the way, and against Germany and Japan and some others. They were killed around December seventh of 1940 at Sidi Barrani, Egypt, where only
13
C OCKY D AN G REGORIAN left Beskudnikov’s employ that day, and easily became a journeyman under another master engraver and silk screen artist, who made theatrical posters and illustrations for children’s books. His counterfeit was never detected, or at any rate was not traced to him or Beskudnikov.
“And Beskudnikov surely never told anyone the true story,” he said to me, “of how he and his most promising apprentice came to a parting of the ways.”
He said he had so far done me the favor of making me feel unwelcome. “Since you are so much older than I was when I surpassed Beskudnikov,” he went on, “we should waste no time in assigning you work roughly equivalent to copying a ruble by hand.” He appeared to consider many possible projects, but I am sure he had settled on the most diabolical one imaginable well before my arrival.
“Aha!” he said. “I’ve got it! I want you to set up an easel about where you’re standing now. You should then paint a picture of this room—
indistinguishable
from a photograph. Does that sound fair? I hope not.”
I swallowed hard. “No, sir,” I said, “it sure isn’t fair.”
And he said, “Excellent!”
I have just been to New York City for the first time in two years. It was Circe Berman’s idea that I do this, and that I do it alone—so as to prove to myself that I was still a perfectly healthy man, in no way in need of assistance, in no way an invalid. It is now the middle of August. She has been here for two months and a little more, which means that I have been writing this book for two months!
She swore that the city of New York could be a Fountain of Youth for me, if only I would retrace some of the steps I had taken when I first got there from California so long ago. “Your muscles will tell you that they are nearly as springy as they were back then,” she said. “If you will only let it,” she said, “your brain will show you that it can be exactly as cocky and
excited
as it was back then.”
It sounded good. But guess what? She was assembling a booby trap.
Her promise came true for a little while, not that she gave a damn whether it was hollow or not. All she wanted was to get me out of here for a little while, so she could do what she pleased with this property.
At least she didn’t break into the potato barn, which she could have done herself, given enough time—and a crowbar and an axe. She had only to go into the carriage house to find a crowbar and an axe.
I really did feel spry and cocky again when I retraced my first steps from Grand Central Station to the three brownstones which had been the mansion of Dan Gregory. They were three separate houses again, as I already knew. They had been made separate again about the time my father died, three years before the United States got into the war. Which war? The Peloponnesian War, of course. Doesn’t anybody but me remember the Peloponnesian War?
I begin again:
Dan Gregory’s mansion became three separate brownstones again soon after he and Marilee and Fred Jones left for Italy to take part in Mussolini’s great social experiment. Although he and Fred were well into their fifties by then, they would ask for and receive permission from Mussolini himself to don Italian infantry officers’ uniforms, but without any badges of rank or unit, and to make paintings of the Italian Army in action.
They would be killed almost exactly one year before the United States joined the war—against Italy, by the way, and against Germany and Japan and some others. They were killed around December seventh of 1940 at Sidi Barrani, Egypt, where only
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