The Golden Calves by Louis Auchincloss Page B

breakfast, and although Ida, the waitress, had set the table the night before and was ready in the pantry, having lit the fire, for his ring, it was a ritual, on dark winter mornings, for the lights to be left off so that the master himself might turn the switch. He loved the moment when, after a brief flickering, the bulbs over the paintings suddenly flashed on bright, and the room would be filled with their dazzling colors: the voluptuous blues and yellows of Manet's
Venetian Canal with Gondola,
the green and dusty effulgent reds of Gauguin’s island goddess and the grays and yellows of Van Gogh’s bartender in Arles, whose thick curly gray hair and mustache, whose humped shoulders and pale worried limpid eyes, were uncannily like Peter’s own reflection in the mirror over the sideboard with the guardian eagles on its cornices. A collector’s life was made up of such moments.
    Peter went to the bay window and gazed out at the gray beach beyond the lawn and the slatey stretch of Long Island Sound. He loved the dreary blackness of early winter and the gleam of the silver coffee urn before the crackle of the small fire in the grate. Then he noted that the Whistler Venetian etching was slightly ajar and he adjusted it carefully. The sudden sound of a bell somewhere in the house put him in mind of his alarm system, though of course it was not that. Augusta was simply ringing for her maid. But did the alarm system really work? There had been that terrible business at the Covingtons’, just down the road, the winter before. Someone, bold as brass, had parked a van before the front door and carted half their treasures away! But then they had been off in Europe without even a caretaker left in the house. What did such feckless people expect? Peter had, in addition to his alarm system, a couple permanently in the house and an outside watchman when he and Augusta were in town, and, of course, the maids in addition on weekends, as now.
    Yet what could maids really do? And the night watchman, mightn’t he doze off? Or be bound and gagged? Or bribed? Yes, even in the apartment on Park Avenue, with all the men in the lobby and on the elevators, how could you guard against a clever burglar who might offer a Puerto Rican at the service entrance ten thousand dollars in
cash
to let him up? Why not? Wouldn’t it be worth more than that to steal a Renoir, not to speak of Augusta’s diamond earrings? Oh, the jewelry, to hell with that—it was insured, anyway—but the pictures, my God, the pictures!
    Peter had rung now for his breakfast, and he tried to distract himself by greeting Ida cheerfully and watching her as she poured his coffee. He knew his moments of nervous seizure were always going to come and go—they always had—and that he must concentrate on the good moments, which were very good indeed. How many men were blessed at sixty-nine with health and wealth, a loving wife and a great collection? Was it his sin to have loved the pictures too much? But then was there any point, after the passage of almost the biblically allotted life span, to pretend he was anything he wasn’t?
    He brought the cup to his lips and drank too quickly, scalding his tongue. Fire! Oh, my God, fire! The apartment where three quarters of the collection was kept was moderately safe, but this long white structure that Augusta had refused to build of stone, this rambling two-story villa so charmingly adapted to the garden and lawns around it and to the ivy that crept over the columns of the verandas, would it not explode into a ball of flame before the pictures could be removed? There were sprinkling outlets in every room, fire extinguishers in every corridor, and each new member of the local fire brigade was invited to cocktails and instructed about the treasures—for hose water could be as damaging as the worst blaze—but what was all of this against the fury of a real conflagration?
Peter,
he warned