Keys were rattling in the lock as I ran out through the French windows, around the house, and in through the kitchen door. There was a wall phone there, and I grabbed it and punched in my sister’s number, the number of her organization, surely there’d be someone there who would take an emergency message, get it to her in Africa, please, your brother doesn’t know who he is, could you tell him? But what I heard was “The number you have reached is not a working number, please try again,” which I didn’t have time to do, because they were coming through the house after me, so I ran up the back stairs. I had to find Rose, because she was the only one now, because maybe I’d made up Charlie too. If I could get to Rose and ask her a few questions again I’d be all right.
She was standing in the hallway holding her pink blanket. I dropped to my knees in front of her.
“Rosie! What are you doing out of bed?”
“I was scared, Daddy. I heard people shouting.” Indeed people were shouting, in German. Footsteps pounded below.
“It’s okay, Rose,” I said. “Look, I’m going to take you to bed again, but first I want to play that game again, okay? Just tell me where I live and where you live and I’ll take you to bed and tell you a story and it’ll be all right.”
“I don’t want to, Daddy. I’m scared.”
“Come on, Rosie-where does Daddy live?” I knew it was wrong, just like I knew blowing a grand’s worth of coke a week was wrong, but I’d done that too. I thought. Anyway, I had to hear it, I had to have that information that instant or die.
I can imagine what my face looked like at that moment, because I could see the terror in her eyes. She started to blubber. I grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. “Tell me, damn it!” I yelled. Rose cried out and I heard Lotte scream behind me, as who would not on seeing a maniac poised over a little girl brandishing a knife? And then I was jerked backward by an arm around my throat and the knife went flying and Franco and one of the Slavs held me down, screaming, and then Krebs came up and yanked down my pants and shot me up with something that switched off my brain.
I came to in a small white room, tied with soft restraints to a hospitel bed, my mouth parched, foul tasting, and dry as old newspapers. I croaked a little and someone must’ve heard me, because a nurse (or someone posing as a nurse) came in and took my pulse and gave me a cup of water and a straw to sip from. She said what I supposed were soothing things in German, and shortly thereafter a brisk young man appeared in my field of view. He had on a white lab coat and those fashionable slit-type black eyeglasses, and he said his name was Schick and that he was the psychiatrist in charge of my case.
I said, “The world is whatever is the case.”
He blinked, then smiled. “Ah, yes, Wittgenstein. Do you study him?”
“No,” I said. “It’s just a bit that floated up.”
“Ah! Well, no matter. Do you know where you are, Mr. Wilmot?”
“A hospital?”
“Yes, it is a small hospital near Ingolstadt, and this is the psychiatric ward. Do you know why you are here?”
“I’m crazy?”
He smiled again. “Well, you have had a breakdown of some kind, delusions and amnesia, and so forth. In such cases, where there is no history and rapid onset, we look for organic causes, and I am happy to tell you that we have found none. You were given a CAT scan while you were unconscious, and your brain is perfectly normal in all respects.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Yes. And could you tell me what is this implant you have? It showed up on the scan.”
“I don’t have an implant.”
“Oh, yes. Very small, at the back of your left arm.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, this may be part of your amnesia, yes? In any case we will have it out and then we shall see what is what. Now, tell me, do you know now who you are?”
I didn’t, but I told him the story I thought he wanted to hear, successful painter goes berserk, thinks he’s an unsuccessful painter, and as we talked it suddenly made a lot of sense. What a strange thing to have concocted, I thought then, fantasizing myself as a bitter failure instead of the prosperous painter I clearly was. I felt calmer than I’d been for a long time. They had me on some drug, obviously, and it was working. The implant? Well, I was sure there was some explanation, some necessary medical procedure that had slipped my mind. I hadn’t been myself lately, and so I might have forgotten I’d had it put in. Really, nothing seemed worth getting excited about. When he saw how calm I was he released the restraints. Quite a pleasant talk with Dr. Schick, and then he went away.
I had lunch and a pill and dozed for a while, and a nurse came in and shot some local anesthetic into my arm and did something with an instrument and went away. I asked her if I could see what she took out of me, but I couldn’t make myself understood, or maybe it wasn’t allowed. In a little while I fell asleep again.
When I awakened it was dark, darker than a hospital usually is, and that hospital smell was gone. I rose from my bed and walked out of the room to find myself in a wide hallway, high ceilinged, the walls covered in tapestries, with an occasional large painting. By the dim yellow light from candles set in wall sconces I see there are people there too, guards with helmets and halberds, and men and women dressed in black, with lace collars. None of them pay me any attention. There is a room from which comes the sound of weeping and muttered prayer. I go in and pass through several rooms, all richly furnished and lit with many candles, and at last to a bedroom, and a deathbed. There I see the soon-to-be widow, and the daughter and the son-in-law, and the priests, and those who have come to pay their last respects, and on the high draped bed is the dying man. The air is heavy with the scent of cloves.
I stand at the foot of this bed and stare at the wan, exhausted face, and the man opens his eyes and sees me.
He says, “You! I know you. I’ve dreamed about you in my dreams of hell. Are you a demon?”
“No,” I say, “just a painter like you. And it wasn’t hell you dreamed of, it was the future.”
“Am I dreaming still, then?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps I am dreaming you. No one else here can see me and this is real, at least to you.”
He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “Then go away. I am sick.”
“You are dying, Don Diego. This is your last day on earth.”
“Then why are you tormenting me? Leave me in peace!”
“I had no choice in the matter,” I say. “I took a drug that comes from the Indies and the drug brought me to you. I can’t explain it, even though in the future we are more clever about these things than they were in your time. In any case, here I am, and I would like to ask you a question.”
He opens his eyes, waiting.
I say, “What became of the last portrait you painted of Leonora Fortunati, the one with your own portrait in the mirror?”
“You know about that?” he says, and his sunken eyes grow wide.
“I know everything, Don Diego. I know about you chasing the seller of red carnations when you were a child and how the priest brought you home, and how you learned to paint, and your visit to Madrid, when you were rejected, and how you went another time and became the king’s painter and how you felt when he first touched you, and your conversations with Rubens and your voyages to Italy, the first and the second, and I know about Leonora, how you painted her for Heliche and how she taught you about the art of love.”
It is a while before he speaks again, nor am I sure that he speaks at all. Perhaps it is a more subtle communication. “She died,” he says. “The plague struck in Rome and the boy died and she became sick as well and she wrote to me. She said she burnt it. I burnt her letter.”