Chapter 19 Los Angeles and Hartford – June 4, 2000 Varden picks up his office phone on the second ring, glad for the interruption to his thorny thoughts about S-duality. “Hi, Sis,” he says. “Hi, Varden. Am I catching you at a bad time?” “No, no. Not at all. You know I’m always happy to hear from my favorite sister.” “Well, I don’t have much competition in that department,” Rose laughs. “How was your trip home?” “Fine,” Varden answers, recalling the otherworldly voices of the flight attendants as they chanted the names of various beverages. “I actually had a few minutes to spare before the final boarding call.” “Next time we will get on the road a little earlier, holiday weekend or not.” “No problem, Sis. I shouldn’t have insisted we stop for lunch.” “Do you have a few minutes?” “Sure. What’s up?” Varden swivels away from his computer and gazes out his office window, which overlooks a courtyard with a two-tiered fountain. When classes are in session, students and occasionally faculty meet at the small tables surrounding the fountain. Now, with the spring semester over, the courtyard is nearly empty. “A couple of things. Jay is wondering if you can come back east a few days before Dad’s service next month. I know it’s short notice, but Jay really wants some extra time to rehearse.” “Oh,” Varden replies as he mentally summons his long list of commitments as a member of USC’s Theoretical High Energy Physics Group. “I know your schedule is jam packed, but I said I would ask.” “I suppose Jay’s schedule is too busy for him to call and ask me himself.” “He was going to…” Rose lies. In the pause before she continues, Varden glances at the pile of books and articles on one of his bookshelves – Seraphita, a few volumes of Swedenborg, a dog-eared copy of Guide for the Perplexed, and (the latest addition to his reading) a highlighted essay on the mystical aspects of Schoenberg’s music. Can he say no to his brother’s request if he can find time to embark on so much personal research? “I offered to ask you, though,” Rose continues, “because I wanted to talk to you about something else.” “Is everything okay?” “Yes. I have some interesting news, in fact. Remember my friend, Annette?” “Absolutely.” “She thinks those two paintings I brought to our last rehearsal might be worth something.” “Really? Well, I’m not too surprised. Dad was a pretty talented guy.” “She doesn’t think Dad painted them. She thinks someone else painted them.” “Who?” “She doesn’t know. Some more serious artist than Dad. She thinks it may even have been one of the German Expressionists.” “You’re kidding.” “I’m not.” “How did they end up in Dad’s armoire?” “I have no idea.” “He didn’t have the money to buy that kind of art.” “I know.” The brother and sister are silent for a moment as they struggle to come up with an explanation. While Varden searches his memory for forgotten family windfalls – winning lottery tickets, sizable Christmas checks from the parents of his father’s Upper East Side piano students, a small inheritance grown sizable over decades – he notices the red-haired woman he’d imagined was with him in his New Haven hotel room. She is sitting with her back to him at one of the courtyard tables, in exactly the spot where he has, in actuality, always seen her. Her distinctive, coppery curls spread over her shoulders as she writes in a large notepad. “I wonder…” says Varden, struck by a new idea. “What?” “I wonder if the paintings belonged to Dad’s first wife. We know so little about her. She may have known the artist, or the paintings may have belonged to one of her relatives.” “I suppose that’s possible.” Varden watches as a sudden down gust, blowing from out of the clear skies like an ethereal prankster, scatters a few of the pages that the redhead has torn from her notepad. To his surprise, the pages, tossing so as to reveal their blank sides, appear to be sheets of sketch paper. For an instant he thinks the woman has been drawing, but then he sees that the inked sides reveal text, not figures. “So did Annette suggest anyone we can consult?” Varden asks, resisting the urge to hang up and run to the assistance of the woman who is now chasing after the loose pages. “As a matter of fact, she did. She suggested I take the paintings to a man named Norman Kestenberg. He’s an appraiser who works in the city.” Thinking of all the cities that Americans have carved out of rock, prairie, and marsh, not to mention all the other glimmering cities around the globe, Varden ponders the confidence with which his sister refers to the Hudson River cosmopolis as “the city.” “That brings me to my other reason for calling. I wanted to ask you if you would go to the appraiser with me… if you can come to Connecticut a few days before the end of July. I think it’s a good idea to enlist another set of ears and eyes for whatever Mr. Kestenberg might reveal.” “Let me get back to you, Sis. If I can get this article to the editor by the end of the week, the turnaround with revisions might be quick enough for me to take off a little early. You know I’ll be there if I can. But a lot depends on my coauthors.” “I understand.” “I may be able to tie up any loose ends with the final edit while traveling.” “That would be great.” Varden considers whether he should mention that he hasn’t taken his violin out of its case since his return to California. Before he can decide, he notices that two of the pages belonging to the redhead are floating in the fountain like a pair of speckled gulls. Evidently, the woman hasn’t noticed them, for she is slipping her notebook and the retrieved pages into a large shoulder bag. He knows that the overlooked pages are probably illegible, but Varden has a vision of himself collecting the sheets and returning them, dripping, to their creator. “Rose, I have to go.” “Okay.” “Let me call you over the weekend.” “No problem.” “Shalom.” “Shalom. Talk to you soon.”
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 13:08:19 +0000
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