Текст книги "Memory of Bones"

Автор книги: Alex Connor

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

3

Madrid, Spain

The two Golding brothers stood beside the grave in a dry cemetery outside Madrid. The heat was building, the sun unhindered by clouds, the brass plaque on the coffin glistening like a lizard’s eye.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ Leon said, his voice so low Ben had to strain to catch it.

They were attending the funeral of the woman who had raised them. Head bowed, Ben could feel the sun burning the skin on the back of his neck and longed for the cool drizzle of London. He could sense Leon’s excitement as his brother stood beside him, the nervous scuffling of his feet, the intermittent hoarse coughs. Was he taking his medication? Ben wondered, stealing a glance at Leon, who was gazing, unblinking, into the grave. He wondered momentarily how his brother would cope with the loss of Detita – if the old woman’s death would herald another breakdown. But apparently Leon had something else on his mind, something so important that it overshadowed the funeral of a woman he had loved since childhood.

‘We have to talk—’ Leon said urgently.

‘We will. Later,’ Ben replied, looking down at the grave.

Irritated, Leon studied his brother. Tall and olive-skinned, any other man would have taken advantage of his appeal, but Ben had no vanity. He wasn’t a player either. In fact, for the last six years Ben had lived with Abigail Harrop, disappointing many nurses – and a couple of female doctors – at the Whitechapel Hospital in London, where he worked as a reconstructive plastic surgeon.

They had met when Abigail had been admitted as a patient after a car accident badly disfigured the left side of her face. Having been a good-looking woman she was affected both physically and psychologically by the accident and therapy had been of little use. Withdrawing into herself, she resigned from her job as an advertising executive and began to work from home, her only forays into the outside world being to the Whitechapel Hospital, or to visit her family. Depression didn’t overtake Abigail but shyness did. The self-confidence she had once taken for granted disappeared with the accident, and she would keep her head averted if anyone spoke to her. It was not the first time Ben had seen a pretty woman lose her looks overnight, but Abigail was different. Her lack of anger surprised him; her composure unfathomable.

It took Ben many months to realise that what really affected Abigail was her loss of appeal, something she had taken for granted before. Believing herself repellent after the accident, she rejected the opposite sex. Ben was the only man she turned to, first as a doctor, then later as a friend. Much later still, when she had left the Whitechapel Hospital, as a lover.

Restless, Leon continued the scrutiny of his brother. ‘We have to talk—’

‘Later.’

Glancing down at the coffin again, Leon could hear the priest’s monotonous litany of prayers and began to jiggle his left foot as Ben gazed at him questioningly.

There were only a few people at the funeral; the widowed Detita had had no family apart from a daughter who had left Spain long ago. Detita had been wealthy once – although she had never fully explained her background – but bad luck and widowhood had overtaken her. Coming to work for the Goldings, she had appealed to their cultured sensibilities, her breeding obvious and unusual for a housekeeper. Her Spanish hauteur, coupled with her domestic competence, ensured that within weeks she was indispensable.

Soon Detita found herself courted by her employers, who were only too pleased to have her take care of their sons during their frequent absences. Reliable and regal as a duchess, by the end of the first year Detita lived only for the boys. Taken into Miriam Golding’s confidence, she slid, boneless, into the family. So when an air crash over the Atlantic killed the parents, it was no surprise that Detita had been nominated the brothers’ guardian.

She took on the role like a Spanish grandee, and over the years which followed leaked tantalising – but measured – information about her past, enough to incite curiosity but never enough to satisfy. Indomitable, she ran the old ramshackle farmhouse, intimidating the gardener and shadowing the cleaner. She was a bully with her own people but the equal of her charges. For two Jewish boys growing up in the predominantly Catholic Madrid, Detita managed to straddle the gap between the heat and suspicion of Spain and the cool learning of the boys’ Anglo-American parents.

Although the brothers had been sent to an English boarding school in term time, when they returned to Spain Detita continued their education. She taught them fluent Spanish and took them to lectures and museums, pounding culture into them like a cook over-stuffing a pair of quail.

Leon had loved Detita very much – perhaps a little too much – but even her death couldn’t stop the overheated excitement in his brain. As the service ended, he grabbed his brother’s arm, leading Ben over to his parked car. His face was a mirror image of his brother’s in all but tone. Leon was a watercolour study, Ben a masterwork in oil. One paper, the other tempered canvas.

‘They’ve found the skull.’

Slipping into the driver’s seat, Ben looked at his brother and wound down the window. ‘Whose skull?’

‘I was thinking that you could get someone – a specialist – to look at it,’ Leon hurried on, ignoring the question. ‘You’re a doctor. You know people who could reconstruct it, check out the measurements, teeth. Do whatever you have to do. Just find out how old it is—’

‘Whose head?’

‘Goya’s.’

Ben smiled and leaned back in his seat. A sudden gush of hot wind made the leaves flap and sent dust eddies shimmying around the bonnet of their car.

‘His skull’s been missing for over two centuries—’

‘Until now. Builders were digging up the foundations of a house in Madrid, somewhere Goya stayed for a while. They found the skull under the cement in the cellar. The foreman, Diego Martinez, brought it to me, knowing I’d be interested in the possibility that it might be the artist’s. You remember Diego – we knew him as a kid, when he used to come to the house with his father. You must remember him.’

Ben frowned. ‘I don’t.’

‘Carlos fixed the guttering and the pipework.’ Leon sighed, irritated. ‘Diego was always getting sunburnt.’

‘How much did he ask for the skull?’

‘He didn’t charge me for it!’ Leon snapped. His voice was picking up speed, but he wasn’t manic. Not yet. ‘Jesus, what’s the matter with you? I thought you’d be interested. We grew up near to where the Quinta del Sordo used to be, for Christ’s sake!’ He paused, his tone coaxing. ‘Think about what this could mean for me. If it is Goya’s skull it would be world news – and it would make my reputation.’

‘They thought they’d found the skull before. But it was a fake—’

Leon wasn’t listening. ‘There’s an exhibition of the Black Paintings this autumn. What a coup that would be – the genius’s skull found just in time to coincide with the show. I’d be the most famous art historian on the bloody planet.’

‘If it’s genuine,’ Ben said calmly. ‘If it isn’t you’ll look a moron.’

‘But it is Goya’s skull! Goya died in Bordeaux in 1828 and was buried there until the Spanish authorities brought him back home to Madrid and re-interred him in 1899. Seventy-one years later.’

Ben sighed. ‘I know the story, Leon. God knows how many times Detita told us that Goya’s head was missing. But all this is supposition, not fact …’

Pausing, Ben glanced out of the car window, his own composure rattled by memory. Detita had made certain that her charges understood Spain and Spanish art. In her eyes, Goya came next after God. Ben could almost see her alive again, sitting at the kitchen table. Automatically he loosened his collar, the heat swelling, her image filling the car.

‘… Goya’s home, the Quinta del Sordo, was only a little way from here …’ she would begin, sitting down in the kitchen, her back straight, her eyes unreadable. Overhead, the old house would creak, water pipes banging, the sound of wild geese coming, mournful, over the river. It had been nothing like their school in England, where the trees grew rich and straight. It had been another country. Another country of location. And of mind. ‘… Goya was one of the greatest artists who ever lived.’

‘What about Michelangelo?’

She had made a dismissive sound as she turned to Ben.

‘No fire. Goya knew the dark side. He lived in that big old house, near the river, near enough to see Madrid, far away enough not to be a part of the city. In that house Goya painted his private pictures, the Black Paintings. In them he left a message …’

Pausing there, she had reached for her books, turning over the pages slowly, grotesque images oozing off the paper.

It required no effort for Ben to remember the queasy unease which had wept from the reproductions.

‘Look,’ Detita had said, her white forefinger turning over the page to expose the Witches’ Sabbath. Not the earlier version, with its light blues and comic devilry – this was the image of Goya’s later years. After the Inquisition and the Spanish War of Independence, after the murder and torture. When the indigo power of Black Magic had been not merely a superstition, but a possibility. The Devil was no longer comic, but a shadow which had followed many Spaniards. The End of Reason in the Age of Enlightenment.

Ben had been repelled, but compelled to look at the painting: at the stupid, animalistic faces of the cohorts crouched on the ground. Women, once beautiful, had been turned by Goya into salacious hags, monochromic heads cowled, eyes wide open and blank with cruelty. And while Detita talked of Goya, she also talked of Spanish history – and the unknown. Of the two boys, she had caught Leon’s imagination first because he was mercurial in temperament, needing constant excitement and stimulus.

Ben was never sure if their parents had understood Leon’s mental frailty, but he had been aware of it all his life – that nauseous dance between stability and hysteria, between appreciation and obsession.

Still staring out of the car window, Ben remembered Detita. The Detita of the daytime, practical, intelligent, stern. And then the other Detita, the night woman, languid as candlelight. Duty had had no place after the light faded – then she had told stories, stories she said had been passed down by generations of Spanish grandmothers, by her Spanish grandmother. But the tales had never been benign. Always, like her, they veered between two worlds.

‘… When you need me, come at midnight to the Bridge of the Manzanares, clap your hands three times and you will see black horses appear …’

Detita had smiled as she recited the quote, Leon leaning forward expectantly under the overhead lamp, Ben’s dark eyes fixed on her. At once she had noticed his expression, the almost warning glance, and felt her power weaken. Many times in the years that followed she had clashed with Ben as her control over him lessened. And then, finally, Detita had shifted her attention from the two brothers to the one. From Ben’s granite control to the soft slush of Leon’s instability.

For an instant, Ben closed his eyes. But still the memories kept coming.

‘… The Spanish people have a dark heart …’ Detita had said, luring Leon in with her stories. ‘When Ferdinand VII reinstated the Inquisition the purges began, the Church re-energised along with its greedy, mercenary priests. And among the pogroms, the Spanish developed an even greater appetite for pain, murder and death. Goya feared Ferdinand because he was a liberal, and after Ferdinand was reinstated the King’s power was absolute again.’

A fly landed on the back of Ben’s hand, throwing a stumpy shadow before he flicked it away. In the overheated car, he wondered why Leon wasn’t talking and glanced over at his brother. Was Leon waiting? Was he biding his time? Or maybe just sulking? Suddenly another memory resonated in Ben’s mind: his brother waking, screaming, in the middle of the night. Every night throughout one long, dry summer as Goya’s image of Saturn picked away at his sanity like a black rook. Relentlessly, Leon had insisted that the house was haunted, that their dead parents lived in the cellar and banged on the water pipes …

Pleading, Ben had asked Detita not to tell Leon any more stories. She had replied with a limp shrug, smile benign as a lamb’s, eyes like a tree monkey.

‘They’re just old Spanish tales!’ she had said. ‘Children have to know about the world, not just the part they can see. Leon might be scared for a while, but then he’ll forget. No one stays frightened forever.’ She had been playing cat’s cradle with Ben’s emotions, unexpectedly tender. ‘You’re a good boy to worry about your brother. You must always look out for Leon – he’s not strong like you.’

‘So?’

Startled out of the memory, Ben turned to his brother. ‘What?’

‘So will you help me?’ Leon went on, his skin translucent, pale after a lifetime of ducking the Spanish sun. ‘Will you get someone to look at the skull?’

‘Yeah, OK,’ Ben said finally.

‘Thanks …’ There was an awkward pause. ‘You’re staying overnight, of course?’

‘I’ve got a hotel room booked in Madrid.’

‘Madrid? Why don’t you stay with us?’

‘I’ve an early flight in the morning. Why disturb everyone?’

‘But I want you to meet Gina,’ Leon replied petulantly. ‘I want you two to be friends. I was never lucky with women before, you know that. But Gina’s perfect. She understands me, my work. I want you two to get on.’

‘I’m coming back next month. I can meet her then.’

‘Why not now?’

‘Leon, next time, I promise.’

‘She’s very supportive—’

‘Good.’

‘Really cares about me.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Very understanding—’

‘She broke up with you for nine months and then came back without ever explaining why she went off in the first place!’

Ben stopped short, cursing himself. Leon’s tone was prickly as he replied.

‘Gina left because we had problems. It wasn’t all her fault. We’ve sorted things out now … She’s good for me, Ben. She’s interested in sport, health. She said I didn’t need to take so much medication—’

His patience strained, Ben stole a quick glance at his brother. ‘You need it, Leon—’

‘Yeah, I do now, but in time Gina says I won’t. She knows all these people who practise alternative therapies; they’ve had great results.’

‘Perhaps you should talk your doctor about it.’

He was sharp. ‘I’m not a child!’

‘I’m not saying that, Leon. I’m saying that it would be a good idea. You could take Gina with you.’ Sighing, Ben tried to break the tension by changing the subject. ‘I’ll pick up the skull on my next trip—’

‘Why can’t you look at it before you leave?’

‘You’ve got it?’ Ben asked, surprised.

‘Of course.’

‘Shouldn’t you tell the authorities?’

‘I have done. And I told the Prado that I’d organise its authentication for them. I’m well respected here, they trust me to do the right thing.’ Leon’s voice held a slight tremor of triumph. ‘Gina said I should do what I’ve always wanted to do – to finally write that book about Goya’s Black Paintings. God knows I’ve done enough work on them. I’ve the chance to solve the pictures. Just think of it – a book to coincide with the exhibition and the finding of the skull.’

‘But you don’t know if it’s authentic—’

‘You don’t know it isn’t!’ Leon’s pale eyes were fixed on his brother. ‘It’ll be the making of me, Ben. I’ll be the only historian who can lecture on Goya and exhibit his skull at the same time. Think of it – people love the macabre.’

‘Leon, about the Black Paintings …’ Ben began anxiously. Memories of Detita, of his brother’s instability, shivered inside him. ‘I’ll get the skull checked out for you, see if it’s authentic. I know someone in London who can do that for us. But I don’t want you to do the book.’

‘Why not? I’ve been talking about it for years,’ Leon replied, bemused. ‘Why would you want me to pass up on it now?’

‘Detita used to say that the Black Paintings were cursed. She said they were bad luck—’

‘Since when did you believe in things like that?’

Ben sighed. ‘All right, but I don’t think it would be good for you.’

‘I know more about the Black Paintings than anyone. Anyway, I’ve got a new theory—’

‘No one really knows what they mean,’ Ben went on. ‘They don’t make sense.’

‘They do!’

‘All right, maybe they do. Or maybe they’re simply gibberish. I don’t know if Goya was ill when he painted them, or smoking something. But I know those pictures, Leon, and they’re disturbing. Detita was right about that. They’ve caused so much speculation: crap about codes, hidden messages, even—’

‘A link to the occult.’

‘Which is unproven,’ Ben said emphatically.

‘But suspected by a number of people. After all, Goya didn’t just paint one or two satanic paintings, he undertook dozens. He was consumed with the dark side—’

‘And you? Are you consumed? Because if you are, that worries me.’

Leon blinked slowly, his tone sarcastic. ‘Paintings aren’t dangerous. They can’t harm people …’

Incredulous, Ben shook his head. Of all the people in the world his brother was the most likely to be harmed by the queasy allure of Goya’s last works.

‘They’re beautiful and they mean something.’ Leon continued. ‘They do. Goya was fascinated with satanism—’

‘Everyone was at that period in Spain. It was a fucking hobby,’ Ben replied drily. ‘There have always been theories about Goya’s work, but no one can prove any of them.’

‘What if I could?’ Leon challenged him. ‘In satanism, they decapitate their victims. When Goya died in France, no one gave a damn about his remains for over seventy years—’

‘Which is when the head could have been lost. Or separated from the skeleton when the body was moved.’

‘Goya’s head was stolen. Think about it, Ben. Perhaps the head could tell us something. An expert could discover if it had been cut off, or just taken after the body deteriorated.’

Staggered, Ben stared at his brother.

‘Even if it was cut off, that wouldn’t mean anything. Goya was an old man; it was a miracle he lived so long.’ He paused, staring at his brother questioningly. ‘What are you trying to prove? That he was murdered?’

‘He could have been! The Duchess of Alba was his mistress and she was poisoned. Goya had already suffered a very bizarre illness in his fifties and then he was sick again in his eighties.’

‘He was old!’

‘He was afraid.’

‘Of what?’

Leon glanced away. ‘There’s a coherent message in the Black Paintings – something Goya had to communicate. But he couldn’t put it in writing. That would have been too dangerous. He was afraid of Ferdinand, afraid that the Inquisition would come after him again. It’s no coincidence that when he finished the pictures, he went to France.’

‘And left a message behind?’

Nodding, Leon folded his arms, hugging himself. ‘Yes.’

‘For whom?’

‘I don’t know yet. For his peers. For his country. For posterity. I’ve not solved all the paintings but I’m close, really close. I don’t think Goya was mad. He may have wanted people to think that he was, but he knew what he was doing. He was a patriot. He’d seen his country gutted, he’d witnessed numerous atrocities. To see Ferdinand back on the throne after so much bloodshed, to see Spain under the royal boot of a vicious, conniving idiot would have been intolerable for him. And dangerous.’

Wary, Ben studied his brother: the flushed face, the clammy skin, the intensity which might precipitate an attack. If Leon did solve the mystery of the Black Paintings he would be thrust into the limelight overnight and come under attack, not least from his peers. He would be feted – and berated – for his theory, and bring a welter of jealousy down on his head. The Black Paintings were on a par with discovering the real sitter for the Mona Lisa: an intellectual prize that many had sought. Who in the art world hadn’t wanted to expose their meaning? It was a ticket to instant fame. And notoriety. But it was also an aesthetic cul de sac from which there would be no easy escape.

Leon’s expression hardened. ‘You think I’m getting too worked up about all of this.’

‘I think you might be tilting at windmills—’

‘Oh come on! What you really think is that I can’t deal with it.’

There was a long pause.

‘OK, you want me to be honest?’ Ben said at last. ‘Maybe I don’t think you can cope. Maybe I’m worried it will all get out of control—’

‘And maybe I don’t like being in control all the time!’ Leon retorted, flushed. ‘Maybe, being medicated to the bloody gills, I might miss the craziness. Did you ever think about that?’

Crazy was one thing, Ben thought, but the fall to earth which followed was always an unnerving affair.

‘Just take it easy, will you?’

‘Well, thanks for the advice, brother,’ Leon said, hurriedly getting out of the car and then bending down towards the window again. ‘Now, piss off.’

‘Before or after I’ve looked at the skull?’

Bordeaux, France, May 1828

Closing the door and locking it, the tall man lit another lamp, illuminating a laboratory of sorts. On the walls there were occult symbols, the pentacle and marked-out circles making swimming patterns in the half-light. Against one wall was a bench with a selection of medical tools laid on it, and beside that an oven. On top of the stove was a hotplate and a large stewing pan filled with water, a fire underneath. Rolling up the sleeves of his silk shirt, the tall man moved over to the sink.

The sack looked benign, with nothing to give away its ghastly contents, but he found himself momentarily unable to touch it. Pausing, he moved back to his desk and opened a ledger, making a few quick notes before returning to the sink. A moment passed and then finally the tall man opened the neck of the sack. The smell rose up and sickened him. Gagging, he put a cloth over his nose and mouth and reached into the bag. His fingers closed over a scruff of coarse hair. Then he gripped it firmly and withdrew the head.

The lamplight flickered, a vast, juddering shadow bouncing against the wall as the head became visible. Its sunken eyelids and rictus grin leered into the dim light as the man moved over to the stove and plunged the head into the warming water of the cooking pan. As he pushed it under, the skin of the face relaxed slightly, one eye opening, the cornea cloudy, staring up at him. Unnerved, the man slammed the lid down on the pan and moved away, rubbing his hands repeatedly to clean them.

At three o’clock in the morning, the clock chimed the hour sonorously. Now seated at his desk, the man waited. In front of him was a porcelain head, marked out in portions to indicate the parts of the brain which controlled the mind’s workings: intuition, intellect, emotion. A book next to it was marked Phrenology, the new popular science by which men of reason believed they could read the character and ability of a person merely by studying the bumps and indentations on their head. It had become a cult all over Europe, a pseudo-medical curiosity, every adept eager to ‘read’ the skull of a genius to see if there was anything truly remarkable about its configuration.

Behind him, the man could hear the water simmer, the smell repellent as he lifted the lid off the large pan. Flinching, he could see that the skin was coming away from the bones of the skull, a sudden hissing noise startling him as one of the dead man’s eyes popped out of its socket. Fighting nausea, the man pushed the head further down into the boiling water, the dark hair – ribboned with grey – floating upwards, loose flesh pooling greasily on the surface.

Slowly the night wore on, the man not daring to leave his watch. Outside, the darkness remained thick, the clock markingout the leaden heartbeat of the house. Exhausted, he fell into a nervous sleep: the cold, queasy sleep of the early hours. The temperature in the room dropped, the night owl stopped hooting, and the only sound came from the hum of the fire and the foul, simmering water.

Half an hour later the man woke, alarmed, sitting upright and then remembering where he was. Uneasy, he rubbed his eyes – and then stiffened in his seat. From behind came the sound of knocking. A steady, rhythmic knocking which was very close. Terrified, his limbs frozen, he slowly turned his head a little to the right. The sound intensified … Was someone knocking on the door? Did someone know he was there? Had the grave robbers betrayed him? The lamps had all but gone out, the shadows cloying as the man finally staggered to his feet. Moving to the door, he stopped abruptly. The noise was coming from the pan.

His gaze fixed on the gleaming copper tomb as he heard the steady, rhythmic knocking and watched in horror as the fire suddenly flared up in the stove and the water hissed and bubbled. It boiled so urgently that the knocking speeded up even more: increasing, manic, deafening. Transfixed with shock, the man realised that the noise was the head banging against the lid. Knocking on the lid, trying to get out … Then with one sudden burst of energy, the white-hot water tossed the lid aside, toppling it on to the floor, the skull bobbing to the surface of the searing, stinking liquid.

No flesh remained, only a few tufts of hair. The black eye sockets – blank and damning – staring directly at him.