“I’m going back to the studio tonight. I’m starting over. Just do one thing for me?”
“What’s that?”
“Burn the Poussin.”
He had visited the studio on and off through his time with Vanessa—he’d even met Marline there on two occasions when her husband had canceled a Luxembourg trip and she’d been too heated to miss a liaison—but it was charmless and cheerless, and he’d returned happily to the house in Wimpole Mews. Now, however, he welcomed the studio’s austerity. He turned on the little electric fire, made himself a cup of fake coffee with fake milk, and, under its influence, thought about deception.
The last six years of his life—since Judith, in fact—had been a series of duplicities. This was not of itself disastrous—after tonight it would once more be his profess sion—but whereas painting had a tangible end result (two, if he included the recompense), pursuit and seduction always left him naked and empty-handed. An end to that, tonight. He made a vow, toasted in bad coffee, to the God of Forgers, whoever he was, to become great. If duplicity was his genius, why waste it on deceiving husbands and mistresses? He should turn it to a profounder end, produc ing masterpieces in another man’s name. Time would validate him, the way Klein had said it would: uncover his many works and show him, at last, as the visionary he was about to become. And if it didn’t—if Ktein was wrong and his handiwork remained undiscovered forever—then that was the truest vision of all. Invisible, he would be seen; un known, he’d be influential. It was enough to make him for get women entirely. At least for tonight.