The Golden Calves Read online

  “Oh, Dad, you’re so prickly. Surely even you will admit that collecting is not as creative as painting or sculpting.”

  “I will admit no such thing! Where would Italian art be without the great patrons of the Renaissance? Who would have supported Raphael or Michelangelo had there been no collecting popes?”

  “We know all that. But today you don’t need patrons. And if you did, they’d be a dime a dozen. Every millionaire from here to Tokyo collects impressionists.”

  “I suppose it’s too much to expect that one’s own children should try to understand what one has spent one’s lifetime trying to accomplish,” Peter said bitterly. “But I still wish to instruct you, Inez, that my collection is not simply a medley of European canvases. It is a carefully selected assemblage of those European and Asiatic paintings and drawings that have given rise to the greatest number of what I call American counterparts. And I have attempted to match these with the works of Americans executed under their influence so that my collection will give a sense of the glory of the inspiration and the glory of the result!”

  But Inez was quite as determined not to be impressed as he was to impress her. “Surely you don’t need that many pictures to make the simple point that American artists were influenced by foreigners.”

  “But I do! To make my point not simply but magnificently.”

  “And how do you make it with the pictures locked up here or in the apartment?”

  “You know they’re always available to students,” Peter retorted in exasperation. “Weren’t you complaining only last week of the bus tour from Hunter College that interrupted your children’s sacred lunch hour? And of course eventually they’ll all be together in a museum.”

  “All? You mean you’re planning to leave your whole collection to charity?”

  “Certainly I am. If by charity you mean the Museum of North America.”

  “Whoa! I knew you were leaving the American paintings there. And I suppose they belong there. But the European ones? The great paintings? Dad, that’s a fortune!”

  “You think they should go to your hungry kids, Inez?”

  This last, in a clear, cool, yet not unfriendly tone, came from the doorway where Inez’s sister Julia had just appeared. The only still unmarried, yet handsomest of the daughters, this tall, darkhaired Miss Hewlett had the soft features and shining blue eyes of her mother, somewhat hardened, or perhaps jelled, by the smart cut of her brown suit and maroon blouse, dressed as she was for the city and for a busy day at her decorating firm.

  “I hardly think it’s proper, girls,” Augusta intervened, “that we should be discussing your father’s will at the breakfast table. Or at any meal, for that matter.”

  “Well, if I’m going to be disinherited, I think I’d better know about it,” Inez exclaimed, aggrieved.

  “It’s all very well for you, Mummie—you have your own money. And for you, Julia—you have your business and no other mouths to feed. But I think those with families, like Doris and me, are entitled to know where we stand.”

  “Disinherited!” Peter cried irately. “You deserve to be disinherited for such an asinine statement. Who do you think supports you now? And where do you think your trust fund came from? If my collection were left to the family, there wouldn’t be money enough in my estate to pay the death taxes. Most of that stuff is worth ten times what I paid for it. It only makes sense to put it in a museum.”

  “Peter, you mustn’t get so excited,” Augusta warned him. “Now I suggest we talk about something else.”

  “Wait a sec, Ma,” Inez enjoined her. “With inflation what it is today, how can anyone be sure there’ll be enough money left to go around? You and Dad have eight grandchildren now and probably more to come. Julia may still marry and have kids.” But the glance that the fecund Inez cast at her sister seemed to place this in doubt. “Where would Dad have been without his inheritance, I’d like to know?”

  “But I’ve told you, Inez,” her father, furious at this last, almost shouted. ‘The taxes would eat up the estate!”

  “Not if the pictures were sold. Then there’d be enough for the taxes and your family.”

  “The pictures sold!”

  “Well, not all of them, of course. You could direct that certain ones be sold and others go to your children and the museum. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Oh, you would allow me to leave a few to the museum? That’s very gracious of you, Inez. I suppose I should be duly grateful. Which ones could go to the museum, do you suppose? The Victorian academics? Are they cheap enough now? But no, they’re coming back, aren’t they?”

  “Of course, Dad, if you’re not going to be serious, there’s no point discussing the matter.”

  Peter picked up his plate, fork and napkin, and rose.

  “I shall finish my breakfast in the library,” he announced stiffly. “Augusta, will you kindly ask Ida to bring me in another cup of coffee?”

  At his desk it was all he could do to cut the toast under his eggs with his shaking hands. Sell his pictures! That was what one could expect from children after supporting them in luxury all their lives, after setting up trust funds for them, after wasting precious horn’s with tedious lawyers determining how to squeeze the most out of one’s liquid assets for their benefit. And all the time what they wanted was simply one’s lifeblood! He smote the desk with his fist. Where the hell was his coffee? He was about to yell for Ida when the door opened. But it was not Ida who brought him his cup, but Augusta herself.

  “I think we’re allowing ourselves to get overwrought,” she said soothingly. “Now drink your coffee while you and I discuss this matter calmly and rationally.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it at all!”

  “I know, dear. I didn’t think it was the time, either, and I tried to stop Inez. But now the fat’s in the fire, we may as well get on with it.”

  He stared at his impassive spouse. “Why must we discuss it at all?”

  “Because despite her nastiness, there may be some sense in what Inez says. Why don’t we have an appraisal made of all the art and see where we stand?”

  “My accountant takes care of that. You don’t have to appraise things that go to charity. They’re not part of the taxable estate.”

  “But, darling, you’re begging the question. Let’s find out just what we have before we plan what to do with it. There must be a dozen different ways of dividing your estate sensibly between your family and the museum.”

  “But, Augusta,” he implored her, in despair at the prospect of losing his greatest ally, “satisfactory to whom? You seem to forget that I bought all the art I own, and most of it out of income, or capital gains, at prices that are a fraction of its present worth. If I leave the children the principal I inherited from my father, haven’t I satisfied the most rigorous moral laws of family succession?”

  “You seem to forget that I have a voice in this, dear. I’ve not been altogether a passive partner in your collecting, have I?” She paused to await the nod he could not rightfully withhold. It had been she, after all, who had pushed him into the purchase of the El Greco Auto-da-fé, the star of the collection. “I am sure, once we have all the facts and figures, that we’ll be able to work out something not too far from what you wish to accomplish. But first I must have those facts and figures.”

  He ventured a sour little smile, as if he might be teasing her. “And if I refuse? It is my estate, after all.”

  “If you refuse, my dear Peter…” His now awesome spouse paused again. She did not have to blink an eye or underline a single word. She spoke with the simplicity and friendliness of one instructing a difficult child. “If you refuse and I die before you, things will come off as you wish. But if I survive you, and in that respect you must consider the difference in our ages…”

  “As well as my heart and the immortality of your family!” he exclaimed, still desperately hoping to make a joke of it.

  “Yes, consider by all means those things,” she purs
ued relentlessly. “I would have a right of election, would I not? To take against your will? Isn’t that how the lawyers put it?”

  “Augusta, you wouldn’t!” he could barely gasp.

  “I can assure you, my dear, that I should exercise every legal right I had to bring about what I considered a fair and just division of your estate.”

  “Do you know that Sidney Claverack suggested, when I signed my last will, that I should ask you to waive your right of election? And I refused. Refused indignantly!” Peter’s voice soared to a new pitch of bitterness and self-pity. “I told him you’d never attack my will!”

  “Nor would I, for my own benefit. Even if you cut me off without a penny. But I shouldn’t hesitate to claim my legal share and give it to the children if I thought you had shortchanged them.”

  “Shortchanged them! They’ll be rich, Augusta.” “In that case I shouldn’t interfere. But rich is a relative term, my dear. I must insist on my right to define it as of the time your will is proved. And now, having said what I came to say, I shall leave you to finish your coffee. A disagreeable thing that has to be stated should be stated only once. The next move is yours.”

  Peter sat with Julia in the back of the maroon Cadillac limousine, en route to the city, pouring out his wrath at her mother’s position. Julia, from childhood, had been by far his favorite. Doris, the youngest, who made an almost embarrassing show of filial devotion, came second; Inez trailed Doris, a poor third.

  “What you should do, Dad,” Julia said, when he came at last to a pause, “is take the matter into your own hands. The collection, after all, is yours. Mummie may have helped you, sure, but I can’t see that that gives her any moral right to dispose of it. You’ve already done plenty for us girls. Why should you provide for an indefinite population explosion of descendants? Give what you want to the museum now. Then it won’t be subject to Mummie’s right of election when you die.”

  “And how do you think your mother will feel about that?”

  “She won’t care. All Mummie worries about is doing her duty. Once you’ve taken the choice out of her hands, she’ll be quite reconciled. I’ve even heard her say that too much money would be bad for the grandchildren. She’d never go against your wishes unless you left her in a position where she had to decide between her family and the museum. Well, don’t leave her in one.”

  Peter glanced inquiringly at this umpire of his marital life. Was she laughing at the antics of both her parents? Did Julia set herself up to scorn the curious money morality of the older generation, with its little fetishes about “earned” and “unearned” income and what should be considered “one’s own” to dispose of and what had to be passed on down the family line? Did Julia, proud and independent as she was, regard greenbacks as simply greenbacks, gold as simply gold? Very likely. But wasn’t that an integral part of her cool intelligence and her good, friendly, steady, reliable filial feeling? What a treasure she was! And what was she doing now but reaching behind the curtain of his pretenses and pulling out the naked little squealing ego that lurked there? “Why not ac knowledge the babe?” she seemed to be asking. “He may be a fine boy, after all.”

  “Can you really be so sure about your mother?”

  “I think so. She sees life in terms of what God is expecting of Augusta Hewlett. He can’t expect her to choose if there’s no choice. Going to law to fight your last will and testament would be a most distasteful business to her. She’d be glad to be freed of it.”

  “If I really believed that! Oh, what happiness! For you know, Julia, it wouldn’t ever be a question of stripping my family. No matter what I did, there’d always be enough to educate the grandchildren, even to set them up in life, and—”

  “Dad, I know all that,” Julia interrupted firmly. “Inez is simply hysterical about that noisy litter of hers. Do what you think is right with your own things and do it now.”

  He leaned over to give her a quick peck on the forehead and then changed the subject, chatting nervously about this and that, anything to avoid thoughts that might intrude upon the glorious license she had just given him.

  He told the chauffeur to drop Julia off at her shop on Madison Avenue and then proceeded down to the Chrysler Building, where Sidney Claverack’s law firm occupied a high story. The white wall of the senior partner’s office, facing a three-window panorama of the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, formed a huge mat for a Rauschenberg study of yellow and tan wheels and cogs, a fantasy of a factory interior.

  “I have several things to discuss with you, Sidney, but let’s get this one out of the way first.” Peter handed a piece of blue notepaper, heavily scrawled, to the expressionless lawyer. When the latter made no move to take it, he dropped it on the desk. “I received it yesterday. I gather you know who it’s from.”

  “Oh, yes. We’ve all heard from Miss Vogel.”

  “And what do you plain to do about her?”

  “I’ve done it. I’ve fired her.”

  Peter started. “Was that wise?”

  “It was unavoidable. After the things she said, not only to Mark Addams, but to me, there could be no place for her in the museum. I didn’t even allow her to unpack her desk. I told her to clear out and that we’d send her things later.”

  “But, Sidney, what are people going to say? Read my letter. This girl claims that you conned Daisy Speddon into signing a will that would let you junk her collection and keep the money she meant to maintain it.”

  Sidney jumped to his feet and shook his fist in the air. “I don’t give a good god damn what people say! Miss Speddon, in the full possession of her faculties, gave me a wide discretion, and I intend to use it. And use it to make her the greatest benefactor in the history of the museum! Now we can have all those things we’ve been dreaming about. And that she knew we’d been dreaming about. The new Mayan gallery. The Indian hall. The great Modern America wing! Do you think I’m going to be stopped by the shrieks of one crazed female who wants the money used for the care and feeding of a million gewgaws put together by whimsy and sentimentality? Sure, a few people are going to grumble. Sure, we’ll get some angry letters. Maybe some nasty newspaper articles. But in two years’ time nobody is going to remember even who Miss Vogel is, and everybody will be singing the praises of the board of trustees that brought about the renaissance of a great museum!”

  “Sidney, Sidney, you’re going too fast.” Peter shook his head reproachfully. ‘This is a matter for the board. It may even be a matter for a special meeting.”

  “Look here, Peter.” Sidney had resumed his seat and now leaned towards his co-trustee, his chin thrust forward, his hands placed palm down on the blotter, with an air of grave and final appeal. “You and I are that board. Between us we’re responsible for half the annual contributions. Nobody else could or even wants to run the place. So long as we stand together, we’re an irresistible force!”

  “It may be as you say. But I have a conscience, Sidney. I respected and liked Daisy Speddon.”

  “Then put up any tablet or statue in her memory that you want. Rename the place the Evelyn Speddon Institute. I’ll go along. And while we’re on the subject, let me tell you something else. Something we can do now if you’ll come up with a million bucks. The Peter K. Hewlett Gallery of American Painters and Their Forerunners. We can build it on the lot to the west, where there’s room for your whole collection. Of course, I don’t want to use too much of the Speddon money on another trustee’s things … that might look too bad … but—”

  “And anyway I shouldn’t need the Speddon money,” Peter interrupted hastily. “No, no, I could do it all myself. Oh, my God!” He jumped to his feet now, as if the whole sudden dazzling vision had exploded to lift him up and up. Who was this monster sitting so placidly at his desk before the panorama of the two boroughs? “Get thee behind me, Satan!” he fairly screeched and then marveled as the room echoed with the strange rattle of his own laughter.

  9

  THE COILED JADE SERPENT covered
the whole blotter on Carol Sweeters’s desk. Its emerald-green body formed sixteen concentric circles of diminishing circumferences; its head, with black orbs of eyes and a round bulbous snout, filled the small central space, its chin resting on the edge of the innermost coil, so that it appeared to be staring balefully at the curator. It was presumably a “vision serpent,” symbolizing a hallucination of the Mayas, who saw some of their gods as zoomorphs. But the vision serpent was usually bicephalic. Where was the other head? Not broken off, for Carol could see on the outer circumference, where the beast diminished into a tail, what appeared to be a rattle. Why had he not been more struck by this when he had examined it in Zürich?

  A fake? Pre-Columbian art had always peculiarly attracted forgers. Carol had brooded over this piece for two hours now without moving from his desk. He knew he couldn’t be fooled. He knew it. He ran his fingers lightly over the jade scales and felt the feathers on the outer layer. Vision serpents sometimes had small feathers. But of course a forger would know that.

  He closed his eyes and tried to imagine blood dripping from a wound on his hand, his knee, his thigh, seeking the giddiness that a Maya would experience as his strength eroded with the loss of his life fluid. Then he blinked and glanced quickly back at the serpent. Yes! There was a gleam of something like red in those opaque orbs, a kind of ruddy glow that now died away. The vision serpent was summoned up in a state of mind affected by loss of blood. Oh, let people say he was crazy—say it, that is, if he were ever a fool enough to utter his thoughts—but he knew he could always feel out a true Mayan piece.

  “May I have another look, sir?”

  It was Fred Farr in the doorway, spookily skinny and cerebral, with red, stiff, curly hair, buck teeth and a drooping jaw, a scholar, too much so, Carol thought, Teutonic in his concern with minutiae. He had already expressed unwelcome doubts.

  “Don’t tell me it should have two heads,” Carol muttered. “In this particular part of the Yucatán the vision serpent made do with one.”