Free A Closed Book by Gilbert Adair Page A

do. It’s as stimulating as I hoped it would be.’
    â€˜It
is
going well, don’t you think?’
    â€˜I’d say so. But I can only speak for myself. I don’t know how much you’d normally expect to get done in nine days.’
    â€˜Oh, well, as for that, rather more than you and I have done. But you must realize, my fear was that I wouldn’t be able to work at all under these conditions. Yet we
have
worked together well, haven’t we?’
    â€˜Yes, we have.’
    â€˜Worked surprisingly well, right?’
    â€˜Absolutely.’
    â€˜I haven’t been too – too martinettish with you?’
    â€˜Too what?’
    â€˜Too much the martinet.’
    â€˜You warned me, Paul.’
    â€˜Well, hell, that means I have, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜No. No, it doesn’t, actually. Look, you’re hardly the easiest person in the world to get along with. I’d be a liar if I tried to pretend you were. But, as I say, in the first place you did warn me.’
    â€˜And in the second place?’
    â€˜Well, uh, actually, there is no second place.’
    â€˜Ah. And here was I hoping you’d say that in the second place it’s a privilege for you to be allowed to collaborate on this book of mine. My last book and, I believe, my best.’
    â€˜Paul, that went without saying.’
    â€˜Ah. Thank you. Well now. What’s today?’
    â€˜Friday.’
    â€˜Friday. So it is. That means, I suppose, you’re off tomorrow?’
    â€˜Yes, I do have to get back to town.’
    *
    â€˜It isn’t a problem, is it, Paul? I mean, it
was
agreed I’d be returning at the weekend?’
    â€˜Oh, absolutely.’
    â€˜I’ll probably get going just after –’
    â€˜I
was
wondering, though.’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Of course I don’t know just how busy you’re planning to be?’
    â€˜Pretty busy, I expect. I haven’t been home for more than a week. There’ll be mail to answer, e-mail, faxes,the usual sort of thing. What was it you were going to ask me?’
    â€˜Well, if you had a couple of hours to kill – mind you, only if you really did have a couple of hours –’
    â€˜I probably will.’
    â€˜There’s a reconnoitring job I shall want you to do for the next section of the book. And if you did it over the weekend, you see, it would save you driving back up to London on Monday or Tuesday.’
    â€˜What exactly would it involve?’
    â€˜There are two jobs, but they’re both in the same area. Next door to each other, in fact.’
    â€˜Why don’t you just tell me what it is you want me to do?’
    â€˜In the National Gallery there’s a Rembrandt self-portrait. Actually, there are two of them, but the one I’m talking about is my very favourite painting in the world. I mean to write about it in this new section that we’re now going to be tackling. Briefly, it’ll have to do with the whole concept of self-portraiture, particularly if you’re blind. I intend to call it “The Melancholy of Anatomy”.’
    â€˜Uh huh.’
    â€˜Well, that went down like a lead balloon.’
    â€˜Sorry, what?’
    â€˜Oh, nothing. Anyway, my thesis, which I’m about to simplify grossly, is that all the great self-portraitswere painted as though by blind men and – God, it sounds frightfully trite put like that, but maybe you get the picture?’
    â€˜I think so. And you want me to –?’
    â€˜What I need is a meticulously detailed description of that particular self-portrait. It’s the older of the two in the National. I mean, in actual fact it’s the more recent, it’s Rembrandt himself who’s older, visibly older. If I remember aright, it was painted just days before he died. There ought to be a postcard of it for sale in the souvenir shop. In which case, buy it and bring it back with you. Otherwise,