The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
With a full-armed gesture of old, he swatted away my words. "No, no. Wait here. I want to show you something."
He got up and creaked into the parlor. He was gone a while. And - when he came back - it was with a falling-to-pieces photo album. He sat down. He leafed through it for several pages. And - when he got to a certain page - he pushed it across the table to me. "There," he said.
Faded snapshot. A tiny, beaky, birdlike boy smiled at a piano in a palmy Belle Epoque room: not Parisian, not quite, but Cairene. Twin jardinieres, many French bronzes, many small paintings. One - flowers in a glass - I dimly recognized as a Manet. But my eyes tripped and stopped at the twin of a much more familiar image, one or two frames above.
It was, of course, a reproduction. But even in the tarnished old photograph, it glowed in its own isolated and oddly modern light.
"Artist's copy," said Hobie. "The Manet too. Nothing special but - " folding his hands on the table - "those paintings were a huge part of his childhood, the happiest part, before he was ill - only child, petted and spoiled by the servants - figs and tangerines and jasmine blossoms on the balcony - he spoke Arabic, as well as French, you knew that, right? And - " Hobie crossed his arms tight, and tapped his lips with a forefinger - "he used to speak of how with very great paintings it's possible to know them deeply, inhabit them almost, even through copies. Even Proust - there's a famous passage where Odette opens the door with a cold, she's sulky, her hair is loose and undone, her skin is patchy, and Swann, who has never cared about her until that moment, falls in love with her because she looks like a Botticelli girl from a slightly damaged fresco. Which Proust himself only knew from a reproduction. He never saw the original, in the Sistine Chapel. But even so - the whole novel is in some ways about that moment. And the damage is part of the attraction, the painting's blotchy cheeks. Even through a copy Proust was able to re-dream that image, re-shape reality with it, pull something all his own from it into the world. Because - the line of beauty is the line of beauty. It doesn't matter if it's been through the Xerox machine a hundred times."
"No," I said, though I wasn't thinking of the painting but of Hobie's changelings. Pieces enlivened by his touch and polished until they looked as if they'd had pure, golden Time poured over them, copies that made you love Hepplewhite, or Sheraton, even if you'd never looked at or thought about a piece of Hepplewhite or Sheraton in your life.
"Well - I'm just an old copyist talking myself. You know what Picasso says. 'Bad artists copy, good artists steal.' Still with real greatness, there's a jolt at the end of the wire. It doesn't matter how often you grab hold of the line, or how many people have grabbed hold of it before you. It's the same line. Fallen from a higher life. It still caries some of the same shock. And these copies - " leaning forward with hands folded on the table - "these artists' copies he grew up with were lost when the house in Cairo burned, and to tell you the truth they were lost to him earlier, when he was crippled and they sent him back to America, but - well, he was a person like us, he got attached to objects, they had personalities and souls to him, and though he lost almost everything else from that life, he never lost those paintings because the originals were still out in the world. Made several trips to see them - matter of fact, we took the train all the way to Baltimore to see the original of his Manet when it was exhibited here, years ago, back when Pippa's mother was still living. Quite a journey for Welty. But he knew he'd never make it back to the Musee d'Orsay. And the day he and Pippa went up to the Dutch exhibition? What picture do you think he was taking her specially to see?"
The interesting thing, in the photograph, was how the fragile little knock-kneed boy - smiling sweetly, pristine in his sailor suit - was also the old man who'd clasped my hand while he was dying: two separate frames, superimposed upon each other, of the same soul. And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate. There wasn't a single meaning. There were many meanings. It was a riddle expanding out and out and out.