Avery's Mission by J.I.M. Stewart

Author:J.I.M. Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Avery’s Mission
ISBN: 9780755133444
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

There followed what I need not detail: an interesting half hour. The top storey of the ancient tower which had become the nucleus of the Villa Buontalenti formed a single large chamber, now by some discreet adaptation excellently lit. Here the whole labour of the corpus (whether vain and outmoded or not) went on. It is popularly believed that art historians and experts generally work surrounded by elaborate scientific devices which alone enable them to tell a Picasso from an El Greco; and I have myself been led through laboratories in which this, to the innocent eye, would scarcely appear to be an exaggeration. But in fact science does much more to preserve than to categorise or classify, and I should have suspended judgement, if tackled, on whether Messrs Brenton and Fagandini – the one equipped, I supposed, with a flash-light and a pair of opera-glasses, and the other lugging round a camera – were too hopelessly an antiquated couple. Certainly what Luigi called the archive was – or was in process of becoming – impressive. On one side of the room was a thicket or jungle of receptacles ranging from cassoni of the seicento and eighteenth-century armoires to Victorian hat-boxes and contemporary plastic bread-bins from Upim. On the other side was a line of steel filing-cabinets. There could be no doubt as to what this betokened. Luigi Fagandini was getting Jethro Brenton straight.

Luigi was a very good cicerone to his own domain. He didn’t pester me with information, and on the other hand he didn’t treat me as an uncomprehending person to whom courtesy has made it obligatory to put on a mere pretence of showing things. He let his wares expose themselves.

Yet I felt there was something missing. And because I own a professional impulse – sometimes rashly indulged – to clarify the minds of young men, I resolved to tackle Luigi on this. I had a shot at it when the time came to go downstairs again.

‘I wonder,’ I asked, ‘how much you’ve realised that Avery’s no fool?’

‘Signore?’

‘I’m sorry. What I mean is this. Avery has a kind of simplicity which amuses and attracts you – and, I think, a background and associations which attract you as well. And you, correspondingly, have a kind of sophistication and (if you’ll forgive the word) a precocity which impress and attract him. When I say he’s no fool, I’m saying that he might be not merely impressed but quite perceptive too. Anything he ventured about you, I’d be myself inclined to listen to.’

‘Ventured about me?’ I saw Luigi’s wary look flit over his attractive features. ‘Avery has been good enough—’

‘Oh, he hasn’t been pronouncing upon you at large. He has simply recorded his impression that this’—and I made a gesture round the room—’just isn’t you.’ There was nothing like an elusive English meaning to concentrate Luigi’s attention.

‘Ah.’ Luigi’s gesture held a subtlety that made my own seem crude. ‘I must not be thought miserable.’

‘Restless?’

‘Forse, signore. Vi sono diverse possibilità.’

Upon this linguistic retreat on Luigi’s part I ought to have stopped off.

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