The Conspiracy Collection: 3 Vols: The Rule of Four, Equinox, Codex by Caldwell Ian

Author:Caldwell, Ian [Caldwell, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780099544753
Amazon: 009954475X
Goodreads: 28431525
Publisher: Arrow
Published: 2007-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

In the aftermath of the debacle surrounding the portmaster’s diary, Taft moved from Manhattan into a white clapboard house at the Institute, a mile southwest of the Princeton campus. Maybe it was the solitude that got to him, the absence of colleagues to wrestle with, but within months, rumors of his drinking began to circulate through the academic community. The definitive history he’d planned quietly expired. His passion, his command of his gift, seemed to crumble.

Three years later, on the occasion of his next publication—a thin volume on the role of hieroglyphics in Renaissance art—it became clear that Taft’s career had stalled. Seven years after that, when his next article was published in a minor journal, a reviewer called his decline a tragedy. According to Paul, the loss of what Taft had with Curry and my father continued to haunt him. In the twenty-five years that elapsed between his arrival at the Institute and his meeting with Paul, Vincent Taft published only four times, preferring to pass his time writing criticism of other scholars’ work, especially my father’s. Not once did he recover the fiery genius of his youth.

It was Paul’s arrival at his doorstep during the spring of our freshman year that must’ve brought the Hypnerotomachia back into his life. Once Taft and Stein began assisting in the thesis work, Paul told me of startling flashes of brilliance in his mentor. Many nights the old bear toiled furiously alongside him, reciting long passages from obscure primary texts when Paul couldn’t find them in the library.

“That was the summer Richard funded my trip to Italy,” Paul says, rubbing a palm against the edge of the piano stool. “We were so excited. Even Vincent. He and Richard still weren’t speaking, but they knew I was on to something. I was starting to figure things out.

“I was staying in a flat Richard owned, the entire top floor of an old Renaissance palace. It was amazing, just gorgeous. There were paintings on the walls, paintings on the ceilings, paintings everywhere. In niches, above staircases. Tintorettos, Carraccis, Peruginos. It was like heaven, Tom. Just breathtaking, it was so beautiful. And he would wake up in the morning and say, all businesslike, ‘Paul, I need to get some work done today.’ Then we’d get to talking, and half an hour later he would pull off his tie and say, ‘To hell with it. Let’s take the day off.’ We would end up walking through the piazzas and just talking. The two of us, walking and talking for hours.

“That’s when he started telling me about his days at Princeton. About Ivy, and all of these adventures he’d had, these crazy things he’d done, these people he’d known. Your father, most of all. It was so alive, so vivid. I mean, it was unlike everything Princeton has ever been to me. I was just completely mesmerized. It was like living a dream, a perfect dream. Richard even called it that. The whole time we were in Italy, he seemed to be walking on clouds.

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