“No, he doesn’t.”
“Perhaps we should just kill him now and get it over with.”
Shamron looked at the bandage on Gabriel’s eye. “Ivan can wait, my son. You have more important things to worry about.”
They had arrived at the stables. In an adjacent pen, a pair of pigs were rolling about in the mud. Shamron looked at the animals and winced in disgust.
“First a crucifix. Now pigs. What’s next?”
“We have our own chapel.”
Shamron ignited another cigarette. “I’m getting tired,” he said. “Let’s head back.”
They turned around and started toward the villa. Shamron produced an envelope from the breast pocket of his leather bomber jacket and handed it to Gabriel.
“It’s a letter from Elena,” Shamron said. “Adrian Carter had it couriered to Tel Aviv.”
“Did you read it?”
“Of course.”
Gabriel removed the letter and read it for himself.
“Are you up to it?” Shamron asked.
“I’ll know after the great unveiling.”
“Maybe Gilah and I should stay here for a few days, just in case things don’t go well.”
“What about Mozart and Pinter?”
“I’d rather be here”-he looked around theatrically-“with the pigs and the crucifixes.”
“Then we’d love to have you.”
“Do the staff really have no idea who you are?”
“They think I’m an eccentric restorer who suffers from melancholia and mood swings.”
Shamron placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “It sounds to me as if they know you quite well.”
73 VILLADEIFIORI, UMBRIA
The doctor came the following morning. Israeli by way of Queens, he wore a rabbinical beard and had the small soft hands of a baby. He removed the dressing from Gabriel’s eye, frowned heavily, and began snipping away the sutures.
“Let me know if anything I do hurts.”
“Trust me, you’ll be the first to know.”
He shone a light directly into Gabriel’s eye and frowned some more.
“How does it feel?”
“Like you’re burning a hole in my cornea.”
The doctor switched off the light.
“How does it feel now?”
“Like it’s covered in cotton wool and Vaseline.”
“Can you see?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
He covered Gabriel’s good eye. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Twelve.”
“Come on. How many?”
“Four, I think, but I can’t be sure.”
The doctor uncovered the good eye. He was holding up two fingers. He put some drops in the damaged eye that burned like battery acid and covered it with a black patch.
“I look like an idiot.”
“Not for long. Your retina looks remarkably good for what you’ve been through. You’re a very lucky man. Wear the patch on and off for a few days until your eye regains some of its strength. An hour on, an hour off. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Avoid bright lights. And don’t do anything that might give you unnecessary eyestrain.”
“How about painting?”
“Don’t even think about it. Not for at least three days.”
The doctor put his light and suture cutters back in his bag and pulled the zipper closed. Gabriel thanked him for coming all the way from Tel Aviv for a five-minute job. “Just don’t tell anyone you were here,” he added. “If you do, that angry-looking little man over there will kill you with his bare hands.”
The doctor looked at Shamron, who had managed to watch the entire proceeding without offering a single piece of advice.
“Is it true what they say about him? Was he really the one who kidnapped Eichmann?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Is it all right if I shake his hand? I want to touch the hands that grabbed hold of that monster.”
"It’s fine,” said Gabriel. “But be careful. He bites.”
He didn’t want to wear the patch, but even he had to admit he looked better with it on than off. The tissue around the eye was still distorted with swelling and the new scar was raw and hideous. “You’ll look like yourself eventually,” Chiara assured him. “But it’s going to take a while. You older men don’t heal as fast.”
The doctor’s optimism about the pace of his recovery turned out to be accurate. By the next morning, Gabriel’s vision had improved dramatically, and by the morning after it seemed almost normal. He felt ready to begin work on Elena’s request but confined his efforts to only one small task: the fabrication of a stretcher, 38 ¾ inches by 29 ¼ inches. When the stretcher was finished, he pulled a linen canvas over it and covered the canvas with a layer of ground. Then he placed the canvas on his easel and waited for it to dry.
He slept poorly that night and woke at four. He tried to fall asleep again, but it was no use, so he slipped out of bed and headed downstairs. He had always worked well in the early morning, and, despite his weakened eye, that morning was no exception. He applied the first layers of base paint, and by midday two small children were clearly visible on the canvas.
He took a break for lunch, then spent a second session before the canvas that lasted until dinner. He painted from memory, without even a photograph for reference, and with a swiftness and confidence he would not have thought possible a week earlier. Sometimes, when the house was quiet, he could almost feel her at his shoulder, whispering instructions into his ear. Watch your brushwork on the hands, she reminded him. Not too impasto on the hands. And sometimes, when his vision began to blur, he would see Elena chained to a chair in her husband’s warehouse of death, a gun pressed to the side of her head. You’d better pull the trigger, Arkady, because Ivan is never getting those children.
Chiara and the household staff knew better than to watch him while he worked, but Shamron and Gilah were unaware of his rules and were therefore never far from his back. Gilah’s visits were brief in duration, but Shamron, with nothing else to occupy his time, became a permanent fixture in Gabriel’s studio. He had always been mystified by Gabriel’s ability to paint-to Shamron, it was but a parlor trick or an illusion of some sort-and he was content now to sit silently at Gabriel’s side as he worked, even if it meant forgoing his cigarettes.
“I should have left you at Bezalel in ’seventy-two,” he said late one night. “I should have found someone else to execute those Black September murderers. You would have been one of the greatest artists of your generation, instead of-”
“Instead of what?”
“Instead of an eccentric old restorer with melancholia and mood swings who lives in a villa in the middle of Umbria surrounded by pigs and crucifixes.”
“I’m happy, Ari. I have Chiara.”
“Keep her close, Gabriel. Remember, Ivan likes to break pretty things.”
Gabriel laid down his brush, then stepped back and examined the painting for a long time, hand pressed to his chin, head tilted to one side. Chiara, who was watching from the top of the stairs, said, “Is it finished, Signore Vianelli?”
Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. “I think it is finished.”
“What are you going to do about the signature?” Shamron asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“May I give you a small piece of artistic advice?”
“If you must.”
“Sign it with the name your mother gave you.”
He dipped the brush in black paint and signed the name Gabriel Allon in the bottom left corner.
“Do you think she’ll like it?”
“I’m sure she will. Is it finished now?”
“Not quite,” Gabriel said. “I have to bake it for thirty minutes.”
"I should have left you at Bezalel,” Shamron said. “You could have been great. ”