‘But you know her, Leonardo?’
‘By the grace of God and an ape.’
‘How, an ape?’
Leonardo was tired of it all. He made a gesture like a man who is shaking water off his finger-tips, and said: ‘Oh … like del Giocondo, like you, like a dozen others, I lost sleep thinking of her. The smile, the smile, the smile. I have seen every face in the world, from the Throne to the gutter. I can read faces as your secretary can read a book. As a cut key fits the wards of a lock, so the shape of a face falls into position in a keyhole in my mind. Very good, this one baffled me,’ said Leonardo, laughing grimly. ‘I saw the agony of del Giocondo and the calm of the Madonna Lisa, and I wanted to know. I talked to her, watched her, employed ten thousand artifices to get her off her guard. And still she smiled. That smile came between me and my sleep. I hated her bitterly because she was too much with me. Then, to be brief, when the portrait was finished and my brushes put away, God sent the ape.’
‘What ape?’
Leonardo said: ‘Del Giocondo filled his house with musicians, tumblers, dancers, and all that, in order to amuse his wife. There was a choir of little boys that sang. There was a man who made me laugh – even me. Madonna sat with folded hands, quietly smiling. I finished the portrait. Then something happened. Del Giocondo had several large hounds. One of them, a buff-coloured dog almost as big as a donkey, used to lie at her feet. This gigantic hound had hanging jowls and an expression of indescribable melancholy. When I showed the Madonna Lisa the finished picture, she nodded and said, through a pin-hole in her compressed mouth: ‘That is good.’ At this, the great dog, whose ears had caught some warmth in her voice, came forward lashing about with his great tail which disturbed a little sleepy ape no bigger than your two hands.’
The Duke looked at his hands.
Leonardo continued: ‘This absurd ape, enraged as little things are enraged, leapt upon the dog’s back and pulled his ears, grimacing and chattering. The patient dog looked up with such absurd melancholy that it was impossible not to laugh. There was this gigantic dog, which might have killed a leopard,’ said Leonardo, half laughing at the memory of it, ‘and there was this preposterous ape chattering and chattering with ape-like anger while the dog feebly gesticulated with his tail, one friendly touch of which had been sufficient to knock his assailant head-over-heels. I laughed. Monna Lisa laughed – and then, by God, in the bursting of a bubble everything was clear. Then, Magnificence, I was a happy man, because I had uncovered a trivial truth, so that a thousand unconnected pieces fell together and made sense. La Gioconda threw back her head and opened her mouth and laughed, and then I knew why she had always smiled that strange quiet smile.’
‘Why?’ asked the Duke.
‘She has very bad teeth, that vain and empty woman,’ said Leonardo, laughing, ‘but I have been thinking——’
‘Very bad?’ asked the Duke.
‘Rotten. Her smile is the secretive smile of a woman with bad teeth. Touching the matter of the water supply; I believe——’
‘I detest women with bad teeth,’ said the Duke, yawning. ‘And to the devil with your pipes and water-tanks.’
The King Who Collected Clocks
SECRETS such as Pommel told me burn holes in the pockets of the brain. If I could tell you the real name of the King and his country, your eyebrows would go up and your jaws would go down – and then, more likely than not, you would damn me for a sensational rogue and a dirty liar.
I met the Count de Pommel in the Casino at Monte Estoril, in Portugal. At first I thought that he was a confidence trickster operating under a mask of shy reserve. The Count de Pommel had lost all his ready money on the third block of numbers, and was feverishly convinced that his luck was about to change. Offering me his watch as security, he asked me to lend him a thousand escudos; about ten pounds. In England, as things were then, almost any watch that ticked was worth ten pounds. I gave him the money. Then he began to win. In three-quarters of an hour he won eleven thousand escudos, stopped playing, and returned my money in exchange for his watch, with a thousand expressions of gratitude and the offer of a glass of champagne. He gave me, at the same time, six square inches of visiting card: he was the Count de Pommel, of the Quinta Pommel at Cascais and the Villa Pommel, Lausanne, Switzerland. The watch, he said, was worth four hundred pounds.
‘Who made it?’ I asked.
‘I did,’ he said.
‘There is something about you that made me think you were a clever man with your hands,’ I said.
He held out his hands. Transparent, bloodless, reticulated with narrow black veins, they seemed to vibrate like the wings of an insect. ‘Once upon a time, yes,’ he said. ‘Now, no. A nervous disorder. There is nothing worse than nerves in my profession.’
‘Your profession?’
‘Or trade, if you prefer the word. I am, or was, a watchmaker. I got my title of nobility from King Nicolas, Nicolas the Third,’ he said, and added: ‘I am not a nobleman by birth. Actually, I was a Swiss.’
‘Oh, of course,’ I said, remembering. ‘Nicolas the Third collected clocks and watches.’
‘His was the finest collection in the world.’
‘And you – of course, of course! Pommel – now I get it – Pommel is a name I associate with the Nicolas Clock.’
The Count de Pommel smiled and said: ‘It was a toy rather than a clock in the proper sense of the word. Birds sprang out singing and flapping their wings, Father Time held up a mechanical calendar in the shape of an hour-glass; and I devised a barometer also worked by clockwork, so that figures representing the Four Seasons appeared according to changes of atmospheric pressure. The Nicolas Clock was over-complicated. I am far more proud to have made the watch I pledged with you this evening.’
‘It seemed to me to be made of gold.’
‘Only the case. It is a very simple watch, but perfect; foolproof and waterproof – absolutely accurate. It seems silly, perhaps. I am a retired man, and time does not matter to me. Still, I like accuracy for the sake of accuracy – it is something to be achieved. I cannot work any more; my hands are unsteady, as you see. So I have a regard for that watch. It is the only thing left to me of all that I have made. The others are museum pieces, collectors’ pieces – dead!’
‘Did you also make the figures on the Nicolas Clock, Count de Pommel? They are works of art.’
‘No, a Belgian artist made those: Honoré de Kock. We worked together.’
‘Ah, yes, Honoré de Kock. He died, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, Poor Honoré…. He was a very good fellow. I liked him very much. It was a pity.’
‘He died in an accident, I believe?’ I said.
‘He died on purpose,’ said the Count de Pommel.
‘You don’t mean to say he killed himself?’
‘No, far from it.’
‘Are you telling me that de Kock was murdered?’ I asked.