The Swan Thieves Part 2

I couldn't have known how thoroughly he would take me at my word. When I visited the next day, the nurse said he hadn't spoken to her all morning, although he had eaten a little breakfast and seemed calm. His silence wasn't reserved for the nurses; he didn't speak to me either--not that day or the next, nor for the following twelve months. During this period his ex-wife did not visit him; in fact, he had no visitors. He continued to display many of the symptoms of clinical depression, with periods of silent agitation and perhaps anxiety.

During most of the time he was with me, I never seriously considered releasing Robert from my care, partly because I could never be completely sure whether or not he was a possible risk to himself and others, and partly because of a feeling of my own that evolved a little at a time and to which I'll admit gradually; I've already confessed that I have my reasons for considering this a private story. In those first weeks, I continued treating him with

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the mood stabilizer John had started him on, and I also continued the antidepressant.

His one previous psychiatric report, which John had sent me, indicated a serious recurrent mood disorder and a trial of lithium--Robert had apparently refused the drug after a few months of treatment, saying it exhausted him. But the report also described a patient frequently functional, holding down a teaching job at a small college, pursuing his artwork, and trying to engage with family and colleagues. I called his former psychiatrist myself, but the fellow was busy and told me little, except to admit that after a certain point he had found Oliver an unmotivated patient. Robert had seen a psychiatrist mainly at his wife's request and had stopped his visits before he and his wife had separated more than a year before. Robert had not had any long-term psychotherapy, nor had he been previously hospitalized. The doctor hadn't even been aware that Robert no longer lived in Greenhill.

Robert now took his medication without protest, in the same resigned way in which he ate--an unusual sign of cooperation in a patient so defiant as to hew to a vow of silence. He ate sparingly, also without apparent interest, and kept himself rigorously clean despite his depression. He did not interact with the other patients in any way, but he did take supervised daily walks inside and outside and sometimes sat in the bigger of the lounges, occupying a chair in a sunny corner.

In his periods of agitation, which at first occurred every day or two, he paced his room, fists clenched, body trembling visibly, face working. I watched him carefully and had my staff do the same. One morning he cracked the mirror in his bathroom with the b.u.t.t of his fist, although he, didn't injure himself. Sometimes he sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, jumping up every few minutes to look out the window, then settling again into that att.i.tude of despair. When he was not agitated, he was listless.

The only thing that seemed to interest Robert Oliver was his package of old letters, which he kept close to him and frequently

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opened and read. Often, when I visited him, he had a letter in front of him. And once during the first weeks, I observed before he folded the letter up and put it back into its faded envelope that the pages were covered with regular, elegant handwriting in brown ink. "I've noticed you're often reading the same thing--these letters. Are they antiques?"

He closed his hand over the package and turned away, his face as full of misery as any I'd seen in my years of treating patients. No, I could not discharge him, even if he had stretches of calm that lasted several days. Some mornings I invited him to talk to me-- with no result--and some I simply sat with him. Every weekday I asked him how he was doing, and Monday through Friday he looked away from me and out the nearby window.

All this behavior presented a vivid picture of torment, but how could I know what had been the trigger for his breakdown when I couldn't discuss it with him? It occurred to me, among other ideas, that he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in addition to his basic diagnosis; but, if so, what had the trauma been? Or could his own breakdown and arrest in the museum have traumatized him this much by themselves? There was no evidence of a past tragedy in the few records I had at my command, although likely his split with his wife would have been upsetting. I tried gently, whenever it seemed the right moment, to prompt him toward conversation. His silence held, and so did his obsessive and private rereading. One morning I asked him whether he would consider allowing me to look at his letters, in confidence, since they clearly meant a great deal to him. "I promise I wouldn't keep them, of course, or if you let me borrow them, I could have copies made and return them safely to you."

He turned toward me then, and I saw something like curiosity on his face, but he soon grew sullen and brooding again. He collected the letters carefully, without meeting my gaze anymore, and turned away from me on his bed. After a moment, I had no choice but to leave the room.

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CHAPTER 4 Marlow.

Entering Robert's room during his second week with us, I observed that he had been drawing in his sketchbook. The drawing was a simple image of a woman's head in three-quarter profile, with curly dark hair roughed in. I recognized at once his extreme facility and expressiveness; these qualities leapt off the page. It's easy to say what makes a sketch weak but harder to explain the coherence and internal vigor that bring it to life. Oliver's drawings were alive, beyond alive. When I asked him whether he was sketching from imagination or drawing a real person, he ignored me more pointedly than ever, closing the book and putting it away. The next time I visited, he was pacing the room, and I could see him clenching and unclenching his jaw.

Watching, I felt anew that it wouldn't be safe to release him unless we could ascertain that he would not become violent again from the stimulus of his everyday life. I didn't even know what that life consisted of; the Goldengrove secretary had done a preliminary search for me, but we couldn't track down any place of employment for him in the Washington area. Did he have the means to stay home and paint all day? He wasn't listed in the DC telephone directory, and the address John Garcia had received from the police had turned out to be that of Robert's ex-wife in North Carolina. He was angry, depressed, approaching real fame, apparently homeless. The episode with the sketchbook had made me hopeful, but the hostility that followed it was deeper than ever.

His sheer skill on paper intrigued me, as did the fact that he had a genuine reputation; although I usually avoided unnecessary

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research on the Web, I looked him up. Robert held an MFA from one of New York's premier arts programs and had taught there briefly, as well as at Greenhill College and a college in New York State. He had placed second in the National Portrait Gallery's annual compet.i.tion, received a couple of national fellowships and residencies, and had solo shows in New York, Chicago, and Greenhill. His work had indeed appeared on the cover of several well-known art magazines. There were a few images from his sales over the years--portraits and landscapes, including two unt.i.tled portraits of a dark-haired woman like the one he'd been sketching in his room. They owed something, I thought, to Impressionist tradition.

I found no artist's statements or interviews; Robert himself was as silent on the Internet, I thought, as he was in my presence. It seemed to me that his work might be a worthwhile channel of communication, and I provided him with plenty of good paper, charcoal, pencils, and pens, which I brought from home myself. He used these to continue his drawings of the woman's head when he wasn't rereading his letters. He began to prop up the drawings here and there, and when I left some tape in his room, he fastened them to the walls in a chaotic gallery. As I've said, his draftsmanship was extraordinary; I read in it both long training and an enormous natural gift, which I was later to see in his paintings. He soon varied his sketches of the woman's profile to full-face; I could observe her fine features and large dark eyes. Sometimes she smiled, and sometimes she seemed angry; anger predominated. Naturally, I conjectured that the image might be an expression of his silent rage, and I also speculated about some possible confusion of gender ident.i.ty within the patient, although I couldn't get him to respond even nonverbally to questions on this topic.

When Robert Oliver had resided at Goldengrove for more than two weeks without speaking, I had the idea of outfitting his room

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as a studio. I had to get special permission from the center for my experiment, and to put a few security measures in place: it was a risk, granted, but Robert had shown full responsibility when using his pencils and other drawing supplies. I considered equipping a corner of the OT Room instead. However, Robert was unlikely to paint in front of other people, I thought, in this situation. I arranged his room myself while he was on one of his walks, and I was there to observe his reaction when he returned.

The room was a sunny one, and a single, and I'd moved the bed to one side to make s.p.a.ce for a large easel. I had stocked the shelves with oil paints, watercolors, gesso, rags, jars of brushes, mineral spirits and oil medium, a wooden palette and palette sc.r.a.pers; some of these items I brought from my own supplies at home, so that they were not new and would give the feel of a working studio. I stacked one wall with empty stretched canvases of varying sizes and provided a block of watercolor paper.

Finally, I sat down in my customary chair in the corner to observe him as he came back in. At the sight of all the equipment I'd put there, he stopped short, clearly startled. Then an expression of fury crossed his face. He started toward me, his fists clenched, and I stayed seated, as calmly as I could, without speaking. I thought for a moment that he would actually say something, or perhaps even hit me, but he seemed to think better of both urges. His body relaxed a little; he turned away and began to examine the new supplies. He felt the watercolor paper, studied the construction of the easel, glanced at the tubes of oil paints. At last he wheeled around and glared at me again, this time as if he wanted to ask me something but couldn't bring himself to do it. I wondered, not for the first time, if he had somehow become unable, rather than simply unwilling, to speak.

"I hope you'll enjoy these items," I said as placidly as possible.

He looked at me, his face dark. I left the room without trying to speak to him again.

Two days later, I found him painting with deep absorption on

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a first canvas, which he had apparently prepared for that purpose overnight. He did not acknowledge my presence, but he allowed me to observe him and to study the picture, which was a portrait. I examined it with the greatest interest; I'm first and foremost a portrait painter myself, although I also love landscape, and the fact that my long work hours prevent me from painting from live models on a regular basis is a source of sorrow to me. I work with photographs when I have to, although that runs against my natural purism. It's better than nothing, and I always learn from the exercise.

But Robert, as far as I knew, had painted his new canvas without even a photograph to refer to, and it radiated startling life. It showed the usual head of a woman--now, of course, in color--in the same traditionalist style as his drawings. She had an extraordinarily real face, with dark eyes that looked directly out of the canvas--a confident yet thoughtful gaze. Her hair was curly and dark, with some chestnut lights in it; she had a fine nose, a square chin with a dimple on the right side, an amused, sensuous mouth. Her forehead was high and white, and what little I could see of her clothing was green, with a yellow ruffle around a deep V of neckline, a curve of skin. Today she looked almost happy, as if it pleased her to be appearing in color at last. It's strange for me to think of this now, but at that moment and for months afterward, I had no idea who she was.

That was a Wednesday, and on Friday, when I went to see Robert, the room was empty; he had apparently gone out for his walk. The portrait of the dark-haired lady stood on the easel--nearly finished, I thought--magnificent. On the chair where I usually sat lay an envelope addressed to me in loose script. Inside it I found Robert's antique letters. I drew one out and held it in my hand for a long minute. The paper looked very old, and the elegantly handwritten lines I could see on the outer side were in French, to my surprise. I suddenly felt how far I might have to travel to know the man who had entrusted them to me.

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CHAPTER 5 Marlow.

I hadn't intended at first to take the letters off the Goldengrove property, but at the end of the day I put them in my briefcase. On Sat.u.r.day morning I called my friend Zoe, who teaches French literature at Georgetown University. Zoe is one of the women I dated when I first came to Washington years ago, and we've remained good friends, especially since I didn't feel strongly enough about her to regret her terminating our relationship. She made excellent occasional company to a play or a concert, and I think she felt the same about me.

The phone rang twice before she answered. "Marlow?" Her voice was businesslike, as always, but also affectionate. "How nice that you called. I was thinking about you the other week."

"Why didn't you call me, then?" I asked.

"Grading papers," she said. "I haven't called anyone."

"I forgive you, in that case," I replied sarcastically, since that's our custom. "I'm glad you're done with the papers, because I have a possible project for you."

"Oh, Marlow." I could hear her doing something in her kitchen as she talked to me; her kitchen dates from just after the Revolutionary War and is the size of my hall closet. "Marlow, I don't need any projects. I'm writing a book, as you know from paying at least a little attention these last three years."

"I know, dear," I said. "But this is something you'll like, exactly your period--I think--and I want you to see it. Come over this afternoon and I'll ask you out to dinner."

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"It must be worth a lot to you," she said. "I can't do dinner, but I'll come over at five--I'm going to Dupont Circle after that."

"You have a date," I said approvingly. I was a little shocked to realize how long it had been since I'd had anything like a date. How had so much time slipped by me?

"You bet I do," Zoe said.

We sat in my living room, unfolding the letters Robert had carried on him even during his attack at the museum. Zoe's coffee was cooling off; she hadn't even started it. She'd aged a little since I'd last seen her, in some way that made her olive skin look weary and her hair dry. But her eyes were narrow and bright, as always, and I remembered that I must be aging in her sight, too. "Where did you get these?" she asked. "A cousin sent them to me."

"A French cousin?" She looked skeptical. "Do you have French roots I don't know about?"

"Not particularly." I hadn't planned this well. "I guess she got them at an antique shop or someplace and thought they would interest me because I like to read history."

She was scanning the first one now, with gentle hands and a keen glance. "Are they all from eighteen seventy-seven through seventy-nine?"

"I don't know. I haven't looked through them thoroughly. I was afraid to because they're so fragile, and what I saw, I couldn't understand much of."

She opened another. "It would take me some time to read them properly, because of the handwriting, but they seem to be letters from a woman to her uncle, and vice versa, as you've already figured out, and some of them are about painting and drawing. Maybe that's why your cousin thought they'd interest you."

"Maybe." I tried not to peer over her shoulder.

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"Let me take one that's in better condition and translate it for you. You're right--that might be fun. But I don't think I can do them all--it's incredibly time-consuming, you know, and I have to get on with my book right away."

"I will pay you generously, to be blunt."

"Oh." She thought this over. "Well, that would be welcome, I have to say. Let me give one or two a try first."

We worked out a fee and I thanked her. "But just do them all," I said. "Please. Send me the translation by regular mail, not electronically. You can send them a couple at a time, as you get to them." I couldn't bring myself to explain that I wanted to receive them as letters, real letters, so I didn't try. "And if you can work without the originals, let's walk to the corner and photocopy them, in case something happens. You can take the copies with you. Do you have time?"

"Ever-careful Marlow," she said. "Nothing will happen, but that's a good idea. Let me drink my coffee first and tell you all about my affaire de coeur."

"Don't you want to hear about mine?"

"Certainly, but there will be nothing to tell."

"That's true," I said, "so you go ahead."

When we parted at the office-supply store, she with the crisp photocopies and I with my letters--Robert's, actually--I went back home and thought about grilling a sandwich, drinking half a bottle of wine, and going to a movie by myself.

I set the letters on my coffee table, then refolded them along their worn lines and put them into the envelope, arranging them so they wouldn't knock against one another, with their fragile edges. I thought about the hands that had touched them, once upon a time, a woman's delicate hands and a man's--his would have been older, of course, if he'd been her uncle. Then Robert's big square hands, tanned and rather worn. Zoe's short, inquisitive ones. And my own.

I went to the living-room window, one of my favorite views: