The Swan Thieves

The Swan Thieves Page 4

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

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 competition, 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 untitled 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 identity 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 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 space 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 scrapers; 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 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.