Nightwork

'You're a generous man. I approve of that. That's one of the nicest things about wealth. It leads to generosity.' We were entering the grounds of the museum now. 'For example, this,' Fabian said. 'Superb building. Glorious collection, marvelously displayed. What a satisfactory gesture it must have been to sign the check that made it all possible.'

He parked the car and we got out and started walking up toward the severely beautiful building set on the crest of a hill, surrounded by a green park in which huge angular statues were set, the rustling foliage of the trees and bushes all around them making them seem somehow light and almost on the verge of moving themselves.

Inside the museum, which was nearly deserted, I was more puzzled than anything else by the collection. I had never been much of a museum-goer, and what taste I had in art was for traditional painters and sculptors. Here I was confronted

with shapes that existed only in the minds of the artists, with splotches on canvas, distortions of everyday objects and the human form that made very little sense to me. Fabian, on the other hand, went slowly from one work to another, not speaking, his face studious, engrossed. When we finally went out and started toward our car, he sighed deeply, as though recovering from some tremendous effort. 'What a treasure-house,' he said. 'All that energy, that struggle, that reaching out, that demented humor, all collected in one place. How did you like it?'

'I'm afraid I didn't understand most of it.'

He laughed. The last honest man,' he said. 'Well, I see that you and I are going to put in a lot of museum time. You eventually cross a threshold of emotion - mostly just by looking. But it's like almost any valuable accomplishment - it has to be learned.'

'Is it worth it?' I knew I sounded like a Philistine, but I resented his assumption that it was my duty to be taught and his to teach. After all, if it hadn't been for my money, he wouldn't have been on the coast of the Mediterranean that morning, but back in St Moritz, scrambling at the bridge table and the backgammon board for enough money to pay his hotel bill.

To me it's worth it,' be said. He put his hand on my arm gently. 'Don't underestimate the joys of the spirit, Douglas. Man does not live by caviar alone.'

* * *

We stopped at a cafe on the side of the square of St-Paul-de-Vence and sat at a table outside and had a bottle of white wine and watched some old men playing boules under the trees in the square, moving in and out of sunlight, their voices echoing hoarsely off the old, rust-colored wall behind them that had been part of the fortifications of the town in the Middle Ages. We sipped the cold wine slowly, rejoicing in idleness, in no hurry to go anywhere or do anything, watching a game whose outcome would bring no profit or pain to anyone.

'Do not dilute the pleasure,' I said. 'Do you remember who said that?'

Fabian laughed. 'I do indeed.' Then, after a moment, 'On that subject - let me ask you a question. What is your conception of money?'

I shrugged. 'I guess I never really thought about it. I don't think I have a conception. That's peculiar, isn't it?'

'A little,' Fabian said.

'If I asked you the same question, what would your answer be?'

'A conception of money,' Fabian said, 'doesn't exist in a pure state. I mean you have to know what you think of the world in general before you can hope to have a clear notion about money. For example, your view of the world, from what you've told me, changed in one day. Am I right?'

The day in the doctor's office,' I said. 'Yes.' 'Wouldn't you say that before that day you had one conception of what money meant to you and after it another?'

Yes.'