“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said, and left me to it.

What was I supposed to do with all this rubbish? The journals were worth keeping, certainly. Without them, I might never prove to anyone that my life with him had been as manic as I remembered it. And not only for outsiders- for myself too. I took them and his autobiography, placed them by the door, and continued scavenging.

Underneath a moth-eaten duffel coat I found a large wooden crate, rotted away at the corners. It looked damaged by water and time. A padlock was hanging off it, and a crowbar lay on the floor. The authorities, looking for missing millions, had cracked open this crate and rummaged through it. I looked closer. On the side was some yellowing paperwork written in French, with Dad’s name and, underneath, an address in Australia.

I opened it up.

On the top was a painting. In the dim light, I couldn’t make it out at first, but when I did, I was so shocked I may even have said something like “What the-?”

It was the painting I’d painted in the chicken coop in Thailand. The painting of the disembodied face that had haunted me my whole life. The painting that had been destroyed.

My head was spinning. I looked again. It was definitely my painting. How could this be?

I lifted it up to see what was underneath. There were more paintings of the same face. That was strange. I had painted only one. Then I understood.

They weren’t my paintings. They were my mother’s!

I took a deep breath and thought it out. I remembered Dad’s green notebook, his Paris journal. Dad had bought Astrid paints, brushes, and canvases and she had become obsessed with painting. The words of his journal were etched in my mind. I recalled that he had written: Each painting a rendition of hell- she had many hells & she painted them all. But hell was just a face- and it was just the face she painted. One face. One terrible face. Painted many times.

A moment of terror stretched into a solid minute of terror and kept going. I looked again at the face; it was like a big bruise, purple and splotchy. Then I studied all the paintings carefully. It was undeniable. The lashes on the lower eyelid, curled like fingers; the nose hairs like nerve fibers; its eyes in a trancelike state; the oppressive closeness of its flattened nose; its uncomfortable gaze. It looked as if the face threatened to break out of the painting and actually come into the room. I also had the uncomfortable feeling that I could smell it- its odor poured off the canvas in waves.

My mother and I had painted the same face, that same ghoulish face! What did it mean? Had I seen these paintings in my youth? No. The journal said she had given up painting after my birth, and since Dad and I left Paris just after her death, I definitely hadn’t seen them. So Astrid had seen a face and painted that face. And I had seen the same face and also painted it. I examined the paintings again. With sharp edges and horizontal lines broken up to make its geometrically off-putting head, done in a vile green and thick, wavy lines of black and red and brown, it wasn’t a passive face she’d painted, it was face as function- the function being to scare you.

I turned away from the paintings and tried to work it out. It was totally reasonable to assume that (a) my mother was haunted by the face in the same manner I was or (b) my mother hadn’t seen it floating in the clouds but had actually known the person it belonged to.

Pacing the warehouse, I forced my way through the junk and came across an old broken cabinet. In the bottom drawer I found half a packet of Marlboros and a lighter in the shape of a woman’s torso. I lit a cigarette but was too preoccupied to inhale. I stood there in that place totally immobilized by thought until the cigarette burned my fingers.

My eyes sprang open. I hadn’t realized they’d been closed. An idea had been inserted into my brain. But what an idea! What an idea! Why didn’t I think of it straightaway? I circled the room shouting, “Oh my God, oh my God,” like a contestant on a game show. I examined the paintings again. This had never happened to me- a lightning-bolt moment! It was incredible! “Why assume I’m turning into my father,” I shouted, “when there’s an equal chance I’m turning into my mother?” I stomped my feet to shake up the whole building. The thought was absolutely liberating. What had I been worried about all this time? And even if I was turning into my father, it wouldn’t ever have been the whole of me but only a section or a subsection- maybe a quarter of me would turn into him, another quarter into my mother, one eighth into Terry, or into the face, or into all the other me’s I hadn’t met yet. The existence of these paintings suggested a scope to my being I had not previously imagined. I think you can appreciate my indescribable joy. The period when my father threatened to dominate my personality- the Occupation- was a mirage. It had never been just me and him. I was a goddamn paradise of personalities! I sat down on a couch and closed my eyes and pictured myself. I couldn’t see anything clearly. Wonderful! That’s how it should be! I am a blurry image constantly trying to come into focus, and just when, for an instant, I have myself in perfect clarity, I appear as a figure in my own background, fuzzy as hair on a peach.

I suddenly knew what it meant. My mission was clear: fly to Europe and find my mother’s family. The face was the starting point. This was the first clue. Find the face, I thought, and I’ll find my mother’s family.

In a daze, I grabbed as many of the canvases as I could handle and called a taxi and took them home. I stared at them all night. I felt a mixture of feelings so conflicting in nature I was threatened with being torn apart by them: a deep grief for the loss of my mother, a snug feeling of comfort that we were close in mind, spirit, and psychosis, an abhorrence of and revulsion for the face, a pride that I’d uncovered a secret, and a furious frustration that I didn’t understand the secret I’d uncovered.

Around midnight, the phone rang. I didn’t want to answer it. The journalists wouldn’t leave me alone. The phone stopped ringing and I heaved a sigh of relief. My sigh was short-lived. A minute later the phone started up again. This was going to go on all night. I picked it up.

“Mr. Dean?” a male voice said.

I supposed I’d better get used to that. “Listen,” I said, “I’m not giving interviews, quotes, comments, or sound bites, so why don’t you go hound a gang-raping footballer.”

“I’m not a journalist.”

“Who are you, then?”

“I was wondering if we could meet.”

“And I was wondering who you are.”

“I can’t say. Your phone is probably bugged.”

“Why would my phone be bugged?” I asked, looking suspiciously at the phone. I couldn’t tell whether it was bugged or not.

“Could you be outside Central Railway Station at nine o’clock tomorrow morning?”

“If the phone’s bugged, won’t whoever is listening be there too?”

“You don’t need to worry about that.”

“I’m not. I thought you might be.”

“So will you be there?”

“All right, then. I’ll be there.”

He hung up. I stared at the phone awhile, hoping it might start speaking on its own, explaining to me all the things I didn’t understand. It didn’t.

At nine o’clock the next morning I was at Central Station, waiting for God knows who. I sat on a bench and observed the people who hurried into the station to catch the trains and the people who hurried out of the station to get away from the trains. They seemed to be the same people.

A car honked its horn. I turned to see a black Mercedes with tinted windows. The driver was leaning out of his window, beckoning me with his finger. I didn’t recognize him. When I didn’t move, he stopped with his finger and started beckoning me with his whole hand. I went over. Even standing right up against the car, I couldn’t see who was in the backseat.