Alive in Shape and Color Page 4

  I went. Why not? The alternative was passage home, to a job I was sure was already gone. I was absent without leave. So I took the sleeper train, to a hot and tawny landscape. A pony and trap took me into the hills. Renoir’s place was a pleasant spread. A bunch of manicured acres, and a low stone house. He had been successful for many years. No kind of a starving artist. Not anymore.

  There was no one home, except a young man who said he was a good friend of Renoir’s. He said his name was Lucien Mignon. He said he lived there. He said he was a fellow artist. He said Renoir’s kids had been and gone, and Renoir’s wife was in Nice, staying with a friend.

  He spoke English, so I made sure he would pass on all kinds of sincere condolences to the appropriate parties. From Renoir’s admirers in New York. Of which there were many. Who would all like to know, for reasons I made sound purely academic and even sentimental, exactly how many more paintings were left in the studio.

  I figured Mignon would answer, being an artist, and therefore having a keen eye for a buck, but he didn’t answer. Not directly. Instead, he told me about his own life. He was a painter, at first an admirer of Renoir, then a friend, then a constant companion. Like a younger brother. He had lived in the house for ten years. He felt despite the difference in their ages, he and Renoir had formed a very deep bond. A true connection.

  It sounded weird to me. Like why people get sent to Bellevue. Then it got worse. He showed me his work. It was just like Renoir’s. Almost exactly copied, in style and manner and subject. All of it was unsigned too, as if to preserve the illusion it might be the master’s own product. It was a very odd and slavish homage.

  The studio was a big, tall, square room. It was cool and light. Some of Renoir’s work was hung on the wall, and some of Mignon’s was hung beside it. It was hard to tell the difference. Below the pieces on display, there were indeed canvases stacked six deep against the walls. Mignon said Renoir’s kids had set them aside. As their inheritance. They were not to be looked at and not to be touched. Because they were all very good.

  He said it in a way that suggested somehow he had helped make them all very good.

  I asked him if he knew of any other canvases as yet unspoken for. Anywhere in France. In answer he pointed across the room. Against another wall was a very small number of items the kids had rejected. Easy to see why. They were all sketches or experiments or otherwise unfinished. One was nothing more than a wavy green stripe running left to right across a bare canvas. Maybe a landscape, started and immediately abandoned. Mignon told me Renoir didn’t really like working out of doors. He liked being inside, with his models. Pink and round. Village girls, mostly. Apparently one of them had become Mrs. Renoir.

  One of the rejected canvases had the lower half of a landscape on it. A couple dozen green brushstrokes, nicely done, suggestive, but a little tentative and half-hearted. There was no sky. Another abandoned start. A canvas laid aside. But a canvas later grabbed up for another purpose. Where the sky should have been was a still life of pink flowers in a green glass vase. It was in the top left of the frame, painted sideways onto the unfinished landscape, not more than about eight inches by ten. The flowers were roses and anemones. The pink colors were Renoir’s trademark. Mignon and I agreed no one did pink better than Renoir. The vase was a cheap thing, bought for a few sous at the market, or made at home by pouring six inches of boiling water into an empty wine bottle, and then tapping it with a hammer.

  It was a beautiful little fragment. It looked done with joy. Mignon told me there was a nice story behind it. One summer day Mrs. Renoir had gone out in the garden to pick a bouquet. She had filled the vase with water from the pump, and arranged the stems artfully, and carried it into the house through the studio door, which was the easiest way. Her husband had seen it and was seized with desire to paint it. Literally seized, Mignon said. Such was the artistic temperament. Renoir had stopped what he was doing and grabbed the nearest available canvas, which happened to be the unfinished landscape, and he had stood it vertically on his easel and painted the flowers in the blank space where the sky should have been. He said he couldn’t resist their wild disarray. His wife, who had spent more than ten minutes on the arrangement, smiled and said nothing.

  Naturally I proposed a deal.

  I said if I could take the tiny still life for myself, purely as a personal token and souvenir, then I would buy twenty of Mignon’s works to sell in New York. I offered him a hundred thousand dollars of Porterfield’s money.

  Naturally Mignon said yes.

  One more thing, I said. He had to help me cut the flowers out of the larger canvas and tack the fragment to stretchers of its own. Like a miniature original.

  He said he would.

  One more thing, I said. He had to paint Renoir’s signature on it. Purely for my own satisfaction.

  He hesitated.

  I said he knew Renoir had painted it. He knew that for sure. He had watched it happen. So where was the deception?

  He agreed fast enough to make me optimistic about my future.

  We took the half-landscape, half-flowers canvas off its stretchers, and we cut the relevant eight-by-ten rectangle out of it, plus enough wraparound margin to fix it to a frame of its own, which Mignon assembled from wood and nails lying around. We put it all together, and then he squeezed a dot of paint from a tube—dark brown, not black—and he took a fine camel-hair brush and painted Renoir’s name in the bottom right corner. Just Renoir, with a stylized first capital, and then flowing lowercase letters after it, very French, and very identical to the dozens of examples of the real thing I could see all around.

  Then I chose twenty of his own canvases. Naturally I picked the most impressive and Renoir-like. I wrote him a check—one hundred thousand and 00/100—and we wrapped the twenty-one packages in paper, and we loaded them into the pony cart, which had waited for me, per my instructions and Porterfield’s generous tip. I drove off with a wave.

  I never saw Mignon again. But we stayed in business together, in a manner of speaking, for three more years.

  I took a room in Cannes, in a fine seafront hotel. Bellboys brought up my packages. I went out and found an art store and bought a tube of dark brown oil and a fine camel-hair brush. I propped my little still life on the dresser and copied Renoir’s signature, twenty separate times, in the bottom right corners of Mignon’s work. Then I went down to the lobby and cabled Porterfield: Bought three superb Renoirs for a hundred thousand. Returning directly.

  I was home seven days later. First stop was a framer’s for my still life, which I then propped on my mantelpiece, and second stop was Porterfield’s mansion on Fifth, with three of Mignon’s finest.

  Which was where the seed of guilt was planted. Porterfield was so fucking happy. So fucking delighted. He had his Renoirs. He beamed and smiled like a kid on Christmas morning. They were fabulous, he said. They were a steal. Thirty-three grand apiece. He even gave me a bonus.

  I got over it pretty fast. I had to. I had seventeen more Renoirs to sell, which I did, leaking them out slowly over a three-year span, to preserve their value. I was like the dealers I had met in Paris. I didn’t want a glut. With the money I got I moved uptown. I never lived with Angelo again. I met a guy who said RCA stock was the thing to buy, so I did, but I got taken for a ride. I lost most everything. Not that I could complain. The biter bit, and so on. Sauce for the fucking goose. My world shrunk down to a solitary life in the uncaring city, buoyed up by the glow of my roses and anemones above the fireplace. I imagined the same feeling inside Porterfield’s place, like two pins in a map. Twin centers of happiness and delight. He with his Renoirs, and me with mine.

  Then the heart attack, and the guilt. The sweet dumb fuck. The big smile on his face. I didn’t write a letter. How could I explain? Instead, I took my Renoir off the wall, and wrapped it in paper, and walked it up Fifth, and through the bronze Italian gates, to the door. Porterfield wasn’t home. Which was Okay. I gave the package to his flunky and said I wanted
his boss to have it, because I knew he liked Renoir. Then I walked away, back to my place, where I continue to sit, just waiting for the second episode. My wall looks bare, but maybe better for it.

  NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER is the author of six novels, The Soloist, Veronica, A Trip to the Stars, Franklin Flyer, The Bestiary, and Tiger Rag; nine books of poetry, most recently, On Jupiter Place and Crossing the Equator: New and Selected Poems 1972–2004; a nonfiction book, Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City; and The True Adventures of Nicolò Zen, a novel for children. His books have been widely translated and published abroad. He lives in New York City.

  Girl with a Fan by Paul Gauguin

  GIRL WITH A FAN

  BY NICHOLAS CHRISTOPHER

  1

  On the fifth of June, 1944, a young man stepped off the 9:13 train from Lyon, squinting into the morning light. Tall and slender, he had an asymmetrical face: the right eye higher than the left, the left cheek planed more sharply than the right. He was wearing a brown suit, black shirt, yellow tie, and brown fedora. His suit was rumpled, his boots scuffed. He was carrying a leather briefcase with a brass lock. His pants cuffs were faintly speckled with yellow paint.

  He cast a long shadow as he walked down the platform. Halfway to the station, two men in leather coats came up from behind and gripped his arms. One of them pressed a pistol into his side, the other grabbed his briefcase. They veered away from the station, guiding him roughly down an alley to a waiting car. A man in dark glasses was behind the wheel. He was bald, with an eagle tattooed at the base of his skull.

  After frisking the young man and taking his wallet, the two men pushed him into the rear seat, pressed between them. The driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror and said, “Hubert Ditmar, welcome to Arles.”

  The man on his right rifled his wallet. He removed eleven francs, a photograph of a blond woman in a red coat, and three calling cards:

  LOUIS VINCENT

  STOCKBROKER

  CLERY & FENNIEL

  15 RUE DE MARIBEL

  BRUSSELS, BELGIUM 63 21T

  Also a Belgian identity card in that name which listed his eyes as brown, hair black, height five ten, date of birth November 30, 1908, in Liège.

  His actual date of birth was November 29, 1908, in Orléans, and his real name was neither Hubert Ditmar nor Louis Vincent.

  2

  Since beginning his assignment four months earlier, Hubert Ditmar had feared this day would come. He had planned to be in Arles until evening, returning to Lyon on the 6:10 express. He had made these day trips before—to Avignon, Rouen, Limoges, Perpignan—the shorter the stay, the better. His superiors praised him for his resourcefulness and grit, but he feared that he was overexposed, and that this trip, slated to be his last, might require him to summon a different kind of courage.

  They drove past wide cornfields and meadows carpeted with lavender, through a beech forest, and then more cornfields. Hubert kept his eyes fixed on the road. The men ordered him to empty his pockets. Fountain pen, latch key, briefcase key, penknife, pipe, tobacco pouch, train ticket. They also took his topaz ring and his amber wristwatch, the back of which was engraved L.C.V.

  The man on his right unlocked the briefcase and sifted through the contents. There was a blank sketch pad and a set of twelve colored pencils in a leather case. A railroad map of France. And two brown folders, one containing stock listings and market charts, the other two typewritten pages in a language the man had never seen before.

  “What is this?”

  “A financial report,” Hubert said.

  “The language.”

  “Catalan.”

  “A financial report without numbers?”

  “The numbers are spelled out.”

  The man on Hubert’s left threw an elbow into his side, expertly, so it knocked the wind out of him but didn’t crack a rib.

  The driver glanced back at the pages. “It’s code,” he said.

  “Whatever it is, you will translate it for us,” the man on the left said.

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t know the language,” Hubert said, bracing himself for another blow.

  It came from his right and this time cracked a rib.

  And he screamed.

  3

  When they arrived at 2 Place Lamartine, a yellow two-story house, a green-and-yellow parrot flew off the roof into the forest. The guard at the entrance, an SS corporal, snapped to attention as the men stepped out of the car. Hubert was doubled over in pain. The men dragged him to the door. Hubert glanced up at a green patch of sky reflected in a window before losing consciousness.

  He came to a half hour later when someone slapped him twice. He was seated, his hands and feet bound to a wooden chair. A ring of flood lamps were directed at him, beyond which he could see nothing. The room was dank, its low ceiling crisscrossed by pipes. A basement. His jacket and shoes were gone, his shirt torn open, and his tie was noosed around his neck.

  A slow, smooth voice addressed him from the darkness.

  “We won’t waste time on the fact your name is not Louis Vincent.”

  “That is my name.”

  “And you traveled here from Lyon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before that?”

  “Paris.”

  “We’ve already allowed you one lie. You don’t get a second. Again: before Lyon?”

  Hubert hesitated. “Geneva.”

  “You traveled across the Swiss border to Lyon in a hired car, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was your business in Geneva?”

  “Banking. At the Credit Montray.”

  “That is another lie.”

  Before he could respond, Hubert heard a shuffle behind him, followed by someone pulling the tie tight around his throat. So tight he thought he would pass out again. Just as suddenly, he was released, gasping for air.

  “In Switzerland you visited Signor Ugo Bartello, correct?”

  Hubert nodded

  “What is your business with him?”

  “His investments.”

  “Stocks, bonds? Don’t lie.”

  “No.”

  “What investments, then?”

  Hubert caught a whiff of musk—the cologne the man who choked him was wearing.

  “You’ll tell us eventually. Spare yourself.”

  “Art,” Hubert said.

  “Bartello is a collector?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why is he consulting you, a stockbroker?”

  “Because I know art. I purchase for him.”

  “How do you know art?”

  “I studied to paint.”

  “But you became a stockbroker.”

  “I was not good enough as a painter.”

  “You are good enough to forge.”

  “What?”

  Again his tie was pulled tight. He felt the blood trapped, pounding, in his head. His lungs contracting. Ten, twenty seconds ticked by. He thought his heart would burst. He was released again. The cologne scent was stronger. The room was spinning.

  “You’re a forger. You copy the paintings Bartello steals from the Reich. Is that not true?”

  Hubert couldn’t catch his breath. “Yes.”

  “Bartello’s thieves steal them and replace them with your forgeries. By decree, all the artwork in France is now property of the Reich. We’ve been storing it in warehouses before transporting it to Germany. By 1946 we will have secured every article the Reich Ministry has requested, including the paintings Bartello has stolen. He is an Allied pimp.” He paused. “We know why you are in Arles, Monsieur Ditmar.”

  Hubert thought he was going to throw up. The restraints were cutting into his wrists and ankles. His cracked rib felt like a knife in his side.

  “Most of the Van Goghs are already in Berlin,” the voice continued. “But, just as Bartello broke into our warehouses, we penetrated his network of scouts and couriers, of whom you are one. We fed him th
e false information that certain lost paintings of Gauguin’s were unearthed and awaiting shipment at the Marchand Gallery. There are no Gauguins, and the Marchand Gallery is closed. He sent you to study the paintings first-hand, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “As a forger and a thief, you will be hanged. Unless . . .”

  Hubert waited.

  “We don’t care about you. It’s Bartello we want. When the Italian government fell, he had enough connections to escape. Now we cannot touch him because he is in Switzerland with the paintings, whereabouts unknown. He keeps his thieves two steps removed from him. They don’t even know who they’re stealing for, only that he pays them plenty. He must pay you even more. You are one of the few who has gotten near him, personally. Who can give us his location. If you do—when you do—along with the names of your comrades and a list of the paintings you’ve forged, you will be imprisoned but not hung.”

  If Hubert could have smiled, he would have. “It’s the list of paintings you really want,” he said, against his better judgment. “You don’t know which ones are forgeries.”

  “Of course we do,” the voice said sharply. “We want your confirmation.”

  They don’t know because I am a better painter than they expected, Hubert thought. But now he held his tongue.

  “You will confirm the forgeries in your confession. When they are no longer required as evidence, they will be burned. Do you understand?”

  He felt the tie tighten slightly around his throat.

  “Yes.”

  The tie went slack and the cologne scent disappeared. A man walked toward him out of the lights. Hubert could not see the man’s upper body, just his black pants and shoes and the hypodermic in his hand.

  “This will help you tell the truth,” the man said. A different voice. He pulled Hubert’s shirt over his left shoulder and plunged the needle into his arm.