A Nearly Perfect Copy (16 page)

“So where in Spain are you from?” Klinman asked in Spanish.

“How many languages do you speak?” Gabriel responded in Spanish,
taken aback. The scotch was warming in his stomach and the room had taken on sepia tones, reflecting off the mirrors and ormolu.

Klinman laughed. He reverted to French. “My Spanish is terrible, rusty. But I am good at two things.” He let his head fall back, searching the ceiling for words and then staring again at Gabriel. “No, three. I am good at communicating. Languages,
puf
, they just make sense to me. I am good at judging character. And I know art. My grandfather was a portrait painter to the aristocracy before they took his life. I inherited his eye, though not his talent. You, it seems, have inherited both.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I hoped that by now I would be better.”

“Paris.” Klinman pronounced the city the English way. “What is Paris? And now they say it’s all about Berlin. Tomorrow it’ll be about somewhere else. At some point it will be someone else’s turn, besides Europe. You, Monsieur Connois, have a choice.”

Klinman stopped speaking. He removed a cigarette from a silver holder and offered it to Gabriel, who shook his head. With affected slowness, he removed a lighter from his breast pocket. It looked heavy, in the shape of a lion whose mouth emitted fire. Its eyes were stones. Emeralds? Topaz? Glass? Klinman took another sip of his drink and then a long drag on the cigarette.

“I have high blood pressure,” he said. “I allow myself two a day. You don’t smoke?”

Gabriel shrugged. Klinman nodded his head. “Hmmm,” he said, as though this revealed something important about Gabriel.

There was a long pause. “Your choice, señor, is the following: make art, or make money. Maybe you will make money with art. Not likely. Maybe you will make art with money. More likely. It’s up to you.”

“I don’t understand.” Gabriel wasn’t sure if he wasn’t following the thread or if the man was not making sense.

“You are dating Colette. She likes fancy restaurants. And maybe you’ll fall in love with her, and will want to make French babies. French babies wear couture, have you not noticed? They eat organic vegetables. Not inexpensive.” Klinman opened his wallet and threw a few euros down on the table. “Come, I have something to show you.”

Gabriel had a brief moment of fear that Klinman was going to take him somewhere and expose himself. That had happened to him once, with a gallery owner, right after he got to Paris. The man actually said, “Would you like to see my etchings?” And Gabriel had followed him into
the back room, where the man turned around, fly open, half-erect cock waving. But Klinman’s interest seemed solely artistic and avuncular.

They wove through the Marais, cutting across the Rue Bourgeois. The shops here were chic; their front bay windows abutted the tiny sidewalk, displaying mannequins that suggested figures rather than imitated them. Whimsical children’s furniture, a store devoted only to men’s cravats, heavy modern jewelry. Above the stores were the minuscule apartments of the old quarter, slanted floors and hallway bathrooms. Some were still occupied by elderly Jews who had returned after the war. The smaller side streets sold kosher food, hid yeshivas. From some second-story windows emanated Sephardic music, plaintive Moroccan wailing. Some of the other apartments held squatters: artists more interested in the bohemian lifestyle than in art. If they were real artists, they would live outside the city, as Gabriel did, in a rented room, with a separate studio. And the Marais was also the new place for wealthy Americans (“new money,” Édouard called it, using the English words).

They turned left onto a small side street and were in the garment district. The sidewalks were wider here, but no less crowded. Though the racks of clothing seemed to part for Klinman, they closed back up immediately, so that to follow him Gabriel kept having to dodge mobile wardrobes and cudgels of cloth.

Finally, Klinman ducked into a large courtyard. Flagstones surrounded a fountain in the middle, where the wan light drifted down from the cloudy sky. The fountain had obviously been functional rather than decorative at one time. The spray rose and then dripped down a symmetrical spindle with a wide base.

“This is my office. Paris office,” Klinman said, waving at the
portière
. He led them straight across the courtyard and pulled a set of antique-looking keys from his pocket. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, hurrying to turn off an alarm on the far wall. When he flipped the lights, they were thrown back in time.

The room looked as if it were transplanted from a nineteenth-century men’s club. The furniture was all burgundy leather, redolent of cigar smoke. A low mahogany table had been remade to double as a lightbox. Heavy brocade curtains suggested windows, but no light was in evidence.

“Have a seat,” Klinman said. “Put on these gloves.”

Gabriel felt a flutter of nervous excitement. Whatever the man was
about to show him would be important. The setting demanded some sort of unveiling. When Klinman left the room and all was silent, Gabriel could hear the hum of dehumidifiers.

Klinman returned with a large portfolio. He set it on a desk and unzipped it. As soon as he stepped forward, holding the paper with his gloved fingertips, Gabriel knew what he was looking at.

It was a small square of paper, probably not more than thirty centimeters, and it held three drawings. The first was a barely rendered face. The lines were exact, if they didn’t quite connect. A young man’s face, an aquiline nose, an erect neck, and a sensitive gaze. Here was youth, but a youth that was concerned: Wounded by the past? Worried about the future? Melancholic? Pensive? Beneath this was a more detailed study. A hand gloved in heavy leather. Gabriel was sure it had some sort of name. A falconry glove? But no, then it would extend up the forearm, and this glove ended at the disembodied wrist. It held its mate, which was limp, sagging, though it maintained the memory of the form of the fingers that had just been inside it. The third sketch was a ruffled, high-collared Renaissance shirt, just a neck. It was a play of shadow, the ruffles suggested by shading rather than line.

It was obviously a study for Titian’s
Man with a Glove
; the final canvas hung in the Louvre and Gabriel had seen it a dozen times. A sketch for a work this important was like looking into the artist’s atelier, or even into his brain. Here was how he worked out his precise lines, the faces that registered age, pain, pleasure. Here was the nascent expressive hand so naturally curved and lifelike—an entire portrait boiled down to the placement of one finger, one empty leather finger.

Carefully, Klinman turned the drawing over. On the back was the ornate mark of its original dealer, which Gabriel didn’t recognize. Also, through the light, Gabriel could see the embossed watermark—the paper had been handmade and signed by its maker. These two marks served to authenticate the drawing. This was a real Titian. The master had drawn this himself.

“Stunning, isn’t it?” Klinman asked. “People think of dealers as tooth pullers, but we are just as moved by beauty as the next person. We unite beauty with others who appreciate it.”

Cold air blew on Gabriel’s neck. He felt feverish, and his back was clammy.

Klinman showed him a succession of significant studies by little-known
Renaissance painters, rococo practitioners, and Mannerists. He had an impressive collection. Some came in their original frames. All the while he talked to Gabriel about his profession.

“This drawing I found in a
marché aux puces
. It does happen sometimes. I was looking for something else entirely when I came across this Piranesi. The seller had no idea what it was. He had dated it correctly, but he missed the classic Piranesi hand, the subject matter that is unmistakably his piazzas.”

The afternoon wore on. Gabriel put his head close to each of the drawings, so close he could smell the peaty mold and the fragrant pulp. The smell reminded him of the woodshed where he had painted the Connois all those summers ago, the same dense, rotting earth. He looked at the lines, the hesitations, the fluidities, the places the master pressed down harder and where the line was fainter, fatter, thinner, darker, grayer.

Then Klinman pulled out a sheet of blank paper. It was old; not quite as old as the others, but meaty, like paper produced with care.

“Care to venture a guess as to who this is?”

Gabriel felt confused, intoxicated, like he’d been breathing in turpentine for days. He looked up at Klinman.

“Come on. You can guess. You’ve gotten every artist right all afternoon, even Chassériau imitating Ingres. You can identify this artist. Try.”

Gabriel motioned for Klinman to put the page on the light table. It was definitely blank. Klinman was playing some kind of joke on him. The paper had some glue on the edges; it had been pasted into a book, but it had never been drawn on. Faintly, in the top left corner, Gabriel saw the traces of a pencil: £50. He looked up. “Fifty pounds? The paper belonged to someone famous?”

Klinman chuckled, though he did it kindly so that it wasn’t exactly at Gabriel’s expense. “No, no,” he said. “That’s how much the paper was worth. Before I discovered it was a Connois sketch.”

Realization dawned on Gabriel like extremities thawing after coming inside from the cold. “A Connois? You want me to draw on this?”

“It is already drawn.” Klinman stared at him, his face close to Gabriel’s. “Do you not see the Spanish marketplace?”

Gabriel nodded, though he didn’t exactly see it. Klinman continued, “It looks perhaps like a sketch for
Víspera de Fiesta
, but not exactly like
it. You can see here—” Klinman gestured at a spot on the page that was no different than any other. “Instead of the gypsy selling the fruit, there is a small boy. And there are touches of his other paintings; the clouds from
La Baia
, this rooster.”

The paper was beautiful: handmade, pulpy. Gabriel could see how it would absorb the ink and then reject it, making an inimitable smooth line. You couldn’t find paper like this just anywhere. It was a work of art in its own right. Drawing on such a piece would be like opening a five-hundred-euro bottle of wine, or staying at the Ritz—a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Suddenly, Gabriel felt such a strong desire to draw on the paper that he didn’t recognize himself. He felt his hands itching to grab the paper off the light table, to run away with it and make it his. The desire was almost sexual, the raw hunger of it.

Klinman leaned back. “You understand me now?”

Gabriel licked his lips, chapped from the cold air. “I think so, yes.”

“You can restore the drawing, then? Return it to its intended state?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. He was thirsty; he wished Klinman had offered him a drink, though no real art lover would let liquid anywhere near these treasures.

“Well, then, we will make each other very happy, I suppose.” Klinman lifted the paper by its corner. Gabriel’s mind was already spinning ideas. Klinman put the page inside a cardboard portfolio, then put that in turn into a faux-leather briefcase. “Should be safe like that,” he said. “You take your time.”

The
métro
could not come fast enough. Gabriel gripped the briefcase in both hands, holding it in front of him like a schoolboy. He longed to take the paper out and examine it, even here in the station, but he knew that would invite disaster. He felt like he’d won an award, like he’d been singled out as special. For the past decade nothing—no woman, no grant, no group show—had produced anything other than anemic contentment. But now he felt like he had arriving in France years ago with the Connois tucked in his suitcase, his acceptance letter in his shoulder bag, the same exhilaration, the same sense of optimism, of possibility that had eluded him for the past few years as his work failed to impress his professors, colleagues, and gallerists. He’d let them toss him aside like potato peelings, but no longer. He would show them what he could do, what they all overlooked.

On a rainy Friday, a week before she gave birth to Moira, Elm took Ronan to the Morgan Library & Museum. “Is that the house one?” he asked. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the Frick or the Morgan.

They rode in the first car of the 6 train, so that Ronan could pretend he was driving it. “If we’re going to Thirty-sixth Street,” Elm said, “where do we get off the train?”

“Thirty-third,” he said, as though anyone on the planet could answer such a simple question. He was turning an imaginary steering wheel, yelling out the stops when they slowed. The subway car found it cute; people were laughing behind her as she held his belt buckle while he tried to peer out the window. Elm couldn’t lift him anymore.

A black man in a doorman’s uniform came over and, without asking, picked Ronan up so he could see out. Elm was startled—a sudden rush of adrenaline made her extend her arm as though she might snatch him back—but the man was totally benign, just trying to help, and Ronan squealed with delight.

After Forty-second Street Ronan said, “We get off here,” to the man, and he set him down.

Elm took Ronan’s hand in the crowded station as they moved slowly up the stairs. The baby was heavy, resting on her pelvis, and picking up her legs was difficult. She had woken up that morning with swollen ankles. The only shoes that fit were her sneakers.

Ronan’s hand was slightly sticky while hers was sweaty. They walked down Thirty-fifth Street. Usually she let him walk on his own,
but today he held her hand the entire way. He walked slightly behind her, as though afraid she’d fall down.

In the museum, she found him a children’s guide to the exhibition “From Bruegel to Rubens: Netherlandish and Flemish Drawings,” and gave him the first item to find within the intricate drawings, a dog with a curly tail. He stood far back so he could see them. Elm had come to study the exhibit, a sort of continuing education session, which she had left until the last minute, but instead she watched Ronan taking his task so seriously. She could read the triumph on his face when he found the dog, rushing back to tell her, almost running into a middle-aged Italian couple. “I got it!” he screamed, and when Elm put her finger to her lips he whispered it again.