Circles of Confusion (31 page)

"I can't say for certain. He got better at removing the paint but leaving on the old ground. Then he'd coax the old cracks to come up through the new paint." Dante turned his face to her, the light hollowing out his cheekbones and eye sockets. "Despite what that guy from Avery's says, I still don't think this painting is a forgery. But even though it seems real, it still might be a fake."

"Aren't they the same?"

"A forgery is something done on purpose—for example, if your friend is right and this was painted to look like a Vermeer, doctored to make it look old, and then palmed off as the real thing. A fake, on the other hand, is something that didn't begin life as an imitation Vermeer, but somehow became that.

"Every couple of years, an 'unknown masterpiece' pops up on the art markets. It's either snatched up by some eager collector, or an art expert like that guy at Avery's denounces it. The auction house withdraws it and makes a lot of noise about how sorry it is. Then a year or two later, the same painting resurfaces, usually in another part of the United States, sometimes in another country altogether."

"Isn't that illegal? Selling something that has already been proven false?"

Dante shook his head. "Fakes and even forgeries, in and of themselves, aren't illegal. You can copy all the old masterpieces you want, age them artificially so they look old, even sign a famous painter's name to them. You can even tell your friends that they are the real thing. All that is legal. The only thing that isn't is to sell them as the real thing. So prudent forgers or people who own forgeries don't sell them on the open market. There are enough rich and gullible collectors who are willing to buy gray-market art, especially if they think they're getting a bargain."

He pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves. "I'm going to remove some of the surface dirt and then clean up her jacket. It will give us an idea of the color in the light areas and the gorgeous depth of the blacks." He picked up the stoppered glass bottle filled with red- tinged fluid.

"What's that?"

"It's a very diluted synthetic solvent mixed with a little turpentine. It will take off the dirt and any old retouches, and then get us down to the varnish."

By rolling a piece of cotton onto an orange stick, Dante created what looked like an outsize Q-Tip. He dipped it into the solvent, then tapped off the excess. With the utmost delicacy, he used his thumb and forefinger to roll the swab gently over the spotted fur that trimmed the woman's jacket. He worked for about ten minutes, changing swabs twice, before breaking the silence.

"What if I'm wrong and that Avery's guy is right? If this painting turned out to be a forgery, how would you feel? Would you like it less?"

"The first thing I thought when I found it was how beautiful it was."

"And would that beauty be gone if you found out that someone painted it fifty years ago instead of three hundred and fifty? It would still be the same painting."

"But somehow it wouldn't be same," Claire answered slowly. "It wouldn't be a painting Vermeer had created of someone he loved. It would be completely different, a deception by someone who only wanted to make money."

"Vermeer probably painted to make a living, too, even if he wasn't successful. And if the painting itself hasn't changed, isn't it still beautiful? Even if it's not a Vermeer?''

It was hard for Claire to explain what she felt. "In the past week I've learned a lot about Vermeer—mostly thanks to you—and that has made this even more beautiful than when I first saw it. When I hold it in my hands, I think, three hundred and fifty years ago Vermeer was doing the very same thing. But if it's not a Vermeer, then there's no link to his past."

Claire had been watching Dante's rapt face and not what he was doing. When she dropped her gaze to his work, she saw that the dozens of utterly delicate passes were beginning to have an effect. The rich colors and cut of the woman's costume were emerging. Claire could almost feel the plush black-spotted white fur between her fingers.

He created another swab and began to roll it delicately over the woman's face. Her skin grew milkier, her large eyes a brighter blue.

"Take a look at her mouth." Dante handed her the headpiece and she slipped it on. "What do you see on either side?"

Without magnification, the mind's eye filled in what was missing or worn, saw the loveliness of the young woman's expression without noting the tiny patch of missing paint on her cheek. Magnified, the painting was an altogether different creature, and far more fragile. At first all Claire saw was rivulets of cracks running through tiny lozenges of paint. Then she began to see the image again. "They look like... little dots of pink paint."

"Don't they make her mouth look juicy? Whoever painted this certainly knew what he was doing." Dante put his homemade Q-Tip down and picked up the painting. "Maybe I'm just biased, but it seems like something Vermeer would do. He was obsessed with light, and that includes his approach to painting highlights."

"Circles of confusion," Claire said.

"That's right." He smiled at her, clearly pleased that she had again remembered something he had said. "Now there's one more test we can do to see if this might be a Vermeer." He picked up the painting and carried it back to the room that held the X-ray machine, with Claire following.

"See if you can find where they keep the X-ray film." She finally located it in a flat storage case behind the shield that would protect the X-ray tech. "Now put it down on the exam table." Dante turned the painting upside down and carefully lowered it into place until it lay directly on the film. He positioned the X-ray machine a few inches above the painting, then took Claire's elbow and pulled her behind the shield. When he pressed the button, the warning buzzer made Claire jump, and he slid his hand up and down her arm reassuringly.

"How did you know what to do?" Claire asked.

"Graduate students specialize in learning things that will never be useful in real life. I actually learned how to X-ray paintings at school."

It took only a minute for Dante to run the film through the automatic developer. The X-ray image looked familiar and strange at the same time, the same painting rendered with a new palette that reflected thickness rather than color. Dante showed her how the film registered varying shades of gray as the paint decreased in thickness and tapered off into shadows. Claire's eyes began to pick out the differences between what she could see on the surface of the painting and the different truth the X ray revealed.

"There are some paint losses here," Dante said, pointing at a dark shadow revealed just beneath the woman's hands. "And these light gray spots in the highlights of her hair and on the brass bowl show where he laid the paint down thick." He pointed at the wall behind the woman's shoulders, the wall that had previously been bare. "What do you see there!"

"It looks like the corner of a painting. A painting within a painting." Claire brought her face closer to the X ray. If she squinted, she could just make out the outlines of a plump leg and a fallen arrow. "But I'm not sure what it is. Maybe a fat little leg and an arrow?"

She started when Dante let out a jubilant shout. "I know what it is. That's got to be Cupid! This really could be a Vermeer! He always made changes to the under layers, and it would be just like him to paint out something he thought was too obvious."

"Like Cupid?" Claire asked.

"Like Cupid. It would spell out that the woman was in love, that she was holding a letter from her lover, and probably Vermeer decided he didn't want his audience to know even that much." Dante turned his attention to the bottom edge of the X ray, which was almost translucent. "You know what the other thing I notice is? This looks like a double thickness of canvas here. I think part of this painting has been folded up."

He had already picked up the painting again, and now he ran his thumb over the frame. "After looking at that X ray, I'm guessing this frame is old, but probably not original." He turned it over. Affixed to the covered back of the painting was a single rusted ring, about an inch wide. The back itself was pale gray, worn rough in places, smooth in others, the edges dark and grimy from years of being handled. He took the painting back to the tools lined up on the receptionist's desk, picked up a penknife, and set to work. Finally, with a little pop, the bottom edge of the frame came loose, accompanied by a puff of dust.

A piece of paper fluttered to the ground from inside the frame, and Claire bent over to pick it up. It was about two inches tall and three inches long, as soft as cotton, imprinted with the face of a stem-looking man with a long nose and a hat in a style no one had worn for centuries. Her heart began to race.

"Look, Dante. I think this is money. Old money."

Dante answered absently as he took the painting from its frame and laid it on one of the sheets of white paper. "People used to use the space between the stretcher and the canvas to hide things. Love letters, keys, rings. And money." His white-gloved fingers gently exposed the bottom edge of the painting, which, Claire saw, had indeed been doubled back. The newly revealed piece didn't show anything exciting, though. It was simply the bottom edge of the carpet-covered table.

"Someone must have decided to use this frame, but the painting didn't quite fit. I'm not going to unfold this all the way. If I do it will crack like crazy. I just want to look at it for a second." He slipped on the magnifying headpiece.

"What are you looking for?"

"A signature. Not that Vermeer always signed a work. There are a few pieces we are nearly a hundred percent certain are his, yet they're not signed."

"But if—" Claire started to say, but Dante held up his hand.

He was silent for a long time, then he slipped off the headpiece and handed it to Claire, his fingers trembling as they brushed against her hand.

"What do you see there? Just at the edge of the table."

And then Claire saw what had caused Dante's fingers to tremble. A monogram, elaborate curlicues that formed two letters nearly lost in the painted shadows.

"It looks like an N and an M. What would that mean?"

There was a pause before he answered her. "Nicolaes Maes."

All the breath left Claire's body. "So it's not a Vermeer, then?"

Dante didn't answer, just took the magnifier back from her and slipped it on.

"Who's Nicolaes Maes?"

"He painted at the same time as Vermeer. And they both did a lot of genre painting. And for a long time, his paintings were very popular. Two hundred years ago, a Maes was far more valuable than Vermeer. Same with Terborch or Metsu. But tastes change. Now people think only of Vermeer, and Maes is forgotten."

He dipped the Q-Tip in the cleaning solution again, only this time he ran it gently over the painted flowers made of tufts of carpet. Right over the spot where Nicolaes Maes's monogram had been painted. Claire could pick it out now without the magnifier. But the N was already dissolving. And while the M held fast, above it appeared a single straight line ending just above the downward V of the M.

"What does that mean?"

"He rarely signed his paintings the same way twice. I've seen this in another of his paintings, a signature where he played with the shapes of the letters. The Meer with a vertical line above the V of the M, suggesting both the V and the J."

"Then Nicolaes Maes didn't paint this?" Claire was too stunned

by the events of the last few moments to know what to think.

"Vermeer used to be the name you replaced if you wanted to get a good price. Of course, if whoever did this was alive today, he'd be too busy painting IV Meer on every halfway decent mid-seventeenth- century Dutch genre painting he could find."

"So," Claire said, taking a deep breath and finding there wasn't enough air in the room, "this really is a Vermeer. A lost Vermeer."

Instead of answering her, Dante put down his swab, slipped off his magnifier and put his hand behind her head. He brought his lips to her mouth, sealing up all the questions that had crowded into her mind.

FX108

With her fingers, Claire combed her hair into place, thinking that short hair did have its advantages. In the mirror just above the metal shelf for urine specimens, her own reflection gazed back at her, eyes wide, lips swollen from kissing. She pushed one last curl into place, then opened the door to the bathroom. Trying to hold her stomach in without being obvious, she walked back into the reception area wearing only a smile. Dante greeted her with a kiss on the tip of the nose.

"Hi."

"Hi."

She felt shy, conscious of their naked bodies, her pale, nearly translucent skin a contrast to his swarthiness. Dante had already put his tools back in his satchel, and now she watched as he slid the bubble-wrapped painting in after them. He gave her another kiss before he, too, went into the bathroom.

Claire went into the exam room where their clothes littered the floor and sat down on the edge of the brown vinyl exam table. In a theoretical way, she knew she must be tired, but instead she felt relaxed, with a subterranean hum of energy.

She could hear him splashing in the tiny bathroom as he tried to replicate the effects of a shower with only a fistful of paper towels and a bottle of hand soap at his disposal. He didn't seem unhappy, though. He was half-singing, half-humming "Layla," the old Derek and the Dominoes song. "What'll you do when you get lonely, and nobody's waiting by your side/'..." His clear baritone trailed off where he had forgotten a word or two.