Old Scores (Chris Norgren 3) (5 page)

When I walked through the open archway, actually the old coach entrance, I found myself in an enclosed, cobbled courtyard, open to the sky, in which a coach-and-four would have looked right at home, but that instead held two glossy, dove-gray Renaults parked at an angle in one corner. At the back of the yard was the facade of the house proper, two stories high, classic and well-balanced, with tiers of tall French windows peeking out from a well-trimmed network of ivy creepers just beginning to drop their leaves.

The entrance to the building was by way of a gracefully scalloped flight of stone steps at the top of which a dour, waspish man of fifty appeared, peering mistrustfully at me through the open doorway.

"Dr. Norgren?" he inquired brusquely. I assured him I was.

"Enchanté"
he muttered, which doesn't carry quite the weight in French that it might in English. He was Marius Pepin, secretary to René Vachey, he told me in nasal, distracted French. He extended his hand, but let it fall away just short of touching, as if his thoughts had gone on to other things halfway there. I didn't take offense, because he seemed like a man with a lot on his mind, but still it wasn't what I'd call an exuberant welcome.

I had been keeping Mr. Vachey waiting for some time, I was sternly told—presumably this was the cause of M. Pepin's anxiety—and would I kindly hurry along in, please, as Mr. Vachey was in the midst of an extremely busy day and did not like being kept waiting.

I apologized (I was all of three minutes late, having turned the wrong way at the corner) and followed him into the house and up the wide stairway. Vachey's living quarters, Pepin told me while scurrying ahead, were on the lower floor, with the gallery situated above. Mr. Vachey awaited me in his study, adjoining the gallery. I was to excuse the confusion and disorder resulting from ongoing preparations for the show and reception that evening.

Whatever spasm of hope that gave me of catching a glimpse of the Rembrandt on my way in was quickly dashed. Most of the gallery portion of the floor was blocked by a set of folding, linen-covered partitions at the rear of the stairwell, so that I could see nothing beyond the landing on which I stood. Here, in a sort of bay, were a few well-displayed paintings by French artists of the Cubist movement: Derain, Duchamp, Villon, Delaunay, others I wasn't sure of. There was also a set of glass doors. Pepin went directly to them, pushed one open, murmured a few obsequiously respectful words to someone within, then stood aside and motioned me in.

Stepping by him, I found myself in one of the most fantastic rooms I'd ever been in; big, gorgeous, and dauntingly ornate, the kind of place most people get to see only in a museum, and only in a first-rate museum at that. I almost expected to run into a polite little velvet cord stretched across the entry foyer. But of course there was no cord, and in I strode, past Pepin, stepping directly onto a nineteenth-century Aubusson carpet (wincing curatorially as I did) that was laid on the worn parquet floor. The walls were sheathed in Venetian Renaissance paneling, rich with fifteenth-century urban scenes done in wonderfully detailed marquetry. I'd never before seen so much in one place.
 
One of the panels had
1489
on it, inlaid in yellowed ivory.

Against one wall was a Boulle commode from about 1700; a glittery, complex tour-de-force inlaid with curling arabesques of brass, ivory, tortoiseshell, and I who knew what else. There was a massive old fireplace with a worn coat of arms cut into the stone in low relief, plump Louis XVI chairs, bronze and marble sculptures everywhere, table lamps made from eighteenth-century Sèvres vases, handsome old books bound in gold-tooled leather. Dominating the room was a huge, old desk that people had probably been killed for; made of cherrywood and polished brass, and topped with a thick, rosy slab of marble that had been carved, with unimaginable patience, into wispy filigree around the edges.

Behind this imposing piece, ensconced in a weird red armchair with a frame that seemed to be made completely of wicked-looking elk antlers—getting in and out of it without being impaled must have taken practice—sat a sunny, smiling man who didn't look in the least upset about being kept waiting for three minutes. Nor did he look notorious, crackpot, or any of the other things I've been calling Vachey. He was, in fact, a positively amiable-looking man in his mid-seventies, a bit stringy in the neck, but deeply tanned and healthy-looking, with a close-cropped pepper-and-salt beard and sharp, friendly, intelligent eyes. He was dressed in a white shirt and flowered tie with an old cardigan over them. On his feet, which I could see through the desk's kneehole, were worn leather slippers. Around his neck hung a magnifying glass on a cord. He closed a thick, well-used looseleaf book when I came in, and watched with apparent enjoyment while I goggled at the room.

"So, what do you think of my study?" he asked in French.

"It's magnificent."

"Yes, yes, I suppose so." He cocked his head this way and that, like a chicken sizing up its surroundings. "But my God, I can tell you, it's hell to dust." This was followed by a peal of merry and transparently genuine laughter. I liked him right off, which hadn't been part of my plan.

"How do you do, Monsieur Vachey? I'm Christopher Norgren. I'm sorry about being late."

He waved this off, stood up and shook hands with a formal little bow, and motioned me toward a chair.

I sat, first checking for antlers.

"Some coffee?" Vachey said. "An apéritif?"

"No,thank you."

On the Rue de la Préfecture, a noisy truck rattled slowly by. The sound easily penetrated the French windows near Vachey's desk. So did a whiff of exhaust. Surprised, I glanced up and saw that the windows were ajar.

"Yes?" Vachey said. "Something worries you?"

"Well, I—" I gestured at the centuries-old paneling, the old books, the furniture. "Aren't you concerned about their condition? I'd have thought—"

"That there would be an up-to-the-minute climate control system installed here? Self-correcting temperature and humidity sensors; locked, ultraviolet-blocking windows?" He smiled. "Back there, in the gallery, for the paintings, there are such wonders. But here, this room, this is not a museum, this is where I work, monsieur. Everything in here was made to be used and enjoyed. In here, everything ages as God intended it to age, myself most of all."

He settled back in his own menacing chair. "Now, what exactly may I do for you?" he asked agreeably.

I cleared my throat and went into a well-rehearsed opening speech of thanks for his donation to the museum.

There is a persistent and touching faith among American travelers to France that the way to win the Gallic heart is to make an honest effort, no matter how humble or inadequate, to address the natives in their own tongue. Not so, in my opinion. In Germany, yes. In Italy or Spain, yes. But in France, they are likely to gaze at you with this hurt, disbelieving look—roughly the expression you might expect from a cow that has just been unfairly hit between the eyes—while you innocently mutilate their beloved and beautiful language, as anyone who is not a native speaker inevitably must.

This is a lesson I seem to have a hard time learning, and, as usual, I started off on the wrong foot, in flowing but mangled French, even though I knew that Vachey, having lived in London for some years, was fluent in English. My presentation was received in pretty much the stunned-cow manner described above, enlivened by an occasional wince when I came to some of the trickier diphthongs. Nevertheless, he listened patiently, although now and then he would flap a hand in an amicable get-on-with-it gesture.

Awkwardly, I got on with it. "As much as we appreciate this noble and generous gesture—"

Flap went the hand, accompanied by an indulgent chuckle.

"—we find ourselves with several questions of some pertinence to any eventual decision—"

Flap, flap. I couldn't blame him. The language does this sort of thing to me. I love listening to myself speak it. It seems to be at its worst when I'm nervous, and I was nervous.

"I wonder, do you think we should try English?" he suggested gently. "Don't you think we'd get done sooner?"

By this time I was glad to oblige, and I came straight to the point. "Mr. Vachey, I'd like to talk to you about your prohibition of scientific testing—"

"Oh, but that isn't subject to negotiation, I'm afraid. There can be no scientific analysis of any kind." This was said not in the least harshly.

"But you must realize that raises questions—"

"No, no, I don't believe in it."

"But—"

"Mr. Norgren, the true connoisseur doesn't rely on chemistry and microscopes to tell him what is art and what is not. Surely you agree?"

I did, as a matter of fact. "Well, yes, but it isn't a question of relying, it's a matter of using all available means—"

"No, I'm sorry," he said apologetically. But firmly. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it must be."

"But surely you know that if we accept the picture, we'd have it analyzed later in any case."

"Of course. When it's yours, do whatever you wish," he said serenely.

I shook my head in frustration. "But then why—"

He wiggled a finger. "No," he said pleasantly, and smiled; a charming, raffish little grin. "No, Mr. Norgren."

And that seemed to be that. Vachey sat smiling at me, hands clasped and at rest on the desktop. Dissatisfied as I was with where things stood, I was reluctant to press any harder. There was always the possibility that the surprisingly sweet-tempered but famously unpredictable M. Vachey would tell me to forget the whole thing. And I didn't want that to happen.

"Tell me," he said with interest, "why do you make such a point of tests?"

"Why do I—?"

"What can science tell you that your own two eyes cannot?"

I settled deeper into my chair. Were we negotiating after all? "Well, as I'm sure you know, no reputable museum adds a major work to its collection without taking every available step to ensure that its attribution is accurate."

"Ah. You want to be certain of its authenticity, is that it? You fear I might have attributed it wrongly, that it might not be a Rembrandt at all, might even be a forgery?"

I hesitated. Vachey was beaming at me, but I didn't really know how touchy he was. "Yes," I said neutrally.

He took it with a pleased little laugh. "And you don't trust your own knowledge, your own experience, to tell you?"

"I trust them, but . . ."I decided to take a chance and level with him. "Frankly, Mr. Vachey, what's weighing on my mind —on our minds—is your outright refusal to allow any scientific analysis. None of us can come up with a valid reason for that."

He smiled. "You don't believe me when I tell you I'm convinced it harms the pictures?"

I took a breath. "No, sir."

He tipped back his head and laughed; genuinely, as far as I could tell. Then he jabbed the magnifying glass in my direction. "Well, tell me something, Mr. Norgren: Just what is wrong with a forgery?"

I stared at him.

He looked back at me, his eyes keen and alert, and very much amused. He was having a good time. "It's a simple question. What ... is wrong . . . with a forgery?"

But of course it wasn't a simple question. The affable Vachey was trying to lead me somewhere, and I didn't know where, and I didn't know why. "A forgery is a deception," I said guardedly. "It pretends to be something it isn't."

"Ah," he said happily. "Something better than it is?"

"Yes, of course."

"No, not of course. Let me ask you this: What if a fake were so well done that it couldn't be told from the original—what then, eh?"

He was leaning attentively forward, his small, lively hands still clasped on the desk's beautiful marble top. Clearly, this was a subject that he found engaging, but I didn't like it at all. Why was he going on about undetectable forgeries? Was this just something he enjoyed talking about, or did it have something to do with the Rembrandt?

"It would still be a fake," I said uneasily.

"And no
reputable"
—teasing emphasis here—"museum would have anything to do with it. Correct?"

"Right."

"But why not? If what we appreciate in a work of art is its artistic, its aesthetic, quality, then why is a copy that cannot be told from the original—except in some chemical laboratory— any less worthy of our esteem?"

This was a hoary old question. Any student who has taken a course in the philosophy of art is likely to have spent some time on it. Weighty thinkers have written whole books on it, but every time some long-worshipped fake is revealed for what it is, the subject noisily surfaces again. Every major museum has gone through the miserable experience of having to announce that one or more of its famous treasures is in fact a fake. Reattribution, we call it in Museumspeak, and not so long ago the great Metropolitan Museum of Art itself reattributed over three hundred of its art objects, all of which disappeared ignominiously into its cellars, never to be seen in the light of day again. It's even happened to SAM.

And consider one of my own favorite paintings, Rembrandt's beautiful, glowing
Man with the Golden Helmet,
with its place of honor in the history of Western art. It was praised by the experts and loved by millions. Until a few years ago, when along came a nasty new technique called neutron photography, which smugly proved that it hadn't been painted by Rembrandt at all, but by some unknown contemporary. At which news the art world promptly went into one of its periodic blue funks. I didn't take it too well myself. I was grumpy for days afterward.

Why, exactly? Had a beautiful object ceased to exist? No, it was still right there to be looked at. Had discrediting it made it any less beautiful than it was before? Of course not; it was the same painting. Did it prove that it was any less masterfully painted? Not at all. Did it make me love the painting itself any less than before?

You better believe it.

Well, why? That was the question Vachey was asking, and I didn't know any wholly satisfactory answer. "I think," I said slowly, "that aside from the dishonesty involved—"