The Last Weynfeldt (18 page)

Throughout the meal she quizzed him about his work. And he described it to her, with growing enthusiasm; his work was probably the one thing which really interested him.

He learned virtually nothing about her.

Adrian went to the kitchen and returned with a fresh bottle of champagne. While he wrestled with the cork, she asked, “Will you show me the apartment?”

“I already did.”

“At the time I wasn't very … alert.”

Each holding a champagne glass, they wandered through the silent rooms, Weynfeldt's commentary on the pictures and furniture echoing like a museum guide's monologue. Aside from the occasional “Wow” or “Super” Lorena said little.

Until: “What's in here?”

“Nothing. It was my mother's room.”

“And it's taboo?”

“Not at all.”

“But it's locked.”

Adrian took the key from behind the painting, opened the door and turned on the light.

“Wow. Very different.”

“Pretty much how she had it herself.”

“You left it like that? That's so sweet.”

He was silent. No one had found it sweet before.

“But a bit uncanny too. Like in that old film.”

“Rebecca.”

“Is that her?” She pointed to the portrait.

“Yes. She was seventy.”

“Her eyes follow you.”

“True.”

Lorena gazed at the picture as she walked around the room. “I wouldn't be able to handle that,” she decided.

He surprised himself with his answer. “Sometimes I'm not sure I can handle it.”

In his study she said, “Wow! The same painting twice.”

“Felix Vallotton. 1900.”

“Who was the woman?”

“His wife, some say.”

“Mighty fine ass.”

Adrian smiled. She was the first person who had said—in his presence—what everyone thought when they saw the picture.

“Nice, anyway. Is it worth much?”

“The original, sure.”

“So these are copies?”

“Only one of them.”

“And the other is the original? Which one? Wait! Don't say anything.” She went up to the paintings, studied them, compared them and chose the left hand. “This one!”

“Almost.”

“The other one?”

“Congratulations.”

“And how can you tell?”

“From the signature, for instance.” Adrian explained the question of the second period.

“You can only tell from the signature? Not the painting itself?”

“From the painting too, sure.”

“Don't say anything. Don't say anything.” She went from one to the other and back again, several times. Finally she turned to him and sighed. “I give up.”

Adrian explained the differences, the elasticity of the paint, the primer, the wax varnish.

Lorena listened with increasing astonishment. “But to the eye it's the same picture.”

“To the eye, maybe.”

“I thought that's what visual art was about—the eye. Did you notice immediately?”

“Not straight off. But on closer examination, yes.” She looked at him skeptically. He changed the subject: “Another few thousand bubbles?”

She followed him with her empty glass to the dining room, where he filled it. “And why have you got the original as well as a copy?”

Adrian was getting carried away and became indiscreet. “Someone needs the money, but can't bear to sell the original. He wanted me to put the copy up for auction.”

“And?”

Adrian didn't understand.

“And? Are you going to do it?”

“Of course not.”

“I thought so.”

“Why?”

“Because you're so straight.”

“Not agreeing to participate in fraud is not being too straight.”

“It's not fraud. You didn't even notice yourself.”

“Not straight away.”

“Wait a moment.” Lorena left the room. He heard her footsteps disappearing down the corridor then returning again. She had fetched her handbag, and opened it now, took her tiny makeup bag out, and from this an eyeliner pencil, which she took the lid off. She walked to the original and Adrian realized what she was doing, although her hand was hidden by her body.

She stepped aside, like a painter admiring her work, put the lid back on the pencil and said, “Voilà. Now they're identical.”

Weynfeldt shook his head. “One of them is forged.”

“Now they are both forged,” she replied.

Weynfeldt laughed. She wasn't completely off the mark.

“What is something like this worth?” she wanted to know.

“With a bit of ‘auction luck,' two or three million.”

“Wow! Just the fact that someone will pay so much for it makes the painting genuine.”

After a short pause Weynfeldt admitted, “I've never thought about it like that.”

“See!”

He shook his head slowly, as if he wanted to bar access to a thought.

“Why don't you do it?” This wasn't a question, it was a dare.

“It just wouldn't be okay,” he answered, collected himself quickly, and, without managing not to go a red, delivered the lady-killer sentence he'd been saving up: “The guided tour isn't quite finished yet.” Now she had to ask:
What's left?
And he would answer:
The bedroom
.

But she said, “Let's save the bedroom for the next tour.”

“Pity.”

She tried to imitate his tone, as she added, “It just wouldn't be okay.”

In the elevator he asked, “Would you give me your address?”

And again she echoed him: “It just wouldn't be okay.”

But she gave him a kiss that was slightly more than a polite, social kiss and gave him hope that there would actually be another tour.

Back in the apartment he refilled the ice bucket and retreated to his study with the remaining champagne. He enjoyed the tingling sensation of the bubbles in his mouth in a new way as he gazed at the Vallottons. The doubled Vallotton. The Vallotton and the Strasser. The same and the similar.

It took him awhile to find it: it was in the cast iron relief on the
salamandre
stove. Not all forgers let their vanity get the better of them. But Rolf Strasser did.

He stood for a long time facing the Vallotton in thought. Finally he walked to the black tool cupboard with its red shiny handles and opened a drawer. Mixed up inside lay boxes and tubes of paint, brushes and other painting things from the time when he still secretly tried refreshing what he'd learned at art school, perhaps even developing it.

He found a fine brush and carefully mixed a little tempera in the deep reddish brown of the paneling in the top right-hand corner of the painting.

T
O THE LEFT—A STORE THAT BOUGHT, SOLD AND
repaired old TVs, stereos, radios and cell phones; to the right, a store offering “Bankruptcy Bargains.” Between the two, the entrance to number 241, Lorena's building. The door was made of wire mesh glass with a metal frame. In the top half of the pane a transparent plastic patch with the name of a glazing firm had been stuck over a small hole the size of a pickaxe. It had been there when Lorena moved in.

She opened the door and entered the hall. To the left and right were twelve mailboxes and milk-bottle holders, the labels changed many times by hand, with scraps of paper taped on to the metal. To the right were the stairs to the basement; to the left, the stairs to the four floors; in the middle was the elevator shaft, the elevator door a slightly smaller copy of the front door. The hall had an indeterminate smell of filth and the products used to tackle it.

The elevator was dominated by the smell of grease used to lubricate the cables extending down the shaft. Lorena had seen them as she left earlier, through the open door to the elevator, where a sign had hung saying, “Safety check, sorry!”

She took the stairs to the second floor now; the elevator technician had done nothing to inspire her confidence.

Her apartment door led straight into the room that served as both bed and living room. It opened just far enough for Lorena to slip through. If her provisional living arrangements continued much longer, there would be no space for her to move between the boxes, suitcases and clothes.

She switched the light on and sat on the edge of the unmade bed. The effect of the champagne was wearing off and what she saw now sobered her up completely. Why hadn't she stayed? She could have drunk a few more glasses of that champagne, which she'd never be able to afford herself as long as she lived, then sunk into his big, soft, freshly made bed. She wouldn't have had to make out with him; he wouldn't have insisted. But maybe she'd have wanted to?

Sure, it would have been a tactical mistake. But whose tactics were we talking about? Baier's? As if Weynfeldt were the kind of man you could seduce into accepting a forged painting for an auction. No, Weynfeldt was what she'd called him: straight. His world was divided into what was okay, and what
just wasn't okay
. She could just as well have slept with him.

She climbed over her possessions to the kitchenette and looked in the fridge. As she thought: nothing. Nothing except a beer. A two-pint bottle of cheap store-brand beer from a low-cost supermarket. She left it there. She hadn't degenerated to drinking cheapo beer after Roederer Cristal.

The Spotlight purchases hung from coat hangers hooked over the open door of the only built-in closet. There was more to be had from someone who was prepared to pay twelve thousand francs to get her out of an unpleasant situation. There were other unpleasant situations she could get into. Lorena knew about unpleasant situations. She didn't need the old man's help there.

Lorena thought of the various chances she could give Weynfeldt to get her out of a tight spot and soon came up with a great many. Matching each to a sum of money, added up it made a figure which more than equaled Baier's fifty thousand.

Then there was plan C. When would she ever come across a man like Adrian Weynfeldt again? Money and manners were a rare combination. And for someone possessing both to be interested in her—late thirties, her best years clearly behind her, nothing much to hope for in the ones to come—for someone like Weynfeldt to be interested in someone like Lorena … When had that ever happened?

Why not try the most obvious thing and become his girlfriend? Make him her rich boyfriend: like in Spotlight. He didn't seem to object to the role. Quite the opposite. Why shouldn't Lorena Steiner move in with Dr. Adrian Weynfeldt? The apartment was large; the mother dead.

She went into the bathroom and removed the wet towel wrapped around the leaky faucet. She washed her hands and started removing her makeup.

She knew exactly why she wouldn't be moving in with him, even supposing that was what he wanted: because she would never ever, ever again move in with a man. She had sworn it—not for the first time, but certainly for the last—two months or so ago, when she moved out of Günther's.

Günther Walder was the man who was supposed to bring calm into her life. He was a scientist from Berlin. An authority in the field of cell biology. He spent his days trying to reprogram the cells of fruit flies. With the aim, one day, of reprogramming human cells so that they could become skin or muscle or liver or something else useful.

She had met Günther at an after-work party which the organizer sometimes mobilized her to attend for a discreet fee, because of the notorious imbalance of men. Günther was standing with a glass of orange juice in the midst of all the forced good cheer, a head taller than anyone else. Like a fish out of water, as she told him later. He was the only one wearing jeans, along with a baggy tweed jacket and a yellow T-shirt with the words in red: “4th International Sand Sculpture Festival Berlin.”

She had asked him what he did with his life, and he had answered, “make fruit flies mate.” She found that funny, and let him buy her a couple of glasses of champagne. It turned out he had moved here three months ago from Berlin and hadn't eaten out anywhere except the university canteen. She took him to Mistral, the best fish restaurant in the city, and when they came to order she discovered he didn't eat fish.

“I think they have a few meat dishes,” she said.

And he replied, “I don't eat animal cells of any kind. I program them.”

Günther didn't drink a drop of alcohol either, which made Lorena moderate her consumption that night. And the decision to go home with him wasn't taken under the influence of alcohol. He took her to his three-bedroom apartment in a modern block on the edge of town. He owned a bed, a desk with a computer, a sofa and a TV, which sat on the floor. His clothes were hanging from a wheeled clothing rack of the kind found in stores. Half empty boxes of books lay all around, and in every room there were books piled according to a system only he understood. The kitchen contained crockery for just two people, and a huge stock of spaghetti and
pelati
, with a dozen pots of basil growing outside on the balcony. He was very proud of his
spaghetti al pomodoro e basilica
and ate practically nothing else.

Günther wasn't particularly good looking, nor was he an amazing lover. It would remain a mystery to her why she fell so completely in love with him. After barely three weeks, she abandoned all her good intentions and moved in with him, taking everything she owned. She set herself up in one of the rooms with her few pieces of furniture, cooked complicated ovo-lacto-vegetarian recipes from her hitherto unused cookbooks, and got ready to live a normal life from now on. She stopped drinking alcohol and started enjoying life without parties.

She was so smitten, she accepted his foibles with unconditional, blind faith. The telephone foibles in particular should have given her cause for concern. She was forbidden, for instance, from answering the telephone in the apartment. And when she made a call, she had to use her cell phone, for which he paid the bill. He didn't own one himself, and when he was traveling, which was often, as he had another project in the works in Berlin, he never left a contact number and almost never called her.