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“Yeah, easy for you to say.”
“I appreciate your difficulty, my friend. But on the other hand, even without, let us say, artificial means of enhancement, you would still be a dweller in mystery. You remember what Duchamp said about art: ‘Only one thing in art is valid-that which ca
I said, “I’m glad you’re happy, Mr. Krebs.” And I was. I had a pretty good idea about what it was like if Krebs was not happy with you.
“I am. I tell you what is most remarkable about you, Wilmot. You are a genius, but you are not a son of a bitch. I have dealt with these before now and it is no fun. But I like you, I really do. And we are going to have fun, a lot of fun, you and I. There is something I have been longing to do for over fifty years that I believe you can help me accomplish, but…excuse me, I believe I must take this call.”
A little tune had played, Bach’s Toccata in D on a harpsichord, and Krebs pulled a cell phone from his i
I finished my grappa, conscious of a strange feeling after this speech from Krebs, thinking about what Lotte had said about collectors falling in love with artists, and also about the doomed little girl that Frankenstein falls for, and also about Fay Wray and Kong. Lotte always used to quote a saying of La Rochefoucauld ’s that there were some situations in life that you have to be half crazy to escape from. If that were really true, I thought then, I should be just fine.
Two days later we moved to Madrid, occupying a couple of suites at the Villa Real. Our party was made up of the king (Krebs), the First Murderer (Franco), the Fool (me), and a new guy, the Second Murderer (Kellerma
All in all it was kind of neat to be part of Herr Krebs’s little court. The life of an international criminal is not a strenuous one, which is why it’s so popular. We rose late, ate well; Krebs and I toured the galleries and museums, strolled the temperate plazas at night, and ate tapas and heard music and discussed art on a high level.
Yes, nice indeed to be driven in a limo everywhere and to stay in this really snazzy hotel and never have to wonder about where you’re going. It was not that great being an American in Spain since the Iraq shit started and the Madrid metro bombings, and I detected dirty looks, subtle rudenesses, and obscene comments behind the backs of the Americans I saw strolling obliviously around this hotel.
Which was five-star, naturally, old on the outside, sleek as a fighter jet on the inside, furnished in leather and brushed steel, wired to the gills. Krebs told me I couldn’t make phone calls without permission, and I haven’t, but he didn’t say anything about e-mail. We had Wi-Fi in our suite and I was able to cruise the Web (all those sites about memory and craziness, although there does not seem to be an organization devoted to fixing what’s wrong with me) and communicate with my children, chatty e-mails from Milo with links to cool websites and videos, and from Rose I got, “hEllo DadDDy I am FIIN” with little drawing-program pictures attached. Lotte didn’t answer the ones I sent her.
And then one night we drove out to the west end of the city, to a commercial street on the other side of Bailén. In a vacant loft, lit bright as day by big portable worklights, we found a couple of familiar faces, Baldassare and Salinas from the Palacio de Livia museum. Salinas informed us that the tests of the paint samples had been perfect; the little scrape was chemically indistinguishable from similar ones taken from undoubted Velázquez paintings. He seemed sad when he said this-maybe he was having second thoughts, or maybe it was his curatorial faith in technology receiving a deadly blow. Anyway, we were obviously on to the next phase.
On a couple of big glass-topped tables pushed together I saw my Venus and another painting, just the same size, that looked a lot like The Miraculous Draught of Fishes by Jacopo Bassano, which hangs in the National Gallery in D.C. Both paintings had been taken off their stretchers and were laid flat on the tables, the Bassano weighted taut with small leather shot bags. I noticed that the fake Velázquez had been adhered in some way to a thick glass sheet somewhat larger than the painting. The air in the loft was close and smelled of old building, turps, and some chemical I couldn’t identify.
“What’s going on, Werner?” I asked.
“Well, you see we have your wonderful painting, but, as I’ve told you, however wonderful it is, it will not pass as genuine unless it has a flawless provenance. What do you think of the other painting?”
“It looks like a Bassano,” I said.
“Yes, but which one? He had four sons, all painters, and the work from their hands is not nearly as valuable as the father’s.”
“The story of my life,” I said, “but this one looks a lot like the one in Washington. It’s a nice painting. How do you tell the various Bassanos apart anyway?”
“It’s almost impossible without evidence from provenance. But this particular painting was in fact sold as a Jacopo to the duke of Alba in 1687. It’s been in the family’s possession ever since, and so its provenance is as good as any provenance can be.”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with the Velázquez?” I said, and then I yelled.
Baldassare had taken a wide brush full of thick white paint and wiped a line right across my fake Venus, and a second later I realized why he’d done it and why we were all there. Baldassare gave me a smirk and continued to paint over the nude.
“You’re going to lift the Bassano and adhere it on top of the Venus,” I said, and the sweat popped out all over my face and scalp. Now at last this was the thing itself, the patent act of fraud, no more horseshit about indistinguishable works of art and buyer beware and who are we hurting. And that’s why we all had to be there, the same reason why a junior mafioso has to make his bones before he becomes a made guy. I had to get dirty.
“Yes, we are,” Krebs said. “Only it’s not a Bassano at all.”
“It’s not?”
“No, it’s the work of your most illustrious predecessor, Luca Giordano. Underneath the surface is his signature. The duke was fooled, and this time Luca did not confess. The thing has been hanging as a Bassano for three hundred years, until Salinas here had it cleaned and X-rayed as a matter of routine. He saw the signature of the faker and called me.”