by Jean Rabe
“What of his assistant?”
“Salai’s cleaning out the studio. A bunch o’ crap there. Leonardo left him more work than ever, and that’s sayin’ something.”
“For you, if you take me to Salai.” Alex drew out a small silver coin and turned it enough to reflect the bright sun into the man’s eyes. It was only a replica, but counterfeiting wasn’t much of a crime when the fake coin cost more than the real one.
“I know Salai. He’s not worth so much.” The man looked furtively around, and then stepped closer. “Is there more?” He pointed at the coin.
“This is all I have. I . . .” Alex’s mind raced. He swallowed and added, “I must collect what Leonardo owed me. If Salai is his executor, he is the one to whom I must present my petition.”
“He owes you? How much?”
“Enough to make it worth my while to give this to anyone showing me the way to his quarters.”
“He’s in Leonardo’s old studio.” The man looked around again, judging how easy it would be to slit this foreigner’s throat and simply take the coin.
“Naples,” Alex said. “You’re from Naples. I know influential people in Naples who would be very angry if anything happened to me. You have family there?”
“How’d you know I was from Naples?” The man stepped back, eyeing Alex with more interest now.
“The cut of your clothing, your wretched accent,” Alex said. “The way you think to steal my money.”
“What’s wrong with my clothing?”
Alex held the coin in his left palm and slowly closed his hand. As the man reached, Alex grabbed him by the collar and lifted him onto his toes. Alex was barely five-foot-ten, but he towered six inches over his captive Neapolitan. The man twisted around, unable to step away. Alex slowly opened his palm. The coin vanished like mist in the morning sun. He lowered his catch.
“There. There’s the old studio,” the man said, pointing to a building not fifty feet away. With that the man scurried away, looking back twice before vanishing down an alley.
Alex took a deep breath, then hurriedly found the narrow, cool passageway to the stairs leading to the studio’s second story. He rapped sharply, heard mumbled complaints inside, then the door opened.
“Hello, Salai,” he said, recognizing the man although he was fifteen years older.
“You, I remember you. Alejandro! From Florence. But how can it be? You are as I remember, yet it has been so many years!”
“Life has been good to me,” Alex said, following his rehearsed script. He had aged less than six months since he had seen Salai, but it had been fifteen years for Leonardo’s assistant. “The truth is, I have found a curative, a pulvilio brought from the New World.”
“So something good has come from all the money spent finding a heathen-infested land,” Salai said, shrugging. “I am glad for you. Come in, my old friend.” Salai hesitated, and then grinned. “Come in, my young friend. It is I who has aged.”
“I had hoped to arrive in time to speak with Master Leonardo, but I heard the sad news as soon as I reached French borders.”
“He was an old man and ready to go. In spite of his curiosity and need to see the next sunrise—”
“So he could paint it,” Alex cut in.
“No, so he could have his breakfast. What did he care of landscapes?”
“He put in a delightful one behind La Giocanda.” Alex barely trusted himself. His voice choked with emotion, but Salai thought it was for Leonardo’s passing.
“Such a background, such imagination. Icy mountains and rivers and valleys.” Salai shook his head. “So many times he reworked that poor painting.”
“When he did it originally, Lisa’s hair was in a bun. He humanized her with loosely flowing hair. Her hair was as fine as spun gold.”
“You and her, you had a thing for her, eh?” Salai shook his head. “Who didn’t? Except the master, of course.”
“He still captured her exquisite sexuality perfectly,” Alex said. Trying to follow his carefully planned speech, he said as nonchalantly as possible, “Is the painting here? Could I see it?”
“Oh, it is somewhere. I don’t know where. I have so little time to vacate this studio. Now that the king’s grant has been revoked, there is no money to keep up the master’s property.”
“You were given the painting, though.”
Salai looked sharply at Alex, his long, hooked nose lifted slightly. The leathery, wrinkled face turned impassive.
“How is it that you, just arrived in France, know this?”
The question flustered Alex. He had jumped the gun and deviated from his carefully planned script, and now he had aroused Salai’s suspicions.
“I . . . it only makes sense that you, his foremost assistant and trusted companion, would receive such a masterpiece for your services.”
“Masterpiece? Ha. Leonardo fiddled with it for years. You said he changed her hair, but how do you know that?”
“I heard . . .” Alex began.
“He took the money but was never satisfied. Del Giocondo stopped asking. We never saw the woman again.”
“Her daughter Camilla joined a convent,” Alex muttered. His and Lisa’s daughter.
“I did not know.” Salai shrugged and half turned. He fell silent, as if expecting some response from Alex that wasn’t forthcoming. Finally, he sighed and said, “I must return to my work. This studio must be vacated. Leonardo was a man of many vices and did not leave a great legacy to me.”
“Other than his work.”
“Who wants it? No one. Bah!” Salai threw up his hands and turned his back entirely on Alex.
“I could help. I mean, what would you like done that I may aid you?”
“Nothing. Get out. Go! I have no more time for you. I ought to burn the building down. It would be easier.”
“Don’t joke!”
“Who is joking? No one wants his paintings or the scrawled notebooks. Oh, the king has expressed some desire for a painting or two. I might sell some of the larger work.”
“For four thousand ecus,” Alex muttered. This was the amount Salai’s heirs had garnered from the king years in the future for the Mona Lisa.
“Such a princely sum,” Salai grumbled. “Go now. Go. I have no more time, no time at all.”
Alex reluctantly left, taking care to memorize the number of steps he took, the direction, and the location of all the flimsy locks and doors.
That night, total darkness his henchman, masked by rising storm winds whipping through the city streets, he returned to the studio to find the painting of his beloved. He crept silently through the dusty room, poking around. He had a small flashlight but used it sparingly to avoid being seen. Explaining such an anachronistic device would be difficult in a time of auto-da-fé and inquisitions. Alex had to laugh as he said softly, “I can always tell them it is one of Leonardo’s inventions. Why not? He sketched everything else from helicopters to still un-invented gadgets.”
Alex methodically worked his way through the paintings, seeing some he recognized as masterpieces that would in future centuries hang with honor in a dozen different museums. But when his flashlight began to dim, he shook it as if that would bring the batteries back to life.
All he accomplished was smashing the lens against the edge of a desk. The LEDs were knocked askew when the lens broke and then the flashlight went dark. He started to fling it angrily, and then remembered his instructions. If Timeshares had logged this in his possession—and they undoubtedly had—he had to return with it, broken or not. He carefully picked up the broken plastic lens and tucked it away into his satchel. Feeling around in the closed room was like returning to the womb. The air was close and almost liquid in his nostrils and no light—what little of it there was—penetrated from the outer world. This was not a time of light pollution.
As he reached out, his fingers found the edge of the table that had broken his flashlight. Dust swept under his hand as he quickly examined the surface. A smile bloss
omed into full, delighted laughter when he found a candle. Returning to his satchel, he fumbled about until he found the small lighter he had brought. It had served him well as he had been forced to camp on the way to Clos Lucé. Now the tiny blue-white flame touched the candle wick and bathed the room in smoky, pale dancing light.
He coughed from the cloud of rising fumes, then stopped and stared. On the table next to the candle lay a stack of sketches he eagerly grabbed and held up.
“My Gioconda!” Alex riffled through the drawings, lingering with every succeeding one that showed more detail, greater care in composition, the changes, everything that made the full painting so accomplished. He had the preliminary sketches Leonardo had done for the Mona Lisa.
He went through the drawings again, studying each more closely. He reached out so his fingertip lightly brushed her lovely face—only a sketch but more than his memory of her. The cheap paper crackled at his touch. His finger came away sooty from the charcoal on the top one. Subsequent ones were done in quick, sure strokes—pen and ink. The years showed in the style and how Leonardo had progressed as a painter, almost hesitant about his ability at the beginning to a confident, bold painter totally in control of his work. These sketches would bring a fortune at auction.
But Alex could never part with them. They were glimpses of his lover. He carefully placed them in his satchel’s hidden compartment. They were a windfall but he still needed to . . .
He looked up to a frame leaning against the wall. He yanked a cover free and his eyes went wide. The poplar backing facing him was familiar. With shaking hands he turned the painting around and stared into La Gioconda’s eyes. Her smile was for him alone.
He had found it.
For long minutes he was transfixed. Transfigured. He returned to the days—the nights!—he had spent in her embrace, every loving kiss remembered, the fleeting touch, the shared intimacy of one soul mate with another.
At first his hands trembled too much for him to properly take the painting and replace his fake with the original. Alex settled himself with a deep breath, and then began the substitution. The wood backing felt identical to him. In the shifting candlelight, he saw how closely the brush strokes had been computer duplicated.
He tucked the original safely in the large, flat satchel. Working with more assurance now, he turned the fake toward the wall and placed the cloth covering over it. No one would ever know the substitution had been made. Through the years, down the centuries, his fake would be authenticated. And why not? The provenance was complete. No one could possibly know or expect a duplicate of such painstaking skill had replaced the irreplaceable.
Alex reached inside his blouse for the time controller. He had been in France long enough. He experienced a moment of regret that he had not been able to speak with Leonardo on his deathbed to record the history’s greatest painter’s last words, but this was nothing compared with the trophy he carried back. He started to press the red button that would signal Timeshares when he heard noises.
Fumbling, he ripped his blouse. He spun around, sure he had been caught as the studio door slammed open and crashed into the wall. A gust of wind from the storm outside blew him back a step, causing him to knock over the candle.
In a flash of heat that scorched his back, the cloth over the bogus Mona Lisa exploded into flame. Alex grabbed for it, but a new explosion of fire drove him back. He watched in horror as fire devoured the bogus painting he had just placed so carefully. He staggered away as new waves of heat scorched his arm. Clutching the satchel holding the real painting, he made his way through the conflagration to the open door.
“What is this? What has happened?” Salai grabbed him in both arms, arms like matchsticks and yet strong and protective, as he was pulled out into the stormy night.
At his back he felt the heat from Leonardo’s studio going up in flames. Against his blistered face hammered fat, cold raindrops.
“You saved my painting,” Salai said. “But why this one? This is not what I would have risked my life to save.”
Alex looked over his shoulder and saw that Salai had discovered the original Mona Lisa. It had tumbled from the satchel to the street.
“No,” he croaked. “Mine.” He wasn’t going to allow Salai to keep what he had risked so much to obtain. His lover’s picture!
Then he sucked cleansing air into his lungs and blood rushed back to his brain. He could not take the painting from Salai. History would change if the Mona Lisa were absent from the world of art and culture. Careers would never be made detailing the smile, the background, renovating it and hanging it in the foremost museum in the world. Salai had to keep the original now that the fake had been destroyed in the raging fire.
In the distance fire bells rang and horses’ hooves clattered on the cobblestone as volunteer firefighters rushed to quell the blaze. Alex knew he had only seconds. He stood, ripped open his blouse to expose the time controller with its mocking red button, then he lunged for the painting. To hell with history! He had to possess her!
He crashed to the ground as Salai stepped back and beckoned, “Night watch! Here, come here! This man is a thief! An arsonist! He tries to steal my artwork!”
A half dozen armed men rushed toward them. His chance at gaining the painting had passed.
“He stole my painting. He . . . he started the fire to cover his theft!” Salai pointed accusingly at Alex.
With a wild grab, Alex pulled the satchel close. Masses had to balance. Then his finger crushed down on the red emergency recall button. For a ghastly instant, Alex thought nothing was happening. The night watchmen grabbed his arms and pulled him upright—and he kept rising. He rose and tumbled and fell hard to a cold floor amid a cascade of fiery sparks, ashes and dirt.
“Goddamn,” came the angry outburst. “You didn’t come back with the same mass you left with. Now I have to clean up all the dirt.”
Stunned, Alex sat up on the floor and look around him. Tiny fires consumed bits of wood from Leonardo’s studio. The dirt and ash came from his surroundings. Panicked, he looked around, worrying that a watchman might have lost a hand in the temporal translation. He sank back, clinging to his satchel.
“I failed,” he sobbed. Then he gained control of himself. He had failed to retrieve the painting but he had the sketches. In his satchel were all of Leonardo’s sketches of his precious La Gioconda. It wasn’t the same but it would have to do.
He huddled on the floor, barely aware of Timeshares technicians standing around him.
“Get the camera rolling, Billy Ray. Is it rolling? Good.”
“Camera?” Alex looked up into stern faces. “There’s no reason for that. You saved me. I panicked and hit the button and didn’t have the proper mass and—”
“It’s just part of the return debriefing Jacob and I do,” Billy Ray said. Alex wasn’t so sure from the tone. “You look a mess. We need to find out what happened.”
“I didn’t mean to unbalance the mass. I . . . I panicked and hit the button.”
“That’s why we call it a panic button,” the other tech said, his tone friendlier. “What happened?”
Alex stumbled through a story he made up as he spoke. He tried to keep to the truth as much as possible but he couldn’t tell them he had tried to steal the Mona Lisa and had started a fire that might have burned down an entire town. He forced himself to keep from looking at his satchel with the sketches in it. Those were all he had.
“Why are you asking me all these questions? You didn’t before. I time traveled before and you didn’t debrief me.”
“It’s like this, Dr. Carrington,” Billy Ray said. “The bond you posted for the excursion turned out to be . . . irregular.”
“We’re sure that it’s only a mistake,” Jacob cut in, “but we need to get the financing squared away as quickly as possible.”
“The grant money—”
“Nonexistent. You made it all up and somehow got it past our financial department.”
“I’ll
make it right. I have resources.”
“We’re checking on that.”
Alex sat cross-legged on the floor in the stainless steel chamber. In his current present only minutes had passed. He had been returned to a time only slightly removed from when he had left to prevent more time anomalies. That meant Timeshares hadn’t yet plumbed the depths of his financial legerdemain. When they did, he would go to jail for fraud. Forgery. A lot of other crimes he only vaguely understood that had been listed in the contract he had signed.
If they found the sketches, he was in real trouble.
“I need to rest. We can straighten out the misunderstanding tomorrow. I’m a tenured professor and the university will back me on the research project, even if there is some glitch with the grant authorization.” He found refuge in academic bureaucratese and this easy professional sounding spiel caused the time techs to look at one another and back off.
“Jacob,” Billy Ray said, indicating they should leave Alex. The instant they left, he was on his feet and out an emergency door leading into the depths of the building. Within minutes after he found the main lobby, he was summoning a cab in front of the glass-fronted Timeshares laboratory. He gripped the satchel fiercely.
He wanted to paw through the contents to open the false bottom but waited until he caught a cab and was a block from the company office. One clause had been specific and he had gone back in time with the intent to violate it—no artifact gathering. He might tell them they were his sketches. They were idiots. How would they know he hadn’t done the finely wrought preliminary sketches from the world’s most famous work of art?
“Take me to Sotheby’s,” he called to the driver. The quicker he got the money situation settled, the less likely they were to inquire about his trip. It would be a relief for Timeshares, collecting their money. He was buying their silence. That was it, but he needed money now to stifle inquiry.
It was best that he sold the sketches immediately, all except one or two for his own collection. If fate denied him the painting, then he could take some solace in the sketches made early in the sittings, the ones closest to the Lisa he loved so well.