The Oldest Confession

by Richard Condon

  “Do you honestly think we should take these risks after three years of time and money and other risk without any fee whatsoever?”

  “I haven’t expressed myself either way.”

  “Do you honestly think you are giving us incentive to solve this problem by refusing to discuss a fair fee?”

  “Refuse? We are discussing it!”

  “All right. Name the fee.”

  “I’m not a storekeeper. Tell me your fee!”

  “I want the three paintings of Dos Cortes. That’s my fee.”

  The marqués shrugged. “Do you think you can get the Goya?”

  “If certain peripheral problems are met. And in comparison to my central problem, these little marginal problems are nothing.”

  “Let me hear your plan to get the Goya then I will answer you regarding the fee.”

  “That wouldn’t be good business. The plan is everything. Almost anyone could take the Goya if they had this plan.”

  Dr. Muñoz smiled his hopelessly banal smile. “I don’t think so,” he answered.

  “Hombre, if I’m caught nobody will ever see me again. I’d be safer trying to steal the British crown jewels.”

  “I should hope so.”

  “Well?”

  “All right. I will pay you the three paintings if you get me the Goya.” He pulled a chair away from the wall and carried it to the center of the room to sit down, facing Bourne. “What is your plan?”

  Bourne again became as confidential and businesslike as an insurance salesman. “First, we will need a permit from the Director of the Museo de Pinturas so that Jean Marie will be allowed to copy in the Prado.”

  Muñoz made a note with a gold pencil the size of a carpenter’s nail on a small leather-bound pad. “Nothing difficult there,” he said. “So you are going to have him copy ‘The Second of May’ in the Sala Goya and switch paintings.”

  “No. He will copy ‘The Second of May’ at the hotel. It cannot be done at the Prado because no one is permitted to copy in actual size.”

  “But I don’t understand. What do you want the permit for!”

  “We will come to that. Get the permit in the name of Charles Smadja. He is a widely known copyist of the masters who is now on his annual fishing dredge off St. Raphael, Jean Marie tells me. The Prado people can check the name with the Louvre, if they choose.”

  Muñoz wrote the name down, pausing to verify the spelling. “I was aware that copyists worked in the Prado all the time but I did not know that they needed a license,” he said.

  “Make a note to point out that M’sieu Smadja has been commissioned by very dear friends of yours, in Paris, to copy three Spanish masterpieces.”

  “Three?” The marqués’ eyebrows shot up. “Three? Mother of God, Jaime, do you propose to pick up two for yourself?”

  Bourne laughed as though he were really enjoying himself for a moment, but it didn’t last long. “No. Nothing like that. But we must provide Jean Marie with material for conversation with the guards so that they will become quite accustomed to him sitting there day after day in the Sala Goya. He will paint a triptych; three paintings on one canvas in the manner of a trompe l’oeil which gives the absolute illusion in miniature of ‘The Second of May’ exactly as it hangs against its background in the museum, flanked—and I mean actually flanked—on the left by Goya’s ‘Milkmaid of Bordeaux’ and on the right by his own self-portrait. One of those interior decorator ideas.”

  “As I remember the ‘Milkmaid of Bordeaux’ is on the right of our big canvas.”

  “No. To the left. It is as though your family were looking out of the big one. To their left.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  “The important thing is that the canvas on which Jean Marie will paint his clever triptych will be very nearly exactly the identical size of the canvas holding ‘The Second of May.’”

  “I’m not sure I follow, but why not exactly the same size?”

  “For this reason. Jean Marie’s master copy of our Goya will fit exactly inside the mother frame which will be the triptych. It will be virtually impossible to detect the second canvas packed inside the first unless one knows where to look. When we take the real Goya down from the wall, and put the copy up, the real Goya will be housed, tightly locked, behind the trompe l’oeil which shields it in the mother frame.”

  “Oh, I say. That is amusing. Oh, I like that!”

  “I should think so. It solves nearly everything.”

  “You said nearly everything?”

  “As quickly as possible, tonight if you can get it from your friends at the Prado or from the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, we must have the best color transparency in their files on ‘The Second of May.’ Try to get the largest size which should be about ten inches by eight inches, Jean Marie tells me.”

  “I’ll have it at your hotel tonight if it exists.”

  “If it doesn’t exist you must arrange to have it photographed. But it will exist. It will be in the files.” Bourne continued, noting the marqués’ excitement, “Jean Marie works fast. He painted that Velázquez”—he gestured to The Pickett Troilus hanging on the Muñoz wall—“in two days. We’ll use the rest of this week on our Goya. He’s looking forward to it. He’s been with it at the Prado for the past two days and he’s straining at the leash to start to work.”

  “You wouldn’t rather have him work with a photographically sensitive canvas?” the marqués asked cautiously.

  “I would not. This isn’t a coloring contest. It takes great art.”

  “It was only a suggestion. Please proceed. I am extremely pleased with what you tell me so far.”

  Bourne propped his charts up against a makeshift pile of books on the table and assumed a lecturer’s manner. “Follow me closely, if you will. Every morning, beginning next Monday morning, provided you have secured his permit—”

  “He shall have his permit,” Dr. Muñoz interrupted.

  “—Jean Marie will enter the Prado through the gate on Calle Ruiz de Alarcón, trundling this huge canvas on which the trompe l’oeil will gradually be taking shape, upon a little double platform, supported and carried forward by roller skates. He nods to the guards with whom he will make it a point to become more and more friendly each day. Occasionally, he will do a portrait sketch of each of them, in pencil, as he takes the cigarette breaks with each one, away from the public halls. Every time he moves with his little trundle cart his copy of ‘The Second of May’ will be locked inside the outer, mother frame holding the canvas on which he paints. If a guard should decide to help him push it the guard will be familiar with the exact weight.”

  Bourne took on the unctuous self-confidence of a medicine show pitchman as he traced Jean Marie’s course in and out of the Prado, day after day. “He will trundle in each morning behind his permit and trundle out each night for two full weeks right up to the Feria of San Isidro when we will take the Goya for you.”

  “Ah, San Isidro. Much diversion. Very good, Jaime. Very good.”

  “Well—not quite, but I’m happy to see that you are right with it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In a minute. We’ll stay with the sequence for the moment. I propose that we take the Goya on the first Tuesday of San Isidro which will be May 12th this year, at some time between four and five in the afternoon after the bull fight has started and still close enough to closing time at the Prado so that Jean Marie can wheel the original Goya out in the mother frame before any remote, almost impossible off-chance that the copy could be discovered and the alarm raised.”

  “Of course. Any day you choose. Naturally!”

  “And so comes my third and most important request and one which you have actually, in a way, anticipated.”

  “I did? Well! What was that?”

  “You must provide us with an extraordinary diversion. You must cause something to happen which will stand the entire city on its head for not less than twelve minutes and eighteen seconds.”

  Dr.
Muñoz’ interest was rapt. “What kind of a diversion?” he asked.

  “Something completely grotesque. Something shocking. Something which will spread like wildfire across the city.”

  “But why do you need it? If you tell me why you need it, then I will understand it better.”

  “Well, look here, old man—if you give me the kind of a diversion I must have the news will reach the guards at the Prado as soon as it reaches the cafés, the vaults of the banks, the hospitals, the ear of Generalissimo Franco because this is an excitable, and very talkative city of gregarious, interdependent people. If it is the diversion I must have the guards who hear it first will call all the other guards because everyone must get an enormous sensation out of speading such news until little knots of Prado guards will be totally engaged—shocked, voluble, gesticulating, entirely abnormal for as long as it is possible to engage the total attention of adult humans. I need eleven minutes and eighteen seconds and will gratefully accept the gift of sixty seconds leeway.”

  Dr. Muñoz got out of his chair with extreme excitement and interest. He scooped up the yolk-colored cat Montes, and cradled him at his bosom, releasing chorded purrs. He walked to Bourne and leaned over close to him saying, most earnestly, “But what kind of a diversion? You have thought about this. You must have something vaguely appropriate in mind.”

  “Only vaguely appropriate,” Bourne answered. “I leave this to you because really a Spaniard must design this thing. He must know to the last nuance what will explode like a shell in the midst of Madrileños. When it hits you you will know that this is exactly the right diversion for the job. You feel what I mean?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Definitely. But perhaps you can give me an example. Perhaps one suggestion.”

  “Oh, something like turning a fire hose on a bishop while he is saying high mass—”

  “Madre de Dios!”

  “—or shooting a bull with a machine gun during a corrida. Something, as I said, grotesque or repellent, but definitely something completely shocking.”

  “Ah. Ah, yes. Of course. I see now. Hmm. Let me think about it. Put it entirely out of your mind. I will deliver to you a splendid diversion. Oh, yes. I’m sure of it now that I understand it.”

  “It is the most important single part of the plan. The rest is plain arithmetic. We begin with the time and motion studies tomorrow morning. We’ll go through the drill of taking one painting down and putting the other one up over and over again, so many times that it will ultimately become pure reflexive action.” Bourne took on the huckster’s flashing eye, his roguish smile, his braying voice and incipiently untrustworthy expression. “The rest is semi-automatic. Let’s say that the diversion is timed for twenty-six minutes past four on that Tuesday afternoon. Jean Marie will be in the Sala Goya finishing the copying of the trompe l’oeil. I will stroll into the museum through the Paseo entrance at five minutes past four. I will walk leisurely to the Sala Goya, arriving in front of ‘The Second of May’ at sixteen minutes after four o’clock. I ignore Jean Marie. He ignores me. At four thirty-one or four thirty-two, no later, I should hear the shout which means your diversion has taken place and has spread across the city. If there should be anyone in the gallery with me at that time I will shout the diversion at them, pointing away from the Sala Goya. Jean Marie will repeat this in another language, pointing off. They will move. Then I will remove the Goya, with Jean Marie’s help, and hang the copy. The original will snap into its place behind the trompe l’oeil under the mother frame. I will saunter off to the other side of the Sala Goya. Jean Marie will continue his copying of the triptych. I will make my way out of the main exit at four fifty-two. At three minutes before five the guard will come to Jean Marie to announce closing time, to tell him the shocking news of your diversion, and Jean Marie will trundle the huge mother canvas which carries the Goya beneath it, out of the Sala Goya, past the guards who wave good night, as he has been doing every day for three weeks. To tell the truth, Victoriano, the world may never discover that ‘The Second of May’ has been stolen.”

  “Then what do you do with the Goya?” Dr. Muñoz asked politely.

  “I exchange it for the three paintings from Dos Cortes.”

  “Ah. Yes. I see,” replied the marqués.

  Jean Marie completed the copy of “The Second of May” in five days, one-quarter and Dr. Muñoz, viewing it, wept at its sweep, beauty and utter authenticity.

  Bourne had conducted two drills a day for nineteen days with Jean Marie. They were engaged in drill number thirty-nine. They began at seven thirty in the morning, each morning, after which they would breakfast and Jean Marie would stroll off with his trundle cart to the Prado to begin his long day’s work which was having the effect of dazzling the guards with its wizardry.

  They worked in the salon of a large apartment on the top floor of the hotel. The furniture of the room had been pushed to one side and covered with bed sheets.

  A large frame containing a blank canvas had been hung on a wall of the room, at the same height from the floor as was hung Goya’s “Dos de Mayo” in the Museo de Pinturas del Prado.

  Jean Marie sat in a canvas-back chair in front of a large empty frame which held no canvas but which framed air. He had lost nearly fifteen pounds. He was haggard and sick-looking. He sat with his hands in his lap, staring disconsolately at Bourne, who stood staring at the empty canvas hanging in the frame on the wall, talking in a low, even voice to Jean Marie while he clearly was calculating something else entirely.

  “Jean Marie,” he said clearly but with remote preoccupation, “please continue to have confidence in me and what I have to say to you. You can forget your nerves. What you think you are going through is the same thing encountered by film stars when they undertake to become stage actors. I mean it. They make themselves sick imagining what will happen when they make their first entrance from the wings and have to face that sea of live faces. As the time grows shorter, as the rehearsals continue, just as our own rehearsals are now continuing, their panic grows like a mushroom in a damp, dark cellar.” Bourne’s voice had taken on a cadence. It was soothing. It was insistent, and different from any other voice he ever used. “But they do make their entrance on opening night and, once they are on, they don’t have time to be nervous because the director has given them so many things to do with their hands and with their bodies that once they are out there, they have neither the time nor the mental room to be nervous. The same goes for you. Identically the same applies.” He walked to Jean Marie and put a hand on his shoulder. “Move over,” he said.

  “Move over?”

  “Get out of the way. Get up. I want to start you counting this morning. I’ll show you.”

  Jean Marie got up and moved aside. Bourne sat down. “This is all you have to do,” he said reassuringly, his voice massaging the atmosphere. “I nod to you. You stand up.” Bourne stood up. You move to your position at the far corner of the Goya frame. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” Bourne paced to the position counting each of his steps in French as he went. He stood motionless at the far corner of the frame, looking serenely across the room at Jean Marie. He motioned to him to take that place. Jean Marie moved in and stood where Bourne was standing. Bourne moved to the directly opposite corner of the painting.

  “Now, I will make my first moves. I take my bolt cutter. I snap the lower holding pins. One, two.” He snipped at imaginary bolts. “I take out the folding stepladder. I set it against the wall. I climb the ladder. One, two and three. I snap the top holding pin. One. I step down the ladder. One, two and three.”

  Bourne looked over at Jean Marie expectantly. “Now we reverse positions. You walk close to the frame. I walk in the outside lane. All right. Count as you go.” Bourne started forward on Jean Marie’s first count. They changed places and were in position at the count of six. Jean Marie held firmly to his side of the frame as though supporting it. Bourne repeated the identical moves he had made on the other side, bolt cutter, stepladder
and counting, but this time he supported the painting with his shoulder as he made the last snip, having snipped from top to bottom on this maneuver. “All right! The painting is free. We move it, walking backward, counting together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” They had reached the empty mother frame with an imaginary painting “In she goes,” Bourne said. Each man slid his end in. They moved crab fashion, pushing it into secure place for the length of the frame, pushing air, rehearsing and pretending.

  “Now, all we would have to do would be to hang your copy in the place of the original and the job is done. Nothing to it. All you had to do was to be able to count to twenty-seven. There is absolutely nothing else you have to do but be able to count to twenty-seven. I merely have to be able to count to forty-six. It’s that simple.”

  “I know,” Jean Marie replied wearily. “It is simple. You have made it wonderfully simple. But I am an artist not a thief. I am a highly imaginative man and I get nervous when I think about it and I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to vomit when I think about it too long, and I live in fear that I will start to vomit while we are in the middle of the job. And I can’t sleep. The more I don’t sleep the more nervous I get. I was not born to be a thief. It is that simple.”

  “Perfectly natural. After all, I’m not a nerveless man, Jean Marie. In my own way I am a highly imaginative man too.”

  “I realize that, Jim. Please—there is no doubt about that.”

  “And I know as well as anyone that the part we call living is the internal life we have, the life of reflexive feeling, the poet’s side of us, the ground on which all of our wars are fought.” His voice stroked at Jean Marie. “Because I understand this I seek to bring order to the external life, the less important part of life because it is not life but rather the time-motion plasma which supports the internal life, where we truly live, as a river supports a cork as it bobs and moves along the endless stream from birth to death.”