Masterpiece

by Elise Broach

  He crawled along the sill to Christina’s desk, the surface of which was mostly bare, except for two neat stacks of paper, a canister of pens and pencils, a clock, and a silver-framed photograph. The photo was of Christina sitting on a sofa, feet tucked under her, with two little girls next to her. Or, really, Marvin thought, on top of her. One leaned across her lap, smiling up at her; the other was draped over her shoulders, one hand tangled possessively in her hair. Christina herself looked messy and rumpled, very unlike her appearance yesterday. But her face was shining. The girls had her delicate features and her same blond hair, only lighter. They must be her daughters, Marvin decided.

  For the rest of the morning, he trekked around the office. He climbed the shelves and surveyed the stiff rows of books. He clung to the cord of the window shade and entertained himself by launching away from the wall and swinging slowly back and forth while the room gyrated below him. It was the closest he could come to flying, a skill shared by many other kinds of beetles—ladybugs, weevils—that Marvin and his family often envied.

  In the early afternoon, he was pleased to find a thumbtack under the desk. If he’d been home, he would have promptly dragged it back to his collection, eager to show Elaine. Instead, he shoved it across the floor and hid it behind one of the table legs, feeling a bit more secure to know that a weapon was available should he have need of it.

  After a while, Marvin grew hungry. He thought longingly of the substantial breakfast Mama and Papa would be enjoying right now, compliments of the Pompadays. Bagel with cream cheese? Pancake with maple syrup? The feast beneath William’s high chair offered endless variety now that the baby was old enough to try different foods, but still young enough to enjoy throwing fistfuls onto the floor.

  Marvin crawled over to the wastebasket by the file cabinet in the hope of finding a stray morsel. The custodian had banged it empty, but fortunately, his careless sweeping had scattered several crumbs under the desk. At first Marvin thought they were only bread crumbs—stale ones, he suspected, the leavings of a sandwich eaten days ago. But to his pure delight, he discovered tiny bits of a strawberry Pop-Tart.

  As he gobbled the sweet pastry, Marvin felt considerably less inconvenienced by a day spent alone in Christina’s office. With a full belly, he returned to the tabletop to look at the drawing again. The lines were delicate but unwavering. And how striking Justice was, with her sad face and her heavy sword. He wanted to draw this picture more than the one with the lion. He couldn’t wait until James brought the ink.

  Finally, hours later, Marvin heard keys in the lock. He concealed himself in the book’s binding again, just as Christina came into the room, followed by James and then Karl, who stopped in the doorway. Christina was dressed as impeccably as the day before, in a crisp silk blouse and navy trousers, with her hair pulled smoothly away from her face and held in a tortoiseshell clasp. James, wide-eyed and nervous, shot quick glances in every direction, scanning the floor, the walls, the table. He’s looking for me, Marvin thought happily.

  “I’m so grateful you were able to come, James,” Christina was saying, resting her hand on James’s shoulder. “I know it must be difficult on a school day.” She turned to Karl. “And you, too, Mr. Terik. I do realize it’s an inconvenience for you.”

  “Well,” Karl said, “James wanted to, so . . .” He shrugged and leaned awkwardly against the door frame.

  Christina looked at James again. “Do you think you can work here at the table? If I clear off a space for you?” She scooted the stacks of paper aside, leaving a wide swath of polished tabletop, with the large volume of Dürer drawings in its center.

  “Let’s find Fortitude,” she said, flipping the pages. Marvin flinched and burrowed deeper into the binding as the pages fluttered above him. “I see you brought your ink set. Do you need paper? Anything else?”

  James looked at the floor. “Just paper. But . . . I . . .” He stopped.

  Christina crouched near him. “What is it?”

  Marvin heard James scuff one sneaker against the floor. “I . . . I don’t know if I can,” he said in a small voice. “I don’t know if I can draw it here.”

  Christina nodded. “I completely understand. The artistic process is so . . . so specific for each person. For the great masters, it was too.” She smiled encouragingly.

  Karl was watching James. “It’s a lot of pressure for a little guy,” he said quietly.

  Christina paused. “I don’t mean it to be. Really, James, don’t worry if it doesn’t work. I’m sure there were times it didn’t work for Dürer either.”

  Marvin saw Karl frown, and Christina reached out her hand quickly, resting it on his arm. He drew back in surprise, but she persisted. “Mr. Terik,” she said, “I feel like you and I have gotten off to a bad start somehow. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Please? To make up for your trouble coming all the way here again? It will give James a little peace while he works.”

  She smiled up at Karl, whose own face softened a little. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “How long do you want, James? An hour? Hour and a half?”

  James continued to scan the room, biting his lip. “Yeah. It could take me a while.”

  “Here’s the paper,” Christina said, setting a clean sheaf of heavy drawing paper on the table. “And here’s Fortitude.” She traced her fingers over the girl wrestling the lion. “Just give it a try, James, okay?”

  “Okay,” James said, his cheeks pink.

  They left, and as soon as the door clicked shut, James dropped to his knees, disappearing from Marvin’s sight. Marvin could hear him whispering as he crawled around the floor. “Where are you? Where ARE you? Oh, please, please be okay!”

  Marvin crawled out of the book’s binding and scurried to the edge of the table. James continued to scramble across the floor, looking under the desk, peering into the rust-flaked grooves of the radiator. Marvin waited until he had dejectedly heaved to his feet and was staring around the room, then ran to the edge of the table, hoping that the flash of movement would attract the boy’s attention.

  “Hey!” James cried. “HEY! You’re here!”

  He collapsed in a chair and rested his chin on the table, inches from Marvin, his face split by a wide grin. He plunked his finger down. Marvin promptly crawled on top of it and held tight as James lifted him.

  He had never seen James look so happy and relieved. That’s because James was worried about me, he realized. That’s because we’re friends.

  To Copy a Copy

  “I’m so glad nothing happened to you, little guy,” James said as he placed the paper in front of Marvin and shook the bottle of ink. “I mean, I kept thinking, ‘What if he got stepped on?’ Or, ‘What if the janitor came and swept you up in the garbage?’ ”

  Marvin thought this sounded like something Elaine would say.

  But James continued happily, “I hope you can do this! I mean, she’s totally counting on you. You know what this is like? This is like that fairy tale, the one with the girl and the straw. What’s it called? . . . ‘Rumpelstilt-skin?’! Remember? Where the girl’s locked in that room of the castle and she’s supposed to spin the straw into gold or else they’ll chop off her head?”

  Marvin shuddered. No wonder human children found it entertaining to pull the legs off beetles, hearing stories like these. He crawled over to the drawing paper.

  “And then that little elf or something comes and helps her, and nobody knows it,” James finished. “Like you’re helping me. Except it turns out the elf’s kind of mean, and I can tell you’re not mean. You’re really, really nice.” He took a deep breath.

  “Okay, ready? Here’s your ink.” He unscrewed the cap, setting it down next to Marvin. “And what I’ll do is, I’ll put the book up like this”—he propped the huge volume upright, arranging other books on the table to hold it open—“so you can see it while you work, you know? Otherwise it’d be too hard; you’d have to crawl back and forth while you’re drawing. This way, it’s kind of like looking thro
ugh the window in my room. Do you think you can do it?”

  Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Marvin gazed at the drawing. James was right, it wasn’t so different from looking through the bedroom window at the city street. Everything was there, in proportion; all he had to do was transfer it to the page.

  But it was a drawing by a brilliant artist, made hundreds of years ago! How could he copy something like that without messing up?

  It didn’t help to think that way, Marvin decided . . . just like it didn’t help to think about the dark water in the drain, or what might be floating there when you were about to dive in. Your only hope was to stop thinking and do it.

  He took a deep breath, dipped his front legs in the ink, and went to work.

  The blank expanse of paper was overwhelming, but Marvin focused on an area the size of the drawing, marking the corners of an imaginary three-by-three-inch square with microscopic dots of ink. Then he began to draw. He concentrated on making his strokes as crisp and firm as Dürer’s, without sacrificing the delicacy of the line. He started with the girl’s tightly curled hair. Then he moved to the curve of her face.

  James sat at the table with his arms crossed in front of him, his chin resting on them. Mostly he was silent, but sometimes he whispered encouragement: “Hey, good job,” or “That part is tricky . . . . You can do it.” Marvin nearly forgot James was there, so intent was he on the drawing. The girl took shape, her sturdy, muscled limbs bulging through the cloth of her gown. The lion was easier somehow, its body held tight in the circle of human arms. Carefully, Marvin added the cross-hatching over its flank, then the flourish of its curling tail.

  “That’s great,” James said in a low, breathless voice, as if afraid to break the spell.

  Marvin discovered that if he copied individual parts of the drawing too mechanically, his lines seemed stiffer than Dürer’s. So he tried to capture the flow of the whole image. The hardest part was making his lines fluid and sure, as if he were drawing something new, all by himself, for the first time.

  “Hey,” James said suddenly, looking at the clock on Christina’s desk. “It’s almost five-thirty. They’ll be back soon. Can you finish it?”

  Marvin worked faster, slipping into the strange trance he’d felt when he first started sketching the scene outside James’s window. It was a way of settling deep inside himself, lost to the outside world. He had no sense of anything but the page in front of him, the lines of ink blossoming into a picture.

  Finally, the drawing was complete.

  Marvin backed off the paper, holding his ink-stained legs aloft.

  James nodded slowly, barely breathing. “It looks just like the other one!”

  Marvin stared at it. It was all there: the crouching girl and her lion, every detail faithfully reproduced on the page. But was it as good as Dürer’s? Marvin felt so much less certain of it than he had of his window drawing.

  James, however, seemed perfectly confident. “They’re not going to believe this,” he said, grinning.

  Minutes later, Karl, Christina, and Denny walked through the door. James had already secured Marvin in his jacket pocket to avoid a repeat of yesterday’s scare. Marvin gripped the flap, anxiously watching Christina’s reaction.

  “Oh!” she gasped. “Oh, James!”

  Denny laughed out loud.

  Marvin couldn’t tell if that was good or bad. Did they like it?

  “Wow,” said Karl, approaching the table.

  James stepped backward, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. Marvin looked up and saw the same pink flush creeping over his cheeks.

  “James, this is excellent,” Christina said, lifting the paper. “I can’t believe it. I have to confess, I thought it was worth a try, but—Denny, look! Did you ever imagine he’d be able to do it so well?” She turned excitedly to Karl. “Did you?”

  To his surprise, Marvin saw that the dynamic between them had entirely shifted, the prickly short-temperedness gone. Karl smiled at her, his face mirroring her enthusiasm.

  “No! I thought he could get the line right, but copying something requires a different skill altogether. The proportions are really good here, James—the way you’ve got them in space. Hmmm. I think the overall effect in the Dürer is not quite so crowded, though. Do you agree?” Karl said this to Christina, who looked more closely at the image in the book.

  Marvin saw what he meant. In the original, despite its miniature size, the girl and the lion formed a broad triangle in space.

  “True,” said Denny. “But it’s very fine work. The technical command is extraordinary.”

  Christina nodded. “And this is his first try. And it’s from a reproduction in an art book, not from the original drawing.” She paused, shaking her head. “I’m almost afraid to say this, but it’s given me hope.”

  Marvin glanced up at James, who clearly shared his bewilderment. What was she talking about?

  “Hope for what?” Karl asked.

  “Yes, Christina, do tell,” Denny added. “Your plans have been a mystery long enough. Why a copy of Fortitude? Still smarting because I outbid you on it at auction?”

  Christina laughed at him. “No, no, I got over that a long time ago.”

  “Why then?” Denny persisted. “Why do you need a copy of Fortitude?”

  Christina’s eyes sparkled. “Because,” she said slowly, her voice barely containing her excitement, “it’s about to be stolen.”

  Stealing Virtue

  “What?” cried Denny and Karl simultaneously. Marvin poked his head farther out of the pocket, almost toppling to the floor.

  Christina smiled. “Not the real drawing! Don’t worry. James’s copy of it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Karl said.

  Denny frowned, raking his hair back with one hand. “Nor do I. And since the real one belongs to the Getty, I think I’d better hear the details of this. Perhaps we should sit down.”

  Christina pulled out a chair and sank into it, placing the drawing in front of her, her slim hands flanking it on the table. Denny and Karl sat down on either side of her, but James remained standing. So I can see, Marvin thought gratefully.

  “Well,” Christina began, “Denny’s familiar with the background of all this, but I doubt you two are.” She turned to Karl. “Know anything about art heists?”

  “Sure,” Karl said. “The famous ones. The Mona Lisa. The Gardner Museum in Boston.”

  “What?” asked James. “What are those?”

  Christina took off her glasses and set them on the table, staring at the drawing. “The most famous art thefts of all time. The Mona Lisa was taken in 1911. An Italian workman took it from the Louvre, planning to return it to Italy. It was missing for two years, but they got it back.” She rubbed her forehead. “The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum wasn’t so lucky. The biggest single art theft in history—in 1990, two men dressed as police officers arrived in the early morning, saying they were responding to a call. They handcuffed the security guards and stole three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet, and five Degas paintings, among others. The whole lot was worth almost four hundred million dollars. They’ve never been found.”

  “Wow,” said James. Marvin thought of all those paintings, gone.

  James looked at Christina. “But why do people steal them? What do they do with them?”

  Christina sighed. “Usually, it’s for the money,” she said. “But of course the paintings are often so well known, they can’t be sold openly, at auction.”

  Denny nodded, rubbing his forehead. “The market in stolen art is a difficult one. Thieves can’t sell to museums or reputable dealers. Any private collector who buys a stolen painting can’t display it publicly. He’d have to want it for its own sake—just for the art—and be willing to enjoy it in private.”

  Christina nodded. “So it tends to be a black-market business. . . . Criminals trade the paintings for other forbidden things, like drugs or guns.”

  “Really?” James’s eyes were wide. Ma
rvin had to admit, it was hard to picture someone swapping one of those lovely, delicate, centuries-old artworks for a secret stash of weapons.

  “Well, that’s one kind of theft,” Denny interjected. “Stealing art is not like other crimes. Sometimes it’s not for money at all. Sometimes it’s really for love.”

  “True.” Christina nodded. “There can be genuine feeling behind it. In the case of the Mona Lisa, the thief just wanted the painting returned to its homeland.”

  “But why would he care about that?” James asked.

  Karl ruffled his hair. “It’s Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous work. Many Italians see it as a national treasure. They aren’t happy that it’s in a French museum.”

  “His works are common targets for thieves,” Christina said. “Madonna with the Yarnwinder was taken from a Scottish castle several years ago, by two men posing as tourists. They overpowered a guide and took it right off the wall.”

  “Was that worth a lot of money too?” James asked.

  “Oh, yes. It’s a masterpiece. Fifty million? A hundred million? Never recovered.”

  James let out a long breath, and Marvin wasn’t sure whether it was because of the lost money or the lost painting.

  “Do they ever get them back? The paintings, I mean,” he asked Christina.

  “It’s rare, but it happens. You can’t imagine how exciting that is.” She squeezed James’s shoulder. “When Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream was found, the museum opened its doors for a night and served champagne. Everyone in the art world was overjoyed. And then there was that strange theft in Manchester, right, Denny?” Christina turned to Denny for confirmation. “In England a few years ago, a bunch of stolen canvases by van Gogh, Picasso, and Gauguin were found rolled up in a cardboard tube and stuffed behind a public toilet, just down the street from the gallery where they’d been stolen two days earlier.”