Chasing Cezanne

by Peter Mayle

  “What happens when advanced senility sets in?”

  “Oh, they go on chasing girls. But slowly, so they don’t spill their drinks.”

  The champagne arrived, and Andre raised his glass. “Thanks again, Lulu. It’s probably a waste of time, but I’d really love to know what happened to that painting.”

  A hundred blocks to the north, Rudolph Holtz and Camilla were also drinking champagne. It had been a satisfactory few days. There had been no further panic calls from Denoyer, and the Cézanne had arrived safely in Paris. A thorough check on the proceeds from the burglary had revealed no unpleasant surprises. The transparencies had been burned, the equipment disposed of through the slippery but capable hands of Benny’s uncle in Queens.

  “So we have nothing to worry about,” said Holtz. “If Kelly were in a position to do anything, we’d know by now. He’d have been in touch with Denoyer.”

  Camilla wriggled her toe in its velvet cocoon. The pain had gone, but she was enjoying the attention caused by her cane and had developed what she thought was a rather fetching limp. “I don’t know about that, but he’s been calling the office every day.”

  “Of course he’s been calling the office. He wants work.” Holtz brushed a scrap of lint from the sleeve of his tuxedo. “But I think it would be wise not to have anything to do with him for a while. You can find another photographer, I’m sure.” He put down his glass. “We should be going.”

  The limousine was waiting outside the entrance of the building, ready to take them the four blocks to a private fund-raising dinner. Holtz was not looking forward to it; these charity evenings could bankrupt a man if he wasn’t careful. He patted his pockets to make sure he’d forgotten his checkbook.

  8

  THE streets of Manhattan’s Upper East Side tend to confirm the view of those who see the city as a frontier outpost on the brink of war. Apartment buildings are garrisons, patrolled around the clock by uniformed men called Jerry or Pat or Juan. Private houses are fortified against invasion: Triple-locked doors, thickets of steel bars, alarm systems, drapes so heavy they could be bulletproof—every security device short of the domestic rocket launcher and the antipersonnel mine is prominently displayed or signaled. And this is the safe part of town. These urban bunkers are the seats of wealth and privilege, situated in highly desirable locations, properties that change hands for seven figures.

  As Andre turned off Park Avenue to go down Sixty-third Street, he wondered what it would be like to exist in a permanent state of siege. Did it ever become something you took for granted and eventually didn’t even notice? The idea of the prison home appalled him, and yet for some people it was normality. Denoyer, for instance, whether he was in France or the Bahamas, spent his life behind barricades. And so, from the look of his house, did Cyrus Pine.

  It was a fairly typical four-floor brownstone, perhaps a little wider than most, and noticeably well kept. The short flight of steps was scoured and spotless, the front door and the ironwork protecting the lower windows were sleek with fresh black paint, the brass bell push was dazzling in the noon sunshine. There was no sign to indicate that this was a commercial enterprise, but then it was hardly the kind of business that depended on passing trade or impulse purchases.

  Andre pressed the bell and identified himself to the intercom. Sixty seconds later, the door was opened by a stray from Fifth Avenue—a willowy young woman who looked as though she had spent most of the morning and a good deal of her father’s money shopping for her outfit for the day. A cashmere sweater, a silk scarf, a skimpy but luxurious flannel skirt, and the kind of shoes—high heeled and with paper-thin soles—that are priced by the ounce. The way she smiled at Andre, she might have been waiting for him all her life. “Follow me,” she said. Which he did with pleasure as she led him across the black and white tiled hallway and into a small study.

  “Mr. Pine will be right down. Can I get you an espresso? Some tea? A glass of wine?”

  Andre asked for white wine, feeling a little uneasy at being treated with such consideration. His call to Pine had been brief; while he had mentioned the young art dealer’s name and the magic word Cézanne, he hadn’t gone into any detail about the purpose of his visit. Pine must have assumed that he was a potential customer. He smoothed his jacket and looked down at his shoes, dull against the chestnut sheen of the study’s parquet floor, and was standing on one leg, polishing a dusty toecap against the back of his trousers, when the girl returned.

  “There.” She gave him another smile and a crystal glass, misty with condensation. “He’s just finishing a call. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable.” She closed the door behind her, leaving a trace of scent in the air.

  Andre gave up on his shoes and inspected the room. It had the feeling of a quiet corner in a comfortable, long-established gentlemen’s club—paneled walls, armchairs of veined and cracked leather, a fine but faded Oriental rug, two good eighteenth-century occasional tables, the faint aroma of beeswax. Andre was surprised by the absence of paintings; or indeed of anything that suggested Pine’s occupation. The only pictures in the room were two large black-and-white photographs hanging side by side over the small fireplace. He went to take a closer look.

  The photographs showed the yellowing tinge of age, in contrast to the obvious youth of their subjects. On the left, a group of boys turning into men, formal in black coats and high starched collars, hands in pockets, displayed a variety of decorative waistcoats to the camera. The faces, under slicked-back hair, were round and serious, almost haughty, gazing into the distance as though the photographer weren’t there. A caption beneath the figures read: Eton 1954.

  The second photograph showed another, less formal group. More young men, this time dressed for tennis, with sweaters slung over their shoulders and rackets that looked decidedly old-fashioned held casually in front of them. They were tanned and cheerful, smiling into the sun. Harvard 1958. Andre was looking from one photograph to the other to see if he could find a face that appeared in both, when the door opened.

  “I’m the pompous one on the far left who looks like he has a smell under his nose. How are you, Mr. Kelly? I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.” Andre turned to see the beaming face and outstretched hand of Cyrus Pine.

  He was tall and slightly stooped, with a full head of silver hair brushed straight back above a wide forehead, sharp brown eyes, and an impressive set of eyebrows, worn long. He was dressed in a gray tweed suit of European cut, a pale-blue shirt, and a butter-colored silk bow tie. Like his house, he appeared to be immaculately maintained. Andre put his age at around sixty. His handshake was firm and dry.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” said Andre. “I hope I’m not wasting your time.”

  “Not at all. It’s always a pleasure to meet a friend of David’s. Very bright young man, David. His father’s a great friend. We were at college together.”

  Andre nodded at the photographs. “You had an interesting education.”

  Pine laughed. “I had wandering parents—never knew on which side of the Atlantic they wanted to be.” He moved over to the photographs and pointed to one of the tennis players. “That’s me at Harvard. You can see I no longer had a smell under my nose. Must have left it behind at Eton.”

  Andre was trying to place his accent, a charming and cultivated hybrid of an accent that seemed to fall somewhere between Boston and Saint James’s. “You are English, though, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I still have the passport. But I haven’t lived there for forty years.” He glanced at his watch. “Now then. I hate to rush you, but a lot of my business is done with a knife and fork, and I’m afraid I have an early lunch date in half an hour. Let’s sit down.”

  Andre leaned forward in his chair. “I’m sure you’re familiar with Cézanne’s Woman with Melons.”

  Pine nodded. “I don’t know the lady intimately, much as I’d like to. That painting hasn’t been on the market for at least seventy years.” He grinned, and Andre could suddenly see
the young man in the photographs. “Are you buying or selling?”

  Andre grinned back, already liking him. “Neither,” he said. “Much as I’d like to. Let me tell you what happened.”

  Pine sat motionless, his chin resting on clasped hands, letting Andre speak without interruption. He had heard similar stories before—paintings that had slipped out of circulation, followed by unconfirmed rumors of their reappearance in Switzerland, in Saudi Arabia, in California, in Japan. He himself had assisted once or twice in discreet maneuvers designed to minimize inheritance taxes. Paintings valued in the millions were often too expensive to keep. These days, you had to be very careful when and where and how you died. As Andre talked on, Pine began to feel stirrings of interest. Odd little incidents like this deserved to be taken seriously in a business that had once been described as shady people peddling bright colors.

  Andre finished talking and picked up his glass. “Mr. Pine, let me ask you something. What do you think that painting’s worth? Just a guess.”

  “Ah. The same question occurred to me while you were talking. Let’s start with what we know.” Pine rubbed the side of his jaw reflectively. “A year or so ago, the Getty Museum bought a nice Cézanne—Still Life with Apples—for more than thirty million dollars. That was the reported price. Now, given certain obvious requirements, like proof of authenticity and the good condition of the painting, I’d have to say that Woman with Melons could fetch as much or more. The fact that it once belonged to Renoir doesn’t hurt, of course; nor does its long absence from the market. Collectors sometimes find those things extremely attractive. It’s difficult to put a price on them.” He gave a mischievous smile, his eyebrows twitching upward. “Although I’d love to try. But let’s be conservative and stick to thirty million.”

  “Merde,” said Andre.

  “Indeed.” Pine stood up. “Let me have your number. I’ll ask around. The art business is an international village inhabited by gossips. I’ve no doubt someone will know something.” Another twitch from the eyebrows. “If there’s anything to know.”

  There was a gentle tap on the door, and Miss Fifth Avenue appeared. “Mr. Pine, you should be going.”

  “Thank you, Courtney. I’ll be back by two-thirty. Make sure all your admirers have left by then, would you?” Courtney giggled as she opened the front door, her cheeks rosy with the faint traces of a blush.

  The two men left the house together, with Andre murmuring something complimentary about the girl as they went down the front steps. Pine buttoned his jacket and shot his cuffs. “One of the advantages of being in a business where appearances are important is that you can hire pretty girls with a completely clear conscience. And they’re deductible. I do love pretty girls, don’t you?”

  “Whenever I get the chance,” said Andre.

  They parted company on the corner of Sixty-third and Madison. As he was uptown, Andre decided to walk to DQ’s offices and see if he could catch Camilla. The last time they had spoken, she had brushed him off, and none of his subsequent calls had been returned. Her continued silence was beginning to puzzle him. It was unlike her; she wasn’t pleased when he worked for someone else, and normally she called often, even when she had no job to discuss. Just keeping you warm, sweetie, she had once admitted to him.

  The milder weather had brought out the usual rich variety of Madison Avenue street life: tourists wearing jeans and running shoes and apprehensive, about-to-be-mugged expressions; businessmen bellowing into cellular phones to make themselves heard above the din; boutique vultures, hair frosted, faces lifted, shopping bags bulging; beggars, Rollerbladers, massage parlor touts, vendors selling everything from pretzels to fifty-dollar Rolex ripoffs—and, drowning out conversation or even lucid thought, the unremitting cacophony of hoots and squawks, horns and sirens, the pneumatic grunting of buses, the squeal of tires and gunning of engines, the mechanical bedlam of a city in a perpetual hurry.

  The midday exodus was at its height by the time Andre reached the DQ building, with a stream of humanity flooding across the lobby and out to lunch. He decided against taking one of the elevators up to the office, not wanting to miss Camilla coming down; and so he waited, facing the hundreds of figures pushing past him in their race to get through the doors. Why didn’t anyone stroll in New York? They couldn’t all be late.

  Another elevator door slid open. Andre saw Camilla’s oversized dark glasses and the shining bounce of her hair as she stepped out, surrounded by a flying wedge of editorial staff, the junior secretary in her official position at Camilla’s shoulder. Andre moved toward the group, recognizing this as being one of Camilla’s mobile meetings. They were frequent occurrences at the magazine, due partly to the sense of urgency and excitement that Camilla insisted came from thinking on one’s feet, but mainly to her congenital unpunctuality. The meetings had been known to continue in the car taking Camilla to lunch or to Bergdorf’s. They were part of the show: the successful, overworked editor not letting a second go to waste in the service of the magazine.

  They were also most effective when used as a shield against the unwelcome approach of anyone Camilla didn’t wish to speak to, and this was such an occasion. She saw Andre—she must have seen him; they were only five feet apart when he called out to her—and she looked straight at him for a moment before her head jerked away. And then, safely behind a wall of bodies, she was past him. By the time he had turned to follow her, she was through the door and into the back of a waiting car.

  Caught between disbelief and mounting irritation, he stood watching the car cut uptown through the traffic on Madison Avenue. He and Camilla had worked together for more than two years. They weren’t close friends, nor would they ever be, but he had developed a liking for her and had always thought that it was reciprocated. Apparently not. His calls were no longer returned, and now this deliberate and obvious snub. But why? What had he done wrong?

  He hesitated outside the entrance to the building, wondering whether to go up and see Noel, who was usually able to make some kind of sense out of Camilla’s signals. But then a mixture of pride and anger took over: If she was going to avoid him, he was damned if he would chase after her. To hell with her, and to hell with DQ. There were plenty of other magazines. On his way toward Park Avenue, he ducked into the bar of the Drake to celebrate a minor victory of independence over immediate need. And immediate need there was, as he had to admit when he looked at the cocktail napkin on which he’d added up the cost of his new equipment. If the insurance people didn’t come through—and they were showing every sign of trying to delay settlement until well into the twenty-first century—he would start to feel the pinch very shortly. Work, that was the answer. He raised his glass in a silent toast to the next job. Lucy was bound to come up with something soon.

  “OK, so it’s not enough to retire on, but it’s better than anything else in town.” Lucy’s face wore a puzzled, slightly defensive expression. “It’s dead out there.” She glanced down at her notepad. “I’ve tried just about everything except the Plumbers’ Gazette, and the only other job anyone could come up with was a catalogue.” She wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like her photographers doing catalogues unless the alimony payments really had got them by the throat and they were desperate. She shrugged. “You never know. It might be fun.”

  The assignment was for an English magazine at an English fee, significantly lower than Andre’s American rate. But Lucy was right. Shooting tapestries in a stately home was certainly better than the grind of working on dozens of room settings under the eye of an art director who wanted everything lit by searchlight. Andre had been through that when he was starting out, and he didn’t feel like going back to it.

  “Lulu, it’s fine. Honestly. I don’t have much choice at the moment. When do they want it done?”

  Lucy consulted her notes. “Yesterday? It’s a crisis. They had it all set up. Their regular photographer was down there, and then he fell off a horse and broke his arm.”

  Andre winced.
“They don’t expect me to get on a horse, do they? What was he doing on a horse, for God’s sake?”

  “How do I know? Grip with your knees, you’ll be fine.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Lulu. I wish I’d had you with me this morning.” Andre described his unsuccessful brush with Camilla and saw a frown settling on Lucy’s face. “So there I was,” he said, “standing in the lobby like a connard—”

  “A what?”

  “A jerk—and she looked straight through me. And she saw me, I know she did.”

  Lucy got up from her desk. “Andre, she’s a flake. You’re always saying she’s not so bad, she has her funny little ways but she knows her job, she puts out a good magazine. That may be true”—Lucy wagged a cautionary finger—“but it doesn’t alter the fact that she’s a flake. When she likes you she’s all over you like a rash; when she doesn’t, you don’t exist. And for some reason, now she doesn’t like you.” Lucy folded her arms and cocked her head to one side. “Are you sure nothing happened when you were in France together?”

  Andre thought back to the evening in the Colombe d’Or and shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

  The frown on Lucy’s face was replaced by the hint of a smile, a rather knowing smile. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  Cyrus Pine, beneath the carefully maintained veneer of affable, casual charm that he displayed to his clients, was highly competitive. It had been in his nature to want to win ever since Eton, when he had discovered that “coming top”—either in sports or in the classroom—afforded him a certain cushion against the minor brutalities of public school existence. And it was at Eton that he had learned to disguise his gifts, since it was very poor form to be seen to try too hard. Success that seemed to come as a result of accident or luck was acceptable; success as a result of obvious determination and hard work was not. By the time he finished at Harvard, the pattern was established: He appeared to be one of life’s fortunate amateurs. This camouflage also worked well for him in business, but the reality was that he worked as hard and liked a deal as much as the next man.