by Dara Horn
“Hello, Mr. Ziskind,” she said. She smiled and stepped back from the door. She was facing him now, along the wall beside the garbage cans. “It’s me, Erica, from the museum.” As though he wouldn’t know who she was. But was she there for him, or was it a coincidence? “Sorry to bother you,” she added. For him.
Haven’t you bothered me enough? Ben demanded in his brain. But her smile was so disarming, so surprisingly real, that he couldn’t find the words. “Hi,” he stuttered, as if she were just a friend bumping into him in the street. He planted his feet on the ground, staking out turf. To his surprise, he enjoyed hearing her voice.
“I called you earlier, but you were out. I knew I’d be in—in the neighborhood this evening, and—well, I brought this,” she said.
Absurd, he thought. What did she mean? He watched as she reached into her bag. The turn of her shoulder made her hair fall away from her neck, revealing a collarbone so delicate that it made Ben think of Sara as a child, poised in front of the murals she had painted on the studio walls. Erica struggled with the zipper on her bag. He wished he could help her open it—to make her leave faster, he told himself. But then she pulled out a book and held it in front of him. It was a children’s book with a snowy landscape on the cover. A woman hovered in the air above a pair of snow-covered tombstones, floating high in a watercolor sky. It was his mother’s last picture book, a ghost story. The title was The World to Come.
“I’m a big fan of your mother’s work,” Erica said. “I was hoping she would be able to sign one of her books for me.” She smiled.
Ben took the book in his hands, astonished. Erica watched him, and in her smile he saw something so honest that he failed to speak. Her eyebrows were raised above her pale green eyes, and as her fingers fidgeted with the strap of her bag, he saw her smooth teeth resting on her perfect lip. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had looked at him that way, besides Sara. Maybe Nina, right after they were married. But after two months Nina’s smile had reversed into a sneer. He looked at Erica’s smile and felt a lightness in his body, as if a stone had fallen from his heart. He had forgotten that his mother was dead.
He glanced down at the book, noticing how similar the cover was to the Chagall painting. He let his eyes follow the lines of the woman’s body, the elongated curve of her hip and arm as she floated through the sky, released from the ground. As he opened the book, Erica took a step toward him. He drew in his breath, wondering what to expect.
“I know you did it, Mr. Ziskind.”
He slammed the book shut. He stepped backward, edging away from her until his back was pressed against the building’s stone wall. Erica moved in closer. “I saw your mother’s name in the file,” she said. “I know it was hers.”
Ben moved his lips, but no words came out. He stared at the book and remembered how it had felt to be under the studio lights on the Beat the Wizkind set, sweating beneath his brace as his heart thumped inside its iron cage and his hands twitched above the buzzer, his brain fighting hard for the right answer. Suddenly he felt something unimaginably soft, cool and gentle, on the back of his hand. Thin fingers rested on his. “I understand if your mother wants it back,” Erica said.
He gulped, then swatted her hand away as if it were a fly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he spat.
“I can help you, Ben. There are things you could do that would make this whole problem just go away. If you want, I can show you how to return the painting without anyone knowing it was you.”
His first name sounded natural in her mouth, as if she had called him that for years. It scared him. He tried to move, but he was backed into a wall. Her breath smelled sweet and pink on his face. He hadn’t been so close to a woman since his wife had told him she was leaving and, after hours of shock and pleading, he had leaned in to kiss her goodbye. She had shoved him away then, disgusted. His back felt cold against the dark gray wall. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he made himself say. “If you’re accusing me of something, then why don’t you just call the pol—”
She tilted her head back, then grinned. “If you didn’t do it, then call the police yourself!” she retorted. “Call them tonight and tell them I’m harassing you. Conspiracy to theft. If you really are innocent, nothing should stop you from turning me in.” She smiled at him again, her knuckles turning white around the strap of her bag. “But if you’re not, then think about it. I have my own reasons for asking you to do this. Trust me, it will be a lot easier for everyone if you just return it.”
Ben noticed that her shoulders were shaking, and her nervousness comforted him. He was suddenly acutely aware of the smell of the trash in the can beside her, a thin, sweet odor of rotting fruit. Her red skirt fluttered in the evening breeze, and he caught a brief glimpse of a long, pale leg. Trust her? She smiled again, and he wondered if she could help it, if she smiled intentionally, or by mistake. She ran a hand through her hair, waiting for him to speak. He was silent. Only a moment later did he realize that his mouth was hanging open.
“I’ll give you a day to think about it,” she said. “Meet me tomorrow night at nine, outside the museum. If I don’t see you there, I’m going to track down your mother. I’m not afraid to have them search her house.”
Search the house! He felt himself starting to panic, and bit his lip. The air around her became blurry, as though he still had his glasses off. Suddenly a figure appeared behind her, a bright green flash in the orange night.
“Sara!” he called.
Erica turned around. Sara stood just behind her, one step up on the sidewalk from the sunken entrance to the building. Sara must have been teaching that day, Ben thought; she looked more presentable than usual. Her curly hair was half tied behind her head, and she was wearing a bright green blouse and dark pants that weren’t jeans. There was only a single streak of blue paint on her left arm. She glanced at Erica, then stepped down beside the garbage cans, standing before them. Erica smiled, but Sara merely stared.
“Hi, I’m Erica,” Erica said, sticking out a trembling hand.
Sara nodded, but didn’t offer a hand in return. Erica slowly lowered her hand to her side. Ben watched as the two women looked each other over: a split second, almost invisible inspection of faces, breasts, hips, hair.
“This is my sister Sara,” Ben said. He saw Erica visibly relax, her fluttering hand finding rest on the edge of her bag. “Sara, this is Erica. She, uh—we met at the museum last week.”
He emphasized the word “museum,” and waited to see if Sara would understand. But Sara was preoccupied, examining Erica as if Erica were one of her paintings, wondering where to add more color.
“I’m a big fan of your mother’s work,” Erica said to Sara, and gestured toward Ben’s hands. Ben looked down, surprised to see that in his left hand he was still clutching the edge of The World to Come. “I just came by here tonight with a book for her to sign,” Erica finished.
“To sign?” Sara asked. Ben saw the horror in her eyes and suddenly remembered what he had forgotten. It was like waking from a sweet dream, a brief joy forever lost. “But she—”
Ben pinched his sister’s wrist with his right hand and held up the book with his left. “Don’t worry, I’ll give this back to you soon,” he said to Erica, his voice self-consciously loud.
“Why don’t you return it to me tomorrow night?” Erica intoned. Ben saw the tiny blond hairs on her forearms rise, her skin tightening in the cool night air. “Nine o’clock. I’m sure we’ll be in touch,” she said. She took Ben’s hand.
They were in touch as he shook her hand, her soft skin warm in his palm. And then they were out of touch as Erica walked away, with Ben left holding her book and breathing her air.
11
“SHE’S BEAUTIFUL, BEN.”
Ben had made Sara hurry inside and up to his apartment, but now they lounged on the couch (the couch he had just bought, a cheap used one, to replace the one Nina had commandeered) as Sara’s fingers wandered
over the cover of Erica’s copy of The World to Come. Ben peered at his twin sister’s stomach, trying to imagine the invisible idea within her. What did it mean? But then she propped the book up on her lap. “Who is she?” Sara asked.
Ben stiffened. Strange, he thought, how he still sometimes sat with his back rigid, his skin prickling between his shoulder blades as though he were trapped forever in his childhood cage. Especially when talking to Sara about women. Ben had first met his former wife in Sara’s apartment, at a party whose main purpose had been to set him up with another artist she knew, a designer who worked in TV. The woman Sara had selected for him was pretty, but aloof. She left the party early, claiming a headache; her friend Nina stayed on, laughed at Ben’s jokes, and married him. Sara had known from the beginning that the marriage was doomed. She had refused to listen to anything Ben said about his wife at the time, changing the subject whenever her name came up, and because she hadn’t listened, Ben had known, too. The two twins formed a magic ring of unsaid words and thoughts, a charged circle that had stretched to include Leonid, but only barely. A fourth person might not fit. And another fourth, Ben remembered, was already on the way.
“She’s the one from the museum,” Ben answered. He pretended disinterest. “She works for them. She says she knows I have the painting, and she wants me to meet her outside the museum tomorrow night to give it back. She claims she won’t tell anyone if I show up when she wants me to.”
His twin sister listened, then tilted her head down, gazing at the cover of the book. Her hair curled in dark ropes on her neck. “She’s beautiful,” Sara said again.
“So that means I should believe her?”
Sara didn’t answer. Ben tried to stop thinking of Erica. He kicked at a pile of recently submitted encyclopedia articles he had left on the floor the previous night, after falling asleep while reading them on the couch. As a child he had been fascinated by encyclopedias. After his father died, when he was old enough to think about it, he had reviewed the various ridiculous stories he had heard about how his father lost his leg (ranging, over the years, from a tiger to an earthquake to a barbaric family feud) and had begun looking things up, learning about the habits of various animals, the terrain of various countries, the histories of various wars—secretly imagining that he was preparing himself, readying himself to survive some even more horrible future. But now the entire idea of an encyclopedia struck him as absurd.
Sara opened the book that Erica had brought, and Ben slid down the length of the couch until he could see the pictures over his sister’s shoulder. Her hands paused on a picture of a man driving a car, his lips tight as his dark inked knuckles gripped the steering wheel. Behind him, a woman with a thin smile sat in the back of the car, transparent against the seat in watercolor paint. “You didn’t tell her about Mom,” Sara said.
“I know,” Ben answered, after a moment. “When she gave me the book, I—I don’t know why I didn’t.” But he did know why: to maintain the illusion, to pretend that his mother existed outside of the paper pages. As long as Erica didn’t know, he could believe what she believed.
“I loved the colors,” Sara murmured. She ran a finger across the edge of the page. Ben looked again at the watercolor woman sitting in the back of the car, unnoticed. “The angles, with that red skirt,” Sara said, thinking aloud. “And the light.”
Sara always talked about everything as if it were something she had painted. If it weren’t for her, Ben wondered if he would be able to see. He pictured Erica standing by the door and smiled. Would he actually go to see her tomorrow night? Suddenly he wanted to. But then he remembered why Sara had come, and yanked the book from her hands.
“This is what I needed to show you,” he said, and reached into his pocket, pulling out the folded page and peeling it open. “I found this in the house.” He placed the letter on top of the book and held it across the letterhead at the top, a bright red frame with the words KOMORNIK ART EXCHANGE emblazoned inside it. Sara looked down and then leaned forward, gripping the page and reading faster until Ben started reading over her shoulder, his eyes racing through the words he had already tried to forget.
December 18, 1986
Dear Mrs. Ziskind,
I’m very sorry about the tone of our telephone conversation yesterday. However, I write this note to reiterate my comments in writing. My decision concerning Study for “Over Vitebsk” remains final.
Your allegations about Sergei Popov’s character notwithstanding (and I must admit that I find it difficult to discern their relevance, not to mention their accuracy, if you were in fact five years old when you and he last met), Mr. Popov is a major client with whom I’ve had numerous dealings since the beginning of glasnost. There has never been a problem with any other sale to him, and our relationship is one of mutual trust. The accusations he made in the telefax I read to you are not to be taken lightly. You have essentially been charged with a felony.
In no way did I intend to dishonor your father’s memory. But when it comes to a sale of this magnitude, I am afraid that dead parents as evidence are simply not acceptable. I was willing to take both your word and (more significantly) that of the expert you retained through me, but I no longer intend to engage that expert’s services after this incident. Unfortunately there are large numbers of fake Chagalls on the market. Since the artist’s death last year, his works are exceedingly difficult to authenticate. Every counterfeit that is sold erodes the value of the originals. Needless to say, they erode my own business as well. As for your request that the painting be returned to you, the bottom line is that even if Mr. Popov were to go to the expense of shipping the piece back to me—which he has no intention of doing, and I believe wisely so—my professional choice would be to destroy it rather than to allow the possibility of it re-entering the market. I have no reason to believe that you would not attempt to sell it elsewhere.
Having met you, Mrs. Ziskind, I understand that you’ve been through a lot, and I know how hard it has been on you and your children. But even if I were to take you at your word, you have placed me in an impossible situation. Mr. Popov feels that yours was a deliberate deception, and while he cannot prosecute you himself from the USSR without severe diplomatic difficulties, he has encouraged me to do so. You should understand that it is purely out of sympathy for your children that I have decided not to press charges. I hope you will be satisfied with this and will bury the matter here.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Komornik
“It’s not true,” Sara whispered.
Ben took the letter back into his own lap. He took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses against his shirt, and then allowed himself to say what he had been denying all the way back from the house. “Yes, it is, Sara.”
Sara was silent, but Ben began to argue as if she had denied it. “I didn’t believe it, either, at first. I remember how upset she was when she tried to sell it,” he said, trying to sound more patient than he was. “But you know she could easily have forged that painting. And it wouldn’t be the only time she did something like that.” He picked up the book from Sara’s lap and slammed it down on the couch. “You know she didn’t write these stories herself.”
It was something they never talked about, yet both of them knew. Sara blinked, and Ben could see that she was going to ignore it. “It can’t be a fake,” she said. “It was in a Russian museum.”
“All that means is that the guy who took it wasn’t a chump,” Ben insisted. “He probably never told anyone in Russia that he’d been fooled, sent it straight to the museum, and kept whatever money they were giving him for the sale.”
Sara shook her head. “That’s not how it was. I met him.”
Ben sat up, leaned forward. “You did? I mean, who? How?”
“When she was trying to sell it. I went with her to the art dealership. The man who bought it was evil.”
Ben stared at her, struggling with something that fell just short of a thought. “What do you mean, ‘evil’?�
� he finally asked. The word made him think of being a little boy, of his odd shame the first time he saw his father’s fake leg—of feeling ashamed to have two legs, ashamed even to be alive. He listened, anxious.
“I mean that Mom fainted right in front of him.”
Ben sat back, his surprise dissolving into disappointment. It was hard to imagine their mother passing out. “That doesn’t explain anything,” he said, assuming the rational voice he knew she hated. “There are a million reasons why someone would faint. And besides, this was when we were how old, eleven? You probably just misunderstood what was happening.”
Sara stared at him. “You don’t believe in evil,” she said slowly. “For you everything is just a misunderstanding.”
Ben was silent, unsure of how to put her down. At last he groaned. “People aren’t inherently evil, Sara,” he said. He was acutely aware of the condescension in his voice. “You can’t just say that about someone you met for ten minutes almost twenty years ago.”
“You’re right. They aren’t born evil. But they choose to be. And they are.”
The line of pale blue paint on Sara’s forearm quivered. For a moment Ben imagined it was a vein, and thought again of his father’s veinless leg. There was no point in talking to Sara rationally, he knew. His eye fell on their mother’s book between them, and the full weight of his predicament struck him in the chest.
“So what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “It doesn’t change anything if the painting I stole is a fake to begin with. I’m as good as caught already. That woman said she would have them search Mom’s house if I don’t show up at the museum tomorrow night. I got the feeling that she’s important over at the museum. They’re going to listen to her.” He gritted his teeth. “She knows I have it. And she knows where I live. She can find Mom’s house in about a million ways, even just by checking where she lives in the ‘about the author’ section and then looking her up. She even knows where you live, from when the police talked to you. I could put it in a storage locker, but it’s only a matter of time until they track it down. It’s over, Sara.”