These public spaces, clad in pale, pale marbles and glass and solemn steel, are meant to intimidate the casual auction-goer: as are their soaring windows, double-wide doorways and shining floors, the latter criss-crossed by sound-deadening, thick wool runners. In deference to Berger’s graying clientele (there’s a preponderance of these) the public stairways to the upstairs rooms were designed with unusually low risers. Intrusive sounds, except for the occasional click of a heel on marble or a civil, muffled “Sorry” are effectively deadened throughout.
Dripping raincoats are everywhere on this moist, but warmish night when Fernanda, wearing what she fervently hopes is her lucky black dress, arrives to watch her painting being sold. Weeks ago now – the same week she started her at the art-store job, in fact – she signed Berger’s contract and agreed to its sale and agreed to the percentage that the gallery would take. Her options were carefully explained to her, “in the unlikely event” that the painting doesn’t bring a bid equal to her stipulated reserve. Although she’s been assured and reassured that this won’t happen, she hadn’t actually known there were such things as reserves until Courtney, who’s quickly becoming a friend, has explained that it’s to her advantage to set a reserve: a price below which she won’t let her Poussin be sold. “Her” Poussin.
Fernanda finds that fail-safe a comfort tonight, but a small one, and somewhat upsetting. Naturally, she doesn’t want to let it go for too little, but maybe Berger’s has set the price too high. She’s allowed Courtney to select the estimate and reserve amount for her, because, after all, what does she know? So seven to ten million dollars for the estimate, Courtney decided with a seven million reserve. Which means they won’t sell her painting for less than seven million dollars. The thought of seven million dollars makes her ill.
Berger’s has waived the usual charges for photographs and insurance, however, along with their charges for the splendid and separate Poussin catalogue that’s been printed as a supplement to their standard Important Old Masters catalogue. An elegant monograph – she’s got it in her bag – it’s devoted exclusively to the painting’s history and all that’s currently known about her Poussin’s previous ownership. It’s replete with lush large photographs and details in the painting, and it includes no fewer than six glowing, scholarly discussions of the bacchanal’s many obvious merits, along with quotes from the international art community’s reigning experts on the works of Poussin: all of whom seem to agree that the painting and its rediscovery are nothing less than the art-world event of the year.
Fernanda only belatedly realized that all of Berger’s concessions to her, plus the marketing to-do, are because the gallery was determined not to let her take the painting anywhere else to sell. (Until a few weeks ago she hadn’t even realized there was anywhere else.) Still, there are many reasons to be nervous tonight, her reserve price first among them. Her stomach’s been iffy all day long, too, and it is reminding her right now that she should have had something to eat. Yet even those photos of fruit or fish in the catalogue proper are making her nauseous tonight. These past few days, in fact, she’s been living on clear broth and rice.
And that is why, not wanting to be caught in an elevator with her iffy stomach and what she imagines will be Manhattan’s chicest and richest crowd; not wanting to be caught in what will surely be a heady and certainly sickening mix of aftershave, perfumes and mints, Fernanda has opted for the escalator. Above and behind her on its stairs are several of what she takes to be Berger’s employees: young men, pleasantly fresh-faced and all wearing slim dark suits; young women, precisely the same. In fact, so attractive and interesting has she found her fellow passengers that, at the top of the moving stairs, she catches her heel in the ribbing and starts to fall. A guard nearby catches her arm and she thanks him profusely. It’s these size 11 shoes, she thinks. I’ll never get used to them.
Another attendant politely directs her toward the saleroom, where Fernanda’s unsettled to find there is no one to speak of: just a few nondescript men in open-necked shirts, one or two of them puzzlingly young, and all of them leafing through catalogues while perched casually on the edges of chairs or leafing through untidy notebooks. Two of the men are leaning against the walls, working their phones. When Fernanda appears in the doorway, nonetheless, they turn her way, as one, and gape. For Fernanda is now – her physical presence is now – the visual equivalent of a gunshot over a crow-filled field.
Ignoring their rapt stares (she’s begun to grow used to this, alas), she’s consumed with instant worry as to why there don’t seem to be nearly enough people here tonight to buy the forty or so Old Masters on offer. She can see that chairs have been set up for at least a hundred and fifty, but there are possibly thirty people here all told, and the auction is set to start in – she looks at her phone – twelve minutes.
Fernanda’s seen auctions in movies, but never for real. Not in St. Louis, certainly, where there was only one auctioneer, and he sold primarily second-hand furniture and used farm equipment. In the movies, she remembers, auction rooms are always chockfull of interesting types: sleek dandies (Italian, of course) in splendidly cut blue suits and dark-silk ties, invariably accompanied by beautifully groomed women (certainly French) each of whom wields an alligator handbag. But tonight, Fernanda is conceivably the most … overdressed … person here. Her St. Louis-ness won’t go away. And yet, eyeing the groups of dealers – if that’s what they are – consulting their notes, or glued to their phones or gossiping, she can’t get over the feeling that the place is more like some seedy off-track betting parlor than a Manhattan auction room. (Which she’s also only seen in movies.) But who, here, she wonders, could possibly spend millions of dollars on art?
She selects a chair at the far left end of the very last row. To her right and just behind her, there’s a comforting, massive pillar. She thinks she may need to stand behind it when lot number thirty-seven, the Poussin, comes up for sale: a very long time from now, she hopes, checking her phone once again. A scatter of auction-goers – one or two couples, a few more men – drifts into the room and settles in as far from each other as possible.
Among these are three rather nattily dressed older men heading, she sees, toward the last row. Her row. They’re much too near, Fernanda decides just as the eldest – the one with the foulard cravat – takes his seat, leans forward to catch her eye, and grins. Struggling to stifle her nausea now, she doesn’t smile back, but looks away instead. Tomorrow night she might smile back. Last night, she might have smiled back. Tonight, she’s a stone: a rock, a nugget of gold. She hopes.
Foraging in her bag for a pen and an old receipt, she begins to write down her options – not if, but when – her painting doesn’t sell.
She can always put it into next year’s sale of Old Masters. Or the following year’s sale. Courtney’s assured her of that. Not in the next auction, though, since potential buyers might (falsely) assume that, having failed to sell tonight, the painting has nasty problems: such as being too heavily restored, for instance, or having a dubious provenance. Or, even more damaging, that a hitherto overlooked – and possibly vindictive – major expert has expressed serious reservations about its authenticity. A formula for disaster.
But then, she also knows she can take it home and live with it until a decade or so has passed and its failure to sell has been forgotten.
As if she has a decade or so.
Her final option is that Courtney decides to approach the underbidder to try to arrange a private sale. She’d have to lower her price, naturally. Which strikes her as absurd and kind of laughable, since the Old Masters department appears to have forgotten that this incredible estimate – $12 to $15 million, upped from the initial $7 to $10 million – was entirely its own idea.
As if she wouldn’t be happy to sell her painting for half of that. Or frankly – even twice what she paid for it! Seven thousand dollars right now (less the commission, of course) would really help out with the rent. Because selling art supplies
wasn’t part of her New York dream. She has to find a better job.
And yet incredibly, she’s sitting here on this pleasantly damp evening, seriously worrying that no one is going to lay out the millions that she’s scarcely allowed herself to fantasize about! For a piece of canvas and four strips of wood and about $6 worth of paint! But okay, Fernanda corrects herself. Allowing for inflation since the 1600s (she opens the back flap of the catalogue and does a few time-killing calculations) that would be possibly … all of $42 now. Fernanda smiles to herself and gazes around again.
Which is when, at last, she notices that along the room’s perimeters, clutches of staff, all in black, have been drifting in and clustering in the vicinity of several old-fashioned telephones. Courtney isn’t among them, she sees, but Christina is, and Fernanda doesn’t think to wave, not because it would be inappropriate – she’s pretty sure it wouldn’t – but because all at once, she understands. The buyers tonight – all the bidders who aren’t in this room – will be bidding by phone! Because they’ve studied the offerings online. On their computers, of course. On the Internet. The World Wide Web. Closing her catalogue and sliding it under her chair, Fernanda gets up shakily, goes to her pillar and leaning against it, inhales.
The auctioneer is approaching the podium at last.
Subconsciously Fernanda has expected it to be Courtney. But instead, it’s a slender, faultlessly tailored man in his forties, with a neat puff of gray-brown mustache and a somewhat overlarge balding head that the ceiling lights polish cruelly. The auctioneer sports a bow tie, and as he announces his name – Charles Raff – and tonight’s sale, Fernanda is deeply thrilled. A British accent. Things will go well now, she thinks, returning to her chair and squeezing her palms between her knees.
An hour later, she still doesn’t understand what is happening here. Bids have been whizzing bullet-like around the room, and while she’s been trying hard, she really can’t tell where they’re coming from or who is bidding. Now and then, one of the staff will point toward a paddle and call out, “in the room,” raising her hopes. But more frequently, the auction starts and ends so swiftly that she’s baffled and bewildered. “Sold to the phone,” the auctioneer announces, and Fernanda supposes that somewhere in the world, an unknown and unknowable, buyer has just secured his (her?) heart’s desire. Now and then, Charles Raff allows the proceedings to lag while he teases out one more little bid. “Any more?” He asks, looking around the half-empty room. “Any further advance on $80,000?” Or $180,000? Or $500,000?
But worse than that, Fernanda doesn’t begin to understand the prices being paid. Tiny paintings bring incredible sums – six figures, even – while a couple of the largest ones – unbelievably, that handsome, full-length portrait of the gray-haired old woman in the beautiful dress with the beautiful frame – seem not to have sold at all. At least she thinks they haven’t sold, because simultaneous with the slam of the auctioneer’s black paperweight – or whatever it is he’s using instead of an actual hammer – he’s mumbled something she can’t quite make out and has also forgotten to smile. From such meager hints, and from the fact that none of the staff requests a paddle number, she gathers that the painting just offered is one of those returning to its owner. The outcome she’s dreading most. Equally disconcerting is the fact that the whole evening long, people around her have been getting up, walking around the room, whispering into their phones or to each other, and some of them have even left. It’s all so casual. So rude. Two of the standees behind her, in fact – and why are they standing when there are so many chairs? – have been murmuring together for minutes now. As Lot 35 is carted off, they part with loud “goodbyes” and “good lucks”, and head for the hall.
An enlargement of Lot 36 is just appearing on the screen above the auctioneer: a small and pretty still life of lemons and a glass vase on a carpeted table. Why, Fernanda wonders, working hard at distracting herself, why would anyone put an oriental rug on a table? She sweeps up the catalogue from the floor and notes that the little still life is estimated at $400, 000 to $600,000, and looks once again at the enlargement on the screen. It isn’t that pretty, she thinks. But what do I know?
As the sales chant begins, sounds fade away and motion slows.
The Poussin is coming up next.
Beneath her right thigh is her painting’s slim catalogue and it’s pricking her leg through her skirt. She can’t stand it one more minute and leaps from her chair to retreat behind that pillar. There, she leans her hot cheek against its cool, marble-ish paint. She just needs to calm herself down, she is thinking. And, with that in mind, she is turning toward the corridor outside the room, when, for just a second and just beyond the door, she sees a piss-yellow dog. Its liverish tongue is lolling wetly from its lips. It has stopped at the entrance to the auction room and is staring straight at Fernanda. For a minute – an hour – a year. Its fiery eyes are searing her own.
It turns and lopes away.
She runs after it, but trips on the door sill and barely catches herself on the jamb before stumbling into the hall. The dog – if that’s really what it was – is gone. Nothing there. Up and down the stairs, the escalator, the elevator hall, back in the auction room: Fernanda stares wildly around: nothing there.
Trembling and sick to her stomach, she makes her way back to the pillar just as Lot 37 – the Poussin – is borne to the stage.
“Lot 37,” announces the auctioneer. “A newly rediscovered Baccanale by Nicolas Poussin. I have eight million on the phone to start, do I hear more?”
Now Fernanda isn’t just sick, she can’t breathe. Eight million dollars? She could live the rest of her life – ten lives – on eight million dollars!
“On my left,” she hears him say, “in the room, I have nine million. Ten million? Eleven? Yes, I see you sir.”
Fernanda peers around the column and sees her painting on the platform at the front of the room. The dirty-brown varnish is gone. Its brilliant colors are revived, and it rests on an oversize easel that is guarded, like some holy relic, by the pair of blue-aproned Berger’s attendants standing to either side. The Poussin, as he painted it, and its escort are all beautifully lit from above. She feels as if some ancient rite is taking place.
“Twelve million. I have twelve million. Any advance?”
Fernanda leaves her column and slips onto a chair. The room’s gone quiet now, not a paddle to be seen. A youngish man a few rows away seems to be taking cellphone pictures and Fernanda wonders why. There’s a hush while the auctioneer scans the room and starts to raise the gavel.
But, abruptly, all smiles, he announces, “Thirteen million, a new bidder with Christina on the phone. Now fourteen from Richard. And here’s Stefan. Fifteen?”
The phones are coming alive.
“Sixteen, Christina? We have sixteen million.” Charles Raff turns to a group on the far side of the room. “It’s against you, gentlemen.”
Quiet everywhere. Fernanda, shoulders hunched, nausea alive in her throat, sees two of the phone people nod.
“Seventeen, then, from Richard and eighteen from Stefan. We have eighteen million.” He turns back. “Christina?”
Fernanda watches Christina Kim shake her head slightly. No.
“It’s eighteen against you, Richard. At eighteen million. You have all the time in the world.”
Some in the audience titter appreciatively, but the silence lengthens, and seems to drag on. At the edge of her chair, and feeling wooden, Fernanda winds one leg tight around the other. The monograph falls from under her thigh to the floor.
“Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one million. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. All eyes are on you now, Richard. It’s twenty-four million against you.”
Charles Raff is facing the two young men to his right, who are glued to their old-fashioned handsets. He’s hugely pleased with himself, it appears, or at least, completely relaxed. He’s even working the crowd a little.
“Richard. Richard? He’s talking to someone, you s
ay?”
The audience chuckles again and she sees Richard – she supposes it’s Richard – nod.
“Twenty-five million – with Richard and against you, Stefan. And what shall we do now?”
Charles Raff spreads his arms wide and grins facetiously at the crowd.
“Ah, so we have twenty-six now from Stefan. And … twenty-seven from Richard.”
There’s a subdued rustling in the room. The game isn’t over. The fans are thrilled.
“At twenty-seven million, then … Stefan,” he pauses for effect, “are you sure?”
Raising his gavel arm high, he turns to the audience and looks, Fernanda imagines, right at her.
“At twenty-seven million then … Hammer … sold!”
Long seconds pass before she actually understands.
Her painting has sold for twenty-seven million dollars.
Fernanda bolts from the chair, races for the ladies’ room, but doesn’t quite make it to a stall before she throws up all over herself.
Her only good dress will have to go to the cleaners now. Her Saks LBD.
She can buy a new one.
“It was unbelievable,” Courtney laughs, tucking a few straggly hairs into her almost-bun.
“Richard is on the phone with this private in Russia, and in the room, there’s this French dealer bidding and bidding and bidding. And Richard’s Russian is going, ‘When does he stop?’ He’s hollering in Richard’s ear and all of us can hear. ‘I’m already double the estimate!’”
Fernanda is sitting in Courtney’s small office at Berger’s, thinking how wonderfully endearing it is that in the rush and excitement of re-telling the sale, Courtney has forgotten her careful locutions. Which is nothing, she reminds herself, to the way she herself forgot everything that day except, luckily, where the ladies’ room was.
Catch 26 Page 12