by Irwin Shaw
If either of us were to die, the full assets of the company and the balance in the bank went to the survivor. “It’s a little macabre, I know,” Fabian had said to me as I read the clause, “but one can’t afford to be finicky in matters like this. If you have any misgivings, Douglas, I could point out that I’m considerably older than you and can be expected to be the first to leave the scene.”
“I realize that,” I said. I didn’t tell him that it had occurred to me as I read the document that it also offered him the temptation to push me off a cliff or poison my soup. “Yes, it’s very fair.”
“Are you satisfied now?” Fabian asked, as we picked our way around a puddle. “Do you feel protected?”
“From everything,” I said, “except your optimism.” We had been in Zurich six days under a gray and sullen sky and in those six days Fabian had bought twenty thousand dollars more worth of gold, had been in and out of the sugar market, on margin, in Paris, twice, and had acquired three abstract lithographs by an artist I had never heard of, but who was going to skyrocket, as Fabian put it, in the next two years. As he had told me, he did not like to allow money to lie idle.
Fabian had discussed all our deals with me and had patiently explained the working of the commodity markets, where fluctuations were so erratic that fortunes could be made or lost in the space of an afternoon and where we had done incredibly well in sugar between Thursday and Friday. I understood, or pretended to understand, our convoluted operations, but when asked for an opinion could only leave decisions up to him. My own naïveté shamed me and I felt the way I had as a small boy in an arithmetic class when I was called on by the teacher for a question which every pupil but myself was prepared to answer. It all seemed so complicated and dangerous that I was beginning to wonder how I had been able to survive in the same world as Miles Fabian for thirty-three years.
By the end of the six days I wasn’t sure anymore that I could stand the daily wear and tear on my nerves. There was cold sweat on the palms of my hands every morning.
As for Fabian, nothing seemed to disturb him. The bigger the risk he was taking, the more serene he became. If there was one lesson I would have liked to learn from him, it was that. For the first time since I was a child, I began to suffer from my stomach. As I swallowed Alka-Seltzer after Alka-Seltzer, I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t nerves, but the rich food that we were eating twice a day in the fine restaurants of the city, and all the wines that Fabian kept ordering. But neither he nor Lily, nor Lily’s sister Eunice, complained of any distress, even after a most elaborate dinner at the Kronenhalle, a Helvetian monument to hearty food and Swiss digestion, where we had smoked trout, saddle of venison with Spätzle and preiselberry sauce, washed down first with a bottle of Aigle and later a heavy Burgundy, followed by slabs of Vacherin cheese and a chocolate soufflé.
I was beginning to worry about my weight, too, and my trousers were getting uncomfortably tight around my waist. Lily didn’t change by as much as an ounce, remaining gloriously slender, although she actually ate more than either Fabian or myself. Eunice, who was chubby and cuddly, remained chubby and cuddly. Fabian, by some miracle, was losing weight, and looked much the better for it, as though the sudden injection of money into his life had drastically improved his metabolism. No matter how much he ate and drank his eyes remained clear, his skin an even healthy pink, his gait springy, his moustache bristling with virility. Generals who had endured long years of peacetime obscurity must react similarly, I thought, when suddenly put in command of armies for enormous, bloody battles. Looking at him, I had the gloomy presentiment that, like a private in the ranks, I was going to do the suffering for the two of us.
Eunice had turned out to be a pretty, pleasant girl with an upturned nose, vulnerable blue eyes, the flowery coloring of a springtime mountain meadow, a sprinkling of freckles, a figure that would have been more fashionable in the age of Victoria than it was in the 1970s, and a soft, almost hesitant manner of speaking that was the result, it was easy to imagine, of the crisp and authoritative speech of her older sister. It was hard to conceive of her going through the Coldstream Guards, as Lily had suggested, or any other regiment.
Whenever the four of us went anyplace together, the two women invariably drew intense looks of admiration from the other men in the room, with Eunice getting just about the same time and an equal coefficient of lust as her more spectacular sister. Under other circumstances I would undoubtedly have been attracted to the girl, but confronted with Fabian’s semi-innocent voyeurism and raked by Lily’s cold, Florentine eye, I could not bring myself to voice any proposals, or even indicate that they might be welcome if they came from Lily’s sister. I had been brought up to believe that sex was a private aberration, not a public enterprise, and it was too late to change now. Chastely, ever since her arrival, Eunice and I had said good night in the elevator, without as much as a kiss on the cheek. Our rooms were on different floors.
It was with something like relief that I listened to the complaints of the two ladies about staying on in Zurich. They had exhausted the shopping, they said, the climate oppressed them, and they didn’t know what to do with themselves in the long hours Fabian and I sat talking in offices or in the lobby of the hotel with the various businessmen, bankers, and brokers Fabian collected from the financial center of the city, all of whom spoke, or rather whispered, English in a variety of accents, but whom I didn’t understand any better than either Eunice or Lily would have done if they had been in my place. Unfortunately, I had to stay, both at Fabian’s request and because of my grim resolve to be present at all transactions. But the two sisters had entrained for Gstaad, where the sun, according to the weather reports, was shining, the snow good, and the company welcoming. We would follow, Fabian promised, as soon as our business was finished in Zurich, which would not be long, he said, and then on to Italy. Fabian gave them the equivalent in Swiss francs of two thousand dollars from our joint account. Walking-around money, he called it, in a phrase I had come to dread. For a man who had led a precarious existence for most of his life, he had lordly habits.
Once the sisters were out of the way, Fabian managed to find time for some of the other attractions of the city. We spent long hours in the art museum, with especial attention to a Cranach nude that Fabian visited, he said, every time he passed through Zurich. He never tried to explain his particular tastes to me, but seemed content enough if I merely accompanied him on his rounds of the art galleries of the city. We went to a concert where we heard a program of Brahms, but all he said about it was, “In Mittel-europa, you must listen to Brahms.”
He even took me to the cemetery where James Joyce, who died in Zurich, was buried, the grave marked by a statue of the writer, and there wrung from me the admission that I had never read Ulysses. When we got back to town, he took me directly to a bookstore and bought me a copy. For the first time I had an inkling of the fact that the prisons of the world might be filled with men who had read Plato and appreciated music, literature, modern painting, fine wines, and thoroughbred horses.
The thought had crossed my mind that he was attempting, for some private reason of his own, to corrupt me. But if so, he was doing it in a most peculiar way. Ever since we had left Paris, he had treated me in a semiaffectionate, semicondescending manner, like a sophisticated uncle entrusted for a short while with the worldly education of an untutored nephew from a backward part of the world. Things had moved so fast, and the future he outlined seemed so bright, that I had had neither the time nor the inclination to complain. The truth was that, during those first days, despite my moments of panic, I felt myself lucky to have lost my suitcase to him. I hoped that before long I could manage to behave very much as he did. In other eras the virtues for which heroes were celebrated were such commonplaces as courage, generosity, guile, fidelity, and faith, and hardly ever included, as far as I could remember, aplomb. But in our uneasy time, when most of us hardly know where we stand, cannot say with confidence whether we are rising o
r falling, advancing or retreating, whether we are loved or hated, despised or adored, aplomb attains, at least for people like myself, a primary importance. Whatever Miles Fabian may have lacked, he had aplomb.
“Something has come up,” Fabian said. “In Lugano.” We were in the living room of his suite, littered, as usual, with American, English, French, German, and Italian newspapers, all opened to the financial pages. He was still in his bathrobe, having his morning coffee. I had had my morning Alka-Seltzer in my room on the floor below.
“I thought we were going to Gstaad,” I said.
“Gstaad can wait.” He stirred his coffee vigorously. For the first time I noticed that his hands looked older than his face. “Of course, if you want, you can go to Gstaad without me.”
“Is it business in Lugano?”
“Of a sort,” he said carelessly.
“I’ll go to Lugano with you.”
He smiled. “Partner,” he said.
We were in the new blue Jaguar an hour later, with Fabian at the wheel, heading for the San Bernardino Pass. He drove swiftly, even when we climbed into the Alps, and hit patches of ice and snow. He said hardly a word until we had gone through the enormous tunnel and emerged on the southern slopes of the mountain range. He seemed abstracted, and I knew him well enough by now to understand that he was working something out in his head, probably just how much he wanted to tell me about the day’s business and how much he wanted to leave out.
It had been overcast all the way from Zurich, but we hit another weather pattern when we got out of the tunnel, and the sun was shining brightly, only occasionally obscured by high, fast-moving white clouds. The sun seemed to change Fabian’s mood, and he whistled softly to himself as he drove. “I suppose,” he said, “you would like to know why we’re going to Lugano.”
“I’m waiting,” I said.
“There’s a German gentleman of my acquaintance,” he said, “who happens to live in Lugano. There has been a great influx of Germans, wealthy ones, in that section since the German Economic Miracle. The climate of the Ticino appeals to them. And the banks. You’ve heard of the German Economic Miracle?”
“Yes. What does the German gentleman of your acquaintance do?”
“Hard to say.” Fabian was dissimulating now and we both knew it. “A little of everything. Dabbles in old masters. Adds to his fortune. We have had one or two minor dealings. He called me in Zurich last night. He mentioned a small favor I might do for him. He would show his gratitude. Nothing is fixed as yet. It’s still very vague. Don’t worry—if it amounts to anything, you’ll be in on every detail.”
When he talked like that, there was no use in asking any more questions. I turned on the radio and we descended into the green Ticino to the accompaniment of a soprano singing an aria from Aida.
In Lugano we checked into a new hotel situated on the lake shore. There were flowers everywhere. The spiky fronds of palm trees waved gently in the southern breeze, and people in summery clothes were sitting out on the terrace having tea. It was almost Mediterranean, and I could understand why the climate of the Ticino might appeal to a northern and refrigerated race. In the glassed-in swimming pool adjoining the terrace, a robust blonde woman was methodically swimming lap after lap.
“All the hotels have had to put in pools,” Fabian said. “You can’t swim in the lake anymore. Polluted.”
The lake stretched out blue and sparkling in the warm sunshine. I remembered the old man in the bar in Burlington complaining that Lake Champlain would be as dead as Lake Erie in five years.
“When I first came to Switzerland after the war,” Fabian said, “you could swim in every lake, in every river, even.” He sighed. “Times do not improve. Now, if you’ll ask the waiter for a bottle of Dezaley for us, I’ll go in and call my friend and make the necessary arrangements. I won’t be long.”
I ordered the wine and sat in the late-afternoon sunshine, enjoying the view. The necessary arrangements Fabian was making on the telephone must have been complicated because I had drunk almost half the bottle of wine before he came back. “Everything in order,” he said cheerfully, as he sat down and poured himself a glass. “We have a date to see him at six o’clock at his villa. His name, by the way, is Herr Steubel. I won’t tell you anything more about him just yet. …”
“You haven’t told me anything so far,” I reminded him.
“Just so. I don’t want you to have any preconceptions. You have no prejudices against Germans, I trust?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good,” he said. “Too many Americans are still fighting World War Two. Oh, incidentally, to explain your presence to Herr Steubel, I said that you were Professor Grimes of the Art Department of the University of Missouri.”
“Good God, Miles!” I spluttered over my wine. “If he knows anything about art, he’ll catch on in ten seconds that I’m an absolute ignoramus.” Now I realized why Fabian had been so quiet and thoughtful on the first half of our journey. He had been cooking up a useful identity for me.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Fabian said. “Just look grave and judicious if he shows us anything. And when I ask your opinion, hesitate … you know how to hesitate, don’t you?”
“Go on,” I said grimly. “What do I do after I hesitate?”
“You say, ‘At first glance, my dear Mr. Fabian, it would seem to be authentic.’ But you would like to come back tomorrow and study it more carefully. In the light of day, so to speak.”
“But what’s the sense in it?”
“I want him to spend a nervous night,” Fabian said calmly. “It will make him more generous in his arrangements tomorrow. Just remember not to show any undue enthusiasm.”
“That’ll be the easiest thing I’ve done since I met you,” I said sourly.
“I know I can depend on you, Douglas.”
“How much is all this going to cost us?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Fabian said gaily. “Nothing.”
“Explain.” I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms.
“I’d really rather not at the moment,” Fabian said. He sounded annoyed. “It would be much better if we just let things work themselves out. I expect a certain amount of taking on trust between us …”
“Explain or I don’t go,” I said.
He shook his head irritably. “All right,” he said, “if you insist. For reasons of his own, Herr Steubel is breaking up a family collection. He believes that by doing it this way he can avoid lawsuits from distant members of the family. And, naturally, he prefers not to pay the grotesque taxes imposed by various governments on this kind of transaction. To say nothing of the difficulties with customs officials when one attempts to ship national art treasures out of one country and into another. …”
“Are you suggesting that you and I are going to smuggle whatever this art treasure is out of Switzerland?”
“You know me better than that, Douglas.” His tone was reproachful.
“Tell me,” I said, “what are we doing? Are we buying or selling?”
“Neither,” Fabian said. “We are simply agents. Honest agents. There is a South American of great wealth, who happens to be an acquaintance of mine …”
“Another acquaintance.”
“Exactly.” Fabian nodded. “I happen to know that he is a lover of Renaissance painting and is willing to pay handsomely for authentic examples. South American countries are noted for their discretion in their handling of the importation of art treasures. There are perhaps thousands of great European pictures that have sailed quietly across the ocean and are now hanging safely on South American walls that no one will even hear of for the next hundred years.”
“You said we weren’t taking anything out of Switzerland,” I said. “The last time I looked at a map, Switzerland was not in South America.”
“Don’t be witty, Douglas, please,” Fabian said. “It ill becomes you. The particular South American I have in mind is at present in St. Moritz, where all good
things abound. He is a dear friend of his country’s ambassador, and the diplomatic pouch is always available for his use. He hinted that he is willing to go as high as one hundred thousand dollars. And I believe that Herr Steubel could be influenced to pay a fair percentage of that as our commission.”
“What’s a fair percentage in this kind of deal?” I said.
“Twenty-five percent,” Fabian said promptly. “Twenty-five thousand dollars for merely taking a five-hour, absolutely legal drive through the picturesque scenery of beautiful Switzerland. Now do you understand why I told you in Zurich that Gstaad could wait?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t say it so glumly,” Fabian said. “Oh—incidentally—the painting that we are going to see is a Tintoretto. As a professor of art you should be able to recognize it. You will remember the name, won’t you?”
“Tintoretto,” I said.
“Excellent.” He beamed at me. He drained his glass. “This wine is delicious.” He poured for both of us.
It was dark when we reached the villa of Herr Steubel. It was a squat, two-story house built of stone, perched high on an unlit, narrow road overlooking the lake. No lights could be seen through the closed shutters on the windows.
“Are you sure this is the place?” I asked Fabian. It did not look like the mansion of a man who was in the process of breaking up a family collection of old masters.
“Positive,” Fabian said, as he turned off the ignition of the car. “He gave me explicit instructions.”
We got out of the car and walked on a path through a small overgrown garden to the front door. Fabian pushed the bell. I heard nothing from within. I had the feeling that we were being watched from somewhere. Fabian pushed the bell again and the door finally creaked open. A tiny old lady in a lace cap and an apron said, “Buona sera.”
“Buona sera, signora,” Fabian said, as we went in. The old lady led the way, limping, down a dimly lit hall. There were no pictures on the walls.