A Question of Return

by Robert Carr

  “And your father?”

  “What about him?”

  “How old were you when he died?”

  “Nine.”

  She was lying on her side on the large bed, facing him, her head cradled in her hand, a pillow under her elbow, naked, a corner of the sheet covering her ankles and feet.

  “What kind of man was he?”

  She didn’t have a clear picture of her father, she’d been too young. She remembered him shouting. No, her father had not treated Natalya with the same reverence Cornilov did later. Far from it. Disappointments had turned him to drink, and, a couple of times, he had knocked her about. Maybe more than a couple of times. He was often depressed, and he killed himself in 1967. Afterward, her mother had slowly succumbed to Cornilov’s adoration. Adoration, worship, and a comfortable existence. A much easier life. Cornilov adored her mother, and she liked it.

  Anna smiled, but her face reflected disappointment. “One day, two months ago, I got home at an earlier hour than expected. I found my stepfather in the kitchen, sitting on a low stool, shining my mother’s shoes and boots, unfolded Izvestias carefully spread on the floor. Footwear, all Mother’s, a dozen pairs—a dozen, imagine it! Mother was in the living room, reading. She said, embarrassed, ‘He won’t let me do it.’”

  And yet, in a way, her mother was afraid of Cornilov. It sounded odd, of course— afraid of a husband who worshipped her. But with Cornilov’s worship came constraints and reproaches. Natalya was untidy, wasteful, couldn’t give proper directions to the woman who came to clean their large apartment. She couldn’t look after her own health. Because she had high blood pressure and some vitamin deficiency, Natalya was supposed to take pills every day, some brought from abroad at great expense and difficulty, but she was casual about taking them. It drove Cornilov to a cold, cutting rage that her mother found frightening. Anna had never witnessed any of his rages, and her mother had never complained to her, but she did to her own mother, once. Only once. Worried, her grandmother told Anna about it.

  Anna delicately scratched her pubic hair with a finger. An hour earlier his head had been there, and he’d heard her whisper something he didn’t get, probably because her thighs had closed over his ears. She turned onto her back and pulled the sheet up.

  “He knows about us,” she said.

  “Cornilov?”

  “He does.”

  She didn’t know how, but Cornilov had known about their dalliance from the very beginning, almost before it started. He hadn’t told her mother about it, but he’d taken Anna aside and warned her that Art Laukhin had had many affairs, and that she would get hurt. He knew it because Art Laukhin was his cousin on his mother’s side. He’d kept a distant eye on him.

  “It was the only time I had a tête-à-tête with my stepfather.”

  * * *

  It began to rain as he turned onto Hazelton Avenue. A luxury minibus, tall and yellow, was parked illegally outside the gallery, its lights flashing. Inside, a group of loud German tourists had taken over. They had a lot to say to each other, their need for cultured communication kindled by irritating spirals of glistening colours. Not the typical quiet Tuesday, as Laukhin had hoped. Audrey saw him and raised her eyebrows in resignation. He approached her and said he’d wait in the small room. She whispered, “The things I learn from Jean Lezzard. We had three buses last week.”

  He understood Audrey’s remark only afterwards—the dealer must have bribed a couple of tour operators to drop their loads of tourists in front of his gallery.

  The new oil painting was right across from Lezzard’s desk. He’d never seen such a large Chemakoff before. The small ink and watercolour he liked so much—what was it, Strong Symmetries?—had disappeared. A couple of late Chemakoffs were gone too. Lezzard must have removed them to make space for his new acquisition. He walked over for a closer look. It was striking, and he began to understand Lezzard’s enthusiasm. When he had called the gallery a week earlier from out of town, Audrey told him that Lezzard had been beyond himself with excitement over his new Chemakoff painting. Audrey and the man who carried the canvas inside had helped Lezzard hang it so that he could look at it by just lifting his eyes. Afterward Lezzard sat down at his desk, leaned back with his hands behind his head, sighed, and said he wished he didn’t have to sell it. Audrey said, “Don’t sell it, then.” Lezzard shook his head. “I have to. I run a gallery, not a museum.”

  In composition, the new painting was similar to the Chemakoff that had hung in his Lavrushinsky Lane apartment—a soirée of the empire’s grandees, with a smattering of absurd presences—only much larger. He didn’t quite get the significance of some of the interlopers, but he recognized a welder, a zek with a number on his torn jacket, a trim SS officer wearing a red armband with a swastika, a knife grinder bent over an archaic, foot activated wheel but dressed in a modern three-piece suit, and a skeletal man wearing a miner’s hat complete with oil lamp.

  Two men came into the small room just as Laukhin sat down again at Lezzard’s desk. The younger one looked briefly at him, said something that might have been construed as a greeting, and led the shorter, elderly man to the new Chemakoff. Laukhin thought of leaving but he heard them speak Russian and decided to linger. Linger, eavesdrop, snoop. He’d have a story for Audrey later.

  The younger man seemed anxious. “Well, what do you think? Wonderful, isn’t it? Didn’t I tell you? Isn’t it his best?”

  He was swirling around the elderly man, in a curious choreography of impatience and respect, like a boy showing his father a toy he coveted. The elderly man took his time, cleaned his glasses, put his nose close to the canvas a couple of times, nodded and mumbled something to himself. His brown trousers, belted way above his waist, exposed grey socks. At last, he said, “It is beautiful, no doubt. One of the best. I remember it.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “It’s odd though.”

  “Odd? What’s odd?”

  “The date, what’s the date? I can’t see it that well. Is it nineteen-sixty?”

  “Yes, nineteen-sixty.”

  “It was there, in his apartment.”

  “What was?”

  “This painting. It was there, in Chemakoff’s apartment when they barged in and took everything away.”

  “They took this painting?”

  “This, and several others too. He had many paintings in his apartment. He had no place to store them, and he couldn’t sell any of them in the last few years. They took away all of them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I remember this one very well. I remember when he painted it. I was the one who suggested he include the Donbass miner. It is Chemakoff’s only painting that has a miner. It took him quite a while to find a thirties miner’s hat. And I know where he kept this painting—in his bedroom.”

  The young man said something that Laukhin didn’t catch.

  “Yes, yes, I was there,” the older one went on.

  “How come?”

  “I was fighting with my wife in those days and I needed a break. Chemakoff had given me the key to his apartment. He told me to make use of it while he was away in Paris for his show.”

  “You mean, they came in, searched the place, and took his paintings while you were there watching them?”

  “They told me to disappear. They were quite startled to find me there and weren’t sure at first what to do. But they made a phone call and then they told me to get lost. I went back several days later. All of his paintings were gone, and his books and papers had been ransacked.”

  They paused, still looking at the painting. Then the young man asked, “But how, then?”

  The old man nodded. “Exactly.”

  Laukhin was keen to hear more—although the two men were almost whispering by now—but just then Audrey came into the small room and dropped exhausted into her chair. “Oh, good, I’m glad you’re still here. Let’s kill that idiot.”

  “The spiral artist?” Laukhi
n asked. “I’m in.”

  “The plumber.”

  “You have a plumber here?”

  “Since this morning.”

  “You can’t kill plumbers, Audrey. Not in Canada, it’s not that simple. Perhaps you can in England, but not here. You can kill painters, though. It’s legal. That’s why they stick together in groups. But plumbers, no. We have laws, procedures.”

  “He keeps telling me I don’t understand the building code.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “Nothing, apart from tearing down a wall in the basement, and the water is still leaking. Art, would you go down and take a look? I can’t get hold of Jean.”

  “I’ll go. I know plumbing. I’m unique, Audrey—plumber and poet. Most women wouldn’t hesitate.”

  She noticed the two men near the new Chemakoff’s painting. “Oh, Mr. Karpov,” she said to the younger one, “you’re back. So soon.”

  Karpov turned to her. “Yes, yes, I said I’d be. Let me introduce a friend of mine, Ms. Millay. Mr. Gratch, a friend of Chemakoff too. Mr. Gratch and Chemakoff knew each other back in Leningrad. Best of friends they’d been, long before my time.”

  Mr. Gratch advanced toward Audrey. “How did you get this painting?” he asked.

  Audrey seemed nonplussed. “Sorry? Which one?”

  Mr. Gratch pointed at the new Chemakoff oil. “That one, of course.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t tell you. Sorry, I didn’t ask.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m sure Mr. Lezzard will be able to tell you. The owner of the gallery, you’ll have to ask him. He doesn’t come on Tuesdays, but he’ll be here tomorrow. Are you interested in that painting?”

  The two of them looked at each other, and then Mr. Gratch said, “You can say that. Very interested. Do you know where he got it from?”

  “Well, I presume from his usual sources. He knows a lot of dealers in Europe. I don’t know the details, but I’m sure Mr. Lezzard will be delighted to give you all the particulars of the painting’s provenance tomorrow. He’ll part with this painting only reluctantly, Mr. Gratch. He loves it. Do you have a card? A phone number we can reach you at tomorrow?”

  Gratch waved his hands, annoyed by Audrey’s questions. “No, no. Not necessary. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  They watched the two men leave, Gratch shaking his head at Audrey’s ignorance. Audrey groaned. “What a crazy day. And now these two. I saw the young one, Karpov, this morning. He wouldn’t leave this room—another admirer of Chemakoff. He said he didn’t know our gallery had a special room for Chemakoffs. What on earth was the old man going on about? He didn’t look like someone who’d buy such an expensive painting, and seemed rather upset.”

  “I think I know why,” Laukhin said.

  He told her what he heard. She didn’t seem to grasp the implication immediately, so he added, “How did this painting get here?”

  “On this continent?”

  “Anywhere outside the Soviet Union. The road this painting took to Lezzard’s gallery is rather suspicious.”

  “You mean, because it was confiscated by the Soviet police?”

  “Surely, how it got into Lezzard’s hands is a legitimate question.”

  She thought for a while. “There might have been an auction.”

  “With confiscated art? Open to western art dealers?”

  “Maybe the Soviet authorities have a side agreement with some western dealers. A quiet understanding, something nobody talks about, but to everybody’s profit. Hush-hush, you know, after Chemakoff’s death. A way of getting some western currency. I’m sure there’s an explanation. You said the French loved Chemakoff.”

  He nodded, but his doubts must have been clear on his face.

  “You don’t think Lezzard … Do you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  She clapped. “This is very exciting. We have unearthed an illicit art network run by the KGB. I love this. Who says Toronto is boring? I can dine out on this story, shadowy Russian art thieves.”

  “There’s probably an explanation.”

  “No, no, don’t say that. Something stinks. Martha almost bought a painting like this one in the fall of 1982. I was visiting her at the time and she and Dirk talked about it. The deal fell through when Lezzard, for reasons he never explained properly, demanded cash, quite a lot of it, too. Dirk said no, and that was that. Martha wasn’t that keen on Chemakoff, anyway. Lezzard then suggested a painting from Chemakoff’s Paris years, very different, but Martha didn’t like it at all, although they could have gotten it for much cheaper and paid for it by cheque.”

  Laukhin said, “I’ll check on that plumber now, set him straight.”

  * * *

  “Did one of the two Russians buy it?” Laukhin asked Audrey the following Tuesday as soon as he noticed that the large Chemakoff oil was no longer in the small room, or anywhere in the gallery.

  She shook her head, impatient and animated – she had quite a story for Laukhin. She told Lezzard first thing on Wednesday morning about the interest two Russian visitors had shown in the new Chemakoff oil the day before, and about what Laukhin had heard while eavesdropping on them. She told him that one of the men, the older one, had recognized the painting from his days in Moscow, and that they’d likely return to the gallery. But she had told Lezzard a censored version of the events; she had skipped over the dramatic circumstances – the KGB raid in Chemakoff’s Leningrad apartment, the older man’s accidental presence there, his question of how the painting ended up in Lezzard’s gallery. She couldn’t, didn’t know how else to tell Lezzard about the two Russians. There was an implied accusation in what Laukhin had heard, that Lezzard was involved with, well, she wasn’t sure, the KGB or some unsavoury Soviet organization making money from confiscated art. She had not known how to put all that to Lezzard.

  “What did Lezzard say?”

  Not much. He hadn’t looked pleased, but she might have been imagining things. He hadn’t looked overly concerned either. But he wrote down the names of the two Russians, and he asked her to describe them.

  There was more. The older one, Mr. Gratch returned Thursday morning. He spoke Russian to Lezzard. They didn’t seem to have met before, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t think they had a good time with each other. No smiles. She had watched them closely and heard the name Chemakoff a few times. Mr. Gratch kept pointing to the smaller room, and then Lezzard pushed him in there and slid the folding doors across. She still heard them, and by the sound of it they were not talking prices. Mr. Gratch left first, without looking around him. Lezzard remained in the small room for about half an hour afterward, most of the time talking on the phone in Russian. She scrutinized Lezzard when he finally left the small room, but he didn’t seem more upset than usual. Hard to know – he was always upset. She asked Lezzard what the visitor had been after. A penniless Russian fool, was Lezard’s reply. Not exactly answering her question.

  That evening she’d flown back to London for a short visit and she’d been away Friday and Saturday. When she came back to the gallery on Sunday, the Chemakoff oil was gone. Lezzard said he’d sold it to an old client from his New York days, a Chemakoff collector. He used that irritated, dismissive tone of his, which meant he didn’t want to talk about it any further.

  She was flushed with excitement, Audrey, and she went on. She had checked the main book, the gallery book that kept the status of all the paintings that were going or had gone through the gallery: arrived, on exhibit, on loan, sold, returned, whatever. She was really curious to see whether the large Chemakoff oil had indeed been sold. No trace of it – wasn’t even listed in as arrived in the gallery. Still more to it. She was the one who usually kept the main book up to date. The odd thing was that when Lezzard first brought that painting in, he’d told her he’d enter it in the main book himself. True, he’d do it, now and then, not that often. But after she checked whether the painting had indeed been sold, she played the naïve but st
raight assistant, and told Lezzard he’d forgotten to list the Chemakoff just sold, and offered to do it herself. He answered angrily that he’d already done it somewhere else. No doubt about it, Lezzard kept two sets of books.

  There was a gap where the large Chemakoff oil had been. Audrey said that one of her tasks that Tuesday was to rearrange the art on the wall so that balance was restored.

  “Back to the way it was,” Laukhin said.

  “More or less.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Saturday, 31 August 1940

  Another draining evening and sleepless night. It began with a tense, early dinner. Varya sighed throughout, without saying a word. Tsvetayeva was quiet too, except to scold Georgy for his manners. She was probably sensing Varya’s fright and mounting hostility. Georgy scowled at his mother. Tyomka and I tried to lift the gloom.

  After dinner Tyomka was sent to bed. He’s temporarily sleeping in the small room I use for writing on a narrow blue mattress, which Varya borrowed from one of the neighbours. As he had for the past few evenings, he was yelling and squealing, still thrilled by the novelty. I was tempted to walk in there and box his ears, but I refrained because he was excited, and Georgy was there with him. Georgy is only fifteen, but looks older. Big, a bit chubby. He plays with Tyomka for half an hour every evening with the air of an adult who understands he has a duty, and is willing to do it, but won’t admit he’s enjoying the task. He’s an odd boy, clever I think, who’s trying to understand his abnormal family, his unusual mother, their vagabond existence, his father and sister’s imprisonments. Because he cannot, he often seems cruel to his mother. Yet they need each other. Clearly she needs him more than he needs her. He believes she’s at the root of their troubles and the reason they are being treated like untouchables. Yesterday, as he and I were clearing the table after dinner, he said he wished his mother were in prison instead of his father. Luckily Tsvetayeva was not within earshot. I told Georgy that surely he wished that neither of his parents was in prison, and he shrugged, as if saying, you know very well what I meant. His mother annoys him. She either mollycoddles him or is unexpectedly harsh; there is no in-between.