by Morris West
‘We can receive it and pay it into your bank. We cannot and should not operate your actual accounts. If you choose you can leave me, say, five thousand dollars’ impress to cover disbursements – and replenish the balance on validation of my accounts.’
Mather made a swift review of his notes. There remained only one matter to discuss with the attorney, but it was the one on which he needed the clearest instruction.
‘Representations made to me or by me as to authenticity, ownership or provenance of objects offered for sale.…It sounds a big mouthful, doesn’t it?’
‘It is a big mouthful,’ Liepert agreed, ‘and if you don’t digest it properly you may have to swallow a jail sentence as well. So let’s take things in order. Representations made to you as a buyer: you ask that they be confirmed in writing to me. I’ll check them and advise accordingly. It may slow down a deal. It may even lose you one from time to time, but it’s the only safe way. You have demonstrated good intent in a legal manner. If a mistake is made or a deception practised, you are in the clear.’
‘That’s comforting.’
‘My father was a judge. He used to say, “There is always comfort for a precise man.” It took me a long time to understand what he meant. Now for the second part of the question, representations by you: as to title, the right to possess or to sell, this must always be demonstrated. As to provenance…there is a wide area of legal tolerance in Switzerland because there is a traditional traffic across our frontiers. That traffic is, of course, immensely profitable. So our own government does not question how the stuff gets here. They will respond reluctantly to official representations about criminal activities, but they refuse absolutely to administer the fiscal or customs regulations of neighbouring countries. So you will find that in the art business a certain reticence is necessary and acceptable. You are not obliged to declare that a wealthy Italian has sold you a picture which he has exported illegally across our borders. Neither are you obliged to tell his name, provided the buyer is content that you are a purveyor of legal goods. But once again our protocol holds. Your clients will quickly appreciate the wisdom of the procedure. Of course the whole thing depends on your disclosures to me; I must be able to rely absolutely upon what you tell me.’
Ten minutes later the conference was over and Mather was striding down the Bahnhofstrasse to see his bank manager, draw cash funds, deposit Hugh Loredon’s briefcase and touch, for a few seconds, the coarse waxed canvas that held the Palombini Raphaels.
He needed that touch to stiffen his courage for the game in which they were the golden prize. It had begun in earnest now. He was word-perfect in the rules. He was accepted in the salon privé, where there was no limit on bets and no markers were accepted. Now he had to prove that he was fit company for the masters of the game who, if he could not master them, would pluck him clean as a spring chicken and eat him for dinner.
Forty minutes later in Paris, Henri Charles Berchmans was already marshalling his strategic resources and setting out his game plan. The resources were enormous, the game plan was global, because Berchmans was not simply a peddler of expensive art, he was a collector of, and a dealer in, information through a worldwide network of agents and clients.
He made valuations for banks and insurance companies in every major country. He advised on the formation and the break-up of collections. He set trends and fashions in art. He helped to set prices, too, just as the bankers in London and Zurich fixed the daily gold price. He was careful as the diamond dealers of South Africa to control the flow of product, so that the value never fell through the floor. If the auction market were slack, he would intervene quietly with a counsel or negotiate a pre-auction sale that was always published at an inflated figure. If Berchmans bought at that price, the experts said, the picture must be worth it. So the rest of Berchmans’ stock increased in value; dealers and auctioneers blessed his name.
With bankers he pursued an expansionist policy. He sold them boardroom pictures at high prices. He put together the exhibitions which they sponsored. He encouraged them to lend money on single art works and whole collections. His argument was very simple.
‘I give you a safe valuation for lending – forty per cent below retail. Any work that I have valued I will guarantee to buy in at that price. But if you have to foreclose, I will advise you to go to auction at the right moment and make twenty per cent profit.’
With insurance companies his argument was the opposite.
‘I value high, so you can rightly collect high premiums. If the work is destroyed, then of course your pay-out is high. If it is stolen, then I will sooner or later hear where it is being offered in the black market and I will know, better than anyone else, how low to bid for its return. If it is damaged, I can get you the best restorers in the world at the best price.’
In short, Henri Charles Berchmans the Elder was himself a kind of banker, dealing in a restricted market with a tightly controlled currency. Like every banker, he depended upon information delivered daily and guaranteed accurate. He maintained his own data bases in Paris and New York. His offices were united by a computer network. His most valued employees were those who never stepped on to the sales floor or cajoled a client but kept squirrelling away scraps and shards of information on deaths, marriages, divorces, bankruptcies and wills in probate.
So while Max Mather, the novice gamesman, was walking down the Bahnhofstrasse, Henri Charles Berchmans was composing an urgent message to all his correspondents.
The information delivered by Mather and Seldes is accurate as far as it goes. We are looking, therefore, to trace two Raphael portraits of Palombini women and five cartoons – not one of which is even hinted at in the catalogues. There is a plausible reason for this, in that the Palombini were never great collectors and were therefore quite likely to have relegated the works to obscurity. Absent of any description of the portraits, it is my opinion that over the centuries these may have been the subject of wrong attribution…as, for example, ‘Lady with the Unicorn’ was credited to Perugino and ‘Portrait of Elizabeth Gonzaga’ was exhibited first as a work by Mantegna and later credited to Giacomo Lancia and others. Another possibility hinted at in a letter to Mather from a librarian in Florence is that the works may have been given as ransom or protection payment to an SS official. Please ask our Brazilian contacts for immediate information on Franz Christian Eberhardt, who married one Camilla Dandolo in Milan in 1947 and then went to Rio de Janeiro. Eberhardt’s documents showed him to be a Brazilian national, but he could have acquired citizenship after the war. Our insurance and banking contacts may help with this matter. Request information soonest.
At midday he called Seldes, who complained sleepily that it was still only six in the morning in New York. Berchmans ignored the protest.
‘This fellow Mather. I met him, I like him. You told me he was an academic idler. He is much more than that. He could be a rogue, but he also could be useful.…’
‘Then use him, Henri, with my blessing. What else did you wake me for?’
‘The Madeleine Bayard exhibition.’
‘Mather knows all about that. He represents it.’
‘He’s not here. He’s gone to Switzerland. Do you have an address for him?’
‘No. I’m waiting for him to check in.’
‘Then you can ask him to call me – and have his people send me immediately a catalogue and price list and a set of transparencies.’
‘I’ll do that. Anything else?’
‘Whom do you recommend as the best textual authorities for Raphael attributions?’
‘Hell, I need to take that under advisement.’
‘So cable me a list when you get to your office.’
‘What are you driving at?’
‘I repeat – attributions. We’re looking for Raphaels. The folk who hold them may think they’re Peruginos. You are not usually so dull, Harmon.’
‘I’m not usually asked to do business at six in the morning.’
‘Don
’t fall asleep yet. There’s more, my friend. Madeleine Bayard…what happened to her papers, notebooks, sketches?’
‘I haven’t the remotest idea. I imagine the police impounded whatever was in her studio. Her husband would probably have the rest. All her stuff will go to him in the end anyway. What’s the point of the question?’
‘I bought some of the lady’s canvases. Lebrun introduced me. We used to spend playtime together whenever I was in New York. I wrote a few letters which I’d like to get back.…’
‘A thousand regrets, my dear Henri, but with a husband like Ed Bayard – no way! Besides, isn’t it a little late in the day?’
‘Perhaps. I was reminded only by this new connection between Mather and Bayard.’
‘Let me think about this. Mather’s writing a piece on Madeleine for the magazine. I know he was looking for papers and miscellanea. I’ll raise it with him.’
‘Thank you, Harmon. And don’t encourage him to expect money. The letters aren’t that bad – I’ve had worse ones splashed across the gutter press!’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Good. You will be happy to know that my people round the world are alerted to the Palombini Raphaels. Now go back to sleep and dream that we are both rich.’
Well satisfied with his morning’s work, warmed by the handshake of a banker who was happy with the shape of his enterprise and happier still to offer him overdraft facilities if he needed them, Mather decided to treat himself to lunch in the grill-room at the Baur au Lac.
The food was first-rate. The elderly waiters were good-humoured and efficient. The guests were a cross-section of the financial folk of Zurich – starched, sober-suited, good-mannered but always a little withdrawn from the Ausländer like himself. The talk eddied around him in a medley of tongues – French, Italian, Schweitzerdeutsch, High German, Swedish – and all of it dealt with money: interest rates, futures, margins, profit potentials, upside and downside factors. Mather ate a leisurely meal and enjoyed the new sensation of well-being and self-confidence. For the first time in years he felt truly his own man, making his own bargains, risking his own neck. That, he was beginning to understand, was the real attraction of the enterprise. He had been scared all his life, clutching for security at women’s apron-strings. Now he was on a tightrope walk without a safety-net. Fear gripped at his guts, but there was a boy’s bravado in his silent shout: ‘Look! No hands!’
The euphoria persisted until he got back to his apartment on the Sonnenberg. He called Anne-Marie in New York, poured out his news in a spate of enthusiasm, then instructed her: ‘Keep in touch with me through Liepert. This place is only living space. I’ll be in and out of it all the time, but you’ve got the number just in case you need it.
‘Write immediately to Henri Berchmans. Mention my meeting with him in Paris. Ask him to be kind enough to lend you his Bayard canvases for the show. You’ll cover all insurance and transport. You’ll give him prominent credit in the exhibition catalogue and all press releases…and you’ll send him an advance set of transparencies as soon as they’re ready so that, in effect, he can have first pick at the show. You won’t forget? You won’t delay? Good; because I want another set of photographs and catalogues for my Swiss people. Send everything by courier, don’t trust the mail.…We’re really going places, bambina!’
‘What do I say? I’m thrilled, I’m grateful…if I don’t sound all that, it’s because I’m worried about Father.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘He’s in the London Clinic. He says it’s just for a check-up.’
‘It probably is.’
‘He asked where you were.’
‘Call him and give him this address and telephone number.’
‘I told him about the briefcase and that you hadn’t opened it. He said, “Then he’s stupider than he looks. Tell him to study the stuff carefully. It’s vital.” What does he mean, Max?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to open the thing and find out.’
‘If you want to call him, he’s in room 137.’
‘You call him. He’ll contact me in his own time. How’s Bayard behaving himself?’
‘Very well, I must say. He’s being solicitous and understanding. I’m rushing around all day and by nightfall I’m dog-tired. He just calls to say hullo, then lets me be. We had lunch one day. We went to the Whitney on Sunday and walked in the park. He dropped me home early. It’s very quiet good-friends sort of stuff, which suits me fine. He’s approved the catalogue notes and is very anxious to see how your story turns out. He’ll be thrilled when I tell him about Berchmans.’
‘Better you don’t say a word until it’s definite.’
‘That could be awkward, Max.’
‘It will be a damn sight more awkward if Berchmans refuses to lend the pictures – which he’s perfectly entitled to do. You know what Bayard’s like when he thinks he’s been slighted.’
‘Okay, I’ll do as you say. Are you keeping well?’
‘Never better…but I need the photographs and the catalogues fast.’
‘Will yesterday be satisfactory, sir?’
‘Barely acceptable. Wish me luck for Wednesday.’
‘I do. Ciao, Max.’
His next call was to Leonie Danziger. Although it was early morning in New York she was not at home. He left his contact numbers on the answering machine and asked her to communicate them to Harmon Seldes. Then he made himself coffee and settled down to a systematic study of the Madeleine Bayard materials.
He took the letters first. Madeleine herself had divided them into three bundles. The first bundle was all erotica – outpourings in technicolor prose from men and women who had shared a sexual experience with her. Some were barely literate; some were unbearably literary. All were signed with a given name or a love-name: Pete, Lindy, Sugartongue, Ironman. Mather wondered why she had bothered to keep them…then he understood Leonie Danziger’s phrase: ‘She was as much a voyeur as participant.’
The second bundle was made up of letters from artists around the country with whom she had regular correspondence, but with whom some kind of sexual relationship had been established:
The thing I love about you Madi, is that you have no professional jealousy. You look at the work. You love it or you hate it and you say so, straight up. Your judgment is tough, but you know what you’re talking about because you’re at the easel every day. That’s why, I guess, I never expected you to be so totally undemanding in love.
Dearest Madi, [this from a woman painter in Arizona] What can I say? I had fire in my fingertips when I came back from New York. You taught me to paint the way you taught me to make love – raw colour mixed on the canvas, all risks accepted, nothing held back.
And from an elderly master, now half-blind but still painting in Vermont:
I’ve loved you from the first day we met; desired you from the first day we made love in your studio. But I worry about you, Madi. I worry about both of you – the happy one who would like to paint beautiful graffiti all over Manhattan, the sombre one who is trying to paint her way out of hell.
It was in this bundle Mather came upon four letters written in French. They were very short, dashed off in a large emphatic script on hotel stationery and signed only with initials. The form of each one was the same: a single explicit sentence praising her sexual performance, a terse judgment of her work, a dismissive farewell:
Quand tu m’enfourches c’est comme si je m’accouple avec un ouragan et je suis transporté au Paradis. Mais quand je te contemple dans tes peintures, je vois une agonie que je ne sais ni partager ni soulager. Quand même je te convoite nuit et jour. A bientôt, cherie…H.C.B.
It took Mather a few minutes to connect the initials with Henri Charles Berchmans. He enjoyed a private chuckle over the irony of the situation, then thought how best to tum it to advantage. There could be no hint of blackmail. Berchmans had had two wives and a string of mistresses. One wife and one girl-friend had taken him to court. A
lot of dirty linen had been washed, but the next month when his two-year-old Laurencin won at Chantilly the crowd had given him an ovation.
He must not appear to be toadying for favours. Berchmans would be resentful anyway that some young buck had read his middle-aged love notes. The simplest approach would be the most dignified one: ‘I came across this stuff, I’m sending it back to you.’ The only problem was that he dared not even touch the originals until he knew why Loredon had passed them to him.
The third bundle of letters had nothing to do with love or sex. They dealt with the economics of the profession, purchases of pictures, invitations to seminars and exhibitions, scholarships, awards and the like. In spite of the fact that she did not exhibit, Madeleine Bayard was well-known and highly respected by her fellow craftsmen.
Now that he had read the correspondence the diaries made much more sense. He could fit real people into the landscape of Madeleine’s life. Berchmans’ visits, for example, were recorded with a good-humoured affection:
Henri looms over me, a giant shape blotting out the sun. I tell him we have to change places. He laughs and says he is happy to let me do the work. He is potent as a bull and just as brutal, but he never leaves me unsatisfied. There are two of him, just as there are two of me. He will stand silent for minutes on end, looking at one of my canvases, and then turn and stroke my cheek with extraordinary tenderness. He will point to a single corner of a work and say, ‘That is well done, almost perfect.’ His power can be terribly destructive; but for me he is a healer.
Of Hugh Loredon she wrote with increasing sharpness:
He has become like a partner on the dance-floor who is always looking over your shoulder at someone else. His little box of tricks begins to bore me…I know he has paid the same compliments to twenty women. His solicitude is faked: ‘You are tired, let me soothe you. Tell Hugh the problem.’ He is not bad in bed, but as a man he tries to give me what I get more richly from women.