Masterclass

by Morris West

  She was a very old lady, but still a very grand one. She was dressed in a brocaded house-gown. Her feet were shod in gold mules, her white hair tied back with a gold ribbon. The hand she held out imperiously to be kissed was covered with rings. Mather almost expected to hear an angelic voice intoning ‘Celeste Aïda’.

  No mean actor himself, he played back to her without shame: the low bow, the lips barely brushing the old parchment of her skin, the speech full of honorifics. Even so there was a moment when he was up to his hocks in trouble. The lady was not easily flattered. She was shrewd and short-tempered. She cocked her head on one side like an elderly parrot and demanded to know: ‘How would someone as young as you know about Camilla Dandolo? Do you remember any of my roles, any of my leading men? I’m sure you don’t.’

  Mather gave her a disarming smile and a lame explanation.

  ‘I came to know you in a very romantic fashion, when I was archivist at Tor Merla for the Palombini family. I was fascinated by the stories the old servants used to tell of your great love affair with Luca. So last weekend your name was mentioned – with great affection, I must say – by a member of the Corviglia Club in St Moritz. It was he who told me your husband had passed away and you were now living in Milan.’

  ‘Ah, now it becomes clear.’ She was amused and flattered. ‘So this book is not about the divas but about the scandals of La Scala?’

  ‘Not at all. It will be an accurate work. I know, for example, that you sang Olga in Fedora with Gigli in 1939; that Guarnieri conducted you in L’Amico Fritz and you sang Mimi with Malpiero…’ He broke off with a laugh. ‘You see, I really have done my homework! However, my interest in you is different. You were a friend of famous and powerful men like Luca Palombini. You were not only a beautiful woman, you were powerful in your own right. All this I have in fragments and hearsay; I would like to hear it from your own lips, record it in a series of taped interviews.’

  ‘It sounds much too formidable for me. I’m an old woman. My memory is not so reliable any more.’

  ‘For that,’ said Mather with a smile, ‘we interviewers have all sorts of tricks, little association games that open doors in the memory…May I show you what I mean?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘Close your eyes, please.’

  He reached out to take a silver-framed photograph from a tabouret and held it directly in front of her.

  ‘When I ask you to open your eyes, focus on the object in front of you and tell me everything about it. Open now.’

  She took a moment to focus and then recited like a well-drilled schoolgirl: ‘That is a photograph of my husband, Franz, and myself on our farm near Brasilia. The other people are the German Consul-General and his wife. The Indians in the background are labourers, the buildings are barns and machinery sheds.’

  ‘Thank you. Now let’s try again. Close your eyes.’

  This time he held in front of her one of the Raphael photographs – that of the Maiden Beata Palombini. She opened her eyes, focused again, stared at the image for a longish moment, then said vaguely, ‘It looks like a picture we had in our house.’

  ‘Let’s try again. Close.’

  He held up the other portrait, that of Donna Delfina.

  ‘Open!’

  This time there was no hesitation: ‘That’s definitely one of ours.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  She shrugged irritably. ‘What can I tell? I was never very interested in art. My husband was the collector.’

  ‘Tell me what you do know then.’

  ‘Franz acquired two pictures during the war from Luca Palombini. I don’t know the details. He was always shopping around for things during his campaigns. He took them with him to Brazil and when we married and went there to live those pictures were still there. They were in our house until he died. Then – because I didn’t want to cart stuff back to Italy – I sold them with the rest of the estate. They turned out to be very valuable – Joaquin Camoens, who is one of our most important dealers in Rio, gave me a very good price for them.’

  ‘You see?’ Mather gave her a smile of happy approval. ‘You see what I mean about association? Already there is the background of a whole story: your husband, what he did in Italy during the war and afterwards, his relationship with Luca as well as yours. Suddenly a whole history begins to shape itself.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,’ said Camilla Dandolo. ‘I really would have to think about it very carefully.’

  ‘Which is precisely the purpose of this visit,’ said Mather soothingly. ‘To introduce the idea and see how you react to it. If it’s a burden, simply forget it. No harm will be done – and I have had the pleasure and honour of meeting you. I’m going on from here to Florence. Would you like me to convey your greetings to the Palombini family?’

  ‘I think not.’ The old lady was very definite. ‘Luca’s family believe I robbed them. The fact is I saved their skins more than once. But you still haven’t told me; where did you get those photographs?’

  ‘They were sent to me by a dealer in Paris.’ Mather told the lie without a flicker of remorse. ‘He didn’t tell me where he got them, but he did ask me to establish a provenance for the pictures. Your Mr Joaquin Camoens must be offering them to the international market.’

  ‘But how did you connect them with me?’ This was one doughty old campaigner. She would let nothing pass her without a challenge.

  Mather rose to it gallantly. ‘That’s the simplest answer of all, dear lady. I knew a lot about Luca’s business deals…also, like you, I loved a Palombini.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Pia. She died last year.’

  ‘Then we should let her sleep in peace,’ said Camilla Dandolo. ‘The world will not perish because you do not write your book. A pleasure to meet you, Mr Mather. A pity I’m too old to pursue the acquaintance. My maid will show you out.’

  Mather had now established beyond doubt what he had always recognised as a possibility: that a copy or copies had been made of the Raphael portraits. He had no present means of knowing whether the pieces in his possession were the originals or the copies. One thing he knew for certain – the moment he brought them to market, the others would appear as if by magic and the inevitable fight over authenticity would break out. He could not win it single-handed, so he decided to take out some insurance.

  There was time to kill before his flight left for Pisa. He went to the post office at Linate airport and made a call to Henri Berchmans in Paris. Berchmans was on the floor with a client and it took some persuasion to have the secretary call him to the phone. He was his usual brusque self.

  ‘I hope this is worth your money and my time.’

  ‘You are being rude again, Mr Berchmans. I promised to pass you information on the Raphaels. I am doing just that. Do you have time to receive it?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘I am in Milan. At the airport. I have just been to visit Camilla Dandolo, who returned to Italy after the death of her husband in Brazil.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘I went skiing in St Moritz where I met one of her old flames. May I go on?’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘After a long waltz-me-round-Willie I have established that her husband acquired two Raphael portraits on undisclosed terms from Luca Palombini. These pictures were sold with the rest of their art collection to a dealer in Rio called Joaquin Camoens.’

  ‘I know him,’ said Berchmans with feeling. ‘A crook. He’d sell his grandmother’s corpse for the gold in her teeth. Anything else?’

  ‘No. That’s the lot.’

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Going on to Florence to visit old friends. By the way, thank you for the loan of your Bayards.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Now you can thank me for this expensive phone call and this valuable information.’

  Berchmans gave his harsh cackling laugh. ‘You expect too much, M
ather. Send me a bill for services rendered. It’s far less trouble.’

  As he sat in the bar with a beer and a stale sandwich, sweating out yet another delay, Mather tried to work out Berchmans’ next move. First he would have to locate the pictures in Brazil, then do a full authentication, then acquire them by option or outright purchase and finally, bring them to market. All the time he would be wondering – as Mather himself was wondering – whether Luca Palombini had dumped a fake on Franz Eberhardt. He would be wondering how many fakes there were and how quickly they would start to pop up in the market.

  And this was the real purpose of the alliance with Niccoló Tolentino. He was the only person in the world who could make an absolute determination between the original and the copy.

  The problem was, of course, that the more people who became involved in the affair of the Raphaels, the more vulnerable Max Mather became. Which brought him one step nearer to that most ancient and paradoxical of remedies: open confession. How simple it would be to say: ‘Look, I’ve been a greedy fool. Take the stakes and wash me out of the game. Just let me keep the small reputation I own by right, give me a modest profit on the deal and I’ll be content.’

  But it wasn’t as easy as that. He was subject to the same divine irony as the rabbi who played golf on the Sabbath and made a hole in one. The recording angel demanded punishment. ‘Wait!’ said God. ‘Whom is he going to tell?’ So it seemed Max Mather’s penalty was to go on building his fine tall house worth millions of dollars, knowing all the time that it was founded upon sand and that a single flash flood might tumble it down.

  Then, because he was back in Italy and the orchard trees were in bloom across the Lombardy Plain, and Palombini might just be fool enough to sign the contract that would keep him out of trouble, and tonight he would be eating pasta and pollo al diavolo and drinking Tuscan wine with Niccoló Tolentino, he said to hell with it all and ordered another drink.

  Take-off was an hour and a half late. On arrival the autostrada to Florence was jammed with commuter traffic. The approaches to the city were noisy with horns and shouting drivers. By the time he reached the comparative quiet of the hotel, he felt like a man from Mars set down on a mad planet. He shaved, bathed, changed into casual clothes, unpacked, sent a suit out for pressing, called Palombini to make a luncheon date for the morrow, then very slowly, like a decompressing diver, came back to normal. He armed himself for the evening with the gallery catalogue, the proofs of the Belvedere material and the Raphael photographs, then set out to walk to the Gallodoro.

  His first gambit was to reaffirm the visit to America with Tolentino.

  ‘We open the gallery in mid-April. If we could have you there for the opening it would be wonderful. We would aim to begin the lecture series no later than a week after that. You can live in my apartment or lodge elsewhere, as you choose. Fares paid both ways, a guarantee of a thousand a week for four weeks, plus fifty per cent of profits – and any private commissions you get are yours to keep. How does that sound to you?’

  ‘Like heavenly music,’ said Tolentino. ‘Fiddlers and flutes and a chorus of cherubim. You will never know what you are doing for me, Max…But you also have to explain what you want me to do for you. I will need to prepare. My English is okay, but that is not enough; I must do honour to you and the people who pay to hear me…also to this city and the great ones who have worked here. So tell me what you expect.’

  ‘I want you to teach and to demonstrate. There will, of course, be students in the audiences – many, I trust – but I’m hoping to have a big enrolment of senior professionals: teachers, curators, restorers. They will want to share your experience, see your techniques, enter into dialogue with you. They will want to discuss forgers and their methods, the dealer as patron and middle-man. What I’d like you to do is draw up a four-week programme of three sessions a week. I intend to charge a lot of money, so I don’t want to over-expose you. If the thing’s a success, we can always extend. You’ll have the whole of the second floor above the gallery. It will hold easily fifty or sixty people. If we get a rush of bookings, we’ll have to double up on sessions. How do you feel about that? Could you bear it?’

  ‘I still feel wonderful,’ said Tolentino.

  ‘Can you get leave from the Pitti?’

  ‘Any time.’

  ‘Great! Now, can I ask you a very delicate question?’

  ‘Certainly. Go ahead.’

  ‘You have to apply for a US visa. Is there anything that could cause a problem?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a police record in your youth perhaps?’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘There was gossip – we spoke of it – about forgery. The gossip said you were very good at it.’

  ‘The gossip said one thing. The facts say another. Let me explain…No, don’t worry. I know why you need this, so I am not angry. I have told you before. I am not a forger, I am a copyist – probably the best in the world. I can copy any painting you put in front of me and, given the right materials, I can copy it so well that the master who did the original would almost believe it was his own work – right down to the signature. But that is not forgery. A forgery is when I pass off my copy as an original. I have never done that. Others may have done it with my works, but never with my knowledge or consent. Now, wait…I say never. There were moments in wartime when Goering’s agents and Himmler’s people as well were rushing about pillaging works of art, bludgeoning people into parting with them for a song. Then, yes…I was very young and not nearly as good as I am now, but I did some very good forging. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I can now sign the formal invitation for you to enter the United States in association with the gallery. You’ll present that when you apply for your visa.’

  ‘We should have another drink on that.’

  ‘Let’s wait for the wine. I’ve got something else to show you. Close your eyes – open them when I tell you.’

  ‘They’re closed.’

  Mather laid the two Raphael photographs on the table in front of Tolentino and told him to open his eyes. The instant he saw them his face lit up with pleasure and recognition. His deep voice dropped to a conspirator’s whisper. ‘My God. All this time and now it is you who bring them to me! How? Why? Where are they?’

  ‘Not so fast, old friend.’ Mather snapped up the photographs and put them in his pocket. ‘It’s very important that we do this systematically. What do these photographs represent?’

  ‘Two portraits, mother and daughter, Palombini women painted by Raffaello in 1505.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’ve seen them?’

  ‘Seen them? Max, my friend, I lived with them for weeks on end. I copied each of them stroke for stroke.’

  ‘For whom?’

  ‘Luca Palombini.’

  ‘You must have been only a boy at the time.’

  ‘I was twenty-six. The war was on, but I was unfit for military service. I had just arrived here and was working under old Cesarini. He was great in his day, but by then his hand wasn’t too steady and his eye for colour was getting uncertain. So he passed the job to me…he still took half the fee though, by God!’

  ‘So you made only one copy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What did Palombini do with the copies?’

  ‘I don’t know; I didn’t ask. It was never politic in those days to ask too many questions. I presumed he palmed them off on someone.’

  ‘If you had the originals and the copies lying before you on this table, would you be able to tell the difference?’

  ‘I could – but you couldn’t. In fact I’d defy most of the so-called experts to tell the difference except after long and exhausting experiment…. Unless they knew my little trick, of course.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ Max pressed the point roughly. ‘I have to know now, Nicki.’

  Tolentino pulled his sketc
h-pad towards him and drew a basic monogram

  Then he explained it. ‘Tolentino, Niccoló: my initials. On every picture I have ever painted, those initials appear somewhere. That, you see, was my defence if anyone ever accused me to my face of forgery. I was copying a master – that after all is my trade – but even when I copied his signature on to the copy, because after all it was part of the whole, I signed my own work. I do it even with a restoration, except I sign that on the back, thus:

  Restauravit: Tolentino, Niccoló.

  He fished in his waistcoat pocket and brought out a loupe. ‘Now let’s take another look at those photographs. Come round next to me; you’ll see better.’

  Mather got out of his chair and stood behind the old man, peering over his shoulder as he used the tip of his pencil as an indicator.

  ‘Take the mother first…Donna Delfina. I put my monogram in the landscape background, in one of the tiny windows. Now the daughter. My mark should be just on the edge of the lowest fold of the gown.’

  He examined both photographs carefully, then invited Mather to examine under the glass the spots he had indicated. Max shook his head. ‘I see nothing.’

  ‘I can’t see anything either,’ said Tolentino. ‘The reduction in size is too great.’

  ‘But if your mark is not on them?’

  ‘Then they are the originals.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Mather objected. ‘There could be other copies than yours.’

  ‘Not possible,’ Tolentino was emphatic. ‘I know the Raffaello brushstrokes by heart. I’ll tell you one other thing, too. The panels on which I made my copies are different from the originals. Mine are on seasoned oak. The originals are on cedar…now perhaps you’ll tell me what all this means?’

  ‘I will,’ Mather promised. ‘But not yet. I need you absolutely unprejudiced – and able to swear that you are.’

  ‘You mean…’

  ‘I mean you’re coming to New York, where you’re going to be famous overnight and you’re going to forget you’ve ever seen these photographs until I stand you in front of the pictures themselves and ask you to tell the world which are the master works.’