Masterclass

by Morris West

  Munsel’s reaction was milder than he had expected. ‘I doubt it was prudent. I agree it was probably necessary. How did she take it?’

  ‘Pretty well, I think.’

  ‘What’s she going to do about Bayard?’

  ‘Decline with thanks.’

  ‘Question arises later; what are we going to do about him?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Warn him or whack him with it? We’re back, you see, to misprision of a felony. Always awkward, mostly borderline. You don’t have to worry too much – I just want you to know that I’ll be the one with the nightmares.’

  ‘Why else does the client pay you, George? I’m only a witness serving the cause of justice. I’ve also just come from an exhausting press conference.’

  ‘I hope you were discreet?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘I’ll be interested to see what they do to you.’

  ‘Chop me up for hamburgers, I expect.’

  ‘Before they do, I need you to finish your analysis of the diaries. If you need computer assistance I can offer some.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll do it the old-fashioned way: coloured pens and ruled columns. I’m not very educated, George.’

  ‘I know. You get by on native cunning. It’s an awful risk. Have a nice weekend.’

  That brought him up short. This was Friday. He had no desire to spend a solitary weekend in SoHo. He looked at his watch. It was coming up to midday – six in the evening in Zurich. He called Gisela.

  ‘If I stay here over the weekend I shall go out of my mind. I’m going to try to get a night flight to land me in Zurich early tomorrow morning. We could have the weekend together. Meantime, I’ll give you Claudio Palombini’s number. Track him down, wherever he is. Tell him it’s life and death that I see him in Zurich on Monday – at my apartment and alone. Start on it now, will you, sweetheart? I’ll call you back in two hours. Yes…of course I’m coming in anyway. You were right. This city’s too full of temptations for a country boy. Oh yes, the latest news is that you’re coming to New York for the opening of the gallery…Alois will give you leave. You can skip one university lecture, go sick, whatever. I’m picking up the tab. I know I’m spending money like a drunken sailor, but after Monday I’ll either be rich or in jail.’

  When he told Anne-Marie, she gave a small start of surprise and then nodded.

  ‘I understand. But you will be back for Ed’s dinner party on Wednesday? I couldn’t face that one without you.’

  ‘I couldn’t face it without you either.’ He told her about the ghost from his gaudy past, Mrs Lois Heilbronner, and he was delighted to hear her laugh.

  ‘That’s the Max I used to know. I was afraid I’d lost him altogether. You were so formidable with the press this morning. Boy, they weren’t prepared for what you dished out to them. Chloe’s saying that while some of them may roast you, the gallery will get a good run and the TV segments will look great.’

  ‘Name of the game.’ Mather shrugged. ‘They think they can make or break you. They can, but only if you let ’em. In the end, it’s what’s hanging on the walls that counts. Dream stuff is very durable.’

  He had grace enough to realise that the phrase sat strangely on the lips of a man who was playing dice games for a hundred million dollars’ worth of Raphaels. As he packed for the journey – clothes, documents, the Madeleine Bayard diaries, every relevant scrap of paper – a small cold finger of fear probed at his heart. It was one thing to play the publicity stakes in Manhattan, but to step into the spotlight and play truth and consequences with the moguls was another game altogether.

  The overnight flight from New York landed him in Zurich at nine in the morning. Gisela, typically, was there to greet him and whisk him off to his apartment for bath, love-making and lunch in very extended order. It was a tardy but true admission that one of the things he had missed most in his life was a sense of homecoming, of being, after however long an absence, among the gods of one’s own household. The household might be a moveable place, but the deities and the matron figure who kept the lamps trimmed before them defined the hearth and heartland of the dwelling.

  Gisela had organised the weekend with a certain Swiss precision.

  ‘Saturday is free for us, just us. Sunday we drive out into the country and spend the day in the place where I was born and which is now my dowry. You didn’t know I was a land-owning lady, did you? The couple who run the place for me will serve us lunch. Alois Liepert and his family will join us, because I think you should talk to Alois before you meet Palombini on Monday. He gets in at ten and will come straight here. Alois suggests that he take you both to lunch at the Jägersverein. Monday night’s for you and me. Tuesday I’ve booked you back to New York. Now, tell me everything that you’ve been doing.…’

  It was a long and often disjointed recital, but it led in the end to a question from Gisela.

  ‘What do you really want to do with your life, Max?’

  ‘That’s not easy to answer. Let me try to reason something out with you, because I’m just beginning to come to terms with myself. I’ve told you about my father and my mother and the lifelong conflict between them. I couldn’t face that kind of battle in my own married life. So the simple solution was never to get married and always maintain the liberty to walk away from an unsatisfactory relationship. Fine. But what was really satisfactory to me? In spite of everything, I’m not a bad scholar, I’m well grounded. My doctoral thesis wasn’t bad. I got all that from my father – a fundamental respect for learning. From my mother I got a lot of unfulfilled desires and the notion that the world owed me a better living than I had…and frankly, I set out to collect it. You ask me what I want to do with my life. Two things. I want to repair the holes in my scholarship – and at the same time pay my way, and yours, with my own skills. I’m enjoying what I’m doing now – the hustle, the bustle, the horse-trading. And I’m best when I believe in what I’ve got – like the Bayard collection. I understand Niccoló Tolentino and Guido Valente. I think I understand you; but I do know I love you. You’re the kind of people who keep people like me honest. So, in an ideal world, what would I like to do? Make enough money from what I’m doing to marry you and raise a family. Have enough leisure to take the fellowship that Guido Valente’s waving under my nose and begin to tidy my academic mind…’ He broke off, laughing a little uneasily at himself. ‘That’s the game plan. God knows if I can make it work.’

  ‘I’m sure you can, my love.’ Gisela laid a cool hand on his cheek. But none of it will happen until…’

  ‘Until the bride price is paid and I’ve been washed clean in the blood of the lamb!’ Max interrupted. ‘That’s what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t, Max! That’s cruel. To yourself and to me.’

  Her eyes were full of tears. He took her in his arms and held her close for a long time, staring over her shoulder into a very uncertain future.

  When Claudio Palombini arrived at the Sonnenberg apartment at a quarter to eleven on the Monday morning, Mather was waiting for him with fresh coffee and a small tabulated pile of notes and documents. He served the coffee and then, without preamble, made the opening move.

  ‘Claudio, we’re very near to success. I’ve asked you here because the next moves are crucial and there has to be complete understanding on both sides before they are made. Whatever is said in this room is private and can never be proved in a court of law. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘What you are saying is clear, Max. The reason for it is still a mystery. We have a contract, signed and notarised – I trust there is no requirement to vary it?’

  ‘None,’ said Mather. ‘That’s our starting point. Now take a look at these.’ He laid out on the table the photographs of the two portraits and the five cartoons.

  Palombini stared at them in wonderment. ‘You mean…?’

  ‘This is your ancestor, Donna Delfina. This is her daughter, the Maiden Beata. These are five cartoons for an altar-
piece for the votive chapel of St Gabriele which used to exist in the grounds of the Palombini villa.’

  ‘I never heard of such a place.’

  ‘It did exist. It was the scene of the rape and murder of a peasant girl. In the seventeenth century it was deconsecrated and destroyed.’

  ‘And you know where these things are?’

  ‘I do. I’ve seen them…I’ve authenticated them. I’ve even seen copies of the two portraits. But refresh your family memory with this.’

  He handed Palombini the letter he had received weeks before from Guido Valente. Palombini read it slowly, then handed it back. Quietly, he said, ‘I said a long time ago, Max, that I underrated you. Please go on.’

  ‘Eberhardt died in Brazil. While we were both in St Moritz, I heard that Camilla Dandolo had returned to Italy and was living in Milan. I went to see her. I showed her the photographs. She recognised the two portraits as those which her husband had acquired from Luca Palombini during the war. After his death she sold them to a Brazilian dealer. They are now in New York on offer to Henri Berchmans of Berchmans et Cie, of whom you have no doubt heard.’

  Palombini’s face fell. ‘So we’ve lost them.’

  ‘No. I have personally verified in Berchmans’ presence that they are copies. The copyist’s cipher is painted into both pictures and the wood is oak, not cedar. Now read this.’

  He handed him a copy of Niccoló Tolentino’s deposition made after viewing the portraits. Palombini read it and began hitting his forehead with the heel of his hand.

  ‘Stupid, stupid! All this in our own city under my own silly snout and I see nothing. For the first time I begin to see what I am paying for. Now the big question: where are these things now?’

  ‘All in safe custody in separate locations. The cartoons are in special care under museum conditions.’

  ‘Who owns them?’

  ‘A company which deals in art works – and other things.’

  ‘Will they sell? Will they deal at the figure you specify in your contract – ten per cent recovery fee?’

  ‘I have reason to believe they will.’

  ‘Then what are we waiting for?’

  ‘The solution to a problem – two problems in fact, though one is subordinate to the other. The first problem is title and provenance. Suppose you acquire these pictures now and you want to make a deal in the market – a legitimate deal, mind you, not a black market discount – you have to show clear title. You can prove that from the original document of 1505. You can prove it acceptably up to Luca during the war. After that there’s a huge gap of more than forty years. Now even on a private sale, without the publicity of an auction, that’s going to worry a big-money buyer. He’s never going to be sure that his ownership is beyond challenge. The second problem, which is minor, because the pieces are de facto outside Italy, is the question of the export of national treasures; but with a forty-year gap in history, that difficulty can probably be sidestepped.’

  ‘Which says to me,’ Claudio Palombini gave him a long approving nod, ‘that you have already worked out a solution.’

  ‘It’s the best you’ll ever get.’

  ‘Already you frighten me,’ said Palombini. ‘Remember that at the end of June I am bankrupt anyway.’

  ‘Bear with me, Claudio…pazienza!’

  He began laying out documents on the table.

  ‘Item one: Valente’s letter, Tolentino’s deposition, clearly point to a wartime export traffic of various kinds by Luca Palombini. The family itself has had a continuous business presence in Switzerland for a long time. That more or less takes care of the export situation.

  ‘Item two: Pia and I were lovers. From time to time she made me expensive gifts. These are the cards in her own handwriting; Here are two of her gifts – an antique watch valued at at least 100,000 US dollars; a comfit box, Louis XIV, valued at thirty.

  ‘Item three: the photostat of Pia’s holograph will which you gave to me on the day it was read at the villa. You will note that among her legacies to me is an object in the archives, provided it is not a manuscript and does not damage the sequence of the family history.

  ‘Item four: this is the object I chose – a canvas bag covered with wax, sewn with cobbler’s thread, which I carried, sealed, out of the country. No one – not even you, Claudio – bothered to ask me what I had chosen. You were perfectly prepared to alienate your whole family’s archive to the National Library and this bag could have gone with it.

  ‘Item five: the legal procurators of the company which now owns the art works will do exactly what its shareholders instruct.

  ‘So there, if you care to use them, are your title and your provenance. If you care to dispute them, you will of course be disputing against your own interest, any immediate deal on the pictures will be impossible and the taint of the dispute will carry over for decades.’

  For a long while Claudio Palombini sat staring at the papers and photographs spread in front of him. Mather refilled his coffee cup and passed it back to him. Palombini sipped the lukewarm liquid, then dabbed at his lips with a silk handkerchief.

  Finally in a dead, cold voice he asked, ‘Does all this come under the original contract? If not, how much more does it cost me?’

  ‘The contract says fifteen per cent of what you receive – that is to say, after auctioneer’s or dealer’s commissions.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You know they will take twenty.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For doing far less work than I have done. Without me, Claudio, these things would have passed out of your hands altogether and I’m advised that these documents give, inside or outside Italy, a defensible claim to the art works. A holograph will is a very potent instrument, as you know. The scale of Pia’s gifts was always high…I was not simply her lover, I was her faithful body servant.’

  ‘You’re a mascalzone, Max, a crook.’

  Mather smiled and shrugged.

  ‘I can say that, Claudio. You can’t, because the documents say the opposite. I’m a trader like you – a sharp trader, but always one step inside the law or half a pace outside it like Luca l’ingannatore, eh?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake – let’s finish this comedy. Name the price.’

  ‘Five per cent.’

  ‘That makes twenty all up – just to you.’

  ‘I’ll admit it’s steep; but without me you wouldn’t have anything, would you?’

  ‘Let’s not argue any longer. How do we arrange this?’

  ‘First…’ Mather was mildness itself, ‘first we go to the Jägersverein for lunch with Alois Liepert. Then we go to his office where some documents await your signature. The first document acknowledges that the Raphaels passed to me, in part by gift and in part by legacy from Pia. The second document is a bill of sale, whereby for the sum of five million dollars I sell you the Raphaels. The third is a quit claim signed by us both, acknowledging that no further claims will be made by either party. The total cost to you is five per cent of market price, only a third of what you’re committed to pay me under the existing contract.’

  Claudio Palombini stared at him in utter disbelief.

  ‘I don’t believe this. You’re passing up the best part of ten million dollars. Where’s the catch?’

  ‘The catch is in what happens if we don’t do it. On the basis of the documents, I have better claim than you. You wrote me a letter disclaiming all knowledge of the Raphaels, remember? Also, I’m not amenable to the Italian government…you are. Even so, my claim could be disputed, so the whole transaction could end in limbo. From my point of view, I figure I’ve earned what I’m claiming because you simply couldn’t have done what I did and built the Raphaels up to a high profile market item. D’accordo?’

  ‘D’accordo!’ Palombini agreed. ‘But there’s only one catch: I don’t have five hundred thousand dollars to spend, let alone five million.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Mather with a laugh. ‘We hold the pictures unt
il they’re sold into the market. Alois Liepert holds the documents and demonstrates them as needed. One thing, though…you’ll have to decide who’s going to market the pieces and where. I’ve got some suggestions about that…and one of them is that you come to America.’

  ‘Save them for lunch,’ said Palombini. ‘What I need at this moment is a stiff drink.’

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  As he was pouring the drinks, Claudio demanded, ‘Why, Max? You’re away free. You come back and make a lousy deal like this. Why?’

  ‘I read my Dante.’ Mather grinned at him over the glass. ‘ “O dignitosa coscienza e netta.” I’ve just discovered mine.’

  For the first time Claudio returned the smile and raised his glass in a salute. ‘The Palombini belong to another age. We cut our teeth on Machiavelli.’

  The lunch at the Jägersverein was followed by a visit to the vaults to inspect the portrait of Donna Delfina, which was now the only one of the Raphaels left there. Palombini’s reaction was almost the same as Tolentino’s. He held the picture at arm’s length, staring at it with tears in his eyes. Then he turned to them with a tremulous smile.

  ‘You have to forgive me, but at the moment she looks like a miraculous ikon, the Madonna of Perpetual Help. I cannot tell you how I felt these last months, watching the enterprises that my ancestors built go down the drain.…I have to apologise, Max. I called you a nasty name…Yet this is the second time you have brought succour to my family.’

  ‘I’m an easy touch, Claudio.’

  ‘We should all be so easy,’ said Alois Liepert. ‘Let’s get back to the office and sign those papers.’

  ‘You take Claudio with you. I’ll join you later – I’m going out to buy an engagement ring.’

  ‘Go to Barzini’s,’ Claudio advised. ‘It’s just a few doors down from here on the left. Hand them this card and they’ll give you a decent discount. We own the place – or we will, after Master Raffaello of Urbino pays off our mortgage!’