The Collector's Apprentice

by B. A. Shapiro

  This is the way to make him go away. To keep him away. To save him. She’ll let him see her exactly as she is. Dirty and malodorous, with no light in her eyes. Exactly as she’ll be for the rest of her short life. He’ll be horrified and run back to France as fast as he can. Her parting gift.

  Vivienne staggers as Tony drags her down the corridor, holding her arm so tightly that there will certainly be bruises by morning. What do a few bruises matter? She doesn’t recognize the hallways or the turns they take, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been here before. So much would be confusing if she cared enough to let it to be. She’s content to slip in and out. Sleeping, waking, drifting, it’s all the same: fractured and fragmented, making little sense.

  Tony pushes her into a low-ceilinged and cramped visitors’ lounge, as the sign on the door proclaims it to be. It seems familiar, but she isn’t sure. Inside, there are a few small tables and a bunch of wobbly chairs. A guard whose name tag reads “Moses” stands in a corner, arms crossed, glaring, waiting for someone to commit yet another heinous crime, such as patting the hand of a loved one.

  Henri is already there, and when Vivienne enters, he starts toward her, his arms spread open. But Moses catches him by the elbow and spins him around. “No physical contact!” Moses growls, pointing to his chair. “Do that again and you’ll be out of here before you say boo.”

  She tries to locate herself in this new place, in this new situation. It feels odd to be somewhere that isn’t her cell.

  Henri sits down, his eyes wide with alarm. Vivienne idly wonders whether this is due to Moses’s words or whether it’s a reaction to the way she looks and smells. Probably both.

  Tony indicates the chair across from Henri. “Fifteen minutes,” he snaps.

  “I was told we would have an hour,” Henri protests.

  “Not with her you don’t,” Tony tells Henri. Then he turns back to Vivienne. “Killer Girl,” he adds in a snarky stage whisper.

  She gives Henri a weak smile. “Life on the inside.”

  Henri’s face crumbles, and he covers it with his hands. He’s crying.

  “Don’t,” she begs, the world suddenly shifting into clarity. “Please don’t.”

  He presses a sleeve to his eyes, pulls himself together. “You did not do this, and—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters very much. You knew Edwin was dying of cancer. There was no need. And that is why I have come. I must tell—”

  “The jury has already decided.”

  “I will not allow you to take the blame for something someone else did—or that no one did. I have spoken to many people. To a lawyer in France who talked with one here. I also have pledges of money. I will go now to the powers-that-be and tell them that this is an impossible thing. I will—”

  “There’s no one to tell. No one to hear. They all believe I’m a murderer, and that’s all they will ever believe.”

  “I do not accept that,” he says fiercely. “Not now and not ever.”

  She decides it’s time to go under, to withdraw into her shell.

  Henri must sense this, because he begins talking very quickly. “I am adding a new dimension to my portraits,” he tells her. “With the oda­lisques, too. Do you remember that mask from the Congo I showed you in Paris? The one with the pearls and the seeds?”

  Vivienne wonders if she does remember, but not enough to try to do so.

  “I thought I might integrate ideas from African culture into my work. I want to make use of the simplifications, the abstractions, and the geometric designs to add distinction, to convey individuality. What do you think?”

  What she thinks is that he’s trying to pull her into his world, to reclaim her. But there’s no one to reclaim. No one is there.

  “You would like these very much,” he continues when she doesn’t respond. “They are full of the deep colors you adore but are also mysterious. One in particular, Woman with a Veil, I want very much for you to see. And”—he leans as close as he dares—“it will fit into your map. Definitely post-Impressionist.”

  She has a feeling this is supposed to be a joke; there’s something in his expression that tells her this. But she doesn’t get it. Or maybe she does and just doesn’t remember.

  “Vivienne, please,” Henri says, his eyes filling again. “Please come back to me. I will get you out of this place. We can live as we once planned. You will be my model, my muse, my love. We can start a museum, you can continue your work, and we—”

  Vivienne stands, presses her fingers to the table to steady herself. “I don’t love you,” she says, as clearly and coldly as she can, her voice unexpectedly even. “I’m not sure I ever did. You need to go home. There’s nothing for you here.”

  “You are lying,” Henri says softly. “And as much as I appreciate the gesture, you and I both know the truth.”

  Vivienne turns her back on him and nods to Tony, who stayed to enjoy the show. “I’m ready to go now.”

  40

  George/István, 1929

  As always, he’s jubilant after a big score: that swell of well-being and confidence, the drive to rush out and execute another even greater triumph. There’s nothing, nothing, nothing like winning. The sheer power of it. He never gets enough. The best feeling ever. Better than the finest champagne or twenty-year-old scotch. Better than sex.

  His biggest con yet is a dazzling success: the Bradley is his. The day after the wedding Ada signed it all over to her handsome husband, and now everything of hers belongs to him. Granted, it took time to persuade her to renege on her promise to Quinton and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But the woman is like a schoolgirl with her first crush, giggly and so besotted that hoodwinking her is embarrassingly easy. Thomas Quinton is hopping mad, as is to be expected. Not only did he miss out on Edwin’s collection, but he missed out on Ada. Quinton is particularly enraged with her new husband, who he has no idea is the same person as the rakish and blond Australian architect Cooper Robinson.

  But even with all his jubilation, something feels off. He wonders whether this is because there weren’t as many marks to best in this scheme. The larger the number of fools he dupes, especially those who pride themselves on being smart and savvy, the greater the kick. There’s Bradley, but he’s dead. And Ada, neither smart nor savvy, isn’t a worthy opponent. He did trounce Thomas Quinton, a worthy adversary indeed. But somehow it doesn’t seem like enough.

  There’s also the dispiriting happenstance of marrying Ada. She’s always clinging and staring up at him, her doe eyes full of wonder, and it irritates the hell out of him. He suggested separate bedrooms, and thankfully she didn’t object; apparently this was her agreement with Bradley as well. He did have relations with her on their wedding night, a necessary part of the job. He needs her to believe he loves her, to develop complete trust in him, until he works out exactly how he’s going to extricate both himself and his windfall from her. The act was distasteful, but the prize is worth the unpleasantness, as it always is. So this probably isn’t what’s bothering him.

  He was incredulous when he discovered Bradley’s finances were in significantly worse shape than he had feared. The idiot invested in bonds while the stock market roared, and he spent extravagantly on artwork without any concern for how much reserve he had. It appears that his partner, Ben Hagerty, handled the business end at Bradley and Hagerty, and that the Bradley board of trustees had rubber-stamped Edwin’s every whim. This wouldn’t be as grave if the collection and the building weren’t in need of costly repairs.

  While this fact was expedient when he used it to encourage Quinton’s lawsuit, which brought about the trust’s termination and thus cleared the way for Ada’s unencumbered inheritance, now it’s working against him. A relatively small inconvenience. He’ll sell some of the pricier items he isn’t fond of, which will give him the cash he needs to start the restoration work on the paintings he plans to take with him when he leaves.

  But he keeps putting off both the sa
les and the repairs because he’s fond of roaming the silent galleries by himself, luxuriating in the fact that each and every one of these masterpieces belongs to him. To him. He owns them, all of them. A collection only a man of prodigious discernment could call his own. A man of greatness.

  He runs his fingers over the canvas of a Modigliani, feels the brushstrokes rise and fall under his touch. His. He can pour paint on it if he wants. Set it on fire. Neither of which he would do, but if he did, no one could stop him. He picks up a sixteenth-century bronze sculpture, throws it back and forth between his hands. Then he sits on a hope chest hand-carved by John Bieber. Just because he can. Heady and intoxicating. So this probably isn’t what’s bothering him either.

  He isn’t a man of abundant empathy—a talent he values, as it gives him an edge over those who succumb to this weakness and are therefore rendered vulnerable—so it takes him a while longer to figure out that he’s upset about Paulien. That he’s concerned about her and feels bad about what happened to her, even though her situation has nothing to do with him or his life.

  He has to resist the urge to visit her at the prison, to talk to her, to console her and let her know she has a friend. It’s too risky. No one can connect him with her—or him with Edwin’s death. Now that he’s Ada’s husband, his motive to knock off the old guy is glaring. He supposes this type of thinking proves he isn’t Paulien’s friend after all, and he’s relieved by the thought.

  As the months pass, Ada makes him so crazy that if he doesn’t unclench himself from her clingy fingers he knows he will go out of his mind. When he discovers that preparing for deaccessioning—getting estimates on the value of the individual works, the cost of restoration, sizing up institutions and individuals as potential purchasers—is ridiculously time consuming, he decides not to do it. There will be no repairs to the building or the collection. He’ll ship the paintings he wants to keep for himself to Europe and have them restored there. Then he’ll hire an agent in Philadelphia to sell the rest as they are. He may lose a few dollars in the transaction, as the artwork won’t be worth as much in its current state, but his sanity is at stake.

  The paintings he takes with him will be useful in the Ashton King scam, and when that’s successfully completed, he’ll hang his entire collection in the massive waterfront estate in Monaco he has his eye on. He can already imagine how his three favorite Picassos will look against the long whitewashed wall in the living room, how perfect The Music Lesson will be for the dining room.

  In a moment of weakness, it crosses his mind that he could send Paulien’s seven paintings back to her father. But that’s ludicrous. They’re his, not Aldric Mertens’s. Bradley purchased them from Aldric in a straight-up transaction, and now they legally belong to Ada. To him. Mertens probably has no idea where Paulien is or what’s happened to her, and it’ll be better for him to remain ignorant of his daughter’s situation. Better for everyone.

  But before he can proceed with his plan, he receives notice of a public hearing at which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania will argue its right—under its power “to protect and maintain one of the state’s most valuable artistic assets”—to confiscate the contents of the building located at 300 North Latches Lane, Merion Station, Pennsylvania, all of which are in “immediate danger owing to lack of maintenance to the building and deferred restoration of the artworks.”

  It contends that Mr. István Bokor, the owner of this property, has refused to take any action to improve either circumstance, and therefore the commonwealth has no choice but to undertake and oversee the actions necessary to correct the situation. Thomas Quinton is clearly up to his old tricks, trying to best his current rival, Ada’s second husband, just as he tried to best her first.

  A letter accompanies the notice. It states that according to federal law, when a governmental entity takes possession of personal property under eminent domain, just compensation must be paid to the owner of said property. “The value of said property, located at 300 North Latches Lane, has been established by commonwealth assessors at $5 million, to be paid to Mr. István Bokor at the time the property is transferred.”

  He throws the papers on his desk. None of this makes any difference. Their attempt to steal his artwork is as unworkable as it is ludicrous. Eminent domain involves the government seizing property in order to build something like a railroad or a courthouse; it can’t possibly apply to a private art collection.

  And $5 million? A fraction of what his collection is worth. It’s a preposterous maneuver, and if they think he’s going to buckle under, they have another think coming. He immediately calls his lawyer, who doesn’t believe the measure is unreasonable and warns him that he’s at a disadvantage because the hearing is being held in two weeks.

  “What difference does that make?”

  “There’s no time for you to address the maintenance and restoration issues,” the lawyer explains.

  “Can’t you argue that we’re planning to do them?”

  “We can try, Mr. Bokor. But it looks bad that you haven’t done anything in the year or so you’ve owned the property.”

  “I’ve been getting the money together.”

  “Do you have it in an account we can point to?”

  “No, not exactly, but I can get it. I just have to sell a few paintings.”

  The lawyer hesitates. “I’m not sure that’s going to be a winning argument.”

  “How can they presume to walk in and seize my personal property? It’s un-American.”

  “I’ll give it everything I’ve got, Mr. Bokor, but as it stands now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that I believe your position is weak.”

  “Edwin would be heartbroken,” Ada says at dinner the night the decision comes down. “This is absolutely the last thing he would have wanted. It goes against everything he stood for, his . . . his life’s work.” Then she starts to cry.

  It happened just as his lawyer predicted. The state is going to confiscate his collection, build a museum next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and move his personal possessions there. Quinton and Ralph Knight are elated, as is the entire population of the city of Philadelphia.

  He throws his napkin on the table and begins pacing the oversize dining room. He came by it fair and square. It’s his private property, and the state has no right to take it from him. Steal it from him. Ada, who lawfully inherited it from Bradley, is now his wife, and she gave it to him. No one is going to take what he’s worked so hard to acquire, what he was forced to marry an old woman for, what’s legally his.

  He wants to strangle Ada. He can feel the tiny bones crunching under the pressure of his fingers. She was the one who wanted to get married, the one who promised she’d turn the collection over to him. And now she has nothing to give. Snap, snap, snap.

  41

  Vivienne, 1929

  After Henri’s visit, Vivienne falls into a deep stupor, sleeping as many hours a day as she can. She stops rocking because it’s too much effort. When she’s awake, she lies on her cot, staring at the ceiling and making pictures out of the water stains. They all look like vicious animals—or, at their most benign, frightened children.

  She eats what’s slipped through the slot in her door, takes the twice-weekly showers, stands listlessly on the muddy or dusty or snow-covered ground next to a basketball court without nets. She goes along, doesn’t make a fuss. It’s as if the piece of her that she recognizes as her true self has succumbed ahead of her body, leaving just that carapace behind. When they finally get around to executing her, she’ll already be dead. Perhaps she already is.

  Henri writes letters, many letters, but she doesn’t read them. She leaves them unopened on the metal tray, along with the trash from her meals. All she has left to give him is permission to forget her, as she’s forgetting herself. She was Paulien and then Vivienne and now she’s Killer Girl.

  Sometimes she remembers killing Edwin. Other times she thinks she didn’t. But mostly she doesn’t trouble herself with the
question. It makes her tired.

  Tony comes into her cell one day and tells she has a visitor, a woman, he says. Vivienne has no idea how long it’s been since Henri’s visit, but she thinks it was warm, then cold, and now it’s warm again. So at least a year. Or is it two? She also has no idea who it could be, even less curiosity. She goes with Tony just as she does everything else, sleepwalking, not there.

  He brings her to a room labeled visitors’ lounge, where she’s never been before. It smells like the mold that crawled up the walls of some cellar in a previous life. She forgets for a moment why she’s here. Turns to Tony, notices another guard. A visitor. Right. An older woman is seated at a lopsided table, drumming her fingers nervously. But she’s a stranger. The woman’s face falls when Vivienne enters, and it’s clear Vivienne is not who she’s waiting for.

  Then the woman gasps and presses her hand to her heart. “Paulie. Oh, Paulie. Oh, my dear Lord.”

  Vivienne’s knees buckle, and she falls into a chair. “Is Papa dead?” she demands, then wonders who Papa is. Her father? Does she have a father?

  “No, child,” the woman says soothingly. “No one is dead.”

  “H-how . . . ?” Vivienne begins, not quite sure whether she’s awake or dreaming. Or maybe hallucinating. The word tante comes into her mind. Is that who this is, sitting across from her? An aunt from a long time ago? How many seasons? How many years? No. She’s dreaming. She has to be. Dreaming is sometimes interesting. So she goes along with it. “How did you get here?” she asks.

  “By ship,” the woman says with a wry smile. “But I think what you are asking is how I found you. The answer is that your friend Henri came to see me.”