by Paul Watkins
“Come and see,” I told him.
He shuffled in front of the painting and I stepped aside to let him look. After a moment of silence, Pankratov started laughing very quietly. “That old sourpuss Martin Luther saw this and gave Cranach some line about how it was undignified, but the truth was he didn’t want people thinking he or anybody close to him had any thoughts on their minds but the heavy piousness of hard-core preachers like himself. I see it. I see Luther as a stingy old man. Stingy about pleasure even in the simple things.”
“That might not be the truth,” I said. “That might be a long way from it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Pankratov stated flatly. “What matters is that there is a story going on between these two pictures that makes sense.”
“Will it work?” I asked nervously.
“By the time I’ve done my part,” replied Pankratov, “it certainly will.”
Only then did I feel tired. And suddenly I was exhausted. I walked over to the fire, spread out a blanket, lay down on it and fell asleep.
* * *
“GO AWAY,” SAID PANKRATOV. He stood in the arched doorway of the workshop. Spiky gray stubble fanned across his unshaven face as if he were part porcupine.
I stood in the alley, still groggy after a few hours’ rest. “You ought to come outside for a bit and stop breathing those fumes.”
“I like them,” said Pankratov.
“I could pretend to be surprised,” I replied, “but I won’t.”
“Tell Fleury he can have it in a week.” He closed the door behind him.
* * *
RAIN FELL SOFTLY ON the city as I made my way to the Galerie Fleury, darkening the sidewalks and making the rooftops glimmer like polished nickel. The Rue des Archives was filled with people carrying umbrellas.
I climbed a narrow, iron-banistered staircase to Fleury’s office on the fourth floor. Along the way, I looked into his show spaces. They were lit by large skylights and had leather couches set back-to-back in the middle of the open, airy rooms. Oriental rugs padded the floors. The walls were a dull beige brown. Fleury had told me that this was to highlight the paintings, of which there were many. At first glance, the arrangement seemed haphazard—a painting of the Rialto Bridge alongside a pen and ink drawing of the rooftops at Arles. Fleury had explained that he didn’t like to group works by era, school or subject. Instead, he found some subtle theme that linked the pieces. This theme might not be immediately apparent, but the buyer would sense a certain harmony. Fleury said that the best buyers bought on instinct, rather than by following the latest market trends. It was the dealer’s job to draw out these unexplained but positive feelings for a work, which often had as much to do with the painting’s surroundings as with the painting itself. To the untrained eye, Fleury’s gallery embraced a kind of chaos. But Fleury left nothing to chance. Calculations lay behind every gesture he made and every detail of his business. Even his location on the Rue des Archives, away from the main drag of galleries on the Avenue Matignon, showed that he considered himself apart from other Parisian dealers, and did not need a choice location in order to draw in his clients.
Fleury’s tiny office was crammed with loose documents. The walls were scaled with receipts held up by small steel pins. Most of these bore his elaborate, many-looped signature.
The only window looked out over a series of gray-slated rooftops. The window was open and rain slipped in molten bars from the edge. Fleury’s coat was hanging from a peg and his hat was on top, making it seem as if there were another person in the room.
“It’s going perfectly,” said Fleury. “Behr has called several times. He’s a sweet boy, really. Anxious to please his masters. But he has absolutely no business sense. Every time he calls”—Fleury jerked his thumbs at the ceiling—“the price goes up.”
“How long can you hold him off?” I asked.
“How long do you need?” replied Fleury, thin eyebrows ribboning his forehead with the question.
“Pankratov needs another week,” I told him.
“A week,” said Fleury, “but no longer.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, I HEARD car brakes squeak to a stop down the street. Before the war, a sound like that would never have woken me, even if it was three in the morning. But now, with the curfew, the sound of any vehicle at night was rare, especially on the Rue Descalzi.
I opened my eyes and just lay there, breathing very lightly, waiting to see what happened next. I wasn’t afraid. If the car had stopped outside my building, I might have thought a little more about it. I assumed it belonged to someone who was working for the Germans and had permission to be out after curfew.
I heard two doors clunk shut and then nothing for a while. I was almost falling back asleep when I heard a window being dragged open and the sound of men shouting. I heard a dog bark and then another sound. It was exactly the same as if I had taken a head of cabbage and thrown it down hard on the ground. After that came the noise of running, of men speaking harshly in German, the doors of the car closing and the rising, clunking rumble of a car moving swiftly through its gears as it sped away.
I went to the window, which was open. Up and down the street, windows were being raised, French doors swung quietly open. I saw people standing on their little balconies, like ghosts in their pale nightshirts. Urgent whispers passed between them.
There was nothing in the street, and nobody left their buildings to investigate.
One after the other, people vanished back inside their apartments, drawing the curtains, closing the windows again.
The next morning, as I stepped into the street on my way to the Métro stop, I saw a crowd of people gathered outside the apartment building where the car had pulled up. It was Madame Coty’s place. As curious as everybody else, I made my way over. I saw a large spray of blood on the cobblestones.
Madame La Roche was there. She already had the whole story from her friend Madame Coty. “It was a man, Lebel. He ran the…”
“Cabaret,” I said, remembering that he was the one who had bought my sketches off Fleury.
“Yes, the Metropole Cabaret,” said Madame La Roche. “You know, my friend Madame Coty was once a dancer there. In the old days. The very old days. It was very nice. Very racy. At least it used to be. Last month, the Germans decided to shut it down. They said it was too shocking. The costumes, the music. The whole thing. I don’t know. But the next week, they turned the place into a rest home for German soldiers. That was the real reason. Everybody knows. They just wanted the building and wanted an excuse to get him out of there. As if they even needed one. They take whatever they want, these people. But Lebel must not have known that. He was making trouble. Protesting, demanding to be paid. He should have shut up and then he might still be alive. But he was very full of himself, this man Lebel. He thought he was an expert on everything. Only he wasn’t an expert on knowing what the Germans would do, because they came for him last night. They always come in the dark. Once they show up at your door, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or not done. You might as well just shoot yourself. Except Lebel didn’t have a gun. So he jumped out the window. Headfirst. And took his dog with him.”
We were outside our building now, Madame La Roche still talking. I had a feeling she would have gone on all day if I hadn’t excused myself and dashed to catch the Métro. I had to run back up the street, past the crowd, which had thinned out. Madame Coty was down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the blood from the cobblestones. She had on a pair of black rubber boots and a brown kerchief tied around her hair. She dipped the brush in a tin bucket of soapy water and scratched away the blackened mess. The suds turned pink. Rosy bubbles rested on the cobblestones, refracting the gleam of the sun, then vanished and joined the silky froth as it made its way down to the gutter. Madame Coty’s face was grim with the effort of scrubbing. She looked more resentful than appalled, as if she had done this before and was cursing her bad luck that this had all happened on her doorstep, so she had t
o be the one to clean it up.
A week later, a sign appeared on the front door of Madame Coty’s building, advertising an apartment for rent. It was snatched up straightaway and the sign was taken down.
There had been no public outcry against Lebel’s death. Not even much said in private. Instead, there seemed to be a kind of quiet resignation. The rules of the old days were gone. The new rules were clear enough, as were the penalties for making trouble.
Seeing that blood on the pavement brought about a change in me. Now I was afraid all the time. I had been fending it off, with sarcasm and indignation and the quiet simmering of anger meshed like barbed-wire entanglements inside my brain. The sight of the blood washed them away. From then on, there was never a moment when I felt safe. I learned to live with the fear, the way a person might learn to live with the pain of an illness. My body and my mind became a kind of house in which the fear had taken residence. Fear became like a white noise, a rushing static that filled my ears so constantly that it even began to feel normal. It stopped me from thinking about the future. From then on I did my best to live purely in the present, taking pleasure in the smallest things to stop this fear from driving me mad.
* * *
IT WAS EARLY SUNDAY morning.
Pankratov arrived at my apartment. “What are all these rabbits doing in the hallway?” he asked, nudging one away with his toe after it had begun to nibble on his bootlaces.
“They belong to the landlady,” I explained.
“They’d make good sandwiches,” he said.
I waited for him to explain why he had come.
“Get dressed,” ordered Pankratov. “We’re going to church.”
I was too tired to ask why, and knew how little good it would do for me to argue. I hauled on my one set of good clothes and walked with Pankratov to the 7:00 A.M. service at Notre-Dame. Pankratov waited until we all knelt to pray, then took out a small penknife and began inspecting the pew. From the underside of the bench, he scraped the grime and waxy residue of wood polish into his palm. Carefully he emptied it into his pocket.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
An old lady was watching us. She frowned and looked away.
“Dust,” he explained.
Then he set to work raking the blade of the penknife across the kneeling cushion until he had another palmful of gray. He kept at this through much of the service, kneeling long after the rest of us had gone back to sitting. “Right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t leave now,” I hissed. “We’re in the middle of the service!”
Pankratov looked around, frowning with annoyance.
The old lady glared at him, her twig-bony hands folded in prayer.
Pankratov heaved himself onto the bench and sat back with a noisy sigh.
Afterwards, we filed out into the quiet streets. Eventually, we came to the corner of Rue du Rambuteau and Rue du Temple. A large pillar had been set up, with thick white arrows pointing off in different directions. They were coded with the locations of German headquarters and with long words like HEERESBEKLEIDUNGSLAGER-PARIS, FRONTTEILSTELLE, FELDGENDARMERIEKASERNE and STAATLICHEKRIMINALPOLIZEIBEAMTE.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now,” said Pankratov, “you are going to learn something.”
We took the Métro out to Gambetta, the stop nearest his warehouse, and walked the rest of the way. As we strolled down the alleyway, several of the warehouse doors were open. The weekends were the only time we ever ran into people out here. Inside the warehouses were cars which had been set up on blocks for the duration of the war. The owners were tinkering with engines or polishing chrome with large chamois rags. Others had workshops as ramshackle as Pankratov’s. One space seemed to be entirely filled with electric fans, and a man in blue overalls, taking them apart one by one. Pankratov nodded hello and waved and smiled, like a country squire greeting his tenants.
“It’s not finished yet,” Pankratov explained as he unlocked his warehouse door. “You mustn’t expect too much.” He didn’t turn on the lights until he had the door closed behind him. For a second, we stood in the darkness, blind, smelling the damp.
When the bulbs popped on, I saw our Cranach held in a glow as if suspended by the light. I barely recognized it. The original brightness of its colors had been replaced by a dark, yellowy light, which seemed to come from deep beneath the surface of the paint. The young girl had receded into the shadows of centuries that Pankratov had laid across the wood.
“How did you do it?” I asked, walking closer.
“With this,” he explained. He held out a white dish in which lay a grayish sludge. “This is time,” he said. “This is the essence of it.”
“What’s it made of?” I asked.
Pankratov shrugged. “It varies, depending on where you want the work to come from. This piece, I decided, might have been in a church for a while, maybe later in a dining room. So I used some wood ash and a few grains of incense. I cooked some bacon fat and while it was burning, I held a silver spoon in the smoke until it was blackened and used it to stir the mix. I thought it needed more dust. That’s why we went to Notre-Dame.”
“But couldn’t you get dust from anywhere?”
“I could have, but you never know how it will come out. What you want,” he explained, “is for whoever is buying it to have held in his or her hands a piece that has hung in a church, and for them to have committed to memory, perhaps even without knowing it, the smell and the exact way in which the dust has settled on the painting. Then, when they look at this, they’ll get the same feeling. It’s just a sensation that everything is right. It happens in the first few seconds of holding the work, or it doesn’t happen at all. Then a different process begins. Suspicions take over. Some people, if they decide they really want the piece, can persuade themselves to overlook their instincts. But others, the real professionals, will put it down and walk away, no matter how badly they want it, if their instincts warn them at all.”
There was that word again. “Instinct.” I was beginning to see that Pankratov and Fleury’s work had the same task, to put the buyers at ease without letting them know exactly why.
Pankratov spread a clean handkerchief on his worktable and emptied out the dust from Notre-Dame. He lifted some of the gray flecks with the tip of his knife and carefully worked them into cracks on the side of the painting. When each crack was filled, he tipped his little finger into the gray sludge and dabbed it over the crack, sealing in the dust.
“I can’t wait to show this to Fleury,” I said.
Pankratov picked up the painting and held it out at arm’s length, studying his work. “Tomorrow, we’ll give it to Fleury. Then he can sell it to Abetz.”
“I’d buy it myself if I didn’t know any better. It’s perfect.”
“There’s no such thing as perfect,” said Pankratov. “The best it can be is persuasive.” Whenever someone paid Pankratov a compliment, he would find some way to deflect it.
I sighed and looked around. “Who’d have guessed we’d end up doing this?”
“The mission always changes,” said Pankratov.
“And what does that mean?” I asked.
Pankratov made no reply. He was lost some place inside his head, long in the past, out on the frozen lake, in the darkness of the arctic winter night.
Chapter Twelve
I WRAPPED THE PAINTING in brown paper and brought it to Fleury’s gallery. He had told me to come by at four o’clock, and kept me waiting while he closed the doors downstairs. I unwrapped the Cranach and placed it on an easel. I sat down to wait on Fleury’s leather couch. It felt cold and rubbery. My earlier confidence had begun to fail me in the formality of these surroundings. My lips and my knuckles dried out with worry. I jerked the knot of my tie back and forth. Then I got up and covered the painting with a brown cloth that I’d found slung over the easel. I was too nervous to look at it.
I heard him climb the stairs, slow and light-footed. His step
s made a swishing sound like someone sanding a piece of wood. He appeared in the doorway, wearing a blue suit, with a red silk cravat bunched at his throat. “Ah,” he said, looking at the brown cloth. “You’ve gone for the dramatic moment.”
“The what?” I asked.
“It’s what we call ‘the dramatic moment’ when you cover a painting and unveil it before the buyer’s eyes. It only works with a certain kind of client. You have to know which ones.”
I tugged off the brown cloth.
Fleury’s eyes narrowed. He was quiet for a moment. Then he mumbled, “This is some kind of sorcery.”
“Will it do?” I asked.
“It will,” he said. “It will do very nicely.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
Fleury walked right past me and up to the canvas. He pulled a kind of monocle from his shirt pocket and peered at the painting through the lens. “Layering,” he said. “Good. Patina. Good. Frame. Period. Wormholes. Nice touch. The right amount of dirt. Craquelure. Yes, good.” Then he came very close to the painting and breathed in through his hawk’s beak nose, which made a tiny, whistling sound. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, that’s just right.” He walked around behind it. “Leonid,” he said. His head popped up. “Did you do this?”
“It was there when we began. We can lose it if you want.”
“No need,” he said cheerfully, and disappeared back behind the painting.
I felt the muscles of my shoulders and at the base of my skull unclenching with relief. I went back to the couch and sat down.
“All right!” announced Fleury. He walked up to me, waggling the monocle absentmindedly in one hand. “You look like you could use a holiday.”
“I expect I could,” I replied.
“Unfortunately you can’t have one just yet, because now that you’ve given me this painting, I want you to steal it back.”
I waited for an explanation.
“I want you to take it to Behr and tell him you’ve recovered the painting from a private collection. That’s the word I want you to use. ‘Recovered.’ He won’t ask too many questions. He’ll think you’ve stolen it and have chosen to cut me out of the deal. Tell him I wasn’t paying you enough. Tell him we had an argument and that you decided to go into business for yourself. Tell him you don’t want money. You want to trade this for some modernist works, which you then intend to sell out of the country. If he asks, you can tell him you have a buyer in Switzerland.”