The Corpse with the Garnet Face

by Cathy Ace

  “So that’s how he saw me?” We all looked. “Not very flattering.”

  To be fair to Hannah, she was right. Jonas had used as his base the portrait of a woman with her hair falling loose about her face, which Van Gogh had painted in 1885. The woman in the original had been not dissimilar to Hannah herself, which made for a weird feeling—Jonas had captured Hannah with Van Gogh’s technique so exactly that it almost outdid the original, because I could look up and see the real person. In the portrait, Hannah looked to be in her thirties. It was apparent that the soft, open, innocent features of the seventeen-year-old girl had hardened by that time, and, since then, she’d broadened somewhat.

  Hannah sloshed coffee into a mug from the pot and drank it down. “Not so bad, I suppose,” she added, still addressing the portrait. “I wore my hair like that when I was that age. In me prime, I s’pose you could say. Boss of me own place, no men to answer to.”

  “I bet you made a pretty penny when you sold it. If you sold it. Did you? You know, when you lost your leg?” I realized I could have phrased my questions more gently, but Hannah didn’t seem to mind.

  She smiled and looked at me. “Sold it to some eegit who t’ought it would be a money machine. He paid too much, but I wasn’t going to tell him. At least he kept me staff on for a year or so, which I made him promise.”

  “How did you ever manage to buy the bar in the first place? That can’t ever have been a cheap thing to do here. Brown cafés are all situated in old, well-established buildings, aren’t they? Antique wood fittings, years of smoke making them a deep, rich brown…that’s where they got their name, isn’t it?”

  Hannah sounded passionate when she answered. “Old, yes. Mine was built in the late 1600s. Jonas loaned me the money, so he did, in 1970. Charged me no interest. I paid him back as fast as I could. Lived here for free while I did it.”

  Thinking of Bud’s theory about drug trafficking, I said, “Did you get a lot of tourists turning up and expecting you to sell marijuana at your place? Muddling up brown cafés with coffee shops?”

  Slapping her good thigh and laughing heartily, Hannah rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, you have no idea.” She grinned. “We had a big dish set out on the bar covered with one of them giant glass domes, you know?” We both looked impressed as she mimed the size of the dome. “When the innocent eegits would come in looking for dope, I’d sell them one of the chocolate brownies or cookies we kept there. I never said there was nothing in them, and all they saw was a sign that said ‘Special treats’ with a price. It was my little joke.”

  “Did many of them walk away thinking they were high?” asked Bud.

  “And acting it,” she giggled. “All they’d had was a glass of beer and a chocolate biscuit—but they were having fun, and I dare say they dined out on the tale when they got back to their homes. Best money I made was on those little extras.”

  As I looked at Hannah, I wondered if she might have been part of an international drug-smuggling ring. It seemed unlikely, but I told myself she hadn’t always been old, one-legged, and a bit too thick around the middle to make getting up out of a chair an easy task; the photographs proved she’d been lithe and vivacious, and her ownership of a bar and restaurant meant she’d have had an ideal outlet for distribution.

  “So you sold up when?” I asked, as lightly as possible.

  “1991. It was time. I’d kept it all ticking over after the accident, in 1986, but I eventually had to admit to meself I couldn’t do it anymore. You can only rely on good people for so long, then they want to move on. As it turned out, it was a good time to sell. The perfect time. Just before everyone went running about moaning and wailing that the end of the world was nigh. Of course, it all bounced back. But now? They say this year, 2013, has been the worst year ever for the economy in the Netherlands. Still they spend. It frightens me. Seen it all before. Banks? Robbers, all of ’em. Not as bad as 1637, of course, but not good.”

  Bud shot Hannah, and me, a puzzled glance, “1637?”

  “The great tulip market crash of 1637,” I said. Hannah smiled knowingly, and Bud’s eyes widened. “Could it be that your boning up on Dutch history didn’t catch that nugget of information?” I said, smiling. “In 1637 there was a huge slump in the price of tulips and tulip bulbs. The Dutch had become tremendously enamored of tulips after their introduction to the country in the mid-1500s by the Ottomans, and by the beginning of the 1600s—the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s being the Golden Age in Holland—tulip bulbs were in high demand among the status-conscious nouveau riche. I think I’m correct in saying the whole thing went ballistic in about 1634, when merchants trading in tulips began mortgaging and even selling their homes to be able to buy bulbs, then sell them on fast at hugely inflated prices.”

  “You mean like people who flip houses?” asked Bud, amazed.

  I leaned back as I answered. “Sort of, but without all the sweat or investment people put into houses they flip—they just sold them on. Prices reached dizzying heights, and people made fortunes on bulb sales. Then, almost overnight, it all went pop. Families were ruined, homes were lost, inheritances were wiped out. The first, and original, bubble to burst.”

  “Tulip bulbs?” said Bud. He was struggling with the concept. He shook his head, bemused.

  “It’ll all go pear-shaped here before you know it,” said Hannah bleakly. “If you’re going to sell this place you’d best be quick, or be prepared to wait for years. All these austerity measures are bound to hit home pretty soon. That’s when we’ll see what the Dutch are really made of. It’s another thing that colors their relationship with the Germans, them being the best-off folks in the whole of Europe. Many people hereabouts whisper they might have lost the war, but they’ve ended up winning the peace.”

  “Is that how you feel?” I wondered aloud.

  Hannah shook her head. “There’s problems enough to go around, many of them of people’s own making. You can’t keep borrowing with no way to pay it off and expect things to turn out all right. My old mother might not have taught me much about life, God rest her soul, but she taught me that at least. When I borrowed cash from Jonas it was against my better judgment. He insisted. I was pretty confident I could make the profits to pay it back fast. Only time in my life I ever borrowed money from anyone, and it all worked out all right. I never needed to do it again, thank the Good Lord.” She crossed herself, looking serious. She noticed my gaze and added, “Just me little ways—not a churchgoer anymore. So, do you want me to come up wit’ you now to pick out another little something from Jonas I won’t mind havin’ on me walls, or should we do it another time?” She had noticed Bud looking at his watch.

  “We’re supposed to meet someone for lunch,” said Bud apologetically. “We’ll be back again tomorrow. How about then? Will you be at home?”

  Hannah smiled a comfortable smile at Bud. “I don’t get out much these days. Same time tomorrow?”

  It was agreed. “We’ll have time for you to browse all the pieces he created and pick out something you really like,” said Bud brightly as we took our leave.

  Outside on the street, having collected the pieces for Greta van Burken, Bud began to hustle me along. “Come on, we can’t be late and I’m not sure exactly how long it’ll take us to walk there.”

  The picture I was carrying wasn’t terribly big, but the frame on it was heavy, so I was struggling a bit. My hyacinth linen outfit looked crumpled, and I was on the downside of a sugar high from the lemon tartlets. I sweated so much I had to keep stopping to shove my sunglasses back up my nose, and we hurried along at such a speed we didn’t have time to talk. All the time I was working on fitting Hannah into Bud’s suggested drug-ring setup. Sadly, she fit too well.

  The Café Americain: Interior

  I ADMIRE ART NOUVEAU, AND reckon art deco is just about perfect—it’s the symmetry of it I love—but one of my favorite period
s is the time when elements of both were used together by architects and interior designers. I adore it when each aesthetic rubs shoulders with the other. All of which meant the Café Americain was an absolute joy to behold. It had been way beyond my budget when I’d been in Amsterdam as a student, so I was happy to know I’d be able to lunch there.

  Dark wood floors, bentwood chairs, chandeliers that looked like collections of Japanese parasols, and stained glass to die for all nestled within a cozy setting of arched ceiling vaults. Upon our arrival I noted the long tables set up for newspaper reading. They were busy, and most of the other tables were full of people enjoying various types of refreshment. Bottles of wine and beer, pots of coffee, pastries, and platters of meats were all in evidence. We scanned the room for someone who could be Greta van Burken. She wasn’t hard to spot; she was the only elderly lady wearing a hat in the place. She was sitting close to a beautiful old grand piano, beside the window, at a table surrounded by four large wingback chairs. She looked imperious, which was fitting, as the portrait Jonas had created of her showed her as Rembrandt’s Juno. The woman’s demeanor upon our arrival at her table suggested she’d be delighted that he’d portrayed her as the queen of the Roman gods whose symbolic animal was a peacock, because her hat was held on with a giant hat pin that sported a peacock feather, of all things.

  “You are Bud and Cait?” she asked in a heavy Dutch accent. For the first time since we’d arrived in the Netherlands, I was concerned about possibly having to communicate with someone whose English wasn’t fluent, or at least proficient. I’d tried to put some time into learning the Dutch language in the week before we’d left Canada, but I’d been too busy at work to really get into it. I hadn’t even swotted up on it on the airplane, as I’d said I would. I hoped my few hours of study would get us through the interview.

  “Sit,” she said. “They will bring the menu. You have gifts for me from Jonas?”

  The arrival of the waiter, our swift perusal of the menu, and the ordering of risotto, blackened chicken salad, and a couple of beers held things up a for a few minutes, but then we got to the matter at hand: presenting Greta van Burken with her pictures.

  As we removed the coverings, I felt a bit like a purveyor of art, trying to convince a potential buyer to invest. With her slight frame sitting perfectly erect in the large chair, Greta stared at her portrait impassively. During the moments of silence that followed the unveiling, I took the chance to study her clothing, which was expensive, classic, and timeless. I also noted her features, which were expertly made up, refined, and surprisingly un-saggy for her age—which I judged to be around the mid-seventies. Her micro-expressions told me she liked what she saw but wasn’t about to admit it.

  Finally she spoke. “Not bad, but I was never that fat.”

  I thought it was an incredible piece, and I didn’t think the portrayal was of anything but a normal-sized woman. I decided to bite my tongue.

  She gave her attention to the piece Bud was presenting. It was a representation of Caravaggio’s Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist in the style of Botticelli. It was stunning.

  “Must I take this one?” she asked. She looked at it as though it were a pile of rotting herring, going so far as to wrinkle her nose in disgust.

  “I’m sure my uncle would not have wanted to force you to accept anything you didn’t want,” said Bud in his professional tone. I could tell he was annoyed. “I’ll take it back to his studio, if you would prefer.”

  “I would.”

  “Very well, then.” Bud threw the sheet over the piece again and tucked it beside his chair. I did the same with the portrait she was going to deign to accept, just to make sure it was safe until we all left. I worried about how on earth we were going to winkle information about Jonas out of her over lunch, and began to wonder how quickly Bud and I would be able to eat.

  The arrival of two icy beers came just in time to prevent us from having to make small talk immediately. Greta took tea. We all drank, and comments about the restaurant, the hotel, and the surrounding area ensued at a leisurely pace. As she spoke, I could tell her English was excellent, but she used it in a slow and pedantic manner. She struck me as being sufficiently well-educated to have learned it as a child, but rude enough, in the normal run of things, to rarely stoop to use it. Her entire persona screamed “haughty.”

  I was grateful that the service was efficient, and was thrilled that my risotto was just the right side of al dente for me—overcooked in most people’s books—and the Parmesan it contained was plentiful and sharp. I ate happily, and Bud seemed content to munch on his salad, because it meant less time to spend either in an awkward silence or just jabbering on about nothing in particular. As for me, well, I’m pretty hopeless at small talk. With less than half my meal left, I finally decided to take the reins and launched into a series of questions I knew I wanted to ask, no matter how things might go downhill once I began.

  “When exactly did you meet Jonas, Greta?”

  “It was 1955. We ran into each other at a gallery and got to know each other quite well, quite quickly. I joined the Group almost immediately, and we became Seven. It was my joining that allowed the name to come into being.” She looked proud at her “achievement.”

  I was puzzled. “I thought Bernard was the last to join the Group, so surely that honor goes to him?”

  Greta regarded me with an icy stare, but didn’t respond.

  I decided to try a different approach. “I understand you were the only female member of the Group of Seven. That must have been interesting.”

  “It was, and it wasn’t,” she replied.

  “In what way was it interesting?”

  “Oh, this and that,” she said enigmatically.

  “Were you and Jonas lovers? Is that why you were invited in?” I was playing a hunch. Bud glared at me.

  She smiled coldly. “Not for long.”

  “And what about the other members? Did you work your way through them too?” Bud crunched on his crisp lettuce so loudly I was worried he might shatter his teeth.

  “Not quite all.”

  “I understand you took your art seriously. Jonas did too. Did you work together?”

  “Jonas always worked alone.”

  Bud finally spoke up, having polished off his meal. “I’m trying to find out all I can about my late uncle, to be able to tell my mother—his sister—about his life here. She’s keen to know more about him, which I’m sure you’ll agree is understandable. What can you tell me about him?”

  “Not much a sister would want to know.”

  Greta was beginning to annoy me. Bud sensed my rising frustration and said, “But surely there’s something. Was he kind or generous? Happy, or not? My mother told me his birthmark affected him badly as a boy—was it something he ever got used to? Maybe as a woman you’d know.”

  Greta stopped pushing her almost-untouched salad around her plate. She looked at Bud and said, “He had your startling eyes, but otherwise he was utterly unattractive. He had no confidence with women. It was why I took him as a lover. He was eager to please and to learn.”

  I understood what Hannah had meant when she’d said Greta was able to insert a great deal of venom into a single put-down sentence. I was convinced she’d made her last, cruel statement just to embarrass Bud, and paint his uncle as pathetic. I wanted to throw her salad in her stupid, skinny lap. The fact that she was a senior didn’t matter to me at all—she was rude, stuck-up, and thoroughly unpleasant. I saw what Hannah had meant about the way she’d grown to hate Greta’s hats, too. I judged she wore them in place of the crown she felt she deserved. I inwardly applauded Jonas’s choice of two-artist painting for her; she was exactly the sort of woman who’d coolly demand that a man’s head be delivered to her on a platter.

  It dawned on me that Jonas de Smet had surrounded himself with unlikeable
people, and I wondered why he’d done it. I had to admit to myself that Bud might be onto something with his theory of necessity breeding strange bedfellows when it came to the drug trade. I decided to try to find the woman’s weak spot.

  “I dare say your family’s connections with Dutch governmental institutions meant you mixed in some elevated circles as a matter of course, Greta. Why did you fraternize with the Group of Seven—was it the art, or because you fancied a bit of rough?” I heard Bud clear his throat nervously.

  Greta van Burken tilted her head. “I don’t know that saying.”

  Her eyes told me otherwise. I managed a fairly inoffensive, “We’ll let it pass then,” before I stuffed the last of my risotto into my mouth to shut myself up. We weren’t going to get anywhere with Greta. I wanted to leave.

  “Have you seen the others?” she asked, as if referring to pond life.

  Bud gushed, “Everyone except Johannes and Bernard. We see them both this afternoon.”

  “Willem is still alive?” she sounded surprised. “Willem is very old now, I think.”

  “Around ninety. We visited him at his art supply store yesterday morning. His daughter told us he had suffered a stroke a little while ago, but that he is rallying,” replied Bud, more politely than I would have done.

  “He won’t last long. They don’t at that age,” said Greta harshly. “Six weeks my third husband managed after his stroke. He was much older than me,” she added, as if by way of an explanation. “Jonas fell to his death, I hear. Typical. He was always clumsy.”

  I saw Bud run his hand through his hair. I’d had enough; she wasn’t going to do this to him. I caught the attention of our waiter, made the international signal that we wanted our check by pretend-writing in the air, then mouthed “Snel,” suggesting he bring it quickly. I was already planning our getaway, but, before that—and knowing I’d better take my chance—I was contemplating parting shots.