by Martin Suter
What had Rolf been painting at Baier’s house?
He placed a slice of roast beef on a piece of toast, now cold again, and spread remoulade on top, lost in thought.
What had Rolf Strasser been painting every day at Baier’s?
Weynfeldt took a bite out of the roast beef toast and put it back on the plate, stood up and walked, chewing, to the easel with the Vallotton.
The light from the spot fell at an angle onto the painting, and picked up its matte sheen. Like almost all temperas by Vallotton it was not varnished. Many of these tempera works had a note on the reverse in Vallotton’s own hand saying, “never to be varnished.”
The matte sheen coating the image was the patina of time. Dust, nicotine, variations in temperature and conscientious maids’ dusters had left a thin film across the surface of the painting, like a matte wax finish.
In one of the four drawers of the black sideboard by Paul Artaria, a one-off from 1930 which Weynfeldt used to store equipment, was a large magnifying glass. He fetched it out and inspected the surface of the painting.
Hardly a brushstroke could be seen. When he’d used this technique Vallotton had worked with the largest brushes and the most homogenous color fields possible.
Adrian put his “Weynfeldt beak” to the painting. It smelled familiar and, almost imperceptibly, of something old and organic. The board, and whatever the painter had used as thickener—bone glue? Egg yolk?
The painting was signed “F. Vallotton. 1900” on the top right.
Weynfeldt knew that signature well, along with the painter’s little obsession with adding a period after his surname.
In the red of the armchair protruding into the picture from the right were some mildew stains, big enough to be visible in a reproduction. Mildew stains were not conclusive proof that a picture was genuine; forgers often created them, with freeze-dried coffee powder, with a solution of rust, or simply with some thinned down raw umbra.
He went to the bookshelves, took down the second volume of Vallotton’s catalogue raisonnée, and looked under 1900 till he found the picture. Marina Ducrey had allowed over half a page simply for the reproduction.
The mildew stains were there. The same number, in the same places. He ran the large magnifying glass over the reproduction. Everything was the same, including the signature.
Weynfeldt shut the book, picked up his toast and returned to the painting. His mouth full, chewing, he searched all over it; he didn’t know what for. He shoved the last mouthful in and continued searching.
The period!
In three paces Weynfeldt was back at the catalogue raisonnée on his desk. He licked the traces of remoulade from his fingers—something he never did!—and rubbed them dry on the inside of his trouser pockets, then flipped through the book till the page with the painting was open in front of him again.
He took the magnifying glass, switched its little lamp on and enlarged the signature. “F. Vallotton 1900.” Without a period after the surname.
Once you know a picture is forged it’s easy to find proof. Weynfeldt took it out of the frame and found ten pieces of evidence immediately. The paint, for instance, was too fresh and elastic; he was able to test that on a thick patch at the edge, hidden by the frame.
The board had been primed, but Vallotton always worked with unprimed card.
The matte sheen on the surface was not the patina of time, it had been created using wax varnish. A test with a cigarette lighter in a discreet corner proved this.
In less than an hour Adrian Weynfeldt knew for certain what Rolf Strasser had been painting every day at Klaus Baier’s house.
15
THIS WOULD BE LORENA’S FIRST BOOTH-BABE JOB, BUT she couldn’t be choosy; February was not a busy month for trade fairs.
The agency that usually got her hostess and promotional jobs had asked if she wanted to work at the motor-bike fair and she had said yes. She thought she would be offering provincial bike dealers lukewarm Prosecco, wearing a two-piece costume with a matching pillbox on her head. Then it came out that she was expected to present the exhibits: writhe around on motorbikes, in other words.
Well, she thought, even the booth-babe thing can be done with style. Even in the booth-babe world there were hierarchies and she would soon find out how they worked.
It was much like the world of modeling, where the top models got to present the top outfits. And the top motorbike at this year’s fair was the Ducelli 7312. Everyone wanted to writhe around on the Ducelli.
The changing room was normally the exhibition center storeroom, by the toilets. Waiting around, among boxes of Kleenex, makeup cases and coffee cups full of soggy cigarette butts, the women teased each other about the Ducelli, like girls at dance school discussing the most handsome boy in the class.
From time to time men came in, without knocking, and looked at the girls. Most of these men were stocky, with an exhibitor’s pass dangling on a broad, colored ribbon over their belly; cocky yet shy, reminding Lorena of nightclub guests.
The girls peered at the brand name on the men’s passes and, depending on what it said, they were either friendly, or very friendly.
Lorena soon concluded she wasn’t going to be the one presenting the Ducelli, so she either ignored the exhibitors or looked disparagingly at them. There were not enough chairs, and she stayed seated on her plastic stool, wrapped tight in her coat as the heating wasn’t working properly in the windowless, smoky room.
So she didn’t realize what was going on when one of the men, younger, more slender, better dressed and without a colored ribbon, said something to his stocky colleague and pointed to her.
It was only when the other girls’ heads all turned toward her that she got it: she had just become the Ducelli girl.
A few minutes later she was sitting at a makeup table, in tight black-leather trousers; knee-length, high-heeled, pointed boots; a tight black shirt with the Ducelli logo and an unzipped biker jacket the same shade of red as the 7312, also with a logo, trying to stop the older woman who had dressed her from applying so much makeup she would be unrecognizable.
Her social standing among the other booth babes had changed in a flash. She was treated with sudden respect, and received the occasional smile, albeit affected. One of them brought her a coffee, another offered her a cigarette and another tried to get on the right side of her with a few friendly words. Lorena had to admit she was enjoying it. This is what it’s come to, she thought, you’re gratified to be chosen as the Ducelli girl.
It was loud in the exhibition hall. Music from different stands clashed with sudden roars from revving motor-bikes and a dull drone from an adjacent hall where the Streetbike Freestyle Cup participants were training. The Ducelli stood on a pedestal, its outline discernable beneath a red cloth. It was surrounded by visitors, mostly dressed in casual clothes, sportswear with logos, motorbike gear, all-weather jackets and jumpsuits. Almost all of them had cameras around their necks, or held minicameras and cell phones above their heads. A man in a business suit with an Italian accent was giving an enthusiastic speech full of technical details.
Lorena stood in the background and waited for the agreed signal. She was genuinely nervous. She had let her new friend, the Moto Guzzi 8V girl, persuade her to accept a shot of vodka in her mineral water, which wasn’t difficult.
“Eccola!” the man in the suit said. A flourish of rock-guitar riffs burst from the loudspeakers and Lorena made her way to the pedestal. She was good at the cat-walk thing, even in pointed, high-heeled boots, even a size too small.
She probably took slightly too long to reach the edge of the pedestal where the man was waiting for her—a man not accustomed to waiting—and a little concluding flourish wouldn’t have gone amiss, but her performance was good. The man helped her up, placed a corner of the red cloth in her hand, took the opposite corner and… eccola!
Shiny and red like a well-sucked raspberry candy, the bike stood in the storm of camera flashes. Lorena stood next to it
, stroked it, nestled against it, posed on it, looking now at one camera, now at another, responded to the photographers’ shouts and really got into her stride.
One of the photographers was standing half on the pedestal and gave her a hand signal she didn’t understand. Only when another next to her made the same one, and another behind him too, did she understand: they wanted her to move aside.
She looked toward the presenter, inquiring, and he nodded. She stepped a few paces away. Now the flash storm reached its crescendo.
Lorena stood next to the pedestal, wanting to sink into a hole in the ground. But then a chubby young man nudged her and nodded at her encouragingly. He had three cameras around his neck and two camera bags over his shoulder.
“Press. If you have time later, I’d love to take some more shots once the amateurs are out the way.” He gave her his card, with a picture of a girl on a motorbike. “Felix Scheiblin, photographer,” it said. And lower down, the name of the publication he worked for: Bikes & Babes.
When the fair closed for the day, the Ducelli team invited them for cocktails. Lorena and Miss Moto Guzzi 8V rode in a taxi to the Fairhill, a nearby trade fair hotel, with Luca, the man who had made her Ducelli girl, and Franco, his stocky colleague.
Two other Ducelli colleagues were already in the bar, also accompanied by booth babes: Miss Kawasaki ER 6F and Miss BMW.
The bar was full of exhibitors and buyers, networking and poring over leaflets, catalogues and order forms, the hand holding their glasses stretched a safe distance from their paperwork.
Luca ordered Lorena a glass of champagne. She changed the order to a Bloody Mary, the best cocktail when you haven’t eaten properly all day. She could see that Luca didn’t like it when his decisions were overturned.
It soon became clear that this was not an official Ducelli business event and that dinner together was not part of the plan. One of the team soon disappeared, accompanied by Miss BMW, and by the time the barman brought Lorena’s second Bloody Mary, Moto Guzzi 8V and Kawasaki ER 6F had also vanished along with their companions.
Luca left briefly, returned and put his room key on the little table in front of them, his hand on Lorena’s thigh—high up, at the hem of her short skirt.
Lorena’s Italian was limited, and Luca didn’t speak a word of German. The few words they spoke were in English. Luca pushed his right hand under her hem, with his left he pointed to the Bloody Mary, almost full, and said, “Hurry up!”
Lorena took the glass and poured it all over his suit. His white shirt front went deep red. She stood up and looked down at him. “Fast enough?” He sat immobile in his chair, like a victim of gang warfare.
Only when she turned to go did he rouse himself. As she left he punched her, hitting her kidneys hard. The blow took her breath away, and tears rose to her eyes, but she walked out of the bar with her head held high.
“Puttana!” he shouted after her. “Puttana di merda!”
Lorena walked down the narrow sidewalk by the four-lane highway. She held her left hand to the spot where she felt the pain, in her kidneys, and continued marching straight ahead. She took no notice of the cars, some reducing their speed, some sounding their horns. She threw up twice on the side of the road. The first time she was startled by the color of her vomit, till she remembered she had been drinking Bloody Marys.
She was cold. She had had a coat with her—not a bad one, black gabardine, Donna Karan, fall 2005—but had left it hanging on the coat stand in the bar. It would have ruined her exit if she’d retrieved it.
She was somewhere in the outskirts, but didn’t know exactly where. A long way out for sure. Too far to walk home. Certainly not in the state she was in.
Here goes the Ducelli girl, she thought, and gave a sob. She wasn’t prudish. She had gone to bed with people in similar situations in the past. It was just that asshole’s presumption which made her mad, thinking he could take whatever he wanted. Not like that, he couldn’t. Not after a day like today.
Another car slowed down, put its blinker on and stopped a little way in front. Lorena kept her eyes on the sidewalk ahead. As she passed the car, a voice asked, “Taxi?”
She stopped still and nodded. The driver reached into the back and opened the door. Lorena slumped inside and pulled the door shut.
The driver was older, with tired, friendly eyes. He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Everything okay?” he asked, in a Slavic accent. When he saw that his passenger wasn’t capable of uttering a word, he said. “I’ll just drive towards the center, okay?”
Lorena nodded. She relaxed. It was warm in the taxi, and smelled the way all taxis did, of the Little Tree air freshener hanging from the mirror.
She took her wallet from her handbag and her suspicion was confirmed: she had less money on her than the sum already displayed by the meter. She had been booked for all four days of the fair, and was to be paid on the final one.
That meant she couldn’t go home. She had to go to someone who would pay for the taxi and ideally help her out with some cash too. Right now that meant one of only two people: Pedroni or Weynfeldt.
She gave the driver Weynfeldt’s address. She couldn’t cope with a man tonight who wanted something from her.
She took a small mirror out of her handbag and sorted her face out as best she could.
“Are you sure this is the right address?” came the driver’s voice. “This is a bank.”
Lorena hadn’t noticed they had already arrived. “Yes, this is it. Please wait a moment and I’ll ring.” She got out of the car and pressed the bell. There was no sound from the intercom.
She rang again. Still no reaction.
Lorena returned to the taxi and called the private number on Weynfeldt’s card, holding it under the passenger light. The driver watched her with a look of resignation.
Weynfeldt’s answering machine came on. Just as Lorena was about to leave a message, the heavy wooden door opened. Two men came out. One of them was Adrian Weynfeldt. The other an old man with a cane.
16
AFTER HIS DISCOVERY ADRIAN SAT FOR A LONG WHILE at his desk, ate Frau Hauser’s cold supper mechanically and finished the bottle of wine.
The monstrousness of the whole thing had paralyzed him. He wasn’t sure who he was more disgusted by: Baier, a very old friend of the family, who had taken advantage of his trust so shamelessly, fully aware that he would ruin Weynfeldt’s good name and his reputation as an expert, or Strasser, someone he thought was a good personal friend, who had let himself be exploited and drawn into this sleazy fraud.
Weynfeldt had picked up the telephone, but couldn’t decide who to call first and confront: the forger or the fraudster.
It was nearly eleven thirty before he decided—on the forger. If he was honest, it was only because the fraudster belonged to the generation you didn’t disturb with a phone call after ten p.m.
Strasser didn’t answer the phone, neither his landline nor his cell.
He overcame his scruples and called Baier, imagining the telephone ringing through the house, Baier clambering out of bed in pain, putting a light on, looking for his cane. Or did he have a telephone next to his bed?
After the sixth ring, he heard Baier’s daytime voice explaining he was unavailable at the moment and inviting him to leave a message after the tone.
Weynfeldt did not leave a message. He hated talking to machines. It made him nervous; he could hear himself speak and got in a muddle. He would call Baier first thing in the morning. In the morning it was the other way round: Strasser belonged to the generation you did not disturb before ten a.m.
He went to bed with a lemon verbena tea, and had almost fallen asleep when a sudden realization brought him wide awake again: you have just been deceived in the most underhand way by two people you thought were friends and you’re wondering what time of day to call without disturbing them? Why? Irreparable damage due to your upbringing.
He got up, slipped into his leather slippers, pulled on his dark-
blue cashmere housecoat, went into the bathroom, combed his hair, straightened the collar of his pajamas where it showed beneath the housecoat and scrutinized himself in the mirror.
The last Weynfeldt.
Adrian wandered down the long passageway, past his museum-like rooms to a door at the end of the corridor. He lifted the painting next to the door frame away from the wall—a landscape by Gustave Buchet—and took the key hanging on a nail behind it, to open the door.
It was the room in which his mother had spent her last years. Weynfeldt had excluded it from the gut renovation, the one point on which he’d insisted Casutt couldn’t have his way. Everything had been left just as it was at her death, apart from the hospital bed; he had exchanged that for her walnut Biedermeier bed.
The room was furnished with a Napoléon III sofa, two armchairs and a dressing table from the same era, a bureau and a chest of drawers. Between the two windows, each flanked by heavy curtains, stood a vitrine holding her collection of Venetian glass paperweights. Adrian’s only other intervention had been to place the portrait of his mother which had hung in the sitting room for years above the sofa here. It showed her in all her splendor, as Weynfeldt’s father used to say, sitting on this very sofa. She had her arms folded, and her watchful eyes on Adrian, wherever he was in the room. Outside of the room too.
The painting was by Varlin. It was done in nervous yet precise strokes, which seemed to begin by chance at the edge of the image, but came together at the center to form an unmistakable, unsparing likeness of Luise Weynfeldt.
Adrian sat on the side of the bed, as he had done so often in her later years. The room smelled slightly of floor polish, and of the lavender bags Frau Hauser hung and hid all over the house to improve the air quality and combat imaginary moths.
He gazed at the picture for a long time, feeling both affection and recrimination. Then he stood up, pointed at himself and sighed: “Irreparable damage.”
He went back to bed, dosed off, but was woken from a light sleep by another thought: What if he had already accepted the Vallotton officially? If he’d taken it to the storerooms and shown it to Véronique? To his boss? To the press? If he had told the other branches, in London, Paris and New York they should contact their Vallotton collectors? The forgery would have been exposed. And even if he had managed to make it clear he had acted in good faith, the dirt would have stuck to him.