A Deceptive Clarity

by Aaron Elkins

  The heavy doors swung inward, scraping along deep curving ruts in the cobblestones, and we drove into the vestibule, stopping before another tall gate, this one of steel. At our left was the old gatekeeper's lodge, its window cut like a ticket-taker's box into the wall. In it was a man in a dark blue uniform sitting before a rack of four television monitors.

  He nodded at Lorenzo and inserted a key into a slot beside him. The wooden door behind us creaked closed, the inner gate swung smoothly open, and the Fiat chugged slowly out of the vestibule, away from the grungy Via Talenti, and into the golden world of the Florentine Cinquecento.

  Chapter 10

  Not every sixteenth-century Florentine's world, of course, but the world as it might have looked to you if you'd been a Medici or a Pazzi.

  To start with, everything was clean. The flooring of the courtyard was made of square pink paving stones, the walls of rough-textured almond-colored blocks. Around the four sides, stuccoed, intricately figured columns supported the vaulted roof of a hollow-square loggia, the sides of which were decorated with enormous frescoes of sixteenth-century Austria and Hungary.

  In the center was an atrium, open to the sky, with a mellow, musical old fountain topped by spouting bronze dolphins of the sixteenth-century variety. Marble and bronze statues stood on pedestals, and urns were everywhere— Roman, Etruscan, Greek, Minoan—all of them overflowing with out-of-season flowers.

  All at the same time I admired it, I envied it, and I thought it a ridiculous, affected, and offensively ostentatious way to live in the 1980s. No, not ostentatious; I don't imagine many people got a chance to see it.

  "This is beautiful," I said to Lorenzo as we walked through the incredible loggia to a discreetly disguised elevator.

  "Mm?" he said. "Oh, yes."

  I motioned at the battle scences. "Vasari?"

  "Mostly. That one over the door is a Signorelli," he pointed out with little interest. "Shall we go up now?"

  We rode to the second floor in silence, and then went through a set of double doors into the reception room, a klittle salon with sixteenth-century Spanish leather wall paneling, seventeenth-century Florentine tapestries, and a colossal French Renaissance marble fireplace hacked from some French chateau, bearded, grim caryatids and all. Lorenzo glanced at his watch.

  "My father's getting his afternoon shave now. We can wait here if you like, or there's time to see the collection. I meant the collection per se, not these." He waved carelessly at the Tuscan and Venetian mannerist paintings on the leather walls.

  The Bolzano art collection "per se" took up the entire floor above, which we reached by walking up an oppressively grand staircase under a domed ceiling covered with an exuberant allegorical fresco—Courage, Prudence, and Destiny Carrying the Globe of the Florentine Republic Into Immortality; something like that. It seemed impossible that the grubby Via Talenti ran by below, but there it was, darkly visible through the grimy (only on the outside) hallway windows.

  Knowing my tastes, Lorenzo took me directly to the Dutch Baroque wing. Not surprisingly, he wanted to talk about the conflict between symbolistic and phenomenological world views in Flemish genre painting, but when he saw that I just wanted to look, and appreciate, and say nothing, he showed mercy and walked silently along beside me.

  We moved past rollicking low-life scenes by Jan Steen, a glowering landscape of van Ruisdael's, an antiseptic church interior by Saenredam—

  I stopped suddenly. "Wait!" I was staring at a painting on the wall at the far end of the room: a Vermeer—a girl, cool and reflective, standing at a clavichord....

  Lorenzo looked inquiringly at me.

  "That painting—" I said confusedly. "It's the one from the cache. I was just looking at it in Berlin. How ..." My mind raced while I nattered on. Could I have been wrong? Was the Vermeer I'd examined so closely in Berlin a copy after all? If this one was the original—

  Lorenzo tittered. "It's a copy, Christopher."

  "A copy?"

  "Didn't you know? My father had copies made of most of the pieces stolen by the Nazis."

  Yes, of course I knew that; I nearly got killed by one. "But this one—that is, the original of it—-it's been recovered now. Why—"

  "Ah, recovered, but not yet returned to its home. While it's in your exhibition, we keep the copy in its place. Why not?"

  When we got nearer, I saw that it was extraordinarily well done, but definitely not the real thing. And yes, I would have known it even if no one had told me.

  "Quite a piece of work," I said.

  "Ah-ha-ha. What do I detect in your tone, Christopher? You don't approve? You think it déclassé to hang copies alongside authentic masterpieces?"

  "No, not déclassé, but puzzling. If you're going to have genuine art—"

  "'Genuine'? 'Art'?" He crowed with pleasure at having snared me. "Define your terms! What do you mean by 'art'?"

  Oh boy, I thought, here we go again. He gestured at the Vermeer copy. "Will you admit this is an object of beauty?"

  "Yes, it's beautiful—"

  "But not art?"

  "No, not in the sense I mean; not with a capital A. It's an imitation. The person who did it was trying to reproduce something already done, not to make something new. It was a mechanical operation, not a creative one; craft, not art."

  I was speaking quickly, hoping to head him off, but a startling new idea had burst in on me, one that I should have thought of a long time ago.

  "Not art?" Lorenzo repeated archly. "Not art? Do you so completely accept the contextualist position, then, that—"

  But I had other fish to fry. "Lorenzo," I interrupted, "tell me something. A copy like this—or the copies in the show—they're extremely fine, good enough to fool almost anyone. Isn't there a danger of their accidentally getting out into the market sometime as originals?"

  Or into The Plundered Past itself as originals, accidentally or otherwise. With dozens of fine Bolzano copies around, a little mix-up—a small confusion of false with real—was far from impossible.

  Happily, Lorenzo was willing to be diverted. "No," he said, "impossible. We've taken precautions. I'll show you." He went to a wall telephone. "Giulio? Will you turn off the alarms in Room Nine, please?" he asked in Italian.

  He came back to the painting. "First, my father has kept the most careful records of the reproductions, both the old ones he's bought and the new ones he's commissioned. There are copies of the records, and photographs of the reproductions themselves in our vaults and in our attorney's hands. And on the pictures themselves—"

  The telephone rang and he picked it up. "Bene. We can move it now," he said to me. "Will you help me take it down and turn it around?"

  We removed the cumbersome painting carefully—its heavy gilt frame was authentically seventeenth-century Dutch, I was sure—and turned it to the wall. "See?" he said. "The provenance is there, right on the back."

  So it was. A neatly hand-lettered statement concisely explaining that this was the work of one Rodolfo Venturi, commissioned in 1948 by Claudio Bolzano for an unspecified price and executed that same year in imitation of Young Woman at the Clavichord by Jan Vermeer, taken from the Bolzano collection by the Nazis in 1944.

  "All the copies have such a statement, inscribed in indelible ink on the backs of the canvases or etched into the backs of the panels."

  "Indelible ink can be removed; etching can be smoothed."

  "But there's more. On the face of every reproduction is a tiny pattern, almost microscopic, of drilled holes. Even our old copies—and we have a false Raphael almost three hundred years old—have this. It's certain proof, you see, that a painting is not an original."

  "Holes can be filled in."

  He whinnied with laughter. "How distrustful you are! When did you become so cynical, Christopher? But no; they can't be filled in—not if they can't be found. And they're impossible to see with the naked eye; next to impossible with a lens, if one doesn't know precisely what to look for and where to loo
k for it. And if they were to be filled in, the foreign material would be easily identifiable. No, this can never be confused with an authentic Vermeer."

  We turned the painting around and rehung it.

  "Well," I said, studying it, "if there's a design punched into this one, I can't find it."

  Lorenzo's mild brow furrowed. "Er ... Christopher ... you understand that I can't show it to you. I would if it were up to me, but my father's adamant about keeping it confidential." He shuffled his long legs uncomfortably. "I probably shouldn't even have mentioned it. You're not offended? It's only to prevent the sort of possibihty you mention."

  I told him I wasn't offended but thought that as director of the show it might be a good thing for me to know.

  He continued to frown. "Why a good thing?"

  Why I hadn't told him before, I wasn't sure, except that, knowing as little as I did, it seemed sensible to play it as close to the vest as possible. But the paintings in the show were his, after all, his and his father's, and I had no reason to suspect either of them.

  I was blunt. "Peter van Cortlandt told me just before he died that he thought there was a forgery in the exhibition, but he didn't tell me which one. I've been trying to find it."

  "A ... a ..." Lorenzo had one of those prominent, pointy Adam's apples that seemed to have a life of their own, and now it ratcheted up and down his throat three times before he could speak. "That's impossible—you don't know what you're saying. You ..." His plastic-button eyes bulged even more. "Surely you don't mean to suggest that my father, that I, would knowingly ..." His voice petered out and then came back in an outraged squeak: "Christopher!"

  "No, Lorenzo," I said soothingly, "I wouldn't think that; neither did Peter. But isn't it possible that one of the copies might accidentally have—"

  "But no!" he cried with scandalized dignity. "We know art, Christopher; it's our life, as it is yours. It's inconceivable that I—let alone my father—could be ... be fooled in the way you suggest. Really ..."

  He was only partly right. As wackily erudite as he might be about art criticism, when it came to assessing individual works of art, I wouldn't have trusted him to tell the difference between a Rembrandt and a Rauschenberg. But his father was another matter; one of the world's most discerning collectors.

  "And," he continued, "we know our limitations well enough to call in scientific assistance when we're in doubt."

  "I know you do," I said.

  "Peter was ... was joking, perhaps?"

  "Could be," I said. Or it could be that the substitution of a fake painting for a real one had been made after the last time Claudio Bolzano had seen them. This more likely possibility I kept to myself, not seeing much point in suggesting that one of the family masterpieces had disappeared since it had been placed in the care of the United States Army. "I guess you're right."

  "No, you don't," Lorenzo said with surprising perception. Then, doubtfully: "Christoper, you're not going to raise this with my father, are you?"

  "Well, I wouldn't want to excite him. His health—"

  "Yes, certainly, that, of course. But, in addition, it would hardly be a way to win him over to your side."

  'To my side?"

  "I thought you were here to try to convince him to permit The Plundered Past to go on." He smiled. "Or did you come to discuss subjectivist art criticism with me?"

  I laughed. Strange to have to be brought down to earth by Lorenzo Bolzano.

  Chapter 11

  Bullet-headed, small, intense, Claudio Bolzano was everything his son was not. Where Lorenzo was professorial, Bolzano was down to earth; where Lorenzo was wandering and abstract, Bolzano was direct; where Lorenzo's intelligence was amiably eccentric, Bolzano's was incisive and focused.

  He was also irritable, restless, and cranky; a man very much used to power, but now forced into a convalescent's feeble routine. He received us with his arms folded, seated erectly in the corner of an immense sofa, not at all the decrepit invalid at death's door I'd been expecting. He was wearing a cashmere sport coat with the collar of his open-throated shirt flattened out over the lapels, so that he looked like a member of the Israeli Knesset about to take his turn pitching hay at a kibbutz.

  He was younger than I'd imagined, in his sixties, with a thick gray fringe of close-cropped hair at the back of his neck, and lively black Italian eyes. There were a few signs of illness—a shadowing around the eyes, a hint of pallor—but he seemed very much a man on the mend, energetic and impatient, and more than capable of snapping the gravely fawning Lorenzo over one knee.

  If the man was a surprise, the room was a shocker. The study of the famous collector of Old Masters was relentlessly modernistic, its walls hung with plainly mounted abstracts by Rauschenberg, Rothko, Bazaine, Nay, Twombly, and others that I didn't know and didn't want to know. The huge desk along one wall was a weird combination of copper and glass; almost everything else was white—the walls, the big couch and armchairs, the rectangular plastic tables, the floor, the rugs, the track lighting. And everything seemed to be made of right angles and straight lines, including the compact, squarish Bolzano himself.

  He waved us into two cuboid armchairs while Lorenzo was still introducing us. "We'll speak English," he announced. "I speak it fluentiy." He patted a quiet dog—also white—who sat on the floor at his side, and waited for me to say something.

  "I hope I'm not disturbing you, signor Bolzano. I've wanted to meet you for a long time."

  A negligent wave of the hand, and then a shrugged afterthought. "I've heard of you too."

  Another lengthy silence while Lorenzo, looking uncomfortable, grinned encouragingly from one of us to the other.

  "And I hope you're feeling well, signore," I said.

  "Not bad for someone my age." He indicated that one must accept life on its own terms, that one takes the good with the bad, that one doesn't know what the future holds, and that on the whole we were better off not knowing. All this accomplished with a small movement of one hand, a lift of a shoulder, and a slight downward turn of his mouth. (The Italians can do these things.) "Everyone gets old."

  'True," I said penetratingly.

  A bowed old man in gray, who never once raised his eyes from the carpet, came in with a bottle of Acqua Minerale Panna for Bolzano, and brandies, espressos, and dry biscuits for Lorenzo and me.

  When we'd each taken a ceremonial sip, Bolzano put his glass down heavily. "I was very sorry to hear about Peter van Cortlandt. He was a fine man. I thought extremely highly of him."

  "Thank you. He thought a great deal of you too. I had lunch with him the day he died, and I know he was looking forward to talking with you that night."

  Bolzano's brows knit. "He was coming to Florence?"

  "No, but he said he was going to call you from Frankfort."

  "He was? About what?"

  That, unfortunately, answered that. Peter had not followed up on his idea of telephoning Bolzano with some "pertinent, subtle" questions. So one more possible line of inquiry on the forgery was closed to me. I tried not to show my disappointment.

  "About what?" Bolzano pressed.

  "I don't know."

  While Bolzano looked queerly at me, Lorenzo said, "Father, signor Norgren is here on behalf of The Plundered Past—"

  "Signor Norgren should speak for himself," Bolzano said, looking steadily at me.

  "You're right, signore. I am here to speak on behalf of The Plundered Past. It's a magnificent exhibition and a great tribute to your taste and your generosity—"

  "And a magnificent tribute to the American army; don't forget that." For the first time he smiled. "But I don't begrudge them that. I appreciate very much what they've done for me. But, frankly, I worry about my paintings, signore; I don't want to lose them. What happened in Berlin is a disgrace."

  "Father, please. You shouldn't excite yourself," Lorenzo put in.

  Bolzano made a face. "I'm not excited. But I ask you: How could it happen? Were there no alarms, no protect
ion? Were the pictures simply left lying in the cellar?"

  "No," I said uncomfortably, "there were guards at the front and back doors—"

  "And both were overcome. You too, I understand."

  I nodded. "I'm afraid so."

  "Well, I'm sorry you got hurt," he said gruffly. "And thank you for saving my pictures." He cleared his throat and poured some more water into his glass; he was not a man used to thanking others.

  "I've had a careful look at the damaged Michelangelo copy," I said, "and I'm sure it's salvageable. We'll pay for having it restored, of course."

  He shook his head roughly. "I don't give a damn about the copies; that's not the point."

  "Father, please," Lorenzo murmured.

  "The point is," Bolzano said, "it's only luck that it wasn't a Rubens or a Tiziano—a real one, I mean. For that matter, it's only luck that they didn't get away with all of them. What kind of security do you call that?"

  "Father, please," Lorenzo said. When that earned him only an irritated look, he tried a different approach. "Please, Father."

  "Please, father; father, please," mimicked Bolzano wearily. "Signor Norgren, I ask you: Do I seem overexcited to you? In danger of imminent death?" He held out a steady, blunt-fingered hand. Not only did he fail to seem overexcited to me, but I had the impression that he was enjoying himself very much.

  "No, sir," I said, "but I want you to know that security isn't a problem any longer. We've installed the most up-to-date devices that exist."

  I should have known better.

  "Such as?" Bolzano asked.

  I gulped and tried to remember what Anne had said at the meeting. "Well, there are infrared and ultraviolet barriers at the doors and windows, and photoelectric cells and electronic sensors that are triggered by movement or body heat" I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and I hoped I was getting it right. "Oh, and pressure-sensitive alarms on the paintings that splatter indelible green ink on whoever sets them off." That I recall as a particularly memorable touch.