by Tom Rachman
There isn’t proof it was me. But why would a vandal break in, damage one picture, and of my mother? Then again, why would I do it? “This is an actual crime,” he says fearfully. From the rental car, he fetches his pipe, lights it, smoking hard. Could a restorer save this? Once they know, I’m at their mercy. When he was a museum guard, Pinch often ate lunch in the restoration department, permitted to observe—but from a distance. He hasn’t a clue where to start.
A jar of Dad’s paintbrushes stands on a table. Pinch leaves his pipe smoldering by the door, and he approaches a ruined patch of the painting. He has not painted since age sixteen. He takes a brush, dabs in the air—dry bristles poking nothing, testing the handle weight in his palm. This is a violation. And Dad would notice. But what if I do this, and hide it, and he doesn’t scrutinize this particular painting for a while? I never come back, I ditch the keys, and nobody ever knows that I was here.
But no—Pinch cannot touch even a dry brush to the damaged painting. He drags a second easel beside the first, cuts and hammers together a blank canvas of the same dimensions. This way, he can practice harmlessly, perhaps even deconstruct the strokes of Bear’s composition and test pigment mixtures on a blank ground, grasping how everything fit into the damaged area. Only then, perhaps, possibly, maybe, he could risk a touch-up.
By day three, Pinch is still engrossed in his practice canvas. He has sketched the entire painting of Natalie’s hands. He has tested pigment mixtures. But something strange has happened. As Pinch toils away, time misbehaves, seeming not to move, then rushing forward, chunks strangely deleted. To know the time of day, he must step outside and look at the sky. Is this Thursday yet? Saturday already?
He visits the weekend market, driving too fast around hairpin turns, his gaze still back at the art studio, stirred only when speaking to the Catalan baker, addressing the man in an improvised blend of French and Spanish. At dinner in the cottage, Pinch recollects this exchange, easily his most vital in weeks. He folds himself a sandwich of that man’s bread and another’s pâté de campagne, alive to taste and sight (two flies circling above the kitchen table), reflecting on the potency of experience known only to oneself, which nobody else can ever witness, and heightened for it.
“All those cheeses,” he mutters while chewing, walking in memory past market stalls, among merchants and shoppers, including a woman around forty who led two children by their hands. “Est-ce que vous avez essayé leur cassoulet? Est-ce que vous le recommenderiez? Et un vin qui irait bien avec?” he asks her now (at the time, he said nothing). “Je m’appelle Charles. Enchanté de faire votre connaissance. Et les petits, comment s’appellent-ils?”
On his last day at the property, Pinch dares to patch the damaged painting. He cannot know if his restoration is glaringly flawed—he left this so late and these are oils, so the paint won’t dry for weeks; his new brushstrokes glisten. But he must leave, so drives at breakneck speed to Perpignan, buys replacement art supplies, then puts everything as it was, swinging open the studio door to test the sight upon entry. The place is suitably dingy, seemingly untouched, except for the fresh paint smell. He must count on Bear not visiting anytime soon.
Pinch lugs his practice painting outside and rests it by the oil barrel where he’ll burn it. He touches the swaying flame of his Zippo to the back of his canvas. The thinnest smoke line rises—then he spits on his finger, pats out the smoldering dot. There isn’t time to ensure that it burns completely to ash. Guiltily, he thinks of Birdie, for whom he made this trip, and for whom he has obtained nothing. A thought comes to him.
On the drive back, he is stopped at British customs. The officer points at the large painting lying flat in the back of his car. “What’s that about, son?”
Pinch brushes aside an errant strand of comb-over, his hair specked with paint. “It’s just a picture I did.”
“What of?”
“Someone’s hands, my mother’s.”
“Worth something?”
“No, no. Just a hobby.”
“But someday,” the officer says, winking, “we’ll be famous, you and me, hey?” He waves Pinch through.
At the first stretch of open road, he steps on the pedal and hammers the steering wheel in excitement, inadvertently beeping the horn at a station wagon ahead. He drives up beside it, waving in apology; a sullen family glares back. Pinch returns to admiring the road, blinking at a low sun, taking jittery peeks in his rearview, seeing a fragment of his own face, aglow—and a painting in the background.
47
“Wait for Ms. Petros.”
Four minutes pass.
How quintessentially New Yorkish of Eva to call, then place him on hold. But Pinch must accept it. He’s been trying to reach her for days.
“So thrilled to hear your voice!” she says finally, as if they’d ever spoken before. Eva—estimating that the aging Bear nears his expiration date—has been sidling up to his kids, seeking to sell any Bavinsky art they possess. Annoyingly, his multitude of brats owns squat. As for Pinch, he always ignored her calls before. Until, suddenly, he can’t stop ringing. Which is why she made him wait. “Please, dear,” she tells him, “talk to me.”
When Pinch does so, it’s from a careful script. “I’ll be honest,” he begins (and this part is genuine), “my father would be furious if I sold this painting. He’d never forgive me. So I’m relying on your discretion. If we move ahead, this work can go only to a collector you trust as totally confidential, who’ll hang it privately, never loan it out, or publicize the purchase. Is that possible? I mean, is that something you can guarantee?”
“Nebraska.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ever heard of Mallard Dwyer?”
“Is that a kind of duck?”
“You! Are! Hilarious!” she says, not laughing. “Mallard Dwyer is a muy rico businessman from Omaha, or some such pointless berg. But here’s the what: This guy—loaded as a result of his family’s Big Ag holdings—turns up on my doorstep last month for guidance on buying. The reason for his sudden interest is a certain Judy-Lynn Mendez, whom you’ll likely recall from The Six Million Dollar Man, where this highly talented young actress spoke two unforgettable lines in the role of switchboard operator. Afterward she tragically quit the business for holy matrimony to aforementioned old man Mallard. She brings the good looks, he brings the good life, including pretty pictures for their Omaha mansion.”
Pinch—throughout the course of this discussion and several to follow—is meticulous never to state that this painting is actually by Bear. That much is assumed, but Pinch won’t be caught on record saying so. When it comes to documenting the provenance, he acts haughty and impatient, playing the artist’s weirdo son, declaring that he’s had enough of all this absurd red tape. “Look, take it or leave it. I’m sorry.”
Eva objects so strenuously that she hikes her commission to 50 percent. “Take it or leave it,” she says.
He takes it, she takes it, and Mallard does too, informed that this is completely normal. After all, he’s got the imprimatur of one of the galleries in SoHo. That’s all you need, surely.
“How’d you do this, Charlie?” Birdie says on the phone, flabbergasted to find her bank balance rising to almost thirty thousand dollars after a mysterious transfer from a London bank account in her little brother’s name. “What did you do?”
“Maybe squiggles on a napkin are worth something.”
“Wait, this is from Dad? Why’d he do this? Shit, I don’t even have his phone number to thank him.”
“This isn’t for talking about with Dad. Not with your children either. Not with Riley.”
“Why would I tell him?” She adds in a whisper, “He nearly broke my nose last week.”
“You serious, Bird? You need to go to the police.”
“He’s my sons’ daddy. We just need to leave.”
“And you will
now. Right?”
“With this money, we’re outta here. But wait, this is from you, Charlie? Or from Dad?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters.”
The transfer was the entirety of Pinch’s cut of a $75,000 private sale, minus Eva’s huge commission and expenses, plus bank fees and taxes. He explains none of this, replying only, “It’s from Dad,” wanting her to love the man again—or rather, knowing that she can’t stop doing so, and that maybe this renders it less painful. “But you’re not discussing it with anyone. Ever. Or I take it back. Okay?”
“However you’re doing this, you saved me.” She chokes up. “But Charlie, you’re not exactly rolling in it. You don’t need some of this yourself?”
“Hey, if I had cash like that, I’d only end up squandering it on my big sister.”
She smiles, sniffs. “Love you, Charlie.”
Afterward he sits on his bed, fizzing from gratification, excitement, fear. Could I get arrested for this? Fortunately, Nebraska isn’t bristling with art appraisers who’d spot a questionable Bavinsky. Also, Mallard didn’t buy this to flip it—he’s establishing a collection, not dismantling one. The painting won’t reappear on the secondary market for years. What’s more, it was convincing enough to fool Eva and her staff. And none of them knows the original, so Pinch’s copy didn’t have to be perfect.
But what if, when Dad next visits the studio, he notices the patched-over damage to the original? He still won’t know it was me. And even if he figures it out, maybe I’d welcome that. I could point a finger in his face and say, “I did that, Dad. What’s more, someone bought it for seventy-five grand. Yes, that’s the record for a Bavinsky. And I hold it!”
He yelps, drums on his knees. A painting by me hangs in Omaha, Nebraska! He shakes his head. To calm down, Pinch takes down an old Latin textbook and runs through verb tables, intending to dampen his thoughts by translating them into another language. But he keeps looking up from the page, preferring to hear his own mind for a change, petrified and electrified at once: I even helped someone.
In his closet, he finds the old orange jumper of Julie’s, which he has adopted and wore on his recent venture to France. He presses his face to the wool—it’s not her anymore, but the smell of charred firewood, paint, turpentine. And he is determined in a way unknown for years.
1985
48
Pinch walks around London unnoticed as ever. But for the first time, it feels like a choice, not evidence of failure. Nobody knows what I am in secret, what I’ve done. In Hyde Park, he looks benevolently at groups picnicking on hairy wool blankets, splashing wine and conversation. Previously he hated the showy joy of strangers. Now he’d like to fit among such people. And perhaps will. He has a plan, and is thrumming to start.
On his first day of the new job, Pinch steps past a knot of cigarette-puffing students outside the Utz language school, remembering the steps to lecture halls in Toronto. And it occurs to Pinch, perhaps for the first time, that he isn’t a young man anymore.
This branch of the Utz chain is in Bloomsbury, a location calculated to harvest British Museum visitors after they’ve goggled at the plundered treasures of an empire shrunken territorially, expanding linguistically. The bulk of trade is teaching English to foreigners, but Utz also offers German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Italian—this final option employing Pinch, who will conduct classes by evening, private tutorials each afternoon.
Back at Evenlode, he taught an introductory Italian course, working off a rigid college syllabus. Yet Utz demands that its teachers not simply instruct but entertain. Consider yourself a cruise ship performer, one administrator told him. Some classrooms resound with sing-alongs, but Pinch’s innovation is more sedate: an Italian-speaking-only policy in his classes intended to help pupils adjust to the sounds but that terrifies timid beginners, who sit there praying that he’ll call on anyone else.
At first Pinch’s classes flounder, students scowling, faith shifting to hostility. In some cases, he feigns a coughing fit and excuses himself to the staff toilets, where he hides in a stall, regaining composure. A single boneheaded student can undermine an entire two-hour session, as when Pinch asks Lower Intermediate to complete the sentence “Non ho mai . . .” (I have never . . .), and someone answers, “Non ho mai toccato una scimmia” (I have never touched a monkey), causing a pothead at the back to ramble about the monkey that resided at his parents’ commune. “I loved that monkey. His name was Ringo.”
“Solo italiano, ragazzi!” Pinch reminds them. “Allora, Karen, sei tu la prossima. Per favore, completa la frase: ‘Non ho mai . . .’”
“What sort of monkey?” another student says. “My favorite is chimps.”
“Chimps aren’t monkeys. They’re apes,” a third student notes.
“Italiano!” Pinch interjects. “Solo italiano, ragazzi!”
Certain sessions do work, and Pinch grows addicted to that: It’s like placing a child on a wobbly bike, pushing away anxiously—and she’s off! On occasion, everything proceeds so well that class ends too soon. They’d all happily continue, were it not for the Mandarin teacher, Jing, who takes the room next, addressing him in one whip-crack syllable, “Chars!,” as if to rebuke him for the travesty of his preposterous name, for the irrationality of English spelling.
A perk at Utz is that teachers may enroll in other courses for free. Pinch signs up for Advanced French, Advanced Spanish, and Intermediate German, sitting in each class with the textbook on his lap, stopping himself from answering the teachers’ every question. When Jing next evicts Pinch from his classroom, it stirs a thought, and he becomes the newest pupil in Introductory Mandarin.
Pinch considers with fresh sympathy his fellow commuters on the Tube, reading of TV programs or talking of wallpapering the kids’ room (but can we afford it?), of summer holidays (but can we afford it?), of schools (but can we afford it?). Arriving at work, he gabs with the janitors, who teach him phrases in Romanian. Then he marks assignments, pausing for lunch with fellow teachers or sneaking out for a stroll around the British Museum.
Dawdling before the Rosetta Stone, he contemplates a few attractive women he tutors, fantasizing about heedless affairs. At a novelty shop near Utz, he buys silly colored socks to wear in class—a conversation-starter perhaps, a wink to someone perceptive that he is not just a teacher here but something besides. On weekends, he prepares complex three-course meals, date-rehearsals at which he drinks a bit too much and eats a lot too much, scooping out a fourth helping of tortiglioni alla barbara and refilling his glass of rioja. “Don’t mind if I do,” he says aloud.
After a few months at Utz, he meets Julie for lunch, his satchel heaving with Chinese and German dictionaries. They must sign papers to finalize the divorce, and both intend to do so with civility. They’ve been in touch occasionally since he moved out, working through the shared paperwork. But this should be their last meeting. He imagined kissing her today; he even researched hotels around here.
Outside the restaurant, she greets him amicably, distantly, in a brown suit jacket with fierce shoulder pads, pleated trousers, silver hoop earrings. She graduates with her sociology degree soon, and he’d like to compliment her—to say, “You look so professional, Julie.” But he doesn’t want to intrude; often he feels she is stiff-arming him. Perhaps that’s fair. He was overbearing, always there with advice, knowledge, “help.”
They take a table at the PizzaExpress, which turns out to be an inappropriately peppy setting, a waiter swinging by to check in repeatedly, which forces them to fall quiet. Pinch longs to break her reserve, to reminisce about happily starving together when too poor to turn on the radiators, wearing socks and sweaters in bed. While she pages through documents, a strange thought passes through him, a counterfactual idea, that they did have a child together, a daughter, and she’s alive somewhere—that Pinch and Julie are still together in that place,
not coupled awkwardly at this restaurant but seated at a dinner table in their kitchen in Belsize Park, the three of them.
“Quite straightforward, not too complicated,” he remarks about the typed page between them.
“Lucky,” she says, “that we never did have kids.”
“No, yes,” he says, signing fast. “Absolutely. Yes.”
49
As soon as the school holidays arrive he skips town, driving through France, windows down, air fluttering in, temperature rising as he travels farther south, cooling anew as he ascends into the Pyrenees. This time he informed Bear of the trip, priming him with concerns about burglars and squatters targeting seasonal properties. “I wouldn’t mind popping over to the cottage, making sure all’s well. You remember when I visited with Barrows? I stupidly walked away with an extra key! Just today, I happened across it in an old pair of corduroys. I could just let myself in, if you like.”
“A key to my studio?”
“No, no—we were only in the cottage, remember? It’s just a single key. But I can certainly try rattling the studio door, if you want. Make sure it’s secure.”
“Do that. Yes, fine—go, Charlie boy. Enjoy yourself.”
Fortunately, why Pinch might volunteer to spend his vacation at a remote cottage off-season is a question that never troubles Bear.
Upon arrival he goes directly to the studio, checking the damaged painting. Now that the canvas has dried, Pinch’s paint strokes blend in, the colors matching, except under closest view. And the retouched patch, considered without panic, isn’t that large. He sweeps up floor dust, rains it over the surface, abetting the impression of age, and rests the painting where it originally stood, restoring it to the historical record among the collected works of Bear Bavinsky.
Relieved, he settles in to the cottage, then drives off for food, and onward to Perpignan for art supplies. When he opens the studio again, he clutches a pile of enlarged street photos—those he snapped years before in Philadelphia. On blank canvases he sketches out the fuzzy characters in the background of shots—strangers who become his sitters during these days alone on the mountainside. Pinch begins each picture clenched with tension, any dab containing the presentiment of failure—and the soaring possibility of its opposite.