by Tom Rachman
He will confess. I cannot let this go too far. If he were to allow his fakes to get out, they’d be detected. And if nobody noticed? What would he gain? Sure, he’d get to keep the originals. And that means much to him. But he could never show them—they’d be prisoners of the attic until Pinch was someday found out. No, no—it’d be insane. Yet he is bewitched by the momentum of this. He lowers his head toward the saucepan, eyes closed. You could be charged with a crime, if this got out of hand. You’d lose everything.
Lose what exactly?
On Connor’s last day, the man stalks about the cottage, studying the paintings for the last time. He leans in for a hug, which Pinch awkwardly consents to. The journalist bids farewell, squashes himself into the Hyundai, and remains silent until he’s driving down the mountain—at which point he shouts out the window: “Got me the start of a fuckin’ book, baby!”
67
When the shippers arrive outside Jing’s house, their boss marches in and measures the painting, calling in two assistants, who wordlessly pack the artwork and lug it out to their truck. They claim there’s no seat for Pinch, so he follows in a black cab, pressing his face to the partition window to keep the delivery truck in sight. “Too late to get out of this?”
“What’s that, mate?” the cabbie asks.
“No, nothing, nothing—the traffic.”
The movers pull up on Euston Road, bundle out the painting in its protective casing, haul it into the lobby of a skyscraper. They cannot locate the service elevator, so grumblingly proceed up an emergency stairwell. Pinch hastens alongside, which irks the two grunts, who say nothing, only glower at each other. On the fifth-floor landing, their boss calls for a water break. “Hot today,” he tells Pinch, wiping a rag across his forehead. “Hope you getting yourself a pretty penny for this picture.”
“I’m giving it away to a relative.”
“That’s family for you,” he responds without interest, nodding to his crew. “Right, gents. The onward march of time. On one, two, three—hup-we-go!”
When they reach the lawyers’ office, a Petros Gallery representative awaits to check the painting and confirm its condition while a solicitor hovers with documents. Pinch sits in a deep leather chair, arms folded tightly across his midriff, squashing his gut. Too anxious, he stands, gazing from the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking BT Tower and cranes. Staring down, he chews his nails, muttering. In the glass reflection, he catches the solicitor rolling his eyes at the Petros Gallery rep—they’ve probably been warned about Bear Bavinsky’s son, the oafish teacher who arrived out of breath in white Panama hat, dress shirt untucked, armpits soaked because he stupidly took the stairs with the movers (notwithstanding a physique that cries out for automated transport). No matter—everyone here is far more concerned with the art than with the artist’s offspring.
After an hour, all is done. “Can I leave?” Pinch asks.
“Not only can you, but you must,” the solicitor responds with a fawning smile. “Enjoy your day, Charles. All is in order. Signed, dated, soon to be delivered.”
On the street, pedestrians stride past him; vehicle noise from Euston Road drowns out his frantic mumbles. “It’s done,” he says, queasy, pinching his tummy. When he rolls his aching neck, the Panama hat falls, skittering down the sidewalk. He runs gracelessly after, catches it under his shoe and stoops, dusting off the brim, puffing from exertion. He makes himself stand fully upright, forcing his spine straighter, and plonks on the hat, pulling it down as if hiding from pursuers in a Casablanca bazaar. I did this. I just did this.
He emits a little laugh, and glances up, dazzled by the shiny skyscraper, where they are right now, admiring a forgery. “It’s done now,” he says. “Done.”
68
While the sale is pending, Pinch suffers torments at work, locking himself in his office, head between his knees, sitting up only to check and recheck his email in-box, convinced that someone is about to twig. He whispers a rehearsal of excuses: “What happened is, I must’ve mixed up my copy with the original. It was a mistake.” He sits there, leg jiggling, computer keyboard bouncing. Checks his in- box again.
When an email from the Petros Gallery arrives, he goes cold. He cannot open it. Pinch speeds down the hall to the staff room, initiating a preposterous conversation with one of the German teachers regarding pencil supplies. “At the very least they should provide sharpeners.”
He stands in his office again. He opens it.
The sale went through. No problems. None.
Pinch punches the air, wincing at a twinge in his spine. But he’s okay. He hurries up the corridor, tittering like a moron. Those art-world idiots! The oh-so-perceptive critics! The empty-headed collectors! No one could tell the difference! Of course, the provenance was unimpeachable, direct from the Bavinsky estate. Plus, this is a work of mid-tier value, unlikely to merit the price of a forensic examination. And who’d suspect Pinch himself, when he isn’t profiting from the sale? Certainly nobody believes that he’d be capable of anything this skilled. Best of all, the Petros Gallery and its buyer are now implicated: Eva endorsed this as authentic, while the Abu Dhabi collector (and his high-paid team of advisers) staked their connoisseurship on the purchase. Everyone involved gained a motive to forever insist this is the genuine article.
Over the coming months, Pinch transfers ownership of his two other forgeries to two other siblings. When the remaining sisters and brothers hear of Pinch’s secretive gifts, he is mobbed with demands, threats, and offers to drop pending lawsuits. Gradually he sets about satisfying them. Many complain that he still refuses to produce an inventory of the entire estate, or let anyone select their artwork. Above all, they loathe how he distributes these paintings: with legal strictures, endless papers to sign—and how he drags it out! Clearly the guy cannot let go. What they don’t realize is that Pinch cannot act any faster—he must still produce their paintings. And with Italian classes to teach too!
Whenever Francesca can spare him, even for just a long weekend, he makes haste to the cottage. No time to drive through France anymore. He flies to Toulouse, hires a car at the airport, guns through the mountains, all while prepping brushstrokes in his head. Once in the studio, everything slows. He scrutinizes his father’s paintings, deciding which is next. Once copied, the original goes in the attic behind the boxes of Natalie’s pottery. Decades from now, when Pinch is old and gray and beyond worrying about incarceration, perhaps he’ll reveal this scandal and find a grand museum to take Dad’s originals. Everyone will fall down with laughter.
For now, he labors in a nervous thrum, knowing that each additional fake ratchets up the chance of exposure. Among the scariest parts is his drive back to Britain, when he must break every speed law to arrive for work, sometimes nodding off for an instant on the road, a still-wet painting in the back of his car, which he rented in Toulouse but expensively returns in London.
Fortunately, Jing works long hours, so he can sneak the latest artwork into the spare room where he sleeps. He collapses on his bed, inhaling glorious paint fumes all night. When the canvas is dry, he ages it with floor dust and diluted coffee and pipe smoke (never letting himself inhale). Everything would be simpler if he could carry out his counterfeiting at a flat of his own, but the travel costs have eaten into his savings—a modest rent to Jing is all he can afford. But it’s richly worth this poverty. Every sale is an injection of euphoria: It’s vindication, even if nobody knows.
When next toiling at the studio, Pinch glances across the floor for his dogs, which are not there, nor anywhere. Pausing, he runs through the people (including both Harold and Tony in that category) who have liked him, wondering why they did—not in self-pity, but to understand. He raises his paintbrush, looking from an easel with the original to an easel with his imitation, a woman’s slender waist taking form.
He stops for lunch, slapping a handful of pâté into a slitted half baguette, drops in a
few cornichons, and munches right there, seated on the studio floor, washing down each mouthful with glasses of a deliciously dismal local red, which mellows the fierceness of his joy. He reaches out, as if to tap his mother’s hand. “I told you, Pinchy,” Natalie tells him. “You are really very good.”
2007
69
After four years, each half sibling has received at least one painting. To outward appearances, they are flogging Bear Bavinsky’s prized Life-Stills—held for decades by the artist, previously unseen in public—to the highest bidders, among them a Bulgarian wrestler (crime boss), a Malaysian baby-bottle billionaire (mass polluter), and a pharmaceuticals heir from Sweden (her art collection kept at a tax-dodging Geneva warehouse, among boxed-up Chagalls, Modiglianis, Picassos).
Pinch’s slow distribution of these forgeries has an unintended consequence: The art market is tantalized. Each sale sets a Bavinsky record, meaning those siblings to whom Pinch provided paintings early (the most deserving or most litigious) earned considerably less than family members at the end of the line. When the final Life-Still sells for $2.4 million, it’s a sum so large as to terrify Pinch. At these prices, future buyers will check the paintings closely. Then again, what is there to find? The provenance is impeccable, while the pigments and brushes are those that his father used.
When Utz closes for the Christmas holidays, Pinch packs his luggage, reminds Jing that Natalie’s immortal cactus in the kitchen requires no water, and he is gone. That night, he flops onto Bear’s bed at the cottage, watching a fly circle under the rafters. Maybe I’ll remember this sight in a prison bunk! He chuckles, sinking into reverie, imagining Barrows’ admiration and of Marsden’s amazement.
“You think I ignored you, Mars, when you said I should paint again,” he tells the room. “Guess what?”
But, no. I can’t speak about this.
He sighs, and sighs again, as if oxygen might inflate his mood. Lately his spirits have sunk. After all those efforts to placate his relatives, Pinch has copied and distributed everything and is left with nothing but a stack of Bavinsky originals hidden in the attic, which nobody can know about. And now what? His siblings aren’t even sated.
Downstairs he leafs through a copy of that commemorative booklet from Bear’s memorial service that includes reproductions of old family snapshots. Many of the kids are pictured when small, most eager, none smiling. Throughout childhood, Pinch longed for a team to join, full of best friends, as siblings were in the movies. To a degree, Birdie was that. The others all resent him. Dad always kept us apart, put us at odds. Was that on purpose?
A memory surfaces, perhaps his earliest: standing in Bear’s studio in Rome by the copper bathtub, which was scalding to the touch. Dad rising from the water, the man’s thick wet warm hand on his son’s head for balance, rough fingers pressing down, Pinch’s little shoulders tightening, his eyes looking up.
Everybody knows that Bear Bavinsky painted long after those days, well into old age. But nobody knows what.
Time to show them.
70
Next summer at the cottage, a black Porsche Cayenne growls into view up the driveway. At the kitchen window, Pinch raises his hand in acknowledgment and hurries out to greet his guest. Connor—the once-gelled ginger locks shaved to stubble—exits the vehicle, wearing a sports jacket with skull embroidered on the back, skinny black jeans, and black cowboy boots, with whiffs of boutique cologne emanating. “So awesome to be here again. I’ve been stoked this whole drive. You’re not letting me down, right?”
Laughing, Pinch looks to the pebbly ground, taken aback by this familiar tone with which Connor seems to declare his elevated status since they last met here, six years before. Today, he’s an influential writer and critic, successful enough to rent this luxury car. He steps ahead of Pinch, letting himself into the cottage. “What you got, my friend?” he asks, sitting at the long kitchen table.
From the next room, Pinch carries in a canvas on stretchers. Both men consider the painting; neither speaks. Pinch steps out again and returns with a second picture. “A small sampling,” he says, watching his guest closely, “of the late works of Bear Bavinsky. These are them.” He presses down a loose strand of hair. “What everyone’s been asking about for years. And you’re seeing it.”
Connor flings off his burgundy skull jacket, as if to better study the artworks, which are part of a startlingly different series than the Life-Stills. In those, Bear never portrayed any face, as if a gaze threatened to wrest the painting from his control. These two paintings—each an enlarged physical detail of the sitter, still employing the pugnacious Bavinsky brushstrokes, his swirling reds and violets—here, his subject is the face, pictured too close, staring at the viewer as if trapped by the borders of the canvas.
“Who are they?” Connor asks.
“Before I get to that, what do you think?”
“Before I get to that, who are they?”
“But you like them?” Pinch asks.
“I’m still taking them in. But what I want to know is why you didn’t put these out there earlier.”
“I’m not sure he wanted them seen. I’m still not sure. Before we go further, Connor, could you just tell me what you think?”
The journalist crouches before the first painting, taking his time.
“Needless to say,” Pinch adds tensely, “you’re evaluating these in strictest confidence.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that, for now, this is all off the record. You’re here as a fellow expert.”
“I am writing about these. I flew all the way here.”
“And I paid for your flight, Connor. I was clear that I just wanted an opinion.”
“Hey, you do know what I do for a living, right?”
“We’re just assessing these,” Pinch says, voice wavering between rage and fear. “I need to know if they even merit showing—and not just because they’re by Bear. But because they’re good. If they are. So are they?” Pinch toys with his Panama hat, which sits on the table. “Sorry—I’m passionate about these pictures.”
“No kidding.”
“Look, maybe you’re not the right audience,” Pinch says, scrambling for a way out of this. “You don’t seem to get them, which is a pity. Because I think they’re valid. Or I thought they were.”
“You are so protective of your old man.”
“This is silly, Connor. I haven’t decided what’s going to happen with these. If you’re unimpressed, I don’t want you going home and writing something negative about my father’s final artworks, which he labored over for years and years. If it’s best they remain private, then they need to stay that way.”
“Listen, man, you got to make your intentions clear next time, if you have, like, terms and conditions.”
“I was clear.”
“Uh, not so much. But hey, you’re keeping more than these up in this joint, right? Tell me there’s more than these two.”
All afternoon Connor takes notes, seated at the kitchen table, leaping up to check the paintings, a mysterious smile lurking. By late afternoon he raps on the table, announcing that he must dash: dinner with friends in Perpignan. “Anything to avoid the dive you took me to last time.”
That night Pinch cannot sleep and repeatedly gets up to study the paintings. Apparently they’re wretched. Clearly, I have no taste. I can’t judge anything. By morning he is exhausted, worn down—and determined to clear the air with Connor. He brings out another of the late works and prays for a better response. Around noon Connor arrives hungover. For a fresh start, Pinch asks about Connor’s flight over here. “No terrorists on board, I’m glad to see!”
“What’s that mean?”
“Last time you were here, you kept saying how with your luck there’d be terrorists on the flight home. Remember? I was cooking for you, and you were saying how Saddam Hussein needed to be taken out
. You don’t remember that?”
“Um, I was totally against that war.”
“Oh,” Pinch says, hesitating. “Look, I didn’t mean to go down that rabbit hole.”
“I was never for the war, okay? Not to be rude here, but can we get to work? If you’re making coffee, I could seriously do with one.”
As happened the day before, Connor snorts with amusement when studying the paintings. Pinch stands back, infuriated.
“Any reason you’re staring at me?” Connor asks. “Kinda distracting.”
Pinch would murder Connor to undo this humiliation. But there is no reversing. When this guy viewed forged Life-Stills six years ago, he venerated every one. Because they fit; those were in the expected Bavinsky style. Yet these are shit. How can he even say? Connor has no judgment of his own. He admires what one is supposed to. These paintings are not what he knows, so he turns catty, elevating himself above the artist. These pictures, he’ll say, are just minor late works.
So absurd, Pinch thinks, his fists clenched. If Bear were present, standing beside these paintings, everyone would love them. That is the problem. It’s me here.
71
Back at Utz he writes a cordial email to Connor, trusting that the journalist had a comfortable voyage home—and ensuring that they’re on the same page about not publishing anything about these works.
Connor Thomas
Charles,
Talking to a bunch of publications.
—CT
Charles Bavinsky
Connor,
I’m sorry to read this. Even if you didn’t love these paintings, I hope you’ll be kind about my father’s last works. He wasn’t young then, and his sight wasn’t great. But I must leave it to you.