The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa

by Martin Caparros

  When he talks about his paintings, his abilities, Chaudron is transformed, and Valfierno once again realizes his incredible luck. On a third easel is another Joconde, partly finished. The landscape is almost complete, but the face of the Mona Lisa is just an outline.

  “So three more now, not two.”

  “Yes, Yves, and quickly. In a month I have to leave for New York, and I have to have all the paintings with me.”

  “Won’t you have problems with the customs people there?”

  “Yves, what’s wrong with you? You know very well that there’s hardly a single American who goes to Europe and doesn’t come back with a couple of cheap reproductions. Like ours.”

  Valfierno smiles to himself. He’d been about to say “like yours,” but by saying “ours” he both moves from his initial false aggressiveness to a camaraderie and also neatly makes the paintings more his own. It delights him to think of this small, unplanned manipulation. He is becoming more and more deft, more precise each time in the use of his particular weapons. This, he tells himself, is my finest moment. But then his face clouds over—if that’s true, he thinks, then the rest of this adventure can only go downhill. So it had better be a lie.

  “You really are going to have to finish them soon. After this, it’s going to be impossible to leave this country with a copy of La Joconde.”

  “After what?”

  “Don’t ask me what you don’t want to know, friend,” replies Valfierno, and Chaudron looks at him, on the point of pressing it, but decides not to. In a corner of the studio there is a narrow, rickety cot. Valfierno sees it and thinks of his bed during his years as Bonaglia in the shop in San José de Flores, feeling suddenly as if everything has turned around one point. Chaudron has cleaned a paintbrush and is retouching the background of the third Mona Lisa. He looks intently at Valfierno, as he usually does, and Valfierno tells him that, one way or another, he’ll know everything in a few months.

  “If there’s something to know, I’d prefer to know it now.”

  “Be careful, Yves—don’t make a mistake here.”

  “To think that just a few years ago…”

  “A few years ago what, Yves? A few years ago you told me what it was I needed to do? It seems to me I’ve shown myself to be quite grateful enough since then. But I’ll tell you again, don’t make a mistake here. That was a very particular time.”

  Chaudron concentrates on the painting. It’s a good way for him to drop a conversation that he can’t resolve anyway. He is pleased to feel the other’s admiring gaze on him, but then he rejects it—how stupid! But he needs to ask him something and the best way to do that is to keep his eyes fixed on the painting, on the minute lines in the Florentine girl’s forehead.

  “You have my trust, I’ve said that. Anyway, I have no choice. But you have to promise me something,” he says. Valfierno looks at him and snorts. His partner has definitely become burdensome. He tells him of course, if he can.

  “You can. I know you can. I hope you can. Just promise me one thing. Promise me that we’re not going to end up like we did in Buenos Aires.”

  “Yves, please…”

  11

  HE WAS A MASTER. HE deceived me so completely for all those years. He seemed like just an old man with no secrets, and all the time he was laughing at me. It’s easier for old people, they seem harmless to us, always good. But if all old people are really as good as they seem, then where are all the bad people in the world? Weren’t there bad people around when they were young? Was it age that smoothed and softened them?

  What I never did understand was why he did it, you know? So many times during those years I asked myself if it was his revenge for the death of his daughter, if he thought—God only knows why or how—that I was somehow responsible for Mercedes’ death. Whether he came up with some reason why I was responsible and decided to get his revenge, or whether he just decided to take revenge on me without needing any reason to justify it. Or if he just wanted his revenge on a world that had snatched his one great work and I happened to be the person nearest to hand. I’ll never know. What I do know is that it was a perfect revenge. The old man had sold me a false future. Day after day, he maintained that falsehood, convincing me that my future would be what he had promised—his false promise. That old man managed to sell me an entire fake life; he was a master.

  In the end, it’s true that his deceit turned out to be an enormous favor, but of course he could never have known that. For what it’s worth, that is my revenge. We all have one, you know? The difficult thing is realizing it.

  Don Simón’s dying had been so simple. It is the most definitive event in a life, but for all that, it is a small happening. The funeral, on the other hand, is always another story.

  In a town like San José de Flores, in the slow beginnings of the twentieth century, no one feels they can afford to waste the opportunities a death presents: its wake, its burial. In those grey lives, each death is a chance to see everyone else and especially to rise above the usual level of everyday chatter. Neighbors can say things at a wake that they can’t say normally. They can work themselves up at the burial, feeling shivers at the beyond and the mysteries it holds. In a town like San José de Flores, which is still trying to resist becoming a part of the city with which it will inevitably be joined, someone’s death forms one of the town’s most vital moments; death serves a purpose.

  In those days of transition, Enrique Bonaglia fulfilled all his duties. He was the one who arranged for a service befitting Don Simón, who paid the whole thing out of his meager savings, now that he wasn’t ever going to have to worry about money, who paid for the cross and the marble headstone, who ordered the flowers, who received the weeping ladies of the neighborhood, and the men who, for lack of anyone better, extended their solemn condolences to him. He, Enrique Bonaglia, was the one who distributed aguardientes and coffees to Don Simón’s old card chums, anís to the ladies, and granadinas to the two or three children who appeared in the shop, presided over by the wooden coffin with iron fittings and the remains inside of a man who had come to Buenos Aires decades before to seek his future.

  “Poor old Don Simón. How sad it is to die with no one to survive you!”

  “Do you really think things will be different?”

  “Doña Puritas! There’s no comparison.”

  “It’s just that I…”

  No one knows what to do at a wake. No one has much experience to draw from. Should you try to put on a brave face, making light of things with laughter and gossip, or instead give yourself over fully to the grief, to the reason for the vigil? As a result, wakes often swing somewhat awkwardly between deepest pain and gratuitous laughter.

  “Do you remember the time he got it into his head to buy that old nag?”

  “Sure! Poor old guy. He sure didn’t know his horses.”

  The good thing about a wake like that, the wake of a man without any family, is that no one is grieving too much for the dead man. Everyone knows that they will forget this man before long. But they go anyway, and they stay there for a while—his death at least deserves to have those two hours lost to him, for him, deserves to have those things said for him: May God have mercy on his soul. He’s not suffering anymore, poor man. Finally he gets to rest. It takes us all, sooner or later. Why is it always the good ones? At least he didn’t suffer. His problems are over now. We are nothing. Man proposes; God disposes. When He calls, you go. There aren’t many of us left. But he looked so well when I saw him last. Here today, gone tomorrow. We are only flesh and blood. What can you do? That’s life. We’re the ones who suffer, the ones who are left behind. And with all that said, the mourners continue:

  “That old Galician devil! You wouldn’t believe how many times he could cheat in a single hand!” says one of his old card mates, and Bonaglia is surprised. He wouldn’t have believed it.

  “I know! He took it so seriously! Do you remember the time he wanted to bet his whole shop on a craps game?”


  “Ugh! If we hadn’t stopped him…”

  Later, he hears two women, customers of the shop, talking about what a flirt he was, what a rascal, and how insistent he could be and just how many girls he went through in his younger years.

  “And not just the younger years, Doña Eulalia. I know what I’m talking about!” says an old woman dressed completely in mourning, and Bonaglia takes another look at an older woman sitting away in a corner with a boy not much younger than Mercedes would have been. They say nothing, keeping to themselves and crying softly. And he asks himself: just who was Don Simón? When do you finish writing the story of a life?

  And he, Enrique Bonaglia, is the one who leads the funeral procession that follows the cart carrying the polished coffin to the San José de Flores cemetery, and who throws in the first shovelful of dirt, after the priest has finished saying that we return to you, O Lord, a Christian who deserves all good things, his sins never having done anyone any harm.

  “Poor old man. That’s one thing I bet he does regret.”

  “Poor man, yes. A whole life of hard work to get to this.”

  And after the three days of mourning are over, he is also the one who must open the shop. He, Enrique Bonaglia, who for his first time as the owner, prepares to open the shop where he worked as an assistant for so many years. And who, on that morning, the door barely unlocked, finds himself face to face with a man in a long dark coat and a youngish fellow wearing a sort of light cotton riding jacket and a straw hat with a red ribbon. Straw-hat looks as if he’s twenty-five, the other one is fifty at the very least. Straw-hat stands back while the older one speaks.

  “Excuse me, sir. Are you the one who goes by the name of Enrique Bonaglia?”

  “Yes, indeed. That’s me. Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Castellani, Dr. Alfredo Castellani, attorney-at-law. This here is Mr. Augusto Perez Coutiño, nephew of the deceased. At your service.”

  It takes Enrique a moment to understand what is about to happen. Or rather, he doesn’t understand until the lawyer asks to see the papers showing that he is the legal beneficiary of the deceased. Enrique replies that he has not yet seen to them, due to the mourning, but that everyone knows that he is the one legitimate heir.

  “That could be, young man. We only wish—my client and I—to ascertain that this is in fact the case. In the meantime, allow me to present my client’s papers, which clearly show, barring any testimony to the contrary, that as the son of the deceased’s late sister, he is the true inheritor,” declares the attorney, and hands Enrique a sheaf of papers. Enrique looks at them, unable to concentrate, but he does notice amongst the papers a birth certificate in the name of Augusto Perez Coutiño, son of Miguel Perez Perez and Josefa Coutiño Álvarez, and a parish registry entry declaring that the aforementioned Augusto has been adopted by his uncle, Simón Coutiño Álvarez, as well as other similar documents. Enrique‘s head starts to spin, and he realizes he must think of something quickly.

  “A pleasure, gentlemen. I ask only that you give me two or three days to put my hands on what you’re requesting. If it’s convenient, I will meet you right here next Friday.”

  “But of course. With pleasure.”

  Never had I imagined that the existence of a mere piece of paper could be a matter of life and death, but it was. Over the next two days, there wasn’t a drawer I didn’t search or a book I didn’t go through page by page or a notebook I didn’t turn inside out, either in the shop or in the house. At first I thought, that damn will must be somewhere, only the understandable distraction of death had caused Don Simón to overlook the detail of actually giving it to me. So that when I finished going through all the logical places, it occurred to me that a document that important would be well hidden, and I turned my attention to the more obscure hiding places I could think of: I tapped on every wall, trying to hear the echo of a hollow, I took up floorboards, unscrewed legs from tables and chairs, poked knitting needles into pillows and cushions—nothing.

  There was one moment when I thought I must be going mad. I was still convinced that the will must be somewhere but thought that it was possible—probable, even—that I would never find it. I imagined I could hear the fates mocking me, watching my entire future slip through my fingers because I couldn’t find a single piece of paper. And then I felt it—a blow. Not a figurative blow, but a real, physical blow that no one was there to have delivered. I remained still for a few moments, stunned. It was Thursday evening. Without lighting the kerosene lamp I sat on the armchair I knew to be Mercedes’, poured myself a glass of wine, and felt the first dawning of a realization—at first just a suspicion—that I would never find something that had never existed. Then I heard the laughter. Without understanding how or why—a tremendous wave of laughter, coming from me.

  I had lost my future.

  “Were you sure that he was the rightful heir?”

  “Ah, so we’re learning, eh, Newspaperman? A question at last. No, of course I wasn’t sure. In fact, at some point that night I was convinced that they were conning me. That the supposed attorney had fabricated those papers and—just like Don Simón at his cards—was bluffing.”

  “And that’s when you decided to fight for what was yours.”

  “That’s when I remembered that my name wasn’t really Bonaglia, or at least that I didn’t have a single document showing that name, and that if they were to find out my real identity…”

  “Your real identity?”

  “There, you’re catching on. I mean the identity that they would have considered real. If they did discover it, they would also quickly discover my previous incarceration, and if that were to come out, then I’d be in danger of losing a lot more than just the shop, you see?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “More progress.”

  “But I can’t believe that, just like that, you would have accepted losing everything you had. Everything you knew was yours.”

  “It wasn’t ‘just like that,’ Newspaperman.”

  “But you did accept it.”

  “Well, at first I thought that even if the will didn’t exist, the old man still certainly owed it all to me and that making one wouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Making one what?”

  “A will, Becker. What is it we’re talking about? It wouldn’t be too much trouble to find someone to reproduce the document, the appropriate signatures, the necessary stamps and seals.”

  “But you didn’t know where to look.”

  “I didn’t, but that wasn’t the problem. I could have found that out. What stopped me then was the thought that, if I did go ahead with it, I’d be putting the rest of my life in jeopardy. I would have to stay there, sitting on my little crime for the rest of my life, which would be a mess, and that perhaps that was the revenge that Don Simón had had in mind for me. That’s what struck me as Friday morning dawned.”

  “Of course; I see.”

  “I doubt it. But you know what? I did feel a great relief.”

  Day breaks. Into his cardboard suitcase, Enrique Bonaglia puts his three changes of clothes, various books, his other shoes, and a photo of Mercedes. He takes the photo out again and closes the suitcase. He strikes a match, but then puts it out. He walks out of the shop, closes the door behind him, and locks it with the key, which he puts in his pocket. He lights another match, but puts that one out, too, and walks to the train station. There’s no doubt: it takes all his will not to look back.

  An enormous relief, as if it were possible once again to wake up.

  12

  “MAYBE SO. HE NEVER DID tell me how he came to be at the brothel, though he did say that he hadn’t been there long, not much more than a year.”

  “Forgive my surprise, Chaudron. I didn’t realize that Argentine women ever paid for male prostitutes. I always thought Argentina was more—”

  “No, no, Becker, that’s not it. That wasn’t what he did there. Not that he wouldn’t—you know him yourself. He worked there as a sort
of bookkeeper or administrator.”

  “Now I see.”

  “You do?”

  13

  YVES CHAUDRON WAS A LOST soul, someone who never knew what to do with that extraordinary ability fate had given him. He didn’t deserve it. In his entire life he’d had just one idea. Odd to think that that idea was me.

  He feels distant, old. Like a man who has happened but not been, he sometimes thinks. The bitter taste of having been without having been something; the relief of not having to be anything special. The peace of just accepting what one was. The relief. The despair. The humiliation, even.

  “Please excuse me, but I really don’t understand how you ended up in that place.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me, Becker; I’ll try to explain—it wasn’t really a place. For me, being there wasn’t going somewhere, it was not killing myself. In just a couple of days I’d lost my entire future—again, just like when they blamed my mother for the necklace I stole, I lost everything. This time it wasn’t my fault, or at least whether it was or wasn’t didn’t change anything. I thought seriously about killing myself, but in the end, it seemed excessive.”

  “Did it frighten you?”

  “Perhaps. But mostly I thought that it was just excessive, that it was too much, that I hadn’t yet done anything to merit an important death. So I buried myself in that brothel. Old Anunciación offered and I was happy not to think, not to plan anymore.”

  Later, I was to confirm that there really wasn’t any reason for them ever to have spoken to each other. That years and years could have gone by without them ever meeting. They could have spent their lives in different cities, or passed each other on the street without a glance, or even shared a table without exchanging a word. But that night at Doña Anunciación’s, the French portraitist suffered a mishap—an excess of alcohol, most likely, though Yves Chaudron didn’t seem like the type of person to have any kind of excesses—and the madam had the good grace not to throw him out into the street as soon as he regained consciousness. The situation was tricky—Chaudron was no longer really a client, and it would not have been appropriate for him to return to the lounge in that disheveled state, his thinning hair a mess, a suspicious stain on his shirt, the way he smelled. The madam led him to the one place in that establishment where on a Saturday night in full swing he would not be in the way: the combination office and apartment of Bonaglia, the bookkeeper.