The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa

by Martin Caparros

  “So, my friend,” says Aliaga, “you are something like an art dealer,” and he raises his champagne glass in a toast.

  “I’m not sure that’s it exactly, but yes, I have sold the occasional painting here and there,” replies Valfierno. “Only classics, mind you.”

  “That’s what we’re missing, dear fellow—classics,” says Aliaga. “We’re a young country. And powerful. We are the future; what we don’t have at the moment is a past,” he says, and Valfierno takes a chance.

  “That, too, can be purchased,” he says, and surprises himself for having said it. But Aliaga is with him.

  “Very true, dear fellow. There’s nothing easier to buy than a past,” he says and smiles to himself. Valfierno hopes that the sound of the waltz has covered up his sigh of relief. “Soon, my friend, Europe won’t even have that left. Quelle décadence, mon ami, quelle décadence. They created it, but we’ll have it,” says Aliaga. “And then soon, we’ll begin to make our own.”

  “Perhaps we’re already making it,” says Valfierno. “Peutêtre, Aliaga, ne croyez-vous pas?”

  “Perhaps, Marqués, perhaps. I’ll drink to that.”

  “The smugness of some Argentines knows no limits!”

  “You should be grateful. If it weren’t for that we wouldn’t be able to make our deals.”

  “You’re right, Valfierno. That’s what we’re living off now.”

  “Not just living, Chaudron. This is more than that.”

  There’s a moment where many people finally let themselves go. They have eaten like the kings in their fantasies and drunk rivers of silver. They have exchanged the highest compliments, valuable nuggets of information, thrilling gossip, jokes that are subtle and jokes that are coarser, and then even eternal promises of friendship. They have danced with bodies they know and with new bodies, rejected the temptation to respond to the pressure of that hand on their back, accepted that temptation, imagined futures with that hand, rejected those futures. Grateful for their luck and to their God for having put them where they are, for bestowing on them that country, that moment, that surname, that grace. For being allowed to be one of them, offered the chance to decide for so many others, to help so many others.

  And then more champagne, more toasts, more smiles, more satisfied faces, promises, greetings, the stifling of a belch, some gentler dances, then exhausted, they rest briefly, feeling a pang that the end of the party is approaching. They sit—many of them—on chairs and in softer armchairs, and they loosen—some of them—their ties, or a button on their dress, and they let their bodies relax, their minds relax; they tell themselves they deserve this last rest before declaring the party dead. It’s at that moment, tucked away on his chair, that Valfierno notices the hands.

  He discovers—has just discovered and been surprised, then amazed, then finally alarmed—what hands can do when their owner isn’t paying attention. He had been looking around for a while at people’s hands, and suddenly he sees his own hands and is startled. Unattended, his hands lie with their palms up as if beseeching, the fingers slightly bent, an air of flaccid disarray that discredits them and, he fears, discredits him also.

  He looks back at the hands around him, the perfectly poised hands of the wealthy partygoers, delicately posed—the hands themselves both delicate and posed—their jeweled rings glittering along the edge of a tablecloth like a miniature, sparkling shoreline. One hand on the other, resting delicately on the thigh, on the black evening dress. One hand resting delicately on the other with the white gloves held in between them to prevent sweat from making them moist and slippery. The fingers of one hand laced with those of the other and held in front of the midriff, or the chest, not touching, just in front, intertwined in midair. An ancient learning, years of work that allows their hands to be controlled even when they are not controlling them. Valfierno looks at his own hands, which are now sweating, and sees that he has no control over them, that everyone can see them, can see him. That he still has so far to go.

  Then, to signal that the party is over, the orchestra begins to play the overture to Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. The sound is sad. Valfierno is not listening.

  “The most complicated thing was to have to keep making up my history. To have to do it all the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If someone asks you about your family, Newspaperman, I’m sure you don’t have to think too much. All you have to do is remember, right?”

  “Sure. Though I do forget some things.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I, on the other hand, had to be ready all the time to put aside my own memories and replace them with Valfierno’s. Doesn’t that seem to you like a fascinating exercise?”

  “No, it sounds terrible.”

  “Well, Newspaperman, it was and it wasn’t. Until the day that it wasn’t anything: the day I realized that I no longer had any memories of my own. Then I knew I had truly become Valfierno. But you have no idea what it cost me later to get those memories back.”

  6

  “SO DO YOU HAVE A buyer yet, Boss?”

  “Why would that be any business of yours?”

  “No, I’m just saying…”

  “Well don’t say, Perugia, don’t say anything. Let’s get things straight from now on: you stick to the plan and you’ll get lots of dough and you’ll live like a king for the rest of your life. I’ll take care of everything else, and the less you know about it the better things will go for you in that new life of yours, understand?”

  “Yeah, I get it, Boss, you don’t need to be so—”

  “I’m not so anything, Perugia. I just want to make sure you know that if there’s any slip-up I’m not going to be the one in deep water.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “I’m not the one who was in jail three years ago over some story about broken locks. Or two years ago over a jackknife.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “No, Signore, I don’t understand…”

  Valfierno realizes that subtlety will not work with him and decides on brutality. Sometimes, he thinks, there is no other choice.

  “See if you understand this—the police know you very well. You make any mistake and I’ll make sure they know exactly where to find you.”

  Perugia looks at him, startled. Valfierno wonders if he’s overdoing it, if he’s got the tone right.

  “Easy, Boss, calm down.”

  “Do I look nervous to you?”

  Valfierno is wearing a checked cap pulled low over his eyes. His Panama hat would have stood out in this Les Halles workers’ bar, and it amuses him to think that he now has to disguise himself to go to a place where he wouldn’t even have been noticed just a few years ago. Perugia, bareheaded, raises his glass of red wine in a toast; Valfierno touches his glass half-heartedly. The air in the bistro is a fog of tobacco smoke, stew, and sweat.

  “Starting now, you’ve got to watch yourself with the drinking, Vincenzo. Wine makes even the dead speak up.”

  “Don’t worry, Boss, I know how to be careful,” says Perugia and, superstitious, he makes the sign of horns with his right hand. He doesn’t like people to mention the dead. He also doesn’t like that his boss has his hat on inside—everybody knows it’s bad luck. Some people just can’t stop playing with fire, he thinks. And then they’re surprised when they get burnt.

  “Let’s go over the plan again, Perugia.”

  “Again, Doctor?”

  “Like I said: we’re going over it again. Now, next Sunday you and your two friends will meet up in the Duchâtel Room. You know which one that is, Perugia?”

  “Sure, Doctor, of course.”

  “Let me repeat: you are not to go in together. You’re to meet up once you’re in there. You go in one side and your friends can go in the other, all right? And dress decently so you don’t attract attention. And don’t forget the tools…”

  Perugia carefully follows what his boss is saying. His mouth hangs open slightly in concentrati
on.

  “…very important to have the white coats. You know this better than I do—any guy in a white coat can do what he likes in that museum and no one will ask him any questions. The French are big on uniforms, aren’t they?”

  From the next table over, two very mature whores try to get their attention with pouts and subtle signs. One runs a dry tongue across her lips. The other grabs her crotch with her thick, rough hand. The two men pay no attention.

  “…and as soon as you get the painting out onto the street, go right to the woman’s house. I might show up then.”

  “Yes, Boss. We need you to—”

  “I’ll be the one to say what we need. If I don’t show up, leave the painting there and then each of you go back to where you were, you understand, Perugia? Don’t change any of your regular habits, keep doing everything like you always do. That Monday, go to work like nothing happened; don’t change anything, you hear me? Don’t change anything.”

  “No, Signore. Why would I change?”

  “Because I’m about to give you quite a bit of money. But if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave it alone for a few months…”

  “You’ll give me half, like we said?”

  Perugia’s eyes light up—small, black, close together, they grip his wide, hooked nose over an unkempt mustache. His features look as if they’ve been hewn with an ax, reflects Valfierno, and he asks himself what Valérie could see in him. Those large cheekbones, the thick fingers drumming on the table. He tries to thinks about something else, but he can’t. What the hell does Valérie see in this hick, he asks himself, and for a moment his indignation turns into hatred, and he wonders if he could take advantage of this whole plan to get rid of him—a tidy little scheme. Valfierno tries to calm down. It would not be easy to do without risking the whole operation; enough of that! He has to calm himself, to keep talking, to show Perugia that he’s in charge. His reward for now is showing Perugia that he’s the boss—showing Valérie, too, though she can’t see them.

  “Yes, half, your half. But I’m serious—don’t change anything. Nothing has happened. The police will probably come by in the first few days.”

  “The police? Why the police?”

  Perugia is startled, and Valfierno thinks he might have found a way—and this idea both comforts and worries him.

  “Don’t worry, man. They’re bound to visit everyone who works at the museum or who used to work there. Don’t worry, don’t be frightened—they have nothing on you. It’ll be a routine visit, and that’s how you should treat it. As soon as they’ve been to see you, you go get the painting and bring it back to your pension. Take good care of it there and send me the message we talked about. I’ll come by, pay you the rest, and take the painting.”

  “Sounds like that’s everything, Boss. You think there’s going to be a lot of excitement?”

  “There’s going to be more excitement than you can imagine, Perugia, but don’t worry; it won’t be about you. But there is going to be a huge fuss. You see how proud the French are? Stealing La Joconde is going to seem to them like an insult to the whole country.”

  “Shit! And when they find out it was an Italian carpenter!” says Perugia and immediately regrets it. Nothing is worse luck than to say something that could come true. Making sure Valfierno can’t see him he touches his left testicle for good luck as he suffers a brief wave of fear. Why does he keep doing things that are bad luck? How many things has he already done? The world is too complicated for him.

  “They’re never going to know that, Perugia!”

  “No, I know, Doctor. I was just thinking out loud.”

  “You’re not supposed to think, I already told you.”

  “I know, Boss, I know. But think about it—the French took her from us and now we’re going to get her back!”

  Valfierno and Perugia speak Italian to each other, Perugia with a Tuscan accent, Valfierno with an accent that’s impossible to define. The Marqués thinks about his mother. What would she say if she could see him—a marqués now? If she knew that soon all the world’s newspapers would be talking about him—even if they didn’t know who he was.

  “All right, then, Perugia—is everything clear?”

  “Everything’s clear, Boss.”

  “Next Sunday.”

  “Next Sunday.”

  Valfierno thinks he ought to feel some fear—he’s just set in motion the robbery of the century. He ought to feel something; how odd that he doesn’t. Perhaps it’s a bad sign.

  7

  WE HAD AGREED TO SEE each other again, but it was another three weeks before I presented myself at the house of Mariano de Aliaga. I excused myself and told him that I’d had to take care of some things at the Mendoza ranch. He asked if we made wine there, and I told him that we did but not much, just for friends, though I’d be delighted to send over a cask for him.

  His house was modest when you compared it to the great Guerrico mansion—just two floors by the Plaza San Martín with a French mansard roof and Italian Carrara marble. But I had done some research. Aliaga had fifty thousand acres of lush pampa there.

  My new friend received me warmly. He led me to his study, offered me some fine cognac, and we spent a couple of hours there talking about everything and nothing, and especially about art. I couldn’t get over the fact that we could just sit there, chatting, sharing those peaceful moments—me, there, so close and so far away.

  Above his fireplace he had a small painting in a newly gilded frame that was done very much in the style of Delacroix. I told him that it looked like the work of a serious disciple of his.

  “No, please, look closely. It’s Delacroix lui-même,” he said.

  “Ah, yes, of course.”

  “And most of all, you can’t deny the influence he had on the eighteenth-century French painters.”

  “I’m sorry—who is that?”

  “Vermeer, Valfierno.”

  “Yes, of course—Johannes Vermeer. His View of Delft is so beautiful, Aliaga. Have you seen it?”

  “Beyond words. And it shows how wrong the world can be. How do you explain that it took two hundred years before he finally got the recognition he deserved?”

  “It does make you wonder—how can the real genius of the man have been overlooked? And I don’t mean by the masses—by enlightened people!”

  “Yes, a genius—a real genius. And his interiors! His Dentel-lière, his Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, his Milkmaid.”

  “Ah, yes, the Milkmaid. I can’t tell you how much that affected me when I saw it.”

  “In the Louvre?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Yes, in the Louvre. A delight. I’d even say a real masterpiece.”

  He lives on the Calle Laprida, near the Calle Santa Fe, in an apartment with two bedrooms and a small living room which are nicely—almost fussily—furnished. It’s the first time in his forty-odd years that he’s lived anywhere like this, though of course he can’t give out his address, as it’s still not appropriate for a marqués.

  His wardrobe consists of six suits, one evening suit, a top hat, three homburgs, four pairs of the finest Grimoldi shoes, two walking sticks that he doesn’t like to use, and a dozen shirts. Everything is of the finest quality. He has spent more money on clothing than he has, and Chaudron had protested, but Valfierno had told him that these were the necessary tools of his trade, though he knows it’s only partly true. He likes the elegant clothes and knows that without them he could not continue to be Valfierno. Sometimes, furtively, when no one is looking, he’ll feel the softness of a sleeve’s fine English cloth, or the fit of a collar, and it seems to him as if he’s feeling his own history.

  His circle of acquaintances is growing; it is no longer unusual for him to be invited to social events, and the bad taste left over from his first, clumsy appearances is now gone. He is sure now that in a few months, or perhaps a year or two, he will have become a full member of Buenos Aires high society, though he knows tha
t he will never be able to let down his guard. He has noticed this happening occasionally, and it worries him.

  He has recently met a young widow, not very wealthy but quite respectable, from a very good family, who has given him clear signals that his attentions would be welcomed. He has taken her on walks near Palermo and is considering inviting her to the Colón Theater and perhaps out for dinner afterwards at Charpentier. But he does not want to move things along with Amelia because he considers her a good woman and the relationship potentially serious. He supposes that she is attracted by his title, but he can hardly fault her for that—him, of all people.

  He has also met a laundress who doesn’t know how to wash clothes—a young Milanesa, ambitious and blond—who sleeps with him on Tuesdays and Fridays, accepts his gifts with a suitable pout, and produces in him a strange disquiet—he is afraid that this might be an error that could cost him dearly, knowing as he does that these extras are never free. But he feels wonder at the fact that on the following Tuesday, the next Friday, that voluptuous body will tumble with him in his bed. It’s clear that she is attracted by his apparent fortune, but he can hardly fault her for that—him, of all people.

  He tells her that he knows what it’s like not to know how one’s life will turn out, that he understands her. When he says this she looks at him with a strange expression that he can’t make out. It could be that she simply doesn’t believe him: “How could you know, Eduardo, you, a marqués, what it’s like to be a poor laundress like me just starting out.” Or it could be that she’s never actually felt what he’s attributing to her. That it’s never occurred to her to think of her life as something to consider in advance, as something to think about at all. Or it could be that she simply doesn’t understand him. He tells her she’s right—that he doesn’t know, that he knows absolutely nothing.

  But she laughs and thinks he must be lying.

  “If you could be something else, Giannina, what would you be?”

  “Ay, Eduardo—the things you think of!”