The café in the main square of Dumenza is a perfect oasis: six mismatched tables under the heavens between the Roman door of the small church and the whitewashed façade of the town hall with its little Italian flags. There is a fountain, abandoned by water and time, paving stones, and the smell of tobacco and lavender.
Perugia goes on in a loud voice, speaking for everyone there:
“We’re not the same as before, when we were embarrassed by what we were. Il Duce has made us proud to be Italians again! Now other countries look at us with respect, especially those queers, the French, who treated us like we were their slaves!”
Perugia is about fifty but looks older. He takes off his hat and mops the sweat on his head with a dirty kerchief. He has a very narrow forehead, his hairline low and close to his eyebrows, which are thick and tangled. At last I have him in front of me and I don’t know how to begin to talk to him. I had put in months of effort, telegrams, unanswered letters, before finally deciding to travel here to his village in Lombardy. Vincenzo Perugia was the best known of all the people involved in the theft of the Mona Lisa—the only one to have been in the public eye—and he had also turned out to be the most difficult.
“That’s why they respect me here, because I was one of the first ones to give those Frenchies what they deserve.”
I had taken the train from Turin that morning, getting off at Dumenza and asking at the post office where I could find him. They told me to go to his shop, a paint and building supplies store, and pointed out the way, which led to a new house at the edge of the village. It looked like many others there. His shop took up the ground floor, and Perugia and his wife lived above. They hadn’t had any children, I was told—“No, you know, they married late, for company.”
The shop didn’t look very well outfitted or cared for. “He says he started it with the money he got from the war,” a woman from the market told me, “from his soldier’s pay. I guess he made sergeant. He was at Caporetto. But who knows where the money came from. Now I’m not judging him, mind you; I don’t like to judge anyone. To me he’s a good Italian, a patriot.”
Perugia was yawning as he came out to attend to me. I asked him in French how business was.
“Fine, why not?” he said and then was silent. His nose was red.
“I’m Charles Becker, a reporter from America—”
“How did you find me?” he interrupted. He was clearly very tense.
“It’s easy, Perugia. You live in the same village you were born in, and your name used to be in all the papers. I need to talk to you. Is that possible?”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think I want to. I don’t talk to reporters now.”
“You get a lot of them?”
“No, they don’t really come now. But there was a time when everyone wanted to talk to me.”
“I’m sure. That was a while ago.”
“Twenty years; nineteen—who knows? I can tell you I don’t miss them—no, sir!”
When I told him I’d come all the way from America to see him he took another look at me. It was more or less true, and it seemed to impress him.
“From America? New York?”
Only the Italians say “New York” like that—with that mixture of admiration and scorn. I told him yes, and that I’d spent a lot of money to come and see him and I didn’t mind if I spent a little more.
“How much more?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
The negotiation took only a few minutes. In the end—I’m ashamed to say it—the amount in dollars was a pittance. He told me to wait for him in the café at six that evening. He arrived at 6:30 and began his patriotic sermonizing. I let him go on, to get him comfortable.
Now, having calmed down somewhat, he asks me if it’s true that I’m writing a book about La Joconde. I tell him it is.
“And you want me to tell you what really happened—the truth.”
I look at him in silence. Perugia corrects himself:
“I mean, to tell you different things, new things.”
“Well, sure—the truth, as you said.”
“Yeah, sure, of course. But I mean, you’ve read all the papers from then, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, it’s all there, mister. How I returned the painting to Italy, how I was betrayed. It was all politics, you know. With Il Duce now that wouldn’t happen.”
Perugia takes another swig of wine and looks around him. In the doorway, the local priest is talking to a woman dressed in mourning. Beyond them, five young men in black shirts surround a peasant who is leading a heavily loaded donkey. The sun is going down behind the hills.
“It’s all there, you know. There’s not much more I can tell you.”
“Perugia, please. You’re the main character in this story, you can tell me a lot.”
“The main character? Yeah, I suppose, but it’s been a long time.”
Perugia wavers some more and I tell him that I’d be willing to double my offer. The amount still seems pitifully low. He tells me he’ll think about it, that maybe we’ll meet here again the next day. He gets up, drinks down the rest of his wine, and puts his hat on at a slight angle. He spends longer adjusting it than I would have expected. I’m on my way out when he grabs my arm:
“Do you know who the Signore was?”
His hand is squeezing me too hard.
“Yes, but I’m not supposed to tell you yet.”
“You want me to tell you everything and you’re going to tell me nothing?”
“No—I said not yet.”
“Look, mister, think it over till tomorrow. I’ll answer all your questions if you tell me who the Signore was.”
4
IN HIS SUITE, WRAPPED IN a dressing gown, Valfierno smokes. He looks at his watch: five past seven. He has been up all night, smoking, waiting for this moment, and now that it’s here he realizes that he has waited for nothing. There’s nothing he can do but wait and smoke and knead his hands.
“Jesus Christ Almighty,” he whispers, and his voice surprises him. The words surprise him. He puts his Turkish cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray and thinks about emptying it.
“Jesus, Jesus. Christ, Jesus!”
Perugia grabs his broom and the Lancelotti brothers take their old dust cloths and the three of them set to cleaning a corner of the Duchâtel Gallery. It’s ten minutes past seven in the morning. Perugia realizes that everything will have to be resolved in the next fifteen minutes and tries not to think about how those fifteen minutes could change his life.
Clutching his broom, he walks toward the arcade that gives out onto the Salon Carré. Just before he leans out he hears voices coming from below. He tries to keep calm and finds a place from where he can see what’s happening without being seen.
“This is the most valuable painting we have in the museum, the one all our patrons want to see. It is said to be worth millions, if it were ever to be sold, which of course will never happen,” intones an old man whom Perugia knows—Georges Picquet, the head of staff for the museum. He is accompanied by eight or ten museum employees wearing new smocks.
“Needless to say, I expect this part of the museum to be kept extra clean,” Picquet instructs the recruits. Perugia cannot believe his bad luck. Once again the star has evaded him. He begins sweeping again and looks over at the brothers, across the Duchâtel Gallery, dusting frames with their cloths. Thanks to the sweat on his hands, his broom is on the verge of slipping from his grip. He listens to the voices below. If they are not gone within ten minutes, he will have to admit defeat. Please God, he thinks, make them go somewhere else!
“…of the museum. I also want to show you this area over here, where…”
He hears footsteps. The procession moves toward the Apollo Gallery. The white smocks drift out, and the Salon Carré is empty. This is it, he says to himself, and, not really believing it, has to repeat it: This is it!
He finishes sweeping some tiles, telling himself not to rush. He think
s about the star, his grandmother, and, finally, about the fact that he cannot wait a moment longer. He looks over at the Lancelottis and makes a sign to them to follow him.
The night before, he had dined with Valérie at Ledoyen. The Marqués Eduardo de Valfierno had wanted to be seen in public, and he couldn’t think of a better place than that elegant restaurant where le tout Paris ate. He ordered champagne and oysters. He felt far away and close at the same time, both appraised and protected by that distinguished clientele. Valérie was in a chatty mood, and they passed the meal talking—about the Comtesse de Noailles at a nearby table, the dress she had on, the oppressive heat, the possibility of going to Deauville for a weekend. The horses Sebastián de Anchorena had imported. Then, over the coffee and cognac, Valfierno looked into Valérie’s eyes and reached across the crisp tablecloth for her hand.
“Valérie, I can now tell you what I’m sure you already know.”
She smiled at him and said, “Yes, Marqués, I know. You don’t need to tell me anything.”
He thought that she probably didn’t know everything, but he wasn’t going to stoop to asking exactly what she did know. Keeping silent would punish her for her arrogance. She didn’t say any more, and it occurred to him that he really had to find a way to neutralize her once and for all.
They finished their liqueurs in silence. As they rose from the table, he said, “No, not tonight,” that she should go home, and he returned to his suite. There he has spent the entire night awake, recalling foolish memories, trying to imagine his future, or rather, trying not to imagine the future this night could bring him, though as much as he tries, he doesn’t succeed. He is assailed ceaselessly by images of wealth and splendor, and each time he pushes these from his mind with a shudder—you mustn’t sell the bearskin before you’ve killed the bear, he reminds himself.
“Perhaps the bear is already dead,” he says to the room at large. “I’d give anything to know…”
It is now a quarter to eight, and he is about to light another cigarette but stops himself. He walks to the bathroom, looks at himself in the mirror, seizes his toothbrush and his box of tooth powder. He spreads the thick powder onto his toothbrush and goes to work scrubbing his teeth like a lunatic. People believe in you if your teeth are white, he tells himself, and brushes harder. I can’t afford yellow teeth now!
He cannot believe that she is up there, alone, hanging on the wall, just that easy, helpless—like a woman who no longer knows what to ask for in exchange for herself, who knows she can’t ask for anything. Perugia can’t believe that it’s this simple, that all he has to do is to reach up and take her down from the wall for the blessed Mona Lisa to be in his hands, but there is no one in the Salon Carré, Vincenzo Lancelotti is beside him, Michele is in the gallery keeping watch, and she is hanging right there, ripe for picking. For the first time in all those hours, Perugia smiles: whores, all of them whores, he thinks, and a wave of heat rolls up his face, reddening it. For the last time, he looks to either side. Then the yellow badge comes into his head and he is furious that he had to think of it just then. He again brushes his left testicle lightly, for luck. Then, slowly, as if he still cannot believe it, his hands reach up.
Yves Chaudron has awakened early, which is nothing unusual—he has been waking up at this time for months. Today he is up at quarter to seven. He feels clearheaded and almost optimistic; he has washed and shaved and even applied a few drops of cologne. Sitting now with his unsugared tea, he thinks that he might have found the way out.
Since he finished the last of the Jocondes he has found it very difficult to paint. He has finished a couple of small Zurbaráns to pay the bills, but he knows that he did these indifferently, with small mistakes, though none that anyone will notice. They held no interest for him. Compared to the accomplishment of those six perfect Jocondes, any other work seems like a joke.
For months now he has felt adrift, without a future or the desire to do anything. But this morning, it is still cool, his tea has a slight smoky flavor which for once he likes, the sun is a festival of color in his window, and a painting occurs to Chaudron. Having been Leonardo all that time, having been able to be, and then having felt the shock of being Chaudron again—surely the solution is to go back? He knows what he will do, he thinks: he will paint a Virgin of the Rocks, but not the one he has seen so many times in the Louvre, with Jesus and John the Baptist and the Angel Uriel; the great Leonardo Virgin—no, he will paint the one Leonardo did not paint. The one he should have painted.
It takes an enormous effort to walk slowly. He fights the impulse to run out of the building, and each step seems to last a year. One foot is raised and describes an interminable arc in the air before it is again placed on the tile just in time for the other foot to begin. Time seems hardly to move. Somehow Perugia manages to keep his pace calm. The gallery is full of mirrors, and while Perugia thinks this is a good sign, he is not sure. Then, in one of them, he sees two museum employees in white aprons, one of them carrying a wooden box under his arm that looks like it must contain a painting. It takes him a moment to realize that he is seeing himself and Vincenzo Lancelotti; Michele follows behind.
Perugia knows that, in theory, no one will ask them any questions. It is normal for museum employees to take works back and forth for an inspection, or a photograph, or some restoration. They cross the Grande Galerie. About a dozen other workers are preoccupied with their own tasks and pay them no attention. For a moment, Perugia imagines he is carrying the star under his arm, and that it’s burning him. Then he doesn’t think anymore, and that is a relief.
“This way, this way,” he says, opening a door concealed in the molding, and he and the two brothers find themselves on the landing of a service stairway. They close the door, take a deep breath, and pause. The light is poor. Perugia selects a couple of screwdrivers and quickly takes apart the wooden box, sets the covering glass aside on the floor, and wraps the Joconde in a large cloth without looking at her. She is painted on poplar board measuring approximately thirty inches by twenty, and she is light; she is so light.
“Okay, let’s go—downstairs and out!”
“Just like that?”
“I don’t know—yes, I think so.”
Without making a sound, the three of them descend the stairway to the ground floor. Perugia grasps the latch of the door leading to the Cour du Sphinx, but the door doesn’t move; it’s locked. He is not worried; he simply takes out the copy of the key the Signore gave him and slides it into the lock. This doesn’t move either. He tries to force it and almost breaks the key.
“Mother of God,” he says, and he notices that his voice sounds high and tight. The two brothers look at him but do not dare ask him what comes next. To go back up to the second floor to find another way out would be crazy—he can’t keep on walking around with the Joconde under his arm. If they can’t get out on the ground floor they’re going to have to leave their prize. Perugia tries again, but the key remains firmly stuck in place.
“We’ve got to do something, and now!”
Perugia thinks, but nothing comes to him.
The night before, when she got home from the restaurant, she thought she might not sleep and had two more drinks. Now, Valérie Larbin lies on her bed asleep, face down, head to one side, the sheets on the floor beside her, her left arm under her head, her right arm flung out and her legs slightly bent. She has on the white cotton nightshirt she wears when she is alone, and her dark curls spill down her back. A little thread of spittle connects her upper and lower lips. Her grey cat peers at her as she always does.
He is suddenly surprised by an idea—the pleasure of having an idea! He feels magnificent, unstoppable. He tells Michele Lancelotti to go up to the first-floor landing and keep watch at the door there. He has decided to remove the lock, and he begins by unscrewing the door handle. It comes away easily, and he stows it in his pocket.
“A little lock isn’t going to beat us,” he says to Vincenzo, who is watching him. Then
they hear Michele hiss and they freeze.
“Watch out! Someone’s coming!”
“Get down here, quickly,” whispers Perugia, and he slips the painting under his arm, covered by the smock. Michele is down with them now, and together they listen, frozen, to the steps coming closer and closer. There is no time to put back the handle. Perugia closes his eyes. Once again, that blankness. When he opens them he sees Sauvet, the plumber, who is hurrying down the stairs with his bag of tools.
“Some idiot has stolen the door handle,” cries Perugia, almost shouting. “How are we supposed to get out of here, through the keyhole?” He is now genuinely angry.
“Hey there, don’t worry. Take it easy, brother,” says the plumber, opening the door with his key. “Leave it open, then it won’t be a problem,” he tells them before he goes on his way. All they have to do now is to cross the Salle d’Afrique and the Cour Visconti to get to the vestibule and then walk out of the door onto the street. Thirty or forty yards at the most.
“Come on, come on, we’re almost out!”
They are crossing the Cour Visconti when Perugia sees a uniformed guard up ahead. Vincenzo Lancelotti stops dead, and the others with him.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know; wait a minute!”
Perugia looks over to the door on the other side of the Cour Visconti, but it is padlocked. Now they are really sunk.
Valfierno is admiring himself in the mirror. He smiles at himself—such whiteness—and looks at his watch: almost eight o’clock. He tries to concentrate on the races at Longchamps and how he is going to spend his day of glory without anyone realizing, mingling with the elegant crowd to secure his alibi, but he can’t stop conjuring up the image of Perugia. That idiot, he thinks. That idiot Italian! He resigns himself to thinking about Perugia, and it is a black hole. He imagines him walking through the Louvre with the painting in his hands, following each of his instructions, having to make decisions in the face of unexpected events, and he cannot fathom what, if anything, must be going through Perugia’s head. He tells himself that this is always how it is. That the perfect plan often ends up depending on a moron for its success. It’s the same thing the general faces on the battlefield: all his brilliant planning and preparation relies on a bunch of imbeciles who are not worthy of cleaning his boots. He tries his smile again in the mirror, and this time it doesn’t come. He feels so superior, and so helpless. The danger of other people, he reflects, ruefully.
The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa Page 22