The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa

by Martin Caparros

  “Then I read in the papers that the top policemen from France, England, and America had been searching for the painting. That they’d sent people to Germany, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Russia…Think of that! And I had it! What morons! All they had to do was find me,” he says, and again he is quite serious. More time went by. Perugia was getting anxious at the lack of news from the Signore, but he continued to wait.

  “When he left, he said he was going to send me instructions and more money. He said he was going to come back to get the painting and take care of everything. I believed him; why shouldn’t I? Think about it—why would he go to all this trouble and then not come back for the painting? But then months went by, he didn’t come, and I started wondering.”

  He tells me that occasionally, he would take La Joconde out of her secret hiding place and prop her up on the table in his room, with a candle on either side of her.

  “Yeah, you know sometimes I’d spend hours just looking at her. Did you ever see her, mister, close up?”

  “Not as close as you.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. And I bet you saw her in the museum. It’s real different to see her in the museum and to have her at home, to know that she’s yours, that you could do whatever you wanted to her.”

  “Like what, for example?”

  “I don’t know—nothing. Can I tell you one little thing?” he asks me, tilting his head in a very odd way.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Suddenly Perugia seems very shy. He doesn’t look at me while he’s talking.

  “You know what I would do? Sometimes, I’d take out my mandolin and sing to her.”

  “Your mandolin?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you know? I play the mandolin real well,” he tells me with a flash of pride. I ask him then what he used to sing to her, but he doesn’t answer. He is silent, looking at something far away.

  “And did you talk to her?”

  “To who?”

  “To La Joconde.”

  “Why would I do that?” he snaps, now irritated. I suspect that he did but that he’d never tell me. Then I ask him what he thought about the Signore, who he imagined him to be, and he tells me he thought different things. He tells me that he tried not to think about who he was or where he came from, but that he couldn’t avoid it. He says he had imagined lots of things, but that he didn’t want to tell me what they were, just in case. And he says that, at the beginning, he waited calmly.

  “He didn’t tell me what he was going to do, but that didn’t worry me ’cause he never told me anything. I don’t know, first I thought that he was looking for someone to buy the thing and that he needed to wait until things calmed down, so I wasn’t surprised that it was taking so long. He wrote to me a few times, you know…”

  “Where did he write to you from?”

  “Phew, incredible places—New York, Cairo…Once he wrote to me from Tangier. I thought he was looking for someone to buy her. It was going to be hard to sell her with all those police. I was sure he was just looking for a buyer,” he says, and at that moment our table is hit squarely with birdshit, white, green, and brownish. Perugia smiles and says it’s good luck.

  “Especially for you,” he says. He tells me that it’s good for him as well, but that he has no need of luck now, that his life now is all set. But that in those days he sure had needed it.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, it was tough. I waited, I’d get nervous; I couldn’t keep any job. I couldn’t stick to a schedule or put up with my bosses.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I don’t know if you can. I had La Joconde under my bed—you think I was going to let some nobody yell at me?” he says, smiling. “And I still had money left, even if I was starting to run out.”

  “So you bet with the money you had left.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, that’s what happens, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean by that—did you check up on me?”

  It had only been a guess, but his reaction told me I’d been right. His face especially.

  “Did you lose all of it?”

  “Yeah, you’re right, almost all of it. I thought my luck had changed, you know? If I could steal the most valuable painting in the world, how come I couldn’t win betting on soccer or boxing, or playing goddamn cards? But of course I was wrong; my luck hadn’t changed.”

  Perugia was running out of money, but he wasn’t that worried. He still thought Valfierno would appear with a pile of cash to pay him what he owed him.

  “See what my life was like, mister? I was sleeping on a gold mine and I didn’t have a penny. Later, when I looked at her I thought the bitch was laughing at me. You know that smile—she was laughing at me! Because I was going hungry with her under my bed. What was I supposed to do? Hold on to her for that guy? I would have waited as long as it took, but for that he had to say something, at least ask me. I started to hate him, that stuck-up bastard. I waited two years. You know how long that is—two years?”

  Perugia is getting worked up, waving his hands in all directions. I try not to look alarmed, but I’m beginning to understand one thing—Valfierno’s mistake. What had seemed like a perfect plan had one critical flaw: it abandoned its principal actor. And it could have been much worse if Perugia had not waited so long to act—his lack of imagination once again. He was penniless, he had the painting, and he had his new hatred, but it didn’t occur to him to put those things together. About a year after the theft, Perugia started to think about what to do with the Madonna he was sharing a bed with.

  “See how it was? Look, since I’m telling you everything, I might as well tell you this: it occurred to me that he must have died. I thought he must have died out there someplace and he couldn’t tell me. One night when I was with the candles, looking at the painting, I suddenly thought, What an idiot! He’s dead; the guy is dead! I was even a little sorry, I’m not kidding. Who knows where it happened? And if he was dead, that explained everything, and then the painting was mine, you understand?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  “Was he dead?”

  “No, Perugia, he was quite alive,” I tell him, and it’s true; it was true then.

  “Shit!” he says, and again: “Shit! He wasn’t dead!”

  Then he’s looking into space again, his hands on his hair, on his glass, the sound of him drinking. It’s a tough moment—once again the story he’d built about what had happened is coming apart. I feel sorry for him. I’m tempted to tell him the truth, but I need to hear the rest of the story first. Then I ask him what he decided to do with the painting, but he doesn’t answer.

  “I suppose you tried to find someone to buy it?” I venture, to see what he will say.

  “No, no, I wasn’t interested in that. I don’t know anybody like that, who buys paintings in that way. Anyway, I didn’t think of selling it.”

  “Come on, Perugia. When you were arrested in Florence, they found a list of well-known collectors in your room in Paris. You even had the addresses of people like Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, Rockefeller.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they said.”

  “And it was true.”

  “It might be true. But I don’t know how to get to people like that, and anyway, I wasn’t selling anything. I wanted to give the painting back to my country.”

  This had been his claim throughout the trial, though it just wasn’t believable. At least it wasn’t what he was thinking at first, when he was trying to figure out a way to sell it.

  The ants on our table are attracting the attention of the sparrows. Perugia scares them off by banging his hand on the table—too hard, almost knocking over a glass.

  “Who gave you the idea of bringing it to Italy?”

  “No one gave me the idea. I thought of it myself, once I thought he was dead.”

  “Come on, Perugia, I know how it is. There you are one night, someone says something, a man, a woman…”

  “No, it was a
man, a man,” he says without thinking. Suddenly, he scrambles to his feet. It’s late now; Perugia knows it. He takes another gulp of wine and then tells me how one morning, out of work, he was in the bistro with a fellow Italian, talking about how badly they were treated by the French; who did they think they were? And his compatriot said that the French treated them like thieves, when in fact it was the French who had stolen lots of things from the Italians: statues, paintings, even some words. And Perugia asked him what paintings, for example? And his companion told him that the most famous one was the Mona Lisa, and that Napoleon was the one who had taken it when he invaded Italy, and brought it back to France, and that now they were making all this fuss about the painting being stolen, and wouldn’t it be funny if an Italian had taken it, what did he think? And he said yes, that would be funny.

  “So then I knew what I had to do, you know? I had to give my country back what that Italian turncoat Bonaparte had stolen from it. Now that sure was good—a carpenter defending his country better than any generals or kings, isn’t that a good one?”

  “But Napoleon didn’t take that painting.”

  “Who says?”

  “Come on, Perugia, you know this now: Leonardo sold that painting to the king of France, François I.”

  “That’s what some people say. You know how it is—everyone lies.”

  Perugia is uncomfortable again and falls silent. The sun is going down and the birds are getting raucous. Two girls on bicycles pass along the cobbled street in front of the church. They are wearing flowered dresses, their hair loose. The blackshirts whistle and call out offers of love. The girls keep riding without turning around, playing their role.

  “You know what? There’s something not a lot of people know, but I’ll tell you. The Signore told me, and he was right: The Mona Lisa is cursed.”

  “What?”

  “She’s cursed, she brings bad luck. The Signore explained it all to me when we were going over the plans. He told me the whole story. It’s long; I don’t want to go into all of it. The point is that she gets everyone who tries to keep her. What you have to do is give her to someone else, keep her moving.”

  “And you were brave enough to steal her, knowing this?”

  “I was just stealing her, not keeping her. Sure, it was a risk, but fortune favors the bold, didn’t anyone ever tell you that? I took a risk stealing her, but keeping her…,” says Perugia, and he touches his left hand to his crotch, making no attempt to be discreet.

  The wind has come up. The domino players are already gathering up their wooden pieces. Valfierno must have told Perugia this gypsy curse story to discourage his henchman from betraying him or making off with the painting. But his invention had ended up working against him. Perugia got more and more anxious. Many nights he would take La Joconde out from her hiding place in the box beneath his bed, and he would look at her, touch her, talk to her in his own dialect, and try to understand where she kept her curse.

  “Two years with that witch under my bed, Signore, two damned years! I know you won’t believe this, but a lot of times I thought about just burning her.”

  “Burning her?” I say, barely able to speak. Perugia smiles to himself.

  “Sounds strange, doesn’t it? It isn’t that strange. But I didn’t do it, I was scared that if I did burn her all the bad luck could stick to me forever. In the end, that’s why I didn’t. What a joke! As if you could avoid it…,” he says, almost in a whisper. I suddenly understand that it’s been years since he’s spoken about any of this. That he needs to tell it all again to someone, to revisit who he is and what his story is.

  “So you decided to bring the painting here.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “You took it to your own country knowing that it would bring it bad luck?”

  “No, no, it’s not bad luck for countries. Look at France—they should be completely sunk, but they’re doing pretty well. No, it’s only for people,” he says, with unassailable logic. He tells me that this is why he brought the painting here. That and because finally he would be someone—the hero who returned the Mona Lisa to Italy.

  “Think about it—I had everything working in my favor. I didn’t count on the politicians doing what they usually do. Thank God Il Duce has got rid of them all.”

  “And what did Matilda say when you decided to take the painting home?”

  “What?”

  Perugia stands up again, puts on his hat, and looks at me as if seeing me for the first time: a judge, a policeman, an enemy. I touch his arm to calm him; his sleeve is greasy. He sits down. I can’t go back now:

  “Yes, Matilda. Don’t pretend, Perugia, you know exactly who I’m talking about.”

  “Look—don’t bring Matilda into this,” he says fiercely. Now he’s defending a girl’s honor—a girl who must be fifty by now. He had known her in the months after the theft, a peasant girl from Alsace, a maid in a house of bourgeoises. Blond, no doubt.

  “You’ve got no right! She had nothing to do with it! She was a good girl—simple, loving; not like the other.”

  Perugia had lost control. The journalist had a duty to take advantage of it.

  “What other one? What do you mean, ‘the other’?”

  “Nothing! It doesn’t matter. Matilda never knew anything about the painting. In all that time I never said a word to anyone about it. I know how to keep a secret; not like some people…”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “No one, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me, please.”

  “No. I can keep a secret.”

  I don’t push; it’s a good idea to let him have the occasional small victory.

  “And Valérie never knew anything?”

  “How should I know what she knew? Don’t even say her name to me. That woman thinks Italians are dogs, that Italian men aren’t real men—I don’t even know what she thinks. Don’t even say her name out loud!”

  I need to know what became of her, but it’s obviously something I won’t be able to get from Perugia, who is agitated and twisting around in his wooden chair, glancing all around him. We are alone now. Standing by the door to the café, the owner waits for us to leave once and for all.

  “Didn’t it remind you of Valérie?”

  “What?”

  “I mean the painting, La Joconde. Didn’t it ever make you think of Valérie?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all right. It’s just that the Signore told me that it reminded him a lot of her.”

  “The Signore?”

  Perugia pours himself what’s left of the wine, drinks it down in one gulp, and tells me that he’s never been able to decide whether or not he still owed the Signore anything.

  “In the end, I don’t know whether he ruined my life or saved it,” he says, and for a moment it occurs to me that I have misjudged him, that he is much more astute than I’ve given him credit for. Then he tells me it’s time for me to pay him. I reach for the wallet in my jacket pocket.

  “No, Mr. Becker—I mean really pay. The Signore’s name. Maybe if I know it I’ll be able to figure out if I owe him anything or not.”

  He’s right—I had promised him much more than money.

  “His name was Valfierno—the Marqués Eduardo de Valfierno.”

  “Marqués? And why did you say ‘was’?”

  That second question seems to me to be the important one.

  “Because the Marqués de Valfierno is no longer,” I tell him, and he asks me where he came from, and before I can answer him he also tells me that he had noticed that the Signore spoke good Italian but that he had also noticed an accent, and he couldn’t figure out where it was from. Maybe Calabrese, he tells me, or Sicilian.

  “He was Argentine.”

  “Argentine? Where from?”

  “From Argentina, Perugia. From South America.”

  “Really? And he’s dead?”

  “Yes. That’s
why I’m talking to you now.”

  “Dead? He’s really dead?”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “It’s funny, I don’t even know. When did he die? Where? What happened?”

  The Jocondes

  1

  HE OPENS THE NEWSPAPER AND scans for the story. It’s not there. He must be an idiot, he thinks—if the story is in here it’s got to be on the front page. With mounting concern, he opens another paper, and another, and another. There is no story. The Parisians publish so many newspapers, and not one of them has the story. The afternoon editions say that the heat will continue but not the rains; that Nijinsky is dancing Stravinsky with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes; that the Germans have sent torpedo boats to the Moroccan coast; that the train workers are preparing to strike; and that those cheap new cigarettes, Gauloises, are too strong for French tastes. Nothing of any interest to him—all garbage. The story is not there.

  In that arbitrary moment in history, the father of that man is a man who does not define himself that way. He is not yet convinced that to be that man’s father—to be anyone’s father, for that matter—is the way to define a person. And as it happens, he does not have much time left to find that definition—or any other. A man can go through his whole life without discovering what truly defines him; he can go through his entire life without even bothering to look for it. He can quite sensibly suppose that it isn’t possible or necessary to define himself in terms that words can encompass. But it often happens, in this story and in others, that a man is identified as the father of another. Then the rest of his life, apart from the four, or five, or twenty minutes of excitement spent on a woman, will count for nothing before the force of that jet of life, of the blood essence in that jet. It can take a man years to learn that this is what will define him in the end. Most men will never learn it.