A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel Read online

  The room looked as if it were transplanted from a nineteenth-century men’s club. The furniture was all burgundy leather, redolent of cigar smoke. A low mahogany table had been remade to double as a lightbox. Heavy brocade curtains suggested windows, but no light was in evidence.

  “Have a seat,” Klinman said. “Put on these gloves.”

  Gabriel felt a flutter of nervous excitement. Whatever the man was about to show him would be important. The setting demanded some sort of unveiling. When Klinman left the room and all was silent, Gabriel could hear the hum of dehumidifiers.

  Klinman returned with a large portfolio. He set it on a desk and unzipped it. As soon as he stepped forward, holding the paper with his gloved fingertips, Gabriel knew what he was looking at.

  It was a small square of paper, probably not more than thirty centimeters, and it held three drawings. The first was a barely rendered face. The lines were exact, if they didn’t quite connect. A young man’s face, an aquiline nose, an erect neck, and a sensitive gaze. Here was youth, but a youth that was concerned: Wounded by the past? Worried about the future? Melancholic? Pensive? Beneath this was a more detailed study. A hand gloved in heavy leather. Gabriel was sure it had some sort of name. A falconry glove? But no, then it would extend up the forearm, and this glove ended at the disembodied wrist. It held its mate, which was limp, sagging, though it maintained the memory of the form of the fingers that had just been inside it. The third sketch was a ruffled, high-collared Renaissance shirt, just a neck. It was a play of shadow, the ruffles suggested by shading rather than line.

  It was obviously a study for Titian’s Man with a Glove; the final canvas hung in the Louvre and Gabriel had seen it a dozen times. A sketch for a work this important was like looking into the artist’s atelier, or even into his brain. Here was how he worked out his precise lines, the faces that registered age, pain, pleasure. Here was the nascent expressive hand so naturally curved and lifelike—an entire portrait boiled down to the placement of one finger, one empty leather finger.

  Carefully, Klinman turned the drawing over. On the back was the ornate mark of its original dealer, which Gabriel didn’t recognize. Also, through the light, Gabriel could see the embossed watermark—the paper had been handmade and signed by its maker. These two marks served to authenticate the drawing. This was a real Titian. The master had drawn this himself.

  “Stunning, isn’t it?” Klinman asked. “People think of dealers as tooth pullers, but we are just as moved by beauty as the next person. We unite beauty with others who appreciate it.”

  Cold air blew on Gabriel’s neck. He felt feverish, and his back was clammy.

  Klinman showed him a succession of significant studies by little-known Renaissance painters, rococo practitioners, and Mannerists. He had an impressive collection. Some came in their original frames. All the while he talked to Gabriel about his profession.

  “This drawing I found in a marché aux puces. It does happen sometimes. I was looking for something else entirely when I came across this Piranesi. The seller had no idea what it was. He had dated it correctly, but he missed the classic Piranesi hand, the subject matter that is unmistakably his piazzas.”

  The afternoon wore on. Gabriel put his head close to each of the drawings, so close he could smell the peaty mold and the fragrant pulp. The smell reminded him of the woodshed where he had painted the Connois all those summers ago, the same dense, rotting earth. He looked at the lines, the hesitations, the fluidities, the places the master pressed down harder and where the line was fainter, fatter, thinner, darker, grayer.

  Then Klinman pulled out a sheet of blank paper. It was old; not quite as old as the others, but meaty, like paper produced with care.

  “Care to venture a guess as to who this is?”

  Gabriel felt confused, intoxicated, like he’d been breathing in turpentine for days. He looked up at Klinman.

  “Come on. You can guess. You’ve gotten every artist right all afternoon, even Chassériau imitating Ingres. You can identify this artist. Try.”

  Gabriel motioned for Klinman to put the page on the light table. It was definitely blank. Klinman was playing some kind of joke on him. The paper had some glue on the edges; it had been pasted into a book, but it had never been drawn on. Faintly, in the top left corner, Gabriel saw the traces of a pencil: £50. He looked up. “Fifty pounds? The paper belonged to someone famous?”

  Klinman chuckled, though he did it kindly so that it wasn’t exactly at Gabriel’s expense. “No, no,” he said. “That’s how much the paper was worth. Before I discovered it was a Connois sketch.”

  Realization dawned on Gabriel like extremities thawing after coming inside from the cold. “A Connois? You want me to draw on this?”

  “It is already drawn.” Klinman stared at him, his face close to Gabriel’s. “Do you not see the Spanish marketplace?”

  Gabriel nodded, though he didn’t exactly see it. Klinman continued, “It looks perhaps like a sketch for Víspera de Fiesta, but not exactly like it. You can see here—” Klinman gestured at a spot on the page that was no different than any other. “Instead of the gypsy selling the fruit, there is a small boy. And there are touches of his other paintings; the clouds from La Baia, this rooster.”

  The paper was beautiful: handmade, pulpy. Gabriel could see how it would absorb the ink and then reject it, making an inimitable smooth line. You couldn’t find paper like this just anywhere. It was a work of art in its own right. Drawing on such a piece would be like opening a five-hundred-euro bottle of wine, or staying at the Ritz—a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Suddenly, Gabriel felt such a strong desire to draw on the paper that he didn’t recognize himself. He felt his hands itching to grab the paper off the light table, to run away with it and make it his. The desire was almost sexual, the raw hunger of it.

  Klinman leaned back. “You understand me now?”

  Gabriel licked his lips, chapped from the cold air. “I think so, yes.”

  “You can restore the drawing, then? Return it to its intended state?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. He was thirsty; he wished Klinman had offered him a drink, though no real art lover would let liquid anywhere near these treasures.

  “Well, then, we will make each other very happy, I suppose.” Klinman lifted the paper by its corner. Gabriel’s mind was already spinning ideas. Klinman put the page inside a cardboard portfolio, then put that in turn into a faux-leather briefcase. “Should be safe like that,” he said. “You take your time.”

  The métro could not come fast enough. Gabriel gripped the briefcase in both hands, holding it in front of him like a schoolboy. He longed to take the paper out and examine it, even here in the station, but he knew that would invite disaster. He felt like he’d won an award, like he’d been singled out as special. For the past decade nothing—no woman, no grant, no group show—had produced anything other than anemic contentment. But now he felt like he had arriving in France years ago with the Connois tucked in his suitcase, his acceptance letter in his shoulder bag, the same exhilaration, the same sense of optimism, of possibility that had eluded him for the past few years as his work failed to impress his professors, colleagues, and gallerists. He’d let them toss him aside like potato peelings, but no longer. He would show them what he could do, what they all overlooked.

  Elm

  On a rainy Friday, a week before she gave birth to Moira, Elm took Ronan to the Morgan Library & Museum. “Is that the house one?” he asked. She wasn’t sure if he was talking about the Frick or the Morgan.

  They rode in the first car of the 6 train, so that Ronan could pretend he was driving it. “If we’re going to Thirty-sixth Street,” Elm said, “where do we get off the train?”

  “Thirty-third,” he said, as though anyone on the planet could answer such a simple question. He was turning an imaginary steering wheel, yelling out the stops when they slowed. The subway car found it cute; people were laughing behind her as she held his belt buckle while he tried to pe
er out the window. Elm couldn’t lift him anymore.

  A black man in a doorman’s uniform came over and, without asking, picked Ronan up so he could see out. Elm was startled—a sudden rush of adrenaline made her extend her arm as though she might snatch him back—but the man was totally benign, just trying to help, and Ronan squealed with delight.

  After Forty-second Street Ronan said, “We get off here,” to the man, and he set him down.

  Elm took Ronan’s hand in the crowded station as they moved slowly up the stairs. The baby was heavy, resting on her pelvis, and picking up her legs was difficult. She had woken up that morning with swollen ankles. The only shoes that fit were her sneakers.

  Ronan’s hand was slightly sticky while hers was sweaty. They walked down Thirty-fifth Street. Usually she let him walk on his own, but today he held her hand the entire way. He walked slightly behind her, as though afraid she’d fall down.

  In the museum, she found him a children’s guide to the exhibition “From Bruegel to Rubens: Netherlandish and Flemish Drawings,” and gave him the first item to find within the intricate drawings, a dog with a curly tail. He stood far back so he could see them. Elm had come to study the exhibit, a sort of continuing education session, which she had left until the last minute, but instead she watched Ronan taking his task so seriously. She could read the triumph on his face when he found the dog, rushing back to tell her, almost running into a middle-aged Italian couple. “I got it!” he screamed, and when Elm put her finger to her lips he whispered it again.

  “Now you have to find a horse,” she said, and he resumed his scrutiny. Elm stood in front of Cossiers’s portrait of his son Guiliellemus. The nose was too large for the small head, but Cossiers had exactly captured the child as his attention was drawn to something else, that moment between focus and excitement that she loved to watch in her own child. Moira kicked inside her and Elm rubbed the spot.

  “Babies, babies, everywhere,” Ronan said next to her, reciting a children’s book. “There”—he pointed to the drawing—“and there”—pointing to her belly.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “Girls,” he observed.

  “Actually,” Elm said, “that’s a picture of a boy with long hair.”

  One of his pant legs was tucked into his sock, and it was time for a haircut. Knowing it was likely the last time they’d spend real time together before the new baby was born, and knowing that everything would change, she held him to her and clung, perhaps a bit too tightly.

  “Ow, Mom, she kicked me,” he said, pulling away.

  “You two are fighting already?” She had felt it too, a little foot wedged between them.

  “I just hope she likes trains,” he said, sighing.

  “Me too,” Elm said.

  She was staring at what would have been a window if she’d had a decent office; she answered the phone only half-paying attention. “Young lady,” the voice on the line said, “I am Indira Schmidt.”

  The name triggered a memory of her afternoon sobbing in the woman’s living room.

  “Young lady,” the woman said. “I would like you to come over.”

  “Now?” Elm asked.

  “Whenever it is convenient for you. I have something to show you.”

  “It’s difficult right now,” Elm said. “Maybe Ian, the young man that was with me before, can come take a look?”

  “It is for your eyes only,” Indira said. “Is that dramatic enough? I want your opinion. If I had wanted that young man’s, I would have called him.”

  Elm sighed. “How about I come by after work tonight?” She considered. She would have to get across town and then up to Columbia. She was committing herself to at least an hour commute each way, though it wasn’t more than a couple of miles.

  “That would be fine,” Indira said. “I’ll expect you then.”

  As Elm waited for Indira to answer the door, she noticed a dead cockroach. She wondered why cockroaches always died feet up, and how they managed to do so. The welcome mat was frayed on the edges. She rang the bell again, heard it loudly on the other side. Was it possible that Indira wasn’t home? That she had forgotten? That she couldn’t hear the bell? Dead? Elm considered what to do if Indira didn’t answer the door. Ring the next-door neighbor’s bell, she decided, and ask them to call the super. Elm was imagining the conversation with the super when the door’s chain began to rattle.

  Indira seemed more resigned to see her than happy. She drew back the door slowly and grimaced. Elm was immediately infused with anger. She had come all the way across town for this woman. The least Indira could do was acknowledge her effort.

  Indira’s apartment looked even darker than it had before, if that were possible. The heavy curtains were still shut tight.

  “I’m sorry,” Indira said, as she limped down the hallway. “Some days are not so good, and this is one of those days.” She collapsed into an armchair, out of breath.

  Elm’s anger melted into pity and guilt. “Can I get you something?” she asked.

  Indira waved her off, her hand crooked like a skeleton in the air. Elm sat down in the armchair opposite her. Between them stood a footed table, a dingy lace runner just slightly larger than the tabletop’s circumference resting on top. There sat an ashtray, its sole contents a dead fly, curled into itself. “Do you know about my family?” Indira asked.

  “The Holocaust, isn’t that right?” Elm said. She placed her hands in her lap, sat up straight.

  “Yes. I was married. They do not know that.” Elm wasn’t sure who “they” were. “He was taken almost immediately: Jew, Communist, student.”

  Elm wasn’t sure what to say. She took advantage of the brief pause to say she was sorry.

  Again, the skeletal hand. “I am telling you this for a reason. You’ll have to trust me. This is not just the ramblings of an old woman. No, it is the ramblings of an old woman, but one who is coming to a point. Young lady, can you please bring me that box there by the lamp?”

  Elm stood and picked up a small curio box. It was plain, the top held by a latch. Elm wondered what was inside it. A broach of some kind that she wanted to show Elm? A portrait on a napkin by Picasso? Indira took the box and opened it. Elm couldn’t see inside it as Indira moved her hands. Then she brought out a small cigarette and a lighter.

  She placed the cigarette in her mouth and handed Elm the lighter. It was antique, and it took Elm two or three tries before she got it to light. When the cigarette caught, Elm realized Indira was smoking pot, and she had to fight to stifle a laugh.

  “Laugh, laugh,” Indira said. “It’s funny to see an old lady get high. I will join you in laughing in a minute.” She took a drag and held it in. Then she flicked it into the ashtray. Indira held out the joint to Elm. “Do you smoke?”

  Elm shook her head. “I have other bad habits.”

  “I know it’s silly, but I turned ninety and thought, what the hell, might as well, and now I keep Columbia’s pot dealers in business.”

  Indira stubbed out the joint in the ashtray on the side table. Elm now saw that what she had thought was a fly was actually a piece of ash.

  “I have been criticized,” she said, “because my work is not political. It doesn’t reference the Holocaust. Why should it? Art is about beauty and balance, nature, and by nature I mean God. If I want to make a statement I use my mouth. We leave politics for the politicians and historians to make up whatever they want.”

  Elm stared at Indira’s profile. Her face was turned toward the painting above the sofa, an abstract that Elm didn’t recognize. But Elm could see that her gaze was soft; she was looking elsewhere.

  “I lived the politics. I don’t have to be reminded.” Indira paused, but Elm sensed she wasn’t supposed to speak. “I had friends in France, and when the Nazis took Jacob my friends insisted I come. When it looked like France would be occupied, they arranged for a U.S. visa, impossible to get at that point, but my friends were … important. I say this because it explains
why it happened. I met him when I attended a state dinner at the White House. He talked to me in German, and he understood. And he wasn’t like the others. His guilt was quiet, like mine. He emigrated. He didn’t have to walk across the Alps or hide in chicken feed or get smuggled out like contraband. He was smart, and he hated himself for it. That was the connection. I’ve never told anyone, but now he’s dead.”

  Elm wasn’t sure who Indira meant. She wondered if the woman wasn’t a little off. “Who?” she asked softly.

  Indira looked at her as though she had just asked her own name. “Blatzenger, of course.”

  “Nixon’s guy?” Elm knew Blitz-Blatz, as everyone called him, had had many affairs, but she hadn’t known that Indira was one of his conquests.

  “I attended a state dinner at the White House. That’s where I met him. We were together for twenty years, until his death.”

  “I didn’t know,” Elm said.

  “No one does,” Indira said. “We were very careful. Toward the end it was an affair without the physical, but we believed in the same God, passionately.”

  “Wow,” Elm said, realizing as she said it how ugly and inadequate the word sounded. How American.

  “There is one more piece that I haven’t shown you. One more. I was supposed to meet him in the Netherlands, but there was a crisis. During the cold war there was always a crisis, and his trip was cut short. Still, he bought this for me, a Connois pastel.”

  “I would love to see it,” Elm said.

  “It’s there.” Indira pointed but her fingers were so crooked it was impossible to tell which way.

  Elm noticed that behind the dining table, leaning against the dark, stained wallpaper, was a large square, undoubtedly a frame, covered by a dropcloth that had the same stained dark green color as the wallpaper, camouflaging it.