A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel Page 17

  “I do not like the word fake. Fake makes it sound as though there were something real that the fake is imitating. This is not the case.”

  Klinman leaned forward so close to Gabriel’s face that he could smell the thick coffee and the deep tobacco on his breath. “It was ours. It was ours and they stole it. This is just squaring the deal.”

  “Well,” Gabriel said. “Wouldn’t returning the real paintings to their true owners or descendants really … square the deal?”

  Klinman chuckled condescendingly. “Say you borrow twenty euros from someone. Then you pay them back. Does it have to be the same twenty euros? Of course not. You spent that twenty euros. It’s a different bill that serves the same purpose.”

  Gabriel nodded. This reasoning did make sense, in a certain way. Of course, it wasn’t a perfect analogy: money, after all, just stood for something. There was no value inherent in the particular piece of paper, so they were interchangeable. Art, however, was not a substitute for something else. It was itself.

  Gabriel felt light-headed, the blood gone to his stomach digesting his large meal. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seems a little bit … unethical? Illegal? Deceiving people like this?”

  Klinman put out his cigarette. “I deal with some of the most important curators and dealers in the world. They have everything to lose by dealing with me and nothing to gain. Except exceptional art. Gabriel, I like you for the same reason all older men like younger men. I see myself in you. Your heritage has been taken from you. You have the goods, obviously.” Klinman waved his hand, palm up, stating the obvious. “Why won’t they let you use them? Why do you spend all day pushing papers for that poof Édouard? What works of Michelangelo might we lack now if he had to, I don’t know, tote water instead of being patronized by the Medicis? If they are going to try to keep you down, then you employ any means necessary to pick yourself back up, yes?”

  Klinman’s voice was rising. People in the emptying restaurant were staring. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Gabriel said.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Klinman said. “I know. I shouldn’t get so worked up. But when I see bogus bourgeois morality, invented precisely to restrain people, prohibiting creativity and progress, I get upset.”

  Klinman paid for lunch and they stepped outside. While they were eating, it had grown overcast. Rain looked imminent. A cold breeze had picked up. Klinman turned the collar of his suit jacket up to cradle his neck. He handed Gabriel a thousand-euro bill. Gabriel had never seen one before. “We’ll work out the rest of the payments later. I’m off.” He shook Gabriel’s hand, and before Gabriel could reply, Klinman had turned his back and was walking away briskly.

  Gabriel was certain he’d offended Klinman. He hadn’t meant to. He liked the man, respected him, and needed the money the man would provide. He just didn’t like making money off others’ ignorance.

  He called Colette; again, no answer. She was probably out for lunch. She liked her independence, appointments he didn’t know about, “girls’ nights” where she and her friends dressed up and went dancing. Gabriel was racked with jealousy on those nights, managing to convince himself that she was picking up men. Sometimes he found the thought erotic, even as he lay awake thinking about how much he wanted to be with her.

  Suddenly, he was getting what he wanted—money, respect. So why did he feel rather like he’d been rejected yet again, from a fellowship or grant. Don’t be stupid, he thought, and went to spend his newfound wealth, but he discovered that a thousand-euro bill is not money that can be spent. He had to go to a bank to get change to buy an umbrella for the rain that was starting to fall.

  When Gabriel emerged from the métro near his studio the rain was steady, thick gooey drops that seemed to hang in the air and then explode upon contact with the ground. Outside the front door, under the awning, sat Didier and Hans, a half-empty bottle of rum at their feet. In the gray light, Hans looked older; the lines around his eyes had increased. Did that mean Gabriel looked older too?

  “Hey,” Didier said. “We’re celebrating. Join us.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Gabriel pulled up a crate and sat down with them. He accepted the bottle offered to him and took a swig. The liquor made him feel like it was raining inside his gut as well as outside.

  “It’s Friday,” Hans said. “We made it to Friday.”

  “Thursday, I think, actually,” Gabriel said.

  “Reason enough for me. Happy Thursday,” said Didier, and took a large swig, wiping his mouth on his paint-splattered sleeve. “But actually, we are celebrating that Brigitte’s pregnant.”

  Gabriel received the news just as he tilted the bottle back. He lowered it while gulping. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, wild, right?” Hans nodded emphatically.

  Didier said, “I asked him if he knew who the father was.”

  Hans ignored him. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

  “Of course, sorry. No one … I didn’t think … Did you mean …? Congratulations,” he finally said. He handed the bottle back.

  “They’re not even married and the old lady wants his art out of the house,” Didier said, laughing.

  “The fumes.” Hans shrugged. “So I took a space here.”

  “Wow, a kid.”

  Hans said, “You look like you’re smelling shit. It’s not a bad thing. We’re really excited.”

  “Sorry,” Gabriel said.

  Didier pulled a joint out of his cigarette carton. “This requires a little hash.”

  Gabriel felt the liquor spreading its warmth. He hadn’t realized how much he missed this camaraderie, how good it felt to be talking, drinking, laughing.

  Didier sparked his lighter and breathed in deeply. “So you’ll have to quit this shit once the baby’s born, huh?”

  “Don’t see why I should.” Hans took his turn.

  Before Gabriel could stop himself, he giggled, clapping a hand to his mouth to stanch it too late. The two men looked at each other and laughed, and then paused and laughed again. Gabriel took the joint and breathed deeply. The smoke traveled through him, a gritty hurt.

  “I don’t know, man,” Hans said, breaking a silence. “It’s going to be weird, being a father.”

  “Hmmm,” Gabriel said. Didier examined the end of his shoelace.

  “My father was such an asshole, you know? I barely knew the guy. Bavarian and cold, like … like …”

  “Yesterday’s weiner schnitzel,” Didier provided. Hans glared at him.

  “I only went to his funeral for my mom’s sake.”

  “Hmmm,” Gabriel said again. He thought about his own father’s funeral. His mother, weeping copiously, leaning on the employees of the funeral home for support. And Gabriel in a suit too short for his long legs, embarrassed for a thousand different reasons, wanting to feel sadder than he did, but mostly angry.

  Without thinking, Gabriel asked, “If you guys could fuck over the art establishment, would you?”

  “Yes,” they both answered at once.

  “What if it was kind of illegal?”

  “Are you thinking of something in particular?” Didier upturned the bottle and shook it over his mouth to get the last few drops.

  “No, it was just, like, a question.”

  Hans looked at him curiously.

  “Not that shit we did for the hotel guy?” asked Didier.

  “No, it’s just … forget it,” Gabriel said, shaking his head violently, as if clearing water from his ears.

  “No, what?” Didier said.

  “You brought it up,” Hans said.

  “Fine.” Gabriel paused. “I was reading about this guy who forged old master paintings.”

  “The Italian guy?” Didier asked.

  “I think he was English,” Gabriel said.

  “I heard about him,” Hans said. “Hepburn or Stubborn, or something. Didn’t he go to jail?”

  “He forged paintings and made them look old and then sold them. They’re all ov
er museum collections.”

  Didier said, “Did he claim they were Rembrandts or whatever?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Gabriel. “I think he just brought them into auction houses.”

  Hans said, “They decide who painted it.”

  “He just copied a painting and everyone thought it was a real Rembrandt?” Didier still didn’t get it.

  “No,” Gabriel said. “He didn’t copy anything. It was an original painting, but in the style of the master.”

  “Wasn’t that the guy who snuck into the Tate and planted a false catalog, or doctored the records with an X-Acto knife and some school glue?” Hans asked.

  Didier brushed ash off his lap. “If those fucking bastards are too stupid to tell a Rembrandt from their assholes, then I think they deserve to get taken.”

  “Very fancy, coming from someone who’s showing at de Treu.”

  “Exactly my point,” Didier said. “They have shit for brains.”

  Hans shook his head. His hair flopped into his eye, and he brushed it back, using his fingers as a comb. “Intent to deceive is deception.”

  Gabriel and Didier looked at him. Didier said, “The whole art world is completely fucked up. It rewards youth because it’s novel; it rewards simple art because it’s palatable and it discriminates against innovation. It’s almost our duty to infiltrate and expose the hypocrisies.”

  “That’s a really juvenile justification,” Hans said. “That’s like pulling the fire alarm at school.”

  “How is that like pulling the fire alarm?” Didier’s voice rose. He was getting angry.

  “Lashing out at authority figures because you’re frustrated with the establishment.” The stubble from Hans’s beard showed in relief in the light cast by the entryway as he leaned forward.

  Gabriel remained silent, watching the two men. This was how he thought he’d feel in art school. Slightly stymied by the language, more stymied by the sheer education and intellectualism of his peers. But as it turned out, art school was actively anti-intellectual. Emotions were privileged. If you overthought your art, you weren’t naturally talented. But then you were supposed to come up with some sort of artist statement that, through the gobbledygook of art-speak, would shed light on the intellectual process behind the art that you were supposed to create without intellectual process. No one’s French was that good, not even Flaubert’s.

  But here he was, eavesdropping on a conversation he’d started about ethics and creation of art, and he felt like it was pretentious and a waste of time. Maybe the hash was making him feel impatient, but the theoretical argument seemed more like posturing to him. Hans was justifying his conventional, moral life, and Didier was trying to attack him for it. It was the same old shit, with art as the weapon.

  “Who said anything about lashing out? It’s like a war. No one has any moral high ground.” The conversation was getting increasingly heated.

  Gabriel stood up, brushing his pants down his thighs. “I’m going in. Congratulations again.”

  “Thanks.” Hans waved absently. He turned back to Didier. Then Gabriel realized they weren’t angry with each other. This was a debate, friendly and substance-fueled. Nothing was at stake. As he entered his studio and the voices receded behind him, he was struck again by his ability to feel shut out, even from a conversation he himself instigated.

  There are decisions, Gabriel mused, that can change your life. And often those decisions are both spontaneous and ill considered. He had made a joke at a dinner party. And he had done a favor for his girlfriend’s uncle. Several favors, actually. And, from the nadir to which his life had descended—artistic slavery, intense professional jealousy, wasted potential—he rose suddenly to exultant heights.

  Klinman had given him a dozen more sheets of period paper, and Gabriel had filled them with Piranesis, Canalettos, and Connoises in exchange for several thousand euros. He had gotten good at being almost nonchalant with the paper, not worrying he would smudge a line, or betray too much Connois the younger and not enough Connois the elder. He drew market scenes, Italian squares, his childhood kitchen, the buildings on the Île St.-Louis. His bedroom had turned into a veritable sizing factory—rare was the evening when there was not a piece of paper drying.

  When Colette made one of her frequent trips to New York, he missed her with an intensity that worried him, one that he was not sure was reciprocal. He examined his ardency like a lump found suddenly under his armpit, with concern. He usually found women irritating, but that might have been because he tended to date the young École students and graduates, who found his experience alluring. Ultimately, the relationships ended in tears when the women realized Gabriel had no interest in deepening the commitment. These young bohemians, who professed to enjoy having someone to go see openings with, to walk in the Tuileries on Sunday afternoons, to fuck every few days to mutual satisfaction, were really just biding their time until marriage. He simply wasn’t built for relationships. He met people, spent time with them, gradually there was a mutual loss of interest and he moved on. Some took longer to try his patience. Some he couldn’t get away from fast enough. But to live with someone, on purpose, to start sharing toothpaste and finances and friends, seemed boring at best.

  Gabriel knew his avoidance of deep relationships probably revealed something dysfunctional about him. But what if it wasn’t pathological? What if this was just the way he was wired? He didn’t feel unhappy. He didn’t feel lonely—not often—even when he celebrated his fortieth birthday by himself at the studio. He was poor, but that was a choice he’d made a long time ago. Shouldn’t there be people in the world who shunned convention, congenitally, to balance out those who wanted monogamy and offspring? What if he was a loner by DNA? The irony, he did not fail to recognize, was that he voiced these thoughts to no one, and so there was no one to provide the counterargument, if such a thing existed.

  He went reluctantly back to his shared apartment, which was where he was when Patrice Piclut phoned him. It took him a minute to place the name, and then he remembered: the gallery owner at Klinman’s dinner party. Patrice wanted to pay a studio visit. Would Gabriel be around tomorrow?

  Gabriel got to the studio earlier than he ever had, rearranging canvases to look like he’d been hard at work, like he’d always been hard at work, on his own paintings. He used his elbow to sweep the pencil shavings off the work table onto the floor, then shooed them to the corner with his foot. He took all the crusted cans of dried-out paint, some with preserved bugs, some with science-worthy dust and mold specimens, to the communal sink, where he let them clatter and left them.

  Sure enough, like clockwork, Marie-Laure stuck her head into his studio minutes later. “Um, about the sink?”

  Gabriel fought the urge to tell her to go fuck herself. It sounded so great in French: Aller se faire foutre. Instead he said, “I can’t talk to you right now. I’m waiting for a studio visit from the Picluts.”

  Marie-Laure stuck her chin out in disbelief. “The Picluts?”

  “Yes,” he said nonchalantly. “I met them at dinner a couple of months ago. They want to come see my work.”

  “Would they want to come next door?” Marie-Laure pointed with her brush to her studio space.

  Gabriel shrugged, and Marie-Laure scurried back into her studio, where he heard her similarly straightening.

  He adjusted his lights. He leaned on his table. He stood by the large wall. He paced. He went to the front door to look. He went back inside. Finally he realized he couldn’t just stand there, and busied himself with a modern miniature, which kept him sharpening his pencil every thirty to forty seconds. He decided to draw the Louvre, in imitation of the thousands of small frontispieces of the palais. But his drawing depicted the shimmering glass of the new, horrific entrance that obscured the original square. Mitterrand had already committed architectural murder by the time Gabriel moved to Paris.

  There was a polite knock on the door. Patrice stepped into the studio, followed by Paulet
te, who was carrying an enormous purse. She was on the phone and she smiled before turning her back to Gabriel.

  Patrice stood for a long time in front of each of Gabriel’s eight pieces. His face betrayed no emotion, but he seemed utterly enthralled, scratching at the small goatee under his lip as if in parody of thinking. Finally Paulette got off the phone and stood beside him in silence. They moved together from piece to piece, shifting as if by wordless signal.

  Patrice turned to him. “I love most of all the incongruity of your images.”

  “Absolutely,” Paulette echoed. “The juxtaposition of unlikely elements is echoed by your choice of color. Were you consciously commenting on the state of French immigration?”

  “Um,” Gabriel said. Had he been? Had he been painting his own carte de séjour visa status?

  “It’s really fantastic,” Patrice said. “How many of you work out here?”

  “About ten,” Gabriel said. “It’s really cheap.”

  “And hard to find. Like a geode,” Paulette said.

  “I’d offer you a coffee, but …” Gabriel let the thought trail off.

  Patrice began to speak but Paulette cut him off. “No, we’re on a really tight schedule. Thank you so much. This has been a real pleasure.”

  “A pleasure,” Patrice echoed.

  And they were gone. Almost immediately, Marie-Laure appeared in the doorway. “They seemed to really like it.”

  “It was all art-language bullshit,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t look at her face.

  “Yes, but it was convincing art-language bullshit,” Marie-Laure said.

  The phone call came a few days later, while Gabriel was walking home from the métro. Patrice, on speakerphone with Paulette, offering him a solo show. Would September work? They were going to have a series of shows on immigrant artists. Gabriel was so excited he forgot to be angry that yet again he was exoticized for his nationality.

  Patrice said, “We especially liked the market scenes.”

  “What market scenes?”

  “The ones that are reminiscent of Connois’s scenes, but with a contemporary irony that modern life cannot escape.”