“In here, Henry. The drawing room.”
I struggled in. She was staring at the half-set table.
“You didn’t do as I asked with the silverware,” she said. “Did you do anything while I was gone?”
I glanced over at the hearth. A bright rectangle of lighter green wallpaper shone where the picture belonged.
“I had to go to the toilet,” I said. I put down the crate, positioning myself between her and the empty space on the wall, and whipped the picture off the top of the crate as she turned to examine the crystal.
“Oh dear. Well, at least you went back to your own place to do that. I say, Henry?” She turned around quickly and I swept the picture behind my back, but as I did so, I realized this was not going to work, so I continued my awkward movement and staggered backwards, kicking at the desk with the two rejected open bottles of wine. One of them fell with a crash on the floor, and Mrs. Heath shrieked something about her Persian rug, and fell to her knees. I hung my false picture on the wall behind, then sank down as if in a dead faint.
Mrs. Heath saved her Persian rug, after which she was full of solicitude for me, convinced the strain of carrying the heavy crate had given me a turn. She told me to go and get some rest. She’d call a friend to help her prepare for the evening.
When Monica arrived that evening, I told her of my adventures and brought her over to show her the purloined original.
“Is that it?” she said, tilting her head sideways to appraise the work. “Can’t say I think much of it.”
“Neither do I,” I remember saying.
“It should be easy then. Why not make a few copies, while you’re at it? We can sell each one as an original. Make far more that way.”
“We don’t have time,” I said. “If anyone looks at the replacement I’ve put on the wall in there, they’ll spot it immediately for a fake. The sooner we get it back the better.”
“Just copy your own copy. Do I have to do all the thinking for the two of us?”
Half an hour later, Monica returned to her earlier idea. “If you make a good enough copy, can’t you just use that to make another and another?”
“I’ve been thinking about this, Monica,” I told her. “We know nothing about the market. There must be all sorts of things they look for that I haven’t done right. The paper, watermarks, records, and so on. The way I see it is we can sell this only once, but if we don’t want to be caught, we have to sell the original, and watch what sort of things they look for. And we’ll need a good story for why we have it, and we need to make sure she won’t have reported it missing.”
I thought Monica was losing interest in the project, but then she did something that was very crass and revealing, but she thought was very clever. After working for a whole week, I had finished, but was not pleased with my handiwork. It looked like a copy of an original. I had solved the problem of the brightness of the paper and the shine of new ink but there was no fluidity to the composition. When I was back in Mrs. Heath’s drawing room, looking at the aged stop-gap work that I so despised, I realized with a shock it was the better work. Bad, but still better, because it had been done with a free hand. These lines drawn from memory somehow made up an original work of art, done in the style of Yeats. The one I had copied directly was a lifeless replica. It was then I realized that forgery had nothing to do with replication. It was an art form, a getting into the mind of an artist.
When I got back to the mews that evening, Monica was on the settee looking up the cinema listings in Bray. I glanced at my copy of the Jack Yeats and froze, then walked over to the sink to get a cup of buttermilk to hide my face behind and regain my composure. In the upper left corner of the page, she had added a tiny dot of ink. She may have thought it was invisible, but it may as well have been bright red for the way it drew in the eye. She had placed it in one of the best parts of the picture, where I had succeeded in getting the lines to curve and overlap without touching. Quite apart from her display of aesthetic ignorance was the other question of why she had done it, to which I had only one answer: she did not trust me. She wanted to make sure that I really kept the original, that I didn’t give it back to my benefactress.
We saw the film Born Free.
Oh dear God in heaven, how I hated that film and that song. For weeks and weeks Monica hummed it over and over. Even now I can hear Matt Monroe sing “as free as the grass grows.” When the lioness Elsa gets released into the wild, Monica wept. “What elsa were they going to do with her?” I said. Apparently that wasn’t in the slightest bit funny.
Partly owing to the lack of contraception in Ireland then, partly to my own failure of nerve, Monica never stayed over. Usually a cause of regret, this night I was glad to be alone. I had been improving my forgery skills so rapidly that my copy now seemed to me to be a pathetic failure. My attempt at the artist’s signature was not too bad. I had been practicing, and I had discovered for myself a trick. To forge someone’s signature, all you need to do is turn it upside down and copy it that way.
My other elementary mistake had been to make a fresh drawing on a clean sheet of paper, and then try to age it. After my experiment with tea as an ageing agent, I arrived at the solution I was to use for the next few years (until I stopped using anything but original period paper), which was to smoke the sheets over burning green wood. Plane wood can also be used, if you can ever get the plane wood to burn, that is. To put some fox-marks on them to give the impression of the beginning of mold and decay, I had dampened both. On one, I sprinkled a little of the Maxwell House that Monica had bought, on the other I had scraped pieces of rust from one of the old nails sticking out from the walls of my mews. As I took them out now, I could see that the one treated with rust was developing naturally by itself and looked far more natural (though I later discovered that the process can be far too destructive and eat holes in the paper). I took this sheet, and treated it on the back with some glue, which would harden within a few days, giving another sign of authenticity should anyone choose to examine it later.
That night I sat up and copied out the pen and ink wash again, working quickly, getting a far better and far more natural flow to it. When I had finished, it was first light. I put down my pens, flexed my aching hand, sat back, and took off my socks, which smelled a bit. I then dabbed one over the drawing I had just done, very gently, making sure I only rubbed where the ink was dry. The effect was to cause almost invisible smudging and splits in some of the ink lines, as when a stripe of iron filings held in place by a magnet is very slightly pricked by one or two misaligned shavings. The result was almost perfection. My next task was to put Mrs. Heath’s original back without Monica ever knowing. Better to run the risk of being caught than to steal from a woman who had treated me with nothing but kindness. Better to be a forger than a robber.
As it turned out, I had an opportunity to get back into the drawing room that morning when Mrs. Heath, in a fluttering panic, came across to tell me that there was some animal trapped in the chimney of her drawing room. I put a penknife, some glue, and a small screwdriver in my pocket and went up to the big house. When I got there, a filthy pigeon with no tail was lying in the hearth, flapping uselessly. Cleaned up, some of its wing feathers would be serviceable as quills.
I smashed the pigeon’s head with the poker, then pulled the original Jack Yeats from under my shirt, and with great care replaced it in its frame, where I hope it has remained to this day.
On the way down the garden, I crumpled up my first effort in my fist, threw it into the bin without looking at it. A few hours later, Monica was there, peering at my two fakes, her eye roving up to the ugly ink spot she had made.
“They are identical, Henry! Tell me which the original is.”
“Guess.”
She pointed artlessly to the one she had altered. This was supposed to be my big test. Her face was an agony of indecision. One part of her wanted me to nod, saying yes, that was the original, and thus confirm her suspicion that the whole world
was as faithless as her. Another part of her wanted to believe in truth and people’s better instincts. I felt embarrassed for her.
“No, no. That’s my copy, Monica. This one here is the original.”
She beamed at me, tears of trust filling her eyes, and said
The doorbell went. Blume put the notebook on top of the refrigerator and went to answer.
Kristin was wearing a turquoise silk top with three buttons undone and a dark skirt that stopped just above her knees. Her hair was loose and seemed far longer and slightly redder than Blume remembered.
She came in, brushed his two cheeks with her own, then, touching his shoulder and very lightly propelling him forward, brought Blume face-to-face with a young man in his early thirties wearing strong fawn pants and a twill cotton shirt with a closed pocket on each breast. “This is Greg,” said Kristin. “Greg, this is Alec.”
Chapter 16
“Really good to meet you, Alec,” said Greg, taking Blume’s hand. He shook it, squeezed it as he let go, and touched Blume on the elbow as he stepped into the living room. “Kristin has told me all about you. Wow. That’s some story.” His cheeks folded symmetrically when he smiled.
“What story?”
Kristin said, “The story of your life, Alec. Or bits of it.”
“You told him that?”
“Just the relevant bits. How an American citizen ends up becoming an Italian police commissioner.”
“Why?” said Blume. “Are you planning a how-to book? Step one, go to Italy; step two, get someone to shoot your parents…”
“Hey, Alec. Can I use your bathroom?” said Greg.
While Blume was considering this, Kristin gave Greg directions. Then she and Blume went to the kitchen, which still reeked of smoke.
“Who the fuh-” began Blume, but Greg was already back, his eyebrows wrinkled, a cute-quizzical look all over his face.
“Sorry,” said Greg. “I got lost. I think I went into your bedroom, Alec.”
“You didn’t get lost,” Kristin assured him. “The bedroom leads on to the bathroom. It’s what you might call en suite.”
“I don’t like walking into other people’s bedrooms,” said Greg. “There isn’t, like, another bathroom I could use?”
“No, there isn’t,” said Blume.
“Only one bathroom?”
“Does that bother you?” asked Blume.
“No, no, it’s cool,” said Greg and disappeared again.
The kitchen table was still set for two. Kristin added a placemat, then went to the silverware drawer.
“We only need spoons and bowls. It’s chili con carne. The tacos burned.”
“I was wondering about the smell,” she said. “Can I close the window now?”
Blume shrugged. He blew out a red candle on the table. “That was supposed to get rid of the smell, but it didn’t,” he said. He filled a pitcher with tap water and put it in the middle of the table, and removed the silver candlestick.
Kristin sat down and Blume returned to the stove, turned off the flame under the chili, which was beginning to stick, and stirred it.
Greg returned, looked around the kitchen appreciatively, and took the chair opposite Kristin. “Alec, this is a really great little place you got yourself here. Hey, where are you going to sit? You want me to get you a chair? Just tell me where to go.”
Blume opened his mouth to do so, but Kristin stood up. “I’ll get Alec a chair from the living room.”
“Thanks,” said Blume. “I don’t usually have this many visitors.”
“I wonder why that might be,” said Kristin as she passed him.
“Kristin was telling me you don’t drink,” said Greg. “I admire that.”
Blume slapped the heavy serving spoon into the palm of his hand, enjoying its weight and potential. “It’s not all that admirable.”
“It says to me you know how to handle personal issues.” Greg poured some water into a glass.
“Is that what it says to you?” Blume brought the pot over to the table and ladled out three servings.
Greg raised his glass. “Can I get some ice and lemon slices with this?”
“I don’t know,” said Blume. “But you’re perfectly welcome to try.”
Greg smiled and looked around as if for an interpreter.
“There, in the refrigerator,” said Blume.
When Kristin came back with the chair, Greg had his head in the freezer and was saying, “How come you don’t have ice?”
Kristin put the chair at the head of the table, went over to Greg, ushered him back to the table.
“I’ve got a lemon in the refrigerator,” said Blume.
Kristin yanked at the refrigerator door until it opened with a reluctant sigh, and pulled out a wizened half lemon filled with blue mold, which she held aloft. “This the lemon?”
“Yup, that’s him,” said Blume.
The three of them sat down. Greg opposite Kristin, Blume at the head. Greg leaned over to pour some water into Kristin’s glass and said something as he did so.
“No. First we eat, then we talk,” said Kristin. “So what, we use spoons for this?”
“Seems the best way,” said Blume. “It’s a bit more watery than I usually make it.”
He took a spoonful, blew on it, put it into his mouth. Salt, it definitely needed a touch more salt. It didn’t need any more chili pepper, though. Definitely not. He could feel the back of his lips, the roof of his mouth reacting to the heat.
At first he loved the sensation of heat streaming down the back of his throat and from there into his sinuses. As he took a second spoonful, Blume realized that the intensity of the afterburn from the first was still sharpening. The inside of his lips began to numb, and the raw burning in his throat became acute. The sides of his tongue suddenly felt blistered and ragged, and his nose had begun to run freely. By now the trail of heat had wound its way down his esophagus and was attacking the top of his stomach. His intestines were already tightening and loosening and tightening again, trying at once to close off the incoming toxin and preparing to expel it as quickly as possible, explosively if necessary. His eyes were leaking and he started sucking in air in an effort to cool his mouth.
Blume reached for the water pitcher at exactly the same time as Greg, who was just a little quicker. With a reverse flick of his wrist, Blume slapped Greg’s hand out of the way. He poured a glass and downed it without relinquishing hold of the pitcher, which he held hostage in his other hand off the table. He refilled and drank. It seemed only to aerate and intensify the capsaicin. Kristin had put her hands over her ears, pressed her thumbs against her chin, and appeared to be weeping. He passed her the pitcher and she drank the rest of the water. Greg had already gone over to the kitchen sink and was gulping back glassfuls of water, suddenly unmindful of the absence of ice. Blume’s sinuses were streaming freely now, and a sweat had broken out all over his body. He got up from the table and walked quickly to his bedroom and the bathroom, where he splashed his face with water, wiped his nose, sat down on the toilet seat, and clutched his stomach.
Fifteen minutes later, he returned to the kitchen. Greg had his hand pressed against the side of his face like he had a toothache, and Kristin, whose face glistened, had untucked her blouse and opened another button.
“That was pretty intense, Alec,” said Kristin.
“Eating bread is supposed to help,” said Blume.
“So I’ve heard,” said Kristin, “but you seem to have filled your bread box with bread-shaped rocks.”
They left their plates abandoned on the kitchen table and went into the living room. Kristin took the sofa, Blume the armchair and Greg returned to the kitchen for the wooden chair. They sat there like three exhausted swimmers, dripping and breathing heavily for a while, until Kristin, straightening her back and doing up a blouse button, said, “Greg has been here three months. He’s a legat, too, like me. He’s attached to the cultural affairs section.”
“Does he speak I
talian?” said Blume, looking at Greg as he asked the question.
“My Italian was graded excellent,” said Greg. “That’s why they sent me. I also speak Spanish and French.”
“As rare as a white fly, aren’t you?” said Blume.
“Whatever that means. Look, Alec, eighteen months ago you agreed, as an American citizen, to leverage your particular competencies to contribute to the knowledge base of the embassy, correct?”
Blume looked over at Kristin, but got no sympathy.
“Alec, I was talking to you?” said Greg.
Blume picked up the remote control and turned on the TV where the studio guests were shouting as they watched a slo-mo replay of a disputed offside by Zlatan Ibrahimovi c.
“Alec, turn off the TV,” said Kristin.
“No, wait a moment… I want to hear this. Jesus, Roma lost to Siena. Can you believe that? Siena!”
“Alec!” Kristin walked over and turned off the TV. “Come on, this isn’t helping.”
“Stop wasting my time, then,” said Blume. “Let’s talk about Colonel Farinelli. You’re interested in him, or you and your boy wonder wouldn’t be here.”
Kristin laughed. “Alec, grow up. Greg has something to tell you. It concerns events that happened before he was born, but he’s learned all the details.”
“OK, Alec,” said Greg. “I’m going to cut right to the chase if that’s OK with you: the embassy fears embarrassment.” He paused to see if this had any great effect on Blume, then continued: “It’s all ancient history, so it’s not that important, but it would be nice if Farinelli and this Treacy investigation did not mushroom, and open some old wounds.”
“It’s not the history that’s ancient, it’s you that’s young,” said Blume. “After Moro got killed, Cossiga took the reins of power, then handed over to Andreotti who shared with Craxi who passed it on to Berlusconi, and here we all are happy in the present again.”
“That’s pretty simplistic,” said Greg. “And you left out a lot of prime ministers.”
“Simplistic? I’ll tell you what’s simplistic…” began Blume, but Kristin intervened.
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