French Girl with Mother

by Norman Ollestad

  forty-seven

  Rain splattered the glass, a subtle drumroll accompaniment to our lovemaking. “Punish me,” she whispered, and she opened her thighs wider, as if acknowledging her exploitation of my dreams and craving to be split in half, her penance. I obliged her; it was one of the ways we communicated.

  She let out a long deep sigh and we shuddered in spasms, collapsing in a heap on the bed. A few minutes of recovery, then she rested her hand on my heart.

  “I thought it would make you happy,” she said. “Secure the money in time for your big show. But don’t do it if it’s going to cause tension between us. Okay? Love is more important.”

  I turned toward a breeze coming through the window. No matter the game she was playing, the manipulations, my gut told me her love was a separate entity, and therefore real—she wanted to help me find success, and help her uncle, and help herself, none of them mutually exclusive.

  “He’s going to sell those drawings as authentic Schieles, isn’t he?” I said.

  “That’s his risk,” she argued. “There is no law against drawing them. Only selling them.”

  Again, I had no other way to come up with a thousand euros, plus another four or five hundred for a cheap plane ticket, in less than two weeks, while also finishing the double portrait. The lure of no longer being at the mercy of Jean Luc and Sophie, of finally towing my own weight with Anaïs, was hard to shake, and imagining all that money in my pocket gnawed at me, sung to me, gave me a sense of floating above the fray. If I just do this one thing, which in itself is not against the law, perhaps I could be free.

  forty-eight

  Jean Luc had to go away on business and I wondered if that had been planned or at least encouraged by Bernard. When Anaïs and I arrived at Bernard’s house, there were fresh croissants and café au lait waiting for us.

  “I think you should work in the living room,” he said. “Everything in there is turn-of-the-century or earlier.”

  “Okay,” I said, understanding that every detail would be scrutinized by whoever was hired to authenticate the newly discovered Schieles. “But what about the paper and pencils?” I asked him.

  “No problem,” he said. “The previous owner of this house, a painter from the twenties, left stacks of old drawing paper, with boxes of crayons and pencils, all kinds of materials from the turn of the century, in the cellar.”

  Bernard got off the stool and opened the iron gate while the Doberman stood guard, and Anaïs added to the story.

  “He and his mother, my grand-mère, would make their own Renoirs. When they thought they’d mastered him, they each took their favorite piece to some galleries in Paris, saying they’d discovered the paintings at an old house. Even after the gallery people had them inspected, Bernard’s was accepted! Once they’d had their fun, they revealed the secret and gave the money back.”

  “So he’s done this before,” I said.

  “Oui,” she said sharply, irritated that I wasn’t as enthralled by his hijinks as she was.

  Bernard arrived with the four Schieles, passing us in the kitchen and laying them across the marble slab in the living room. I stood over the drawings, studying them, while he brought up the stacks of old paper, pencils, and watercolors for me to work with, and an easel.

  “All set?” he said, and I nodded, never taking my eyes off the Schieles.

  I heard him leave out the front door and when I looked up again Anaïs was taking off her clothes. She curled up in one of the smoking chairs. I gathered up the Schieles and carefully moved them to a corner couch where they could no longer intimidate me.

  Making the drawings convincing will demand my total surrender, I told myself. I put a blank sheet of paper at the foot of the smoking chair and kneeled. Looking past her thighs, I studied her chin and jawline. She was looking out the French doors, presumably at the statues, lawn, river. I made some initial marks and then, as if she understood we needed some sort of catalyst, she opened her legs, grabbed my hair, and stuffed my face between her thighs.

  When she was on the edge of climax, I slouched back to the floor. Stymied on the cusp, with one corner of her mouth kinked somewhere between lust and loathing, eyes wound like a bloodthirsty animal, her expression ignited me, and from there, the pencil struck the paper as if from Schiele’s own hand. The lines came preordained, so electrifying that I wouldn’t let Anaïs rest. By lunch, I had five drawings done and she walked out on me, heading for the river.

  Bernard returned with food from the market. He saw the drawings on the floor and studied them.

  “I won’t sign his name,” I told him.

  He flung a shoulder upward. “I have someone who will do that,” he said. “But I only like these two.” He pointed at the more graphic drawings. “And we need three.”

  I glanced out the window. Anaïs was walking up the lawn, coming in from the river.

  “And if I don’t like the next one you have to keep trying.”

  “No way. I’m only doing one more. I need to get back to my own stuff, Bernard.”

  “I can make your sessions with Sophie quite difficult,” he warned. “One word about it to Anaïs and you lose everything. Everything.”

  I wondered how he’d found out. Did his brother tell him, confide in him, or was it Sophie? Maybe he caught on, came by one morning when we were working, then confronted her, or told Jean Luc? In any case, now he had me by both balls. Even if I didn’t care about losing Anaïs, which wasn’t true, I would still need access to Sophie while I married the two figures onto what I’d come to realize needed to be a bigger surface, refining, making sure it was right, with a last chance to discover something new.

  “Fine,” I said, and I went to the kitchen.

  forty-nine

  Bernard approved the next drawing. “Almost better than Schiele himself,” he said. Now I had to add the watercolor. Anaïs was angry that I didn’t make love to her, to celebrate your achievement, but I was on a roll and there was no time or need for sex or sleeping, just for working. She left her uncle’s house in the small hours.

  In the morning, I showed the three finished pieces to Bernard and he grinned at me, eyebrows practically wriggling, and clapped his hands together a few times. After a quick breakfast, he brought up his largest drawing paper from the cellar, and he also offered the use of one of his easels. The easel would really help but the paper wasn’t big enough for what I wanted to do with the mother-daughter portrait. Fortunately, he had to go to Paris for a lunch and offered to drop me in Fontainebleau, near the art-supply store.

  He let me out on the outskirts of town and handed me a hundred-euro note, nowhere close to the twenty thousand he’d promised me, claiming that he wanted to make sure the drawings passed the test before he paid us. It wasn’t part of the deal but I had no leverage.

  The store was on the far side of Fontainebleau, off the beaten path of the tourist-packed streets, and I was the sole customer at the moment. I couldn’t find any paper that was large enough. Utilizing the hundred euros, and the fact that the owner had seen me there before, twice with Anaïs, elevating my status above American tourist, I cajoled him into stretching a four-by-six-foot grounded linen canvas for me. It wasn’t as smooth as paper but I would use its faint coarseness to suggest the women’s subtle fragmentation. I had enough money left for more black and flesh-toned gouache paints, and a taxi back.

  The big canvas was cumbersome. As I got closer to the center of town, where the taxis waited, it got more difficult to wield around pedestrians, so I walked on the street next to the curb.

  I was approaching a wider street that was closer to the hustle-bustle when a Range Rover careened into my periphery, nearly taking me out. I turned to shoot the driver a scowl, but then I saw who was behind the wheel. It was the guy from the bridge, the birdwatcher; at least it looked like him—same straw hat and pale face.

  “Get in, Nathan,” he said in an American accent. “I’ll give you a ride back to Grez-sur-Loing.”

  Som
ething was wrong, I knew right away, and I felt the blood vacate my head, drain from my face, and fall like sand down my arms and legs, leaving my upper body hollow. All the blood seemed to lodge in my hands and feet, and they felt swollen.

  “No, thanks,” I said, a quavering note in my voice, as I heard the whir of a motorcycle behind me.

  The black-clad figure, looking like the same one who’d darted from the cluster of trees and who’d crossed the bridge with the woman in the yellow dress, suddenly screeched to a stop a few feet away. He leaned over the handlebars of his Ducati, his ominous tinted visor seemingly urging my compliance.

  “What do you want?” I said to the man in the car as I stepped onto the sidewalk, rested the canvas on the ground, and clutched it against me.

  “We can’t talk here,” he said, taking a gold badge out of his coat pocket and flashing it at me. I could see U.S. in big letters with an eagle perched above.

  “You need to get in the car and hear me out, Nathan.”

  Parts of me seemed to come loose. I felt drunk, his face warping like in a funhouse mirror. Then his dead, humorless eyes sobered me up. I glanced at the guy on the motorcycle. He was dismounting, and the man in the car pointed at him.

  “Mr. Beck will put your things in the back,” he said. “I’ll drop you in the village. Just hear me out. Please.”

  fifty

  “Hal Cumberland,” he said, opening his hand for me to shake as I sat in the passenger’s seat.

  I nodded and shut the door. Hal pulled a U-turn and drove fast, weaving his way out of the town and onto the main road. It cut through dense woods, making it seem later in the day than it was. Mr. Beck was right on our tail. Once we were at cruising speed, Hal started talking.

  “I’m sorry to accost you like that but I needed to talk to you right away.”

  I studied him. He looked like Colonel Sanders. He was doughy and his voice carried a midwesterner’s lilt. The only threatening feature to him was the deadened eyes, milky brown and unflinching.

  “About what?” I said.

  “I work for the FBI. Lead man for the Art Crime unit.”

  It was like being in outer space, looking into a meteor shower, a thousand flaming scenarios, accusations, regrets, lies trampling through my head. I tried to use my sudden collapse into despair to demonstrate naive shock.

  “So what do you want with me?”

  “I was hoping you’d help me out.”

  “How?” I scoffed, the blood in my arms and legs quickening, rushing back.

  “I’m looking for some stolen drawings. They were pilfered during an exchange between two museums in the United States about a year ago. Thought you might have seen them. By mistake, of course. You wouldn’t have necessarily known they were stolen. It was only in the papers for a day.”

  “I think you have the wrong guy.”

  “Are you Nathan Woods?”

  I gave him a weak nod.

  “Currently residing with the Blanchon family in Grez-sur-Loing?”

  “You got me,” I said sarcastically.

  “It seems you got yourself.” He smiled.

  “How’s that?”

  “The Blanchon brothers are of great interest to us. You’re living in one brother’s house, sleeping with his daughter, and maybe with his wife, so you’re in a unique position to help.”

  I looked at him blankly. Yet the undersides of my arms and legs were pinned to the seat. I glanced out the passenger’s window and flashed on that moment in Paris, walking beside Anaïs, her fingernails digging into my skin, and my intuition telling me to get away from her, that she was dangerous.

  “Who made the drawings?” I said, watching the forest go by.

  “Egon Schiele.”

  My throat closed. Luckily I was still looking out the window and I shook my head, praying he didn’t notice me gasping for oxygen.

  “Why won’t you look at me?” he said.

  I took in air and turned, exhaling discreetly.

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  “Cops always make me nervous,” I said, telling him the truth.

  He chuckled and gestured to the rear of the car, asking if the canvas was for the third piece for my show.

  “Are you reading my emails?”

  “Of course.”

  I shook my head and turned away from him.

  “I really want it to work out for you, Nathan,” he said.

  Sure, I thought, wondering what was next, and suddenly he pulled over. It took a moment to realize that we were in Grez, on the bridge by the château. His eyes were directed over my shoulder, at the river, as if looking for a good fishing hole.

  “Are you in love?” he asked.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Yes or no?”

  I thought of her posing for me or decoding my work, holding my hand in the forest, swimming beside me in the river, the way she always made love as if it were our last night on earth, but once I came back to the present, I saw all the holes and wedges imposed by the forgery scheme and now by this.

  Yet saying no felt wrong. I shrugged.

  Only one side of Hal’s mouth lifted. I detected envy or a bitter remembrance in the awkward, palsied smile.

  “All I’m asking is that you call me if you see any Schieles.” Hal handed me a business card. It read Ski Tour Guiding and had a European phone number on it. If anyone found this in my pocket it wouldn’t raise any suspicions. “That’s all you have to do,” he said. “No one will know.”

  “You could be anybody,” I retorted. “I mean, it’s easy to buy a badge on the Internet. How do I know you’re legit?”

  He sucked in his breath, teeth showing. “Well, let me put it this way: if you protect them, I’m going to send you to jail, and then you’ll have your proof.”

  “Or I could just ask the brothers if there was any reason the FBI would be asking about them.” I countered.

  “Ah, that would be considered aiding and abetting. I don’t advise.”

  “You got an answer for everything, huh?”

  “I’ve been at this a few years.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” I started, lost my words, and then turned and opened the door.

  Light-headed, I dropped onto the bridge and went to the rear of the car and retrieved my materials. Mr. Beck was nowhere in sight. I didn’t look at Hal when I passed the front of the car.

  “Don’t forget about me, Nathan,” he called out.

  I didn’t take the road through the village; instead I clambered around the side of the bridge, down the embankment, and I followed the river toward the château.

  When the house came into view, I started to sweat. How am I going to face them? If Hal is right then they’re the kind of people who would always be on the lookout, constantly have their radar on, so to speak, and would see unease in your face, hear it in your words.

  Maybe I should turn around, walk to the village, and call Hal from a pay phone. End this thing right now.

  I leaned the canvas against a tree trunk. Glanced at the house then back at the canvas. Once you make the call you’ve shut the door. No double portrait, no show, back to square one—the best chance you’ve ever had, will likely ever get, down the tubes.

  fifty-one

  Bernard’s Citroën was parked at the end of the drive. He was supposed to be in Paris. Strange. Of all the people to have to face right now, Bernard was the worst, the one most directly involved. I ducked into the horse stall farthest removed from the château, setting the canvas and paints in a dark corner next to where I’d stashed the easel Bernard had lent me. I sat on the ground for a few minutes trying to gather my wits.

  It dawned on me that Hal wouldn’t be asking me to snitch if he knew for sure that Bernard had the Schieles. Which means he also doesn’t know if I’ve seen them or not. So that means I haven’t been clearly implicated. Not yet. That’s a huge relief. It gives me a little breathing space to map out a strategy.

  What about Ana
ïs; how much does she know? Is she aware that the Schieles are hot? She’s willing to profit off fakes; why not stolen art too?

  It was as if my lungs were collapsing, to think that all her desire and affection was just an act. It was inconceivable. You’d have to be a robot. It just didn’t fit. Bernard had to be manipulating and lying to her too. Please let that be the case.

  Throat parched, mouth full of cotton balls, I paced the interior of the stall, hot one second and cold the next, while my mind toiled to narrow everything down and find an equilibrium. At some point, I stopped pacing, pushed open the stall gate, and walked toward the house, momentarily made sturdy by the esoteric compass of a painter who believed he was on the verge of his masterpiece.

  Get the double portrait done and get out, I resolved. You didn’t steal anything. You aren’t selling anything. You are an innocent painter trying to make it.

  fifty-two

  The four of them were sitting at the dining table, plates of untouched lasagna in front of them.

  “Where have you been?” Anaïs demanded. “You look disheveled.”

  Reflexively, I combed down my hair then stopped myself. I avoided Bernard’s eye and thought it through: if I mention the canvas, she’ll know what to look for later, make it harder to hide it. “Walking,” I said.

  “You should have told me you’d be late for lunch,” she said, her preoccupation with etiquette a welcome respite.

  “I lost track of time. I’m really sorry, everyone,” I said. “Got a bad headache. I have to lie down. I’m sorry.”

  “Why should you be sorry?” Sophie asked.

  “Because I held up the lunch.”

  “But what about us?”

  I looked at her, perplexed.

  “Now we can’t be upset because you are. It’s like guilt, which is really only a selfish way for the one feeling guilty to get off the hook.”

  My entire array of senses was frayed and all I could do was garner a wayward nod. It must have come off as something else, a form of awe or reverence, because Anaïs lifted up the tablecloth and sent the glasses and plates tumbling.