“Be ready to drive,” Gainer told her emphatically, and took off for the house.
He thought about going over the wall. It would have been easy, but he reminded himself to keep it street, simple, right through the main gate. He would know his man on sight, but his man would not know him.
Gainer walked in as though he belonged there, right up to the front door.
Pulled on a bronze knob that rang a bell inside.
No one came.
Knocked loudly on the door.
Still no one came.
He went around the side of the house to the rear, where the grounds ran quite deep. Far back were several apple trees. A ladder was propped up against one of them, and Gainer could detect movement among the branches. And the white of a shirt. He slipped the fingertips of his right hand in under his jacket, advanced to the apple tree until he was only some twenty feet from it.
He saw the black trouser legs of the man up in its branches, and called out: “Monsieur Ponsard?”
The man climbed down the ladder with some difficulty. He had a manual insecticide pump in hand. He was frail, old. He did not fit the description at all. He looked back up the tree, cursed the caterpillars and then acknowledged Gainer quizzically.
Gainer told him: “I’m looking for Monsieur Ponsard.”
“He is not here.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“I am the gardener, and the carpenter and the cook,” the man complained.
“Where is Monsieur Ponsard?”
“At this moment?”
“Yes.”
“He is painting.”
“Painting what?”
“Haystacks.” The man followed that with a nasal scoff and made for the house.
Gainer had to get the directions to Ponsard from him, and just did manage to get the last, most vital part of them as the man went inside, slammed the door and, as an afterthought, bolted it.
Gainer hurried back to the Bentley, immediately recited the directions out loud to keep them straight. He applied them to the Michelin map and found the way, navigated for Leslie, back to the town and through it, and up a grade to open countryside.
The first sign they saw of what might be Ponsard was a silver-gray Citroën sedan parked on the side of the road adjacent to an open, sloping field. About a hundred yards out in the field was a heap of something white that Gainer couldn’t make out exactly. It didn’t seem to be a person, the way it just sat there.
Gainer got out and started off into the field. The grass was taller, thicker than it looked. He had to wade through it with high steps. As he got closer to the white image he saw it was a figure in a white smock coat and a white cap seated beneath a white umbrella.
A man painting.
He had an easel up and a canvas on it. He did not notice Gainer, intent as he was on dabbing with a long brush.
It had to be Ponsard, Gainer thought, and continued on. The noontime sun was glaring, striking so intensely on the white figure that Gainer could not clearly make out the man, but he kept his eyes fixed on him and at a range of about fifty feet the figure in white locked in, correlated with the description Gainer had been carrying in his mind since Alma. The chunky build, the round, almost chinless face, a wrestler’s neck.
This was his man, Gainer was sure of it, felt it. He put his hand in under his jacket, gripped the ASP. But could he just kill the man without warning—?
Goddamn right he could, Norma.
He took a few more steps, decided he would get closer, as close as he could, point blank if possible, at least until the man noticed him. Only twenty feet to go.
Gainer was about to draw the ASP, have it aimed and ready.
Something came up out of the grass between himself and the man.
A young girl.
She got to her knees, stood up, squinted at Gainer. She was entirely nude. A girl in her early teens with breasts that were mere promises and a sparse triangle of fine blond floss at her crotch. The hair on her head was gathered back and held by a number of narrow pastel-colored ribbons, long ribbons that flowed down her skin. She was pretty, had a full, slightly pouty mouth and large eyes. Her hello to Gainer was a question.
The man looked up.
Gainer’s hand released the ASP and came out from under his shirt.
“Monsieur Ponsard?” Gainer said.
“Yes.”
“I was told I’d find you here.”
Ponsard quickly took Gainer in, and rejected him for the painting. He chose a different, smaller brush to make a few small commalike strokes of yellowish white, careful with them. “Haystacks are very illusive,” he said.
Gainer glanced further out in the field to a mound of hay, pale and dry under the sun. It was only remotely represented by what Ponsard had put on the canvas: a stringy ocher lump set nondimensionally on an attempt to capture the texture of the grass. Gainer thought it looked more like the top of a lopsided head emerging from green ooze.
“Monet’s haystacks were only a little better,” Ponsard said, mostly to himself. “Monet was extremely fortunate with his haystacks.” He had a dead Gauloise stub between his lips, it stuck to his upper one as he spoke. “Who sent you to me?” he asked Gainer.
Gainer glanced at the naked girl, who stood there as though she was too young for modesty.
Ponsard noticed and told her to get dressed.
Which gave Gainer time to invent. “A dealer in Paris recommended you. He said you were the most dependable expert on Monet.”
“You are writing a book?”
“We have a painting.”
“You want me to appraise it.”
“Yes.”
“My fee is one percent of the value,” Ponsard said as he squinted at the haystack. “Oh well,” he sighed, “the light was changing anyway. Most people cannot discern such subtle changes in light and its effect on color.” He tossed his dirty brushes into his palette box, didn’t bother to put the caps back on the used tubes of paint. However, he was very careful with his bad, wet painting.
The girl had put on a simple white cotton dress that was next to nothing. Ponsard said she was Astrid, his niece.
Gainer did not believe the niece part. Astrid was too similar to the young girls he had encountered at that brothel on Rue de la Cerisaie. Her precociously erotic attitude … that would explain the phone call from Zurich to that address. It fit.
Gainer said his name was Crawford. Mrs. Crawford was waiting in the car.
Astrid took down the umbrella and the easel, carried them to Ponsard’s car.
Ponsard stuffed himself behind the wheel of his Citroën and abused its ignition. Astrid rode in the rear seat like a privileged passenger. All the way to Ponsard’s house she kept glancing back at the green Bentley, as though such an expensive car could not be disregarded.
Within ten minutes they were at Ponsard’s house, in the large room that he called his studio. Gainer had brought the two paintings in from the car for Ponsard to examine beneath a skylight. He studied them from across the room and close up, front and back; inspected the canvas frames and stretchers and used a magnifying glass to examine the brushstrokes.
There was no need for all that, really. Ponsard knew the paintings were genuine and worth a fortune the moment they came before his eyes. He was using the time to decide whether he should go for his appraisal fee, which would be a considerable amount in this instance, or … “Where did you get these paintings?” he asked.
“My grandfather,” Leslie replied quickly. “He died last month and we found them among his old junk.”
“Has anyone else looked at them?”
“No.”
Gainer appraised the appraiser, who was evidently a different sort than Becque. What was their connection? Gainer wondered. Why had they been in Zurich together—a cemetery keeper and an art expert? Why would they have shared a room at the Dolder Grand? Something about it didn’t jibe, Gainer thought.
Ponsard’s overgrown eyebrows
went up. He ran his palms over his incorrigible hair. These were gullible Americans, he assured himself. He turned his back on the paintings, to demonstrate their unimportance. He sat in a leather armchair that was conditioned to his weight and shape. Astrid lay on the floor at his feet like some obedient pet.
“Excellent attempts,” Ponsard said, “especially the Monet.”
“Attempts?”
“Whoever painted them should have had more confidence in his own ability.”
Leslie acted disappointed. She went into her carryall, felt beneath her ASP for a tissue that she used to dab at her eyes.
Gainer wished Astrid would disappear. Had the girl not been there to witness right then, he would have silently put a 9mm hole in Ponsard’s forehead. He watched Ponsard light another Gauloise and exhale the first puff from his nostrils. He imagined Ponsard’s brain was on fire.
“I’m sorry,” Ponsard said, “your paintings are not worth what you expected.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Leslie said, turning blasé.
The lying bastard, Gainer thought, and anticipated what would be coming next from him.
“You know … actually …”—Ponsard glanced around at the paintings as though condescending to give them a second thought—“they are not authentic but they are also not intolerable.”
“There’s nothing I hate more than a fake,” Leslie said.
Ponsard did not catch her double edge. “I could use them as examples in my profession.”
Leslie gave them away with the back of her hand. “They’re yours,” she said.
Ponsard said he couldn’t accept them.
“Well, I certainly can’t be bothered with lugging them around,” Leslie said, nose up.
“Then … I insist on paying you for them. Shall we say twenty-five hundred francs?”
“How much is that in dollars?”
“About five hundred.”
“For both paintings?”
“Twenty-five hundred each.”
“Oh, I’d say that’s most generous of you, Monsieur Ponsard.” Leslie beamed her best model’s smile. “Isn’t it, darling?”
“Most generous,” Gainer said.
Ponsard had trouble downplaying it. God, but he wanted those paintings, so much his balls ached. The Degas would fetch a half million, at least, the Monet even more. These two Americans were uncultured assholes, probably nouveau riche from selling breakfast cereals or canned soup or something. Served them right.
Ponsard got out some of his letterhead business stationery. He composed a detailed, binding bill of sale. Took ten five hundred franc notes from a desk drawer, handed the money, the bill of sale and the pen to Leslie.
She stuffed the money into her carryall, signed the bill of sale without reading it.
Ponsard checked the signature of Mrs. L. G. Crawford, folded the bill of sale and put it in the desk drawer, locked the drawer and made a tight possessive fist around the key. Done, he thought, done! He was so elated he felt like having Astrid use her mouth on him again, and would as soon as these Americans were gone. Meanwhile, he’d throw them a couple of tidbits. He felt expansive. “You know, of course, Monet lived in this area.”
“Did he really?”
“In Giverny, just a few kilometers from here. Lived there for thirty-six years, died there.”
“He’s probably still there,” Leslie said.
Ponsard gave her the benefit of not having said what he’d heard.
“In spirit,” Leslie explained with a quick little smile.
“As a matter of fact,” Ponsard told her, “Monet’s house and gardens have been restored to the way they were in his time.”
“All the more reason for him to be around.”
Ponsard lowered his head and sneaked a look at her through his eyebrows. “The place has been declared a national site,” he said.
“Oh, I’d love to see it!”
Ponsard felt himself saved by the day. “It’s Tuesday,” he said. “It is closed on Tuesday.” The last thing he wanted to do with the afternoon was play personal guide-to-Monet for these two.
“Won’t someone be there?” Leslie asked.
“No one.”
“Wonderful! We’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”
“But—”
“Surely you can arrange for it, Monsieur Ponsard. After all, you are an expert.”
Ten minutes later they were in the green Bentley headed for Giverny.
The problem was still Astrid. No matter how pointedly Leslie and Gainer told her she’d be bored, she would not be left behind. For one thing, she wanted to experience the green Bentley, so that she wouldn’t have to make a total lie to the other girls. She’d already thought up for them an elaborate memoir of the lurid things she’d been required to do in the car. Even more important, however, was her practical reason for going along. Madame Brossolette, the woman who ran the rendezvous at 12 Rue de la Cerisaie, had taught her never, under any circumstances, to allow a client to leave without first settling his account. The client in this instance, of course, being Ponsard.
So, there was Astrid in the rear seat. And Gainer in the rear with her. Ponsard had thought it best that he sit in front where he could more easily give directions. Leslie had the window all the way down on her side and sat so close to it she was nearly sideways to the steering wheel. Because Ponsard smelled of Gauloise cigarettes and roses. His clothing was permeated with smoke, and before leaving the house he had splashed his cheeks and neck with a heavy cologne. So heavy, it made Leslie’s eyes water.
They drove through town. Ponsard pointed out puncturelike indentations on the walls of some of the buildings where bullets had struck. “The Germans wounded Vernon badly when they came in 1940, and I must say the Americans did worse to it in 1944,” Ponsard said and, as though it was the most important thing that had happened since the ninth century when Rollo established the town, Ponsard added, “I was born here.”
He’s about to die here, Norma, Gainer thought.
They crossed over the Seine to the satellite village of Veronette and stopped there at the house of the government-appointed Monet estate caretaker. Ponsard went inside. Across the way was a pâtisserie with its door open and wonderful baking fragrances wafting out. Leslie’s mouth watered. Astrid stuck her head out and inhaled through her nose several times. They could see the reds of things raspberry and the yellows of things lemon and the white of sprinkled powdered sugar on the tops of things on display in the pâtisserie window. Leslie sent a strong mental message to Gainer, urging him to jump out and get some. But just then, Ponsard returned, jangling a ring of keys, holding them up rather victoriously to convey that he had been able to make the necessary special arrangements.
Leslie expressed her frustration by pressing the engine up to nearly 5000 RPMs and leaving black traction marks on the cobbles of the street. The road to Giverny had the Seine and a single set of railroad tracks running beside it. Here and there were the lighter green droops of willows or the higher spears of poplars. Wild bushes grew dense along the way, competing for the sunlight that was somewhat demure now, hiding behind a haze. Leslie drove the road as though she knew it, at high speed with no letup for any dip or turn.
She was doing nicely until a curve deceived her, and the Bentley swerved around it, momentarily out of control. The centrifugal force sent Astrid flying over onto Gainer. It could not have been more opportune as far as she was concerned. Her right hand braced on his crotch, grasped it, and while the sensation of that overwhelmed him, her left hand went in under his jacket to remove a leather case from his inside pocket. Recovering, she slipped the case beneath her right buttock, sat on it for a while and, when no one was looking, dropped it out of sight down the front of her dress. She’d done it almost instinctively, as though only her hands were responsible. It was something she’d learned early from her mother, a whore in Hamburg. Any day she picked a pocket she didn’t have to go to school—those had been her mother’s terms. At the
moment, however, Astrid almost regretted her behavior. The wallet hadn’t felt fat, felt thin in fact. Still, maybe it contained brand new hundreds, or even better. She knew that certain people carried only new money because they were afraid of germs. She glanced over to Gainer and said the word fuck to herself. This one didn’t look as though he was afraid of anything, let alone germs.
Leslie parked the car on the Chemin du Roy, right at Monet’s front gate. Ponsard made a minor ritual out of unlocking the gate and, acting as host, stood aside for them to enter.
The house was situated on the north side of the road, set back about two hundred feet. It was on three acres, rectangularly shaped and walled all around. In the far right corner of the grounds was Monet’s main studio, high-peaked with much more skylight than roof. In the opposite corner was his second studio overlooking the thousands of panes of his greenhouse. Between the two studios was the house itself, a long, two and one half story structure somewhat resembling the architectural personality of an army barracks. It was saved, to some extent, by the creeper vines that overgrew its rough pink-cast surface, softly disguising corners, obscuring most of the repetitive eaves and sills.
From the porch of the house all the way to the road was garden—as true as possible to the way Monet had originally laid it out. The trellises that spanned the wide center path were climbed upon by pink and crimson roses, and bordering that path were creeping nasturtiums, daisies, white, pink and violet asters, delphiniums, dahlias and anemones. Although there was a certain symmetry to the spacing of the beds and walkways, the attitude was by no means formal, a far cry from Le Notre, this garden of Monet’s, where mats of nasturtium were allowed to spread beyond their territories and wild geraniums, abrietta and pink saxifrage were disciplined as little as possible. One had to walk with care not to step on them.
Irises stood up with their tongues out.
Gladiolas looked as though if shook they would ring.
Hollyhocks were attentive, listening in all colors.
Gainer and Leslie had expected a pretty garden but not this. They were struck to the point of near-reverence.
Ponsard suggested that they begin their tour on the other side of the road. A passageway tunnel ran beneath the road and the railroad tracks, and when they were in it Ponsard’s echoing voice told them this convenience had recently been installed with the money of some wealthy American. Monet, he was certain, would have detested it.
19 Purchase Street Page 22
