The Forger

by Paul Watkins

  With each of these people, I developed a small but consistent list of topics, which would last us the forty-five seconds it took to travel up or down the elevator. Even if that didn’t amount to much, at least I didn’t find myself listening to the door to see if the hall was empty before venturing out.

  All through the winter of 1939–40, I made more paintings and Fleury was able to sell them. There was a moment when Fleury joked with me about making a new series of sketches and selling them as old originals. I pretended he was joking. He got the message, and we left it at that. Sometimes I worried that the sketches would be exposed as forgeries, but as time went by, the chance of that seemed less and less likely. After a while, I stopped worrying about it altogether. Instead, like everyone else, I worried about the war.

  By the beginning of October, the Polish army had been defeated. The Germans were torpedoing ships all over the Atlantic, but lost their big battleship, the Graf Spee, in December. In that same month, the Russians invaded Finland. The Germans didn’t attack the Maginot Line. After a while it became possible to think that they might not.

  In Paris, the war still seemed a long way off, but its presence could be felt in higher prices for things like bread, bacon, butter, sugar, milk. Some foods could be sold only on certain days, like baguettes, while croissants, for reasons I never understood, could be bought any time. Cafés could serve alcohol only three days a week. Tobacco prices went up sharply and coffee became almost extinct. Instead, the cafés began serving something called Café National, which was made of roasted acorns and chickpeas. The only way it could be drunk at all was if you didn’t try to pretend it was coffee. There was very little gasoline, and because of this, fewer cars in the street. Officially, the government was rationing all these things, but in the beginning you could still buy what you wanted. This was lucky for me since although I was granted a ration card, mine took longer to process because I was a foreign national. I received two eggs a week, about three ounces of cooking oil and two ounces of margarine. The only food that could be found in any quantity was turnip. I boiled it, mashed it up like baby food and forced it down without thinking.

  It was a very cold winter. Madame La Roche turned down the heat so that the radiators were barely warm to the touch. She turned them up for only one hour a day, right before dawn, when the building would fill with grumbles and hisses and clanking, as if some midget were crawling through the heating pipes with tiny hobnailed boots. Other landlords turned off the heat altogether.

  The snow that fell was thick and wet. It froze against the manes of horses pulling carts along the Quai d’Orsay. I saw people being towed around on skis behind cars whose tires were wrapped with chains. The river froze on either side of the Isle de la Cité and bargemen hit the ice with huge and hollow steel balls attached to the ends of bamboo poles. The sound they made was like the ringing of a cracked bell, echoing past the ice-bearded windowsills and shop signs. Paris bums, the clochards, froze to death beside the Pont d’Austerlitz and the Pont de Tolbiac, where they had set up huts made from cobblestones and canvas sheeting stolen from barges moored on the banks of the Seine.

  One day I noticed that Madame La Roche’s heavy, wooden family crest was missing from its perch in the front hallway. When I asked her if it had been stolen, she flapped her hand at me and frowned. “I burned it,” she said. “There was three days’ worth of fuel in that old thing.” She tottered off toward the elevator on her stiffened legs. “It wasn’t my family crest, anyway,” she called back without turning around.

  “Whose was it?” I asked. I was thinking maybe an uncle or something.

  She climbed into the black cage and closed the door. “I don’t know,” she said. “I bought it for ten francs at Clignancourt.” She laughed as the elevator rumbled her up out of sight.

  There were times that winter when I wished I’d had my own fake family crest to burn. I got used to sleeping in my overcoat and with a wool blanket under the bottom sheet as well as on top of me. I wore my wool socks until they fell apart and then I learned to darn and repair them myself.

  Military uniforms were everywhere, along with rumors of soldiers abandoning their posts, less out of fear than the crazed boredom which the French called le cafard. The French army took these incidents very seriously, remembering the mass desertions that had taken place in the last war. There was also widespread drunkenness among the soldiers. Each French poilu was issued with two liters of strong wine per day. They called it “Pinard,” and would riot if the wine did not arrive. The train stations had special rooms set aside for soldiers to sleep off their hangovers before heading back to the front, where nothing seemed to be happening, except for the occasional firing of heavy guns for the benefit of visiting officials.

  I made no plans to leave the city and remained optimistic about my luck. I had a stubborn faith it would not fail me.

  In those harsh months, I came no closer to expanding my circle of friends. I was so near to being broke most of the time that I didn’t get out to the places where I might have met people. Slowly I grew used to the idea. I didn’t get too worried about the fact that I didn’t have a girlfriend, or that I wasn’t invited out to parties, the way I might have been in normal times. The war had set everything off balance. There was no such thing as normal any more.

  * * *

  “MR. HALIFAX!”

  I had just walked into my building when a voice called to me from the street.

  “Mr. Halifax,” said the voice again.

  I turned to see a man with short-cut hair and a tweed sports jacket with a white polo-neck sweater underneath. He had the dented nose and shallow eyes of a boxer. It was a face built for taking punishment. The daylight blinked as he stepped inside the foyer.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked cautiously.

  “My name is Tombeau. I’m with the French police. I was wondering if I could have a word with you.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, sudden worry hollowing me out inside. “What’s it about?” But I knew what it was about.

  His face showed no expression. His hands stayed by his sides. “I need you to come with me.”

  “Now?” My throat had dried out so quickly that I could barely talk.

  “Now,” he said. “We’re pressed for time.” He turned and looked out to the street.

  I followed his gaze to a car that was waiting at the curb, its engine still running.

  For a moment, I felt panic scattering inside me, like small birds startled from their grassy hiding place. Then I felt myself giving up. I had nowhere to run. Part of me even felt a little relieved that it was over now.

  Tombeau seemed to know what was going on inside my head, as if my thoughts had passed like shadows across the angles of my face. “Come along,” he said softly. “It won’t take long.”

  We climbed into the back and the car pulled out into the stream of traffic. I could smell the driver’s cologne and the leather of the seats. Nobody spoke on the short ride. We pulled up outside an alleyway, at the end of which was a large green wooden gate and above it a sign which read: Préfecture de Police. Commissariat du Quartier des Halles. Above the sign was a French flag, hanging limply in the damp cold air. The alley was dirty and the walls that bordered it were unpainted and slapped with the tatters of old theater bills.

  Tombeau got out of the car. Then he looked in after me. “Let’s go,” he said.

  As I walked up the heavy cobblestoned alley, I had a sudden urge to run. I didn’t know where to. Just to bolt like a frightened animal.

  Tombeau opened the gate, which led into a courtyard. The courtyard was much cleaner than the alley. It was lined with windows and doors, each of which had numbers done in blue and white enamel above the doorway. He seemed to relax as soon as we got inside the building. He walked me down three flights of stairs to a corridor with many doors. The further down we went, the more helpless I felt. Electric bulbs with green-topped glass shades lined the center of the corridor with a harsh glare. People
bustled in and out of rooms. It all looked very busy.

  Tombeau showed me into a waiting room, which had a table and a bench and a standing coat rack with brass hooks in the corner. There was a door at the end of the room which was closed. “Sit down,” said Tombeau. He opened the far door and ducked into another room and was talking to someone as he closed the door behind him.

  In the few seconds that I spent alone in that room, my lips became chapped and even the skin on my knuckles seemed to have dried out. I wondered whether there was any chance this might not be about the sketches Fleury had sold. I wondered if there might be any point in trying to deny it. That was an idea I should have fixed in my head long ago if I had any hope of it working. I had left it too late for that. The only thing I could do now was to hold on to some kind of dignity.

  When Tombeau returned, he had taken off his sports jacket. The white polo-neck glowed like marble in the light of the bulb. He had with him a large cardboard folder. He sat down at the other side of the table. The toes of his shoes brushed against mine and I tucked my legs under my chair. He set the folder down and pressed his hands together, laying them flat on top of the folder. “Well,” he said. “Mr. Halifax.”

  I nodded.

  He opened up the file. And there were my sketches, just as I had feared. He took one out. “Is this yours?” he asked.

  My guts twisted. I took the sketch from him and looked at it for a couple of seconds. It was a study of a fox’s head which I had made of a Gauguin called Young Girl and Fox, which was itself a study for a painting he did called La Perte du Pucelage. I had done the sketch on yellow paper in charcoal and white chalk, just like the original. The fox was lying on top of the woman’s naked chest the way a cat might sleep on its owner. I felt the paper soaking up sweat from my fingertips. “I drew it,” I said, and handed back the sketch.

  Then he went through a small stack of sketches. I noticed that Gauguin’s signature had been added to some of the pieces, and that there were small signet ring–sized stamps on the back, the kind that some collectors have for marking ownership.

  “I didn’t sign anybody’s name to them and I don’t know where these stamps came from, either.” I sighed. “But I suppose I could guess.”

  He grinned. “If you guessed Fleury, you’d be right.”

  I sighed and licked my dried-out lips.

  When we had been through all the sketches, Tombeau closed the file. He took a packet of Caporals from his pocket, tapped one out of the pack and lit it. Then he inhaled deeply and set it down carefully on the edge of the table, the smoke rising cobralike toward the green-shaded light. “You have to understand,” he said, “that you are guilty of forgery. They’re getting ready to throw you in jail. I’m here to try and prevent that.”

  “I’m not a criminal.” I croaked out the words. I had no spit left to talk.

  “You’re a forger,” he told me, raising his voice. “You pollute the marketplace and galleries and museums with everything you do. You fill minds with doubt when there should be no doubt. We happen to need you at the moment, so you have become a necessary evil. But if you don’t do exactly what you’re told to do in the next couple of hours, I can guarantee that you’ll be put away in a French prison for three to five years. Now, whether you think you deserve that doesn’t make any difference to me. You owe the people of France a debt for not locking you up. Monsieur Fleury was very understanding about this fact when we explained it to him.”

  “Where is Fleury?” I asked.

  “We already let him go home. You could be home soon yourself, if you’re helpful.” Tombeau got up and walked over to me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “I want you to talk to someone,” he said. The door opened again. I heard Tombeau say, “Three minutes! That’s all. Or we do this a different way.”

  The door closed and I sensed that I was no longer alone. My head stayed down. I looked at the grain of the wood and the sweat stains on the table’s old polish.

  “Hello, David,” said a voice. It was Pankratov.

  I looked up. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He lowered himself into the other chair. “If you had listened to me about Fleury, you wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

  I just stared at him. I felt like telling Pankratov that if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t even be in Paris.

  “Well, I guess it’s too late for that now,” said Pankratov. “What I don’t understand is why Fleury even bothered. He sells a lot of paintings. Some major works have passed through his hands since he first opened his gallery. He didn’t make a fortune off your sketches. He didn’t need the money. I don’t understand why he did it.”

  “Because he could,” I said. “He did it because he could.”

  Pankratov shook his head and sighed, as if to show that he would never understand what went on inside the mind of Guillaume Fleury. He gestured at the door behind me. “The people in that next room are waiting to find out whether you will agree to help. It’s all or nothing, you see. If you don’t cooperate, none of this is going to work and you’ll both end up in prison.”

  I smoothed my thumb across my lips, back and forth, feeling more helpless with every new thing Pankratov said. “What cooperation?”

  “They have asked me to explain it to you,” said Pankratov. “They need your help.”

  “Who?” I squinted at him. “Help with what?”

  Over the next few minutes, Pankratov told me that a group had been formed to deal with the safekeeping of works of art in the event of Germany invading France. The Germans were planning to establish an “art capital” of Europe in the Austrian city of Linz. Plans for a museum there had already been approved by Hitler. The Germans were going to remove as many works of art as they wanted from the countries they invaded and then sell off or destroy the rest. Pankratov told me they had a long list of Impressionist, Expressionist, Cubist, Futurist and Dadaist art that they considered “degenerate.” He said arrangements had already been made by French authorities to hide as much of the art as they could within France, or to get it out of the country. “But we won’t be able to hide all of it,” explained Pankratov.

  “You’re talking as if the Germans are already here,” I said.

  “It would be foolish for the French people not to take precautions. Don’t you agree?”

  “How should I know?” I rocked back on two chair legs, not wanting to listen. “I’m an American.”

  “It seems”—Pankratov drilled his pinky into his ear—“that the American Embassy has been very cooperative in allowing you to volunteer for temporary French citizenship.”

  “Volunteer?”

  He nodded, looking away. “A request I suggest you follow.”

  The door flew open again and Tombeau filled up the doorway. “Get on with it, Pankratov!” he yelled. He banged two heavy fingers against his wristwatch. “We have no time!”

  “I was just finishing up,” said Pankratov, without turning to face the man.

  The door banged shut.

  “Why is he in such a hurry?” I asked.

  “Never mind that now,” said Pankratov. “David, they want you to make forgeries. They came to me and asked if I thought you had the skill and I told them you did. And you do, even if you don’t yet believe it yourself.”

  “But if the Germans are putting together one vast European art museum, they’re going to rip out half the paintings in this country! You can’t fake all of those and expect to get away with it.”

  “We’re not trying to. It’s more complicated than that. Everything will be explained very soon.”

  At that moment, I was positive I would be absolutely no use to them, despite what Pankratov was saying. “What makes you think I could do it?”

  “With training…” he began.

  “And who’s going to train me?” I demanded.

  “I will.”

  I clicked my tongue with irritation. “Why don’t you just do it all yourself, then?”

  “It’s one th
ing to know the techniques. It’s another to be able to use them the way you can. You have skills I don’t possess. But I have knowledge that can make those skills stronger.”

  “I stayed here in order to do my own work!” I leaned across the table toward his wide and complicated face, the gray hair swept back in crooked threads. “Not someone else’s.”

  “I know what’s going through your head,” said Pankratov. “You’re caught up in thinking about your own career, making a living, all the little details that leave you too exhausted at the end of every day to see beyond your own small concerns.”

  “They don’t seem small to me!”

  “I know. But they will, one day. The work that lies ahead of you now is more important than your own career, more important than any one artist’s career. You might not understand this now, but in time it will become clear,” he said. “Some people wait their whole lives for a chance like this to come along.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The chance to do something at which you are a natural,” said Pankratov.

  “What did they threaten you with to get you to come in here?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “They explained it to me and I volunteered.”

  “And you’re asking me to volunteer as well? Why the hell should I? Just because you tell me to?”

  “I know you don’t want to do this. We’re all doing things we don’t want to do, but you’ll feel a lot worse about it if the Germans wipe out entire generations of art.”

  “But what’s the point in doing that?” I asked, frustration boiling over. “Why is an invading army going to put so much effort into destroying the artwork of another country? They might steal it—that I can understand—I’m sure France plundered Germany in the past. But what is the point in destroying it? Blow up the Maginot Line instead. Blow up the tanks and the guns. But paintings? That makes no sense to me.”

  “They’ll do it,” he said, “whether it makes sense to you or not.”