The Empress of Tempera

by Alex Dolan

  He lived apart from Melinda’s mother, the couple having separated once her mother decided to disown their daughter.

  Qi and his daughter visited in secret. They could never meet in public places, but she came to Chinatown. The owners of his apartment building provided Qi Jianyu a rent-free flat and a basement studio. In return, Qi taught art to neighborhood youth. Over time, he established an informal school in that basement. According to what Qi told his daughter, his student shows reminded him of the abandoned barn outside Beijing, where he staged anonymous art shows for the people who dared to create. He taught them so well that a number of his students had become successful artists. Others branched into forgery.

  Upon his death, his students forged documentation to show that The Empress Xiao Zhe Yi, Seated, had been shipped from an art gallery in Beijing instead of delivered from Canal Street by courier to Melinda Qi in Long Island City. Again, the Chinese government failed to respond to requests to prove the authenticity of these documents. This was another American problem, and by then the Chinese government had no interest in dredging up anything more on Qi Jianyu.

  When Melinda finished, Paire couldn’t speak. A lump formed in her throat. She didn’t know what she could or should say. Something comforting would be appropriate, but nothing comforting came to mind. No one had ever said the right thing when it came to the story of Paire’s parents, so she had no way of knowing what the right words might be.

  Eventually, Melinda said, “I need to show you something.”

  They walked across the compound to the warehouse where Melinda stored her finished flowers. They slid open a steel door, and lights flickered overhead above her gargantuan ceramic garden. Following Melinda through the bent leaves and drooping petals, Paire cut across the room as if fumbling through a corn maze. The rear wall of the vault was a large expanse of white drywall. Melinda had hastily constructed this years before, without even painting over the nails that pinned it in place. Melinda ran her fingers along the wall in the far corner of the room. Kicking gently at the plaster, she loosened a rectangular flap by their feet. A piece of drywall no larger than an automobile window had been sawed out of the larger wall and then refitted into place like a jigsaw puzzle. Something that small would have been overlooked. The outline of the hatch would have been indiscernible from across the room if the warehouse were empty. Behind the synthetic orchard, it was perfectly obscured.

  Melinda gave it another kick, and the panel dislodged, coughing up a mist of dust.

  They shimmied through the hole in the wall, Melinda on her stomach and Paire on her back. The next room was dark until Melinda switched on another bank of fluttering overheads. In a room the size of a squash court, pine crates aligned in rows like oversized dominos, up and down in aisles. They filled the floor.

  “He never stopped creating. He just stopped showing,” Melinda said.

  “How many—”

  “Two hundred and six.”

  “So the empress—”

  “Was my least favorite. It was a portrait of my mother. So it was the piece I was happy to sacrifice.”

  Melinda picked a crowbar up off the floor and handed it to Paire, so she might pry apart a crate and see what was inside.

  Chapter 24

  The MAAC was jammed full of bodies tonight, all tuxedoes and cocktail gowns. It was November, and the sky darkened early, so at eight in the evening it felt like a crisp midnight. Manhattan was a cool monochrome of black, white, and gray this time of year. Inside the museum, the wardrobe of the guests mirrored the palette of the city.

  Against a white backdrop, the color of the artwork popped out that much more. Around the cavernous hallways, the Qi retrospective exhibit filled up most of the wall space. They had miraculously found places to hang almost all of the crated works. Viewers gathered in rows around the perimeter of the great hall, breathlessly beholding the individual works and the cumulate impact of the artist’s expression.

  In the crowd, Melinda Qi was mingling. A reporter held a microphone under her chin to record her thoughts on her father’s work. Melinda’s teeth gleamed from across the room. She looked happy.

  Paire watched Melinda but didn’t want to intrude. She stood by the museum entrance, dressed in a gray curve-hugging gown. She wasn’t avoiding the crowd so much as admiring a particular piece of work that stood by the entrance, next to the commemorative bust of Gabriel Kasson. The sculpture had been placed so that all the guests who paraded through the entrance tonight would see it.

  A young man approached Paire. Probably her age. He stood next to her under the pretense of examining the same piece of artwork. He said, “Cheers,” and they clinked glasses. He was Asian, with bronze skin and a gymnastic musculature that his dinner jacket couldn’t hide. With a shaved head, his cheekbones seemed more prominent. Paire thought he was handsome. She’d always been dopey for cheekbones.

  “Do you know someone?” he asked.

  “I know a few people,” she said coyly.

  “This was a tough invite to get. What’s your connection?”

  “I used to work at the Fern Gallery,” Paire said.

  The man’s eyes flickered in understanding. By now, everyone in the room had heard about the shootings at the Fern.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t want him to feel guilty for bringing it up. “What brought you here?”

  “Qi used to teach me in his apartment complex. I was one of his basement kids.” He sipped his champagne. This could have been a boast, but he stated his connection to Qi Jianyu without bragging.

  “So are you an artist or a forger?”

  The way he laughed reminded her of Lazaro’s reaction when she had asked whether he was a criminal. She smiled at him.

  He asked, “Did you see the big flowers in the next room? Apparently, that’s his daughter’s work.”

  “I’ve seen them. They’re beautiful,” Paire said.

  “I really like this one,” he said, pointing at the sculpture in front of them. “But it doesn’t look like anything from him or his daughter.”

  “It’s from a different artist,” said Paire.

  He read the artist’s name on the plaque next to the sculpture. “Funny name, but I like it. Think it’s a man or a woman?”

  “A woman,” she said.

  The sculpture in front of them was a six-foot statue of a suit of armor. A samurai suit. Of Japanese, not Chinese, inspiration. Poetic license. It had been crafted tile by tile out of ceramic back in Melinda Qi’s studio in Long Island City. Using Melinda’s process of fabricating an armature first, a mannequin had been built, then the suit of armor painstakingly fabricated from individual ceramic tiles. The toughest challenge was getting the glaze right, so when it baked it was the right mix of black with hints of deep red and speckles of mottled sea green.

  “I like that the armor has breast plates contoured for a woman.”

  “I like that too,” she said.

  The man commented, “The armor plates, what do they look like?”

  “Lobster shells.”

  He laughed. “Maybe. Do you think?”

  “Yes. Lobsters,” Paire said, edging closer to the man, her shoulder softly brushing his arm.

  Acknowledgments

  A few years ago I wandered into the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco, and first learned about the artist Rudolf Bauer. While this book is a work of fiction, I took some inspiration from the relationship between Bauer and his benefactor, Solomon Guggenheim. Maria Echavarri was incredibly generous with her time, providing details about their relationship and pointing me to additional resources.

  Several people helped give me a better sense of what life might be like for an artist in China during the 1970s. In particular, Jeff Kelly provided a wonderful overview, and shared stories about his wife, acclaimed artist Hung Liu. Raman Frey gave me insights and pointed me to influential artists from the period. Christina Hadley gave me a better understanding of what it’s like to work at an art gallery
, and Rachel Ralph fielded questions about the state of contemporary street artists, as well as technical questions about guerrilla installations. I’m also grateful to a certain New York firm for indulging my questions about the techniques used to identify art forgeries. To provide some of Paire Anjou’s backstory in Maine, I drew from several friends who live there, especially from my old friend Crash Barry, who told me stories about his experience on lobster boats.

  I’m indebted to Randall Klein at Diversion Books for continuing to believe in my writing. The entire team at Diversion Books has contributed to the success of this project, including Mary Cummings, Chris Mahon, and Sarah Masterson Hally. Jennifer Skutelsky provided her expertise editing an early version of the book. Special thanks to my agent and champion Jill Marr for being a fierce advocate and a warm counsel.

  I wouldn’t have written this book if I hadn’t grown up as the son of two painters, Philip and Virginia Dolan. They taught me how to appreciate art, and gave me the desire to create my own. I feel blessed to have a community of friends and family who support me. To my niece and nephew Hannah and Graham, you guys both give heaps of joy. Finally, thank you to Sabrina, for being proud of me whether I win or lose.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Euthanist!

  Chapter 1

  Every autumn is tarantula mating season around Mount Diablo. Horny male spiders roam through the twiggy grass to find their soul mates in a sort of spider Burning Man. They say spiders are more afraid of us, but that’s bullshit. They don’t even see us. They incite terror with their furry little legs and never know the havoc they wreak in our lives. If you were like me and grew up having nightmares about tarantulas, you would probably avoid the area like a nuclear testing zone.

  Normally I’d have steered clear, but on this day I was driving through spider country to see a client. Bugs shouldn’t scare a grown woman, but driving here made me nervous. A shrink once told me being afraid of spiders meant I wasn’t aggressive enough. Then we talked about my stepdad.

  He asked, “What is your stepfather like?”

  “He’s the sort of man who places a dead spider on your alarm clock to see how you react.”

  “I don’t understand the metaphor,” he said.

  “It’s not a metaphor. My stepfather put a dead tarantula on my alarm clock when I was nine. So when it went off, I hit the spider instead of the clock.”

  My doc dropped his notes. “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “Because he’s a fucking sociopath. He sat by my bed when it happened, I think just so he could see the look on my face.”

  “How did you react?”

  “How do you think? I screamed my head off.”

  The shrink had eyeballed me the way that a psychic magician looked at a spoon he wanted to bend. I think he was wondering if I was lying, and if not, what he should do with me. “Do you speak to him?”

  “Not since he went to prison.”

  After Gordon’s spider stunt, big hairy bugs petrified me. The alarm clock wasn’t the only time he pulled that crap either. He hid another one in my underwear drawer, and another at the bottom of a Balinese tin box where my mom held her “guilt” chocolate. The fear wasn’t irrational, not if you half expected them to pop up like Easter eggs. I still shake out my shoes in the mornings, in case there’s one curled up in the toe. Once I was old enough to have my own apartment, a Zen chime dinged across the bedroom in the morning, so I had nothing to slap on the nightstand.

  Because of my fear of spiders, I cautiously rounded the hairpin turns through the foothills of Clayton. Hands at five and seven o’clock. One of those fuckers came out of nowhere—a brown spider the size of my fist boogied across the road. If I’d seen it coming, maybe I would have sped up and smushed it under a tire. But it flew into the road like it was in the Olympic trials, and, for whatever reason, I jammed on the brakes. On this vacant road with the paper clip bends, the car erked to a standstill. The spider paused. Tarantulas are predators themselves, so they know what hunting behavior looks like. It sensed the enormity of the vehicle, its hot breath and growling motor hovering over it. For a moment, it might have actually been afraid. But then it skittered across the asphalt and into the wild brush off the shoulder. Maybe later when it wooed its amour, it would recount this story so it could get some spider cooch.

  My hands strangled the wheel, forearms buzzing with the motor’s vibration. I hated myself for being spooked.

  Behind me, the driver of a matte brick truck blasted the horn. I found the honk comforting, human. I wasn’t afraid of people who weren’t my stepdad, not even a big ugly guy like this one with the Civil War sideburns. The horn ripped a second time. Stopped in the road like a moron, I might have felt bad, but he mouthed swears at me in the rearview. His grill kissed my bumper, and I could feel the tremor of his engine. Maybe I didn’t step on the gas because I wanted to provoke a reaction. My shrink liked to tell me I was combative. Whatever. If he stepped out of his rust monster, I’d make quick work of his knees with the tire iron I kept on the passenger floor. I made him go around me, smirking at his tobacco-spit frown as he passed. If I were dressed down he might have called me a bitch, but one look at me and he diverted eyes back to the road. If you stare at someone just the right way, they’ll know they’re in danger. Or maybe the wig just threw him off.

  I remembered my client, Leland Mumm, was waiting for me. He didn’t deserve someone to come late with shaky hands, whether those shakes came from arachnophobia or road rage. Not today.

  IPF, or idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, was killing Leland Mumm. Since his diagnosis three years ago, my client’s lungs had stiffened with scar tissue. He described his breathing with two words: shredding lungs. Talking hurt, so he chose his words parsimoniously. For example, he would never have used the word “parsimoniously.” Leland’s lungs no longer transferred oxygen to his bloodstream, so the rest of his organs didn’t get the oxygen they needed. Piece by piece, his insides were slowly suffocating.

  Brutal way to go. Not Desdemona’s gracious death in bush-league productions of Othello. From what Leland described, it was more like a pincushion bursting in the chest. Doctors weren’t much help, because medicine didn’t really understand the disease. With IPF, the agony is constant, and it can take five years to die.

  In Leland’s video interviews, he had trouble sitting up straight. He tipped to the side after a few minutes. Eventually we had to tape him in bed. Not the most flattering angle, but I adjusted the lighting to minimize the eye rings.

  The video conveyed personal messages to friends and family. Last wishes. I burned DVDs to be mailed out when he passed, so he could explain why he was doing something most people would think was nuts, even selfish. Ten years ago, before I got started, clients might have sent their last messages by post. Some still wrote letters. I preferred video because it felt more intimate. In case cops in black riot gear rammed my door, the video also proved I was working with my client’s consent.

  When we first met, Leland could manage more words before his lungs pinched. He insisted we record a message to his wife, who had passed away a few years ago. In short bursts, he pieced a story together about when they first dated. The moment he realized he loved her. They were walking along the endless Berkeley Pier when a fisherman yanked a crab out of the Bay and it flew into her. Leland had known then he wanted to protect her. I’ll admit, I admired the chivalry. When he got to the word “crab,” he twisted in the sheets with a shock of pain.

  I spoke to his pulmonologist by phone, but, paranoid about the legal fallout, she refused to meet me in person. Dr. Jocelyn Thibeault. She sounded austere, over-enunciating her English. I imagined her thin with telephone pole posture, probably in her fifties. She mailed Leland’s medical records to a P.O. Box so I could peek at the X-rays. I’m no pulmonary specialist, but the doctor talked me through the radiograph, so I could see the mess of scar tissue on his lungs.

  As with all clients, I met Leland roughly four weeks ago. A month be
fore the terminus. That term feels cold to me, but I wasn’t the one who coined it. I suppose you have to give some kind of name to an event that important. In any case, it’s not a word I would ever use around Leland Mumm.

  Leland wanted to die the first day I met him. He didn’t want time to think it over, because he didn’t want to lose his nerve. But I insisted on a waiting period to give my clients the chance to get cold feet. It was my own Brady Bill. Two other clients had changed their minds at their moments of truth. During the first meeting clients were eager. They thirsted for relief and could forget that they needed to put their affairs in order. The good-byes. The legal documents. Sometimes a final house cleaning. When we met, Leland didn’t want me to leave. He pulled at my dress with a weak hand, imploring me to ease his pain. The best I could do was morphine.

  In most cases, I’d meet the family, usually a spouse. Leland didn’t have anyone he wanted me to meet. I didn’t push him. A typical client would introduce me to his doctor, but because of her qualms, Her Majesty Dr. Thibeault refused to be in the same room as the executioner. So it was just Leland and me.

  Leland was young for a client—only fifty-two, according to his records. He had a long build, and I suspected he’d had more meat on him before the disease. IPF had eaten away at the muscle, especially in his arms and legs.

  Over the past month, I visited his hillside ranch house in Clayton once a week. I’d gotten to know the ochre peels of the bathroom wallpaper, the bend where the wood veneer had pulled away from the wall. This was the house where Leland grew up, and it looked like it hadn’t changed much. Leland didn’t open windows either, turning the house into a gardener’s hotbed. Stale sweat and urine fermented the air.