He hangs the Picasso in his studio. He calls it a Picasso, though he doesn’t have its veracity checked. He doesn’t want to know. The truth of Mireille’s story rests on it and he couldn’t bear for it to be proven a forgery. He couldn’t bear for her to be proven other than what she has claimed. He sometimes thinks she would have known this – she may have counted on it. She may have given him a forgery, knowing its discovery would be protected by his love for her. It is an exquisite thing. A Picasso.
In 1986 Picasso’s Weeping Woman was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria by a group calling itself the Australian Cultural Terrorists. The first two letters attributed to the Australian Cultural Terrorists in this novel were written by them (him? Her?) and published in The Age newspaper. The second two letters were written by me.
Weeping Woman was found in locker 227 at Spencer Street railway station. The identity of the Australian Cultural Terrorists remains unknown, but we almost certainly have them surrounded.
Stealing Picasso Page 21
