by André Alexis
– When did you notice anything was missing?
– As soon as we came downstairs this morning, said Gretchen. Miou-Miou’s ashes were all over. Fallingwater was gone and so were our laptops.
– And so was the toaster, said Adele.
– Yes, that’s true, said Gretchen, so was the toaster. But we found the toaster in the alleyway.
– That doesn’t mean it wasn’t stolen, Mother!
– I’m sorry, said Mandelshtam, but what is ‘Fallingwater’?
– Fallingwater? said Gretchen. It’s a house by Frank Lloyd Wright.
– He means, said Adele, Grandfather’s model of Fallingwater. Don’t you, Detective?
– Yes, I guess I do, said Mandelshtam.
– We keep it on the mantelpiece, right here, said Adele. You can’t miss it being gone. It was big and strange-looking.
– It wasn’t strange-looking, said Gretchen. It was silvery because it was made from titanium and niobium.
– It was strange-looking, Detective. I’m sure you’d agree. We only kept it in the living room because Mother’s so attached to it.
– I’m attached to it the way you’re attached to the cat’s ashes. And I told you that urn was going to fall.
– Could you tell me about the model? asked Mandelshtam.
– Oh, well, said Gretchen, there’s a bit of a story to it. Do you mind?
Detective Mandelshtam did not mind, though the story began a little further back in time than he might have wished.
Mrs. Azarian-Grau – who preferred to be called Gretchen – had had a wonderful childhood. She’d been especially fond of her mother who had, poor woman, died tragically young. Her family – that is, her father and her four siblings – grew closer after her mother’s death. If there was any good to be taken from the long agony her mother suffered, it was this mournful solidarity her family might not otherwise have shared. It goes without saying, of course, that they would all have surrendered even the most blessed of solidarities to have more time with their mother, whose portrait, by the way, was on the mantel in the living room.
Mandelshtam politely regarded the framed photograph. It was taken in the fifties, from the look of it, and somewhere in Yorkville. Mrs. Azarian was not smiling but not at all dour. Something of her warmth and humour was in her eyes, her long lashes, her white coat and the playful sombrero whose rim she held up so you could see her face. Blond in black and white, she was unmistakably Adele’s forebear and Gretchen’s mother.
When Gretchen was twenty-one, she’d not yet chosen a profession. Her father, Robert, thought her brilliant. He would have liked her to help him run Azarian Holdings. He’d taught her about business at the same time as he’d taught her older brother, Alton, and she’d been able to read a financial report from the age of eleven. But Gretchen wanted a profession in which she could express her own creativity. And she had options. She excelled in music and photography. But though she played the oboe exceedingly well, for instance, she could not imagine a life spent playing the music of others and she felt no urge to write her own. So, though she was infatuated with music, she turned down a scholarship to Julliard. The same hitch prevented her from pursuing photography. She felt no need to do it.
Then, one day, she found one of her younger brother’s books lying open on the kitchen table. The book was oversized, beautifully bound, filled with striking photographs. It was devoted to the life, ideas and work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Gretchen could remember the pages at which the book lay open: 105 and 106, two impressive photos of the Great Workroom of the Johnson Wax Headquarters, with its so-called lily pads and columns and natural light. Seeing them, Gretchen knew at once she wanted to be an architect. In fact, as she looked through the book – which she begged Michael to give her and which for years she kept by her bedside – it seemed so obvious she was meant to be an architect that she felt almost foolish not to have realized this until faced with Lloyd Wright’s exquisite work.
Her father was disappointed. He tried to dissuade her from architecture. It was a difficult profession, he said, one rife with treacherous competition. The most successful architects were not necessarily innovative or creative. They were the ones who gave the client what the client wanted, and most of the clients she encountered would be men who preferred vapid grandiosity to the play of form and light. Besides which, though he did not mind paying for schooling any of his children, he suspected that paying for her to become an architect would be like throwing his money down a well while wasting her time.
For months she pleaded with him and for months he refused to answer the simplest questions about her future. Then, when she had begun to make her own plans, looking into the prerequisites for admission to mit (where another of her idols, Marion Mahony Griffin, had studied) and casting about for work that would pay for the tuition, her father asked her to accompany him and Alton to Pittsburgh where, he said, he needed intelligent advice on a delicate matter. She went with them but with a single purpose: to convince her father to support her in her desire to be an architect.
During the trip to Pennsylvania, her father refused to talk about architecture. Whenever she brought the matter up, he changed the subject, speaking instead about the business he’d brought them along to help him resolve – something to do with zoning laws and deciding if a certain real estate agent was or was not trustworthy. By the time they landed in Pittsburgh, Gretchen felt humiliated, barely able to look at her father. The agent in question picked them up in a Lincoln Continental. The car radio was tuned to some vacuous station that played the hits like ‘Dizzy’ – a song Gretchen still associated with anguish – until she asked the man to turn it off. Which he did, thus nurturing the dull talk that went on and on as they drove into the heart of a late-spring countryside.
By the time the car stopped in the middle of the woods, Gretchen was so relieved to get out and walk she scarcely took in the surroundings. The agent preceded them down a winding path. Then her father called her to his side while Alton and the agent went on ahead.
Suddenly solemn, her father said
– Gretchen, I love you very much.
He was not one to overuse the word love – at least, not around her – so she was taken aback.
– Whatever you want in this life, he continued, I want for you. Of course I’ll support you if you want to be an architect. I just wanted to know you were serious.
Though she found this change confusing, she was almost immediately ecstatic. She hugged her father and they walked arm in arm along a beaten path further into the woods, the sound of water growing louder, the smell of spring overpowering. And it was as they came to a short bridge over a river that she finally understood where they were: Fallingwater, the house designed by Lloyd Wright! It was as if they had walked into the pages of Michael’s book: the cantilevered terraces, the steps down to the river, the house descending by stages into the woods.
She wept that day and she wept again some forty years later as she recounted the moment to Detective Mandelshtam, the moment she began to think of herself as the architect she eventually became. Adele put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and the two were quiet.
– So, said Mandelshtam, your father left you a model of Fallingwater. Was it valuable?
– Well, said Gretchen, it has great sentimental value and it’s unique. But if you mean how much did it cost to make … I’m not sure, Detective. Maybe hundreds for the material. It was titanium and …
– Mother, said Adele, it was mostly titanium. The craftsmanship. That’s what would have been expensive. I told you, you should have had it evaluated.
– I understand you lost something of personal value, said Mandelshtam, but …
– No, no, said Gretchen, this is why I hesitated to call you, Detective. Would you like another cookie? I’m going to have to talk about my family again. You see, my poor sister, Willow, died a week ago.
– She was a heroin addict, said Adele.
– She was my sister, said G
retchen, and I loved her. I won’t have you saying unpleasant things about her. Yes, Detective, my sister was an addict. It wasn’t a complete surprise that she died when she did. But she was a talented woman, much more intelligent than I could hope to be. Honestly, Adele, you have no business speaking of her like that to a stranger.
– I didn’t mean anything unpleasant, said Adele. I loved Aunt Will as much as anyone, but she was an addict. The detective should know.
Mother and daughter sat side by side on the sofa, facing Mandelshtam. One really could not have taken them for anything but relatives: both of them blond with brown eyes and slightly hooked noses, both obviously fit and, one might say, defiantly unashamed of it. On this day they were dressed similarly as well, with one colourful difference: Gretchen wore a silk kerchief from Hermès, its border light blue.
– I wonder, said Mandelshtam, if we could get back to the things that have been stolen.
– Willow, said Adele, has something to do with what’s been stolen.
– She might, said Gretchen. My father left each of his five children a memento, something to remember him by, in his will. He left Willow a lovely Japanese screen. Alton got a poem. I got a model of Fallingwater. I can’t remember what Simone got. Oh yes, a painting. And Michael got a bottle of alcohol. Willow thought the mementos father left us were clues to some fortune or other. Sometimes she thought they were clues to money and sometimes they were clues to Lord-knows-what. To be fair, Detective, my father wanted Willow to think this. He thought the game would distract her from her addiction. You’d have to know my sister to know why this makes sense. You see, once Willow got an idea in her head …
– That’s why it’s important for the detective to know about Aunt Will, Mother. So he has an idea of the kind of people Aunt Will talked to. We all know why Grandfather did what he did, but her addict friends wouldn’t. They might take the treasure business seriously.
– Yes, yes, said Gretchen. Who knows to whom she told her story. I haven’t thought about any of this too deeply, Detective. We knew there was no treasure, so none of us took the treasure hunt seriously. But when we went to Willow’s home, Adele and I, and the screen wasn’t in her living room where she always kept it, we both noticed. And we looked for it. I wanted to have it in memory of my father and my sister. But we didn’t find it. That was two days ago now.
– Could she have sold it or given it away? asked Mandelshtam.
– She wouldn’t have, said Adele. My aunt would never have sold her screen.
– My daughter’s right, said Gretchen. Willow treasured that screen the way I treasured Fallingwater. It can’t be a coincidence that both mementos are gone or that mine was stolen so soon after Willow died. What I think, Detective, is that Adele is right. Willow didn’t always choose the best company and she never made a secret of her ideas.
– She was probably too stoned to keep a secret, said Adele.
Gretchen put a hand on her daughter’s leg.
– Willow used to tell us about the places she frequented. ‘Dives’ is what we called them, in my day. And if some desperate person believed her about the things Father left us being clues, it wouldn’t have taken much to find out where we live. Willow herself might have told them. In monetary terms, Detective, it wouldn’t be a big loss if our mementos were stolen. None of us would suffer financially, but it’s an invasion and, speaking for myself, I really resent losing this connection to my father.
Detective Mandelshtam rose from the armchair, brushing cookie crumbs from his jacket.
– That’s an interesting story, he said. Have any of the other mementos been stolen?
– No, said Gretchen. I don’t even know that Willow’s screen was stolen. It’s not where it was. That’s all. But now that mine is gone, it set off bells.
– I understand, said Mandelshtam. We’ll do what we can. I will say this looks like fairly competent work. Not the kind of thing you’d expect from heroin addicts. And, to be honest, I don’t think we’ll recover your model.
– You’re not very encouraging, said Adele.
– I didn’t want to call the police at all, said Gretchen. No offence, Detective, but I told my daughter, ‘What can they do? What’s gone is gone.’ It’s sad to have lost something my father left me. It makes me miss him even more. But when you get to my age you accept that things will go their own way. I really don’t understand why anyone would take it, though. I suppose it was unusual. It was made of titanium and niobium. The titanium was pure and it would have been hard to work with, but the model wasn’t worth a lot of money. Whoever stole it went through a lot of bother for very little. The paintings in the dining room are worth much more.
– I didn’t mean to be discouraging, said Mandelshtam. But I try not to give people false hope. There’s minimal chance we’ll recover your things, unless we catch someone trying to sell them. But, out of curiosity, if you don’t mind: do you think your father was the kind of man to leave money to be discovered?
– Absolutely not, said Gretchen. If there was a chance we wouldn’t find it, he would have been horrified at the waste. At the idea of it. My father’s parents were well-off, but they were always frugal. I think he would have died rather than waste money.
Adele said
– On the other hand, my granddad had a great sense of humour, Detective. You could never tell what he was up to.
– He had a sense of humour, said Gretchen, but not about money.
– One last question, said Mandelshtam. I’d like to know how expensive your model of Fallingwater was. Do you happen to know who made it?
– No, I don’t know that, said Gretchen.
– I do! said Adele. Aunt Will found him a while ago. I remember his name because it sounded so grand: Alexander von Würfel. It sounds like a count in exile, someone who’d lived in a ruined castle. When I told Aunt Will that, she laughed at me.
Gretchen put a hand to her mouth, suddenly upset.
– I’m sorry, she said. My sister had such a lovely laugh.
2 Von Würfel’s Animals and Birds
Much like his friend Tancred, Daniel Mandelshtam did not like family stories. Something about them reminded him of dreams – fascinating to the dreamer, dreary for anyone else. But the Azarian-Grau story had been unexpectedly interesting or, at least, puzzling. A treasure hunt to distract a heroin addict? A strange idea and, as the addict in question had died, of questionable merit.
Then, too, there was the burglary. Why would a professional – one who’d left no prints and shut off a sophisticated alarm – take on such risk for such poor return? The model of Fallingwater was made of relatively common materials and its significance was so specific it was difficult to imagine anyone hiring a thief to steal it. The laptops were not worth much more unless, of course, they were being mined for information. But why bother to take a toaster and then leave it outside the house? Contrary to what he’d told the Azarian-Graus, that was the mark of amateurs, of drug addicts. The theft left an odd feel in the mind. Was it that a good thief had made a mistake or was it that an incompetent one had inadvertently done almost everything right? Or was it that the front door had been left unlocked, the alarm off, and some opportunist had wandered in and, like a jackdaw, taken a few shiny objects?
He had written up his account, done all the paperwork himself, and yet, days after speaking with the Azarian-Graus, Daniel was still sufficiently intrigued to dig a little. He found out where a certain von Würfel – ‘Preserver of Animals and Birds’ – had his business and, on a day off, visited the place.
He saw at once why Willow Azarian had been amused by her niece referring to von Würfel as a count. The man’s shop was in a dingy little building not far from a ‘bike joint’ and an establishment called Angst whose sign was in a silvery, gothic script that made it seem like the kind of place Europeans went to be punished. To be fair, the buildings along Queen from Moss Park to Ontario were all a little grimy so that von Würfel’s shop – Von Würfel’s Animals
and Birds by name – did not stick out until you saw its unusual display window – a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, fronted by two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword duel.
The inside of the shop was unexpected, in that it was so different from its display window. For one thing, it was well-lit by banks of fluorescent lights that hung from its high ceiling. Its walls were a pleasing celadon. Or, rather, what you could see was celadon. The colour was obscured by shelving that was screwed into the walls themselves. On the shelves was a wide array of glass containers filled with gel or some vitreous fluid that magnified the animals (or animal skeletons) floating within: parrots, falcons, mice, shrews, lemmings, squirrels. All on the upper shelves. On some of the lower shelves there were aquaria – filled with the same or similar liquid – in which cats or dogs or (in one instance) a monkey were suspended.
The shop was both eerie and fascinating, the animals all – from shrew to monkey – as if caught in moments of pleasure or enterprise.
– Can I help you?
The question was asked by a young woman in a bright green dress.
– Is Mr. von Würfel in? asked Daniel.
– I think he’s in the back, she said. Did you bring your pet with you or is it not dead yet?
Then, seeing that Daniel looked baffled, she motioned toward the shelves.
– Most of these are people’s pets, she said. Instead of doing old-school taxidermy, my dad turns them into works of art. Don’t you agree?
– They look … striking, said Daniel. But I really came to speak to Mr. von Würfel.
– Oh, okay, said the girl. I’ll get him.
Mr. von Würfel was, in his way, as eccentric as his shop. He was a tall man – six feet three or four – and portly. He stooped slightly and his hands moved constantly as he spoke. The frame of his glasses was black-rimmed, thick, rectangular. A man in his seventies by the look of it, he dressed as if he were younger – plaid shirt, blue jeans – while grey stubble made his chin and cheeks look prickly. He walked as if he’d had a mild stroke or, perhaps, polio when he was a child.
