A Deceptive Clarity

by Aaron Elkins

  And that is what makes it so useful. "We provide," Dr. Rowlande had further explained, "not so much a catalogue raisonné of an artist's work as a quarry of information to be discriminatingly mined, so to speak."

  At the Witt, and nowhere else in the world, it is possible to look at most of the dubious paintings that have been successfully put forward as Vermeers at one time or another, and to compare them with the entire small body of unquestioned Vermeers. It is also possible to mine the quarry for factual information—provenances, cuttings, sales records—-that is impossible to get anywhere else.

  I probably ought to explain that the three paintings from the cache required a different approach than the one I'd used on the others. That is, my initial premise for the pictures from Florence had been that the forgery, if there was a forgery, was an old copy of an already existing painting; that there were two identical Dürer self-portraits for example, one fake and one real, and that the fake was masquerading as the original. That avenue had turned out to be a blind alley.

  But for the cache there were other possibilities. They had been purchased by Bolzano's father between 1930 and 1939—when only the most primitive scientific techniques for assuring the authenticity of paintings were available, and they had been out of sight since 1944. If one of them was a fake, it was not going to be a copy of an actual Vermeer, Rubens, or Titian, but a centuries-old painting in the style of one of them. Possibly it hadn't been intended as a forgery (what would be the point of forging the unknown Vermeer in the seventeenth century?) but had been altered later on. In any case, it had gotten by the experts of the 1930s.

  If one of them was a fake. And if I couldn't find that out in the Witt, I wasn't going to be able to find out anywhere.

  It always takes me a while to get used to the filing system. The materials under an artist's name are not arranged chronologically, or artistically, or by "period," but in the way that's most helpful to the people who use the place. Most of those who come are on errands like mine: They have an old painting whose authorship they doubt, so they want to look at every picture they can find with a similar composition, to see what it might be—other than what it's purported to be.

  So Vermeer's pictures, for example, are organized under headings such as "Single Figures, Male, Full Length, Turned to Left" and "Males, Less Than Full Length, Without Hands." I found Young Woman at the Clavichord under "Single Figures and Portraits, Women, Less Than Full Length, With Hands, Turned to Right."

  There was only one version, and it was identified as Bolzano's, and it matched the one in the exhibition perfectly. I turned over the large gray card to which the photograph was attached, hoping to find a provenance, and I did:

  Young Woman at the Clavichord was perhaps in the collection of Diego Duarte, Antwerp, 1682, or in an anonymous sale (Jacobus Abrahamsz, Dissius of Delft?), Amsterdam, 16 May 1696, or in an anonymous sale, Amsterdam, 11 July 1714 (Lot 12). It was apparently in the collection of Graf von Schonborn at Pommerfelden near Bamberg, allegedly by 1746, and passed with the greater part of his collection to the Lacroix family, Paris. After several anonymous sales, apparently purchased by Charles Sedelmeyer in 1892 and sold by him to Lawrie and Co. in London in February 1893. Lent by T. Humphrey Ward to the Royal Academy, 1896. Acquired by the Bolzano family, Florence, in 1933. Expropriated by German government in 1944, present whereabouts unknown.

  Also attributed to G. ter Borch, q.v. Also attributed to J. van Cost, q.v. Also attributed to K. Dujardin, q.v. Also attributed to P. de Hooch, q.v.

  I'm not sure what I'd expected to find, but I'd hoped for something more useful. But this is a pretty typical provenance for an Old Master, and as you can see, it raises more questions than it answers, with lengthy gaps, and "apparently," "allegedly," "anonymous," and "perhaps" sprinkled throughout. And then there was that mess of "Also attributed's," all of which except the de Hooch were news to me.

  I looked in the files of the other three painters as instructed by the q.v.'s, but came away with no reason to think that any of them had anything to do with it. No surprise.

  Then I went rapidly through all the Vermeer files, glancing at each picture. I was searching for parts of Young Woman at the Clavichord that might show up in other pictures. There is a common kind of fake, of a Vermeer, say, in which the forger borrows a pair of hands from The Music Lesson, a mouth from The Geographer, eyes from The Love Letter, and so on, and weaves them into a single picture that thus has many Vermeer touches, even if it lacks the unity of a Vermeer whole. The great artists, on the other hand, while they repeated themes or entire paintings, rarely cannibalized little pieces of their own work.

  As expected, I found nothing to suggest that Young Woman at the Clavichord was anything but an original and thoughtfully integrated composition. And I was more than ever convinced—almost certain now—that whatever Peter meant by "Down your alley," he didn't mean that anyone but J. Vermeer of Delft had painted this one.

  That left Titian's Venus and the Lute Player and Rubens's Rape of the Sabines, and although the Rubens files were only a few yards from Vermeer's, I was freezing down there in the stony cellar, so I climbed up two flights to where the Italian collection is, and where the temperature is kept almost livable. (Years ago I complained to Dr. Rowlande about the Witt's heating, and was given a lecture on the pitiful American dependence on central heating instead of sensible underwear.)

  The bright oval room in which Titian's files are stored was once the house's dining room, and in its center is an elegant twenty-foot-long Adam table, probably the original one, now just a comfortably worn worktable. On it I spread the contents of a folder labeled Venus With Musicians. Bolzano's Venus was there, along with a lengthy provenance and an envelope full of cuttings. The provenance told me nothing, but one of the cuttings quickly solved the riddle I'd come with: Why was this relatively early Titian painted in a style not associated with the artist for another forty years?

  The cutting was from a 1951 paper by a Yale professor:

  The Firenze Venus has long been ascribed to the year 1583. Clever biographical extrapolations by Sabrioli, however, now suggest that the correct date may be 1538, with the earlier ascription being attributable to an accidental transposition of digits in the seventeenth century. The current observer, though no art historian, finds Sabrioli's ingenious deductions thoroughly convincing.

  Well, this observer didn't. With no disrespect intended to Sabrioli's biographical extrapolations, they were wrong. And the fact that all the post-1951 cuttings used the 1538 date merely meant that they were wrong, too. On stylistic grounds, Venus and the Lute Player was 1583, not 1538, and that was that. Sabrioli made a mistake. Case closed.

  But the Titian had other problems, the main one being that there were six different versions: the one from Bolzano's collection, the well-known one in the Fitzwilliam Museum, one in Dresden with a doubtful provenance, one in Berlin with a black organist substituting for the lute player, and two in the Prado, also with organists, but white instead of black, with one of the two lacking the customary Cupid smirking nearby.

  All different, but all very much the same. So much for Norgren's dictum about great artists never repeating themselves. I made photocopies of the other five versions to take back to Berlin, but I can't say that I expected much to come from them.

  By this time it was one o'clock, and I was bleary-eyed from staring at photographs. I went out to eat in a fish-and-chips restaurant on Oxford Street, marveling as every foreigner does at how it is that the British can fry their haddock so deliciously and their potatoes so wretchedly. A Liverpudlian once told me that they like them that way, and I suppose it must be true. Reasonably fortified by the fish if not by the chips, I returned to the basement of the Witt to tackle Peter Paul Rubens.

  But the Rubens situation was hopeless. There was not just a folder but an entire file box devoted to "Rapes of the Sabines and Reconciliations of the Romans and Sabines" (with very little to tell them apart). Lest you think that Rubens was ob
sessed with this subject matter, I will tell you that the man has 114 file boxes devoted to him—and these are sizable containers a foot and a half high and three inches thick; fifty-seven linear feet of densely filled shelf space.

  By five o'clock I had gone through almost half the boxes, although the last ten had been a blur. The attendant was wandering around nearby, straightening things, coughing politely, and looking pointedly at the clock. I capitulated, closing the box before me with a peevish snap and giving up for the day. And since I was due in Frankfurt the next morning to play my part in the Byzantine plot to get the El Greco out of Frankfurt, I would not be back.

  Not that I wanted to come back; fifty file boxes was enough. The Rubens, I decided, would just have to be given to Kohler to look at, if need be. But truthfully, I couldn't see spending the money. There were a few touches on our Rape of the Sabines that were questionable, but there are a few touches on most Rubenses that are questionable, and I would have bet that we had something which was at least ninety percent by Peter Paul's own hand. By my definition, it was authentic.

  And so, I was more and more certain, were the Vermeer and the Titian.

  Whatever came before square one, that's where I was.

  Chapter 18

  My flight to Frankfurt the next morning was delayed, so I arrived at the Kunstmuseum half an hour late. I went directly to the basement workroom, as agreed, to observe the crating of the El Greco and to document the various nicks and scratches already on it. That done, I dashed upstairs to Emanuel Traben's office, still twenty minutes late, but as it turned out I needn't have worried. I found him, more dyspeptic than ever, talking to an American major.

  "Sorry I'm late, Herr—Harry, what are you doing here?" I hadn't recognized him at first. I don't think I'd really believed he owned a uniform.

  Traben explained. "Major Gucci is commendably cautious. He has arranged that the truck should leave later than the scheduled time and should follow a route other than the agreed-upon one, Another truck has left as scheduled, empty except for two of your soldiers, to provide a ... a decoy, as the major calls it." He frowned painfully, digging with two fingers at the area below his sternum, and looked up at a wall clock. "And now perhaps we should get underway with moving the painting?"

  In the hallway, he scuttled along in front of us, giving me a chance to talk to Harry.

  "A decoy? What's going on? What do you expect to happen?"

  "Who knows?" he said happily. "Nothing, probably. But I figured we already had enough trouble; why take chances? Besides, they always do it this way in the movies."

  "Oh well, then; of course. Forgive my asking. How're you doing with Peter's calendar?"

  "I've been through it. Can't say it did me any good. Also did a little more checking on Robey and Jessick."

  "And?"

  "Robey really does have a girlfriend in Sachsenhausen. A very nice almost-divorced lady with two kids. As for Jessick, it turns out Robey and Gadney walked in about five minutes after you talked to him on the phone from Berchtesgaden, and he told them about how you were going out to that midnight shooting thing—so he wasn't the only one who knew."

  "Mm. And where does that leave us?"

  He scratched briefly at his cheek and smiled serenely at me. "Who the hell knows?"

  At the loading bay in the cobbled courtyard, while Traben gave instructions to the sleepy-looking workmen who would load the crate onto the truck, a soldier approached Harry hesitantly. "Major, I'm not sure if it's anything, but there's something weird here."

  He took Harry to the back of the truck some thirty feet away, where they both knelt to peer underneath it, inside the right wheel. Harry straightened up instantly and the two of them walked rapidly back to us.

  "Get that painting out of here," Harry said, his face set. "And everyone out of the courtyard."

  "Really—" Traben ventured.

  "Now!"

  Traben jumped, and within five seconds he, the painting, and the now-wide-awake workmen had all retreated behind the swinging glass doors.

  "All right, Abrams," Harry said, "get on the horn to the Frankfurt bomb squad."

  "A bomb?" I said. "That's crazy. Are you sure—"

  He spun around, justifiably brusque. "No, I'm not sure. Now, did you hear me tell you to get the hell—"

  My attention was diverted by an extraordinary sight. The latched back doors of the truck were bowing slowly outward toward me, like an inflating balloon. "Harry," I wanted to say, "will you look at that," but I didn't seem to be able to find the words.

  "Chris, are you all right?" he shouted suddenly. "Chris!"

  "Well, of course," I said irritably. "Don't yell in my ear like that."

  Only I didn't say that either. I think I may have made a small croaking sound, but that was all. What was happening? Something hard was pressing against my back, and my head was wedged uncomfortably against something rough and cold. Stone? Was I lying down? How could that be?

  "Chris!"

  "Harry ..." I realized I couldn't see him or anything else. Were my eyes closed?

  They were. I opened them and laughed, then shut them quickly as a surge of nausea welled up along with a sudden if incomplete grasp of what had happened. What with my newly exciting life, I now could recognize that sickening, heaving billow that goes with coming back to consciousness after a blow on the head. I was lying down, all right.

  "Did the bomb go off?" This time the words made it all the way out.

  "Did the bomb go off?" he repeated, and laughed, genuinely amused. "Yeah, the bomb went off."

  "I didn't hear it."

  "I wish I didn't," the soldier's voice growled. "Jesus H. Christ."

  Tentatively, I re-opened one eye and then the other. The nausea had receded. Maybe one developed a tolerance after a while.

  "Are you all right, Chris?" Harry pressed.

  "I don't know." I was lying on my back on the cobblestones, my head propped against the rough granite wall of the building. I moved to shift the pressure onto my shoulders, and touched my head gingerly. Nothing broken there, and only one painful spot, behind my left ear. And a sore neck. "Yeah, I'm OK."

  Just another insignificant concussion. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and felt my limbs. Bloodied knuckles, bruised knee, torn trousers. "Yes," I confirmed, "I'm all right." I looked up suddenly. "What about you two?"

  "Fine."

  'Traben? The workmen?"

  "Everybody's all right. You're the only one who got zapped. The painting's OK, too."

  "Nobody else even got knocked down?"

  Harry shrugged. "Explosions are funny. I guess you were standing in the wrong place. If you'd moved your ass when I told you to—"

  "Believe me, next time I will."

  "Major," the soldier said, looking over Harry's shoulder, "that must be the bomb squad."

  Harry turned around. "Yeah."

  "Already?" I said. "How long was I out?"

  "Five minutes, a little more." He straightened up. "If I were you, I'd just sit there for a while. Need anything?"

  I shook my head. While he went to meet the German unit, I leaned back against the wall, feeling my pulse hammer at about twice its normal rate, and waiting for my mind to reassemble itself.

  Ten minutes later I was on my feet, waiting impatiently for Harry and Kapitän Knopp, the dour leader of the bomb squad, to conclude their discussion just inside the now-shattered glass doors. I realized that I was very, very lucky to be alive. The bomb had gone off at about 12:40, at which time I should have been sitting directly over it, halfway to Rhein-Main. I suppose I should have been weak-kneed with relief, but I wasn't; I was tense with excitement.

  I grabbed Harry's arm as Knopp turned to snap orders at his men. "It's the El Greco," I whispered. "It's got to be the El Greco."

  "What?" He was understandably distracted.

  "The forgery, the forgery," I babbled. "Don't you see? Peter said he found it a week ago—I mean a week before he was killed. Well,
he was here a week before he was killed, trying to work out the insurance." I shook my head wonderingly. "I just automatically assumed it was one of the ones in Berlin. I forgot all about this one. It was as if I had blinders on."

  "Yeah, maybe."

  "It's staring us right in the face. They tried to blow it up before we found out."

  "That's one explanation."

  "What other explanation could there be? That's why," I said, not above a little self-justification, "I haven't been able to identify a forgery in Berlin. It wasn't there. I've been wasting my time."

  "Could be," he said, his eyes on the green-uniformed Germans and the American soldiers in mottled field dress now beginning to sift through the wreckage of the truck and to pick up unrecognizable fragments scattered throughout the courtyard.

  The wooden crate was standing near the wall. On a bench next to it Herr Traben sat, pale and trembling, staring into space, the red spots on his cheeks as vivid as lipstick. I put my hand on the heavy wooden crate. "Harry, do you have any objection to my opening this up and having a look?"

  "I do!" said Kapitän Knopp, materializing from somewhere and speaking fluent English. "I goddamned well do!"

  Harry made a little motion assuring him it wouldn't be touched, and waved him off. "Me too," he said to me.

  "But why—"

  "Because I want to have a look at it first."

  "But—"

  "Look, Chris, for all we know the crate itself could be booby-trapped." On its own, my hand jumped quickly off it. "I think that's what Knopp's worried about. Me, my mind runs more to drugs."

  "Drugs!" I said, startled. "Where the hell did that come from? Why should there be drugs?"

  He sighed. "I guess it didn't sink in yet, what would have happened if that bomb had gone off the way it was supposed to." He turned me gently toward the glass doors opening into the courtyard. "Look at the truck."