Under the Hammer

by John Mortimer

  ‘You liked that, didn’t you?’ He smiled charmingly.

  ‘It seems I was fooled by it.’

  ‘You wanted me to have a soul, so you could feel good about me. So you could feel better about all our family squashed in three rooms in a block where our drunk neighbours use the lift for a toilet and we shall never afford a Mercedes car. Where my sister could not give a year’s wages for a silk shirt like you are wearing.’

  ‘So you set out to fool me.’

  ‘I set out to make you love me. I know what English girls like about us. And it’s true also, it will be true for both of us, when we have sold the icon we can afford to live a rich inner life. Together!’

  ‘On stolen property?’

  ‘There is no one in the West does that?’

  ‘Some people, perhaps. That’s not the point.’

  ‘They can’t preach to me. They beat us in the arms race, they destroyed Communism, they pulled down the Berlin Wall. They think it’s their great triumph. But, after that, what do they expect us to live on? Honesty? Please don’t make me laugh! Do you think there are honest livings to be got in Russia nowadays?’ He stood up. ‘I must go now. Tonight I bring the picture.’

  ‘No, Alyosha. No!’

  ‘I come tonight.’ She saw him moving away, down the path between so many graves, and called after him helplessly, ‘No. Listen. It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. I’m sure you’re joking. It’s quite impossible!’

  ‘Don’t follow me now! It might not be safe for you.’ He started to run and she was still calling, ‘Alyosha! Come back. Alyosha. I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Konchalovsky. Alyosha Konchalovsky. That’s a funny name to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘No! No, it’s not funny. Come back!’

  ‘Tonight!’

  She could see him no longer. The paths twisted and he was out of sight. He ran out of the cemetery gates and, as he did so, an old Mercedes car came to life and moved after him. It was driven by Lubov.

  Maggie had decided that she couldn’t believe a word Alyosha had told her. He had tricked her about his ‘soul’ because he wanted her to love him. Couldn’t he have told her an absurd story about the icon for the same reason? The idea that he was going to turn up at the hotel with ‘The Virgin of Vitebsk’ was part of a ludicrous seduction technique. Of course, he wanted her to take him back to England, where they would wait for a picture which had, in fact, disappeared long ago. She decided not to be in that evening and asked Ben to take her to the circus.

  ‘Without Alyosha?’

  ‘Definitely without Alyosha!’ When she said this he started to hum ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’ and went to change into his most flamboyant tie.

  So they fought their way through the crowds, past the circus horses stepping delicately on the pavement, and sat staring up and up to the immense height at which girls with strong thighs and square-shouldered men twisted and somersaulted and performed what seemed incredible feats of bravery in the air. And Maggie tried to forget all about that afternoon.

  At which time Alyosha left his apartment block near Mayakovsky Station and started to walk to Maggie’s hotel. And the battered Mercedes, with Lubov smiling at the wheel, started quietly and moved after Alyosha as he made his way to Tverskaya Street, once called after Maxim Gorky, a writer considered too left-wing for the brave new capitalist world. Quite soon, Lubov became aware of the fact that there was someone else intensely interested in Alyosha’s journey.

  At the end of Tverskaya, Alyosha turned into narrow streets by the Moscow Arts Theatre, a short cut to Theatre Square and Maggie’s hotel. And it was in one of these, a silent empty place, that he heard footsteps behind him, looked round and started to run because of what he saw. The long-haired man shouted at him to stop and then raised the gun he took from the pocket of his battered overcoat.

  Alyosha fell running and his briefcase tumbled open, exposing a glimmer of a gold picture. And then the Mercedes’ lights lit up and, before Tolyagin could reach his prize, ‘The Virgin of Vitebsk’ was swept up and driven away by Lubov, the English schoolgirl’s lover, to an unknown destination.

  A few people heard the shot, but such sounds are common in the Moscow of today and they took no notice of it at all.

  The next morning, the day of their return to England, a strange woman introduced herself to Ben and Maggie at breakfast. ‘I am Ursula Mamentova and I am your Intourist guide for today. Our programme is: I take you to the airport and see you safely on to the flight for England. BA 873 it is, surely?’

  ‘Where’s Alyosha?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Our guide was Alyosha.’

  ‘Mr Konchalovsky,’ Ursula told them, ‘is not available. He has another client. Now. Shall we start our programme?’

  Angela Ridgeway remembered the procedure for baggage inspection when you depart from Moscow Airport. The big suitcases go through an X-ray machine some fifty yards before the check-in, but not the hand-luggage. You then have to carry, drag or somehow hump your big case to the check-in and put it on the conveyor-belt. It won’t be examined again and your hand-baggage doesn’t get X-rayed until you’re on your way to the final point of departure.

  The important parcel, square, flat, and wrapped in brown paper, which Lubov had given Angela was in her shoulder-bag while her big suitcase was examined and found innocent. Half-way to the check-in, she put it down, apparently exhausted by its weight, and a well-briefed selection of her friends crowded around her. It was then that the parcel came out of her shoulder-bag and went into the big zipped pocket on the front of her suitcase, which was sent on its way to London.

  Maggie and Ben saw none of this. They had passed through and he was saying goodbye to Russia with a small Guinness in the Irish bar, which was doing a roaring trade in the duty-free area. ‘So Alyosha deserted us,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were you in love with him?’ he felt it safe to ask.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Maggie stared down at her coffee. ‘A little.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thank you, Ben.’

  They were both silent. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, he said, ‘Smart-arse!’

  ‘What did you call me?’

  ‘I suppose I was in love too, once. With a girl called Smart-arse. Now she’s old Batty. Oh, well, it happens to all of us.’

  Maggie had stopped listening. She was thinking of someone else. Then she said, ‘Alyosha told me he’d stolen “The Virgin of Vitebsk”.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘I suppose you’d better know the whole story.’

  It was on an easel in Lord Holloway’s office: the small golden picture of the kneeling girl and the angel lit up the room. Ben and Maggie were looking at it for the first time, as were the Lord Chairman and Shrimsley, the office manager. Meredith Bland had received it into Klinsky’s and he looked at it with the pride of ownership. ‘The provenance is absolutely fascinating,’ he told them. Stalin sold it in the Thirties. He looted so many Russian treasures.’

  ‘However, it was a perfectly legitimate sale by a head of state,’ Shrimsley assured everybody.

  ‘Oh, entirely legal,’ Merry agreed. ‘It was bought by a Dutch gallery owner.’

  ‘German,’ Shrimsley suggested.

  ‘No, Dutch,’ Merry Bland insisted. ‘He sold it to an Orthodox family who’d left Russia at the time of the Revolution and taken up residence in South America.’

  ‘Leipzig!’ Shrimsley was sure.

  ‘Rio. The grandson of the original purchaser sold it to a dealer in New York,’ was Bland’s version.

  ‘It was recovered by the Russian Army during the war and recently came into the hands of the Ministry of Culture.’ Shrimsley apparently knew the full story.

  ‘My dear Shrimsley. It was brought into Klinsky’s by a representative of the New York dealer.’ Bland was certain of the story.

  ‘Ivan Grekov sent me certificates, authenticated!’ Shrimsley opened the
file on his lap.

  ‘The New York provenance is fully documented,’ Merry assured them.

  ‘There would seem to be some conflict of evidence.’ Ben looked amused.

  ‘What did you find out about it, Ben?’ the Lord Chairman asked. ‘I assume you were doing something in Russia.’

  ‘Apart from dancing and drinking vodka? Oh, yes. Maggie and I came to the conclusion that – it’s a beautiful work of art.’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’ Shrimsley was impatient.

  ‘No,’ Ben told him, ‘I don’t suppose you do.’ And then he told the story as far as he knew it. ‘Records in the Academy of Arts show it was still in Vitebsk when Hitler invaded Russia. It was fought over, soldiers died for it, but I don’t think the Germans got it. A young Russian officer looted it. His name was Krupenski, the husband of Merry’s friend Olga Krupenska. After his death she hung on to it. Waiting for the moment to sell.’

  ‘But she never did?’ Holloway asked.

  ‘No. Someone we met told me he’d stolen it from her.’ Maggie spoke for the first time.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Holloway was losing patience.

  ‘Alyosha. Alyosha Konchalovsky. Our interpreter. He said he was going to bring it to our hotel.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did we have to go to Russia, Merry?’ Ben asked in the silence that followed. ‘Why didn’t you get a visa?’

  ‘Some bureaucratic nonsense.’

  ‘About smuggling icons in the past?’

  ‘That’s a perfectly outrageous suggestion!’

  ‘Please! Please, both of you.’ Holloway tried to reach a solution. ‘Let’s be realistic about this. We’re not detectives, Ben. Is it up to us to inquire too deeply?’

  ‘It depends on whether you think we’re honest dealers or receivers of stolen property,’ Ben told him.

  ‘So. What should we do?’ The Chairman was undecided.

  ‘Do? I’ll tell you what we should do.’ And Ben asked, ‘Haven’t we done enough to Russia? We’ve beaten her, defeated her, seen her split up. We’ve given her all the benefits of our civilization, crooked currency deals, pornography, crime on the streets. But, for God’s sake, don’t rob her of all her art. Maggie can tell you I got a bit bored hearing about the Russian soul. But leave them a bit of it. Do with this lady? Only one thing to do. Send her back to where she came from. The monastery of Vitebsk. I’m going out to buy a large drink. At least I’ll know the pub came by it in a lawful manner.’ And that was the point at which he banged out of the room. The meeting was adjourned, so that they could go away and come to the clear and independent conclusion that they could sell ‘The Virgin of Vitebsk’ in close collaboration with Meredith Bland’s dealer.

  Wonders in the Deep

  These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

  Psalms 107:24

  It was a fine spring morning in Wedensbury Park, Somerset, the dawn chorus was over but the early sunshine still sparkled on the dew, the daffodils were in bud and the azaleas looked promising, when Lady Pamela Wedensbury threw the entire contents of her husband’s wine cellar into the lake.

  She didn’t do it in person. She marched – an elderly, grey-haired lady with the profile of a bird of prey, sensible shoes, a tweed coat and skirt and two rows of pearls – at the head of the procession. Behind her came the butler, Dennis. He was followed by two gardeners whose wheelbarrows were loaded with cases of Pichon-Longueville, Château Palmer, vintage port, Hermitage, Chateau Yquem and similar treasures. The rear was brought up by the miserable and long-suffering Lord Bertie Wedensbury who had long struggled against his wife’s Puritan principles and had, at last, given up the battle. He had lived through her various campaigns for many years, from the early days of Decency on the Wireless to Sentence Smokers, Keep Sex out of the Sitting-Room (concerned with television) and The Bloom of Youth (forbidding the sale of contraceptives to those under twenty-one). Her latest enthusiasm was Sober Sanctity,

  Lady Wedensbury having come to the conclusion that the consumption of alcohol was a clear defiance of the will of God. Bertie’s spirit was so far broken that he forbore to bring up the subject of Communion wine and attended, however reluctantly, the ritual drowning of his famous bottles.

  There was a little jetty on the lake for the mooring of boats. Lady Wedensbury stationed herself at the end of it and quoted Scripture in her support, speaking in the ringing tones of a minor prophet: ‘“Wine is a mocker. Strong drink is raging; and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.” Proverbs.’ She turned to the butler and issued a brusque command, ‘In!’

  The butler made a signal to the gardeners, who lifted a case and threw it into the lake. Bertie Wedensbury winced as though in acute pain as his wife came out with another question, “‘How long wilt thou be drunken? Put thy wine away from thee.” The Book of Samuel. In!’ Another case splashed and sank into the bosom of the lake.

  Klinsky’s auction house was about to mount a sale of Old Master drawings. Ben Glazier was in the viewing gallery, straightening some frames, checking the catalogue against Annabelle Straddling-Smith’s sometimes slapdash notes. He came on a sudden space, an empty square of red damask wallpaper, and called out to the porter who was bringing more pictures to hang, ‘What the hell’s happened to the Carracci “Satyr Frolicking”?’

  ‘Was that the bloke with the goat legs doing naughties?’ the porter inquired politely.

  ‘I suppose you might describe it like that?’

  ‘The Chairman had it put away. He reckoned it might cause embarrassment.’

  ‘Did he really?’ The porter was startled by a rare sight at Klinsky’s: Ben Glazier in a towering rage.

  In the Lord Chairman’s spacious office, decorated with some of the best pictures passing through Klinsky’s, Bernard Holloway and Camilla Mounsey, now head of Modern British Paintings, were engaged in a delicate encounter; it was particularly delicate for Bernard because Camilla had come to him with a serious complaint. ‘Your wife gets everything,’ she said. ‘Weekends. Holidays away. Bloody Christmas!’

  ‘She’s given me the best years of her life,’ Holloway excused himself.

  ‘She’s given them to someone. I mean, she certainly hasn’t got them any more.’

  At which awkward point the door was banged open and Ben Glazier was among them. ‘Satyr frolicking with a young female faun!’ he said dramatically.

  ‘Really, Glazier! I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ Holloway moved away from Camilla and Ben explained, ‘The Carracci drawing. It’s not in the viewing gallery.’

  ‘I know,’ Holloway admitted. ‘I’ve had it removed.’

  ‘May a simple-minded art expert ask why?’

  ‘My wife found it offensive,’ Holloway said with dignity. To which Camilla added a bitter rider, ‘Oh, well. Of course. That settles it!’

  ‘Please, Camilla.’ Holloway told the story. ‘We happened to walk through the viewing gallery and my wife was upset by that revoltingly explicit drawing. She found it deeply offensive. She stared at it for a long time.’

  ‘So,’ Ben asked, ‘what did her Ladyship say?’

  ‘She didn’t need to say anything,’ the Lord Chairman explained. ‘I knew her thoughts exactly. We can’t display intimacy just because it’s in a work of art. The public won’t stand for it.’

  ‘The Puritans!’ Ben looked up to heaven in despair. ‘The Puritans have come back to plague us!’

  ‘No one could call me a Puritan, could they?’ Holloway looked to Camilla but she failed to come to his support.

  ‘Remember what the Puritans did?’ Ben spoke with deep feeling. ‘They knocked the willies off all the statues in the British Museum. You know what they’ve got there now? Drawers and cupboards full of broken-off willies.’ Holloway looked pained. ‘I thought that would make you wince.’

  ‘Please, Glazier.’ The Chairman sat at his desk and did his best to look busy. ‘
I have got rather more important things to do.’

  ‘I wish to register a serious protest,’ Ben said with dignity and was constrained to ask, ‘May I borrow your loo?’

  ‘No!’ The Chairman was in some respects a hard man, but Ben had already gone through a door at the back of the Chairman’s room. As he stood at the porcelain he saw, hanging above the tank, the drawing in question. Ludovico Carracci, born in sixteenth-century Bologna, was a master of chiaroscuro and a warm and passionate painter of religious works who, Ben knew, sometimes turned his attention to a happy pagan subject. The satyr frolicking with a faun was drawn with the accuracy and attention to detail which would have brought down the wrath of Lady Wedensbury’s campaign and had caused Lord Holloway to transfer it to the Chairman’s facilities.

  Maggie hadn’t exactly made peace with Nick Roper. She just hadn’t felt up to continuing the war, especially as he seemed maddeningly unmoved by her hostility. She didn’t feel she ought to forgive him, and yet the effort of not forgiving sometimes seemed too much. With the guilt a paid-up member of Alcoholics Anonymous might feel as he slinks towards the pub, she allowed herself to wander into the Wine department; there Nick seemed to pay less attention to her than to a single bottle which he had taken from an open wooden case and was now holding up to the light, smiling at it and saying, ‘Beautiful stuff.’

  ‘What’s so good about it?’

  ‘How can you ask such a question, Maggie? It’s Petrus ’61.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see it’s beautiful,’ she told him. ‘If I showed you a Matisse, or a Rembrandt drawing, well, you know what you’re getting. Immediate pleasure. All you’re offering is a black bottle with a dirty old label. Can’t we have a swig or something?’

  ‘Good heavens, no!’ Nick flinched.

  ‘Not even if I bid for it?’

  ‘Certainly not if you bid for it. We wouldn’t let you open the case. You wouldn’t even be able to go and visit it in the vaults.’

  ‘How do I know it was Petrus 19–, whatever it is?’

  ‘Because of the label. And because, well, you’ll just have to trust me.’

  Maggie looked at him. ‘Famous last words,’ she said. ‘Maggie!’ Nick looked injured and tried to look innocent. ‘I know I cut a few corners over the Bronzino business, but you’ve had nothing to complain of since then, right?’