“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUTLa Joconde?”
“What?”
“You heard me, Yves. What do you know about the Mona Lisa?”
“That’s not what I heard—Joconde, Mona Lisa…”
“You know the strangest thing about all of this, Yves? It’s that from time to time I find myself almost liking the way you believe your role in life is to annoy your fellow man. I’ve come to think that perhaps this will end up being my role, too.”
“What an honor, Marqués. As you yourself say: you become your neighbor.”
“Enough of this, Yves. Now I’m serious—what do you know about the Mona Lisa?”
“The same as everyone else.”
They speak to each other in Spanish. Yves Chaudron’s accent mixes French r’s and a Río Plata lilt. Eduardo de Valfierno blends the pure Argentine with a Frenchified rhythm.
“Which is?”
“Nothing.”
Yves Chaudron never knows anything—on principle. It has been some time now since he decided on a path of ignorance, and he has stuck to this scrupulously. Especially since he became executor of Valfierno’s schemes and ideas, a partnership that affords him the ability to be, as never before, the hand—and a most able one—directed by another’s mind. The perfect situation for him.
“You’ll need to find out soon enough.”
“About the Mona Lisa?”
“What do you think we’re talking about?”
“If you won’t tell me…”
Chaudron tails off and then does something that for him seems like an abrupt gesture—he wipes each joint of his fingers with a rag soaked in turpentine. Valfierno wrinkles his nose at the smell. Centuries could pass, he thinks, resignedly, and the smell of turpentine will still always remind him of that priest who was not what he seemed. Chaudron dries his hands on his white painter’s smock and looks at him for a moment before speaking.
“Eduardo, we need to do something. Since we’ve been in Paris, the business…”
“Let me remind you that you were the one who convinced me to come.”
“Me?”
Chaudron looks around him with an expression of Who, me? To come here? The studio is bright in the morning light but very small and crowded: half a dozen half-finished paintings—mostly religious scenes in the Spanish baroque style of Ribera or Zurbarán—two easels, palettes, little knobs of paint, three small tables crowded with brushes and more paint, a tottering bookcase with a few books on art, and a narrow cot in the far corner.
“That is something we are not going to talk about.”
“Right. It’s not worth it.”
“Valfierno—I’m worried.”
“Have you ever been anything else?”
“Please, Valfierno. I am really worried. We need to do something. Have you seen how the world is now? It’s unbelievable: streetcars, the Métro, electric light in houses, phonographs, automobiles. Soon we won’t be able to do anything.”
“Have you been drinking already? It’s morning! What do aeroplanes have to do with us?”
“It’s obvious, Señor Marqués. You should be the first one to see it. Soon they’re going to have machines that will analyze paintings, the materials, I don’t know what. We’re not going to be able to do this anymore. We have to do a big one before it becomes impossible, Eduardo. Progress is going to kill us—we’ll end up in a museum.”
“What was that?”
“We’re going to end up in a museum.”
“That’s not a bad idea. I have to think about that. In a museum.”
“I’m serious, Eduardo.”
“So am I.”
Valfierno loosens his black bow tie and takes a look at the paintings Chaudron is working on. They are perfect, copies that cannot be improved, and once again it surprises him that his copyist could be so unambitious for himself, that someone of his ability should be content just to be Valfierno’s hands. And once again he asks himself why. It has to be because he is a copyist, that is the word. I am the forger, he thinks, and smiles to himself. Occasionally Chaudron asks himself the same question, and the answers he gives himself alarm him, and he tries to forget them.
“How’s it coming with that Murillo virgin? I see it’s almost finished.”
“It just needs a couple of touches and then the whole aging process. A few more days, and meanwhile…”
“Bustelo’s impatient. He asks after it every time I see him. But in the meantime, you must steep yourself in everything that has to do with La Joconde. Go to the Louvre, look at her, make a couple of copies, buy some books.”
“With what money, Marqués?”
“I’ll get you the money, don’t you worry about a thing. Leave that to me, as usual. You—become Leonardo.”
Chaudron smiles to himself, and that little smile is almost a boast: he knows that he can. That he could, if it were suggested, begin preparing the same pigments, the same palettes, imitate the very same brushstrokes of the master. But he doesn’t know why, and he is not sure that he wants to.
“You’re not thinking of selling copies of La Joconde, are you, Eduardo? Even your ignorant Argentine ranchers know that it’s in the Louvre. Certainly everyone in Paris does.”
“I’m not thinking of anything, Yves. It seems that the one thinking is you. Now that’s a joke!”