September was a busy time in Paris. France woke up from the slumber of August, the government offices reluctantly opening their doors, teachers shuffling to work, professionals stretching out the morning kinks. Gabriel watched everyone scuttle about on important business.
He was supposed to have spent the month of August painting, but instead had fiddled about with making antique drawings, doing research, and scouring antique and bric-a-brac stores for old pastels, paints, and palettes to make drawings for Klinman. He needed the money. He had joined Colette for a week at her mother’s house in Tenerife, an expensive plane ticket, and his first real vacation. It was such a relief to speak Spanish, to be in charge. He felt swollen with masculinity, ordering for Colette, translating for her, trading proprietary looks with other men at her little ass in her bikini. But when they returned home, he found all sorts of reasons to avoid his studio. He just didn’t feel like working in his own style. When he searched for ideas, his mind was blank. When he looked at colors he found no inspiration. And yet the Connoises kept flowing as though he were channeling the old man himself. He had to hurry to finish his own canvases for his show.
He had to hand it to Paulette and Patrice, the Galerie Piclut put on an excellent show. The paintings were hung with care. The postcards showed real design savvy, a reproduction of Après-midi au Supermarché in full color, with an appropriately vintage Figueiredo font. Gabriel had eked out fourteen canvases in the end, and after the third, he started to have fun. Connois’s tropes were, as it turned out, exactly the kinds of locations that Gabriel had occupied since he moved to France. Tweaking them for a modern audience, with his own flourishes, created a visual pun that also commented on immigration and culture clash. Yes, all this was devised for the artist statement, written by Paulette, but somehow it seemed he’d been thinking about just this melding of styles and ideas all along.
“Dé/placement, Dé/plaisir” opened on a Thursday, and Gabriel was sweating profusely in his black T-shirt an hour beforehand. The lights were very bright, and he was up on a ladder adjusting one so that it didn’t hit the slick surface of the oil and reflect back into viewers’ eyes. If there were viewers.
He had gotten lucky. An item in mylittleparis.com highlighting the neighborhood had come out that Monday. Galerie Piclut was mentioned as one of the up-and-coming cool spots to catch emerging artists. He did pause for a moment to sigh that he was still considered “emerging” at forty-two. But he hoped the article would spur some foot traffic.
Climbing down now and surveying his work, a momentary twinge that it was not exactly his own pained him. He would not have chosen this subject matter (two paintings set in a Grand Prix supermarket; another at the airport; a couple of send-ups of Parisian street scenes, colorful African-print caftans and head wraps worn by the Senegalese; a dead pigeon, an empty wine bottle, and a pair of discarded panties as a still life). But his own choices had never netted him a show.
People like a story. A locksmith who makes chairs out of keys. An amputee who paints footraces. A flamboyant gay man who pees on his canvases and calls it art. And Gabriel had a good story.
As the show’s opening had approached he felt alternately elated and full of dread. He was sure Patrice and Paulette would cancel his show. But they seemed as enthusiastic as ever. Probably everyone would see right through the blatant pandering that was now covering the gallery’s walls. But maybe a few would sell. Maybe a few would sell to important collectors and Gabriel’s career would finally be launched.
He turned to help Patrice and Paulette and their intern put out cheese and wine. The smell of the melting cheese made his stomach roil and he stepped outside for a moment. The streets were bustling with people coming home from work, young people, like him. Only he wasn’t so young anymore. Artists, jugglers, dancers, designers. Could the world hold this many creative types? Could it support them all?
The first several guests were friends of the Picluts, middle-aged, gray-haired men and overly made-up women tottering on high heels. They shook his hand and commented asininely on the art. “Oh, the light!” “I love the use of red here. So deft.” And, Gabriel cringed to hear, “I see the Connois influence. Is that cultivated on your part or innate?”
More and more people arrived until there was a veritable crowd. He made his way to the bar and downed his second glass of red wine. He knew he should eat something. The room was getting warmer and he started to feel a bit tipsy. But the cheese plate was picked over and someone had eaten all the grapes.
Marie-Laure was kissing his cheeks. Then her boyfriend was kissing them. He was touched that she had come. She squeezed his arm and said how much she admired the work, how far his style had come and how happy she was for him. She looked genuine. “I was supposed to tell you that Hans couldn’t come. Something about his wife and a cough. But I think it’s really rude that Didier isn’t here. We went to his show.”
Gabriel was formulating an answer when he saw Colette and Lise walk in together. They were a study in contrasts, Lise white-blond and Colette dark, elbows hooked conspiratorially so that Gabriel gave an involuntary smile to see them together.
“Super!” Colette gave him a kiss. “But wait, I told them not to hang that there. Excuse me.” She marched off to see the Picluts, leaving Gabriel with Lise.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, squeezing his hand. He smiled again. “You did it.” Her approval, her praise, was like a jolt of caffeine. He wanted to talk to her, to take her in his arms and hug her with joy, but there were more people, tapping his shoulder to get his attention, and he was pulled away before he could thank her. The room was crowded now. Paulette grabbed his arm and pulled him over to Après-midi au Supermarché no. 1. “Look! I’m putting a dot!” The dot was yellow, which meant someone had put a hold on it (red would have meant a purchase). Someone had actually put down money as a deposit on his work.
An old man came through the door, leaning heavily on the arm of his young friend. For a second, Gabriel thought it might be his old adviser LeFevre from the École, but that would have been impossible. The man was surely dead by now. He felt his cheeks flush. He would have been embarrassed to show him his work. How disappointed LeFevre would have been at this pandering.
“So much talent,” someone said next to him; Gabriel heard it from LeFevre’s mouth—a sad lamentation that he’d done nothing with it. But it was a woman wearing a pearl and diamond necklace, obviously slumming in the new hip part of town. And she was saying it positively, and Patrice was behind him; Gabriel said obediently, “You’re too kind. Thank you so much.”
“No, thank you,” the woman said, and Gabriel realized that a month ago this would have made him laugh.
Marie-Laure was in front of him again. “It’s too crowded; we’re taking off.” The taciturn boyfriend kissed his cheeks again.
At some point the evening tipped and the numbers began to get smaller until finally the only ones in attendance were the art students hovering near the wine and Colette.
“Look!” Paulette said. “One red dot!”
“That’s not bad,” Patrice said.
“It’s the smaller one, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked.
“Still,” Patrice said.
“Congratulations.” Paulette refilled his wineglass.
What was he supposed to do the next day? He went to the studio. His space seemed larger emptied of work. He sat down in the folding chair and stared at the splatter patterns on the floor. He didn’t really feel like working. It was like going jogging the day after running a marathon. His artist muscles were tired.
He decided to straighten up his studio. Some of his brushes could use a good washing, not the quick rinse he usually gave them. He set them in turpentine to soak. And maybe he should paint the walls again. He could go out and buy white paint. With the advance from the “red dot.”
Marie-Laure stuck her head in to congratulate him. “Great show. Fantastic. I think that art blog guy was there.”
“Which art blog guy?”
“He calls himself Sir Veille. Get it? Like surveillance?”
Gabriel didn’t get it. That is, he got the surveillance part but didn’t understand what the double entendre was. “What does he write?”
“A blog. An art blog.”
“Oh,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t actually sure what that was.
“On the Internet?” Marie-Laure raised her voice; his confusion must have registered on his face. “The thing on the computer?”
“Oh, yeah, that. I just didn’t understand your accent.” Gabriel recalled that these online diaries were gaining in importance. In some circles they already outstripped professional art critics.
“Anyway, that’s a good sign.”
“Unless he hated it,” Gabriel said.
“All press is good press,” Marie-Laure said.
“Baudelaire?”
“I don’t know who said it.” Marie-Laure missed his sarcasm. She went back into her studio.
Just sketch, he told himself. Get lead on paper. He opened his sketchbook and hovered over the page. Don’t analyze, he thought, just sketch. Why did he even care what critics thought? They were all failed artists.
A half hour later he looked at what he’d done. He’d drawn his shoe. But it was unmistakably a shoe in the style of Brueghel. The same hatching, the same stiff lines. He ripped the page up, disgusted. He couldn’t even sketch like himself anymore. He was simply a cipher, a sponge, sopping up others’ styles.
Gabriel went outside to walk while the brushes soaked. Didier was smoking a cigarette. “Man, I am so sorry I didn’t make it to the opening,” he said. He looked sheepish, crinkling the corners of his mouth in concern. “I had the worst day, and I just couldn’t … I mean …”
“Don’t worry,” Gabriel said. “It was too crowded anyway.”
“I feel awful. I mean, you came to mine. I promise to go look at it this week.”
“Hey, don’t worry,” Gabriel said. Then it struck him. Had Didier not come because he was jealous, the same way Gabriel had contemplated not attending Didier’s show last spring? Was it possible that Gabriel had achieved enough success to inspire envy? The thought made him smile.
That afternoon, he went to the Internet café and paid his five euros to log on. He tried to type in various versions of what he had heard Marie-Laure say, but he didn’t find the art blog. Finally, he asked the teenager next to him how to find something when you don’t know the name.
The kid looked at him with undisguised disdain. His hair framed his head like yarn on a doll, and he flicked his head back to get it out of his eyes. “What do you mean?”
Gabriel explained himself as best he could, and the kid got up and began to type on his keyboard. Within seconds, Sir Veille’s page was up.
“Thanks,” Gabriel said.
“Where are you from?” the boy asked.
“Spain.”
“Don’t you want to go home?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Why?”
The boy shrugged back. Something in his gesture was mocking, but Gabriel turned to his screen.
Nothing about the opening. Why had he listened to Marie-Laure? He was angry at himself for being disappointed. Sir Veille was a part of the same establishment that had shunted him aside for years. Why should this blogger be any different? He hated that he still craved acceptance.
A couple of days later, Marie-Laure burst into his studio. “Here! I printed it out for you. It’s good. Well, mostly.”
She handed Gabriel a piece of paper. “What is this?” he asked.
“A review. Of your show. By Sir Veille.”
“Oh. I’ll read it later.”
“What?” Marie-Laure said. “That’s ridiculous. Read it now.”
Gabriel had trouble making out the small print in the dim light. “Can you read it?” he said. “I have a headache.”
“ ‘Swimming down Canal Saint-Martin the other night, I stopped in for free booze at Galerie Piclut. The cheese was decidedly low-quality, and there were stems that suggested that once there might have been grapes, now long gobbled by hungry students. It has always seemed uncouth to me (and for this you can thank my mother) to take grapes and leave the stems. Break off the stem and take it with you!
“ ‘Oh, right, the art. The artist, skinny and sweaty, is a descendant of Marcel Connois of the École des Hiverains. Yes, that Connois. But this grandchild is an École des Beaux Arts graduate. Swarthy, sexy, all the usual stereotypes. He’s riffed on his relative’s style, painting marketplaces and still lifes and playing with light, but with an ironic twist. Street scenes become African markets, sun shining refracted off dark black skin. Boats on water are barges carrying fruit. There’s a decent use of color and an obvious flair for satire (if not for a sense of humor. The paintings seem sometimes to not get their own joke). Mostly it appears to be an attempt by a foreigner to claim Paris, which is the subject of the art itself. Whether this goal is worthy of artistic inquiry is up for debate, but the artist does succeed in carving out his own space in the city. Overall, worthwhile if you’re in the neighborhood, to get a glimpse of contemporary Connois.’ ”
Marie-Laure let her hands fall to her sides.
“That’s good?” Gabriel asked.
“It sounded better the first time I read it,” she admitted. “But he called it worthwhile.”
“If you’re in the neighborhood.”
“Lots of people go to that arrondissement,” Marie-Laure said brightly. She handed him the page and left.
Gabriel held it far from his eyes and squinted, reading it again. He hadn’t caught it the first time, but one line stood out. “The artist does succeed in carving out his own space in the city.” He couldn’t help but feel proud. Finally, Gabriel owned Paris.
Gabriel sat in Colette’s apartment. He was mostly living there, though Colette was in New York nearly half the month. Gabriel felt like he was living on a movie set, the views fake and the props hollow. It was still hot, and Gabriel sat on the love seat, watching Colette’s small television. He picked up the top catalog from the large pile Colette used to form a side table. He fanned himself, then saw that it was a Tinsley’s catalog from last spring. He began to flip through it.
He thumbed through glossy pages of antique bric-a-brac. Most of what they auctioned wasn’t even art. It was artisanry, not at all the same thing. So he flipped to the index in the back. Automatically, he looked for Connois’s name and there it was. For sale was Mercat, a pastel.
Gabriel’s heart pounded loudly in his ears. He felt caught suddenly, like in a dream of being chased and then arrested by the police for an unspecified crime that he knew he’d committed. He turned quickly to the page. The pastel was not reproduced. Instead there was a square that said “Image not available.” He read the description next to the entry: “Marcel Connois, 1825–1889. Mercat (Market). Signed by the artist. Pastel on paper. Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the family of the present owner. Literature: Connois’s Flights of Fancy, 1901, described.” The dimensions were listed in the ridiculous American measuring system; he wasn’t able to tell if the painting was his or not. The reserve was 750,000 euros. For something Gabriel did. For something Klinman paid him 10,000 euros to do.
Gabriel threw the catalog down and slumped in his chair. He permitted himself a brief fantasy in which he went back in time to New York and burst in on the auction, announcing the hoax. There would be cinematic gasps, followed by newspaper articles, then international recognition.
“Fuck!” he swore out loud. The art world was stupid, insipid, without taste, and he still wanted its approval. No, he corrected himself, not its approval, its money. It wasn’t fucking fair that some artists got plucked to fame. He wasn’t asking for much. A nice studio, with light. The occasional vacation. He’d been living in France for nearly twenty years now. Well, existing, anyway. He wanted to be successful. He wanted to make enough money off his art that he could paint/create full-time. His art, not his personality, or his ancestry. Bullshit, he told himself. He had changed his style to suit a gallery. He had forged his ancestor’s work, passed it off as original. God only knows what happened to it then. So what artistic standards was he supposed to be upholding?
His whole life was based on a principle he abhorred. He wanted to win a game he didn’t believe in playing. No wonder he had spent the past fifteen years angry and depressed. Who wouldn’t be when faced with the gaping abyss of existence? His happiness at his success of the last few months was the result of a grand coincidence that acted like some kind of numbing drug, so that he was in a fog of complacency.
He went to the studio, but felt his fury grow, speeding through his veins. He spent a few hours banging around cans of solvent.
“What are you doing?” Marie-Laure asked.
“Trying not to kill someone,” Gabriel answered. This admission fueled his rage, and Marie-Laure scurried away. He heard footsteps and then Hans stood in the doorway.
“What’s up, man?” he asked. “Did you threaten to kill Marie-Laure?”
“Those fucking sons of whores,” he said.
“Who?”
“No one. I’m just …”
“Hey, man, chill out. What happened?”
“Nothing.” Gabriel couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice. “Everyone gets something from me. Everyone but me.”
“Is this about me not coming to the show? My old lady had bronchitis.”
“Never mind.” Gabriel headed for the door. Hans blocked him and the two men played a game of chicken. At the last second, Hans stepped back. Gabriel’s shoulder brushed him as he stormed out.
He tried to fuel his rage all the way to Klinman’s. It took more than an hour, and there was a point at which the métro had a transfer with his line. He considered just going home. But then he saw a pair of shoes, expensive, handmade. They were on the feet of a woman sitting near him. The heels were tremendously high, the leather shiny. At the end of the shoe, a pedicured foot poked its toes out. Her ankles were slim in the French way—he wondered often how they held women up, calves so thin he could wrap his hand around one.
Finally he looked up at her face. She drew her arms in and after a couple of seconds stood up to go across the car and sit with her back to him.
This snub reignited his anger. He willed the train to travel faster and leaped out the doors at Klinman’s stop before they had fully opened.
It occurred to him that Klinman might not be there, and he wondered what he would do if that were the case. He took the stairs two at a time instead of waiting for the elevator, arriving at Klinman’s door breathing hard.
The door was open, the lock turned so that it wouldn’t close all the way. He heard noise coming from inside the apartment, soft music, voices. He pushed the door.
The apartment had a large table in its center that Gabriel hadn’t noticed before. Seated at it were about a dozen people, who stopped in the middle of their conversations to stare at his entrance.
“Ahh, Gabriel,” Klinman said, standing up. “So glad you could make it.” As though he had been invited and was merely tardy.
Gabriel had a speech planned. He opened his mouth to begin the recitation when the focus of all those pairs of eyes made him turn red.
“I need to speak to you,” Gabriel said.
“Would you like a drink?” Klinman nodded at a uniformed waiter who approached Gabriel until his angry look made the waiter shrink away. “All right, then, we can go in here. I won’t be a minute,” he said to his guests.
He led Gabriel to a room off the salon. It was a bedroom, smaller than Gabriel would have guessed. In contrast to the dark, clubby main room, it was bright and minimalist. A platform bed with no headboard and a midcentury modern dresser. Blackout shades and an upholstered chair. There was no nightstand, but two sconces perched above the pillows, protruding from the wall on spider arms.
Klinman made no move to sit down. He set his drink on a small doily on the dresser and folded his arms. “What do you—”
“No, you listen.” Gabriel pointed a finger at Klinman. It was dirty from his messing about in the studio and seemed to diminish his authority. He also hadn’t noticed how tall Klinman was. His courage and anger began to ebb. Still, he had come for a reason.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m done forging your pictures. You’re making money, everyone is making money off of me. And I’m not making shit.”
“Please don’t raise your voice, I have guests. You are making money, I’ll remind you. But all right, if you don’t want to work anymore, that’s fine. I can find someone else.”
A siren called out, getting louder as it passed the building, then quieting again. “Just try,” Gabriel said. “I’d like to see you find someone who can do Connois like I can.”
“I’m sure there is no one,” Klinman said, “but there are others who can do others.”
Klinman’s nonchalance surprised Gabriel. He had expected the man to apologize, offer more money. Then he would have the opportunity to refuse him. Gabriel had even entertained a scenario in which he got to punch Klinman. But here was a reaction that he hadn’t planned for. He saw now he should have.
“Ha,” he scoffed. “Try to find others when the police are after you!”
Klinman stared at him. Gabriel had rendered him speechless.
“I have evidence,” Gabriel said. Which he didn’t. Why had it not occurred to him to get evidence? “The German expert, he’ll support me.”
Klinman’s stare began to change. Soon he was smiling widely at Gabriel, a look of derision rather than mirth. “You’re going to report me to the police?” he said. “Rich.” His smile emitted a sound that might have been a cackle. “Hilarious. The German expert will support you? I doubt that very much, since he is my business associate.” He was laughing for real now, and Gabriel felt his ears go hot with embarrassment. Of course Schnell had been in on it. His drawing wouldn’t have fooled a real expert. Gabriel had no reply.
“Turn me in,” Klinman said, suddenly serious, “and it is you who will be sketching other prisoners’ assholes. That I can promise you. Now, would you like to stay for dinner? We can have someone pull up a chair and make you a plate,” he said, giving Gabriel a chance to respond.
Gabriel said nothing, unable to make his mind work out the words of protest in French. Klinman was all politeness now. Gabriel was a favorite nephew and not an attempted blackmailer. Gabriel shook his head. Finally, he understood his role. He was the rube, in way over his head.
Klinman shook his head sadly. “If you’ll excuse me, then, my guests.”
Gabriel could hear Klinman’s voice in the big room, but couldn’t make out the words. The guests laughed. He stood in Klinman’s bedroom. The man was right. Gabriel was expendable. How could he not have seen that?
He sat on Klinman’s low bed. The mattress was thin; he could feel the planks of the bed frame beneath it. He had never understood why rich people so liked the hard Asian way of sleeping. He preferred to sleep like Louis XIV, in a featherbed so soft he might be suffocated. He hoped he’d suffocate. This was just another reminder of the gulf between him and the rest of the world. The rest of the successful world.
His bank account was practically empty and Klinman hadn’t called him in weeks. Gabriel regretted his outburst, but all his calls to Klinman went unreturned. When he asked Colette if she’d seen her uncle, she treated the question like a joke. “What, you like him more than you like me?” She had been distant, increasing her evenings out with the girls (he hoped this was true, that she was not lying to him about who she was out with) and telling him she needed some space. Reluctantly, Gabriel spent more nights at his shared flat, staring at the textured ceiling. It was all turning to shit. He was still poor and The Man was still rich.
Really, what was Klinman doing that he couldn’t do himself? Providing period paper. That couldn’t be that hard to come by. Yes, Klinman had the contacts to dispose of the drawings, but what would stop Gabriel from entering any gallery in town and concocting some story about how he’d found this in the closet of his aunt (who was titled, of course; French people love royalty)? What would he need to strike out on his own? Appropriately old paper, a good backstory. Fuck it. He was going solo.
On the banks of the Seine the kiosks of rare-book sellers would certainly have some early- to mid-nineteenth-century paper. He could just buy an old book of prints and either split the paper or cut out the page glued to the cover. He had done that before, in liceo, taking the precious sheets of good, thick (though modern) paper and soaking them to peel them apart, splicing them into multiple sheets. He had also taken art books from the university library and liberated their back pages or the odd blank page left over from uneven pagination. Occasionally, he checked out a book and someone had already removed the page. He was not the only paper thief in town.
The quais were mostly deserted and the men sat in the shade of the linden trees fanning themselves. He stopped to take money out of the bank. He passed the postcard vendor and the LP stand and stood in front of a kiosk of larger folios that looked of appropriate age. Gabriel pretended to be interested in a vintage edition of Molière. Its spine was leather, revealing lighter beige suede inside. It looked like craquelure on an old oil painting. He opened the volume. The paper was ticklishly soft. But that wasn’t what he was looking for. Too small, too yellowed. He put the book back and nonchalantly moved over to the larger books. He took one out, a loosely bound collection of botanical prints from 1863. The pages held smooth engravings, glued or partially glued to just the sort of old paper he needed. The man behind the kiosk eyed him suspiciously. Gabriel held his breath. He didn’t need for the man to see him getting excited about a book; that would drive up the price.
“You’re interested in botany?” the man asked.
“Hmmm,” Gabriel said noncommittally. “I’m looking for something more …” He tried to think of something he could be looking for instead, but the word didn’t come to him in French or Spanish. “I don’t know how to say it.” He smiled sheepishly. “But maybe this is okay. How much does it cost?”
“The price is on the inner cover.” The man reached a thin arm over the mound of books to grab the prints from Gabriel. “One hundred euros.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Sixty,” he said, repeating the French number in his mind to make sure.
The man scoffed. “Ninety is the best I can do. They’re original prints. Beautiful.”
“And how long have you had this book?” Gabriel asked. “Maybe you are looking to get rid of it. Seventy-five.”
“Eighty.”
“Fine.” Gabriel handed the man four twenties. “Do you have a bag?”
The man sighed, annoyed. He handed him a plastic Monoprix bag and Gabriel gingerly put the book inside, tucking the whole package into his messenger bag.
When he got home, Gabriel put a pot of water on to boil. He opened the botanical volume and, with an X-Acto knife, cut off the back cover. Then he held the board over the pot of water, tapping his foot.
He stood over the pot for forty-five minutes, his bladder growing full. But he didn’t dare put the cardboard down to go to the toilet. The glue was almost fully softened. Finally he judged it ready. He sat down at the table, and carefully, so carefully, pulled the paper from its cardboard backing. He laid it facedown on the linoleum. Then he took a blunt butter knife and scraped off all remnants of glue. Now he let himself use the bathroom.
After sizing it and replenishing his period ink stash, Gabriel let the paper dry for twenty-four hours. Then he took it to the studio and drew on it. His finished Connois looked not half bad, if he said so himself. He had managed to draw the local market at his house in Spain from memory. His mother made an appearance in the drawing, toward the back, selling her bread. He gave the other market vendors wry expressions, as was Connois’s custom, and made sure to sketch the figures with great detail, leaving the kiosks and wares only suggested. Concerned mostly with anatomy and expression, Connois rarely bothered to finish the nonhuman details, even in the final paintings. It was what separated him from the Impressionists who were his contemporaries—their canvases tended to be uniform, whatever their style. It was also, Gabriel suspected, why Degas was a name that even the uninitiated knew while Connois was known only to aficionados and academics.
Christie’s was located in a rather unassuming building on Avenue Matignon off the Champs-Élysées. From the outside, the building looked like another one of the antique stores that characterized the neighborhood. Its two street-front windows were cluttered with antique furniture and mediocre nineteenth-century oils.
Gabriel pulled the door open, hanging his weight on it, and paused while his eyes adjusted to the interior. He made out a grand carpeted staircase, with a Baroque mural at the first landing. The first-floor ceilings were low and the room was filled with sandstone pillars holding up archways that blocked his entrance. There was no art hanging in the entryway, just a couple of glass cases highlighting recent auctions. The lavish rooms he’d heard about, the huge salesroom with its expensive carpets and textured wallpaper, must be on higher floors. The difference between this space and Ambrosine’s was as stark as if they existed in two different countries, in two different time periods. Ambrosine’s was white light; Christie’s small archways threw off forbidding shadows. Ambrosine’s was pulsing with energy; Christie’s was languorous.
At a polished desk sat a receptionist who might have been eighty, dressed impeccably in a vintage pea-green suit with oversized pearlescent buttons. Her hair was sprayed into a large gray helmet, and her hands, when they replaced the telephone in its cradle, were covered in age spots.
“How may I help you today?” she asked.
Gabriel hadn’t thought in advance what to say, and the French came out convoluted. “I am a Spanish, relative of Connois from the École des Hiverains, and I have a drawing to possibly sell.”
“With whom do you have an appointment?” the woman asked, her French careful and slow now that she knew he was not French.
“An appointment?” Gabriel said.
“Ahh,” the woman sighed, as though Gabriel had just admitted to her that he had wet his pants.
There was a long silence while they both waited for the other to speak. Finally they both spoke at once. “Please, you first,” Gabriel said.
“I was going to ask you what kind of a drawing, so that we can make an appointment with the correct person.”
“Um, it’s a drawing, by Connois. A sketch of a marketplace.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not familiar with the artist.”
“A contemporary of the Impressionists.”
“All right, then you’ll want to speak with Jean-Georges Tombale.”
“Okay,” Gabriel said. “Jean-Georges Tombale.”
“I’ll just ring him now,” the woman said, “since you’re here. When might be a convenient time for you to meet him?”
“Um, whenever.”
The woman picked up the phone and pressed three numbers. “What did you say your name was, dear?” she asked.
“Gabriel Connois.”
“Ah!” the woman gave a gasp of surprise, or recognition, or simply Gallic enthusiasm. She spoke quickly into the receiver, then turned to Gabriel. “You are in luck. Monsieur Tombale is available to see you now.”
She placed her hands on the desk and heaved herself to a standing position. Despite her age, she wore small heels. Slowly, she waddled toward the staircase, and Gabriel feared she would have to ascend it. But she veered left and opened a door at the back of the room. She gestured down the sterile hallway.
Gabriel followed her directions, past a small conference room and a large area with cubicles. There was a small, balding head peeking out of one of the doors. “Monsieur Connois?” it asked.
Tombale introduced himself and invited Gabriel to sit. The office felt precarious; its shelves were overflowing with large coffee table books, most with colored flags sticking out of them. In between, catalogs of Christie’s and other firms were curling with age, also marked up. There was no computer. This man did all his research by looking at reproductions of previous works. No wonder he was as stooped as a dowager.
“I have a drawing,” Gabriel said. “It’s been in my family for years, because, well, Connois was my great-great-grandfather.”
“May I see it?” The man’s hands trembled. A small spot of croissant stuck to the stubble above his lip.
Gabriel took it out of its portfolio. In the harsh fluorescent light of the office it looked yellow, the ink an anemic gray.
“Come, we’ll take it to the viewing room.”
They went back to the conference room Gabriel had passed. Here the light was better. There was a small clerestory window.
First the man held it up to the light, admiring the watermark. Gabriel studied him. In the light, the small wisps of hair left on the top of his head stood up straight, waving like seaweed in a current. His hands were flaky, and Gabriel fought a shiver of repulsion.
Tombale turned the drawing over, looking for a dealer’s mark that wasn’t there. Gabriel hadn’t thought of inventing one, but now he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn’t—the man could have easily looked up its history in his catalog. Absence wasn’t proof, but presence of the wrong element would be a red flag.
“It’s never been sold before,” Gabriel said.
The man turned the drawing around again slowly. He put it down on the table and stood up above it. Then he took out a magnifying glass and examined the drawing in sectors. During what must have been fifteen minutes, his face registered no expression whatsoever. Even more amazingly, the croissant flake held steady to his lip.
Finally, he sat back down. “Bah,” he let out a Gallic sigh. “Well, it’s very good, and the paper is authentic.”
Gabriel realized he’d been holding his breath.
“But I can’t be sure if it’s a Connois original. Without a provenance, I will have to compare it with other Connois sketches. This will take time.”
Gabriel’s face must have shown his disappointment. His rent was due, and he didn’t have money to pay it.
“You were expecting cash on delivery? Monsieur, we are not a Chinese takeout restaurant.” Tombale looked Gabriel over with obvious disdain, settling on his shoes, the soles of which were held to the body by electrical tape.
Gabriel saw then that he should have dressed up. Looking like a desperate artist wasn’t going to convince this established dealer that he had a treasure in his attic.
“This is a beautiful drawing,” Monsieur Tombale continued, sounding to Gabriel’s ears like his thesis adviser. “But we simply cannot take it on without further investigation. There have been so many nineteenth-century drawings of late. Too many.”
Gabriel stood up, and though he wanted to snatch the drawing out of the man’s grasp, he resisted. He waited for the dealer to pack the drawing up, then shook the man’s dry, scaly hand, thanking him for his time. He walked quickly out, ignoring the ancient receptionist. On the street he stood in the gray light, fists clenched. Why had he thought he could sell it to Christie’s? He should have started more modestly. It had been so easy to get rid of Febrer. But that was twenty years ago. Now everyone was much more savvy; now databases were accessible with the click of a mouse, without having to search through archives. Dating methods had become less expensive and more accurate. Maybe Klinman was right—he did need his help. He was the talent, yes, but Klinman understood the way the world worked. Gabriel was incompetent at anything that didn’t have to do with art, and even, possibly, incompetent at art.
Gabriel quickened his step. He held an imaginary conversation with Klinman where the man laughed at him for showing up, in jeans and sneakers, no less, with an unauthenticated drawing at one of France’s most important auction houses and attempting, on the spot, to have one of its experts declare it sellable.
And now the drawing was tainted. Tombale wouldn’t soon forget it. Gabriel wasn’t going to be able to sell it without a provenance, and if it came up for auction with a fabricated story Tombale would be suspicious. The drawing was now not even worth the paper it was drawn on. Gabriel could have sold it blank for more money.
He felt like crumpling it up and tossing it into the Seine, but he had affection for the drawing. He passed a bar and went in to order a panaché. A girl’s drink, but one he still enjoyed. He didn’t want to get drunk. He wanted to think.
Above the bar, instead of the polished mirror typical of a neighborhood café, there was a boar’s head. Sanglier. He remembered the word, the way some bizarre French words—huissier (bailiff), etalon (studhorse)—seemed to glue themselves to his memory while more common ones—like the ones for “broom” and “great-great-grandfather”—remained forever out of reach. The bar was an odd sight, slightly foreboding. And then, looking around, he saw many other taxidermied game animals presiding over the few tables.
The bartender noted his interest. “I like to hunt, at my house in the country. Do you hunt?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“And my wife’s uncle stuffs the animals. He does an excellent job. If you ever have something you need preserved, let us know. All these specimens are for sale.”
“Who wants a dead animal in their house?” Gabriel asked, before he could stop himself.
“Not my wife,” the man answered. “That’s why they’re here. But lots of people like the look. It reminds them of grand old hunting lodges.” The man wiped the already pristine bar with a rag. A couple walked in and sat at a table. The woman held up two fingers—they wanted coffee. The bartender nodded, but before he turned to the espresso maker, he said to Gabriel, “People want to pretend they have nice things, that their family name is more important than it really is.”
Gabriel reflected that his case was just the opposite. His name was illustrious; he himself was not. His name connoted great art; he did not. But perhaps the drawing wasn’t a total loss. Maybe he’d gone to the wrong expert. An antiques dealer might like the drawing simply because of its age, and might appreciate it for its aesthetics, as opposed to where it came from. In a way, this could be a purer form of art appreciation. Then the drawing would no longer be pretending to be what it was not, but rather proclaiming proudly what it was.
Gabriel paid for his drink and took the métro up to the marché aux puces at Clignancourt. He haggled for and purchased the gaudiest nineteenth-century frame he could find, and then took his purchase home, where he mounted his drawing on matte paper and renailed the frame shut. He then lined the back with butcher paper, and the next day went to the Left Bank dressed in a pair of wool pants and a button-down shirt borrowed from one of the Scandinavians. The first store he went into offered him 150 euros for the framed drawing. The entire transaction was completed in less than ten minutes.
When Gabriel added up his hours of work and the cost of the materials, he was better off sorting paper clips at Édouard’s. He couldn’t help but feel angry, at himself, at Klinman, at Paris, at the art world that conspired to keep him out. He was destined to be exploited, and he returned to his studio out in the suburbs to sit cross-legged on the floor examining splats of paint that had hardened into small shiny pieces, impenetrable as a Pollock splatter, and nowhere near as valuable.