A Deceptive Clarity (15 page)

He waved us into two cuboid armchairs while Lorenzo was still introducing us. "We'll speak English," he announced. "I speak it fluentiy." He patted a quiet dog—also white—who sat on the floor at his side, and waited for me to say something.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, signor Bolzano. I've wanted to meet you for a long time."

A negligent wave of the hand, and then a shrugged afterthought. "I've heard of you too."

Another lengthy silence while Lorenzo, looking uncomfortable, grinned encouragingly from one of us to the other.

"And I hope you're feeling well, signore," I said.

"Not bad for someone my age." He indicated that one must accept life on its own terms, that one takes the good with the bad, that one doesn't know what the future holds, and that on the whole we were better off not knowing. All this accomplished with a small movement of one hand, a lift of a shoulder, and a slight downward turn of his mouth. (The Italians can do these things.) "Everyone gets old."

'True," I said penetratingly.

A bowed old man in gray, who never once raised his eyes from the carpet, came in with a bottle of Acqua Minerale Panna for Bolzano, and brandies, espressos, and dry biscuits for Lorenzo and me.

When we'd each taken a ceremonial sip, Bolzano put his glass down heavily. "I was very sorry to hear about Peter van Cortlandt. He was a fine man. I thought extremely highly of him."

"Thank you. He thought a great deal of you too. I had lunch with him the day he died, and I know he was looking forward to talking with you that night."

Bolzano's brows knit. "He was coming to Florence?"

"No, but he said he was going to call you from Frankfort."

"He was? About what?"

That, unfortunately, answered that. Peter had not followed up on his idea of telephoning Bolzano with some "pertinent, subtle" questions. So one more possible line of inquiry on the forgery was closed to me. I tried not to show my disappointment.

"About what?" Bolzano pressed.

"I don't know."

While Bolzano looked queerly at me, Lorenzo said, "Father, signor Norgren is here on behalf of The Plundered Past—"

"Signor Norgren should speak for himself," Bolzano said, looking steadily at me.

"You're right, signore. I
am
here to speak on behalf of The Plundered Past. It's a magnificent exhibition and a great tribute to your taste and your generosity—"

"And a magnificent tribute to the American army; don't forget that." For the first time he smiled. "But I don't begrudge them that. I appreciate very much what they've done for me. But, frankly, I worry about my paintings, signore; I don't want to lose them. What happened in Berlin is a disgrace."

"Father, please. You shouldn't excite yourself," Lorenzo put in.

Bolzano made a face. "I'm not excited. But I ask you: How could it happen? Were there no alarms, no protection? Were the pictures simply left lying in the cellar?"

"No," I said uncomfortably, "there were guards at the front and back doors—"

"And both were overcome. You too, I understand."

I nodded. "I'm afraid so."

"Well, I'm sorry you got hurt," he said gruffly. "And thank you for saving my pictures." He cleared his throat and poured some more water into his glass; he was not a man used to thanking others.

"I've had a careful look at the damaged Michelangelo copy," I said, "and I'm sure it's salvageable. We'll pay for having it restored, of course."

He shook his head roughly. "I don't give a damn about the copies; that's not the point."

"Father, please," Lorenzo murmured.

"The point is," Bolzano said, "it's only luck that it wasn't a Rubens or a Tiziano—a real one, I mean. For that matter, it's only luck that they didn't get away with all of them. What kind of security do you call that?"

"Father, please," Lorenzo said. When that earned him only an irritated look, he tried a different approach. "Please, Father."

"Please, father; father, please," mimicked Bolzano wearily. "Signor Norgren, I ask you: Do I seem overexcited to you? In danger of imminent death?" He held out a steady, blunt-fingered hand. Not only did he fail to seem overexcited to me, but I had the impression that he was enjoying himself very much.

"No, sir," I said, "but I want you to know that security isn't a problem any longer. We've installed the most up-to-date devices that exist."

I should have known better.

"Such as?" Bolzano asked.

I gulped and tried to remember what Anne had said at the meeting. "Well, there are infrared and ultraviolet barriers at the doors and windows, and photoelectric cells and electronic sensors that are triggered by movement or body heat" I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and I hoped I was getting it right. "Oh, and pressure-sensitive alarms on the paintings that splatter indelible green ink on whoever sets them off." That I recall as a particularly memorable touch.

"That's extremely impressive, Christopher," Lorenzo said, doing his pathetic best to help. "Extremely. Isn't it, Father?"

"Eh," Bolzano said..

"And," I went on, "most of it runs on car batteries in case the electricity is cut"

I hoped that was it for questions. My fund of knowledge was exhausted.

Bolzano seemed to be weighing things. "And what about this group, these Nazis?"

"The Heinrich-Schliemann-Gründung?"

"Yes, those asses. How do I know they won't convince the German government to keep my pictures?" He smiled grimly. "Their forbears did, after all."

'The police say they have absolutely no support. And in any case, you've lent your paintings to the United States Department of Defense, not Germany. Nobody's going to take them."

"Ahh," he said gravely, "the United States Department of Defense. That's different." He laughed, not offensively, and leaned back against the white couch, his hand kneading the loose skin at the dog's neck.

I was certain he was wavering, and pushed home my arguments: Of all the private collections looted by the Nazis, Bolzano's had benefited more from American military efforts than any other private collection except the Rothschilds'—

"So let Rothschild put on a show."

Besides that, I pointed out, months of work by many people had gone into the preparations, the catalog, the insurance, the excruciating maneuvering to secure a temporary export license from the Italian government. And the show had been extensively covered in the world press, much to the enhancement of the Bolzano reputation. If he were to pull out now, his credibility would suffer enormously.

"Ah, my credibility," he murmured.

"And of course," I said, reluctantly getting down to serious arm-twisting, "there's a signed agreement—"

His black eyes fixed mine sharply. "Would you really try to hold me to that?"

"We'd have to," I said, knowing that if it were up to me I wouldn't. "We think The Plundered Past is an extremely—"

He held up his hand. "Enough. You've worn me out. All right, the show will continue."

Lorenzo expanded his narrow chest and beamed, as if he had personally engineered this, and I sat back, relieved but not surprised. From the moment he'd grunted hello, I'd had the feeling he wasn't serious about pulling out. Anne, who'd never met him, had read him all wrong. He was no feeble, fearful old shut-in but a man who enjoyed asserting his considerable power, and getting me down to Florence had simply been a way of perking up his life a little.

The white dog, which had done nothing but gaze enchantedly at Bolzano, suddenly turned its head sideways, snapped at the air, and looked astonished when it didn't come up with anything. One of its baggy ears had flopped inside-out with the effort, so that the pink interior showed.

Bolzano laughed, a gravelly rasp deep in his throat. "Hey,
cane,
you look ridiculous. Put your ear back the way it should be." He leaned over and affectionately straightened it with his hand. The dog, an ordinary mutt without visible pretensions, gazed up at him in a tongue-lolling ecstasy of admiration.

Lorenzo and I laughed, too, and we all relaxed a little.

"So, signor Norgren," Bolzano said expansively, "you like The Plundered Past? Please, have a cake."

I bit into one of the dry, anise-flavored biscuits. "I think it's superb. There are paintings in it I've wanted to see for years."

"And the copies? Tell me, what do you think of exhibiting the copies of the missing pictures?" His bright eyes darted momentarily to glare at Lorenzo, then came back to me.

Lorenzo's Adam's apple jounced, and the tip of his droopy nose turned a shade bluer. He looked beseechingly at me. I had no idea what was in the air between them, and said something safe.

"I think there's something to be said for the idea."

Lorenzo was so relieved his breath whistled, but it wasn't the answer Bolzano wanted.

"I don't!" he said, so emphatically that the dog started. "I see no purpose in it. It was a childish fancy ever to buy them. I should have disposed of them long ago."

"I must disagree, Father," Lorenzo ventured in timorous rebellion. I say that if an object is beautiful, why shouldn't it give pleasure for its own sake? From a purely aesthetic point of view, why should it make any difference whether it was painted in 1680 in the throes of divine inspiration—ah-ha-ha—or copied three hundred years later, with every stroke faithfully reproduced?" His shiny eyes brightened. "Not more than thirty minutes ago, even the learned Christopher was deceived by our copy of the young woman at her clavichord."

Bolzano looked at me with something close to disappointment. "Is this true?"

"Well, momentarily," I admitted.

"And why should he not be?" Lorenzo said, gaining momentum. "It's a wonderful painting in its own right: every line laid on razor-sharp; the pearl earring a small masterpiece of its own, portrayed with a delicate precision that might fool Vermeer himself."

"Do you agree, signore?" Bolzano asked me dryly.

"Not entirely, no." I was still unsure of where I was treading, or on whose toes.

But he wouldn't be put off. "Do you agree that the painting my son describes so eloquently might fool Vermeer himself?"

I was being tested, then, and I thought I'd better prove myself, even at the cost of some face for Lorenzo. "No," I said, "not the way he described it. Vermeer's precision is a brilliant illusion. There are no lines, no outlines. Those pearl earrings that seem so perfect and pearl-like—seen up close they're just three or four formless dabs of paint. Everything in a Vermeer is fuzzy—"

"What?"
Lorenzo's eyebrows shot up to the vicinity of where his hairline had once been. "Fuzzy?
Vermeer?
Christopher, I cannot believe—"

"Of course fuzzy!" Bolzano snapped. "Vermeer was the most painterly of painters—more so even than Rembrandt, Velazquez—not some mere linear drudge like Bronzino or—"

"Not linear?" echoed Lorenzo, who seemed stunned a lot of the time. "Vermeer?"

"The forms themselves are anything but precise, Lorenzo," I said, heading off a less gentle response from his father. "When you look at a Vermeer, it's your mind that sorts things out, not your eye. It's not so different from your own subjectivist—"

"Ha," Bolzano muttered.

"But the texture," Lorenzo persisted, "the
clarity ..."

"But that's just what makes him so great," I said. "It's all a magical illusion, a deceptive clarity—"

"Ah." Bolzano nodded his bullet head with approval. "A magical, deceptive clarity. Well said, Christopher Norgren." He looked sharply at his son and shifted to brisk, rapid Italian.
 
"And this magic, Lorenzo, this magic flourishes only with that 'divine inspiration' you sneer so superiorly at, and which makes a work of art a living thing. An imitation is lifeless, no matter how wonderful it seems at first, and the longer one lives with a bogus painting the more hateful it becomes."

"Surely, Father, you don't seriously suggest—"

"Whereas the longer one lives with a work of art conceived and executed in the grip of"—a bristling glance at poor Lorenzo—"'divine inspiration,' the more one can sense in it the vital flame, the genius, that created it." He turned to me. "Do you agree, signore?"

"Yes, I do. But if you feel this way, why did you include the copies in the show?"

"Why?" he grumbled, returning to English. "Ask the professor of subjectivist art criticism."

Lorenzo's Adam's apple jiggled all the way up, down, and back up his neck. "When it came time for the final arrangements, you see, my father was seriously ill—""

A gallstone operation," Bolzano observed petulantly, "not a mental attack. I had my faculties; you could have consulted me."

"–and I was acting for him—power of attorney, you call it? And when Colonel Robey suggested it might be an excellent idea to exhibit copies of some of the pictures that are still missing—to publicize them and perhaps lead to their recovery—I agreed with him. I still do." He looked at his father and actually managed to stare him down. "Anything is possible. Who can tell?"

"From that standpoint, I think it is a good idea," I said quietly to Bolzano. "It could very well turn up some leads."

He shrugged and then sighed good-humoredly. "It begins to look as if I am not going to win any battles today. My opposition is too unified. Signor Norgren"—he gestured at my brandy snifter—"do you know what you're drinking?"

"Cognac?" I said. "It's extremely good."

This made him clap his hands. "No, and you're not the first to be fooled. It's a good old Italian product:
Vecchia Romagna.
He tapped his thigh. "You know, I'm going to have some, too."

"Father!" Lorenzo began, but was silenced by a look.

"This battle I win."

When the bowed servant brought us all fresh brandies, Bolzano drank with pleasure, licked his lips, and looked sharply at me. "Something is on your mind?"

Something was. "Sir, you said you were ill at the time the final arrangements were made. Does that mean you weren't here when the paintings were crated?"

"I was in the hospital. Lorenzo was here to attend to it." There was one more disgusted look at his son; Lorenzo might have won the battle of the copies, but he wasn't getting much pleasure from it.