A Nearly Perfect Copy (35 page)

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.