Cairo (16 page)

‘Uh, no thanks.'

‘But it will keep them both well away.'

‘Yes, and everyone else.'

‘Not always a bad thing. Helps to get work done, at least. Which reminds me, how's that novel of yours coming along?'

I made a helpless gesture. Perhaps the only thing more foolish than wishing to write novels is making such an ambition public. Pretty much the only fiction I was responsible for at that time were the infrequent phone calls to Dunley when I regaled my mother or father — both of whom were unaware of the change in my educational priorities — with tales of my imaginary classmates and professors, most of whom were based on people I had met at parties or read about in books. I needed to remain on high alert during such conversations lest my mother (with her prodigious memory for names) asked me whether I was still going to the cinema with my new friend Jose Arcadio or if old Mrs Du Maurier was proving to be a more agreeable literature tutor than she was at the start of the academic year.

Washing dishes for a living and going to lots of parties was not always the most fulfilling existence, and when I did become disillusioned at my failure to enrol at university, the idea that I was living the bohemian life and writing a novel became a consolation. Progress, however, had been slow. I had a notebook in which I scribbled things (usually when drunk, late at night), ideas for characters and storylines that on closer and more sober inspection inevitably proved — assuming they were legible — to be nothing short of idiotic.

A visit from Max was rare: I could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had been into my apartment. He was not himself, nervous even, leaping to his feet every now
and then to poke about as if reassuring himself we were alone.

I made a fresh pot of tea and, once we were seated, asked how his own work was progressing.

‘Can't say I've done very much lately, but now that the shenanigans of summer are over I'm keen to get back to it. I've been stuck on one or two things that I think I've resolved. I need to hit the ivories, you know. Make some noise.'

He had told me a bit about the nineteenth-century poem on which his work was to be based. It was, I gathered, some sort of proto-surrealist prose poem about the decline of a mad king. He had quoted aloud portions of its fevered text for me (‘
Holding a head whose skull I gnawed, I stood like the heron on one foot at the brink of a precipice scored into the mountainside
'), but Max's explanations of his work-in-progress were as garbled as they were enthusiastic, before grinding to a halt with an implication that his interlocutor was unlikely to understand anyway.

I poured tea for us both. Max lit a cigarette, scratched at his chin. He was wearing grey trousers and an unfashionable dark-blue cardigan over a cream shirt. His red tie was askew and hair tumbled across his eyes.

‘Look,' he said at last, ‘can I talk to you?'

‘Sure.'

‘We've known each other for a few months now.'

‘Yes.'

‘I think you are a fine man. Trustworthy.'

I was genuinely flattered. ‘Thank you.'

He leaned forwards, elbows on knees, and glanced around before speaking. ‘I might as well get to the point. Now, this is serious. We're planning an escapade and I think it's only fair you get a chance to become involved. We all do.'

His tone was comically ominous, and I couldn't suppress a bemused snort, which was met with a reproving glance. I gulped
my tea and arranged my features into what I hoped was a more suitable expression.

‘You know that Picasso painting at the National Gallery everyone has been going on and on about?' he said.

‘
Weeping Woman
?'

‘Have you been to see it yet?'

I shook my head. ‘Why?'

‘We are going to steal it.'

There followed a peculiar lull into which tumbled a torrent of images. Ever since the gallery took possession of the work at the start of the year, the local papers had been full of news and comment on the subject: how the National Gallery of Victoria had paid $1.6 million for it; the folly of spending vast sums on old foreign art instead of funding young Australian artists; correspondence to the editor mocking it as worse than anything produced by the letter-writer's three-year-old niece etc. etc. With minimal effort, I could summon in my mind the portrait's sickly green planes and empurpled lips, the eyes like ravenous sea creatures.

Unsure how else to respond to Max's claim, I laughed.

He scowled. ‘I'm glad you think it's funny.'

‘Oh, come on. You're not serious, are you?'

‘But we are.'

And I did see, with a shock, that he was. ‘Who do you mean by
we
?'

‘We're all involved in one way or another. Myself. Sally, Gertrude, Edward; another woman called Tamsin and her brother George. Tamsin is a friend of James's. A Bolshevik art student from England. She knows the gallery inside out. These Bolshevik twins will, you know,
take
the painting. They are sort of mad, very political. They smashed that massive front window at the NGV a few years ago as part of some protest. James is being difficult about
the whole thing but he'll be included when we divide the proceeds. Basically, he'll do pretty much anything I ask of him.'

I jumped up and put out my hands to stop him talking. ‘I can't believe I'm hearing this, Max. What the hell are you talking about? The
proceeds
?'

‘Shhh. Calm yourself. I know it sounds crazy.'

‘Yes. It does.'

‘But it's all perfectly well planned out. We've done it before. Well, not exactly, but we did a similar thing before and no one has ever been the wiser. Now sit down, will you.'

Eventually I did sit down and listened as Max filled me in on their plan that — whether because of my exhaustion or Max's sheer charisma — actually began to sound plausible. These Bolshevik twins had a friend who worked as an attendant at the gallery and knew there was no special security in place for the
Weeping Woman
, irrespective of the painting's value and notoriety. They would hide overnight in a maintenance cupboard in the gallery, come out after closing time and unscrew the painting from its frame with a special tool. In the morning, when the gallery opened for the day, they would mingle with the public and walk out the front door with it.

‘Walk out with a million-dollar painting?' I asked.

‘Basically, yes. It's not very big when it's taken from its frame. Fifty-five by forty-six centimetres, to be precise. It can be hidden easily under a coat or among some folders. That's one of the things we have to work out. We're not planning to do it until winter. Wait until the fuss over it fades away. We've done a few trial runs already, and no one notices a thing.'

‘What kind of trial runs?'

‘Well, they've hidden all night in the cupboard three times and taken a stroll through the gallery in the middle of the night. Just last night, in fact. And we'll do it again before the real thing.'

‘Aren't there guards patrolling at night?'

‘Yes, but they have a pretty fixed schedule. Easy to avoid. For us there's not that much risk. It's not as if they have secret cameras, is it?'

‘So you manage to steal a famous painting. Then what?'

Max rubbed his hands together. ‘Here's where it gets
really
interesting.'

‘Because so far it's been very dull.'

‘Yes. No. Anyway. You don't know this, but Gertrude is a brilliant painter, a brilliant technician. She'll make a copy, we'll sell the original to some people who deal in these kinds of things and then give the copy back to the gallery. Stash it where it can be found, leave it at a tram stop or railway station. That way the gallery gets it back and we make a load of money. Everyone is happy.'

‘People who deal in these kinds of things? Who might they be?'

‘Associates of Anna Donatella's.'

‘She's in on it as well?'

‘She has the contacts. But not that horrible Queel. He mustn't know a thing about it. He's dangerous.'

‘I thought Edward was the painter?' I asked.

‘Edward is an awful painter. Sells well but he's basically an amateur. It's what the market wants these days. They want sensation, work that matches the couch and the carpet. Gertrude is the real artist, but no one is interested in the kind of things she does anymore. Too serious, far too skilful, too
profound
. People enjoy things that make them feel equal to the artist, not less than. She was represented by Anna Donatella for a few years, but not anymore. Queel got rid of her. She and Edward make a great team when it comes to this kind of thing, though. He's a crappy artist, but Edward is a genius with colour. He does the mixing of pigments and so on, while she does the actual work. She did that Soutine portrait they've got in their studio as a sort of experiment. Similar era and so on. You know the one?'

‘Yes. It's a great painting. But I don't think it's as easy to make forgeries as you think. There's the line of ownership, the types of paint used …'

‘We don't need provenance for this one. It already
has
provenance. That's why the plan is so brilliant. Besides, we've already passed off a couple of Norman Lindsays.'

This sounded unlikely. ‘Which ones?'

Max held up a hand, palm outwards. ‘Sorry but I can't tell you. Any knowledge of these things has to stay very, very close. I shouldn't have told you anything about it, as a matter of fact. Look, it's easy if you have the connections. The art market is absolutely
full
of fakes. Dealers and galleries don't want to examine too closely because they don't want to know that a piece they paid millions of dollars for is only worth twenty bucks. We won't get caught.'

I thought back to the night I had overheard him and Edward talking outside my apartment. What was it Edward had said?
This isn't just some old Norman Lindsay painting of ladies with big tits sitting in a river
.

‘Why not sell the forgery to these …
associates
?' I asked.

Max hesitated. ‘You remember when we were at Edward's place that day of the
Challenger
explosion and some people came around? You stayed in the bedroom with Gertrude?'

The memory of it still rankled. ‘You made me go in there.'

‘Yes, I know. These … associates don't think a woman can do such a good forgery, so we let them think Edward does it. Gertrude gets in a flap about it but, really, it's neither here nor there. Anyway, there was a man there, Mr Crisp, and he's the chap we'll sell the painting to. Mr Crisp's bodyguard was with him that day.' He grimaced. ‘You remember what happened to Buster?'

I didn't answer his question. Poor Buster had remained in plaster for three weeks after the shooting and made a pitiful sight lurching around Edward and Gertrude's warehouse like a grizzled old coot.

Max went on. ‘The gallery, on the other hand, will be so pleased to avoid international humiliation that they'll accept almost anything. The police will call off the search, our friends get the real version out of the country, we get our money. Look, Pablo painted it in
one single day
. We reckon we can take a week or so. You haven't seen anything until you've seen Gertrude paint. She's amazing.'

‘And you want me to help how?'

‘I knew you'd love the idea. I knew you had the guts. Well, we can't very well take the thing out of the city on a tram. It might be raining, for a start. Plus, we need to get away from the area as soon as possible. The painting needs to be thoroughly looked after to maintain its value. It's no good to us if it gets wrecked, is it?' He raised his voice, as if to forestall my inevitable objections. ‘We need someone to drive from the gallery to Edward's place, that's all. Anna Donatella can't do it, because she's too well known. You and I will park outside and wait for Tamsin and George. I've talked about it with the others and we all think you're perfect. It's not only about having someone who can drive or who has a car; it's about finding someone who deserves the opportunity. Deserves the money. We want you with us. I had to hold Sally back from asking you straight away, she was so taken with you, but I thought we should wait until we knew you better.'

I thought of two or three conversations among them in the past few weeks that had petered out at my arrival, and another time when I saw Max arguing with James in the Carlton Gardens. Although nothing in their manner towards me had changed, I lived in fear of transgressing the little group's code of conduct in some obscure way that would result in my being excommunicated. I had thrown my lot in with them so comprehensively that such a prospect was unthinkable, unbearable. In this light, the news they had been conspiring to steal a major artwork was, somehow, a relief.

The cups of tea remained untouched. Max stood, fetched a bottle of Aunt Helen's sherry from my sideboard and poured a tumbler for each of us.

‘Tom, we stand to make a lot of money out of this. It will set us up for years. Do you want to wash dishes for the rest of your life? Afterwards, we're all moving to France. Me and Sally and James. Edward and Gertrude are going to Berlin, because, well, that's where people like them tend to go. It's much cheaper in Europe. I'll finish
Maldoror
; you can write your novel. Live like Hemingway, like Henry Miller — without the, you know, crabs. It'll be amazing. It will change our lives. Our long exile will be over. This is a chance to make a mark, to do something that people will remember for decades. And all
you
have to do is pick someone up and drive a few kilometres and —'

‘Someone who happens to be carrying a stolen Picasso painting.'

Max conceded my clarification. ‘Yes. But I'll be in the car with you, if that makes you feel any better. It's — what? — a four-kilometre drive from the gallery to Edward's place? Straight up Swanston Street. No distance at all. The risk is absolutely minimal for us. If Tamsin and her brother don't come out within fifteen minutes of the gallery opening, then we drive away and forget it. There's no crime in sitting in a car outside a public gallery, is there?'