Cairo (33 page)

I woke, gasping for air.

*

In darkness, I scrambled out of bed and pulled on some clothes. My clock radio showed 1.52 a.m. Spooked by my dream and by what Sally had said earlier, I took the pistol from beneath the squeaky floorboard in the hallway. It was still wrapped in its tea towel. In a sort of grim frenzy I drove out to Eltham, a semi-rural suburb of farmlets and mud-brick houses half an hour's drive away. I pulled up in the car park of some playing fields and picked my way over to the Yarra River's muddy banks. After ensuring no one was around, I tossed the gun into the eddying water at what I estimated to be the deepest part of the river.

Getting rid of the gun didn't give me as much satisfaction as I had hoped, but at least it was out of my apartment. A breeze ruffled the gum trees. A pair of bats drifted across the night sky. I lit a cigarette, smoked it down.

As I drove home, my conversation with Sally looped over and again in my head. Although humiliated, my despair was moderated by a vague gratification at the dramatic turn of events. I had, at least, experienced something adult and important. I imagined how this scene would play out in the movie of my life: a mournful piano motif, tear-stained cheeks, empty city streets. And that hateful obbligato:
What do you think love is? What do you think love is? What do you think love is?

On my return, I was surprised to see lights on in Max and Sally's apartment. It was past three a.m. I crept over and stood listening at their front door. From within I heard the dim notes of classical music, muffled voices. At one point it sounded as if Max was on the phone. Laughter, then footsteps, the noise of a heavy object being dragged across their wooden floor.

*

The following day, James banged on my front door. Although it was almost noon, I had only just got out of bed and was standing in my lounge room, wondering what to make of everything. The conversation with Sally, the terrifying dream, and the late-night journey to get rid of the pistol had all combined to instil in me an overwhelming exhaustion.

James swept past me as soon as I opened the door. He reeked of cigarette smoke, liquor and stale sweat; of someone who had been out all night. He was agitated.

‘Thank God you're home. Have you seen them?' he asked.

‘Who?'

‘Max and Sally. They're not here, are they?'

With one hand I shielded my eyes from the daylight flooding the hallway. ‘I haven't seen anyone today.'

‘When did you last see them?'

‘God. What is this? Last night.'

He pulled my hand away. ‘I've been over there and no one's home.'

It was too early for this sort of carry-on. I closed the door. ‘Perhaps they're asleep?'

He shook his head. ‘I don't think so. I knocked very loudly. It's weird.'

‘What do you mean?'

He stared at me for a second before flopping onto the couch. ‘I don't know. Nothing. Pour me a drink, will you.'

‘
James
. It's not even midday.'

‘I know, I know, but it's far too late to stop now. I need to get through the rest of the day and the only way to do that is to keep going. Besides, it must be six o'clock somewhere.'

‘Where have you been?'

‘You do not want to know. Out in the wide, wide world.'

‘Don't you want to eat lunch?'

‘No. Drink, please.'

I poured him a tumbler of whisky — heavy on the ice — and put the kettle on for myself. I had witnessed James in this kind of truculent mood before, and knew all I needed to do was ignore him for a while and he would settle down. Sure enough, by the time I had dressed and made myself breakfast, he was calmer. He sat smoking while I ate my toast and sipped my tea. I told him about the visit from the police, about lunch with my father; despite the drama of these events, I could tell he wasn't paying attention.

‘You know,' he said, ‘I drank a bottle of port when I was thirteen because I knew somewhere in the back of my tiny, tiny mind that it might kill me — although that wasn't my intention. I vomited all over our Persian rug that, luckily, was almost the same colour. My parents were away somewhere that year, and my sister never told anyone about it. Bless her.'

I knew James's relationship with his parents to be troubled; we had met briefly once at James's flat, and their affection for him was distracted — more like that of an elderly couple for a pet terrier than middle-aged parents for their only son. The mother wore eccentric, multi-coloured eyewear, the father an expensive-looking leather coat with a fur collar. They oozed money and liberal, arty pretensions; their colognes were interchangeable. I was intimidated by them. Max had told me they were involved in a swingers scene out in the leafy eastern suburbs, that they smoked joints after meals, that their bedside table was piled with erotic art books that he and James used to peruse in the hours after school before the parents returned home from work.

I cleared away my plate and lit a cigarette once I was sitting down again in the chair opposite.

James fished an ice cube from his glass and popped it into his mouth. He crunched on it, thoughtful for a minute or so. ‘I was
afraid you would all leave without me,' he said.

‘What? Why?'

Tears shone in the corner of his eyes. ‘I don't know. It's not as if I did much to help with the theft or anything. You drove the car; Gertrude and Edward did the actual painting. Those weirdo Bolshevik twins took the thing. Besides, I think Max is fed up with me.' He controlled his emotions before going on. ‘I had this vision of being left here alone while you all lived it up in Europe. What I would do if that happened …'

‘Don't be silly, James.'

‘Kill myself, most likely.'

‘James. Please. I saw Max and Sally last night. Everyone's excited.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, in fact …'

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

‘
What?
Tell me.'

‘Sally's pregnant. They're going to have a baby.'

‘Oh, I see. That's interesting.'

‘So there'll be a baby with us in France.'

James sniggered. ‘That fertility dance we did must have worked after all.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Well,' he said, ‘we are quite the pair of fools, aren't we?'

Disingenuous to the end, I asked him what he meant by this, even though I knew that he was referring to my wasted feelings for Sally and his own for Max. In any case, he declined to elucidate further, and he blew his nose and pulled himself together.

‘I suppose they're over at the warehouse,' James said, once he'd recovered. ‘We should go around there now. Get our money, our share of the spoils? Isn't that the plan?'

These so-called spoils had become nestled so deeply in the proliferating Russian dolls of complications that I had almost forgotten about them. Despite the abrupt loss of my kitchen-hand job, the money was not as attractive as it had been when Max first broached the plan to steal the
Weeping Woman
. In addition, I wasn't at all keen to see Sally so soon after last night's rebuff. I regretted my outburst, even though we had (superficially, at least) parted on good terms. At any rate, I felt confident she would mention nothing to Max of what I had said.

‘But Max told us to come around at five o'clock,' I reminded James.

He waved this away. ‘Let's go. Get it over and done with.'

I ground out my cigarette. What difference would it make? I would have to face Sally eventually; it might as well be sooner rather than later. I threw on a coat and opened the door.

Once on the walkway, I was startled by emergency-vehicle lights on Nicholson Street, directly in front of Cairo. I dragged James back, and we hovered out of sight on the landing until I ascertained the flashing lights were those of an ambulance, rather than a police car. Even so, we approached with caution.

A crowd had gathered on the footpath, including the enigmatic New Zealand man and a couple of other neighbours. Two paramedics came along the path wheeling a trolley, on which lay Mr Orlovsky. His trousers were muddy and torn, and his face was as grey as old concrete. He looked awful.

A middle-aged man I recognised as another Cairo resident told me Mr Orlovsky had tripped and fallen on the stairs. Poor Mr Orlovsky was petrified, one of his filmy eyes rolling like that of a dolphin caught in a net. He seemed excited to see me, however, and reached out in my direction. I went to his side. He stammered at me, but the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance before he could get any words out that I understood.

The crowd dispersed, and James and I set off across the park. It was sunny. James hummed morosely as we walked. We didn't speak. When we arrived at the warehouse's battered steel door, it was ajar and rocking in the breeze.

‘That's weird,' said James as we mounted the stairs. ‘You know how obsessed they are about keeping that door closed.'

*

The following tableau is frozen forever in my memory, like one of those tenebrous paintings of the Counter-Reformation (by Caravaggio or Gentileschi) in which one can discern the flurry of activity destined to follow the captured scene, as well as everything that precipitated it. A miracle, the conversion, bloody sacrifice, flight.

Upstairs at the warehouse Tamsin and George were slumped at the kitchen table. One of the kitchen cupboard doors was open; the sink was full of dirty dishes.

I took one look at the Bolshevik twins and somehow, before being told any details, I knew what had happened.

‘They've gone, haven't they?' I asked.

Tamsin regarded me from behind her greasy fringe. Her smile was more sour than usual. ‘Yep.'

Everything was quiet, until George uttered what were among the few words I ever heard him speak.

‘Those fucking
fuckers
.'

FOR SOME REASON THE SHOCK WAS NOT AS GREAT AS MIGHT
have been expected; it was of belated recognition as much as utter surprise: after all, the clues to a story's end are invariably contained somewhere within.

James groaned and staggered forwards. ‘Oh, I knew it. I
knew
it.' He fumbled in his pockets and produced a key. ‘The lock to Max and Sally's front door had been changed. I have this key that I swiped from Sally, but it wouldn't work this morning. I tried to get in but …'

In her faint English accent, Tamsin told us that she and her brother had arrived at the warehouse an hour or so ago. Like James and me, they had been told to drop over for the money at five o'clock but, unable to see any reason to wait, and keen to get their share, they came by earlier.

‘We wanted our money,' Tamsin said. ‘One o'clock, five o'clock. What's the difference, anyway? But the front door was open and there was no one here. They've left a lot of stuff but most of their clothes are gone; their painting materials are gone. We've been conned. We were so, so daft.'

‘Wait a second,' I said, ‘this isn't conclusive. We don't know for sure they've left.'

George pushed a sheet of paper across the table towards me. Reluctantly, I picked it up.

‘We found this on the floor,' Tamsin said.

It was a crumpled photocopy of an itinerary, prepared by a local travel agent for a Mr Edward Degraves and Mrs Gertrude Degraves. In time, the squiggles coalesced into recognisable words and digits. Passport numbers. A Qantas flight. Melbourne–Bangkok–Frankfurt. Thursday, 21 August 1986, 7.15 a.m.

I re-read it, checked the date. No one said anything. I was horribly aware of James's damp and drunken breathing nearby.

‘I heard Sally and Max moving things around late last night,' I said.

‘What time?' asked Tamsin.

‘Around three a.m.'

‘They were probably packing to go to the airport.'

James belched. ‘What about Anna Donatella? Is she still in the country?'

‘We can ring her at the gallery, I suppose.'

Tamsin and James began to go over it all again, but I couldn't bear to listen. Leaving them in the kitchen, I wandered to the other end of the warehouse.

The place had always been more impressive at night, but then, with afternoon light streaming through the large warehouse window, the trompe l'oeil of the Bay of Naples looked tacky and careworn, no more convincing than one you might find on the wall of a fish-and-chip shop. There were scuff marks where the wall adjoined the floor. Spider webs billowed in the breeze.

Although always chaotic, the warehouse showed signs of having been rummaged through. Scattered here and there on the floor were items that had previously rested upon shelves or windowsills: a bird's skull, an old tram timetable, a Rubik's cube, a pocket edition of Allen Ginsberg's
Howl
.

Edward and Gertrude's bedroom was in disarray as usual, but their dresser drawers were agape and empty. Most of the cosmetics and assorted jewellery had been swept from the top of the dresser. All that remained was a greasy tube of lip balm, an assortment of broken earrings, and a bent and blackened spoon.

Likewise, their studio had been cleaned out. The bottles of pigments and oils were gone, as were the suitcase of materials that had once belonged to Elmyr de Hory, and Gertrude's forgery of the Soutine portrait, which I had liked so much. Blank canvases were stacked against one wall. Crusty brushes and tubes of paint littered the floor.

I ran my palm over the scarred surface of the wooden bench, spattered with its galaxy of paint. I lowered myself into the squeaky wooden chair where Gertrude had often sat to consider her work in progress, and I thought back to the first night I came to the warehouse, and what Max had said about the moon landing:
If people are desperate to believe in something, then they will
.

On the floor was a copy of yesterday's
Herald
. The front page was all about the return of the Picasso painting and featured a photograph of a forensic scientist leaving Spencer Street Station with the package. There was also a reproduction of Tamsin and George's final cheeky note, in which they intimated the theft was merely the first phase of an ongoing campaign for increased arts funding. I found it hard to believe they would attempt anything so daring after this little fiasco.