After that came the traditional French salad of lettuce with vinaigrette dressing (gorgonzola and walnuts were not options), followed by some local cheeses with which to "finish" the wine, as they say here, and a very pleasant practice it is. Then a chocolate souffle that I was too full to eat, although it hurt me to look at it sitting there in front of me; and finally small, welcome cups of potent black coffee.
Charpentier and Froger were just heaping prodigious amounts of sugar into their coffees-this being one of the few serious defects of the French palate-when someone at the head table, which was located at one end of the room under four mullioned windows paned with ancient bull's-eye glass, called for attention.
A moment later, Vachey's thin, sprightly figure arose at the center of the table. Trim and natty, if a bit archaic in an old-fashioned white dinner jacket, he waited for the chairs to finish scraping on the stone floor as people turned to face him. His eyes, darting over his audience, were no less twinkly than they'd been that morning in his study, maybe more so. For a moment his glance rested warmly on me, and his eyebrows lifted in a quick greeting before he addressed his audience.
"My dear friends," he said in French, his voice lively and distinct, "thank you for joining me on this happy occasion. I know that you are impatient to see, collected publicly in one place for the first time, the most beautiful of the works of art which it has been my privilege to safeguard…"
Sauvegarder, I liked that. Not "own" or "acquire," as so many collectors would say, but "safeguard." I knew Charpentier agreed, because I saw his head dip in a minuscule nod of approval.
"… and, of course, the wonderful, newly discovered masterpieces by Rembrandt and Leger, so fortuitously rescued from a dusty and dangerous obscurity."
"Masterpieces," Froger huffed under his breath.
Some people applauded Vachey. Others peered at him in flint-eyed silence. The assemblage seemed to be made up of Vachey-haters and Vachey-lovers in about equal measure, or possibly with the haters having a slight edge. I was getting less sure all the time of which camp I belonged in.
Vachey then asked the Minister of Culture, a smiling but manifestly wary woman named Irene Lebreton, to stand up. With her at his side he publicly pledged to the Louvre, effective on his seventy-fifth birthday, all of the paintings that were on view that evening, "with the exception, of course, of the Rembrandt and the Leger." While flash-cameras clicked and whirred-the photographers and TV people had set up shop in a cleared area in front of the table-Madame Lebreton shook hands with him and accepted politely but guardedly on behalf of the nation. With gifts from Vachey, people knew they had to stay on their toes.
There was further applause, a little more enthusiastic than before, as the minister returned to her chair, stopping first to lean over, shake hands, and say a few words to a smirky, overweight young man who sat on Vachey's other side.
This, Lorenzo told me, was Vachey's son, Christian, who was not currently the apple of his father's eye. He had recently squandered almost all that was left of the fortune he'd inherited from his mother, Vachey's dead wife, in a seamy venture into bauxite mining in Venezuela. Before that it had been a Tanzanian cement factory, and before that a seaweed processing plant in New Caledonia. There was a conviction for tax evasion in his past, and well-founded rumors of associations with the Mob in both France and the United States. For the last decade he'd spent half of each year in Miami, but six months ago he'd given up his house there-two steps ahead of the law, according to Lorenzo- and returned with his tail between his legs to Dijon, where he'd been living on his father's sufferance ever since.
Lorenzo's expression as he explained all this told me that Christian wasn't one of his favorite people. I can't say that he looked especially likable to me either, but I drew no conclusions. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't have looked so likable myself if I'd just had to sit and watch my father give away a few hundred million dollars' worth of what might otherwise have been my own inheritance. I supposed he had a right to look a little sour.
Vachey lifted his hand to quiet the applause. "As to the paintings by Leger and Rembrandt-"
"If they are by Leger and Rembrandt," Froger said, ostensibly to those of us at his table, but his robust bass carried around the room. "For myself-permit me to doubt."
Vachey laughed, seemingly genuinely amused. "That is one point of view, Edmond. I suspect others share it, but I hope you will change your mind after you've examined them."
Froger watched him sullenly, hands clasped on his substantial belly, thick fingers splayed out. "We'll see."
Vachey bowed in his direction. "However, you are certainly right in reminding us that, other than by myself, they have yet to be authenticated. That will soon change, I am sure. As many of you know, Dr. Christopher Norgren of the Seattle Art Museum-"
I stiffened. I'd made it clear to him that I wasn't going to commit myself, and I meant to stick to it. I wasn't going to let him put any words in my mouth.
"-one of the world's foremost Rembrandt authorities-" Lorenzo shot me a wry glance. "Congratulations, Christopher."
I shrugged and kept my peace. I couldn't very well be expected to quibble with every word Vachey said.
"-has come to Dijon in connection with my offer of the Rembrandt to that fine museum. Like you, he will see it tonight for the first time. He will examine it at length tomorrow, at which time I look forward keenly to his evaluation of-"
"Monsieur Vachey," I said, "by the end of tomorrow, it is my expectation that, as an emissary of the Seattle Art Museum, I will be able to provide you with our response to the generous proposal which you have made, but I can say with assurance that I will be unable to come to a conclusion regarding the authenticity of the painting; that is to say, whether or not it can be attributed without qualification to Rembrandt van Rijn. That, as you know, cannot be accomplished without the aid of analytical techniques that are prohibited under the conditions of your bequest."
Sorry about that. I was speaking French, remember. And I was nervous.
My remarks caused a buzz, which I don't think was due solely to amazement at my command of their language. But Vachey himself accepted them affably. "Of course, forgive me. Now then. As to the Leger-"
"The so-called Leger," Froger said with a sneer, pretending to address Charpentier, but his booming voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. If he wasn't enjoying himself, he was doing a good imitation of someone who was.
With no sign of rancor, Vachey joined in the mild laughter that followed this. He wasn't having a bad time either. His mood was buoyant and playful; he was practically purring.
"Monsieur Froger, will you do me the honor of coming up here with me?"
Here comes the "frisson," I thought.
"What?" Froger had been caught off guard. He eyed Vachey suspiciously and cleared his throat. "I'll remain here, thank you."
In his place, I'd have been worried too. Whatever Vachey was up to, and I thought I knew, it didn't seem probable that Froger was going to like it.
"As you wish. It is a source of regret, ladies and gentlemen, that relations between Monsieur Froger and myself have not always been cordial. For this I take responsibility. A certain act of mine some years ago"-his voice was grave, but he couldn't keep that sparkle out of his eyes-"was an inadvertent cause of distress to our fine Musee Barillot and its excellent director, Monsieur Edmond Froger. Now I wish to make amends. I do so in the spirit of atonement and the hope of future friendship."
Froger looked as if he doubted it. I doubted it too.
"It is my pleasure to announce," Vachey said, "that the great painting you will see tonight, Violon et Cruche, by Fernand Leger, is hereby offered to the Musee Barillot of Dijon as an unrestricted gift. I hope they will honor me by accepting it."
He beamed tranquilly at Froger.
Talk about horns and dilemmas. It hadn't been five minutes since Froger had made it amply and publicly clear that as far as he was concerned the painting was a fake and Vachey was a charlatan, so what could he do now but turn it down? But what if Vachey had sandbagged him, as had suddenly begun to look highly possible? What if it turned out to be genuine? Refusing it would lose Froger the Leger and make him look like a chowderhead besides. Accepting it would get him the painting, but he'd still look like a chowderhead, and a toad-eating one at that. Assuming Vachey's aim had been to put his old adversary in an impossible situation, which I didn't doubt for a minute, it was a masterful stroke.
Froger started stammering. "It's not-I can't-that is to say, it's not my decision to make. My board of directors, which is to say-"
He sputtered to a stop and just sat there, getting redder and angrier, puffing up before our eyes. His features, dainty for his size in any case, seemed lost in the ample flesh of his head, like a too-small face painted on a balloon.
"As for your commendable concern for its authenticity, Edmond," Vachey continued smoothly, "we are fortunate in having with us one of France's preeminent experts in the oeuvre of this towering twentieth-century French master. Monsieur Charpentier, I'm sure we all look forward to your opinion of the Leger- pardon, the alleged Leger-with breathless anticipation."
Charpentier, loading a second small cup of coffee with sugar, looked up puckishly. "Oho. I see. Is this why I was invited? I must perform for my dinner?"
"You were invited because I couldn't imagine unveiling a major Leger without your presence, Jean-Luc, that's all. But it goes without saying that your opinion would be welcome."
"That's most gratifying," Charpentier said, "but my opinions are my livelihood, such as it is; unfortunately, I can't afford to give them away." After a second he added: "Have I ever asked you for a free painting?"
Vachey laughed. "No, and you wouldn't be likely to get it, either. All right, your professional opinion, then."
Charpentier, who had lit a cigarette, took a drag on it and slowly let the smoke drift from the corners of his mouth, scowling thoughtfully at Vachey all the while. "You are asking my professional opinion?"
"Of course. At your usual exorbitant fee."
"Just a moment," Froger said nervously. "I don't know if I'm empowered to authorize funds to-"
"Which it will be my pleasure to pay," Vachey said. "Naturally."
Froger fell silent, chewing his lip.
"I must say," Charpentier said to Vachey, "I'm surprised to be asked."
"Ah, you above all, Jean-Luc. With you, at least no one is likely to assume you are biased in my favor."
There was some history between them, because several people laughed. Charpentier himself, possibly mellowed by the thought of his unexpected fee, allowed himself a smile. "That's true enough, anyway. Very well, then, why don't we have a look?"
"Indeed." Vachey nodded his thanks. "In fact, ladies and gentlemen, why don't we all have a look? My gallery is at your disposal until midnight. There is cognac, champagne, and coffee." He smiled. "And, if you like, a few pictures to pass the time."
Most of the guests chose to walk the three blocks from the palace to Vachey's gallery. It was an odd sort of postprandial stroll: a straggling, elegant procession composed of groups of three and four threading slowly through the moon-washed Square des Ducs with its pensive, homely statue of Philip the Good, then turning left along the prettily medieval Rue de la Chouette, and right at the Rue de la Prefecture. We moved in a leisurely, relaxed fug of cigar smoke and winey breath, but the conversation was anything but relaxed. People were vigorously dissecting the events of the evening so far, speculating on what was yet to come, or otherwise discoursing learnedly.
A few yards ahead of me, for example, Calvin was launched on a confident exposition of the difficulties of authenticating art.
"Now take Rembrandt, for example, Nadia," he was telling his admiring new lady friend and her not-quite-so-admiring parents. "Do you have any idea how many brilliant students Rembrandt had? There was, let me see, Hoogstraten, Dou, er, Bol…"
And in my own group, while Charpentier and I walked along in silence, Lorenzo was trying to calm a huffing, chafing Froger by loftily telling him to put aside pride and accept the painting if Charpentier verified it-or even if he didn't, as long as Froger himself found it beautiful. Why should he care whether it was encumbered with such artificial, misleading labels as "real" or "false," which changed nothing whatsoever, being as they were mere perceptual constructs, transitory and equivocal? All one had to do was look at things postexistentially, that was all.
For some reason, Froger did not appear to be soothed.
I wasn't feeling very soothed either. In just a few minutes I was finally going to be seeing the picture, and I was steeling myself for the worst; the worst being that it would turn out to be a colossal dud, nothing more than one of those "Rembrandts" that pop up in the art market every few years with an almost tedious regularity. If they aren't gobbled up by some eager, naive collector, they are soon denounced, and then hurriedly withdrawn by the profusely apologetic dealers or auction houses that had them up for sale-only to surface again in a year or two, usually through other dealers, sometimes in other countries.
Surprised? You thought that, once a painting was proven to be a fake, that was that? That there must be some legal requirement that it be destroyed, or properly labeled, or something to protect unwary future buyers?
Sorry, but no such thing. Fakes are not illegal. You can copy all the Rembrandts you want. You can sign his name to them, you can crackle and darken them so they look old, you can put bogus seventeenth-century stamps and inscriptions on the backs. All perfectly legal as long as it's all in good fun. You can even go around telling people they're the real thing. What you can't do is try to sell them as such. That's why prudent forgers never sell their own work directly to the public; it's too easy to prove fraudulent intent. But dealers are another matter. They can be duped like anybody else, after all, and they can hardly be routinely charged with intent to deceive if some of their offerings turn out to be bogus. If the Met can make mistakes, why not them?
So where do you think all those exposed fakes that you're always reading about wind up when all the hoopla dies down? Back in circulation is where. After a suitable time, of course. And eventually, many of them end as the proud property of rich, gullible private collectors all around the world. Not that I thought of Vachey as gullible; not by a long shot. If his new Rembrandt was a phony, and if there was any duping going on, Rene Vachey was the duper.
Guess who that left as the dupee.
At 39 Rue de la Prefecture, a pair of Vachey's minions stood at the door of the house, under Pepin's fussy, darting supervision, to examine our invitations and direct us up to the gallery, or rather to make sure that we didn't stray into Vachey's ground-level private quarters. Upstairs, the folding, linen-covered partitions had been moved back, opening up a sizable reception area in which the guests milled about, sipping brandy or coffee.
Naturally, the only thing I could think about was having my first look at the Rembrandt, but the entry to the main part of the show remained blocked by a table drawn up against the partitions. All that was open was the section on the landing, near Vachey's study: Villon, Duchamp, and the other Cubists. And I didn't have much interest in those. Near the table, Vachey was energetically conferring with his secretary, Marius Pepin, and with a round, fluffy, excited woman in her sixties who Calvin told me was Clotilde Guyot, Vachey's gallery manager. Evidently, the exhibition wasn't quite ready to open.
Restive and eager to get on with it, I snared a balloon glass of cognac from a passing waiter, found a corner by myself, and waited. I'd already prepared myself mentally for being face-to-face with the Rembrandt-the alleged Rembrandt-and I didn't want to have to talk to anyone before I did. The truth is, I was too jumpy for rational conversation, but that didn't bother Calvin, who located me and rattled happily on for what seemed like half an hour. I think he was generously describing for me the attributes of the young woman he'd dined with, or maybe of some of the other women there, but I couldn't swear to it either way. I gulped at the brandy and waited.
At long last there was a businesslike rapping from the front. The table blocking the entrance was moved to the side. Madame Guyot raised her great, pillowy white arms for silence and turned her sunny pink face on us.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she announced breathlessly, "it is my privilege to welcome you to the Galerie Vachey tonight, and to thank you all for coming, and permit me to invite you in to view the paintings, and-wait, please-kindly do not carry your beverages into the exhibition." This was emitted in fluttery French that lacked discernible pauses (no wonder she was out of breath), after which she stepped hurriedly out of the way and behind the table, just in time to avoid being trampled by the herd.
Calvin and I, caught near the entrance with nothing to duck behind, were less fortunate. We were borne helplessly into the gallery, where more partitions necessitated an immediate choice; either go right, into the French wing, which had the Leger, or left into the Dutch wing, where the Rembrandt alcove was. Calvin was swept off to the right with the greater part of the crowd, bobbing along in the flow like a plastic cup in the surf, but I managed to fight my way to the left, where I found myself in a corridorlike space about ten feet by thirty, low-ceilinged and lined on both walls with an orderly procession of seventeenth-century paintings by Dutch masters.
I caught glimpses of a Honthorst, a Bloemaert, a Cuyp, all superb and more than enough to capture my attention under ordinary circumstances, but at the moment they couldn't have interested me less. Like most of the others, I made singlemindedly toward an alcove at the end of the corridor, where the partitions were draped with lush, green velveteen; obviously the place of honor, although its main wall was out of sight, around the corner of the corridor.
But at the last second, I got cold feet. Slipping into a nook just before the alcove, I let the others push by. Now that it had come down to it, I found that I didn't want to look at it, not yet. The moment of truth was at hand, and I wasn't quite ready to face it. For despite the reservations I'd been expressing to Tony and Calvin, and despite the distressing doubts currently being raised about the entire Rembrandt oeuvre, I knew I wasn't really going to need a whole day of analysis, or even an hour. All it was going to take for me to know if the picture on that wall was the real thing was one good, hard look.
I'm not saying that was always the case-not by a long shot, it wasn't-but when it was a painter that I knew as well as I did Rembrandt, and when I'd just done some heavy boning up, as indeed I had before I left Seattle, then I wasn't going to need very much time-or laser microanalysis or thermoluminescent discrimination, for that matter-to tell me what was what.
Sure, I'd want them for confirmation, but if it took more than three minutes to reach a conclusion, my own conclusion, for myself, I would be extremely surprised. If there was a Rembrandt in that alcove, I would know. If there wasn't, I would know that too.
I let the hubbub in the alcove die down a little, waited for a few people to come out, then took a breath and pushed around the corner. The painting leaped out at me, three feet from my face, brilliant and vivid from its recent cleaning, a handsome portrait of an elderly man. I peered at it, eyes narrowed, mind cleansed of everything else, focusing every ounce of concentration, everything I'd learned from fifteen years of scholarly absorption in Baroque art. I put the buzzing around me out of my mind. I scrutinized the brushwork, the palette, the thousand nuances of style and technique.
After a couple of minutes, I let out my breath and stepped back.
I didn't know whether the hell it was a Rembrandt or not.