A Deceptive Clarity (28 page)

Gadney shook his head. "No, Mark's already spoken to him. He thinks it's a good idea to put it off, too."

"I'm sure he does," I said, smiling. "He's probably afraid Bolzano will strangle him when he hears about it."

"Be that as it may," Gadney said by way of closing the discussion, "I have to get back downstairs now. The caviar isn't here yet, if you can believe it, and we may have to do without." The thought brought a steely compression to his lips. "By the way, you might want to know that Lorenzo Bolzano is here along with his father."

"Great," I said. "At least the conversation will be lively."

* * *

It was. Lorenzo was in classic form, voluble and opaque. "All of our old constants of 'objective reality,' " he piped, pushing a canape farther into his mouth with one lank forefinger (the caviar had arrived in the nick of time, so that crisis, at least, had been averted), "all of our old constants—space, matter, time—we now recognize as nothing more than constructs of cultural consciousness." He smiled brighdy at the group of six or eight people gathered around him, and gulped some more from the glass of Schloss Johannisberg Riesling wrapped in his other hand. "They are no longer valid."

"No longer valid," murmured a dazed one-star general, edging surreptitiously backward.

"No. Reality is, in reality—ah-ha-ha—a multidimensional and, in the end, an ambiguous invention, of no significance to the artist. In my paper 'Rembrandt, Warhol, and the Synthetist Manifesto' ..."

The reception was a little over two hours old, and Lorenzo, having established a station within arm's reach of one of the food tables, had been going on like that for almost the whole time. Following Robey's instructions to mingle, I had wandered in and out of his ongoing discourse several times, finding myself entertained, as always, by his inexhaustible resources of learned goofiness.

I had also talked briefly with his father. Claudio Bolzano, looking happy and healthy, broke away from a circle of generals and diplomats to come and talk with me.

"So," he said, "here I am, after all." His alert black eyes glittered with life. "You're progressing in your investigations? Why don't I hear from you?"

"I'm afraid there's been nothing to report, signore."

"You're
afraid?'

"Well, I only meant—"

He threw back his head and laughed. "I understand. I should tell you, signore, that as soon as I arrived, before the reception began, I went carefully through the collection, and my conclusion was this: To search for a forgery among these paintings is to waste your time. They are authentic, all of them; I will stake my reputation on it. And the three masterpieces from Hallstatt are even more wonderful than I remember." He smiled suddenly, his whole face alight. "Surely you must agree?"

I nodded. "I do."

Bolzano laughed good-humoredly. "I hear a scholar's disappointment. You're sad because you have no earth-shaking discovery to report to the world of art. Well," he said generously, "it's all right; I understand your long face very well."

But he didn't. I didn't give a damn about earthshaking discoveries. My friend and teacher had been killed because of something he'd found in the show. He had told me about it, and I'd been too dense to understand or even to follow his lead. And so his murderer was still walking around free. There were other compelling things to worry about, too, as Harry had pointed out; since I'd gotten involved I'd been beaten, grazed by a bullet (a doctor at Rhein-Main had confirmed it), and knocked silly by a bomb. And without a doubt I was
still
on somebody's hit list.

And I still didn't have a clue. I'd gotten absolutely nowhere at all.

That's why I had a long face.

"And so," Lorenzo was saying, "the subjectivist, essentially post-existential viewpoint opens to our minds a
third
reality, the astructural, nonfunctional, purely relational reality of an interior, many-layered system of reference...."

I managed to hide a yawn under cover of finishing my Scotch and water, and let my eyes wander over the room looking for Anne. She was musing before the Vermeer, her arms folded, an empty wineglass cradled against her cheek.

It was the first time I'd seen her that afternoon without some panting male—or two or three—drooling over her. And no wonder. She looked marvelous; tawny-haired and glowing with girl-next-door prettiness. And she was in mess dress uniform, a knockout outfit of dark mess jacket, white shirt and cummerbund, and ankle-length skirt slit up to the knee. I hadn't been able to keep my eyes off her.

I went to her and took the glass from her hand. "I could sure stand a break. Why don't I get us a couple more, and we can find someplace to sit down for ten minutes."

"I don't know," she whispered. "I have orders to amuse the VIPs. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to talk to you."

"Well, couldn't you pretend I'm a VIP?"

Lorenzo, unfortunately, had noted my absence, and his voice, shrill with wine, cut effectively through the racket of a successful cocktail party well underway.

"Christopher, come over here and settle a fine point for us! We'll soon see," he said to his circle, "what the eminent Dr. Norgren has to say."

Anne took the glasses from me. "Duty first. Go be entertaining. I'll get your drink."

"Make it fast," I said out of the side of my mouth. " I'm going to need it."

"So, Christopher, ah-ha-ha," Lorenzo said, welcoming me with a comradely and unsteady arm across my shoulder, "tell us: If we accept—and how can we not—the epistemelogical underpinnings of de Chirico's
pittura metafisica,
must it not follow that an
inner
reality— that is, the expectations and values which we impose upon our world—is infinitely more persuasive, more
real,
than the exterior world itself, which we can know only through our senses? How would you answer?"

"Uh, well." I looked for help to the group around us, but they simply looked back with that expression of stunned astonishment that ten minutes of Lorenzo invariably produced. I cleared my throat. "It's an interesting question. ..."

Lorenzo rescued me, as I hoped he might. "It is a
vital
question, and not only for art. Heidegger, Kafka, Proust ..."

He burbled merrily on, forgetting me again, as Anne came with the drinks.

"Thanks." I sipped, and then I must have frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, the Scotch just tastes a little peculiar. Maybe they put mineral water in it." I laughed nervously. "Or maybe I'm getting paranoid." I took another tentative sip. "I guess they just changed brands, that's all. No taste of bitter almonds or anything like that."

"Are you serious?"

"About what?"

"It's wine, not Scotch. Reisling.
 
That's some educated palate you've got there."

"Wine? Why did you get me wine?"

"That's what I thought you were drinking. You had a wineglass."

"No, they just ran out of highball glasses, that's all. Is this really wine?" I tried it again. "Of course it is. Funny that I'd think it was Scotch."

"Oh, not really. Other things being equal, you see what you expect to see, hear what you expect to hear, taste what you think you're going to taste. Proven many times over."

"So that's what you learn in career counseling."

"That's what
you
should have learned in Psych 101. It's an elementary principle of perception: expectancy."

"Expectancy! Yes!" Lorenzo burst out. "Exactly my point! Do you see? It's why you didn't recognize the wine!"

It wasn't the first time I'd observed his ability to take in other conversations even when he was in the middle of one of his own harangues. Presumably it was due to his being unable to follow what he was saying any better than anyone else could.

"You see?" He grinned triumphandy at his glassy-eyed audience. "One's expectation overrules the evidence of the senses. You expect whiskey, and although your senses tell you you have wine, your 'inner reality' constructs a complex rationale to protect itself, to convince you that
it
is right and your senses wrong. 'They put mineral water in it'; 'It's a different brand.' Anything to maintain the integrity of your preconception."

"Yeah!"
one of the somnolent listeners said suddenly. "That makes a lot of sense."

Lorenzo's button eyes blinked in surprise. It wasn't the sort of thing people generally said to him. "Well," he mumbled gruffly, "I was merely speaking in concrete terms."

Anne and I seized the opportunity to move on, but after three steps I froze on the spot.

"Anne . .. ? I just realized—preconceptions—expectations—the integrity of—of—"

"I think," she said gravely, "you've been talking to Lorenzo too much."

"No." I shook my head impatiently. "Remember what Peter told me? To look at everything without preconception? Well, I haven't done it. I haven't done it!" I laughed, no doubt a little wildly.

"Chris—"

"Come on." I grabbed her wrist and broke toward the neglected alcove where the eleven copies of the missing paintings were.

"Dr. Norgren, a little decorum, please!" she yelped, tripping after me. "Remember, we represent the dignity and majesty of the government of the United—"

"Screw decorum! Anne, if I'm right ... if I'm right—!"

I was right.

"Chris," Anne said, looking uncertainly up at my face, "you're making me nervous. What's going on?"

"Nervous?" I said, barely hearing her. "Why?"

"For one thing, because you're staring at that picture with a look on your face like that orangutan with his banana, only you're sort of chuckling and oinking—"

"Oinking?" I repeated, not taking my eyes off the painting. "I don't think I'm oinking."

"Well, you are, and before that you practically yanked me off my feet, which isn't like you. You also said 'screw,' which also isn't like you—"

"Did I say 'screw'?" I asked dreamily.

"Yes," she said, "you did. Christopher, what ... is ... going ...
on
?"

"Yeah, what?" Harry appeared at the entrance to the alcove. He, too, was in mess dress and looking uncomfortable, as if he longed to stick a finger down his starched collar and tug. "You practically ran me over getting here. What's the big deal?"

"The deal," I said slowly, relishing this moment so much I didn't want to move on. "The deal is, I've found Peter's fake."

In real life, people don't do double takes very often, but they both did one now. From vague, uncomprehending stares at the painting, their eyes jumped to me and then leaped again to fasten on the smallish, modestiy framed picture we stood before.

"This?" Harry said in a squawk of surprise. "This?" He leaned closer to the identifying plaque, a neat white rectangle of cardboard on the brown wall covering, a few inches from the picture's bottom right corner.

" 'A Woman Peeling Apples,' "
he read, " 'Jan Vermeer, sixteen—' "

"I don't understand," Anne interrupted. "How can this be a fake? I mean, it already
is
a fake." She gestured at the other ten copies in the alcove. "These are
all
fakes. That's what they're
supposed
to be."

"Yes," I said, "but this is a
fake
fake." I know I chortled; maybe I even oinked.

"Listen, Chris," Harry said evenly, "it's real nice to see you having such a good time, but I think maybe you better let the rest of us in—"

"It's real."

Silence.

"It's a genuine Vermeer," I said.
 

Silence.

I finally looked away from the painting and at the two of them. "This is Peter's 'forgery.' That's why he was so funny about it. It's not a fake that everyone thought was an original, it's an original that everyone thought was a fake."

"Are you sure?" Anne said in a bewildered whisper.

"Absolutely. Look at the
pointilles,
look at the wall texture with all those incredibly tiny color variations; who else ever understood enough to do that? No question about it. It's obvious." I shook my head, not sure if I were more pleased with how clever I was or distressed with how slow I'd been to get here.

"Well, what the hell are you looking so smug about?" Harry asked almost angrily. "And if it's so obvious, what in the goddamn hell took you so long to find it?"

"What took so long was that I wasn't looking for it. Not here, anyway, among the copies. They were supposed to be fakes, so I saw them as fakes, and I didn't pay any attention to them. Damn, I should have figured this out weeks ago, but I didn't do what Peter said—I didn't start without preconceptions. My inner reality—"

"Inner reality!" Harry exploded, and looked at Anne. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

"Sure. Expectancy. The imposition of our values and expectations on the supposedly objective exterior world. Kant. Kafka. Heidegger. Ask Lorenzo; he'll explain it to you."

"You're getting weird, too," Harry muttered. "All right, it's real. I'll take your word for it." He folded his arms, pulled at the side of his beard, and stared hard at the simple homely scene on the canvas; a seated, house-jacketed woman peeling apples from a basket on her lap, with a little girl standing at her side, both figures bathed in Vermeer's wonderful, clean light pouring in through the window on their left.

"A
Woman Peeling Apples,"
he said musingly. "This is why van Cortlandt got killed? Because he figured out what you just figured out?"

So much for chortling and oinking. In the excitement of discovery, I'd actually forgotten the point. "It's got to be that," I said, sobered. "And I think that's why somebody's been trying to do me in, too, before I figured it out as well.
 
I'm supposed to be a Vermeer expert, remember?" I shook my head ruefully again. "Down my alley, Peter said. Right smack down the middle of my alley."

"No, wait a minute," Anne said. "Why you and only you? If it's so obvious, couldn't someone else have found it, too? What about Earl, for instance? He's also an art expert. Why hasn't someone been trying to kill him before he—" Her eyes widened. "You don't—do you really think he might be the ... Heinrich Schliemann … might be
Earl
?"