The Forger (2 page)

Balard rolled his eyes at us.

I realized that Pankratov was watching Balard’s reflection in the window. I winced, waited for him to explode, but he pretended not to notice. It occurred to me that Pankratov might be fond of Balard, despite his tone of voice. Maybe he was glad to have found someone who would stand up to him.

I, however, joined the ranks of the intimidated, unable to shake from my mind the bowel-cramping memories of schoolmasters with their cannon-fire voices, and chalk-throwing, head-slapping, hair-pulling punishments.

The day continued in this fashion, with Pankratov ordering us to sketch the woman on the platform and then to stop and sketch her again. It was all sketching, interrupted by his pacing round the room to inspect our work. He made only one comment to me. After one series of sketches, he took the paper from my easel and held it up in front of him, as if he were holding up a banknote to see its watermark. “You have come a long way,” he said, “to be here.”

“Yes, sir.”

He handed me back the paper. “And if you cannot be here on time and do better than this, you will have come a long way for nothing.”

I jerked my head around. That was too much for me.

He was right there, inches away. Come on, he seemed to be thinking. Talk back to me. Talk back and see what happens.

But I didn’t talk back. My face grew hot with frustration and shame.

There was a knock at the blurred glass window of the door.

We all turned to see who it was.

I saw the pink smudge of a face and then a hand, tap-tapping a ring against the glass.

“Fleury,” said Pankratov. “What the hell does he want now?”

The door opened slowly and a frail, well-dressed man poked his head cautiously into the room.

“Well, Fleury?” demanded Pankratov. “What is it?”

Fleury cracked a smile. He held out a fan of little cards. “Tickets!” he said. He stepped into the room. “Tickets to an opening tonight at my gallery. Everyone will be there. Free champagne. Little cheesy things. It will be grand. You’ll see.”

Now I got a better look at Fleury.

He was my age, but his clothes made him seem older. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses and an expensive-looking navy double-breasted suit, which nevertheless did not fit him. His wrists and hands hung down so far below the sleeves that it looked as if he had dislocated his arms. He was tall and gaunt, and his hair was short but studiously unkempt, as if designed to clash with his otherwise impeccable appearance. He still held the tickets, like someone about to perform a magic trick with cards.

“I won’t prevent it,” said Pankratov, “but I certainly don’t recommend it.”

Fleury didn’t seem to hear. He was staring at the woman on the stage.

She was half turned in her chair, not shy about her nakedness. She smiled at Fleury. “Hello, Guillaume,” she said.

“Oh, hello, Valya,” he replied quietly. “Will you come to the show?”

“I might,” she told him. “The free champagne sounds nice.”

“It is,” said Fleury, nodding and looking vaguely stunned. “It will be. Valya.” He said her name softly, by itself.

There stands a man in love, I thought to myself.

“Come along, then!” Pankratov snapped his fingers, as if to wake Fleury from his trance. “Give me the tickets and push off.”

Fleury held out the tickets and Pankratov snatched them away.

“You have a new pupil,” said Fleury, jerking his chin in my direction.

“Yes,” said Pankratov. “All the way from America.”

“Oh, this is the American?” asked Fleury. “The one…”

“Yes, the one I told you about,” snapped Pankratov. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m running my class.”

Fleury made his retreat. “I hope to see you all there,” he announced to the room. “And you, Valya. I hope you’ll come tonight.”

“We’ll see,” she said.

When Fleury had gone, Pankratov sighed violently. “Stay away from that man,” he muttered.

I wondered if he was telling all of us or only Valya.

“Why don’t you want us to go to the show?” I asked.

The man and the woman stared at me, surprised that I would dare to open my mouth.

Seeing their expressions, I immediately wished I hadn’t.

“You be careful around Monsieur Fleury.” Pankratov wagged one finger slowly in the air, as if it were too heavy for his hand. “You might think you are an artist, Monsieur Halifax. You might actually be an artist. But Monsieur Fleury, he is something quite different. Monsieur Fleury is a
dealer.
”

Before I had a chance to reply, Pankratov wheeled around and clapped his hands. “Begin again!” he thundered.

I returned to my drawing, blind with obedience, forgetting everything else.

*   *   *

O
UTSIDE, THE SUMMER DAY
filed past in brassy sunlight, and only when the brass had turned to copper, warped through each distorted pane of glass on the great window of the atelier, did Pankratov allow us to leave. He smashed his palms together in the dusty air and told us all to be on time tomorrow. Then he hooked his thumbs into the thick leather belt around his middle. The buckle of this belt was a large slab of brass, on which I could make out an ornate spread-winged eagle with two heads. The eagle was holding a scepter in one claw and a crown in the other, and there was some kind of royal crest on the eagle’s front.

I tried to get a better look at it as I walked up to Pankratov, holding out the papers of my scholarship. “I wanted to ask you,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Ask me what?”

“About the Levasseur Committee.”

“What about them?” he asked.

“Well, I wanted to thank the committee. There’s no address on their letter. I wondered if you knew where they are.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps they like to remain anonymous. I’m sure if they want to talk, they’ll come and find you.”

Slowly I folded the papers and put them back in my coat pocket.

Pankratov busied himself with a broom, sweeping with wide and violent strokes across the bare wood floor.

On the way downstairs, I felt the relief of having been set free from Pankratov’s pacing behind our backs.

So did the others. The nervous woman seemed to have grown a decade younger on her walk down to the street. She introduced herself as Marie-Claire de Boinville. Her features were fine, her nose aquiline and dignified. The dark and narrow chevrons of her eyebrows stood out against her cedar blond hair. She had kept the beauty of her much younger years and she knew she was still beautiful. She carried herself that way, without arrogance or effort. Her clothes were dark and conservative, but there was a sultriness about her short-cut jacket draping across her shoulders and the way her footsteps seemed to trace a line from stair to stair, as if she were walking a tightrope. “This was one of Pankratov’s good days,” she said, “if you can believe it.”

“I was wondering how he would be.”

“Oh, he can be worse. Much worse. He’s so moody.” She waved one hand dismissively. On her ring finger was a large diamond engagement ring flanked by two rubies, and a heavy gold wedding band. “He just has to be endured.”

“Where are the other students?” I asked. “I mean,
are
there any others?”

She shook her head. “So few people can stand him.”

“What does he have against dealers?” I asked.

“Oh, Pankratov has something against everybody.”

The man with the black curly hair spoke up behind us. “Pankratov is a genius. Even people who hate him agree.”

“How many do you think there are who hate him?” asked Marie-Claire. “Do you suppose it runs into the thousands?”

The black-haired man set his hand upon my shoulder. “My name is Artemis Balard.”

“David Halifax,” I said. We shook hands awkwardly, as he reached down from the step above.

“You mustn’t take it badly,” he said, “if Pankratov comes down hard on you. He’s a good judge of art. You just have to accept that. He criticized me once, back when we first started.” Then he slapped me on the back. “Good to have you along.” Artemis Balard galloped past me down the stairs, pom-pomming some tune of his own invention.

Then it was just Madame de Boinville and me. She smiled faintly. “Artemis is very sweet, but sometimes he doesn’t think before he speaks. He’s right about Pankratov, though. The man may be a genius, but the truth is I don’t know how much more of him I can take. Do you suppose all geniuses are like that? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever met a genius before. Not a real one, anyway. Unless of course, you’re a genius,” she added after a moment. “In which case I’ve met two.”

I shook my head and smiled.

“Well, I’m glad,” she whispered, and rested her hand for a moment on my arm. “One is about all I could stand.”

I didn’t go to the café that first day, despite Balard’s invitation. I had promised myself only work while I was here. No lounging in bars or cafés. For as long as I could take it. Only work. I’d set myself the goal of twelve finished paintings within the first two months. I’d brought no pieces with me. Nor had I arranged to have a gallery represent me. Once I had the paintings, I’d set about finding one. There was something about starting out fresh in this new city that had appealed to me before I left.

My apartment building was number 50 on the Rue Descalzi. I rode to the top floor, three flights up in a cage of an elevator whose suspension cord creaked and grumbled as it hauled its cargo of the old landlady and me. Her name was Madame La Roche. She had tightly curled gray hair, and wore a flower-patterned housedress with clumpy black shoes. The first thing she did after shaking my hand was to point to a large and gaudy coat of arms, carved out of wood and painted, which hung in the main entranceway. “My family,” she said. “Very noble.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And your family?” she asked, her voice rising.

“Not very noble, I guess.”

She nodded severely, to show it was a problem that could neither be helped nor overlooked.

The apartment was a one-room studio divided into kitchen, bathroom and bedroom by three heavy velvet curtains, which hung from brass rings on wooden rails. It had a window at the front and a window at the back. Slowly, I set down my cases. Then I straightened up and clenched and unclenched my hands to get the blood flowing again. I went to the front window. It looked out onto a large advertisement that had been painted on the wall of a building across the road, which was some kind of warehouse. The advertisement was bone white with a wineglass in the middle. The glass was half full of red wine. Below it, in black letters:
Buvez les Vins du Postillon.

“Beautiful,” she said, and gestured out the window. “The view.” She didn’t sound very convincing.

“When does the sun come in?” I asked. “For how many hours a day?” I wanted to know if I could get any painting done here.

“It depends,” she said suspiciously. “The clouds. The time of year. Most of the day you will get sun. You don’t want to see the kitchen?”

“That’s all right,” I told her.

Madame La Roche squinted with suspicion. She held out the keys, pinched between her thumb and index finger. “You are an artist,” she said.

“That’s right,” I replied.

“If this committee weren’t paying your rent, and paying for it in advance, I wouldn’t let an artist stay here.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said wearily. I’d heard talk like that before.

“The only other exception I have made is to Monsieur Fleury. He lives here, you know, in one of the luxury suites downstairs.” She emphasized the word “luxury,” letting it roll off her tongue in slow motion. “I expect you have met Monsieur Fleury. Everybody has. Everybody here likes Monsieur Fleury. He is a very charming artist.”

“I did meet him,” I told her. “I think he’s a dealer. Not an artist.”

She looked me up and down. “You are an artist at making paintings.
He
is an artist at selling them.”

“I guess you could see it that way,” I said.

“I see it,” she told me, “just the way it is. And I tell you one other thing I see. I see people who come to Paris because they think that the city will make them into what they want to be. Actors. Painters. Musicians. But it doesn’t, you know. It doesn’t work that way.” Having made this pronouncement, she went out into the hall and pressed the button for the elevator to take her back down.

I walked over to the window and hauled it open, hearing the iron counterbalance weights rattle inside the frame. Warm air coming off the sun-heated slates on the rooftops brushed against my face. I leaned on the lead sheeting that plated the narrow sloping rim of the building, and looked out across what little of Paris I could see. I listened to the noises of the city, squinting in the glare of sun off the Postillon wine advertisement.

Already, I was starting to feel lonely. I looked down and was surprised to see Fleury standing in the middle of the street.

He was looking up at me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. The whites of his teeth showed when he smiled and the sun winked off his glasses. “I see we’re going to be neighbors,” he called out.

Madame La Roche heard his voice. She came clumping in from the hall, pushed me aside and wedged herself half out the window. “Hello, Monsieur Fleury! Have you been working hard?”

“Madame La Roche!” Fleury filled the air with her name. “You look lovely today!”

“Oh,” said Madame La Roche very quietly, then glanced about the street to gauge how many people might have heard him call her lovely. She waved and then stepped back into the room. “You see,” she said to me. “He is so charming. A gentleman of the old days.”

“You should come to the show,” Fleury shouted to me.

“I ought to work,” I told him.

“But it
would
be work,” he said. “Now that you’re here, you’d better start making connections.”

I held up the ticket, to show I hadn’t thrown it away, and gave him a noncommittal smile.

He gave a short wave and walked toward the café at the far end of the street.

I set up my easel in the corner of the room, and then, from my suitcase, I brought out a little pyramid-shaped box. Inside it was a metronome, the kind that people use when they are learning to play the piano. I started it ticking on the table in the kitchen, very slowly, with the easy swing of a grandfather clock pendulum. Whenever I came to a new place, unfamiliar sounds always got in the way of my concentration.