BRUSHSTROKE!
A Novel
By Alice Goldfarb Marquis

Chapter Ten: Grisaille

Franz wondered if the Baron would ever ring for his breakfast.

It was almost nine and still not a peep from the master bedroom. Gingerly, Franz allowed a romantic fantasy to swirl briefly inside his stolid Swiss brain. He arranged dewy yellow tea-roses on a gleaming chrome serving cart and smiled. It was good to have Madame home again. l Behind drawn blinds inside the bedroom, a tall hump in the eiderdown marked the spot where Baron Karl T. Baritsch and Rosalinda lay tightly entwined on the king-size bed. Although asleep, they gripped each other's bodies with the blissful relaxation following a passionate night. Karl snuffled softly and immediately fell back into sleep as Rosalinda carefully disentangled herself from his embrace.

The last two days had been an incredible roller-coaster. First came Karl's worried call from New York. "Something's gone wrong with the collection." His voice sounded high and tight; she knew that he had telephoned her only after much internal agonizing.

"What do you mean, wrong?" Why did he have to use such flat circumlocutions, even when he was clearly in distress? Rosalinda really did not wish to be drawn back into Karl's staid, repressed, unspeakably boring orbit. Not now, just when she was getting back into the lively Munich scene.

"I don't know exactly what's wrong," Karl said. "I had a call this morning from Carlo Alfieri, you remember him, don't you? The chief guard at Bellagio."

"But of course I remember him," said Rosalinda sharply. "I saw him almost every day for ten years. And I left less than six months ago. Really, Karl, why do you always have to stuff your anxiety into such banal sacks? Clearly, you're very upset about something to do with the collection. So why not convey your worry and fear or whatever to me? Don't hold back. Let go."

Rosalinda was flabbergasted to hear sobs, great racking gales of tears crackling halfway around the world.

"I ... I don't know what passed over me," said Karl in embarrassment when he calmed down. "To be honest, I've been feeling odd ever since you left; Detached and disinterested, I guess. And when they told me that something was the matter with the collection ... it was crazy ... I felt glad!"

Rosalinda felt compelled to see for herself what was transpiring in Bellagio. When she spotted Karl sprinting down the hallway toward her the next day, she wondered what had gotten into this taciturn man. And when the rest of the day passed in excited conversation and affectionate gestures, she began to suspect that her stay in Bellagio would stretch on for quite a while.

Hand in hand, they had walked through the galleries, pausing to study each picture. Rosalinda alternately felt grief over loss of the pictures, rage that such a theft was possible, and ... and a creeping feeling of admiration for the replicas.

At the Munich Alte Pinakothek, she had often seen fakes side by side with the genuine article. Most fakes were pathetically obvious: the colors too flat or too garish; the brushstrokes nervous or jagged; the textures muddy; the details blurred. Above all, to the eye of a connoisseur a fake lacked the unmistakable aura emanating from a genuine masterpiece. Though its components were hard to explain to the layman, most experts believed in this aura and had experienced it. The great art expert Berenson had described it as a prickling in the back of his neck. Looking at these pictures, Rosalinda sensed neither the golden glow of the masterpiece's aura, nor the leaden footprint of the fake. Instead, the work before her jibed uncannily with the work it replaced. But how could that be?

She felt the Baron's tug on her hand. "Enough of all this sobriety. Have you noticed that it's still a gloriously sunny day out there on the lake?" He led her to the window and pointed to the dock, where a sleek speedboat bobbed lazily against its ropes. "I bet it wouldn't take more than fifteen minutes for Franz to pack a luscious picnic supper into that boat. What about it? Do you think we can jump into our bathing suits and get there faster than he can?"

His lighthearted air carried Rosalinda back to the first day she had met the Baron in the bitter cold of the Alte Pinakothek library. She had thought that nothing was left of the spark between them and now, suddenly, it flamed again, fanned by seeming adversity. She had, in fact, overheard Karl ordering the picnic right after lunch.

They reached the boat-landing at the same time as Franz, who solemnly carried, as though it contained the British crown jewels, a gigantic wicker hamper. He tucked it under the back seat. There, Rosalinda glimpsed a towel-wrapped bottle of Piper Heidsieck chilling in an ice-filled silver bucket. Karl pushed the starter and Rosalinda collapsed onto her seat, laughing, as the boat leaped forward.

"I just can't resist buzzing the fishermen's houses," Karl shouted into her ear. "And I do hope we disturb their siestas." He bucked the boat over the wake of the ferry to Menaggio and then turned it south for a flying run toward Grotta Bulgaro. On the shore of this western leg of the lake, the pretty, fragrant resort villages were expanding toward each other and soon would form one tawdry, crowded strip all the way down to Como at the lake's southern tip. Sun-starved Dutch and Germans and Swedes were ruining the very setting they came to savor. Still unspoiled, however, was the tiny village of Grotta Bulgaro. Saved from the motorized mob because the highway engineers had been unable to tunnel through the rocky shale overhang blocking the road to its heart, the village was approachable only by a footpath or over the water. At the town's north end, the lake lapped into a deep and eerie cavern, the grotta which gave the place its name.

Rosalinda recalled visiting here only once before, an idyllic afternoon in the first summer they had spent in Bellagio. Karl now guided the boat into the grotto and leaped lightly to the shore to secure the painter. Tucked between willows weeping into the water was a tiny sand beach and here they spread out a blanket and a checked cloth and their portable feast. The champagne cork bobbed away on the lake and they sipped from tulip-shaped goblets and nibbled Dutch cheese crisps.

Rosalinda wiggled on the blanket and then stood up, shedding her bathing suit. The last bit of sunlight formed a halo around her body as she stood above Karl, frankly preening. "Not bad," he said, lazily looking up at her ripe, swelling breasts, her smooth belly, her golden tufts of bush. He reached for her.

"Not so fast." Giggling, she evaded his hand and turned toward the lake with a teasing swagger. He lunged up and just missed grabbing her before she ran lightly into the water. Without a glance around to see if anyone was watching, Karl jumped out of his bathing suit and followed her, with great, frothy splashes. They both slipped on the weeds festooning a hidden rock, collapsing into the water. They went under and reappeared, mimicking the dignified file of ducklings passing offshore. They laughed and grabbed, and went under again.

And then they lay grinning and panting on the blanket. Rosalinda felt deliciously slippery inside and out, open, wanting to show him how vulnerable she really was. He touched her with exquisite lightness, like an egret's feather, caressing elegantly, yet with purpose. She reached out to him. "Please. Now. Now."

The recollection now flooded back into his brain; he stirred languidly in bed as Rosalinda sleepily touched his back. One of this world's great privileges had to be this leisured awakening in the morning; this was the true luxury of the rich, this freedom to hover in the creative limbo between deep sleep and full consciousness. His left hand was groping lazily toward her body for reassurance. A sharp line of sunlight under the blinds hinted at the lateness of the hour and Rosalinda sat stark upright. It was June 12.

She had no sooner pushed the bell than Franz appeared; he must have been lurking outside. He was rolling a cart laden with tempting breakfast possibilities: a crystal bowl of wild strawberries; a pyramid of croissants; a tray of creamy cheeses; a platter of cold cuts. Franz was already pouring coffee from a silver pot when Rosalinda spotted the advertisement, under "Wanted," page thirty-seven, in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The letters leaped out at her, a cruel intrusion upon an idyllic scene: "Confession is good for the soul. The truth shall make you free. Honesty is the best policy. For details, see letter for Freyja, Poste Restante, Bellagio."

"Who gives a hoot anyhow?" Karl was carefully measuring out a sensible dollop of cream over his strawberries. "We can live very nicely without all this art complication. Better than with it."

Rosalinda was inclined to agree. Still, the whole mysterious business was too intriguing to ignore. Besides, if they didn't respond, the thieves might get nasty. They sounded like fanatics. It could even be dangerous.

When Franz re-appeared, he found a couple grinning idiotically at each other among the ruins and scraps remaining of their lavish breakfast. Following a quick run to the post office, he was solemnly bearing a white envelope on a silver tray. He backed out and Karl began to read:

"Sorry for that parade of cliché proverbs, not to mention inflicting the grotesque Freyja upon you. Here's what needs to be done."

It was neatly typed in élite on cheap white notepaper.

"You know damned well that there are no real Baritsch Old Masters. The stolen items are no more genuine than the replacements we left behind and have no more value than Freyja. Therefore, you must cancel the proposed sale and carry on as before."

* * *

The red telephone on Wesley Till's desk was shrilling. He had tried to dissuade Alex Clarendon from installing this direct line into his office. But the museum president had insisted, saying that it was the only way to maintain secure communication on extremely sensitive matters. Money matters is what he meant, and Till cringed at the crude conversations that were sure to follow after the red phone rang. As though it were a poisonous adder, he picked it up.

"What do you mean cancel the Baritsch sale?" Clarendon often blared into the phone without preliminaries.

"I'm upset about it too, Alex," said Till smoothly. "It seems the Baron's changed his mind. He really didn't explain much; just called to say he's had a change of heart."

"Well, he'll just have to have a change of heart back," said Clarendon curtly. "A lot of people have already decided to bid on those pictures, including me. And the museum absolutely has got to have the funds generated by the commissions, not to mention the exhibition itself. The new building depends on it. You know all that. So why did you even let Baritsch re-open the matter?"

Till was dismayed by Clarendon's disrespectful tone. It was most unseemly coming from this bluff businessman who had amassed a multi-million dollar art collection on the basis of his advice. Clarendon was making him feel like an incompetent errand boy.

"Wes, you're going to Bellagio and you're going to persuade Baritsch to go ahead with the exhibition and ..."

"... and suppose the Baron refuses?"

"Refuses? He's got no damned good reason to refuse. Wes, for years I've watched you persuade people to do things they hadn't dreamed of doing. And now, the entire future of the museum is on the line." He hesitated dramatically. "To be blunt, it's your future too."

The words pounded in Till's ear like a blow.

* * *

Helmut had arrived in Chartres just in time to partake of one of Lisette's masterpieces. Every year, her brother François made a grand ceremonial when the first cèpes of the season burst from the fragrant loam upon the forest floor. This time, he had invited everyone at the Chartres house to his farm near St. Benôit-sur-Loire for the weekend. They had spent most of Sunday in the forest nearby, piling the musky mushrooms into baskets, before returning joyously home with their booty.

Lisette's recipe for mushroom stew was one of those ancient peasant concoctions that never appear in cookbooks. The chunks of meaty mushrooms swimming in a rich brown sauce had probably been a springtime staple already among the forest tribes that harassed Julius Caesar in Gaul. When a friendly chieftain offered him a bowl of this savory stew, the Roman would likely have sopped up the musky juices with bread. Nowadays, boiled potatoes had become de rigeur, the waxy texture and parsleyed aroma being considered the finest complement to the mushrooms' loamy flavor.

"So what are they whispering about in New York?" Rachel thought she knew the answer.

"If you really knew the city," said Helmut, "you'd know they never whisper. They shout. They scream. Or they hint. Either it's huge noises, backed up by professional p.r. people, or it's innuendo ... and sometimes that involves subtle p.r. as well."

"And right now? What's the decibel level?"

"I'm worried because it's nonexistent," replied Helmut. "Till's red telephone rang. Followed by a hasty trip to Bellagio. Followed by his usual summer hibernation in Maine. The museum then signed the Kleist agency to do the p.r. So as best I can tell, the show is on."

"That's nice," said Luc, unenthusiastically.

"Nice?" said Rachel. "What's nice about it? The easiest would have been to persuade the Baron to cancel the show. It seems like we did so, and then Till got him to change his mind."

"If you ask me," said Ilana, "he doesn't much give a damn one way or the other."

"My guess is that the museum is going to do something spectacularly nice for the Baron's collection of modern things," added Maria. "When it comes to making extravagant promises, you know Till is a master."

"No doubt about that," said Rachel. "And he's got so many chips to play with. He could promise the Baron a show of his modern collection. He could sell him some lesser Kandinsky or a Braque out of the warehouse. He could whisper in his ear about the next Chagall some over-greedy speculator wants to put on the market, preferably at a distress price for cash."

Polishing off Lisette's angelic peach tart, they all agreed on the next step.

"So in the morning," said Rachel, "I'll give Bettman Levin his Christmas in July."

* * *

Ouch. Filippo had leaped out of the car directly onto artifical foot. Damn. He had forgotten how much it hurt to do that after a long stretch of driving. But even the pain couldn't spoil his euphoric mood. The drive from Naples, all fifteen hours of it, had been one long, triumphant fantasy.

Roaring steadily north on the autostrada that ran like a white stripe up the spine of Italy, Filippo allowed his imagination to roll. With only a little outside help -- he had stopped for a joint just once in a rest area near Siena -- he propelled himself through delicious scenarios.

First, there would be the parties. Or would the interviews come first? Then the photographers. They would seek him out in Vicenza. He would immediately have to instruct Carmina and Boldo to clean up the palazzo and order repairs. When the reporters started arriving, those two would learn some respect. Then he would have to spend time in New York. But when would be best? Should he be there when the autumn art season begins in September? No, let them wait. November might be a good time; that's when the New York art parties really got started. On the other hand, Christmas really sparkled in the big city. Yet, the art world practically shut down during the last two weeks of the year.

Filippo sourly abandoned his speculations as Carmina came waddling toward him. Even before he could hear what she said, he saw her arms waving. What now?

* * *

It was a damned nuisance to have Till roosting all summer long in that tumbledown shack of his in Maine. For Zelda Levin, it meant endless trips to the post office to mail off the packets of confidential museum material that just could not be entrusted to the office channels. Trudging through the humid miasma of West 53rd Street, Zelda wished that, for once, the museum director would try spending the summer in the city. Let him experience just a week of the fiendish heat and then maybe he'd agree to close the office for at least the worst summer month.

Unless a miracle came, however, nobody would even get any vacations this summer ... except, of course, for Till, who was probably at this very moment paddling his flimsy arms across that arctic pond of his. One dip into its crystalline forty-degree depths had been enough for Zelda. So had the rest of that weekend been more than enough, what with Emily Till drunk the entire time, while her husband studiously ignored her antics. How could he stand being cooped up with that virago of a woman all summer long? It was a question the entire office had inconclusively chewed over many a time.

Today, however, Zelda felt particularly resentful. The Baritsch exhibition was causing an inordinate amount of extra work. For one thing, the trustees were going berserk with devising chic social activities. The night before the opening, Anita Deckman insisted on a sit-down dinner in the museum's galleries, followed by dancing either in the garden or, in case of inclement weather, in the lobby. Then Alex Clarendon added a fund-raising luncheon for building fund donors of $100,000 or more, featuring Baron and Madame Karl Baritsch. But she knew that the chief reason that Clarendon held such an iron grip on the museum presidency was that he knew how to slurp up every last available penny in contributions.

Therefore, the museum would also hold a cocktail reception for donors of $10,000 or more; a wine-and-cheese preview for those who gave at least $5,000, and, finally, a half-hour "private walk-through" for givers of at least $500. All of these events were to take place during the week before the Baritsch collection opened to the public, on September 17. The night before, of course, there would also be the usual mob scene otherwise known as a press preview. Since they had all received voluminous press packets, from which most of them had already written their articles and reviews, the critics had absolutely no further obligation to the exhibition. Free of their duties, they turned into swine.

None of this was new to Zelda. However, this time, an additional, backbreaking task loomed. To make room for the Baritsch exhibition and its attendant hoopla, the New Museum's entire collection would have to spend four months in storage. Even before Till left town, he had scouted various warehouses around the city, winnowing the possibilities down to three, all of which seemed to have equally secure, fireproof, fortress-like facilities. All three were also within a five-mile radius of the museum, less than a fifteen-minute drive away. The security experts all agreed that the only risk -- an infinitesimal risk --to the museum's collection was concentrated in that tiny segment of time.

The trustees had already authorized the purchase of extra insurance covering that crucial quarter of an hour. There would also be private police to supplement the considerable force supplied by the city to safeguard the move. Till had planned to select from among the three best warehouses, but then had rushed away on his mysterious errand in Italy. Once he was ensconced in Maine, she had badgered him for a decision, all to no avail.

"Can't anything happen down there without my imprimatur?" he had testily scribbled on the margin of a memo asking him about it. "Clarendon has approved all three. So pick the fairest of them all and don't bother me with it again."

Zelda stepped out of the post office into the steambath of the noontime street. She had just ten minutes to get over to the Russian Tea Room, where that charming fellow from the Severini Brothers warehouse had invited her for lunch. Naturally, he was courting a potential customer, but there seemed to be more than a business relationship between them. He was totally different from the cerebral art types she usually met; he was more lighthearted, more amusing and, let's face it, he was certainly more open to new ideas. Zelda had not met an interesting new man in a long time. With luck, she would have five private minutes in the ladies' room to freshen up before he arrived.

* * *

For weeks, Bettman Levin had been looking forward to this little vacation in the Hamptons. Now that he was in the midst of delicate clothing and accessory decisions, he felt a pang, a worrisome shadow that seemed to have sneaked into his life along with Ginevra di Benci. His first impulse had been to hang the picture; to exult in its sheer magnificence. But suppose the cleaning lady noticed it, what then? It was unlikely that Matilda, the earth mother of the Zion A. M. E. Church, would recognize a Leonardo masterpiece. Yet, she would certainly notice the extra item in her dusting routine. He discarded the idea of a safe deposit box after reading that it was easy for police to get a warrant for searching such places. Not that he was certain that any crime attached to the picture.

So he had kept the picture wrapped in its tissue paper shroud -- he assumed it was acid-free -- tucked behind the luggage which occupied the topmost shelf of his linen closet. Balanced on the stepladder, he dropped a leather valise to the floor and then carefully unwrapped the painting. One more time, he stared into those pitiless eyes and wished that the mouth were softer, the carriage less imperious, and most of all that he had not gotten involved with the lady at all. He replaced her wrappings and wedged her firmly behind another suitcase.

Laid out on his bed was the surprisingly large wardrobe he was packing. The trouble was that one could never anticipate the precise degree of formality in one of these extended summer weekends on the Island. For some stupid reason, asking one's hosts in advance was considered gauche. By contrast, arriving with an overstuffed pullman case was also considered tacky. The ideal, totally unattainable outside a Bergdorf advertisement, of course, was to bring a small club bag from which one could magically extract tennis and yachting outfits, washed out beachcombing attire, slickers and boots in case of rain, dressy sportswear for luncheon or cocktail parties and, good grief!, formal garb, including a witty printed cummerbund.

Levin was folding his gear into his too-big bag when the phone rang.

"Has the beautiful Ginevra di Benci bent you to her will yet?"

Levin shuddered.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said stiffly.

"Come off it, Betty. You don't have to play games with your old friend Rachel. You did such a great favor for me. Now I'll do one for you."

"It's OK," said Levin lamely. "I don't want any favors. Just go away."

"But hear me out." She sounded positively manic. "I'm about to give you the art scoop of the century. Free. No strings attached. And it's exclusive for Art for Tomorrow."

"You have the greatest talent for barging into my life at the worst moment. Look, I'm leaving for a long weekend in the Hamptons. The limo will be downstairs in just a few minutes. The next issue of Art for Tomorrow won't be out until September, so there's plenty of time. Write me a letter with the scoop, okay?"

"Sorry, Betty. I mean, I'm glad your bag is packed. There's a ticket waiting for you at the Pan Am counter. I'll pick you up in Paris tomorrow morning. You are going to be one euphoric journalist when you see what we've got. Ever heard of an art writer winning a Pulitzer? That's how big this story is."

"They all say that," he said wearily. I suppose there's no way I can beg off."

"Not unless you insist on my reporting a certain stolen painting to the N.Y.P.D. I mean, you didn't have to keep the lady if you weren't ready to pay the price."

"Right to the point, as always. A bientôt."

To Be Continued...

A frequent contributor to The Idler, Alice Goldfarb Marquis is the author of The Art Biz, Art Lessons: Learning from the Rise and Fall of Public Arts Funding, Alfred H. Barr, Jr.: Missionary for the Modern, and a forthcoming biography of Marcel Duchamp.