At the time, I had no idea how momentous the comment would be to my near future. Peter and I were students in those days, art history majors and aspiring artists ourselves. I was living with a girl named Marjorie Jenkins and I had spent most of the morning watching her while we looked at the paintings that aligned the walls of the Poslitt Museum of Pre-Modern, Modern, Post-Modern, and Futurist Art with Peter Briggs, when he made his announcement.
"What?" I asked.
"The wall," Peter repeated, very slowly, as though speaking to someone who was having difficulty understanding English. "Look at the wall, Phil." My actual name is Pelvington Jamerring (that may explain something about what my childhood was like), but everyone with whom I am still on speaking terms calls me Phil.
I looked at the wall Peter was facing. It was, as Peter had correctly pointed out, blank. It was also pink. At the time, I found the pink more disturbing. I wondered why anyone would have a pink wall in a museum. I wondered why anyone would have a pink wall anywhere. After I had decided I didn't care very much either way, I remembered Peter's comment. "Why shouldn't it be blank?" I asked him.
"Think of the artists," said Peter. His eyebrows were twitching, which happened when he got excited about something.
I thought of the artists.
I thought especially of the artists' legs, or at least of Marjorie's legs, which were very nice. She was wearing a pair of shorts just about an inch too long to be called indecent and looking at a painting across the room. Peter, on the other hand, was waiting for an answer, and I turned my mind back to the question at hand. "I don't get it, Pete," I confessed, finally.
"All the artists out there," Peter Briggs said, "all the artists who would give anything for their work to be displayed-- especially for it to be displayed here, in the center of all new art! Think about that, Phil!"
It didn't seem to me to be worth much thought, and I was about to say as much to him when Marjorie came over, took one look at Peter's face, which was gradually turning red with anger and excitement as he warmed to his new plan, and said: "What's he up to now?"
"Peter's offended," I told her. "There's a blank wall over there."
"Yeah, I saw. Doesn't it give a great sense of the feel of the room, Philly?"
Like I said, only people whom I'm still on speaking terms with call me Phil. Marjorie called me Philly, which I didn't like very much but didn't complain about; maybe I felt a little sorry for her. Anyone named Marjorie can't really adopt a nickname. What do they adopt? Maggie? Marge? Marsha? They're better off being stuck with Marjorie.
"It doesn't give a great feel of the room," Peter told her, his voice and tone a parody of hers. "It's lousy. It tells us just what's wrong with the world today."
"What's wrong with it?" I asked. I had always wondered this, in fact, and was glad that now the answer would be revealed.
Peter said: "Artists don't take an aggressive stance."
I didn't buy that answer at all. "What about that performance artist we saw downtown? The one who was hitting herself with a riding crop onstage? She seemed pretty aggressive."
"Don't be silly," Peter told me.
"That's right," Marjorie said knowingly. "That's just masochism; there's nothing really violent about it. Everyone knows that masochism is a sign of repressed kindness."
Peter looked at her for a moment, and then said: "Phil, you have my deepest sympathies."
Marjorie's kick was very well-aimed; Peter's, however, was less graceful, and he fell flat on his back after missing her entirely. The guard said: "You folks wanna take that outside?"
I told him that we did and asked if he would help us carry it.
He didn't know Peter Briggs, of course, and he thought I was joking. We left; I carried Peter about half the way to the exit.
* * *
"I'm going to do something about that," Peter told me, when we going down the front steps.
Marjorie, on my other side, said: "Don't let him, Philly."
"Don't let him?" I asked. "Did I kick him, or did you? You don't let him."
We had reached the sidewalk. "You're the man," Marjorie pointed out.
"You're liberated now, remember?"
"To hell with that," she said. "I didn't ask to be."
"Someone did."
"Not me."
"For God's sake," Peter Briggs said, angrily. "I'm not going to do anything to you," he told Marjorie. "Though I fully intend to tell Sally what you just said about being liberated. You can explain it to her--it should take three, four days, tops." Sally was Peter's different-gender-life-companion at the time.
"You wouldn't," Marjorie said, her eyes full of laughter.
"I would," Peter Briggs replied.
Marjorie's kick was too slow this time; Peter had gotten out of the way.
"Anyway," he said, after she had stopped trying to kick him. "That wasn't what I was talking about. The wall is what I'm talking about. It shouldn't be blank. And I am going to do something about it."
Someone had to ask the question. I didn't want to, but I knew it was expected. I said, putting as much of the reluctance I felt into my voice as I possibly could, "What are you going to do about it, Pete?"
"What are we going to do, actually," he corrected me.
"That's not what I said, Pete."
"That's true," Marjorie agreed.
"No," Peter said. "It's what I said."
"That's also true," Marjorie pointed out.
"But," I replied, ignoring Marjorie, "I didn't say it. It was my question to begin with. I don't want to know what we're going to do. We're not going to do anything. We--" I pointed at Marjorie and then back at myself-- "are going to go back to our apartment and study Manet's early works . What are you going to do?"
"I am going to take you away from Manet and take you back to that museum and we are going to do something about that wall."
"We are?"
"We are," he repeated. "We are going to take a stand, Phil."
"We are?"
"We are," he repeated. "We are going to make damn sure that nobody walks all over us artists any more! No, sir! The time has come to put a stop to that!" By this time he had worked himself up to doing a fair impression of a televangelist.
I said, as reasonably as I could manage, "You're nuts."
"That's also true," Marjorie observed. This time Peter's kick hit its mark.
* * *
The guard at the Museum was easily distracted. Peter went in carrying a big painting of his-- one of his "Sketches Of Sally"-- and I went in carrying a lot of questions about the Picasso that Peter was going to hang his painting across from. The guard was happy to be distracted and to answer them, while Pete, moving in record time, tacked up two hooks, and hung his painting, straightening it very quickly by eye. Marjorie, also behind me, helped him with that part, telling him to move it a little to the left or the right. Then she came up to me and took my arm, and I thanked the guard for his help, and turned to see Pete, stuffing the huge paper bag that had covered the painting into his bookbag.
The guard looked at Pete, at the painting, at me, at the painting again, at the other paintings in the room, and then shrugged and shook his head. "Must be gettin old," he observed, to no one in particular.
We turned to leave the Museum.
As we did so, the little man with a goatee and a pink suit (it matched the walls almost perfectly) ran in, ran to Pete's painting, and exclaimed: "A Picasso! I have found it! A Picasso!"
The three of us turned to stare.
"Mira! Mira!" he shouted. "A Picasso! I was right, Pemberton, you fool! I was right! He did later realistic work as well! Hah!"
Peter said: "Excuse me, sir, but you mean that that's a Picasso?"
The goatee (and the man) turned to face him, very slowly.
"I," the goatee said, "am Professor William Van Hardinsson of the Spanish Museum of Switzerland. Do you know of my work, young man?"
"No," Peter said, "but--"
"I am the foremost scholar on Picasso in the world!" Professor Van Hardinsson said. "There is no forgery that can trick my eyes, young man! None!"
"All right," Peter said, "but, you see--"
"No imitation can fool Van Hardinsson! His word is final!"
"Yes, well, maybe, but--"
"No amount of paint, or amount of change of styles," Professor Van Hardinsson said, "can ever disguise Picasso! His soul remains! And this, my young friend, is a Picasso!"
Another man rushed into the room. This man was wearing a gray suit. "Ah, Monsieur Curator!" Professor Van Hardinsson said. "Perhaps you can explain to the young man whom I am, precisely!"
"Professor Van Hardinsson is a noted scholar," the Curator said, as though reciting from a book. "An expert on modern art. Or is it post-modern art, Professor? I was never quite--"
The Professor went right on. "Have you ever known my assessment of a Picasso to be incorrect?"
"What?" the Curator asked, his mind too wrapped up in his own question. "Oh. No, of course not."
"This," Professor Van Hardinsson continued, "this is a Picasso, is it not?"
The Curator looked at him sadly, and then looked at the painting. "Well," the Curator said, "actually--"
He stopped speaking for a long moment. He was looking at the painting with a very puzzled look on his face.
"I would place its value," Professor Van Hardinsson finished, "at approximately two million dollars."
"Picasso," the Curator said. "Yes. Of course it's a Picasso."
Peter Briggs looked at me, and I looked at him, and we left the Museum.
* * *
It was some days later when it got on the news. "The newly-found Picasso actually nearly doubles the total value of the Museum's collection," announced the shiny person on the screen (I've always thought that all newscasters look shiny; whether it's their teeth or their hair, there's something particularly glossy about a newscaster, even when they've supposedly gone through two battlefields and a swamp to get to wherever the story is). "And the entire discovery has come as something of a shock to the art world. It is regarded as conclusive proof, on the word of such an expert as Professor Van Hardinsson of the Swiss Spanish Museum, that Picasso did undergo a period of what is now called super-hyperrealism during his early twenties; date tests were performed by Professor Hardinsson himself, and it is now a fairly close dating, within twenty years, of 1970, quite a bit later than any other realistic works by Picasso."
Peter Briggs got up, then, angrily, as the shiny person gave way to an only-slightly-less shiny person advertising toilet bowl cleaner (Have you ever wondered why they advertise toilet bowl cleaner? I mean, are there really people who change their toilet bowl cleaner based on a guy who stands up on television and talks about his bathroom odor? It is a moving thought, but not especially important.), Peter announced: "We are going to do something about this, Phil!"
I said: "Good." I was still thinking about the toilet bowl cleaner. "What? Should we write to the station?"
"Van Hardinsson," Peter said, snapping his fingers. "He's the key. His tests must have gone wrong."
"But," I said, "what does he have to do with toilet--" Then I got him. "Oh, you mean the date tests?"
"Of course!"
"Well, I'm no expert, Pete, but those tests don't go wrong! Besides, you painted it in 1990; he dated it to 1970, plus or minus 20 years. The dating test was right."
"But I did it for living artists! Not dead ones! Besides, that bastard stole my painting!"
"Who? Van Hardinsson?"
"No," Pete said. "The Curator. And Picasso!"
"Picasso's dead, Pete. No reason to hold a grudge against a dead man."
"We're going to--" Then Pete's eyes blazed. "We'll steal it back!"
"How?"
"Easy," Pete said. "Look, these guys think that it's theirs, right?"
"Right."
"Well, if it's theirs, then it will go off when I leave the building with it. In fact, it would go off when I leave that room with it."
"Well, but what if they've alarmed it?"
"Alarmed it? It's a painting," he began, and then stopped. "Oh, I see what you mean. I think they magnetize it."
"Then wouldn't it attract metal?" I asked.
He didn't answer that one, instead saying: "Why would they? They think it's real. They at least think it's theirs. The Curator just was surprised that he had a Picasso. So you'll distract the guard, and I'll leave with the painting. I've still got the paper bag, and I can just put it over the painting again."
"You think it'll be that easy, huh?"
"No reason why it wouldn't," he replied.
No reason on earth. We went off to steal the Picasso.
* * *
I distracted the guard again, asking the same guy almost the same questions about the same Picasso painting that hung across the room from Pete's own masterpiece.
Unfortunately, halfway through our discussion, the guard said: "We got another Picasso. Right--"
And that's when he turned to see Pete, who was leaving the room with the painting under his arm.
"HEY!" the guard shouted. "That guy stole a painting!"
"Well, yeah, he did," I said, as though I was surprised. "How about that?"
"Stop him! Call a guard!"
I said, obediently enough: "Guard!"
"Hey! I'm a guard!"
That was a nice example of self-realization; I let it hang there, and he started blowing his whistle.
I decided that it was time to exit the scene.
* * *
Peter Briggs's Picasso made it out of the museum. On the news that night:
"Professional art thieves broke into the Poslitt Museum," the shiny person announced. "They may have been the same people to ransom the Scream last fall. They stole a painting that was somewhat more valuable, however; the Picasso that they stole was worth at least seven million dollars, according to Professor Van Hardinsson, of the Swedish Museum of Spain."
Van Hardinsson's face came on. "I am outraged!" he announced. "How dare you let your boulabaise stew American media do such a thing!"
The shiny person said: "We're sorry that we didn't explain earlier. You will be happy to know that boulabaise stew is not profanity in any language or culture, but rather an unappetizing type of stew. Professor Van Hardinsson is an artist himself, and sometimes his expressions are extremely creative. In fact, the use of the phrase, 'boulabaise stew American media' has, we have just learned been put into the next edition of Bartlett's Quotations; the editors of Bartlett's are only awaiting the Professor's explanation of what the phrase means before entering it into that record of the most brilliantly conceived quotes of human history. More after this message from our sponsors."
The toilet bowl cleaner ad came on again, and I turned off the television. I said: "Pete?"
He didn't even meet my eyes to say, "Yeah?"
"Can you put art thief on your resume?"
"No. Sorry."
"You want to go get a drink?"
"A drink? That means one, right?"
"Well, for starters."
"Good. Because I'm going to need way more than one!"