Happily, Lorenzo was willing to be diverted. "No," he said, "impossible. We've taken precautions. I'll show you." He went to a wall telephone. "Giulio? Will you turn off the alarms in Room Nine, please?" he asked in Italian.
He came back to the painting. "First, my father has kept the most careful records of the reproductions, both the old ones he's bought and the new ones he's commissioned. There are copies of the records, and photographs of the reproductions themselves in our vaults and in our attorney's hands. And on the pictures themselves-"
The telephone rang and he picked it up. "Bene. We can move it now," he said to me. "Will you help me take it down and turn it around?"
We removed the cumbersome painting carefully-its heavy gilt frame was authentically seventeenth-century Dutch, I was sure-and turned it to the wall. "See?" he said. "The provenance is there, right on the back."
So it was. A neatly hand-lettered statement concisely explaining that this was the work of one Rodolfo Venturi, commissioned in 1948 by Claudio Bolzano for an unspecified price and executed that same year in imitation of Young Woman at the Clavichord by Jan Vermeer, taken from the Bolzano collection by the Nazis in 1944.
"All the copies have such a statement, inscribed in indelible ink on the backs of the canvases or etched into the backs of the panels."
"Indelible ink can be removed; etching can be smoothed."
"But there's more. On the face of every reproduction is a tiny pattern, almost microscopic, of drilled holes. Even our old copies-and we have a false Raphael almost three hundred years old-have this. It's certain proof, you see, that a painting is not an original."
"Holes can be filled in."
He whinnied with laughter. "How distrustful you are! When did you become so cynical, Christopher? But no; they can't be filled in-not if they can't be found. And they're impossible to see with the naked eye; next to impossible with a lens, if one doesn't know precisely what to look for and where to look for it. And if they were to be filled in, the foreign material would be easily identifiable. No, this can never be confused with an authentic Vermeer."
We turned the painting around and rehung it.
"Well," I said, studying it, "if there's a design punched into this one, I can't find it."
Lorenzo's mild brow furrowed. "Er… Christopher… you understand that I can't show it to you. I would if it were up to me, but my father's adamant about keeping it confidential." He shuffled his long legs uncomfortably. "I probably shouldn't even have mentioned it. You're not offended? It's only to prevent the sort of possibihty you mention."
I told him I wasn't offended but thought that as director of the show it might be a good thing for me to know.
He continued to frown. "Why a good thing?"
Why I hadn't told him before, I wasn't sure, except that, knowing as little as I did, it seemed sensible to play it as close to the vest as possible. But the paintings in the show were his, after all, his and his father's, and I had no reason to suspect either of them.
I was blunt. "Peter van Cortlandt told me just before he died that he thought there was a forgery in the exhibition, but he didn't tell me which one. I've been trying to find it."
"A… a…" Lorenzo had one of those prominent, pointy Adam's apples that seemed to have a life of their own, and now it ratcheted up and down his throat three times before he could speak. "That's impossible-you don't know what you're saying. You…" His plastic-button eyes bulged even more. "Surely you don't mean to suggest that my father, that I, would knowingly…" His voice petered out and then came back in an outraged squeak: "Christopher!"
"No, Lorenzo," I said soothingly, "I wouldn't think that; neither did Peter. But isn't it possible that one of the copies might accidentally have-"
"But no!" he cried with scandalized dignity. "We know art, Christopher; it's our life, as it is yours. It's inconceivable that I-let alone my father-could be… be fooled in the way you suggest. Really…"
He was only partly right. As wackily erudite as he might be about art criticism, when it came to assessing individual works of art, I wouldn't have trusted him to tell the difference between a Rembrandt and a Rauschenberg. But his father was another matter; one of the world's most discerning collectors.
"And," he continued, "we know our limitations well enough to call in scientific assistance when we're in doubt."
"I know you do," I said.
"Peter was… was joking, perhaps?"
"Could be," I said. Or it could be that the substitution of a fake painting for a real one had been made after the last time Claudio Bolzano had seen them. This more likely possibility I kept to myself, not seeing much point in suggesting that one of the family masterpieces had disappeared since it had been placed in the care of the United States Army. "I guess you're right."
"No, you don't," Lorenzo said with surprising perception. Then, doubtfully: "Christoper, you're not going to raise this with my father, are you?"
"Well, I wouldn't want to excite him. His health-"
"Yes, certainly, that, of course. But, in addition, it would hardly be a way to win him over to your side."
'To my side?"
"I thought you were here to try to convince him to permit The Plundered Past to go on." He smiled. "Or did you come to discuss subjectivist art criticism with me?"
I laughed. Strange to have to be brought down to earth by Lorenzo Bolzano.
Chapter 11
Bullet-headed, small, intense, Claudio Bolzano was everything his son was not. Where Lorenzo was professorial, Bolzano was down to earth; where Lorenzo was wandering and abstract, Bolzano was direct; where Lorenzo's intelligence was amiably eccentric, Bolzano's was incisive and focused.
He was also irritable, restless, and cranky; a man very much used to power, but now forced into a convalescent's feeble routine. He received us with his arms folded, seated erectly in the corner of an immense sofa, not at all the decrepit invalid at death's door I'd been expecting. He was wearing a cashmere sport coat with the collar of his open-throated shirt flattened out over the lapels, so that he looked like a member of the Israeli Knesset about to take his turn pitching hay at a kibbutz.
He was younger than I'd imagined, in his sixties, with a thick gray fringe of close-cropped hair at the back of his neck, and lively black Italian eyes. There were a few signs of illness-a shadowing around the eyes, a hint of pallor-but he seemed very much a man on the mend, energetic and impatient, and more than capable of snapping the gravely fawning Lorenzo over one knee.
If the man was a surprise, the room was a shocker. The study of the famous collector of Old Masters was relentlessly modernistic, its walls hung with plainly mounted abstracts by Rauschenberg, Rothko, Bazaine, Nay, Twombly, and others that I didn't know and didn't want to know. The huge desk along one wall was a weird combination of copper and glass; almost everything else was white-the walls, the big couch and armchairs, the rectangular plastic tables, the floor, the rugs, the track lighting. And everything seemed to be made of right angles and straight lines, including the compact, squarish Bolzano himself.
He waved us into two cuboid armchairs while Lorenzo was still introducing us. "We'll speak English," he announced. "I speak it fluentiy." He patted a quiet dog-also white-who sat on the floor at his side, and waited for me to say something.
"I hope I'm not disturbing you, signor Bolzano. I've wanted to meet you for a long time."
A negligent wave of the hand, and then a shrugged afterthought. "I've heard of you too."
Another lengthy silence while Lorenzo, looking uncomfortable, grinned encouragingly from one of us to the other.