Cairo (25 page)

After observing Edward and Gertrude for more than a week, I had learned that painting was an alchemical enterprise as much as an artistic one. Edward spent some time flipping through Elmyr de Hory's handwritten manual and other books on technique, mixing his pigments and various other substances to match colours precisely and attain the proper consistencies. He had a wealth of recondite facts about the history of colour and paint: Prussian blue was discovered in 1704 or thereabouts; carmine red is made from insect blood; violet was discovered accidentally by a young chemist hoping to create synthetic quinine in the nineteenth century.

A variety of sickly greens, however, were the colours most used in Picasso's
Weeping Woman
.

‘And surprisingly,' Edward said as he used a spatula to smear a mixture about on his plastic palette, ‘green might be the most natural of colours but has been one of the hardest to create in paint. Yellow mixed with blue. Cennino used malachite. You get it from corrosion of metal. Oxidation on copper, that sort of thing …'

From the main body of the warehouse came the sound of the doorbell jangling on its rope. Gertrude, who had no doubt heard all of Edward's little art lectures, slipped away to answer it.

‘Some bloke did make a magnificent green in the eighteenth century using arsenic. Scheele's green, it was called. Became very popular and was used in wallpaper and everything, even though it was highly poisonous. Probably contributed to Napoleon's death, in fact …'

There came the murmur of anxious chatter. Edward halted mid-sentence, perturbed. Even Buster, who had been dozing on a chair,
looked up.

The voices drew nearer. It was Max, raving, his tone high-pitched and frantic. ‘A disaster,' he was saying. ‘An absolute disaster.'

Then he was in the doorway, dishevelled, a red woollen scarf askew at his throat. His hair and the shoulders of his gaberdine coat were soaked with rain.

‘He knows,' he announced.

Edward gestured with his spatula, a sort of referred shrug. ‘What are you talking about, Max?'

‘Queel. He knows the
Weeping Woman
is here. He knows what we're up to.'

There was a stunned pause as the news sank in. I noticed Sally bobbing around behind Max. Her hair, too, was wet. A thick strand of it clung to her jaw. She avoided my eye. I had hoped, by not seeing a great deal of her, that my desire might be suppressed, but at that instant my heart beat against my ribs, a fish caught in the shallows.

‘We're screwed,' said Edward.

‘But how,' said Gertrude. ‘You still haven't told me.'

Max flopped into a chair. He looked as if he hadn't slept for many nights, and he smelled of sodden wool.

‘Anna Donatella rang me. Said Queel had rung her earlier this afternoon. Very excited, he was. He told her he'd called around here this morning on the pretext of checking on the progress of Edward's show. Claimed he'd had a funny feeling about the whole thing. Suspected we had Dora all along, he reckons. Anyway, the bottom door was open when he arrived and he walked right in …'

I recalled the banging door that had woken me.

‘How many times did I tell you to be careful?' Max said. ‘Tom here was fast asleep on the couch' — he glared at me, as if such deep slumber were itself a crime — ‘and you two were completely comatose.'

‘We had a late night,' Edward said.

‘Yes,' said Gertrude. ‘A very late night.'

Max sighed. ‘Be that as it may, somebody left the studio key on the kitchen table and he let himself in. He saw
both paintings
.'

‘Well, that's preposterous,' said Edward.

Gertrude pressed a tiny, paint-spattered hand to her mouth in distress. She looked tearful. ‘Oh no. We were sick last night, Max. I must have left the keys out. I'm so sorry.'

‘And who left the bottom door open?' Max asked.

I raised one hand in a sheepish admission of guilt. ‘That must have been me. I was last inside and I was only planning a quick visit. Sorry, but I was so tired.'

Max shook his head with seething disappointment. I felt a pang of childish shame and sensed a blush crawl up my neck as far as my ears.

‘What do you think he's going to do?' Edward asked.

‘What does Queel always want? He's a bloody art dealer. He wants a cut.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because I rang him. What else could I do?' he said over our outraged exclamations.

Gertrude, who had been hovering in the doorway with Sally, scooped up Buster and came into the studio. She indicated the paintings. ‘But we're so close to finishing. Another two days, at the most. Can't you hold him off? We're
nearly
there.'

The two paintings were side by side on their respective easels. I realised I had ceased noticing how much the forgery had come to resemble the original. At a glance, they were difficult to tell apart. All that was required was to age the surface some more and touch up the brown portions at the bottom of the canvas. As Max had promised, Gertrude had performed an extraordinary feat; the marvel of it almost outstripped Picasso's original achievement.

‘Nearly isn't good enough, Gertrude. It's safer if Queel's on our side, rather than risk him going to the police or jeopardising everything. Need I remind you that we are already over schedule?
Way
over schedule. You said it would only take a week, but it's been nearly two. Mr Crisp is getting anxious. He wants his painting. His buyers won't wait forever, you know.'

Gertrude waved her hands about like a flummoxed schoolgirl. ‘I know. I'm sorry. We've had some trouble with … supplies and so on. I'm sorry, Max.'

Max looked mollified, albeit reluctantly. ‘We need to shut Queel up for now. We can't have him going to the police for the reward. If he breathes a single word of this to
anyone
then we all end up in jail.'

Jail. Although I had read in the newspaper that prison was a possible consequence of being caught for the theft, none of us had mentioned the actual word before. We had for so long been living in our private ecosystem that it had been easy — far too easy — to forget we were all implicated in a major crime and, if discovered, could be imprisoned for some years.
Jail
.

The cassette playing Mark Stewart and the Maffia strained at the end of its tape and clacked to a stop.

Max grunted with satisfaction. ‘Thank God that's finished, at least.'

Edward put down his palette on the bench already strewn with paint materials, shards of paper and canvas. ‘How much does he want?' he asked. ‘The reward for information is $50,000.'

Max dug out a packet of cigarettes from a pocket and lit one before answering. ‘I don't know. I'm going to see him tonight. It's all arranged.' He jabbed his glowing cigarette end at me. ‘And I need you to drive me over to his apartment.'

‘Max,' Gertrude said, ‘you can't trust Queel.'

‘I do know that, my dear. There's a party at that big house in Drummond Street tonight. I think you all should go along.
Gertrude, can you ring James and tell him what's happened? Tom and I will meet you all there in a few hours.'

Gertrude bent down and placed Buster on the floor. ‘Max? What are you going to do?'

‘Talk, you know. Talk to him.'

We lapsed into a brooding silence.

ROUNDING A BEND OR CRESTING A HILL IN THE FAMILY CAR
when I was a boy, long before I knew my left from right, I was always convinced that the approaching cars wouldn't know which side of the road we were driving on and we would all be killed in a head-on smash. All my life I have, on occasion, been possessed by a presentiment of doom while driving, the seeds of which I could trace back to that childhood fear. It is a sensation that has never left me, and has never been more acute than the wintry night I drove Max to see Queel. Cars swished past on the wet roads and at every turn I expected to see — too late! — a truck bearing down on us with a spray of water sluicing up from its enormous front wheels, a trucker's startled face in the headlights, a yelp of fear. Smash.

We were driving to South Yarra, an upmarket part of the city with leafy streets and discreet mansions tucked behind hedges and high brick walls. Although he spoke very little, I could tell that Max was excited, as if he were lit from within. We stopped at a red light at the top of the Punt Road hill. A car packed with teenagers pulled up beside us; I could hear thudding rock music, the excited squeal of their voices. One of them, a chubby blond guy, glanced over and raised his can of Victoria Bitter in salute. They were probably
driving to St Kilda to see a band or go to a nightclub, and for a second I envied the simplicity of their night: beer, girls and loud music.

‘I should have seen it,' Max was saying. ‘I do see things sometimes. They're visions, I suppose. Remember that
Challenger
disaster? I had a feeling it was going to explode in that way. I knew it. You remember I said it would never work? On the morning it lifted off? And another thing. You know what the smoke was like, the bits that separated?'

I was anxious, impatient with this discussion. ‘No. What did it look like?'

He placed a raised index finger to either side of his head. ‘The devil. Next time they show that footage on the news, you take notice of it. There, in the blue sky, you'll see the face of the devil. Hiding in plain sight. Horns and everything.'

The light turned from red to green, and I was absolved from responding to this outlandish claim. The neighbouring carload of teenagers sped off, fishtailed, righted itself and vanished down the other side of the hill. We followed at a more sedate pace.

‘Left at Toorak Road,' Max said at the bottom of the hill. ‘Left again up here. That's it. Turn off the headlights and pull over near that building.'

We were in a dark and dripping side street. Water rippled in the gutters. A jogger pounded past.

Max punched the car lighter and waited. When his cigarette was lit, he turned to face me. ‘You're not very close to your family, are you?'

I was taken by surprise. ‘What?'

His expression was sincere. ‘I don't mean to pry, but none of them has visited since you moved here. In — what? — eight months. Your mother? Your father? No one. And you haven't visited them, either. And you
never
talk about them.' He paused
before going on, as if choosing his words ever more carefully. ‘I think perhaps you are not well loved at your home.'

I was too stunned to speak. Although I had not thought a great deal about it, it was true that no member of my family had visited me, or even offered to do so, and phone calls were infrequent. In March my sister Rosemary had mailed me a postcard (beachside kangaroo in a red bikini) from a Queensland resort where she had holidayed with her family but, generally, weeks passed without contact from any of them. I was not much bothered by this, but the notion this state of affairs might be indicative of a lack of affection for me was thrilling. As a white, middle-class boy I had lacked the requisite background for authentic artistic angst; if nothing else, this would furnish me with one such reason.

‘It's hard, isn't it?' Max went on. He waved his cigarette about as if, like air, the answer were all around us and only needed pointing out. ‘It's hard when you don't have anyone to show you how to be in the world. We all need someone to admire. Even I had my parents, while they were still alive. My father was always wise.'

He was right. And because my parents (if indeed they
were
my parents) were hardly role models, I had become wary of adults — real adults, that is, with real lives and real jobs — and it was clear to me how much I flailed around in the quicksand of my life.

‘What would he have done in this instance?' I asked.

Max stared through the windscreen with smoke trailing from his nostrils. ‘That's a good question,' he said. ‘I can no longer see what he might have advised — my memory of him is fading. Most likely he wouldn't have been so dumb in the first place. There are things I have never learned, things I'll never learn now. I make it up as I go. There are no shoes for me to fill. That's what's hard, isn't it? And you have an orphan's heart, too. It's one of the reasons I like you, I think. You're lucky you met us. We'll be your family now. I am so looking forward to taking you to France: you'll love
it. You'll write novels there, I know it. I see the future better than I see the past, and that is definitely one of the things I can see — all of us in the garden wearing straw hats. I'll finish
Maldoror
; I'm almost there. You'll be Uncle Tom to our children, you know. James tapping away at his typewriter, you unwrapping the very first copy of your debut novel. Wine in the afternoons. Cheese. Imagine it. We can go to Berlin to visit Edward and Gertrude. They can get off those awful drugs.' He shook his head. ‘It would be dreadful if things fell apart now, if Queel somehow wrecked it all. We've planned our escape for so long.'

I was unaccountably moved by Max's speech — by his sensitivity to my familial situation — and had to fight down a lump in my throat. No one had ever been so generous towards me. And it
would
be terrible if things fell apart now. The very idea that our plan of getting to France could be disrupted at this late stage was intolerable.

‘
To complete a stage of a journey in a single breath is not easy, and the wings become very weary during a high flight without hope and without remorse
.'

Bemused, I could only stare at him.

‘From
Maldoror
,' he said by way of explanation. ‘One of my favourite bits.'

For several minutes we sat smoking, before Max ground out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and pulled his coat tight around himself.