Masterpiece (17 page)

He watched as James took a breath, squared his shoulders, and started toward the door.

“I’m going with him, Mama. I have to. He can’t do it without me.”

“Marvin!” Mama protested, but Marvin was already scuttling out from under the heavy fringe of the rug. He rushed up the door to the brass knob, where he positioned himself in plain view.

“Oh, darling!” his mother cried.

James stopped in his tracks.

“Hey! YOU’RE HERE!” he yelled.

The door swung open. “For heaven’s sake, who are you talking to, James?” Mrs. Pompaday demanded.

James gingerly reached for the knob, his hand almost touching Marvin. Marvin climbed onto his finger and quickly crawled under the cuff of his jacket.

“Nobody,” James mumbled.

“Well, don’t do that, dear. It’s odd.”

Resting his hand on the door frame, Karl winked at James. “Let’s go, buddy. Got your ink set?”

“Yeah, Dad, I’m ready.”

“Be careful!” Marvin heard his mother call from far below.

He poked his head out from under the knit cuff and waved at her to show he’d heard. He could see James’s wide grin as he and his father strode through the apartment to the elevator, then out of the building into the gray winter afternoon.

W
hen they met Christina in her office, she greeted them in a flush of excitement. “Here you are! I’ve been thinking about this all day.” She gave James’s shoulder a quick pat and beamed at him. “I still can’t believe my luck in finding you, James.”

James smiled shyly, staring at his sneakers.

“Oh, I know,” Christina laughed. “I’m embarrassing you. I do that to my nieces all the time.”

Karl walked over to her desk. “Are those the girls in the photo?”

“Hmmm? Oh, yes . . . my sister’s children, Katie and Eleanor.” She looked at the picture, her eyes shining with affection.

Marvin climbed quickly up to James’s collar, for a better look at the photo. He liked the relaxed expression on Christina’s face, the way her arms curled comfortably around the children. She looked different in the photo—unguarded. He remembered hearing Karl tell
James once that it was hard for people to ever know what they really looked like. Reflections in mirrors weren’t accurate, Karl said, because when you stared at yourself in a mirror, you subconsciously composed your face in a way that wasn’t your natural expression.

Marvin wondered if that was true when you were with strangers too. Maybe you only looked like your true self with the people you loved. And maybe that was a face you yourself hardly ever got to see, except in photos like this one.

Karl lifted the frame. “The little one looks exactly like you.”

Christina smiled. “Doesn’t she? And Eleanor is the spitting image of my sister’s husband. Have you noticed how that happens sometimes? The genes of the parents seem to sort themselves out, and the children look like
one side or the other. I told Lily she saved me the trouble of having children.”

Karl tousled James’s hair. “Well, it’s not so much trouble, really.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way,” Christina said quickly, glancing at James. “Anyway, it’s the kind of trouble I’d enjoy.”

Christina seemed to turn shy suddenly, bowing her head to focus on a stack of papers on the desk. “Okay. These are from Denny. They’re blank manuscript pages, old ones, from the sixteenth century. That’s the trick to forgeries. Everything has to date correctly and show the right signs of wear.”

Karl frowned. “But I thought you said it didn’t need to be an exact copy . . . since you don’t have to convince a collector, just some underworld art thief.”

“That’s right.” Christina turned reassuringly to James. “Your drawing will pass for the real thing, James. I’m sure of it. But we don’t want anything on the surface to be a dead giveaway.”

She gently lifted the pages and set them on the table, removing the parchment overlay. The sheets were yellowed and tattered at the edges, marked by odd discol-orations and blemishes. Marvin thought they showed every bit of their five hundred years.

“The best forgers are meticulous about their materials,” Christina continued. “They use old paper, taken from books or manuscripts of the time period. They match the historic shades of ink. They ‘age’ the work
with tears and smudges. There’s no surer sign of a fake than an image that’s too perfect.”

Karl nodded. “Anything real has flaws.”

“Exactly. And in the art world, oddly enough, the flaws are what show its value.”

James looked at the pages on the table. “But what about my pen-and-ink set? It’s not old. Can we still use that?”

We
, Marvin thought, flexing his front legs. A trill of anticipation coursed through him.

“If the drawing had to pass inspection by an expert, no. But James, you’re able to make such delicate lines with that pen of yours! So like Dürer’s.”

“What about the ink?” Karl asked.

“The ink has to be brown, as it is in the original drawing. I’ve been working on that for the past couple of days. I have a sample to try. James, we may need you to do the drawing more than once to get it right. Okay?”

James nodded.

“Okay, then.” Christina faced the broad wooden table. “Let’s set you up here. The museum closes shortly, and then Denny’s going to bring you the original
Fortitude
.”

“The real one?” James turned to his father, looking worried.

Karl raised his eyebrows. “Can you do that? Just take it off the wall? There’s no alarm system?”

“Not during the day. Just the guards. We move
artworks all the time,” Christina answered. She twisted a strand of hair, watching James. “What is it, James? Are you nervous?”

Marvin looked at James’s pale face. He was biting his lip.

Christina touched his shoulder, and Marvin dove for cover under the jacket collar. “Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly. “The drawing is protected by glass—you can’t hurt it.”

I hope not
, Marvin thought. He was trembling with excitement. He’d get to see it up close finally, the real drawing!

“Okay,” James said in a small voice.

Christina squeezed his arm. “I’ll check on Denny,” she said. “And fetch the ink.”

As soon as she left, James looked at his father. “What if I break it? Or spill ink on it?”

Marvin cringed, thinking how often Mrs. Pompaday cautioned James not to spill.

Karl laughed. “You won’t, buddy. It’s in a frame, under glass. We’ll make sure it’s safe.”

“But Dad, it’s, like . . . a masterpiece, right?”

Karl considered this. “Well, it’s not the
Mona Lisa
. It’s not the Sistine Chapel.”

James looked at his father, puzzled. “What makes those masterpieces, and not this one?”

Marvin felt compelled to crawl out from under James’s collar to hear the answer.

“I didn’t say that. A masterpiece is a great work of
art. It’s the best of an artist’s work—one of a kind.” Karl rubbed his beard. “But sometimes people don’t recognize a masterpiece for years and years . . . till long after the artist’s death.” He hesitated. “It can be hard to say what makes one work stand out from the rest. What makes the
Mona Lisa
so special? On one level, it’s just a picture of a woman smiling.”

James shrugged. “It
is
just a picture of a woman smiling.”

“But on another level, it’s so much more,” his father said. “It’s full of secrets. Is she proud? Sorry? Flirting? In love? Look at it long enough and you might come to your own answer, but it’s a painting that can be seen in a hundred different ways.” He smiled a little. “By that standard,
Fortitude
could be a masterpiece, I guess . . . a tiny masterpiece.”

“Yeah,” James said, satisfied. Marvin gulped, wondering how it was going to feel to copy a masterpiece. Or try to copy a masterpiece.

Not long after Karl and James’s conversation, Christina appeared with Denny, who was carrying something wrapped in a large white cloth.

Denny’s eyes sparkled. “Hello, friends,” he greeted them. “And now, what you’ve been waiting for . . .”

He carefully removed the cloth and set
Fortitude
in the middle of the table.

Marvin inched forward for a better look. He caught his breath.

The lines were as strong and fine and lovely as he
remembered. The girl gripped the lion fearlessly. The lion reared up in her arms.

James’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Is it worth a lot of money?”

Christina nodded. “We paid close to seven hundred thousand dollars for
Justice
. Dürer’s
Virtues
date from the early 1500s, which makes them rare and even more valuable than most of the Old Master drawings.”

Denny nodded, his fingers lingering on the drawing’s frame. “The Getty was very lucky to get this one. The
small size. The excellent condition. The detail, which is truly exquisite. More than a thousand Dürer drawings survive, but his
Virtues
are in a class of their own.” He paused. “There’s a romance to them.”

James looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Justice, for example. It’s a universal ideal. Civilizations depend on it. Wars are fought over it, and people die for it—or the lack of it.”

Christina reached for the dusty volume of Dürer prints and thumbed through it quickly. “There’s a wonderful Plutarch quote. Do you know who that is, James? Philosopher and historian in ancient Greece.” She scanned the pages. “Here:
Justice is the first of virtues, for unsupported by justice, valor is good for nothing; and if all men were just, there would be no need for valor
.”

“What’s valor?” asked James.

“Bravery,” Karl said. “Courage.”

“Or fortitude,” Denny added thoughtfully. “So Plutarch is saying: If everyone were fair, you wouldn’t need anyone to be brave.”

Christina nodded. “The Greeks thought the four cardinal virtues were related to one another. It was impossible to master one without mastering all of them.”

Denny smiled. “Now Nietzsche, on the other hand”—he turned to James—“famous German philosopher, thought the opposite. He believed the virtues were incompatible. He said you couldn’t be wise and brave, for instance.”