Masterpiece (8 page)

“D
enny! Hey! How are you?” Karl grinned broadly, thrusting out his hand. “James, this is Dennis MacGuffin, an old friend from my Pratt days. Remember? The art college? Denny, my son, James.”

Denny crouched slightly, winking at James. “Not so old, eh, James? It’s nice to meet you. I’m always delighted to see young people at an exhibit like this.”

“What are you doing here, Denny? I thought you were out west somewhere. . . . California, wasn’t it?”

Denny nodded. “Yes, that’s right. I’m at the Getty now. Curator of Drawings. The Dürer and this Bellini over here are ours.”

He gestured to a similar picture of a woman and a lion, hanging next to the one they were staring at. It was the same size, but Marvin thought it seemed less delicate, the pen strokes thicker.

Denny continued, “We’ve got a number of items on loan for this exhibit, and I’ve been helping Ms. Balcony
with the arrangements.” He beckoned to a woman who was skirting the crowds and walking in their direction, her gaze darting over the drawings.

Marvin edged out from underneath James’s collar. She was slim and tidy-looking, her blouse tucked in, her honey-colored hair drawn back in a neat bun. Black rectangular glasses sat firmly on her small nose. He saw that she was very pretty, but she had the unself-conscious manner of someone who was totally oblivious to that fact—which only made her seem prettier. Marvin liked her instantly.

“Christina,” Denny called to her. “Come meet my friends Karl Terik and his son, James. You may have heard of Karl’s work. He shows at Ernst Auger’s gallery. In addition to being one of my favorite people, he’s an excellent artist.”

Christina Balcony approached them, smiling. “Terik? No, I’m afraid not.”

“My
Freedom
series was at the Steinholm last fall. Large abstracts?” Marvin thought Karl sounded embarrassed, but hopeful.

“No, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Or maybe you saw some of my work at the Whitney Biennial?”

Christina shook her head. “But anything less than four hundred years old is quite beyond my area of expertise.”

“Expertise or interest?” Karl asked, and Marvin was surprised to hear a note of irritation in his voice.

“Well, both, I suppose,” she said, laughing. “I’m sorry. Please don’t take my ignorance as any sort of verdict on your work. I’m stuck in the late 1400s . . . Germany, Italy, Holland.”

Stuck in the late 1400s
. The time of these drawings. Marvin couldn’t even imagine how long ago that was. Impossibly ancient, in beetle terms.

Christina took Karl’s extended hand and gave James a wide smile. “Do you like these?”

James nodded shyly.

“We do,” Karl said. “Very much. Especially the Dürers.”

“Yes, they’re lovely. He’s our favorite, isn’t he, Denny? Whenever one of his comes up for sale, we are always fighting over it. Extraordinary attention to detail, and a flawless touch . . . you can really see it here, compared to the Bellini.” She turned to James. “Same image, different artist. Which do you like better?”

James looked up at her. “That one,” he almost whispered, pointing to the Dürer.
Me too
, thought Marvin. The Bellini was prettier in its way, but Marvin preferred the crisp, certain lines of the Dürer.

“Why?” Christina asked encouragingly. James bit his lip, too shy to answer.

“Giovanni Bellini was a great Italian artist,” she said. “Dürer called him ‘the best painter of them all.’ ”

“But he’s not nearly as admired as Dürer,” Karl pointed out.

“Well, at the time he was. Now he’s often overlooked in favor of the big names . . . Michelangelo, Leonardo, Rembrandt.” Christina studied the two pictures, smiling faintly. “Dürer went to Venice to learn from Bellini, but look how different the pictures are. The best teachers are like that. They don’t teach you how to do things exactly the way they do; they teach you how to be your best self.”

She pointed at the Bellini drawing. “This one is gentle, all curves and shadings. The woman almost seems to be playing with the lion.”

Marvin could see what she meant. There was nothing particularly threatening about either the girl or the lion, even though the drawing was called
Fortitude
.

“Now look at the Dürer,” Christina said. “He tries to capture Bellini’s ideal of Italian beauty, but he can’t do it. Dürer’s girl is a German peasant, a real person. Look at her shoulders. They’re as massive as the lion’s. It will be a fight to the finish, for sure.”

Denny laughed. “And my money’s on the girl.”

James nodded. Half-hidden beneath his collar, Marvin did too.

“James likes to draw,” Karl interjected. “That’s why we’re here, actually. I gave him a pen-and-ink set for his birthday and, well—look what he came up with.” He held out the drawing for them to see, grinning. “I still can’t believe he did this.”

Christina Balcony stepped forward. Her whole face changed. The pleasant mask of politeness dropped away. She reached for the drawing. “Your son
drew
this?”

Denny peered over her shoulder and sucked in his breath.

Christina crouched next to James, with the drawing between them. “You made this? By yourself?”

James nodded, blushing.

“Were you tracing something?”

“No. It’s just—it’s just a copy of what’s outside my window at home.”

Christina straightened and held the drawing at arm’s length, next to the works on the wall. “Look how similar it is to our Dürer miniature, the landscape here,” she said to Denny. “The execution . . . it’s really uncanny.”

“I know,” said Karl. “That’s why we came. I told James this could have been done by a Renaissance master!”

Christina moved along the wall of pictures, still holding the sheet of paper. “The line . . . it has the same fastidiousness. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

Marvin inched forward to hear her words more clearly.
She’s talking about my drawing
! he thought with delight.
She’s comparing it to these famous pictures
!

Finally, she turned to them, her face flushed.

“James,” she said. “Would you come with me? I want to show you something.”

M
arvin quickly ducked back under James’s collar, worried about being seen. Christina’s face was so close, her eyes fixed on James.

James pressed against his father’s leg.

“What? Where?” Karl asked.

Christina’s gaze returned to the drawing. “It’s extraordinary. It’s given me an idea.”

Denny raised an eyebrow. “Her ideas are dangerous,” he said to Karl and James.

“What are you talking about?” Karl turned from one to the other. “We’re only here for a couple of hours. I have to get James home by five o’clock.”

Christina glanced around the gallery, at the elderly couples and the guided tours murmuring past.

“It won’t take long,” she said, and Marvin thought her voice had a pleading note. “I’d love it if you could come to my office. I want you to see something.”

Karl rested one large hand on James’s back.
“But we’ve barely had a chance to look at the exhibit,” he said.

“I know,” Christina said apologetically. “I won’t monopolize your afternoon, I promise. But if you come with me, I can show you some other Dürer drawings. Would you like that, James?”

“I guess,” James said, his voice hesitant. He looked up at his father, and Marvin could see Karl’s impatience.

“I’m sorry, but I’d really like to take him around the exhibit. That’s why we came.” He took the drawing from Christina, who released it very reluctantly. “And his mother will be upset if I don’t get him home for dinner. Perhaps another time.”

Christina pursed her lips. “It won’t take long, Mr. Terik.”

“Karl.”

“Karl. You’ll still have time for the exhibit.”

Denny, who had been standing nearby with a preoccupied expression, finally intervened. “Karl, if you don’t mind, it could be important. I ask you as a favor.”

Marvin saw that Karl and Christina were facing each other, equally irritated. Finally, Karl shrugged. “Oh, all right. I don’t understand either the urgency or the secrecy, but all right. James?”

James nodded his head, and they followed Christina through the gallery to a plain wood door tucked away in the corner.

“Here?” James asked. “It’s like a secret door.”

Christina smiled at him. “This is the entrance to the Drawings and Prints Department. Convenient, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got it,” Denny said, pulling a small ring of keys from his pocket. He winked at James. “Full access for special friends of the museum. I’m trying to get a lot of use out of these before I have to give them back.”

He turned the knob and held the door open for Karl, James, and Christina to enter. Marvin looked around in amazement. The nondescript door opened into a large study lined with bookshelves. There were doors and hallways opening off it, all hidden behind the wall of the gallery.

“How long are you here for, Denny?” Karl asked.

“Just a couple of weeks. Then back to the Getty. I
won’t be sorry to leave this cold weather for my California sunshine, I can tell you that.”

Christina Balcony’s office was at the end of a long corridor. It was a large room with windows overlooking Central Park, and floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books—probably fat, dusty volumes of art history, Marvin decided. There were a few battered wooden chairs around a long table. She indicated to them with one hand while she retrieved a big book from her desk. James, his father, and Denny sat down and waited. Christina balanced the book awkwardly in the crook of her arm and thumbed through the pages to a glossy reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing.