Theft: A Love Story

27

Having shoved his arm inside my painting and pulled it inside out, you would expect Detective Praying Mantis to be afraid, but in spite of his scaredy-cat haircut, his eyes showed no more agitation than might be caused by the sight of something nice to eat. And no, it did not help to have my moron brother smashing his fist into his open palm. Marlene moved away. Hugh followed her. I did not even pause to think of why they should. I was wholly occupied by this little vandal with the creased-up eyes.

After he sat down he constructed an "X" with the chopsticks and then retrieved one in order to wag it in my face.

"Michael," he said.

"That's me."

"Michael." He ducked his head, and used the chopstick to construct a "V."

"Michael, and Marlene."

"Oh, you are a clever boy."

"That's right, Michael," he said, using my first name in a style beloved by the New South Wales police. (Now pull over, Michael. What do we have, Michael? Have you been using drugs, Michael?) "I've got an MA, Michael," he said, "from Griffith University."

"I thought you left the force."

He blinked. "No, mate, you're not going to be that lucky."

"How do you know I'm going to have a show in Tokyo?"

From beneath his chair he produced a cheap canvas satchel, a design I would later recognise as being popular with elderly single visitors to the Museum of Modern Art. From this he conjured up a recent copy of Studio International, an issue not yet available in Sydney.

"You've been overseas?"

He blinked twice rapidly but held my gaze, and I was so concerned with combatting his character, whatever that might be, that I was slow to see the full quarter-page ad he was sliding out towards me: "MICHAEL BOONE," I finally read, "Mitsukoshi, Tokyo. August 17-31."

My mouth, I'm sure, went slack.

"Congratulations, Michael."

I was mute.

"You've gone international, mate. You must be proud."

Well I was. No matter who was saying it or why Beyond description. If you are American you will never understand what it is to be an artist on the edge of the world, to be thirty-six years old and get an ad in Studio International. And, no, it is in no way like being from Lubbock, Texas, or Grand Forks, North Dakota. If you are Australian you are free to argue that this cringing shit had disappeared by 1981, that history does not count, and that, in any case, we were soon to become the centre of the nicking universe, the flavour of the month, the coalition of the willing, etc., but I will tell you, frankly, nothing like this had been conceivable in my lifetime and I did not care there was a dirty green cast across the reproduction—I should have cared, but I am saying that I did not give a fuck and on the facing page there was a late Rothko. Do you understand? I mean—how far this was from the life of reproductions taped to the sleepout wall? From Bacchus Marsh? From the life of a celebrated Sydney painter?

"Everything all crated is it?" he asked.

"Oh yes."

"But not through customs yet."

"I think it may have gone."

"No, mate, not yet."

The little fuck was grinning like he'd just won the trifecta.

"Marlene set this show up for you, Michael?"

"She did, yes."

He smiled at me and began flipping through the Studio International.

"'Rothko's death changed everything,'" he read out loud. "That's what they're saying here, Michael. It transformed the meaning of his work, gave every encounter with his painting a terrible gravity. That's how they're reading it, like True Confessions. I don't see it that way, not at all. I don't think you would either."

He closed the magazine and beamed at me.

"I'm so pleased the Japs are into the work. In all sincerity."

My work, I thought, don't you talk about my work.

"Who's doing it, the crating?"

"Woollahra Art Removals."

"Fantastic, mate, no-one better. Here, I can see you've got your eye on my Studio International"

I received his magazine without caution, unprepared for the three typed yellow pages which slid out of it and came whispering like weapons across the tabletop. " 'Jacques Leibovitz,' " the first page read, " 'Monsieur et Madame Tourenbois.

A Condition Report.'"

I thought, you cagey little cunt. What are you up to?

"Read," he encouraged. He wiped his bloodless lips with the back of his hand. "Very interesting," he said, "in my opinion.

Did you ever look at a condition report before?"

It was a strange document, very distinctive, bright yellow with a band of pink across the top. I wondered was this the report from Honore Le Noel. If so, it was very credible, like a dentist's record of the most fastidious inspection, and this one began with the gums, so to speak, the frame, describing how it was constructed, what—in the case of Monsieur et Madame Tourenbois —the condition had been before it was removed and abandoned by the thief beside the pancake mix on Dozy Boylan's kitchen countertop. It gave me bloody goose bumps, to read how Leibovitz had made "a light-duty strainer of bevelled construction"—those were the actual words—"with no structural element touching the surface of support." The corners were half-lapped, glued and nailed with small brads. The back of the strainer was labelled in paint: 25 avril XIII.

"What's avril?"

"April," he said. "Spring."

There was so much more. The support was of close linen weave, estimated to be of commercial preparation with rabbit-skin glue, or words to that effect. The policeman watched me closely as a cat, but I was inhabiting a space he would never reach, not even if he died and went to heaven.

On the back of Monsieur et Madame Tourenbois were three labels, the first put there by Leibovitz or perhaps Dominique or even Le Noel himself, assigning it a number, sixty-seven, and an address at 157 rue de Rennes. This was undated. Next to that was a label from an exhibition in Paris at Galerie Louise Leiris in 1963, nine years after the artist's death. There was also an envelope containing a four-by-five-inch photograph taken by Honore Le Noel.

The policeman pushed close. I moved my chair away, though not beyond the whiff of the carbon tetrachloride rising from his shiny suit.

"Short-sighted," he said. "You read out loud."

"Fuck you. You do it."

To my great surprise, he obeyed.

"'There are numerous and intermittent abrasions"' he recited, "

'showing loss of paint and material at the top edge from the left centre to the right-hand corner. They extend into the painting approximately three blah-blah. Ultraviolet examination was made... blah blah... The examination revealed...' Here we are, young Michael Boone, here it is. 'The loss of paint and subsequent replacement of an area thirteen millimetres by twohundred- and-ninety millimetres from the top left corner to the centre point. Brushstrokes measuring between four and six-and-a-half centimetres thus out of character with artist's known work.' You see this? It's bloody wonderful. See, see.,. here... 'subsequent X-ray analysis has revealed that the upper layers cover what appears to be a work similar to that produced by the artist after 1920.' You understand that, Michael. Monsieur et Madame Tourenbois is dated 1913, but it can't be 1913, because it's painted on top of something done in 1920. I smell a little ratty, don't you? A little ratty rat."

"How?"

"If it's 1913 it's great Leibovitz. It's worth a fortune. If it's 1920 ... well, forget it."

"Come on, mate, this one is in all the books. It's also in the Modern. Everyone knows it."

"Was in the Modern, Michael. So why do you think they got rid of it?"

"And why are you showing this to me?"

"I would think that was obvious."

Obvious? All that had ever been obvious was the little creep had stolen my canvas and then ripped it apart. Now he handed me the condition report and said, "I think the forensic significance of this is very clear."

"You know, Barry, frankly, I don't give a shit."

"I know," he said, "but just imagine if you'd authenticated this, Michael. You might just want the canvas to disappear. You might want to smuggle it to Japan, say, where the rules are different."

"Oh."

"Oh," he said, folding his big white hands across his crotch.

"You think this is what my show is all about?"

"Michael, I'm very sorry."

"You know, Barry, why is it when an Australian does well outside the country everyone thinks it's a scam? What if I was a great painter?"

"You are a great painter, Michael. That's why I hate to see you used."

I looked up to see the authenticator herself moving towards us. I pulled a chair out for her, but she leaned across my shoulder and then, suddenly, violently, snatched the paper from my hand.

Turning, I could hardly recognise her—the cheeks made into hard angular planes, eyes narrowed in fury.

"This is crap," she said to Amberstreet. "You know this is crap.

It's not even your property."

"It came into our possession, Marlene."

"Yes!" She sat beside me, looked around wildly, ordered a glass of water, stood and drank it so rapidly that it spilled down the front of her dress. "Yes, it came into your possession" she said, returning the glass loudly to the table. "Because you burgled my apartment and stole it from my files. You've been hanging out with art dealers too long, my friend. Do you know who actually wrote this criminal shit? Do you really seriously believe it was ever X-rayed?"

Amberstreet lifted his head as if expecting to be kissed.

"We explore all avenues," he said. "That's our job."

"Then piss off," I said. "Explore that avenue." And when I turned I saw Hiroshi, the owner, and I ordered a bottle of Fukucho sake and when I had done with that I discovered the detective gone, Marlene in tears, my copy of Studio International gleaming in the summer light. She saw me reach for it and, bless her, smiled.

"Do you like your ad, my darling?"

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.