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The Goldfinch
  • Текст добавлен: 8 октября 2016, 10:18

Текст книги "The Goldfinch "


Автор книги: Donna Tartt


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Текущая страница: 52 (всего у книги 55 страниц)

Then, suddenly, bursting into the last wisps of bioluminescence still trailing from the dream, the bells of the nearby church broke out in such violent clangor that I bolted upright in a panic, fumbling for my glasses. I had forgotten what day it was: Christmas.

Unsteadily, I got up and went to the window. Bells, bells. The streets were white and deserted. Frost glittered on tiled rooftops; outside, on the Herengracht, snow danced and flew. A flock of black birds was cawing and swooping over the canal, the sky was hectic with them, great sideways sweeps and undulations as a single, intelligent body, eddying to and fro, and their movement seemed to pass into me on almost a cellular level, white sky and whirling snow and the fierce gusting wind of poets.

First rule of restorations. Never do what you can’t undo.

I took a shower, shaved and dressed. Then, quietly, I cleared up and packed my things. Somehow I would have to get Gyuri’s ring and watch back to him, assuming he was still alive, which I was increasingly doubtful he was: the watch alone was a fortune—a BMW 7 series, a down payment on a condo. I would FedEx them to Hobie for safekeeping and leave his name for Gyuri at the front desk, just in case.

Frosted panes, snow ghosting the cobblestones, deep and speechless, no traffic on the streets, centuries superimposed, 1940s by way of 1640s.

It was important not to think too deeply. The important thing was to ride the energy of the dream that had followed me into waking. Since I didn’t speak Dutch, I would go to the American consulate and have the consulate phone the Dutch police. Spoiling some consulate member’s Christmas, the festive family meal. But I didn’t trust myself to wait. Possibly a good idea to go down and look at the State Department’s website and apprise myself of my rights as an American citizen—certainly there were many worse places in the world to be in jail than the Netherlands and maybe if I was up front about everything I knew (Horst and Sascha, Martin and Frits, Frankfurt and Amsterdam) they could run the painting down.

But who knew how it would play. I was certain of nothing except that evasive action was over. Whatever happened, I would not be like my father, dodging and scheming up until the very moment of flipping the car and crashing in flames; I would stand forward and take what was coming to me; and, to that point, I went straight to the bathroom and flushed the glassine stamp down the toilet.

And that was that: fast as Martin, and just as irrevocable. What was it my dad liked to say? Face the music. Not something he’d ever done.

I had been to every corner of the room, done all there was to do except for the letters. Even the handwriting made me wince. But—the consciousness made me start back—I did have to write Hobie: not the self-pitying wobbles of drunkenness but a few businesslike lines, whereabouts of checkbook, ledger, deposit-box key. Probably just as well if I admitted, in writing, the furniture fraud, and made it crystal-clear he’d had no knowledge of it. Maybe I could have it witnessed and notarized at the American consulate; maybe Holly (or whoever) would take pity and call someone in to do it before they phoned the police. Grisha could back me up on a lot of it without incriminating himself: we’d never discussed it, he’d never questioned me but he’d known it wasn’t kosher, all those hush-hush trips out to the storage unit.

That left Pippa and Mrs. Barbour. God, the letters I’d written Pippa and never sent! My best effort, my most creative, after the disastrous visit with Everett, had begun, and ended, with what I felt was the light, affecting line: Leaving for a while. As a would-be suicide note it had seemed at the time, in terms of concision anyway, a minor masterpiece. Unfortunately I’d miscalculated the dose and awakened twelve hours later with vomit all over the bedspread and had to stagger downstairs still sick as a dog for a ten a.m. meeting with the IRS.

That said: a going-to-jail note was different, and best left unwritten. Pippa wasn’t fooled by who I was. I had nothing to offer her. I was illness, instability, everything she wanted to get away from. Jail would only confirm what she knew. The best thing I could do was break off contact. If my father had really loved my mother—really loved her the way he said he had, once upon a time—wouldn’t he have done the same?

And then—Mrs. Barbour. It was sinking-ship knowledge, the sort of extremely surprising thing you don’t realize about yourself until the absolute last ditch, until the lifeboats are lowered and the ship is in flames—but, in the end, when I thought of killing myself she was the one I really couldn’t bear to do it to.

Leaving the room—going down to inquire about FedEx and to look at the State Department’s website before I called the consulate—I stopped. Tiny ribbon-wrapped bag of candies over the doorknob, a handwritten note: Merry Christmas! Somewhere people were laughing and a delicious smell of strong coffee and burnt sugar and freshly baked bread from room service was floating up and down the hall. Every morning I’d been ordering up the hotel breakfasts, grimly plowing through them—wasn’t Holland meant to be famous for its coffee? Yet I’d been drinking it every day and not even tasting it.

I slipped the bag of candy in the pocket of my suit and stood in the hallway breathing deep. Even condemned men were allowed to choose a last meal, a topic of discussion which Hobie (indefatigable cook, joyous eater) had more than once introduced at the end of the evening over Armagnac while he was scrambling around for empty snuffboxes and extra saucers to serve as impromptu ashtrays for his guests: for him it was a metaphysical question, best considered on a full stomach after all the desserts were cleared and the final plate of jasmine caramels was being passed, because—really looking at the end of it, at the end of the night, closing your eyes and waving goodbye to Earth—what would you actually choose? Some comforting reminder of the past? Plain chicken dinner from some lost Sunday in boyhood? Or—last grasp at luxury, the far end of the horizon—pheasant and cloudberries, white truffles from Alba? As for me: I hadn’t even known I was hungry until I’d stepped into the hallway, but at that moment, standing there with a rough stomach and a bad taste in my mouth and the prospect of what would be my last freely chosen meal, it seemed to me that I’d never smelled anything quite so delicious as that sugary warmth: coffee and cinnamon, plain buttered rolls from the Continental breakfast. Funny, I thought, going back into the room and picking up the room service menu: to want something so easy, to feel such appetite for appetite itself.

Vrolijk Kerstfeest! said the kitchen boy half an hour later—a stout, disheveled teenager straight from Jan Steen with a wreath of tinsel on his head and a sprig of holly behind one ear.

Lifting the silver tops of the trays with a flourish. “Special Dutch Christmas bread,” he said, pointing it out ironically. “Just for today.” I’d ordered the “Festive Champagne Breakfast” which included a split of champagne, truffled eggs and caviar, a fruit salad, a plate of smoked salmon, a slab of pâté, and half a dozen dishes of sauce, cornichons, capers, condiments, and pickled onions.

He had popped the champagne and left (after I’d tipped him with most of my remaining euros) and I’d just poured myself some coffee and was tasting it carefully, wondering if I could stomach it (I was still queasy and it smelled not quite so delicious, up close), when the telephone rang.

It was the desk clerk. “Merry Christmas Mr. Decker,” he said rapidly. “I’m sorry but I’m afraid you’ve got someone on the way up. We tried to stop them at the desk—”

“What?” Frozen. Cup halfway to mouth.

“On the way up. Now. I tried to stop them. I asked them to wait but they wouldn’t. That is—my colleague asked him to wait. He started up before I could telephone—”

“Ah.” Looking around the room. All my resolve gone in an instant.

“My colleague—” muffled aside—“my colleague just started up the stairs after him—it was all very sudden, I thought I should—”

“Did he give a name?” I asked, walking to the window and wondering if I could break it with a chair. I wasn’t on a high floor and it was a short jump, maybe twelve feet.

“No he didn’t sir.” Speaking very fast. “We couldn’t—that is to say he was very determined—he slipped right by the desk before—”

Commotion in the hall. Some shouted Dutch.

“—we’re short-staffed this morning, as I’m sure you understand—”

Determined pounding at the door—coarse nervous jolt, like the never-ending burst spraying out of Martin’s forehead, that sent my coffee flying. Fuck, I thought, looking at my suit and shirt: wrecked. Couldn’t they have waited until after breakfast? Then again, I thought—dabbing my shirt with a napkin, starting grimly to the door: Maybe it was Martin’s guys. Maybe it would be quicker than I thought.

But instead, when I threw open the door—I could scarcely believe it—there stood Boris. Rumpled, red-eyed, battered-looking. Snow in his hair, snow on the shoulders of his coat. I was too startled to be relieved. “What,” I said, as he embraced me, and then to the determined-looking clerk in the hallway, striding rapidly toward us: “No, it’s okay.”

“You see? Why should I wait? Why should I wait?” he said angrily, flinging out an arm at the clerk, who had stopped dead to stare. “Didn’t I say? I told you I knew where his room was! How would I know, if not my friend?” Then, to me: “I don’t know why this big production. Ridiculous! I was standing there forever and no one at desk. No one! Sahara Desert!” (glaring at clerk). “Waiting, waiting. Rang the bell! Then, the second I start up—‘wait wait sir—’ ” whiny baby voice—“ ‘come back’—here he comes chasing me—”

“Thank you,” I said to the clerk, or his back rather, since after several moments of looking between us in surprise and annoyance he had quietly turned to walk away. “Thanks a lot. I mean it,” I called down the hall after him; it was good to know they stopped people charging upstairs on their own.

“Of course sir.” Not bothering to look around. “Merry Christmas.”

“Are you going to let me in?” said Boris, when finally the elevator doors closed and we were alone. “Or shall we stand here tenderly and gaze?” He smelled rank, as if he hadn’t showered in days, and he looked both faintly contemptuous and very pleased with himself.

“I—” my heart was pounding, I felt sick again—“for a minute, sure.”

“A minute?” Disdainful look up and down. “You have some place to go?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Potter—” half-humorously, putting down his bag, feeling my forehead with his knuckles—“you look bad. You are fevered. You look like you just dug the Panama Canal.”

“I feel great,” I said curtly.

“You don’t look great. You are white as a fish. Why are you all dressed up? Why did you not answer my calls? What’s this?” he said—looking past me, espying the room service table.

“Go ahead. Help yourself.”

“Well if you don’t mind, I will. What a week. Been driving all fucking night. Shitty way to spend Christmas Eve—” shouldering his coat off, letting it fall on the floor—“well, truth told, I’ve spent many worse. At least no traffic on the motorway. We stopped at some awful place on the road, only place open, petrol station, frankfurters with mustard, usually I like them, but oh my God, my stomach—” He’d gotten a glass from the bar, was pouring himself some champagne.

“And you, here.” Flicking a hand. “Living it up, I see. Lap of luxury.” He’d kicked off his shoes, wiggling wet sock feet. “Christ, my toes are frozen. Very slushy on the streets—snow is all turning to water.” Pulling up a chair. “Sit with me. Eat something. Very good timing.” He’d lifted the cover of the chafing dish, was sniffing the plate of truffled eggs. “Delicious! Still hot! What, what is this?” he said, as I reached in my coat pocket and handed him Gyuri’s watch and ring. “Oh, yes! I forgot. Never mind about that. You can give them back yourself.”

“No, you can do it for me.”

“Well, we should phone him. This is feast enough for five people. Why don’t we call down—” he lifted up the champagne, looked at the level as if studying a table of troubling financials—“why don’t we call for another of these, full bottle, or maybe two, and send down for more coffee or some tea maybe? I—” pushing his chair in closer—“I am starving! I’ll ask him—” lifting up a piece of smoked salmon, dangling it to his mouth to gobble it before reaching in his pocket for his cell phone—“ask him to dump the car somewhere and walk over, shall I?”

“Fine.” Something in me had gone dead at the sight of him, almost like with my dad when I was a kid, long hours alone at home, the involuntary wave of relief at his key in the lock and then the immediate heart-sink at the actual sight of him.

“What?” Licking his fingers noisily. “You don’t want Gyuri to come? Who’s been driving me all night? Who went without sleep? Give him some breakfast at least.” He’d already started in on the eggs. “A lot has happened.”

“A lot has happened to me too.”

“Where are you going?”

“Order what you want.” Fishing the key card out of my pocket, handing it to him. “I’ll leave the total open. Charge it to the room.”

“Potter—” throwing down the napkin, starting after me then stopping mid-step and—much to my surprise—laughing. “Go then. To your new friend or activity so important!”

“A lot has happened to me.”

“Well—” smugly—“I don’t know what happened to you, but I can say that what happened to me is at least five thousand times more. This has been some week. This has been one for the books. While you have been luxuriating in hotel, I—” stepping forward, hand on my sleeve—“hang on.” The phone had rung; he turned half away, spoke rapidly in Ukrainian before breaking off and hanging up very suddenly at the sight of me heading out the door.

“Potter.” Grabbing me by the shoulders, looking hard into my pupils, then turning me and steering me around, kicking the door shut behind him with one foot. “What the fuck? You are like Night of the Zombie. What was that movie we liked? The black and white? Not Living Dead, but the poetry one—?”

I Walked with a Zombie. Val Lewton.”

“That’s right. That’s the one. Sit down. Weed is very very strong here, even if you are used to it, I should have warned you—”

“I haven’t smoked any weed.”

“—because I tell you, when I came here first, age twenty maybe, at the time smoking trees every day, I thought I could handle anything and—oh my God. My own fault—I was an ass with the guy at the coffeeshop. ‘Give me strongest you have.’ Well he did! Three hits and I couldn’t walk! I couldn’t stand! It was like I forgot to move my feet! Tunnel vision, no control of muscles. Total disconnection from reality!” He had steered me to the bed; he was sitting beside me with his arm around my shoulders. “And, I mean, you know me but—never! Fast pounding heart, like running and running and whole time sitting still—no comprehension of my locale—terrible darkness! All alone and crying a little, you know, speaking to God in my mind, ‘what did I do,’ ‘why do I deserve this.’ Don’t remember leaving the place! Like a horrible dream. And this is weed, mind you! Weed! Came to on the street, all jelly legs, clutching onto a bike rack near Dam Square. I thought traffic was driving up on the sidewalk and going to wreck into me. Finally found my way to my girl’s flat in the Jordaan and layed around for a long time in a bath with no water in it. So—” He was looking suspiciously at my coffee-splattered shirt front.

“I didn’t smoke any weed.”

“I know, you said! Was just telling you a story. Thought it was a little interesting to you maybe. Well—no shame,” he said. “Whatever.” The ensuing silence was endless. “I forgot to say—I forgot to say”—he was pouring me a glass of mineral water—“after this time I told you? Wandering on the Dam? I felt wrong for three days after. My girl said, ‘Let’s go out, Boris, you can’t lie here any more and waste the whole weekend.” Vomited in the van Gogh museum. Nice and classy.”

The cold water, hitting my sore throat, threw me into goosebumps and into a visceral bodily memory from boyhood: painful desert sunlight, painful afternoon hangover, teeth chattering in the air-conditioned chill. Boris and I so sick we kept retching, and laughing about retching, which made us retch even harder. Gagging on stale crackers from a box in my room.

“Well—” Boris stealing a glance at me sideways—“something going around maybe. If was not Christmas Day, I would run down and get something to help your stomach. Here here—” dumping some food on a plate, shoving it at me. He picked up the champagne bottle from the ice bucket, looked at the level again, then poured the remainder of the split into my half-empty orange juice glass (half empty, because he had drunk it himself).

“Here,” he said, raising his champagne glass to me. “Merry Christmas to you! Long life to us both! Christ is born, let us glorify Him! Now—” gulping it down—he’d turned the rolls on the tablecloth, was heaping out food to himself in the ceramic bread dish—“I am sorry, I know you want to hear about everything, but I am hungry and must eat first.”

Pâté. Caviar. Christmas bread. Despite everything, I was hungry too, and I decided to be grateful for the moment and for the food in front of me and began to eat and for a while neither of us said anything.

“Better?” he said presently, throwing me a glance. “You are exhausted.” Helping himself to more salmon. “There is a bad flu going round. Shirley has it too.”

I said nothing. I had only just begun to adjust myself to the fact that he was in the room with me.

“I thought you were out with some girl. Well—here is where Gyuri and I have been,” he said, when I didn’t answer. “We have been in Frankfurt. Well—this you know. Some crazy time it’s been! But—” downing his champagne, walking to the minibar and squatting down to look inside—

“Do you have my passport?”

“Yes I have your passport. Wow, there is some nice wine in here! And all these nice baby Absoluts.”

“Where is it?”

“Ah—” Loping back to the table with a bottle of red wine under his arm, and three minibar bottles of vodka which he stuck in the ice bucket. “Here you go.” Fishing it from his pocket, tossing it carelessly onto the table. “Now”—sitting down—“shall we drink a toast together?”

I sat on the edge of the bed without moving, my half-eaten plate of food still in my lap. My passport.

In the long silence that followed, Boris reached across the table and flicked the edge of my champagne glass with middle finger, sharp crystalline ting like a spoon on an after dinner goblet.

“May I have your attention, please?” he inquired ironically.

“What?”

“Toast?” Tipping his glass to me.

I rubbed my hand over my forehead. “And you are what, here?”

“Eh?”

“Toasting what, exactly?”

“Christmas Day? Graciousness of God? Will that do?”

The silence between us, while not exactly hostile, took on as it grew a distinctly glaring and unmanageable tone. Finally Boris fell back in his chair and nodded at my glass and said: “Hate to keep asking, but when you are through with staring at me, do you think we can—?”

“I’m going to have to figure all this out at some point.”

“What?”

“I guess I’ll have to sort this all out in my mind some time. It’s going to be a job. Like, this thing over there… that over here. Two different piles. Three different piles maybe.”

“Potter, Potter, Potter—” affectionate, half-scornful, leaning forward—“you are a blockhead. You have no sense of gratitude or beauty.”

“ ‘No sense of gratitude.’ I’ll drink to that, I guess.”

“What? Don’t you remember our happy Christmas that one time? Happy days gone by? Never to return? Your dad—” grand flinging gesture—“at the restaurant table? Our feast and joy? Our happy celebration? Don’t you honor that memory in your heart?”

“For God’s sake.”

“Potter—” arrested breath—“you are something. You are worse than a woman. ‘Hurry, hurry.’ ‘Get up, go.’ Didn’t you read my texts?”

“What?”

Boris—reaching for his glass—stopped cold. Quickly he glanced at the floor and I was, suddenly, very aware of the bag by his chair.

In amusement, Boris stuck his thumbnail between his front teeth. “Go ahead.”

The words hovered over the wrecked breakfast. Distorted reflections in the domed cover of the silver dish.

I picked up the bag and stood; and his smile faded when I started to the door.

“Wait!” he said.

“Wait what?”

“You’re not going to open it?”

“Look—” I knew myself too well, didn’t trust myself to wait; I wasn’t letting the same thing happen twice—

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I’m taking this downstairs. So they can lock it in the safe.” I didn’t even know if there was a safe, only that I didn’t want the painting near me—it was safer with strangers, in a cloakroom, anywhere. I was also going to phone the police the moment Boris left, but not until; there was no reason dragging Boris into it.

“You didn’t even open it! You don’t even know what it is!”

“Duly noted.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe I don’t need to know what it is.”

“Oh no? Maybe you do. It’s not what you think,” he added, a bit smugly.

“No?”

“No.”

“How do you know what I think?”

“Of course I know what you think it is! And—you are wrong. Sorry. But—” raising his hands—“is something much, much better than.”

“Better than?”

“Yes.”

“How can it be better than?”

“It just is. Lots lots better. You will just have to believe me on this. Open and see,” he said, with a curt nod.

“What is this?” I said after about thirty stunned seconds. Lifting out one brick of hundreds—dollars—then another.

“That is not all of it.” Rubbing the back of his head with the flat of his hand. “Fraction of.”

I looked at it, then at him. “Fraction of what?”

“Well—” smirking—“thought more dramatic if in cash, no?”

Muffled comedy voices floating from next door, articulated cadences of a television laugh track.

“Nicer surprise for you! That is not all of it, mind you. U.S. currency, I thought, more convenient for you to return with. What you came over with—a bit more. In fact they have not paid yet—no money has yet come through. But—soon, I hope.”

“They? Who hasn’t paid? Paid what?”

“This money is mine. Own personal. From the house safe. Stopped in Antwerp to get it. Nicer this way—nicer for you to open, no? Christmas morning? Ho Ho Ho? But you have a lot more coming.”

I turned the stack of money over and looked at it: forward and back. Banded, straight from Citibank.

“ ‘Thank you Boris.’ ‘Oh, no problem,’ ” he answered, ironically, in his own voice. “Glad to do it.’ ”

Money in stacks. Outside the event. Crisp in the hand. There was some kind of obvious content or emotion to the whole thing I wasn’t getting.

“As I say—fraction of. Two million euro. In dollars much much more. So—merry Christmas! My gift to you! I can open you an account in Switzerland for the rest of it and give you a bank book and that way—what?” he said, recoiling almost, when I put the stack of bills in the bag, snapped it shut, and shoved it back at him. “No! It’s yours!”

“I don’t want it.”

“I don’t think you understand! Let me explain, please.”

“I said I don’t want it.”

“Potter—” folding his arms and looking at me coldly, the same look he’d given me in the Polack bar—“a different man would walk out laughing now and never come back.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“I—” looking around the room, as if at a loss for a reason why—“I will tell you why not! For old times’ sake. Even though you treat me like a criminal. And because I want to make things up to you—”

“Make what up?”

“Sorry?”

“What, exactly? Will you explain it to me? Where the hell did this money come from? How does this fix a fucking thing?”

“Well, actually, you should not be so quick to jump to—”

“I don’t care about the money!” I was half-screaming. “I care about the painting! Where’s the painting?”

“If you would just wait a second and not fly off the—”

“What’s this money for? Where’s it from? From what source, exactly? Bill Gates? Santa Claus? The Tooth Fairy?”

“Please. You are like your dad with the drama.”

“Where is it? What’d you do with it? It’s gone, isn’t it? Traded? Sold?”

“No, of course I—hey—” scraping his chair back hastily—“Jesus, Potter, calm down. Of course I didn’t sell it. Why would I do any such?”

“I don’t know! How should I know? What was all this for? What was the point of any of this? Why did I even come here with you? Why’d you have to drag me into it? You thought you’d bring me over here to help you kill people? Is that it?”

“I’ve never killed anybody in my life,” said Boris haughtily.

“Oh, God. Did you just say that? Am I supposed to laugh? Did I really just hear you say you never—”

“That was self defense. You know it. I do not go around hurting people for the fun of it but I will protect myself if I have to. And you,” he said, talking imperiously over me, “with Martin, apart from the fact I would not be here now and most likely you neither—”

“Will you do me a favor? If you won’t shut up? Will you maybe go over there and stand for a minute? Because I really don’t want to see you or look at you now.”

“—with Martin the police, if they knew, they would give you a medal and so would many others, innocent, not now living, thanks to him. Martin was—”

“Or, actually, you could leave. That’s probably better.”

“Martin was a devil. Not all human. Not all his fault. He was born that way. No feelings, you know? I have known Martin to do much worse things to people than shooting them. Not to us,” he said, hastily, waving his hand, as if this were the point of all misunderstanding. “Us, he would have shot out of courtesy, and none of his other badness and evil. But—was Martin a good man? A proper human being? No. He was not. Frits was no flower, either. So—this remorse and pain of yours—you must view it in a different light. You must view it as heroism in service of higher good. You cannot always take such a dark perspective of life all the time, you know, it is very bad for you.”

“Can I ask you just one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Where’s the painting?”

“Look—” Boris sighed, and looked away. “This was the best I could do. I know how much you wanted it. I did not think you would be quite so upset not to have it.”

“Can you just tell me where it is?”

“Potter—” hand on heart—“I’m sorry you are so angry. I was not expecting this. But you said you weren’t going to keep it anyway. You were going to give it back. Isn’t that what you said?” he added when I kept on staring at him.

“How the hell is this the right thing?”

“Well, I’ll tell you! If you would shut up and let me talk! Instead of ranting back and forth and frothing at mouth and spoiling our Christmas!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Idiot.” Rapping his temple with his knuckles. “Where do you think this money came from?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“This is the reward money!”

“Reward?”

“Yes! For safe return of!”

It took a moment. I was standing. I had to sit down.

“Are you angry?” said Boris carefully.

Voices in the hallway. Dull winter light glinting off the brass lampshade.

“I thought you would be pleased. No?”

But I had not recovered sufficiently to speak. All I could do was stare, in dumbfoundment.

At my expression, Boris shook the hair out of his face and laughed. “You gave me the idea yourself. I don’t think you knew how great it was! Genius! I wish had thought of it myself. ‘Call the art cops, call the art cops.’ Well—crazy! So I thought at the time. You’re a bit nuts on this subject to be perfectly honest. Only then—” he shrugged—“unfortunate events took course, as you only too well know, and after we parted on the bridge I spoke to Cherry, what to do, what to do, wringing our hands a bit, and we did a little nosing around, and—” lifting his glass to me—“well in fact, a genius idea! Why should I doubt you? Ever? You are the brains of all this from the start! While I am in Alaska—walking five miles to petrol station to steal a Nestlé bar—well, look at you. Mastermind! Why should I ever doubt you? Because—I look into it, and—” throwing up his arms—“you were right. Who would have thought? Over million dollars for your picture out there in reward money! Not even picture! Information leading to recovery of picture! No questions asked! Cash, free and clear—!”

Outside, snow was flying against the window. Next door, someone was coughing hard, or laughing hard, I couldn’t tell which.

“Back and forth, back and forth, all these years. A game for suckers. Inconvenient, dangerous. And—question I am asking myself now—why did I even bother? with all this legal money straight-up for the claiming? Because—you were right—straight business thing for them. No questions asked whatever. All they cared about was getting the picture back.” Boris lit a cigarette and dropped the match with a hiss in his water glass. “I did not see it myself, I wish I had—did not think a good idea to stick around if you get me. German SWAT team! Vests, guns. Drop everything! Lie down! Great commotion and crowd in the street! Ah, I would have loved to see the look on Sascha’s face!”

“You phoned the cops?”

“Well not me personally! My boy Dima—Dima is furious at the Germans because of the shooting in his garage. Completely unnecessary, and a big headache for him. See—” restlessly, he crossed his legs, blew out a big cloud of smoke—“I had an idea where they had the picture. There’s an apartment in Frankfurt. Used to belong to an old girlfriend of Sascha’s. People keep stuff there. But no way in hell could I get in, even with half a dozen guys. Keys, alarms, cameras, passcode. Only problem—” yawning, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand—“well, two problems. First one is that police need probable cause to search the apartment. You can not just call with name of thief, anonymous citizen being helpful if you know what I mean. And second problem—I could not remember the exact address of the place. Very very secretive—I have only been there once—late at night, and not in best of condition. Knew roughly the neighborhood… used to be squats, now is very nice… had Gyuri drive me up the streets and down, up the streets and down. Took for fucking ever. Finally—? I had it pinned to a row of houses but was not one hundred percent sure which. So I got out and walked it. Scared as I was, to be on that street—afraid to be seen—I got out of the car and walked it. With my own two feet. Eyes closed halfway. Hypnotized myself a bit, you know, trying to remember number of steps? Trying to feel it in my body? Anyway—I am getting ahead of myself. Dima—?” he was picking assiduously through the breads on the tablecloth—“Dima’s cousin’s sister in law, ex-sister in law actually, married a Dutchman, and they have a son named Anton—twenty-one maybe, twenty-two, squeaky clean, surname van den Brink—Anton is Dutch citizen and has grown up speaking Dutch so this is helpful for us too if you get me. Anton—” nibbling on a roll: making a face, spitting a rye seed between his teeth—“Anton works in a bar where many rich people go, off P. C. Hooftstraat, fancy Amsterdam—Gucci Street, Cartier street. Good kid. Speaks English, Dutch, only two words maybe of Russian. Anyway Dima had Anton phone the police and report that he had seen two Germans, one of which answers to precise description of Sascha—granny glasses, ‘Little House on the Prairie’ shirt, tribal tattoo on his hand which Anton is able to draw exactly, from photograph we supplied—anyway, Anton telephoned the art police and told them he had seen these Germans drunk as gods in his bar, arguing, and they are so angry and upset they had left behind—what? A folder! Well of course it is a doctored folder. We were going to do a phone, a doctored phone, but none of us were nerd enough to be sure we did it totally untraceable. So—I printed out some photos… photo I showed you, plus some others that I happened to have on my phone… finch along with relatively recent issue of newspaper to date it, you know. Two years old newspaper but—no matter. Anton just happened to find this folder, see, under a chair, with some other documents from the Miami thing, you know, to connect to prior sighting. Frankfurt address conveniently inserted, as well as Sascha’s name. All this is Myriam’s idea, she deserves the credit, you should buy Myriam big drink when you get back home. FedExed some things from America—very very convincing. It has Sascha’s name, it has—”


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