"As you wish. You're at home around here anyway."
"Stop, please," I said to the chauffeur, and got out. "Thanks for the ride," I said to Natasha, and received no reply. I stood on the sidewalk staring at the Café Hindenburg and listening to the band music that welled from within. German coffee rings were on display in the window of the Café Geiger. Next door hung strings of blood sausage. German was being spoken all around me. Many times over the years I had wondered what it would be like to go back—but I had never thought it would be like this.
IX
At first my work for Silvers consisted in drawing up a catalogue of everything he had ever sold, giving a detailed history of each work since it had left the painter's easel. It wasn't difficult; most of the information could be found in catalogues and in books or monographs on painters.
"The trouble with old paintings," Silvers explained, "is their pedigree. You can't always be sure of their origin. Pictures are like nobility; you've got to be able to follow their genealogy back to the man who painted them. It has to be an unbroken line—from X Church to Cardinal A, from Prince Z's collection down to Rabinowitz, the rubber magnate, or Ford, the automobile king. No morganatic escapades allowed."
"But why do we need all that if we know the picture?"
"We may think we know it, but photography wasn't introduced until the nineteenth century. Sometimes we have contemporary engravings to go by, but not too often. Without a basis for comparison, we're reduced to conjecture." Silvers smiled diabolically. "Or to the judgment of art historians."
I was classifying a pile of photographs. On top lay some color photographs of Manets. Small paintings of flowers, peonies in a water glass- You could feel the blooms and the water. They breathed a wonderful sense of repose and an energy that was pure creation—as though the painter had created those flowers ex nihilo.
"Do you like them?" Silvers asked.
"They're magnificent."
"Better than Renoir's roses on the wall over there?"
"Different," I said. "You can't speak of better and worse in a case like this."
"Oh yes you can, if you're a dealer."
"These Manets are a moment of Creation. The Renoir is a moment of life in all its fullness."
Silvers wagged his head. "Not bad. Were you. a writer before you came here?"
"Only a lousy journalist"
"I belive you could write very well about pictures."
"I'm afraid I don't know enough."
Again Silvers put on his diabolical smile. "Do you think the people who write about painting know any more? I'll let you in on a secret: nobody can write about paintings, or about art in general. Everything that's been written on the subject has only one purpose: to make lowbrows think they know something. Nobody can write about art. One can only feel it"
I made no reply. "And sell it," said Silvers. "Isn't that what you were thinking?''
"No," I said truthfully. "But why do you think I'd be capable of writing about it? Because there's nothing to say?"
"Maybe it's better than being a lousy journalist."
"And maybe not. Maybe it's better to be a lousy but honest journalist than a pretentious phrase-monger writing about art"
Silvers laughed. "Like many Europeans," he said, "you think in extremes. But between your two extremes there are thousands of variants and shadings. Besides, your premises are false. Take me. I wanted to be a painter. I started out as a painter. A lousy one, full of enthusiasm. Now I'm a dealer. Full of the cynicism that characterizes all art dealers. Has anything changed? Did I betray art when I stopped painting bad pictures, or am I betraying art by selling it?"
Silvers offered me a cigar. "Thoughts on a summer afternoon in New York," he said. "Try this cigar. It's the lightest Havana in existence. Are you a cigar smoker?"
"I've never learned to make distinctions. I've smoked whatever I could lay my hands on."
"You're a lucky man!"
I looked up in surprise. "That's a new one on me. Why does that make me lucky?"
"Because you have everything ahead of you—refinement of taste, enjoyment and weariness. The end is always weariness. The lower down you start, the longer it takes you to get there."
"Then you think it's best to start as a barbarian?"
"If you can."
I felt suddenly irritated. I had seen too many barbarians. What good was this drawing-room aestheticism to me? That was for peaceful times. I was sick of this perfumed chitchat, even if I was being paid ten dollars a day for it. To change the subject I pointed to a pile of photographs. "With these," I said, "the pedigree is simpler than with Renaissance paintings. Several centuries less to worry about. Degas and Renoir died only thirty years ago."
"Even so, there are plenty of phony Degas and Renoirs floating around."
"Is an unbroken pedigree the only guarantee?"
Silvers smiled. "That and feeling. You've got to look at hundreds of pictures. Over and over again. For years and years. And study. And compare. And look at them some more."
"That sounds fine," I said, "but how is it that so many museum curators give worthless certificates of authenticity?"
"Some do it against their better knowledge. But that gets around very quickly. Usually they're just mistaken. Why do they make mistakes? That brings us to the difference between a curator and a dealer. The curator buys occasionally— with the museum's money. The dealer buys often, and always with his own money. Believe me, that makes a difference. When the dealer makes a mistake, he loses his money. The curator doesn't lose a cent. His interest in a picture is academic; the dealer's interest is financial. The dealer is more careful."
"True," I said, looking at a Sisley landscape, a flooded countryside.
Silvers followed my eyes. "If you had money," he said, "I'd advise you to buy that Sisley. Sisley is coming up. Still a lot cheaper than Monet. For the moment he's even cheaper than Pissarro. Paintings are the best possible investment. You've seen the little Manets. Ten years ago one of them cost three thousand. Today the price is thirty thousand. In ten years it'll be fifty. Or more. Show me the stocks you can do better with. Do you know what my policy is? To sell as little as possible. What I don't sell increases in value."
That was a little too much. "Then why do you sell at all?"
I was expecting him to tell me that he had to live. But that wasn't his style. With a disarming smile he answered: "Because it amuses me."
I looked at this fashion plate of a man. His suits and shoes were from London, his shirts from Paris. His nails were nicely manicured, and he smelled of French cologne. I saw him and listened to him as though he were sitting behind a glass pane; he seemed to live in a muffled world— a world of bandits and cutthroats, I was sure, but fashionable, well-groomed bandits and cutthroats. Everything he said was true, and then again nothing was true. His whole world seemed strangely unreal. He seemed serene to the point of indifference, but I had the feeling that he could change at any moment into a ruthless businessman, ready to make his way over corpses. He was a lover of frothy, mellifluous phrases; he spent half his time talking about art and he seemed to know a great deal about it, even to understand it; but perhaps, it suddenly struck me, all he really understood about his art works was their prices, because if he really loved them he wouldn't sell them. And by selling them he was enabled to live a life of luxury unknown to the painters who had made it possible. All this fascinated and troubled me; there was something wrong, almost evil, about it—though actually his activities were not too different from other supposedly honest, reputable businesses. The only difference was that he didn't deal in beans or brassières. And wasn't it more refined, more spiritual to deal in art? No, I said to myself, the exact opposite. What he sold was the very life and soul of other men. And yet by buying their works for a song, dealers had often saved poor artists from going hungry. Everything about this business was so ambiguous, so misty and unclear. There was no way of proving that he had ever wronged anyone. It was all perfectly l
egal. If his stock in trade had been something else than Works of art, I wouldn't have given it a thought
Silvers looked at his watch. "Let's knock off for today. I've got to go to my club."
His having to go to a club didn't surprise me in the least That was part of the unreal showcase existence that he seemed to be displaying for my benefit "We'll make out all right together," he said, smoothing the crease in his trousers. I looked at his shoes. Everything he had on was just a shade too elegant His shoes were a little too pointed and a little too light in color. The cut of his suit was a little too perfect, and his tie just a little too expensive-looking.
He glanced at my suit. "Isn't that rather heavy for summer in New York?"
"I can take off the jacket when it's too hot."
"Not here. Buy yourself a tropical worsted. American ready-to-wear is very good. Even millionaires seldom have their suits made to order. Go to Brooks Brothers; or if that's too expensive, to Browning, King. For sixty dollars you'll get something very decent."
He drew a wad of bills from his pocket. I had noticed before that he didn't use a wallet. "Here," he said, peeling off a hundred-dollar bill "Call it an advance."
I felt as if that hundred-dollar bill would burn a hole in my pocket It wasn't too late to go to Browning, King. I raced down Fifth Avenue, saying a silent prayer for Silvers. I would have kept the money and gone on wearing my old suit, but I knew that was impossible. In a few days Silvers would start asking questions.
I turned into Fifty-fourth Street. A little way from the corner there was a small flower shop where I had seen some low-priced orchids. Maybe they weren't too fresh, but that wasn't noticeable. The day before, Melikov had given me the address of the shop where Natasha worked. I had been mulling the matter over and hadn't made up my mind. One moment I decided she was a hysterical chauvinistic fool, and the next that she was a charming, if somewhat high-strung, young lady whom I had needlessly offended. But now I had a hundred dollars, and that settled it. I bought two orchids and sent them to Natasha's address. They cost only five dollars, but they looked more expensive, and that, too, seemed somehow fitting. Then with a load off my mind I went back to Fifth Avenue, happy in the feeling that I had done something silly.
At Browning, King I selected à lightweight gray suit. It fitted me perfectly except that the trousers had to be shortened. "We'll have it for you tomorrow evening," the salesman said.
"Couldn't I have it today?"
"It's pretty late."
"But I need it this evening," I pleaded. "It's urgent."
Of course I didn't need it, but suddenly I was all eagerness. I hadn't bought a suit in years, and all at once a new suit struck me as a sign that my days as a wandering Jew were over, that I would now bé able to settle down to a quiet bourgeois existence.
"I'll ask the tailor," said the salesman.
I stood between long rows of suits and waited. The suits seemed to bear down on me from all sides like an army of automatons, bent on the total elimination of man. The salesman looked strangely anachronistic when he reappeared in their midst. "The tailor says he can do it," he reported. "You can call for it in half an hour."
I walked up Second Avenue. Lowy Senior was decorating his window. I stopped outside in all the splendor of my tropical worsted. He stared at me like an owl in the night and motioned to me with a twentieth-century candlestick to come in. "Beautiful," he said. "Is that the first fruits of your activity as a high-class crook?"
"It's the first fruits of my collaboration with the gentleman you recommended."
Lowy grinned. "A whole suit I can't believe it. You look like a con-man."
"Thanks for the compliment But I'm a beginner, you know."
"You seem to be doing pretty well," he grumbled, while pinning a freshly painted eighteenth-century angel to a square of Genoa velvet "It's a wonder you even talk to small fry like us."
I was speechless with amazement The little man was jealous, though he himself had sent me to Silvers. "Would you rather I'd robbed Silvers?" I asked.
"I didn't tell you to rob him. But I didn't tell you to kiss his ass either!" Lowy adjusted a French chair, half of one leg of which was genuine period. A feeling of warmth rose in me. It was a long time since I had felt that someone with nothing to gain by it was really fond of me. Well, on second thought it hadn't actually been so long. The world was full of good people. You didn't notice it until you were in trouble, and it was a kind of compensation to you for being in trouble.
"What are you gaping at?" Lowy asked.
"You're a good, kind man," I said in all sincerity. "Like a father."
"What?"
"It sounds funny, but I mean it"
"In other words," said Lowy, "you're happy. To talk such baloney you've got to be happy. So the parasite's life appeals to you?" He wiped the dust off his hands. "None of this dirty work for you, eh?" He tossed the soiled towel onto a pile of framed Japanese woodcuts. "Better than here, eh?"
"No," I said.
"Don't give me that"
"Different, Mr. Lowy. What does all that matter when the paintings are so beautiful? They're not parasites."
"No," he said. "They're victims. Imagine how they'd feel if they were alive. Being sold like African slaves, to soap manufacturers, soup manufacturers, armaments manufacturers . . ." He broke off sharp, looking as if he had seen a ghost "My GodI If it isn't Julius. In a dinner jacketl All is lost!"
Lowy Junior appeared in the dingy honey-colored light amid the exhaust fumes of a late afternoon in New York. He wasn't wearing a dinner jacket, but his attire was festive enough: black jacket, striped trousers, and, to my amazement the light-gray spats of another generation.
I looked at the spats with a feeling of nostalgia. I hadn't seen spats since before Hitler.
"Julius!" cried Lowy Senior; "Come in! Don't go! One last word! Think of your poor mother!"
Julius stepped slowly across the threshold. "I have thought of Mother," he said. "And you can't intimidate me, you Jewish fascist!"
"Julius! Don't talk like that! Haven't I always done all I could for you? Watched over you as only an elder brother can, cared for you when you were sick! And now . . ."
"We're twins," Julius explained to me, as though I hadn't known it "My brother is three hours older."
"Three hours can mean more than a lifetime! You were dreamy and impractical, a poet I always had to look out for you, Julius; you know that I always had your welfare in mind, and now you treat me like your worst enemy . . ."
"Because I want to get married."
"Because you want to marry a shicksah! Look at him standing there, Mr. Ross. It's pathetic. Like a goy on his way to the races! Julius, Julius, pull yourself together! All dressed up to propose, like J. P. Morgan! They've given you a love potion. Think of Tristan and Isolde—a lot of good their love potion did them! Already you're calling your own brother a fascist because he's trying to save your life. I'm only asking you to take a nice Jewish girl!"
"Don't pay any attention to my brother," said Julius. "I'm an American. I'm sick of his old-fashioned prejudices."
"Prejudices!" In his agitation, Lowy Senior knocked a porcelain shepherd off its stand, but caught it just in time.
"My God!" cried Julius in spite of himself. "Was that the genuine old Meissen?"
"No, it's the phony we got from Rosenthal." Lowy Senior held up the figure. "Unharmed!"
The incident had a calming effect on them. Julius took back the "Jewish fascist," toning it down to "Zionist" Lowy Senior made one tactical blunder. He brought me into it. "Would you marry a Jewish girl?" he asked me.
"Why not?" I said. "When I was sixteen, my father even advised me to. He said I wouldn't amount to anything if I didn't."
"See!" said Julius.
The discussion went on, with rising and falling intensity. Little by little, by sheer persistence, Lowy Senior gained ground. I had expected as much. If Julius' mind had really been made up, he wouldn't have shown himself on Se
cond Avenue in his proposal costume. He finally agreed, not too reluctantly, to wait a little while.
"You've got nothing to lose," his brother assured him. "Just take your time."
"But suppose somebody else shows up?"
"Nobody else will show up. Hasn't thirty years in business taught you anything? Haven't we said a hundred times that another customer was waiting to snap up some white elephant? And wasn't it always a cheap trick? And now, take off that monkey jacket"
"No," said Julius. "I've got it on and I'm going out"
"Fine. We'll go out to dinner. To a first-class restaurant We'll start with an appetizer! Chopped chicken liver. And we'll wind up with peach Melba. Wherever you like; the sky's the limit!"
"Voisin," said Julius firmly.