Aaron Elkins: Old Scores

And here he was, astride, unless I was mistaken, one of his favorite metaphysical hobbyhorses, the mind-bending notion that there is no valid distinction between an original work of art and a forgery. If you're thinking, so what, that was merely the same thing Vachey had been telling me that morning, then you've missed the gist of Lorenzo's speech. (Don't blame yourself.) Vachey had been probing into the elements of perception that affect our attitudes toward art and forgery. An unsettling topic, considering the situation, but not unreasonable in itself. Lorenzo was carrying things a giant step further, maintaining that there was simply no difference-literally no difference-between authentic art and counterfeit art, and that any distinction we tried to impose was purely artificial, with no aesthetic, empirical, or other foundation.

Did he really believe it? As far as I could tell: yes. That and a lot of other equally goofy ideas. Or maybe he didn't quite believe them, but he was so in love with the words and the crazy, convoluted philosophical mazes they led through that it was the next best thing to believing them.

But if he was a crackpot, he was an amiable crackpot, fun to argue with, unfanatical, obsessed not so much with his cockeyed theories as with the pleasures of argument. He could even be lucid and down-to-earth for long periods-sometimes minutes at a time-and was, moreover, one of the gentlest, sweetest-tempered people I knew, always a pleasure to run into. And there he was, gesticulating over his plate, gawky and hollow-chested, bald and beaky-nosed, his button eyes shiny with the excitement of discourse.

He was at a table with two other men, both of whom I'd met before. One was the stout and self-important Edmond Froger, director of the Musee Barillot, and part-time art critic for the Revue Critique d'Art. The Barillot, you may remember, was the small Dijon museum from which Vachey had temporarily stolen-excuse me, had caused to be taken-six paintings, about a decade earlier. That incident, while amusing to many, had never struck Froger's funny bone, and his continuing antipathy to Vachey was no secret. What he was doing there as Vachey's guest was anybody's guess.

The other person was Jean-Luc Charpentier, a member of the Chambre des Experts d'Objets d'Art, one of several influential French societies of independent, certified art experts who valuated art objects and issued certificates of authenticity for dealers and auction houses. The Chambre des Experts was one of the more prominent of the chambres specializing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European art, with Charpentier's specialty being the latter.

A resolutely crusty and sharp-tongued man, he was at this moment devoting his attention to the pate de campagne that had been laid out on the tables ahead of time, grumbling in an undertone to himself, or maybe to the pate, as he spread it on a slice of bread. Listening to Lorenzo for too long affected different people different ways, and talking to the chopped liver didn't really seem that extraordinary.

As always, a little inattention wasn't bothering Lorenzo. "If, on the other hand," he went blithely on, "we take as our starting point a postexistential, that is to say, a subjectivist and therefore multidimensional perspective, then we see, ah-ha-ha, that 'reality' is no more than a convenient metaphor for a many-layered… Christopher! Ha, I heard you would be here!"

He shouted this with a transparent joy that did my heart good, and jumped up, lanky arms outspread. After a clumsy Mediterranean embrace (Lorenzo wasn't any better at it than I was), he herded me to the one vacant chair. "Come, sit, join us!"

Froger grunted at me and extended a hand as I sat down. Charpentier merely grunted.

I watched regretfully as the waiters cleared away the pate before I'd had a chance to taste it, but cheered up when it was followed immediately by hefty but delicate salmon quenelles in a bearnaise sauce, with an artfully arranged border of curled, rosy shrimp. A round of Clos Blanc de Vougeot was poured-Vachey certainly wasn't cutting any corners-and we fell to. In Burgundy, one is expected to pay attention to the food.

But Lorenzo was one of those people who preferred talking to eating regardless of where he was, and in a minute or two he was back at it, gesturing with his fork as if to hurry the luscious dumplings down his gullet.

"Well, then, Christopher," he said, "you're just in time to settle an argument for us."

I laughed, not averse to a little Lorenzian hairsplitting. "What's the argument?" So far I hadn't heard any argument. Just Lorenzo.

"The issue is," he said, "do we defer to a false objectivist contextualism-"

"Objectivist contextualism," I heard Charpentier mutter, head down. Now he was talking to his quenelles.

"-contextualism that persists in confusing its own paltry, artificial system of reference with the universal dynamism of-"

"No, that's not the issue," Edmond Froger said with a burst of impatience. He leaned forward over the table, beefy and aggressive, perceptibly taking over the conversation. "The issue is, what is our friend Vachey up to?"

Lorenzo, who was actually quite easy to cut in on, once you found a place to do it, blinked and fell silent.

"Consider," Froger said. "This is a great day for France, yes? Everyone knows that tonight he will announce the donation of the greatest paintings of his collection to the Louvre. Unquestioned masterpieces all; I admit it freely. A magnificent gesture and worthy of unqualified admiration if that were all there was to it. But what does he do? He decides to use what should be an uncontroversial demonstration of generosity to 'reveal'-that is his word, gentlemen-two previously unknown 'masterpieces' that are by no means unquestioned. These he has kept a jealously guarded secret until tonight. Why has he kept them a secret?"

He paused to eye us all, one by one. No one offered an answer. We knew a rhetorical question when we heard one.

"And he refuses to permit any… scientific… testing of them whatsoever. Whatsoever. I ask you. Why?"

He lifted his wine to his mouth, drinking while he chewed. Small eyes watched us over the rim of the glass.

"I will tell you why," he said, as I hadn't doubted that he would. "They are inauthentic, that is why. Forgeries. I said so from the beginning, I say so now, and I do not doubt that I will say so after they are 'revealed.' I am not an underhanded man; I have said it openly, isn't that so, Jean-Luc?"

"Don't drag me into this, Edmond," Charpentier said crankily. "I'm not as accomplished as you are. I still find it necessary to see works of art before I judge them."

Charpentier's face went along with his manner: wild, beetling, devilish eyebrows that made him look as if he were scowling even when he wasn't; liverish lips that always seemed to be poised on the edge of ridicule or scorn; and a great, fierce, ruddy gunnysack of a nose, frequently used for contemptuous snorting. Despite all this, I must admit that I had always found him good company. Things rarely remained dull very long with Charpentier around.

Froger eyed him for a moment. "Pah," he said. "The trouble with me is that I say what I think, I don't pussyfoot around just because someone might be offended. Vachey knows very well what I think. It's a matter of public record."

So it probably was. Froger didn't miss many chances to denounce Vachey in the monthly columns he wrote for the Revue. I can't say that I blamed him, given the circumstances.

"And just what is he after, our man Vachey?" Froger went on. "Let me tell you what is in his mind." He finished his quenelles, swallowed some wine, and made some pontifical throat-clearing noises while he arranged his thoughts to tell us what was in Vachey's mind.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: This was, of course, the same Froger Tony had referred to as a horse's ass the other day. One of his more acute assessments, in my opinion.