Aaron Elkins: Old Scores

"To begin, he is an uneducated man, our Vachey," Froger instructed us. "Rich, of course, very rich, and admittedly self-taught to a certain extent, but deeply jealous of those, like ourselves, who have a more profound understanding of art, a better-trained and more disciplined eye. It is the natural envy of the self-made man toward those whose tastes have been developed and refined through the generations. What was his father?" He laughed. "A cutter in a belt factory. A Lithuanian belt cutter!"

Lorenzo, who saw no contradiction in being one of the wealthiest men in Florence and a full-fledged egalitarian at the same time, objected in his mild way. "Oh, well, I don't know that I would say-"

On flowed Froger, pompous and oracular. "And so he lays his plans, he licks his chops, he sets his snare. He will show the world who is the smarter. Gentlemen…" He paused dramatically. "… do not be fooled. Do not fall into his trap. It is you I address in particular, Mr. Norgren."

"I beg your pardon?" My attention had lapsed a bit. Like Charpentier, I was still concentrating on the quenelles. (I wasn't conversing with them yet, however.)

"This so-called Rembrandt," he said. "You're not seriously thinking of accepting it, I hope."

"I might," I said. "I'll decide after I have a chance to study it tomorrow."

He shook his head, writing me off as a lost cause. "And his so-called Leger, to whom is he donating that precious masterpiece? Has he told you?"

"Told me? No."

"You don't know?"

"No."

"I understand he intends to give it to a museum here in France," Lorenzo put in.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Froger said grimly. "I will do everything I can to prevent it. What the Seattle Art Museum in America does is not my affair. It is France I care for, France, which has always been the custodian of the torch of civilization." His voice quavered with emotion. "I will not stand idly by and see the museums of France mocked and ridiculed. I will not stand by and see our nation's luster tarnished yet again by this buffoon Vachey." His heavy fist thumped the table. Dishes jiggled. Echoes of "La Marseillaise" throbbed in the warm air.

It was too much for Charpentier. "God in heaven," he muttered. "Torch of civilization"… "our nation's luster." He wiped his lips with a napkin. He wiped his fingers. He flung the napkin to the tablecloth.

Froger looked at him coldly. "You find the phrases objectionable?"

"My dear Edmond. Who, precisely, placed the torch of civilization in France's care? Where was France's luster' in 1940, when-"

"This," said Froger, turning redder, or rather purpler, "is no way to speak in front of… I'etrangers." He cocked his head toward Lorenzo and me, in case anyone wasn't sure who the "etrangers" at the table were.

Charpentier laughed indulgently. "Mr. Norgren, what is your symbol?"

"My symbol?"

"The symbol of your country, your national emblem, the living creature that represents America." "Oh. A bald eagle."

"An eagle. And yours, Mr. Bolzano?"

"Ah, well, that is not so easy to say, ah-ha-ha. The name 'Italia' derives in all probability from the ancient Romans' term for 'land of oxen'-"

"Yes, good. Eagles, keen of sight and fierce. Oxen, powerful and resolute. Of course. Naturally. And ours?" Charpentier asked Froger? "What is France's?"

Froger eyed him malevolently, his mouth clamped shut, but Charpentier waited him out.

"Le coq," Froger finally mumbled through set lips.

"Precisely," Charpentier said dryly. "Le coq." He picked up his napkin again, shook it out, and replaced it on his lap. "What I would like to know," he said, dropping his chin so that he peered out at us from under those tangled eyebrows, grumpy and droll at the same time, "is just how we can expect the world to take seriously a country that chooses a chicken as its national symbol?"

Lorenzo and I managed (just barely) not to laugh, but the conversation took a decided downturn anyway. Froger was miffed and stayed miffed. Charpentier had but one more contribution to make, informing us in a by-the-way tone that the term chauvinism derived from one Nicholas Chauvin, a patriotic nineteenth-century Frenchman. After that he dropped out of things too, to continue communing with his meal, and even the endlessly effervescent Lorenzo couldn't seem to figure out how to get things going again.

The main course didn't help any. Served with a show-stopping, velvety burgundy from the hallowed Romanee-Conti vineyards just down the road, it was Burgundy's best-known gift to fine cuisine, tender and fragrant with the thyme, shallots, and red wine in which it had been simmered.

Coq au vin, what else?

After that came the traditional French salad of lettuce with vinaigrette dressing (gorgonzola and walnuts were not options), followed by some local cheeses with which to "finish" the wine, as they say here, and a very pleasant practice it is. Then a chocolate souffle that I was too full to eat, although it hurt me to look at it sitting there in front of me; and finally small, welcome cups of potent black coffee.

Charpentier and Froger were just heaping prodigious amounts of sugar into their coffees-this being one of the few serious defects of the French palate-when someone at the head table, which was located at one end of the room under four mullioned windows paned with ancient bull's-eye glass, called for attention.

A moment later, Vachey's thin, sprightly figure arose at the center of the table. Trim and natty, if a bit archaic in an old-fashioned white dinner jacket, he waited for the chairs to finish scraping on the stone floor as people turned to face him. His eyes, darting over his audience, were no less twinkly than they'd been that morning in his study, maybe more so. For a moment his glance rested warmly on me, and his eyebrows lifted in a quick greeting before he addressed his audience.

"My dear friends," he said in French, his voice lively and distinct, "thank you for joining me on this happy occasion. I know that you are impatient to see, collected publicly in one place for the first time, the most beautiful of the works of art which it has been my privilege to safeguard…"

Sauvegarder, I liked that. Not "own" or "acquire," as so many collectors would say, but "safeguard." I knew Charpentier agreed, because I saw his head dip in a minuscule nod of approval.

"… and, of course, the wonderful, newly discovered masterpieces by Rembrandt and Leger, so fortuitously rescued from a dusty and dangerous obscurity."

"Masterpieces," Froger huffed under his breath.

Some people applauded Vachey. Others peered at him in flint-eyed silence. The assemblage seemed to be made up of Vachey-haters and Vachey-lovers in about equal measure, or possibly with the haters having a slight edge. I was getting less sure all the time of which camp I belonged in.

Vachey then asked the Minister of Culture, a smiling but manifestly wary woman named Irene Lebreton, to stand up. With her at his side he publicly pledged to the Louvre, effective on his seventy-fifth birthday, all of the paintings that were on view that evening, "with the exception, of course, of the Rembrandt and the Leger." While flash-cameras clicked and whirred-the photographers and TV people had set up shop in a cleared area in front of the table-Madame Lebreton shook hands with him and accepted politely but guardedly on behalf of the nation. With gifts from Vachey, people knew they had to stay on their toes.

There was further applause, a little more enthusiastic than before, as the minister returned to her chair, stopping first to lean over, shake hands, and say a few words to a smirky, overweight young man who sat on Vachey's other side.

This, Lorenzo told me, was Vachey's son, Christian, who was not currently the apple of his father's eye. He had recently squandered almost all that was left of the fortune he'd inherited from his mother, Vachey's dead wife, in a seamy venture into bauxite mining in Venezuela. Before that it had been a Tanzanian cement factory, and before that a seaweed processing plant in New Caledonia. There was a conviction for tax evasion in his past, and well-founded rumors of associations with the Mob in both France and the United States. For the last decade he'd spent half of each year in Miami, but six months ago he'd given up his house there-two steps ahead of the law, according to Lorenzo- and returned with his tail between his legs to Dijon, where he'd been living on his father's sufferance ever since.