Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“Now,” he said, lapsing into his usual Chevalier English, “I go to do several excruciating errands for Mama. I attend you in a half-hour at Queenie’s.”

He waved, swung gallantly onto the saddle of the Vespa and. hair and scarf streaming, dodged down the bustling street toward the British embassy. Roberta watched him for a moment, then turned toward the door. In the window of the gallery there was a large painting done in shades of purple that might have represented a washing machine or a nightmare. Roberta scanned it swiftly and thought, It’s a cinch I can do better than that, and opened the door and went in.

The gallery was small and plushly carpeted, with many paintings jammed together on the walls, a good many of them by the purple-washing-machine man in the window or his disciples. There was one visitor, a man of about fifty in a coat with a mink collar and a beautiful black Homburg hat. The owner of the gallery, distinguished by a red carnation in his buttonhole and a wary and at the same time predatory expression on a thin, disabused face, stood behind and a little to one side of the man in the fur-trimmed coat. His white hands twitched gently at his sides, as though he were ready instantaneously to produce a blank check or seize the potential client if he showed signs of flight.

Roberta introduced herself to Monsieur Patrini, the owner of the gallery, in her best French, and Patrini said brusquely, in perfect English, “Yes, Raimond says you’re not without talent. Here, you can use this easel.”

He stood about ten feet away from the easel, frowning slightly, as though he were remembering a dish at lunch that hadn’t quite agreed with him, as Roberta took the first watercolor out of her portfolio and placed it on the easel. The sight of the painting did not cause any change in Patrini’s expression. He still looked as though he was being mildly haunted by a too-rich sauce or a fish that had been too long in transit from Normandy. He made no comment. Every once in a while his lips twisted minutely, as if in digestive pain, and Roberta took this as a sign of progress and put the next painting on the easel. In the middle of the exhibition, Roberta became conscious that the man in the Homburg hat had given up his examination of the pictures on the walls and was standing off a little to one side, looking at her watercolors as she slid them one by one onto the easel. She was so intent on trying to discover some sign of reaction on Patrini’s face that she never even glanced at the man in the Homburg hat throughout the entire performance.

Patrini’s lips made a final gaseous twitch.

“There,” Roberta said flatly, hating him and resigned to failure, “that’s the lot.”

“Ummm … huh … umm,” Patrini said. He had a very low bass voice and for a moment Roberta was afraid that he had said something in French and she had been unable to understand it. But then he went on, in English. “There is a certain promise,” he said. “Deeply buried.”

“Forgive me, cher ami ,” said the man in the Homburg hat. “There is a great deal more than that.” His English sounded as if he had lived all his life at Oxford, although he was clearly a Frenchman. “My dear young lady,” he went on, taking off his hat and revealing a marvelously barbered head of iron-gray hair, “I wonder if I could bother you further. Would you be good enough to put your paintings all around the gallery so that I might study them and compare them without haste?”

Roberta looked numbly at Patrini. She was sure that she had let her mouth fall open and she shut it with a loud click of teeth. “ Mon cher Baron,” Patrini was saying, his face suddenly transformed by a brilliant, demi-social, demi-com-mercial smile, “may I present a young American friend of great talent, Miss Roberta James. Miss James, the Baron de Ummhuhzediers.”

That was what the name sounded like to Roberta, and she cursed herself again for not having yet gotten the hang of French names, even as she tried to smile graciously at the gray-haired Frenchman. “Of course,” she said, her voice an octave too high. “I’d be delighted.” She began to grab paintings off the pile on the easel and stand them indiscriminately on the floor against the walls. Patrini, suddenly spry and professional, helped her, and within two minutes, the work of eight months was spread all around the gallery in an impromptu one-woman show.

No word was spoken for a long time. The Baron moved from painting to painting, standing minutes before some of them, passing others quickly, his hands behind his back, a slight, polite smile touching his lips. Occasionally he nodded gently. Roberta stood to one side, anxiously peering at each painting as the Baron approached it, trying to see it anew with those shrewd, experienced eyes. Patrini subtly stood at the window, his back to the room, staring out at the traffic of the busy street outside, the echo of whose passage made a constant hush-hush in the carpeted, warm room.

At last the Baron spoke. He was standing in front of a painting Roberta had made at the zoo at Vincennes, of some children in pale blue ski suits looking in at the leopard’s cage. “I’m afraid I can’t make up my mind,” he said, not taking his eyes off the painting. “I can’t decide whether I want this one or”—he walked slowly along the wall—“or this one here.” He nodded at one of Roberta’s latest, one of her shop windows.

“If I may make a suggestion,” Patrini said, turning swiftly into the room at the sound of a customer’s voice. “Why don’t you take them both home for study and make up your mind at your leisure?”

“If the young lady wouldn’t mind.” The Baron turned deferentially, almost pleadingly, toward Roberta.

“No,” Roberta said, struggling to keep from shouting, “I wouldn’t mind.”

“Excellent,” the Baron said crisply. “I’ll send my man to pick them up tomorrow morning.” He made a little bow, put on his beautiful black hat over his beautiful iron-gray hair and went through the door which Patrini had magically opened for him.

When the Baron had disappeared, Patrini came back briskly into the shop and picked up the two paintings the Baron had chosen. “Excellent,” Patrini said. “It confirms an old belief of mine. In certain cases it is advisable for the client to meet the artist at the very beginning.” With the two watercolors under his arm, he peered critically at a monochromatic wash of a nude that Roberta had painted at Raimond’s studio. “Perhaps I’ll keep that one around for a week or two, also,” Patrini said. “If I pass the word around that the Baron is interested in your work, it may stir one or two of my other clients in your direction.” He picked up the nude, too. “The Baron has a famous collection, as you know, of course.”

“Of course,” Roberta lied.

“He has several excellent Soutines, quite a few Matisses, and a really first-class Braque. And, of course, like everybody else, several Picassos. When I hear from him, I’ll drop you a line.” The telephone rang in the little office at the back of the shop and Patrini hurried away to answer it, carrying the three paintings with him. Soon he was involved in an intense, whispered conversation, the tone of which suggested a communication in code between two intelligence agents.

Roberta stood irresolutely for a while in the middle of the shop, then gathered all her paintings and put them back into the portfolio. Patrini was still whispering into the telephone in the office. Roberta went to the door of the office and stood there until he looked up. “ Au revoir, Mademoiselle ,” he said, waving a white hand at her gently, and lapsed back into his coded mumble.

Roberta would have preferred more ceremony for the occasion. After all, this was the first time anybody had ever expressed even the vaguest intention of buying a painting of hers. But Patrini gave no indication that he might conclude his conversation before midnight, and he had clearly dismissed her. So she smiled uncertainly at him and left.