“We already use those three old tricks recreating Maya antiques of 800 to 1500 a.d.
Which is yours?”
“None. We do something utterly new.”
“You said there’s no other ploy.”
“There isn’t. Yet.”
They all stared suspicion. “Your scheme is new?”
“Utterly. Pristine.” I gave them a second, timing it. “Song Ping lived in China in the 1870s, an artist. Using the old Trans-Siberian Railroad, he visited Paris during the Impressionists’ battles over the salon exhibitions. He saw Monet’s works, Renoir’s, Sisley’s, met them and developed his own style. He returned to China hoping to popularize the movement. Admitted, his exhibitions were failures. But he worked on.
Only lately has a glimmer of his genius begun to filter out. China is frantically trying to collar his fabulous masterpieces. He even developed a late post-Impressionist period, Van Gogh and all that. And influenced a group of Chinese artists likewise…”
Pause. Then: “What are his paintings worth?”
“Currently? Pennies. But eventually we should wangle a start price of, say, three thousand ounces of gold.” I avoided the shifting sands of paper-money prices. “The auction price of the first Song Ping will determine all his later works.”
“You have one?” The world leaned in anticipation. Even Ling Ling unfroze momentarily.
“Ah, no. There you have me.” I was so sad. “It’s always other people who’re lucky. Lora Leighton’s lost painting, Sybil, was found in a Connecticut gents’ lav. We can’t wait for that kind of luck.”
“But you know where Song Pings can be obtained?” Fatty’s anger was swelling him visibly. “You told Song Ping’s name to Dr. Surton. You are a traitor.”
They knew about that too. Okay, I was used to everybody knowing everything. That nice girl with the tea, probably. “We need Surton’s help.”
“Help in what?”
“In making Song Ping come back to life.”
They all blanched. For a second I remembered about local superstitions, ghosts. Fatty swayed gigantically, silly sod.
“Explain.” From Ling Ling, the only one with any composure.
“I’m Song Ping,” I said. They recoiled. I grinned and shook my head. “No. Not me me.
Song Ping never existed, see? Got the name from the South China Morning Post.
Therefore I need help to make him up. And”—I smiled sincerely—“all his works. Have faith.”
24
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A brief note about prices, and faith.
If you’re keen on antiques, be careful. When money and antiques mix, somebody comes off worst. Pick up a rarity cheap and you’ve “stolen” it, according to some. Like the dealer Rohan, who in the early 1920s paid highly (?100, a lot those days) for a stupendous ancient George Ravenscroft wine goblet, sold it instantly for ?300, and actually wrote a book bragging about his astuteness. Leaving aside the question of the goblet’s current value (almost priceless), antiques is a game of buyers’ keepers. Now, Rohan behaved perfectly properly. If a buy turns out a dud, you’ve no redress no matter what the dealers promise. So, if that tatty painting turns out to be a Constable, that chair Chippendale, that old timepiece a costly 1680 London hooded clock, and you got it for a song, keep hold no matter what people say. You paid in fairness, so it’s yours—finish. As the antiques trade says, the complainer wouldn’t do the opposite with the opposite. Meaning if you bought a dud, the vendor wouldn’t chase after you to return your payment, right?
The point of all this is price. It’s easy to decide the cost, say, of a loaf. The farmer must grow the grain, harvest it. Somebody winnows, bakes, delivers. Add all that up and you’re heading for the minimum-possible price of your loaf, bicycle, house, anything.
Anything except antiques, that is. Because there’s something called faith.
Faith’s dicey stuff, but when it’s around it’s heap-big medicine. It’s why people queue in the street to pay zillions for a few daubs of pigment on a tatty bit of canvas—just because a bloke called Monet did the daubing. It’s faith—faith that everybody else would also give zillions for the same painting if they had that much. I mean, authenticity’s in the mind of the holder. I think Schwarz’s theory—that Mona Lisa’s face is actually Leonardo da Vinci’s—is barmy, though. Well, what can you expect from computers?
No. It’s prices and faith. In antiques they are inseparable.
At the Digga Dig, If-Ever letters, as I call them, were arriving. Chok, one of the waiters, kept them for me. The first was from Lorna expressing misery and saying If Ever I was in the States… A second came from her wanting me to phone, write, send photographs—me, who’d crack any camera at four hundred yards—and saying she was trying to wangle a return buying trip soon. She sent three photos of herself in affluent surroundings.
And the presents. Women baffle me. I couldn’t get the hang of it. All the rewards were coming my way for a change. I was briefly tempted by a Monaco lady called Gabriella, if I’ve got her name right, who said I’d love her Mediterranean villa If Ever… About that time I was shocked by the sight of Algernon’s face on the front page: The idiot was doing well at practice laps in Macao. Unnervingly, he was even interviewed on television, large as life. I prayed he’d start losing and retire home. Now I was secure at least for a day or two, he was the last person on earth I wanted. I pulled myself together and headed for the Surtons’.
It was the first time I’d been inside a proper house in Hong Kong. The Surtons had really put themselves out, so I put myself out too. I tried to be charming, pleasant, anxious, and diffident. I admired everything they showed me.
