My supplier was mostly Piccolo Pete, a hybrid Florentine engineer who has his own furnaces and retorts straight out of the mid-nineteenth century. The place he uses was actually an artist colorman’s factory in 1875. Sometimes, however, Piccolo naughtily perpetuates old frauds. Vowing murder if he’d done me, I analyzed the red lead. You heat it in an earthenware crucible, then add nitric acid—a reddish undissolved powder shows if scoundrels have adulterated the pigment with red brick dust. Nope, in the clear. So I tested for red ochre by boiling the red lead in muriatic acid, then some mumbo jumbo with potash solutions, and watched for the colored precipitate. Another no. Honest old Piccolo Pete. He’d just saved his legs.
Cunning old me, I’d ordered two different sets of test reagents to check on everybody.
All my checks gave identical results. Three-Wheel Archie from East Anglia was my choice for white lead—flake or “silver” white they called it—because I knew he’d been making a massive batch the old way (thin sheets of lead hung over malt vinegar in closed vessels placed on dung heaps; the lead nicked from old church roofs of the right vintage). I was a bit narked because Archie must have sold his unexpected Chinese buyer his entire stock. This hurt: he’d promised it to me. Friendship, I thought bitterly.
To my relief, the canvases in the huge crate were sublime, a dream. All were French, not modern stuff phonily antiqued up but genuine handloom weave. The old weavers could only throw the shuttle about a yard, which decided the sizes. Most, of course, were landscape canvases, No. 5 to 30 (these size numbers only meant the original price in sous), and a few marine canvases. I’d ordered some horizontals, No. 40 to 80. I was delighted. The wood stretchers were original oldies. And one or two of the canvases were definitely “cleaners”—old paintings from which the picture had been removed, leaving the ancient canvas waiting for a new but fake antique picture. It’s the crudest of deceptions, for it means killing an antique to replace it by a dud. But my life was at stake. The lost paintings would understand—I hoped.
“Right,” I told Marilyn. “Dress summery, as a Parisian Lady, 1875. Duty calls.”
29
« ^ »
IS there ever truth in rumor?” Dr. Chao asked the television interviewer. I turned up the volume because of the traffic noise through the balcony window. I’d shot back to Steerforth’s place when Sim the swine sent word Dr. Chao would be on after the news.
“Reports say you paid seven figures for a rare painting—”
“Impossible,” Dr. Chao interrupted blandly. “Who pays millions for a work by an unknown artist?”
“Unknown? To Hong Kong and the Western art markets, yes. But reports suggest that the painter is Chinese —”
“Reports! Rumors!” Dr. Chao spread his hands.
“So there is no truth in reports that an old painting has arrived, changed hands for a fortune? That China offers a substantial sum for its return?”
Dr. Chao was astonished. “Why do you ask me these things? Secret shipments of valuable antiques, the payments in gold, these are impossibilities. You should ask Sotheby’s, not a simple doctor.”
“Thank you,” said the interviewer.
The taipan smiled with serenity. A cartoon came on.
Pretty good. There were enough clues to tell Hong Kong that Dr. Chao was fibbing.
Nothing fails to convince like a denial. Mind you, it was never in doubt, seeing that the Triad owned the interviewer, and the station itself for all I knew. Pawn to king four.
Game on.
Freedom too is absolute. I felt king of Hong Kong, now being allowed to roam. There was the odd blip from my two dark-suited watchers, Leung and Ong, but I only had to mention that my wanderings were authorized and they faded like snow off a duck. “The artistic impulse must flourish untrammeled,” Ling Ling said in melodious judgment, so I could go anywhere, anytime—in bounds, of course. The phone was barred; no letters, telegrams.
There are tales of folk becoming “island-happy,” meaning slightly deranged from claustrophobia brought on by Hong Kong’s smallness. I don’t understand it because the place really is all things to all men. Hong Kong never disappoints. Every feature is larger than life. Turn a corner and you happen on a dancing dragon, its giant head grinning in multicolored celebration and noisily stopping traffic. Another few paces and an entire shop front is covered in artificial flowers and glittering draperies, with musicians and incense calling on the gods for lucky trade. And I learned what truly defined Hong Kong for me: the clack-clack-clack of thick wooden sandals, the clicks of the abacus, mah-jongg counters rattling, the tock of gambling chips. Every side street sounds full of pendulum clocks from the combined sounds of movement, money, gambling, more movement for still more risky money.
And I started painting.
Marilyn—I’d given her Chinese name up—sat for me. I used any old oil paper for the sketches. She was nervous but got used to me blundering about, spinning her round, peering at her face hours at a time. I’ve never had a model of my own, so I was learning too. Art fires you up. And, me being me, I naturally rabbited on all the time about past scams, the Impressionists, my past mistakes, the world of fakery we all inhabit, how antiques constitute the only true faith…
Calling to see how old Surton was managing, I casually introduced my problem.
“How marvelous to have a place like this,” I said enviously. “To work. I’d love to have somewhere to try out some of Song Ping’s painting techniques.”
His mezzanine room was done out as a study, with a long bench to lay out work. He was showing me a proof of Song Ping’s first catalog, printed on authentic Chinese paper and in typefaces of Canton in the Victorian era. Dt. Chao’s laborers were worthy of their hire.
“I do sympathize, Lovejoy. Couldn’t your firm help?” The pillock’s logic irritated me.
“No.” I was so sad. “Living rents are, er, not tax-deductible. Accountants.”
“Hey!” His specs gleamed. “We have a roof room, quite unused!”
