Meanwhile we had reached the house where Lipotin had his shop and his room. I was about to take my leave of him when he suddenly said, “Now that you’re here I’ve just remembered that I had a delivery of some rather nice antiques from Bucharest yesterday – you know, the backdoor route by which I occasionally manage to get the odd thing out from under the noses of the Bolsheviks. Nothing sensational, I’m afraid, but there might be something you’d like to cast your eye over. Have you a minute to spare? Why don’t you come up and have a look?”
I hesitated for a moment because I thought there might be a telegram from my friend Gärtner waiting for me at home; it did occur to me that if I stayed out I might miss a rearranged time. But then I remembered my irritation at Gärtner’s lack of punctuality and made up my mind rather more quickly than I intended and without allowing myself the chance to think it over carefully:
“I’ve plenty of time. I’ll come up.”
Lipotin was already pulling an ancient key out of his pocket; the lock grated and I was stumbling through the shop door into the dark room.
I have often visited the Russian’s poky little basement by daylight; it is as romantic in its seediness as one could wish. Had it not been that by normal European standards this damp cellar, ridden with dry rot, was regarded as uninhabitable, Lipotin would have been unlikely to have obtained even this hovel, given the shortage of housing in the years after the Great War.
Lipotin lit the tiny flame of his cigarette lighter and rummaged around in a corner. The gleam of dull light from the alley was not enough to enable me to get my bearings among the pile of fusty jumble. Lipotin’s tiny flame flickered and spluttered like a jack o’ lantern over a dark brown swamp from which lumps and knobs protruded, fragments of half-drowned objects. Finally the meagre light of a candle stump glowed in the corner, at first only illuminating the object in its immediate vicinity, a dreadful, obscene idol in matt polished soapstone; the candle was wedged into a hole in its fist. Lipotin was still bent over it, presumably to see whether the flame would survive on the dusty wick; – it looked as if he were performing some sketchy, secretive ritual before the idol. Then, in the cold flicker of the candle, his fingers finally fumbled their way to a paraffin lamp and soon a relatively cosy glow spread from its green glass. I had spent the whole time cramped motionless in a corner and now I heaved a sigh of relief.
“The mystery of ‘Let there be light’ unfolding step by step, just as in the days of creation!” I called to Lipotin. “After such a revelation of the three-fold intensification of the sacred flame, how mean and vulgar is our unpoetic electric switch.”
From the corner where Lipotin was bustling about came his dry, almost croaking voice:
“Quite right, my dear sir. If you move too quickly out of the benign darkness into the brightness, you will ruin your eyes. That sums up your history, you Europeans.”
I was forced to laugh. There we had it again, that asiatic arrogance which – hey presto! – turned a wretched back-street basement into a positive advantage. I was tempted to take up the pointless argument about the advantages or disadvantages of our beloved electricity industry, for I knew that such challenges usually drew a few witty, if caustic, remarks from Lipotin, but glancing around the room my eye was suddenly caught by the dull golden glow of a beautifully carved, antique Florentine frame around a spotted, clouded mirror. I gave it a close examination and could immediately see that it was excellent, very painstaking and yet sensitive workmanship from the seventeenth century. The frame appealed to me so much that I felt an immediate urge to have it in my possession.
“I see you have already found one of the pieces that arrived yesterday”, said Lipotin and came over to me, “but the worst one. It’s valueless.”
“The mirror, you mean? That certainly.”
“The frame as well”, said Lipotin. His face, greenish in the rays of the lamp, was suffused with a reddish glow as he inhaled deeply on the cigar in his mouth.
“The frame?” I hesitated. Lipotin did not think it was genuine. That was his affair! But immediately I felt ashamed of my instinctive collector’s reaction when dealing with someone as poor as Lipotin. He was watching me closely. Had he noticed that I felt ashamed? Strange – something akin to disappointment flitted across his face. I had an uncanny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I finished my sentence on a note of defiance: “The frame is, in my opinion, good.”
“Good? Certainly! But a copy. Made in St. Petersburg. I sold the original years ago to Prince Yussupoff.”
Hesitantly I turned the mirror this way and that in the light of the lamp. I am well acquainted with the quality of St. Petersburg forgeries. The Russians rival the Chinese in the art. And yet: this frame was genuine! – – – Then, quite by chance, concealed on the underside of a voluptuously curving piece of scrollwork, I discovered the mark of the Florentine studio, half hidden by the old varnish. The collector in me rebelled against the idea of revealing my discovery to Lipotin. Honour would be satisfied if I stuck by my original judgment.
