“And”-he tipped his head forward in a polite bow, smiling-“Charles Rousset.”
“My Gahhhhd! I don’t believe it!”
“Oh, do, Edie. You really must.” Corsier laughed as Edie stepped outside and embraced him. She was wearing a long peasant skirt and a cotton blouse hanging loose to distract from the fact that she no longer had much of a definable waist. Her long honey-colored hair was shot through with gray, and she had it pulled back and piled in a rough chignon. She was thicker now, but even so there was something undeniably sensual about her that made hugging her a pleasure. She smelled of lavender and the musk of oil paints.
She stepped back and put the palm of one hand against his goatee. “This becomes you, dear. Very fetching.” He smiled. “The Schieles,” she said. “I did these… these darlings for you?”
“Indeed.”
“Oh, Claude!” She clapped her hands together. “Quelle intrigue!”
They had tea on the frumpy terrace and brought each other up-to-date on the gossipy parts of their lives in the intervening five years since they had seen each other. Corsier, of course, left out almost everything, and he supposed that Edie did also.
“Well,” she said finally, setting aside the tiny wicker tea table and putting her hands on her knees, which were spread apart underneath the long skirt, “let’s get down to business.”
She got up and returned in a moment with two drawing boards with butcher’s paper covering the image on each. She propped them against the legs of the tea table and went out again, returning instantly with two thin easels, which she set up with their backs to the house so that the pictures would catch the light from the sea. She put a board on each easel and removed the papers. Then she stepped back beside Corsier so that they could look at the pictures together.
Corsier smiled. He was thrilled.
“You like them, then,” she said.
“They’re perfect.” He got up from his chair and went over to look at each of them more closely. “Edie,” he said, his face glued to the pictures, “these are exquisite.”
“Schiele,” she said, “the man’s a freak. Insane.” She came up beside Corsier. “You were very precise, as usual, Claude. I confess, I wasn’t always sure I was doing the right thing. You said to have her arms thus, as in this picture. Her legs thus. Her hair thus, but opposite, as in that picture. Her eyes looking directly at you, but vacant.”
“I left the color to you.”
“I knew them. I remember the originals that I’ve seen as though I had owned them myself.”
She pondered her drawings. “Despite your assurances to the contrary, I had a friend in Berlin send me some old drawing paper he had salvaged from a prewar paper mill near Munich. It’ll pass close examination, but not a chemical analysis. The pencil wasn’t a problem. Getting the right shade on the watercolor was a little tough.”
Corsier stepped back again from the two pictures, each of them roughly twenty-one inches high by fourteen inches wide. Both of them were unabashed exhibitionist portrayals of the female body, the distinctive mark of Egon Schiele. The first was a pencil drawing of a nude woman standing, looking at herself in the mirror. The back of the woman was nearest the viewer, and then another, smaller image of the woman was seen from the front, behind the first image, this one being the actual reflection. She was vamping for the artist, wearing only black stockings pulled up to midthigh. She had short bobbed hair and thin, horizontal eyes encircled by smoky shading.
The second picture was of two nude young women, done in pencil and watercolor. The two women lounged on a dark amethyst drapery. One of them had bobbed hair, the other long raven tresses. Their pubic hair was as jet as their ringlets, and there were pale splotches of lilac on their cheeks and nipples. Both of them were looking at the artist, one of them from the corners of her eyes as though she were just in the beginning movements of looking away.
“Nineteen eleven,” Corsier said. “I wanted them to precede his harsh, ectomorphic later works. You’ve done a wonderful job, Edie, of making them sensual while hinting at the meanness that was soon to dominate his style.”
“Those rather prissy mouths,” Edie said. “I liked doing them. I liked doing the eyes.” She paused. “But the pelvis on this one”-she pointed to one of the figures-“was difficult… maddening. Those explicit crotches on them were problems.” She laughed at herself.
“Good use of the amethyst”-Corsier came in closer to the dual portrait-“on the drapery, darker at the edges. Mmmmmm. I like this horizontal line above her stomach.” He perused the drawings for a long time.
Finally he straightened up. “Les splendide!”
Edie laughed. “God,” she said, “I can’t believe I’ve done this.” She stepped back and leaned on a stone pillar. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Claude,” she said, her voice a little more sober, “but frankly, at my age prison doesn’t suit me at all.”
Corsier turned around, his bearish body seeming even more formidable in his dapper linen suit. He came over to her and leaned on the other side of the pillar.
“Edie, just take the money, my dear, and forget about the drawings. They are destined to be short- lived.”
“Really.”
“Indeed.”
“What does that mean?”
“Destroyed.”
“Bloody hell,” she said.
They were both looking at the pictures.
“I suppose one is better off ignorant,” she mused.
“As far as you are concerned, I love Schiele, couldn’t afford them, and you made copies for me.”
“Except there are no originals.”
“Even better. You imagined Schiele for me.”
They said nothing for a moment.
“I need the money,” she said by way of explanation.
“You didn’t have to say that.”
“Odd,” she said. “I’m proud of them. Just as Schiele must have been proud when he did something like them.”
“You should be proud,” Corsier said. “No one would ever know the difference. Ever. Schiele would receive kudos for them. Why should it be any different for you?”
“Because they came from my cold intellect, Claude, not from a searing fire in my gut.” She sighed. “Credit where credit’s due. Come on. Let’s box them up for you.”
CHAPTER 33
PARIS
The hotel was small. Another of Strand’s former haunts, it opened onto one of the narrow streets in the Quatre Septembre, a short walk from the Boulevard des Capucines.
“Harry.” Mara’s voice intruded into his dream, the illogical plot of which quickly began rearranging itself to accommodate her. “Harry.” The second time she spoke, the sound was different, and he began to wake. “Harry, wake up.”
When he finally roused himself, he saw her standing at the foot of the bed. She reached down and put a hand on his foot. Behind her the windows of their room were open, the curtains pulled aside to let in the morning sounds of the neighborhood. He could see the sun on the buildings across the street.
Whenever it was possible, Strand always insisted on a room that faced out from the front of the hotel. It was usually louder, but the sound of the city provided him with an aural orientation to the rhythm of his surroundings. Because he had traveled a great deal, crossing time zones as readily as he crossed the street, and because he more often than not stayed in small, neighborhood hotels, such a synchronization helped him adjust his body clock
