Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling Read Free Book Online

hidden you from us.” He extended his hand. “Welcome into our family, young Berenzon. I heard it was quite an auction. I might have flown upstairs to marvel, but you see, it was over so quickly I hadn't the time.”
    René pulled my hand from the gnome's damp grasp. “Exactly!” he shouted. Rose looked pained. “No Manet is going to sell in four minutes. Seventy thousand francs is a fortune, to be sure, but the last Manet the Jeu de Paume bought five years ago was three times that. The cost alone is an argument against its authenticity. Don't you agree?”
    “These are difficult times, René. Many are leaving Paris, selling their artwork for whatever it will fetch. The world is not a stable place. Our currency is fickle. Art! Art is the only solid investment. Art and bullion.” The gnome smiled, revealing his gold teeth. “When the Luftwaffe first appear in the sky over Paris, will you havetime to rush to Crédit Lyonnais and wait in line with all its other weeping clients, or will you pluck your fortune off the wall and make for the countryside?”
    “I shouldn't go to the bank at all,” said Rose. “I'd find a pistol and—”
    “This is a waste of time,” René said. “I'd like to speak with Mr. Drouot.”
    “Don't,” I begged.
    René already stood on the second step of the stairs. “Why?”
    Must he ask? Because I wanted to appear strong in front of Rose. Because my father would detest any public acknowledgment of a mistake. The voices in my mind began to roar.
    “Max?” René asked. I shook my head, took leave of them, and returned to Room Six. I handed one of the uniformed men my claim slip, gave him delivery instructions, and took the back staircase to the foyer. I touched the pocket where the check had been. I did not know how much seventy thousand francs was worth, but the thought of the number made me wince.
    “Max?” Rose called, but I did not stop. I pushed past the knot of people lingering before the door and into the whipping March wind.
    A flock of seagulls swooped low over the street, crying bitterly. The round portal windows of Drouot's and the dampness of the air heightened my sensation of being near the ocean during a storm. I recalled leaving my father on this corner when I was a young boy, though at the time I did not think to ask why he separated from us here. With the romance of an eight-year-old, I was more preoccupied with the journey that Mother and I would continue on without him. Auguste had driven us up the rue des Martyrs, past the cobblestones glittering with scales from the fish dealers and the dusty windows of the antique booksellers, to the foot of Sacré-Cœur, which I told Mother was made of chalk, and she said No, plaster of Paris, that's how the stuff got its name. At the church, we fed two centimes into the binoculars and Mother lifted me up to look through them. I told her what I saw: the long steely roofs of the Comédie Française, the flags of a military parade, a windmill (“It's a dance hall,” she said), the Eiffel Tower, and an invalid girl carried up the stairs in a chair.
    I made Mother recount the story of how Saint Denis walked for hours after having his head cut off, and how he finally laid it down where we stood and declared a church should be built there, at the apex of the hill. We strolled to a small plaza behind the church where a dozen men in suspenders and berets had set up their wooden easels. They called out to us, and Mother chose one with an Italian accent to sketch my portrait on a piece of butcher's paper.
    We rode the funicular down to the plaza of Saint-Pierre. Strong gusts made the cable car swing and jounce. Father met us in front of Drouot's, a wooden crate under his arm. He had disliked the butcher-paper portrait. “Ten francs for that ! But it's not even our son! They must have given you some ugly boy's picture by mistake.”
    “Until Pablo paints his portrait,” my mother had said, “you leave me no other choice than to