Provenance by Laney Salisbury Read Free Book Online Page A

broken his heart. Her work took precedence over their relationship, she’d calmly explained. He was devastated, but he’d gotten over it.
    “Look at me,” he said. “I’ve suffered a great deal, but I’ve put my life in order. It takes time. Things work out in the end.”
    Myatt nodded. Drewe was apparently living happily with Goudsmid now, well off, successful in every respect.
    “You’re spending too much time teaching other people’s children and not enough time teaching your own. Your job is a drain on your talents.” The most important thing in the world, he reiterated, was for Myatt to provide for his children, preferably without having to suffer the daily drudgery of working for a pittance.
    Myatt had always wanted to work from home and manage his schedule around the children’s, so he listened carefully. By now, even though Myatt was nearly three years older than Drewe, the professor was a father figure to him, someone with authority and compassion who could guide him through the difficult moments. What Myatt didn’t know was that Drewe had invented most of his tragic narrative, conjuring it from air to tug at Myatt’s heartstrings and tighten their emotional knot. Drewe’s father wasn’t a scientist but an engineer for the telephone division of the British Post Office, 7 and the failed marriage to the Cambridge mathematician was pure fiction. If Myatt had been aware of any of this, he might have walked away, but he was already in Drewe’s pocket.
    “Remember that Gleizes you painted a few weeks ago?” Drewe asked him suddenly.
    Myatt had been captivated by a reproduction he’d seen of a small elliptical pencil drawing, a 1916 sketch titled Portrait of an Army Doctor, by the cubist Albert Gleizes. The sketch had prompted him to make a painting of the doctor in the artist’s style, as what he called “a small homage” to Gleizes. He couldn’t afford real oils, so he’d bought house paint from the hardware store. Once it was dry, he’d applied a thick coat of varnish until it looked very much like the real thing. Drewe had framed it nicely and hung it on his stairway wall. Myatt thought it looked glorious and was quite proud of himself.
    Drewe said he had shown the piece to an acquaintance at Christie’s, who believed it was genuine and could fetch at least £25,000 at auction.
    “You know, you don’t have to sell these paintings to me exclusively,” said Drewe, “though of course I’m happy to handle them for you. For the Gleizes I can get you £12,500.”
    That was more money than Myatt had seen in years. He could buy shoes for the kids, stop worrying about the rent, and have more than enough coal for the stove. It would solve all his problems.
    “We don’t have to stop there,” said Drewe. “You can make a decent living at this.” He held out a fat brown envelope full of bills. “It’s yours if you want it.”
    It hit Myatt that Drewe had already sold the piece. He could no longer deny what he had suspected, that Drewe was passing off his works as genuine. He had already painted fifteen or twenty pieces for the good professor, and Drewe wanted more.
    Myatt took the cash and realized that with that one small gesture he had crossed the line.
    “What would you like to paint next?” asked Drewe.
    Myatt thought for a moment.
    “Giacometti,” he said.

5
    MIBUS WANTS HIS MONEY BACK
    Frequently there is a tender complicity between faker and victim: I want you to believe that such and such is the case, says the faker; if you want to believe it, too, and in order to cement that belief, you, for your part, will give me a great deal of money, and I, for my part, will laugh behind your back. The deal is done.
    —JULIAN BARNES,
Letter from London, June 11, 1990
     
     
     
    A drian Mibus was becoming increasingly unhappy with the de Staël he had bought from Danny Berger. The longer he stared at it, the more he realized something was off—the brushstrokes seemed a little too stiff, and