The Last Weynfeldt (10 page)

Rolf Strasser estimated the costs at around fifty thousand francs, with the option of a further twenty or thirty, depending on the time limit. As the Marquesas were so far-flung, life on the islands was expensive, and the ongoing costs here in Zurich would continue—studio, insurance, health care, pension etc. This would be a refundable loan with interest obviously; he was certain that on his return he would finally make it big.

Weynfeldt knew he could neither prevaricate excessively nor agree too swiftly; either could bring one of Strasser's tirades of hatred down on his head. He took his notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled a small silver pen out of the loop in the binding and wrote “Rolf” and “Hiva Oa” and “50,000” and “new start.” Strasser regarded him distrustfully. Finally Adrian shut the little book, replaced it and said, “Sounds very sensible.”

Strasser filled both of their glasses and raised his to Weynfeldt. “Hiva Oa.”

“Hiva Oa,” Adrian replied.

Strasser drained his glass. “Do you by any chance have some slightly comfier seating, in a room that's not too far from here?”

Weynfeldt had hoped Strasser would start taking his leave, now the business had been concluded to his satisfaction. But he clearly felt obliged to stay a little longer. Adrian led him down the corridor to the Green Salon, as his mother had called it. The name had stuck, although during the renovation he had consistently avoided the color green.

They passed his study on the way. When he'd gone to answer the door to Strasser earlier, Weynfeldt had left the door open and the spotlight on. Now
La Salamandre
glowed in the dark room as if deliberately put on show. Strasser paused, entered the room, stood in front of the painting and stayed there for a good while, saying nothing, till Adrian observed, “Vallotton. Probably going in the next auction.”

“You mean this Vallotton, this one here, will be put up for auction?”

Weynfeldt put the strange question down to the level of alcohol in Strasser's blood, and said simply, “Yes.”

Strasser left the room. Seen close up he looked pretty tired. “What would you value something like that at?”

“I'm really not sure, but I think we'll start at around a million.”

Rolf Strasser didn't stay much longer. Soon after this he willingly let Weynfeldt put him in a taxi, with one of his vouchers to cover the fare.

People were sitting at the tables outside one of the bars in the city center, perched with their drinks on the windowsills, leaning against the wall, as if it were the middle of summer.

“And it's only February,” the taxi driver said.

Strasser didn't reply. He had no desire to start yet another conversation about the weather, climate change, the Kyoto Protocol, George Bush, Al Gore, Iraq or the trend towards hybrid vehicles. He had other problems.

He fished a Chesterfield out of his pocket and went to light it.

Without uttering a word, the driver tapped against a sign on the dashboard. It said, T
HANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING
.

Strasser kept the cigarette in his mouth, unlit. The bastard, he thought. What a bastard! Takes me for an idiot.
I can't bear to part from the painting. As accurate as possible, please. So I won't realize it's not my
Salamandre
anymore, the one which has been with me my whole life. My whole life! Sob, sob!

The bastard. For eight thousand! A hundred and twenty hours work! At sixty-six francs an hour. For an artist! And then he wants to auction the copy and keep the original. He can play tricks on a dope like Weynfeldt. But not on Strasser. Not on Strasser. The bastard!

They had left the center behind them now and were driving though the quiet streets of the villa district. Strasser lit the cigarette.

The driver took his foot off the gas. “This is a no-smoking taxi.”

“But I'm not a no-smoking passenger,” Strasser snapped.

“I'll say it again.”

“Just drive. We're nearly there.”

The driver braked abruptly. “Sixteen eighty.”

Strasser made no reply, simply a gesture implying he should keep driving.

“Sixteen eighty,” the driver repeated, with studied calm.

“Drive on.”

The driver held out his open hand to Strasser in silence. Strasser opened the door and made to step out. But the planned haughty exit degenerated into humiliating slapstick: he had forgotten to release the seat belt.

By the time he had found the catch, the driver's hand was already on it. “Sixteen eighty.”

Strasser flung him one of Weynfeldt's signed vouchers. “Put whatever price you want on it.”

The driver looked at the paper. “Behaves like a rock star but can't even pay for a taxi himself.” He released the seat belt; Strasser got out, slammed the door and said, “Asshole!” The taxi drove off.

The street rose steeply. The upstanding villas of the city's upper classes stood dreaming behind precise hedges and mature front gardens. Here and there a window was lit, but no one could be seen; the rooms facing the street were mainly bathrooms, kitchens and utility rooms. Up above in the attics were the maid's rooms, rarely used now.

He took a shortcut, part footpath, part steps. In white letters on a blue enamel sign, the path was named Bienensteig—“bee rise.” He began panting after a few feet.

I think we'll start at around a million
. Complacent rich kid!
I think! I'm not quite sure yet. Maybe we'll start a few hundred thousand higher or lower. It's not a big deal. It's only money.

Strasser paused, bent with his hands on his thighs, gasping for breath. Perhaps he would quit smoking on the Marquesas. Jacques Brel was buried there. Lung cancer.

We'll start at a million and take it from there. Two million, three million, many millions, whatever. But let's palm Strasser off with eight thousand.
The old bastard.

Strasser began climbing again, slowly this time, controlling his breathing.

He would ask for ten percent, that was fair, he thought. Not ten percent of the hammer price, he knew his limits. But ten percent of the estimate. If it fetched two or three little million francs that was thanks to Vallotton. But the fact that this could happen at all, that it could fetch even one million, was thanks to Strasser.

The path returned to the street it was shortcutting. He recognized Baier's house from a long way off. It rose, ghostly, from its garden of conifers and acid-loving plants. Except for the diagonal row of windows marking the stairway, it was dark.

A car approached, maintaining the required speed limit, blinding Strasser briefly, till the driver noticed him and switched off his brights. It was a Bentley with an almost inaudible motor, a vision which made Strasser so mad he raised his share by a percent. One hundred and ten thousand, not one hundred, was the sum Strasser would make Baier promise him, if he didn't want to be busted.

He opened the garden gate, walked along the granite flagstones to the front door and rang the bell.

Nothing happened. He rang again, this time for longer. After the third time he heard Baier's grumpy voice over the intercom. “Yes,” he said brusquely.

“Rolf Strasser. I have to talk to you.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Do you think I've come all this way to tell you what the time is?”

“Come back tomorrow.”

“Fine. But first I'll drop by Murphy's and tell them who really painted your Vallotton.”

Baier's intercom buzzed.

G
IULIANO
D
IACO HAD DRAWN THE DEEP RED VELVET
curtain aside. The sun threw a glaring quadrant onto the worn oriental carpet. In this merciless light they scrutinized the fabrics.

Diaco rolled a few yards of cloth from the bale and draped it over Weynfeldt's shoulder from behind. Weynfeldt looked at himself in the full-length mirror: over his right shoulder the roll of fabric, over his left the critical eyes of the diminutive tailor; Diaco could barely see over Weynfeldt's shoulder.

A veil of dust shimmered in the sun's rays. The room smelled of new cloth. Weynfeldt loved that smell. It evoked childhood memories for him. His father in a new suit. His favorite hiding place in his father's closet. The measurements and fittings for his little suits with the knickerbockers and short trousers, in this selfsame tailoring workshop.

Giuliano Diaco was the third generation of his family to run the business. His father, Alfredo Diaco, had handed it down five years ago. But he still appeared in the workshop regularly, and the older tailors still addressed him as “padrone” which in practice he remained.

Weynfeldt had been in Diaco's fabric storeroom over half an hour now, Diaco showing him one fabric after another, all merino wool, all top line plus, plus—the highest possible quality. He needed a suit for this spring they were having in the middle of winter. “Needed” was something of an exaggeration; he had a walk-in wardrobe full of suits. But he liked going to his tailor, and this weather provided a useful excuse for another visit.

“Do you know what a body scanner is?” Diaco asked.

“Something used in hi-tech medicine?”

“In just a few seconds, a body scanner can take several million measurements, which another computer then uses to cut the cloth for your suit. And someone in a sweatshop in the Czech Republic sews it for slave wages.”

Weynfeldt sighed. “So that's the future of your fine craft.”

“Not even the future. There's already a company in Zurich using them. They can sell you a made-to-measure suit for under a thousand francs. But they make a big profit on it.”

No wonder Diaco was worried. His suits started at ten times that. “There will always be people who would miss being measured personally, the conversations with you, the time spent thinking solely about their appearance,” Weynfeldt consoled him.

“They can still have all that. The proprietor pretends to be taking measurements, but the machine scans the client in the changing room without his realizing. No, no, Dottore, you can forget us tailors. We've had our time.”

“Dottore” was what Giuliano Diaco's father had called him, even before Adrian had begun his dissertation. The title had been passed down a generation intact. It was indeed possible that Diaco's days were numbered. Only Weynfeldt's older friends went there. And they were becoming ever fewer. His younger friends couldn't afford it. And the really rich people he knew, collectors for the most part, went to Caraceni in Milan or Savile Row in London.

Adrian had registered the first sign that Diaco was in trouble some while back. He had suddenly started stocking accessories. Entering the discreet premises, on the first floor of a retail building in one of the best locations, you were greeted by stands full of colorful neckties. A vitrine held leather articles—key cases, wallets and change purses, belts etc.—and another displayed products from an unknown cosmetics brand, created exclusively for Diaco.

On any other day, the prospect that Diaco's would soon cease to exist, and that yet another law firm would take over the premises, would have depressed Weynfeldt. But today his mood was not easily dented. The prospect of dinner with Lorena had made him impervious to the grim realities of everyday life.

That morning he had corrected the initial proofs of the catalogue, appalled by the quality of the printing. He had spent over an hour on the phone to the manager of the Grand Imperial Hotel, in whose ballroom their auctions were always held. The date which till now they had promised him, verbally, was suddenly unavailable due to a clash of bookings. And Véronique had bombarded him with questions after he asked her to research Vallotton's prices over the last decade on the Internet. He stonewalled in response since something still didn't feel right about
La Salamandre
. Still, there was no doubt the picture would look better on the cover than Hodler's
Landscape with Telegraph Posts
.

Some days that would all have dampened his mood. Not that he would have been bad-tempered; he was much too well bred to let his moods show. But it would have made him slower and more laconic.

Slower, yes. It had taken years for Weynfeldt to realize that his “slow-motion days,” as he thought of them, the days he felt as if he'd run aground, these days were what other people called depression. He had discovered this reading a novel, as the protagonist's emotional state was described. It wouldn't have occurred to him otherwise. And he didn't have anyone he could talk to about his feelings.

But today, although it had all the makings of a slow-motion day, everything felt light and breezy.

To make sure Diaco felt the same way Adrian ordered two suits, “transitional clothes” as his mother would have called them.

He ate a light, late lunch, alone, in a self-service vegetarian restaurant, and spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with the date problem and writing an expert's report on a Lake Geneva sunrise by Ferdinand Hodler for a colleague in the New York branch.

It was early as he left the office, wishing Véronique a good evening; he wanted to go home and change before going out. He didn't always, but today he would.

Châteaubriand had only eight tables. It was more like an elegant, private apartment than a restaurant. It was furnished with antiques; dimmed Venetian glass chandeliers provided a relaxing light throughout, and a multitude of table lamps and sconces ensured an intimate atmosphere at the tables and in the niches.

It was a pleasant, cozy place; the pictures hanging on the walls were the only thing not to Weynfeldt's taste.

The restaurant didn't have a bar at which he might have waited for Lorena, and he was led directly to the place he had reserved, a four-person table laid for two, in a window-niche, barely visible from the rest of the restaurant. He knew this table from previous meals, mostly business-related, and liked it. You could talk without being disturbed or overheard, and if you ran out of things to say, you could gaze out into the prettily lit garden, or down to the glittering city below, its lights reflected in the lake.